Whether you’re interested in buddy comedy action stories or anthropomorphic cats performing historical reenactments of the American revolution, there’s likely a webcomic creator out there doing something that speaks directly to you.

This week’s interview features Ontario-based artist Adriana Blake, who writes and draws a webcomic with its own unique niche market; Fall on Me, which she has been cartooning since February ‘09, explores the lighter side of day-to-day newlywed life.

Unlike many contemporary webcomics, Fall on Me is persistently upbeat, unapologetically cute, and shies away from dark humour or the ’serious’ aspects of emotionally-vested human interaction. Mostly consisting of brief anecdotes from Adriana’s relationship with her real-life husband Alex, Fall on Me is silly and at times touching – and that’s all it needs to be.

Blake’s comic sets itself further apart from the host of webcomic fare out there for two more reasons. One, her art really is superb. Super clean linework and expressive, memorably drawn characters make Fall on Me really stand out.

Two, Fall on Me has a dual identity: to Spanish readers, it is known as Cuenta Conmigo. The Venezuela-born Blake does a version of each and every strip in Spanish.

Though she lives in Milton, Ontario at present, she was raised in Venezuela, and then spent her adult life living between Canada and Texas.

I talked to Adriana about her decision to pull dual-language-duties on her webcomic, her thoughts on  writing a comic that is defined by its ‘cuteness’, and what sort of comics she read while growing up in Venezuela.

The interview is below:

KD: The first thing I wanted to ask you was, why a webcomic? What was it about webcomics that compelled you to start Fall on Me?

AB: For one, I think webcomics have made it much easier for comic creators to get their work seen by a larger audience. That definitely appealed to me, and it goes also for the level of technology out there with other things like Twitter and Facebook, which help with spreading the word about your webcomics even more.

That isn’t the only reason I chose webcomics as my medium – it was also about being able to get feedback to my work immediately – which I thought was pretty cool.

KD: How did Fall on Me begin?

AB: The topic of the comic actually came up by accident. Alex and I didn’t live together prior to being married, so a lot of stuff that I considered funny kept coming up in our relationship which I had never experienced before. As these little things started to accumulate I thought ‘these are funny, I should start writing them down’  – I saw the potential they had as material.

I didn’t know if it was going to work as I thought, so I drew my first one as a test and put it out there. I liked how it turned out, so I drew a second one, and it just kind of kept going from there.

KD: Growing up in Venezuela, were you interested in comics back then at all?

AB: I loved comics and I loved reading. When I was a kid I read a lot of the old school Donald Duck, MIckey Mouse, and I was all over the Funnies in the newspaper.

Storytelling as a whole has always been a big part of my life.

KD: How did your interest in doing your own comics develop?

AB: I wanted to have a comic project of my own for a long while, but the lack of having a story to tell held me back.

Back in High School my first attempt at approaching comics was just through the mainstream. Checking out superhero comics or whatnot, and trying to emulate drawing those. Which were quite embarrassing, actually, and I wound up throwing those drawings out.

At the time I wasn’t really aware of comics being produced in any other way.

KD: Fall on Me is, at its heart, really just a cute comic about the little day-to-day things that you and Alex share. What is it that motivates you to embrace this ‘cute’ approach to the strip so wholeheartedly?

AB: It’s easier for me to share the funny and cute stuff that happens to us rather than the deep serious stuff.  The funny/cute is what motivates me to jot stuff down in my little journal and want to share it with the world.  It’s also made me a lot more appreciative of my marriage, as I’ve been able to record these silly little moments that we would have otherwise forgotten about.  And with FoM being an autobiographic comic strip, I don’t feel too comfortable putting THAT much of our private life out there.

I know there are plenty of webcomic creators who have no reservation of sharing every little detail of their lives and it’s truly admirable, but personally I’m not on that page, at least not for this comic (I’m not that brave?).  Whether that may or may not change overtime, we’ll have to see.

Also, I think it’s a reflection of not just our relationship, but also my own illustrative style. If you look through my work outside of Fall on Me, I do tend to prefer drawing the cutesy stuff.

KD: Was it initially strange for your husband to adjust to being in a webcomic, and how does he feel about it now?

AB: Surprisingly, he adapted to it very quickly and I don’t think it phased him. He sometimes made a face when I told him about feedback I received on the strip. Like I told him how a fan said, ;oh, your husband’s my hero’ and he looked at me like, ‘what? what do you mean?’. He was a bit surprised that some people would say those things about his character in the comic strip.

Overall he’s been very supportive, and I remember at first how I used to ask him whenever I made a comic if it was okay to write about certain things that happened. He never said no, and these days I don’t even really consult him anymore. There’s just never been a problem.

KD: One of the unique things about your webcomic is that you publish it in both English and Spanish format. What prompted your decision to do this?

AB: First of all, most definitely to reach a wider audience. Also a good chunk of my relatives speak only Spanish and not English, so I felt it would be unfair if I published everything in English and leave them out. Whoever else in the Spanish speaking community also reads as enjoys them is really a bonus. I’ve actually received quite a bit of response from that end of my readership.

It’s all been really amazing the sort of response we’ve had overall.

(I asked Adriana about the sort of split between the readers of her English strip and her Spanish strip, and she informed me that she has about 3-4 times more visits to Fall on Me than Cuenta Conmigo.  She added that, “I was surprised at how many more English readers I had, since the Spanish readers tend to comment more and be generally more interactive.”)

KD: You were just recently out at the Wizard World Toronto Con, and I read on your blog that you got to meet some of your Fall On Me fans.

What is it like for you knowing that you have this fan base, and what they’re interested in is really just the way you actually interact with your husband on a day-to-day basis?

AB: Well, the Wizard World Con is a more mainstream event, so while I brought my books and whatnot in case anyone would be interested, I was surprised to have people I had never met before come up and say they read Fall on Me.

Actually, one of them was a reader from Mexico which blew me away in itself. He was asking if I had any books for sale in Spanish, which I felt super bad about because I just didn’t think I would have someone come up and actually request that.

