Just starting your comics career? Got a story to tell? Are you starting big — maybe too big? Or are you starting really, really small — say, a comic about guys who like to get small?
Tim and Mulele discuss comics from listeners that go to these extremes: City of Walls v. 1 by Shaun Noel and Abede Lovelace, and Hippy Jonny by Ryan S. Dodd.
UPDATE 6/2/11: Here’s a PDF with selected pages from City of Walls. Thanks to Shaun Noel for providing!
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Not wanting to leave Emerald City Comicon behind without giving a closer look to at least a few of the creators he met there, Tim chooses Web comics by two of those creators to critique with Mulele: Hominids by by Jordan Kotzebue, and Over the Surface by Natalie Nourigat. Plus: Panels for Primates (link is to Tim’s favorite selection), and the Web comic creator Tim regrets overlooking at Emerald City!
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Mulele & Tim, long overdue to critique some Web comics on the podcast, find a couple of sites chock-full of them.
First, The Supervillain, which features five different creators, a different one every weekday — and an opportunity for other artists on the weekend!
Then, the comics of John Roberson, who recently gave this podcast some warm fuzzies in his blog. Can Tim & Mulele return the favor?
Finally, time to do some self-promotion: Mulele talks about Weird Crime Theater.
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The Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly recently passed a law that further limits minors’ access to “Any manga, animation, or pictures (but not including real life pictures or footage) that features either sexual or pseudo sexual acts that would be illegal in real life, or sexual or pseudo sexual acts between close relatives whose marriage would be illegal, where such depictions and / or presentations unjustifiably glorify or exaggerate the activity.” Perhaps understandable, but without clear guidelines for determining what is OK and what is not, there are fears of a slippery slope. Could this become defacto, outright censorship? Tim, Kumar, and Mulele discuss the new law, and how this situation compares to the events in the U.S. that led up to the creation of the comics code.
Dan Kanemitsu’s Paper Trail — many good blog postings on the topic
Publishers boycott anime convention
“My publisher has banned school uniforms” — (visuals on this site are NOT SAFE FOR WORK)
Child sex in manga: Art or Obscenity? — The Japan Times
JL Roberson touts Deconstructing Comics
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FIVE YEARS of “Deconstructing Comics”! We celebrate with a retro lineup (Tim, Mulele, and Brandon, plus Kumar) discussing the topic that we always used to accidentally end up talking about anyway: Star Wars! Specifically, Dark Horse’s Star Wars Tales #20, an issue in which various indie creators took a crack at the Star Wars characters. Especially Jar Jar.
Also, our reactions to the trailer for the Green Lantern movie. Have all these superhero movies run their course?
A fun (if rather ribald and un-p.c.) conversation!
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At Deconstructing Comics, we will review no comic before its time. Unfortunately, Zeb’s comic is not quite there. Tim and Mulele decide to critique, not the comic itself, but the presentation.
Shawn’s comic is also not finished (see samples here), but the first 88 pages are reviewed.
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A horror anthology? Some may advise against it, but artist Greg Hinkle and several of our San Francisco friends in Writer’s Old Fashioned decided to boldly go there anyway! The result is Parasomnia, now available without a prescription. Greg talks to Tim about preparing the comic for the Alternative Press Expo, and then Mulele and Tim critique the work.
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 Oglaf appears on the Web uncredited, with no merch store, and with plenty of well-written, well-drawn raunchy comedy. Very, very raunchy. Tim, Mulele, and Kumar dig on this comic (platonically). |
 The trailer for the upcoming “Thor” movie, though, does not impress. What were we expecting? Is Marvel starting to make their movies as inaccessible to the layman as their comics? What could have made this movie look more appealing to us? |
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Though the highly influential manga series, and resulting TV show, are known for non-stop action and fighting, Dragon Ball started out as a comedy strip reminiscent of Akira Toriyama’s early work, Dr. Slump! Viz’s English versions have gone through various levels of censorship over time to adjust to the low level of sexuality that most Americans expect of kids’ books. Except, most of the characters themselves don’t understand sexuality, and that’s the charm of it; it’s best enjoyed (probably by kids as well) in its pristine form…if you can find it! Tim, Kumar, and Mulele review.
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Visual censorship comparisons after the jump (NSFW but probably safe for Japanese kids):
At last the time has come! As we promised a few weeks back, this week Tim, Kumar, and Mulele critique comics by listeners:
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