KD: You now have over two hundred strips of Fall on Me and two collected Volumes (100 strips per collection). As far as comics go, is Fall on Me all that you’re currently working on, or do you have anything else in the works that you can speak of?

AB: Unfortunately, no. It’s not that I haven’t thought about doing something else. It’s just that nothing has really sparked my imagination to take up. So for now, I’m just sticking with Fall on Me and playing it by ear as far as anything else on the side goes.

I still draw on the side, like I do my little pinups or illustrations, but as far as storytelling goes nothing yet. I’m open to ideas as they come up.

For more Fall on Me, you can visit the official website or check it out en Español.

-Interview by Kevin de Vlaming

Now put that premise into the capable hands of Montreal-based artist Alex Fellows, a comic creator so talented he was nominated for a Doug Wright Award in the Best Emerging Artist category and then nominated again for that same award six years later.

Toss in a dash of surrealism alongside some genuinely interesting use of colour to convey tone and mood, and congratulations! You’ve successfully whipped up a steaming fresh batch of Spain & Morocco, the graphic novel currently being serialized online by Fellows over at www.spainandmorocco.com.

Cooking metaphors aside, Spain & Morocco is a fantastic read.  The characters are well-defined and marked by the kind of honest human flaws that mean they aren’t always likable, but they are, for the most part, relatable.

Fellows’ art is top-notch as well.  The expressions of those aforementioned characters are brought to vivid life in pencil and ink, while watercolor paints capture the mood and setting of the world they inhabit with inspired creativity.

It should come as little surprise that this project has been a long time in the works.

Fellows, who formerly was best known for his graphic novel Canvas, has been working on Spain & Morocco in one form or another since 2003. After Canvas was released by Fantagraphics Books in 2004, word got out that he was working on a follow-up project titled ‘The Unmoved’.

“From 2003 to 2007,” says Fellows, “I worked on a graphic novel which is basically a black & white version of Spain and Morocco. It was 110 pages or so, and it was called ‘The Unmoved’. It featured the same lead characters and the same basic setup. I originally proposed it to Fantagraphics, but they turned it down, so I put aside doing any comics for a few years.”

In the interim Fellows worked on animations (including this stellar animated video for a Deerhoof song), as well as a children’s picture book and some prose writing. Then a few years ago, he stumbled across his old pages from ‘The Unmoved’ and decided he would scan them and put them up online.

“I started touching up some of the pages so much,” he says, “that I finally gave up and completely redrew one. Then I realized that if I was going to juxtapose pages I was redoing with pages I had done six years ago, it would be pretty distracting to the reader. So I basically started re-doing the comic I had finished, but with watercolor, and I was really enjoying telling the story again. And this time I had the advantage of having a first draft.”

On account of the time Fellows has invested into this project, he says that his influences have changed regular over the course of its conception.

“For a while, I was reading the last Martin Amis novel, ‘The Pregnant Widow, which is about young people spending the summer in Italy trying to have sex with each other, and it was making me re-consider some of the scenes I was writing. Then the other day I was listening to the new Radiohead album and an idea for the story popped into my head. I guess whatever I’m looking at or reading, for better or for worse, makes it into my comics.

I’ve also been looking at Winslow Homer’s watercolors to try and skimp even the smallest smidgen of his sense of color and light and put it into my work.”

Despite the creative and notably skilful use of color seen in Spain & Morocco, Fellows says that painting is actually the step that requires the least amount of time in his artistic process.

“This is because I’ve been thinking about it the entire time while pencilling and inking,” he explains. “It takes about one to two hours per page. I usually work in big washes and I avoid using too many different colors. I try not to bog down the story with over-rendering, although I’m afraid I crossed that line in some places. I’m always re-thinking how I should be painting this comic. Sometimes I feel it’s too sloppy, then sometimes it looks too uptight.”

I mentioned that Spain & Morocco has a surrealist element to it. This is by no means a pronounced or regular aspect of S&M, so much as it is a tool that Fellows employs on occasion to help us get more into the heads of his characters.

“I like trying to convey what somebody is feeling through some kind of comic exaggeration or through expressionist drawing,” says Fellows. “Every day you see people walking down the street and it’s clear that their thoughts are elsewhere; having an imaginary argument with their boss, remembering something from their childhood, working out some plan to murder their neighbor’s dog… In the case of Spain & Morocco, my way of showing a fantasy or a memory without using a cloud-like thought balloon above the character’s head is just to integrate it into the setting. I try not to use it too often because it can be pretty self-indulgent.”

Alex Fellows’ work on Spain & Morocco has earned him an acknowledgment from this year’s  Doug Wright Awards in the form of a Best Emerging Artist nomination. Fellows says that he is “really happy to have a Doug Wright nomination, even if it is for ‘emerging artist’ again.”

“I guess the committee really liked my work,” he says, “and since I don’t have a book out, emerging artist was the only category they could fit me in. In any case, the Toronto Comics Art Festival is a really great convention and the Doug Wright Awards ceremony is very nice, so I’m looking forward to it.”

I also asked Alex if anything from Spain & Morocco was based on his own experiences’ backpacking around in foreign countries. His response:

“I went on four backpacking trips in my twenties, all of them with not much money. One of them was in the South of Spain, then across the water to Morocco, but the trip (S&M characters) Walt and Dan are on is pretty different than mine.

When I try to directly use an experience of mine it always turns into fiction. I feel more concerned with sticking to the story I’m telling rather than stitching together a string of backpacking anecdotes. Hopefully, the autobiographical bits I have put in are seamless with the fictional ones.”

Outside of Spain & Morocco, Fellows is currently seeking a publisher for a children’s picture book he has completed titled ‘Kelvin the Weather Boy’.

“I worked on ‘Kevin the Weather Boy’ full-time for nearly five months thanks to a grant from the Quebec Arts Council. Writing for children was a lot harder than I thought.  It means towing the line between talking down to the reader and talking about subjects that are way over their head. But I’m happy how it turned out. ”

Speaking of children, Alex currently divides his time between illustrating, animating, and raising a young child of his own. Contrary to what you might think, he insists this actually helps in maintaining an effective work/life balance:

“I’m more productive now that I have a child, a wife, and a full time job, believe it or not. When you’re working under the threat of your child suddenly waking up crying from his nap, you don’t dilly-dally as much. Sometimes I’m half-awake at the drawing board, but it just gives you a different perspective on things.”

For more from Alex Fellows, you can visit his official website, check out his blog, or follow him on Twitter.

You can find Spain & Morocco here.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

Actually, it’s an adjective that means ‘morose’; somewhere between ‘glum’ and ‘grim’. It’s also the stage name of Graeme Shepherd, an electronic musician from Leeds, and a botnet which sends billions of pharmaceutical spam emails out on a monthly basis.

For the purposes of this week’s artist profile, a Grum is a cartoon character with stick legs and a distinctively unique shape that lives in a ‘fantastical world, where anything and everything can happen’.

“A Grum is basically just a simple-shaped character,” says Rhian Engel, creator of the comic strip My Life as a Grum, “I came up with them when I was just doodling one day. My wife was having a bad day, and I drew a little story with these characters, and that’s where the idea started from.”

My Life as a Grum is a weekly webcomic that is also currently in syndication in the Red Deer Advocate (a daily newspaper based out of Red Deer, Alberta, Canada). The comic centers around the day-to-day adventures of Squib, an impulsive little fellow with sloped brow and a knack for speaking his mind, and his best friend, all-around-good-guy Pat.  Throw in an assorted cast of oddly-shaped characters, each with their own distinctive personality, and you have My Life as a Grum.

According to Engel, who is Red Deer-based himself, the comic as we know it started as a book.

“I was doing the book with a-page-a-day regime, and that worked at the time,” says Engel, “But then when started looking to do some marketing for the project, I did some Grum strips. And the strips actually wound up working better than the book itself did, which led me into doing that instead.”

Rhian’s decision to pursue newspaper syndication was based out of a desire to find creative ways to expand his readership.

“It’s hard for people to find your stuff on the web if you’re not spending the money to advertise,” he says, “which at the time, I didn’t have. So I adopted an ‘anything in anywhere’ approach to broadening the strip’s horizons and just get it out there.”

Engel says that the Red Deer Avocate was looking to re-modernize their comics’ page, and he took the opportunity to pitch My Life as a Grum as a modern comic strip that would add a different touch to the section.

If you look at any of his weekly Saturday comics from the Advocate, you’ll notice that Rhian’s current strips have a decidedly ‘all-ages’ appeal. This wasn’t always the case.

“The book was actually geared towards a more adult crowd, and so were the original strips that I did,” says Engel, “When the Advocate looked at my strip they said that they thought it could work, but some of the adult content I had in my older comics might exclude a portion of their readership. So that’s what led me to the all-ages approach.”

My Life as a Grum works well as an all-ages comic strip. The colourful characters, clean, crisp linework, and the uniquely imaginative world of the Grums all lend themselves quite well to a comic that’s really a lot of fun to read.

That being said, Rhian’s older, less content-restrictive strips still contain some of his most entertaining work.  I would recommend taking a browse through the archives to get a better idea of what the land of the Grums is really all about.

My Life as  Grum stands out as a well-drawn comic that obviously conveys the passion its creator has for the medium. A passion that is also evidenced by the fact that Rhian Engel is also the former owner of Widowmaker Comics and Collectibles, a comic shop that he ran in Red Deer for just shy of five years, prior to it shutting down on account of the recession.

“Right from when I was a child, I had a love for the medium,” says Engel, “I mostly read standard superhero, Marvel sort of stuff as a kid, and expanded my horizons beyond that as I grew up. That love for the medium was what prompted me to open up Widowmaker.”

When the recession hit, it became harder and harder for Engel to bring customers into the store.

“When you’re struggling to save money, one of the first things to go is your entertainment budget. That’s pretty well what it felt like happened to us. When everybody started tightening their purse strings, their comic budget was one of the things they cut back first.”

Rhian does have plans to open another comic shop in the future. When he gets to that point, he says that he would like to open a shop in a larger market and approach the industry on a much bigger scale than he did with Widowmaker.

“It’s a tough market to crack,” he says, “especially when you’re competing with existing stores that already have a history with local consumers.  Unless you have something that you’re bringing to the table that’s completely different, it’s a difficult industry to get into.”

Engel has plans to ramp up the updating schedule for My Life as a Grum in the coming weeks, moving back in to a daily format instead of a weekly. He’s also steadily exploring more syndication options for My Life as a Grum.

“I’m always looking for new ways to get my comic out there,” says Rhian. “If there’s an interested party, I’m always interested in new publications for My Life as a Grum.”

For more from Rhian Engel, you can check out the official website for My Life as a Grum.

-written by Kevin de Vlaming

This week’s feature on The Fabler Blog is an interview with the creator of an (appropriately) ghostly comic about the afterlife and the nightmare creatures that lurk beyond the proverbial veil.

You may recall that the week before last I posted an interview with Fabler Wacom Contest Grand Prize Winner Scott Ferguson, of Scout Crossing and Nerf This. This week’s interview is with Danielle Keller, (aka lucidk) who took home an Extra Large Intuos4 Tablet in that same contest for her comic, GHOST!

Danielle, a Minnesota local currently attending the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, is already a semi-prolific webcomicker at the age of 20. In addition to several smaller projects (many of which you can find on Smack Jeeves), she completed her first graphic novel-sized work in early 2010 – titled Acid Monday.

Acid Monday, which Keller recently released in book form, dealt with drug addiction, gay male romance, and ‘inappropriate workplace relations’. Did I mention it’s an adults-only title? Go on, indulge your curiosity, you know you want to.

GHOST! represents a (so far) significant change of pace from Acid Monday, painting a fictional afterlife where the protagonist, Elijah Grave, wakes up after hanging himself. From Danielle’s excerpt on the Fabler:

The people transported to this dimension have either committed suicide or were murdered, but none of them remember anything about their past…except Grave.

Along with being the only exception to this troubled society, Grave finds that this world is infested by what can be called “ghosts”. The creatures are revered and worshiped by one side of society and hated and hunted by the other. A radical group called G.H.O.S.T! (God Hunting Organization in the Search for Truth!) hunts these ghosts (with guns) to supposedly investigate their origins and purpose.

The concept is intriguing, and the manga-inspired art is crisp, clean, and charged with energy. Like… an electric blanket? No, I’ve got nothing. But it’s awesome, really.

The interview with Danielle is below:

KD: When did you start webcomick-ing, and what was your first project?

DK: I started making webcomics when I was 16, so just over four years ago. Aaaah this is actually really embarrassing, but my first webcomic was actually a Danny Phantom fancomic called House on Phantom Mountain. It was a complete disaster in my opinion, but we all have to start somewhere.

KD: In addition to working on GHOST! and recently releasing a book compiling your Acid Monday comics, I imagine you’re pretty busy with art school.

How do you balance doing webcomics with school and the other elements of your life?

DK: Copious amounts of time management and not really sleeping ever. School always comes first for me, so I guess I try to prioritize what is most important after that. Unfortunately, as most of my fans bitterly know, I tend to slip into a webcomic coma during the school year and the frequency of updates dwindles.

KD: The subject matter between your two larger webcomics projects, Acid Monday and GHOST!, couldn’t be more different. Interdimensional ghost worlds versus rehab clinics, sci-fi action scenes versus complicated boy/boy love affairs.

Tell me about what inspires your work – where do you come up with the ideas that form your comics?

DK: I think I end up drawing inspiration from a little bit of everywhere, which is why all of my ideas end up being drastically different. I started Acid Monday while I was in high school, so the theme somewhat developed from my observations at the time. GHOST! is a more conceptual story, which is probably due to my increased interest in politics and philosophy.

KD: Despite the differences between Acid Monday and GHOST!, they both predominantly feature characters dealing with major personal issues. Drug addiction and childhood trauma play a role in the former, while in the latter the main character kills himself at the very beginning of the story. (Granted, this is more due to an inability to live in a world without answers more than anything else)

Is there a particular draw for you to writing characters who are troubled?

DK: For me, I feel that all interesting characters have some sort of internal issue that affects the way they react within a story. The more troubled they are, the more potential they have to develop through their actions in the story. Though perhaps I’m just a sadist and enjoy torturing my characters ahah.

KD: Let’s talk more specifically about GHOST! for a bit. How long have you had this idea brewing in your head, and what did the idea initially start as?

DK: I’m pretty sure I came up with the initial idea for GHOST! just under two years ago. Originally, it was about a group of kids that had committed suicide and wounded up as ghosts. However, I was getting really sick of the talking heads and droning dialogue that I was working with in Acid Monday, so I went to a more action-based story with guns.

KD: How far ahead do you typically plan scripts, and how far ahead do you know the plot of GHOST!?

DK: Before I start a chapter, I write my script. By no means to I stick to it when I go to thumbnailing, but the basic story is there for the chapter. I have several sketchbooks devoted to GHOST! notes, but I try to keep to the bigger picture when taking these notes. This way, I know the entire story, but I don’t have to worry about the details until I sit down and write the script for the next chapter.

KD: What are your own thoughts on the afterlife?

DK: Hahah well, this is completely ironic since GHOST! is, well, about the afterlife, but I don’t believe in an afterlife. I guess this is partially why I started the comic. I think my lack of belief in the subject fuels my interest in it.

KD: What are you currently reading in comic books or webcomics?

DK: As far as webcomics go, I follow Hanna is Not a Boy’s Name by Tessa Stone and Hark, a Vagrant by Kate Beaton. I’ll pick up the occasional shojo/shojo-ai/shonen-ai manga because I can’t stop old habits, but I haven’t really been reading anything significant lately. Probably because I’m too busy making comics to read them haha.

KD: Pop culture/entertainment-wise, what else are you consuming these days?

DK: I have a sick obsession with Russian novels. My favorite book since forever has been Crime and Punishment and I’m in the middle of reading The Brother’s Karamazov. Over the summer I watched all nine seasons of X-Files and now I’m re-watching the old Pokemon anime. Also I’ve been getting really into generic jazz music and Johnny Cash… Like I said, I kinda get my inspiration from a little bit of everywhere.

For more from Danielle, you can visit her personal homepage, her blog, check out her stuff on The Fabler, or track her down on the Twitoverse.

-Interview by Kevin de Vlaming

Though we are taking a neutral stance as to who was involved, Fabler Comics holds a zero tolerance policy towards copyright infringement and plagiarism. In light of our stance we had to suspend the comic, Zombies Ate my Neighbors, by PsElliott pending further inquiry, with respect to the contest. Upon further investigation, the characters used in the story appeared to be similar in nature to some characters created by Matthew Dunn, an accomplished comic artist and illustrator in Melbourne Australia.

We spoke to both Peter and Matthew regarding the contest and this issue and Peter. Though the similarities were unintentional, Peter has asked us to withdraw his comic, Zombies ate my Neighbors from this contest and the site due to the similarities.

Matthew explained to us that this wasn’t the first uncanny appearance and similarities of his character designs of Leroy, the star of his comic called Lonely Monsters, also appearing in a webcomic called LM2. Apparently little Leroy and some of Matthew’s other characters have appeared in knock off t-shirts. posters, stickers etc. since their first appearances.

Moving forward, We hope that this incident doesn’t deter Peter or anyone from entering ongoing contests as we are looking forward to giving away many more prizes and much, much more for the next few years to come.

Just a quick note here from the guys upstairs. We have chosen our Top 3 Grand Prize Winners and will be making the official announcement to everyone via the blog. Check back today at 5pm EST to find out who our Top 3 Finalists are, and Grand Prize winners of our first ever Cintiq contest. We will also be making some very important announcements for all you comic creators and fans a like. So stay tuned!

Since 2007, Zuda had been home to a number of fantastic webcomic titles. It showcased some of the best and brightest comic artists and authors that could be gathered with the right combination of incentives. (ie., DC’s Big Boy clout, a growing social network of comic enthusiasts, and a flash-based viewing platform that, while it wasn’t perfect, still worked as a great ready-made outlet for aspiring webcomickers)

In Maps & Legends, illustrated by Niki Smith and written by Michael Jasper, was one of the more popular Zuda titles of the past year. The winner of the November 2009 Zuda competition, In Maps & Legends tells the story of Kaitlin Grayson, a freelance artist who finds herself obsessed with creating an intricate map of a place she’s never been.

When a bizarre stranger who claims to be from another world seeks to enlist Kait’s help as a true “world artist”, she finds herself on the cusp of an epic, interplanetary adventure.

An adventure that Niki and Michael recently announced they would continue, despite the demise of Zuda as an open webcomic distribution platform.

“I’d had a bad feeling about the state of things at Zuda after they stopped doing the competitions a few months earlier,” says Michael, “which I really missed, because I got to read the pitches for ten really cool comics and then vote and comment on them. With all of the changes happening with the upper management at DC, I could squint and sorta make out the writing on the wall.”

DC officially shut down Zuda on July 1st, just weeks after Michael and Niki had established a weekly update schedule for In Maps & Legends. The reason officially given was that Zuda was to be folded into DC Comics’ “Digital Publishing Initiative” – the goal being greater editorial and digital convergence.

Zuda did not ask Michael and Niki to continue under their banner when they switched to Comixology, so all rights for their comic reverted back to them.

“I definitely wanted to continue the story,” says Michael, “and I’d already scripted the next three issues, up to page 60. After a bunch of emails back and forth, Niki and I decided to publish the comic ourselves, and distribute it everywhere we could.”

No kidding. In Maps & Legends will be available for download on a huge variety of platforms, including Comixology, Robot Comics, Graphic.ly, Kindle, and more.

According to Niki: “If the countless potential readers out there prefer to use a specific device or read a certain format, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain from making ourselves available to them!”

This new approach to digitally publishing In Maps & Legends means a drastic overhaul to the methods which Niki and Michael had previously presented their comic to the public. With Zuda, their update style was the typical webcomic standard of one page at a time. Now, they aim to release a new issue every six weeks or so, starting with issue one being available today, September 1st.

In addition to keeping a website regularly updated as an information hub for the comic, Michael says that they will be making the first 8 pages available for free download wherever possible.

“Those were the 8 pages that won the Zuda competition for us in November,” says Michael, “So I figure we can’t go wrong with giving them away for free!”

Some existing readers might harbor concerns about this new, pay-per-issue distribution format for In Maps & Legends.

To those sceptics, Niki has this to say:

“In Maps & Legends has always been written as 20-page chapters, and I think the story’s pacing suffered being released so slowly. So while readers may not be getting 60 free pages (as they would have had Zuda stayed as it was), now they’ll be getting 10 solid 20+ page issues, and a complete storyline. There’s no more chance of being left with a cliffhanger 60 pages in.”

I’m sure many fans will be excited to see Michael and Niki’s comic continue, regardless of what form it takes. The two have already come a long way from their initial thoughts on a collaboration just over a year ago.

“We started working on the comic pretty much on a whim,” says Michael. “I was following Niki on Twitter, and one day last summer she said she was looking to team up with someone on a pitch for Zuda. So I threw 4-5 ideas at her, including the idea for In Maps & Legends, which started out life as a novel that ground to a halt by page 100.  Niki liked that idea best, started doing character sketches, and when I saw her first drawings of Kait, our protagonist, I knew we had a winner.”

From there, they set about applying their respective talents to make a webcomic that would stand out as a top Zuda contender. Michael had never worked on a comic before, which came with its own learning curve, and they to this day have still never met face to face.

“I think we get along pretty well for never having met!” says Michael, “We’ve collaborated via email almost exclusively, with the occasional instant-message chat here and there. I think it’s a really great give-and-take — neither of us pull punches when it comes to perfecting the story, and I think that comes through in the finished product.  I try to give my amateurish tips on the art, but really it’s just nitpicks and continuity stuff — Niki’s art rocks. And she’s taught me at least two Scott McCloud books’ worth of comic-book knowledge.”

Presently, the duo are aiming to finish a ten issue story arc by late 2011.

“We’d love to have a trade paperback publisher lined up by then,” says Michael, and I foresee many more stories springing from this set of characters and their situations, so I don’t see us stopping after issue 10.”

Neither Michael or Niki are particularly apprehensive about the switch to a multitude of digital platforms, although Niki admits to considering some slight revamps to her style.

“I think my page layouts may gradually change,” she says, “As I see how these first few issues work on panel-by-panel phone views. Diagonal or very thin vertical panels may break the flow.”

As for their thoughts on Zuda, both Niki and Michael look at their time on the DC-owned webcomic venture fondly:

“Zuda gave us an incredible boost,” says Michael. “I’ve made a lot of friends online through the Zuda community, and I’ve gotten to read some amazing comics and get to know their creators and editors. As grueling as the November contest was — even though we led the whole month, we felt like we were gonna lose our lead at any moment! — it made us  network and do lots of marketing to get the word out.  I’m glad for the experience, and it shot us much farther down the road than just a website and a great comic could’ve done.  I was sad to see Zuda end, but I’m quite excited by the prospects for the future and our comic.”

“I’m with Michael,” says Niki, “the Zuda community was a great head start of sorts. I know it’s very hard to get a long, somewhat epic, story-based fantasy comic launched and try to build an audience… especially when you’re on a page-a-week schedule. Zuda gave us a built-in community of readers that we owe a lot to. I hope some of them stick around and check out the issue releases.”

To find out more about where you can find issues of In Maps & Legends, check out the newly launched website.

You can also visit Niki Smith and Michael Jasper on their respective personal web pages, or follow Niki and Mike on Twitter.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

I mean, sure they managed (using black magic and wizardry) to congest Crime and Punishment down to a palatable 85 pages of overview, and yes, Jane Austen is a lot more sensible when you don’t have to muddle through hours of haughty 19th century prose.

Still, do you ever find yourself thinking that they really could have gotten where they were going a lot faster?

Enter Ontario-based comic artist Eric Kim, who answered a resounding ‘yes’ to the above question. To prove that any classical narrative could effectively be reduced to two-to-four panels of dialogue, Kim set about putting to shame one of literature’s greatest icons; the Bard himself.

“My friends and I were all sitting around, having some drinks and watching movies,” Kim says modestly of the project’s humble beginnings, “At some point in the night, someone mentioned Scott McCloud and the notion of condensing a narrative into two panels. It sounded pretty ridiculous, so I tossed off a two-panel version of Hamlet. Turned out it to be pretty funny, actually. My friends all thought it was pretty hilarious, so I kept it up.”

From there, Eric embarked on an epic two-and-a-half-month quest to translate all of William Shakespeare’s plays into glorious, two panel comic book form. That’s right, Every. Last. One.

The results were collected and published Eric Kim’s new book, The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare. I’m delighted to say that Kim’s friends were right to encourage him – his collection of masterly rendered stick-man drawings and modern takes on Shakespearean dialogue are truly, ridiculously funny.

Any author that describes the first part of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the dialogue “Holy shit! I’m a donkey!”/”Well shit! Let’s get it on!” has my vote of confidence.

“It’s weird,” says Kim, on the reaction he’s been receiving from Shakespeare fans, “It’s all been pretty positive. I think it’s because I’ve made an adaptation that doesn’t dumb down the material, and in some cases, actually incentivizes (is that a real word?) the reading of the work. I hate Shakespeare. And now I want to go read “A Winter’s Tale” because of how people have responded to it. It’s kind of fascinating.”

Hate, perhaps, is a strong word. As the dedication to the source material would indicate, Kim’s research on Shakespeare’s works alone shows his appreciation for the legendary author.

Says Kim:

“I’ve read Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, King Lear, and Romeo and Juliet. Basically anything that was required reading for high school. My appreciation for Shakespeare is pretty superficial.”

Thank goodness for Wikipedia.

Despite Eric’s extensive research, some plays still proved harder than others to Coles-size into accessible versions of Shakespeare.

“The hardest to summarize was the last one in the collection, Cymbeline,” says Kim. ” It’s a lot of plot to compress into two panels, so that mostly became just two people summarizing everything. Well, I guess most of them are about two people summarizing everything.”

If only Will Shakespeare lived to see the Twitter generation. He certainly could have learned a thing or two about getting to the point.

The easiest play to summarize, says Kim, was Hamlet.

“I know that play pretty well, so I was kind of sad when it was over. I think that it has more of the intent of the book at heart: to compress what people already know and put it into a humourous context. The lesser known plays tend to read more like summaries, which is fun too, but sort of aside from the initial intent of the work.”

I also asked Eric about his influences outside of the Elizabethan area in putting together the book. Specifically, I was curious if he was inspired at all by fellow history-reinterpreter Kate Beaton.

“I have a huge admiration for her work, and also for her depth of knowledge about so many figures in history,” he says. “You can see her passion in it, as well as all the little things that bother her in recounting of history, I think. In comparison, I think I tend to care about literature, so history is just to lend context to the work I’m reading. Admittedly, most of my reading is pretty much pop-culture stuff. I’m pretty fascinated by sci-fi in the mid-eighties. But when I need to research, I go into it.”

Eric says his modern inspirations fall more in the camp of xkcd.

“If it were written by Larry the Cable Guy,” he adds. “I think that Kate Beaton’s writing is much more clever and far less profane than mine.”

Kim’s not entirely sure if he would ever extend the two-panel author concept beyond Shakespeare:

“I’d always pictured this to be sort of a one-off thing. Though I’ve really considered making a “safe for work” version. Ultimately, I’d hate to be pigeonholed as someone that just does this one joke over and over again. There are many things that I’d like to pursue, as my editors at Oni Press are well aware.”

Unfortunately, at this time he can’t say much about his current work with Oni Press. Whatever it is, it has been big enough to keep him from updating his Transmission X webcomic, Streta, for several months now.

“I think I’m going to have to let that one go,” Kim says of the sci-fi webcomic, “I’ve been rewriting Streta ever since I went on hiatus, and it’s just not lining up right. I think I’m freaking myself out, thinking that people want more than what is there. But on top of that, all of my fears as a writer, they’re being realized. I have to stop until I can see where I’m going again. I don’t think it’s going to happen by November, ultimately. I’m not sure when it’ll happen.”

Sad news for Streta fans, indeed.

The good news is that whatever Kim’s working on for Oni Press, he reassures us it will be interesting. And until then, there’s always The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare – which you should probably pick up from Kim’s online store as soon as possible, if you haven’t already.

Consider it doing your brain a favour.

For more from Eric Kim, you can check out his various works on his official website, view recent art updates on his blog, and follow him on Twitter.

While you’re at it, here’s a rad illustration that he did for VENT, UDON’s 10 year anniversary anthology:

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

In addition to their close proximity to Canada’s Western Coastline, they share something else in common; founding membership in a comic book collective by the name of Cloudscape Comics.

I was fortunate enough to recently connect with a few individuals involved with the group. My goal was to learn a little about what they do, what they stand for, and how local comic creators can benefit from collaborating through a collective like their own.

According to Jeff Ellis, current Cloudscape President and a founding member himself, the collective’s reason for being is to promote and assist Vancouver-area comic artists and writers.

“There are a lot of talented individuals living in the city,” says Jeff, “but they’re all working on their own, and it’s much harder to get recognition working that way. Cloudscape Comics is a way to support those individuals.  Secondary to that, we also want to build up the reputation of comics in general – we’re trying to make interesting fictional stories that have a broad appeal, not just for kids and not just for really discerning indie connoisseurs.”

Jeff says that Cloudscape was born out of the initial desire of a few Vancouver comic artists to start up a local collective. Without any real idea where to start, he and a friend created a Facebook Fan page, which ended up pulling in quite a few members. They decided to meet in person at Our Town Cafe in Vancouver, which became a weekly event.

“The next idea that came to us,” says Jeff, “Was hey, we have all of these artists making comics – rather than spending money to do our own individual works why don’t we work together and pool our resources to publish something. That’s where our first volume came from, Robots, Pine Trees and Broken Hearts. It was a 48 page floppy comic, and doing that encouraged us to keep going.”

Angela Melick, author of the popular webcomic Wasted Talent, initially became involved with Cloudscape immediately after graduating from University.

“I was searching for structure in my life before I found a job, and Jonathon Dalton told me about a group he was starting up with these other cartoonists,” says Angela, “I said hey you know, I’ve got nothing better to do, I’m unemployed, and I’m looking to get back into doing comics. So I wrote a story for the group and we actually managed to publish an anthology together, which I think shocked everyone in the community.  As many cartoonists could tell you, anthology groups come together very often, and ninety percent of the time they implode.”

She says that publishing Robots, Pine Trees and Broken Hearts was significant in that it showed the group they could actually pull together to release a quality anthology. In doing so, herself and the other Cloudscape artists also learned a great deal about the publication process  and what they would need to tell artists submitting works in order to  make the process flow more smoothly in the future.

“Since then,” says Angela, “we published Historyonics, which was a long book of history comics, and we published Sunday Funnies, which was a color book  – and that impressed a lot of people, because they didn’t know that color was achievable. Our latest book, Exploded View, we really tightened up on the editorial direction and we’re really proud of the emphasis on story-telling in the book. I think with Exploded View, we really hit our stride as a group. ”

As for the origin of the name, Cloudscape Comics was not the group’s original moniker. Back in the beginning, they called themselves Cumulus  – that is, until they found out there was another publisher in Montreal with the same name, coincidentally also doing comics.

“We decided to rename ourselves,” says Jeff,  “after a long meeting at the comic shop we took a vote and Cloudscape was what we ended up with. I think we were looking for something related to the Vancouver weather, so we came up with a lot of names very cloud and rain related. Precipitation Press was another option. (Jeff laughs)”

Over the course of four anthologies, Cloudscape has built an impressive list of over thirty contributors – including the likes of Camilla d’Errico, Colleen macIsaac, Jordyn Bochon, and Colin Upton, to name a few. (We’ve actually featured both Colleen and Jordyn on The Fabler Blog before – click on their respective names to read the articles!)

Of those contributors, Colin Upton would be the member with the longest hands-on experience in comics. He started making minicomics in 1985, and released his first full-length comic, Big Thing, in 1990. He saw his comics published by Fantagraphics and several other Seattle-based alternative publishers throughout the nineties, before returning to the minicomic format around 2000.

“I remember coming across the first Cloudscape anthology,” says Colin, “and being very impressed with this group of young people who were managing to get their stuff together enough to publish in print.  I particularly appreciated this since so many new comic writers and artists choose to put their stuff online, rather than publish in print.”

Another draw for Colin was the fact that Cloudscape was very story-oriented.

“At the time,” he says, “I was seeing a lot of comics that were what I like to call ‘arty-type comics’. That is, ones that don’t have much of a plot or direction where it seems to be mostly about sketching or drawing, rather than anything story-driven.  So I appreciated that about Cloudscape, that they were story-oriented.”

For these reasons, Colin decided to get involved with the collective. He has contributed to every Cloudscape anthology since.

“Cloudscape allows local comic creators a chance to come together and do something larger than a minicomic,” says Upton, “Also, in my case it allows me to connect with what’s going on in the comic scene these days. Just about all of the artists I knew doing comics in the eighties or nineties have gone on to other things – working in video games, graphic design and the like. It gets quite lonely when you reach my age, having very few cartoonists as your contemporaries.

Not to mention, hanging out with a group of younger people involved with web-publishing and the modern world of comic publishing in general helps me come to terms with those developments I don’t yet fully understand myself.”

The value of connecting with local comic creators is, in itself, a significant benefit to collectives like Cloudscape. As Angela Melick points out, drawing comics can be a very isolated experience.

“One of the greatest things for an artist about the internet is being able to find other artists,” she says, “but being able to do that locally is ten times better. You can actually talk to people informally about the artistic process, and learn from their technique as you’re sitting with them, watching them draw.  Even if you don’t ever publish anything in your group, just finding other cartoonists near you is tremendously helpful for anyone.”

Currently, anyone that is presently living in Vancouver or has previously lived there can contact the group about getting involved.

“All of the contact information is on the website,” says Jeff. “We’re currently trying to keep the anthologies grounded in a West Coast perspective, but we also run comic battles as a weekly feature on our website, and anyone can submit something for that.  We post a theme, and anyone is welcome to submit a comic, then we put it up for a week for everyone to vote on. The winner gets the glory (and possibly a prize, depending if we have a prize ready).”

Jeff says that one major goal for the near future of Cloudscape Comics is to establish a distribution method that can get their anthologies onto shelves in a wider radius of bookstores.  Being a sharp sort of fellow, he acknowledges that this is no small feat.

(For those unfamiliar with the world of indie publishing, distribution is traditionally one of the largest hurdles to overcome – largely thanks to the existing, outdated, and non-indie-friendly Diamond-based infrastructure of distribution.)

The group is also working on tightening their editorial control over the next Cloudscape Comics anthology, Journeys, which would hopefully be due out sometime around next March .

“When cloudscape first started, it was very democratic,” says Colin Upton, “which has its problems. But increasingly they are attempting to up the quality of the book by making editorial decisions and judgements and suggestions. Which is great, because in my experience with editors I’ve dealt with before – even from professional publishers like Fantagraphics – you don’t usually get much feedback. Getting that from the editorial group at Cloudscape really helps you improve your story and see some of the mistakes you might otherwise have missed yourself.”

“We’re really trying to up the ante, creatively, ” says Jeff. “We’re trying to push everyone to write and draw to their best ability, and we hope to make something that could maybe catch some critical acclaim. We’d love to attract the attention of, say, the Shuster Awards.” (hint)

You can find Cloudscape Comics  on the web, and purchase any of their four anthologies to date here. They also have a Twitter account!

Jeff Ellis keeps a personal website, blog, and Twitter account. You should also check out his webcomic, Teach English in Japan, which he does with Jonathon Dalton.

Angela Melick writes this super fun and quirky autobiographical webcomic, and she also has Twitter.

Colin Upton can be found here on the web, and he also updates both his Facebook Page and blog regularly.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming

Melick had been drawing comics in one form or another for almost as long as she could remember,  and she felt that pursuing an education in engineering shouldn’t be a reason to suppress her interest in that form of art.

It was lucky for us that Angela made the decision to find an outlet on the internet – that simple website collecting her quirky, autobiographical sketches on looseleaf became Wasted Talent, a hugely popular and extremely funny weekly webcomic that’s still updating, 5 years later.

The Vancouver-based Melick has been busier than usual lately, between planning (and starring!) in a wedding, and working on her first solo book.

All the same, she managed to fit in a quick interview with The Fabler for your perusing pleasure – the results of which you may gleefully behold below:

KD: Back in 2005 when you put your first Wasted Talent sketches online, at that time what was the extent of your knowledge about webcomics?

AM: There were a few webcomics that I read, but I didn’t know anyone that was actually doing them.  I knew quite a few cartoonists, but I had never met another webcomicker.

I didn’t really have a good feel for the industry, so my knowledge was very minimal. It was a learn by doing sort of thing.

KD: If you could go back and give your 2005 self advice about the webcomic, what – if anything – would you say?

AM: I would say that someday people are actually going to read it! I think that would have made a difference to me to know.

I might not have been able to put any more time or energy than I did into the comic, (’cause I had almost zero energy to spare on it back then) but I think there would have been a few things I’d have done differently if I had known it would go somewhere.

KD: In the five years you’ve been doing Wasted Talent, what aspects of your experience making it have been the most rewarding for you?

AM: Definitely knowing that people all around the world read it, and that it brings a bit of extra happiness into their lives. I think it’s the only thing I could have done that had the potential to make that kind of impact on other people.

KD: On the flipside to that coin, what aspects of your experience doing Wasted Talent have been the most stressful?

AM: I tried really hard not to make it stressful. It could very easily have fallen into the ‘work’ category of my brain, and because I’ve done a lot to mitigate that it hasn’t been very stressful.

That being said, trying to get out to conventions and missing out on opportunities that I would have had if this was a full time thing has been fairly stressful. I wish I could just jump into everything headlong, but you know, you make trade-offs.

KD: Has it been any easier (or harder) to find time to do the comic and convention thing than back when you started?

AM: It’s gotten easier, probably, because the more you do it the faster you get, and you just learn how to fit it into your schedule. Also the more successful you are at it, the better you get at working the logistics behind it.

So the more I go to conventions, the easier it is to get to conventions – because I have a better idea about what I need to do in advance in order to get there. One of the big learning curves for me was learning that certain things you need for conventions, such as table space and tickets, often sell out up to six months in advance. So you sometimes have to start preparing for a convention literally six months ahead of time. Now that I’ve learned all of that, it’s a lot easier.

KD: What’s your creative process like for coming up with a Wasted Talent strip?

AM: Well, I go out and live my life, right? (laughs)  Then anything something happens that’s remotely joke-like or that I think I might be able to make a comic out of, I put it in my little book.

I have a little book that I carry around with me all of the time, and I just write a little note about what happened. Like, this is the situation, and this could be the punchline. Anything that’s just enough to remind me what it was without being too detailed, ’cause then I might forget what was funny about it in the first place.

When it’s time to draw a comic, I go over my notes and pick the ones that seem funniest to me. I sketch them out, and if it looks good I go forward, and if it doesn’t I try an idea.

KD: As I understand it, you’re planning on releasing your first solo book soon. Can you tell me a little about that?

AM: I would love to! It’s at the printer, and it’s completely finished. What I did was I took the best comics from the University days back at the very beginning of Wasted Talent, and I redrew them.  I redrew about eighty comics, and I put that altogether with a bunch of bonus material – pictures from back then, stories, sketches, and a history of the campus that affects the comics a little bit.

I’ll have preview comics together for Anime Evolution in mid-August, and I expect it to be available for sale online September-ish.

KD: With those eighty comics you redrew, did you alter the dialogue at all, or leave that much intact?

AM: I did for some, because I think I’m a much better writer now than I was then. So there are ways that I was able to improve the dialogue, I took out some sections to streamline it a little better, and made things generally clearer. I left the spirit of the jokes intact.

KD: Is there anything else you’re currently working on outside of Wasted Talent, comic-wise?

AM: I’ve done something for every anthology put out by local comic collective Cloudscape Comics, and I’d like to keep doing that. I love writing short stories.

I’m working pretty hard on a book called Lost Omens, which is a fantasy/sci-fi sort of story that I’ve been working on for a really, really long time. I hadn’t found the time to get it going before – I put about two pages up and then I got engaged. I had to redirect all of my energy into the wedding. Now that the wedding and Book 1 of Wasted Talent are done, I’m hoping rechannel my energy into Lost Omens.

KD: Name a webcomic that you find hilarious.

AM: I really enjoy Questionable Content. That should probably be obvious, but I really enjoy the characters and a lot of people identify with them – I have an inner Hannelore myself.

KD: Name a webcomic that you find inspiring.

AM: I’m really inspired by Der-shin Helmer’s ‘The Meek‘; he draws comics that I wish I could draw. I’m also inspired by Rice Boy, I just love Evan Dahm’s world building.

I also admire Dresden Codak for the art, and Anders Loves Maria for the writing and style.

I’m much more readily inspired than I am driven to laughter, I guess.

For more from Angela Melick, you can visit the Wasted Talent website or follow her on Twitter.

-Interview by Kevin de Vlaming