Tag Archive for 'Comics'

Sequential Underground #26 - 24-Hour Comics Day Recap and PIX Pregame

Published
by
nick marino
on October 5, 2011
in Podcast Episodes
. 4 Comments

Sequential Underground

Sequential Underground #26 [ 39:09 ] Play Now | Download

FIRST: A call-in from Justin Rivers of the Distro1 podcast. He talks about his scrapped comics project (a topic we discussed on the show back in SU #22).

THEN: What's a bindlestiff? WAIT... WHO CARES? Shawn Atkins and Nick Marino recap their 24-Hour Comics Day 12-Hour Comics Day experience at the Toonseum. Shawn showed up 45 minutes late... but Dan Greenwald showed up 11 hours late!


Shawn and Nick toiling away at 24HCD (photo by Barry Linck)

Shawn did an artistic Gello Apocalypse story, while Nick drew a dramatic Stick Cats tail tale. Dan talks about past 24HCDs, including his 2010 story, Spacebase 01.

PLUS: It's time for PIX! Everybody's excited about the second year of Pittsburgh's fledgling indie comics show. Dan'll have more copies of Spacebase 01, Blue Wraith minicomics, and more. Shawn'll have this year's and last year's 24-hour comics, Phoenix 9, Explorers of the Unknown, Gello Apocalypse, and hopefully some prints.

Nick will have tons of comics both old and new (see above) including Zombie Palin, Super Haters, Time Log, Stick Cats, Passage, XLK, and more!

NEXT: A PIX and NYCC Recap!

A Podcast with Ross and Nicholas #112 - Fashion in Comics

Published
by
nick marino
on September 28, 2011
in Podcast Episodes
. 19 Comments

A Podcast with Ross and Nick

A Podcast with Ross and Nick #112 [ 42:16 ] Play Now | Download

Guest starring writer M. Nicholas Almand!

We're talking about the fashion in comic books, manga, and more. From Rob Liefeld to Starfire's misfire, and everything in between!!!

Thx to Diello for suggesting our topic on deviantART!

NEXT: Art school memories.

AudioShocker Special - Formatting Comics for Sale on the Kindle

Published
by
nick marino
on June 21, 2010
in Podcast Episodes
. 3 Comments

The Amazon Kindle DX ebook reader is an awesome medium for reading comics, but formatting your comics to look good on the device and sell through the Kindle store takes a bit of work.

In this podcast tutorial, Nick Marino walks you through the process of sizing, saving, converting, and posting your original comics content so it can be sold through the Amazon Kindle store.

AudioShocker Special: Kindle Comics [ 25:33 ] Play Now | Download

Resources and links:

Questions, comments, or corrections: email nick @ audioshocker.com

Special thx to Shawn Atkins, Dan Greenwald, and Seth Fronzoli

Click here to visit the AudioShocker Store!

Culturology #68 - Oh, the Book Club is So On

Published
by
pete
on June 11, 2010
in Culturology
. 5 Comments

The first selection for the 2010 Culturology I Know What You Bookclubbed Last Summer Bookclub has been made: China Mieville's The City & The City. So run out to your local independent bookseller and hop on board the CIKWYBLSB train! The City & The City, though I haven't started reading it, is a work of speculative fiction, and a police procedural. Online reviews, just glossed by me, like to compare it to Kafka & Dick (that's Philip K. Dick, who you might recall from 2009's Summer of Booklove Bookclub). Perfect summer reading! I'll look to write it up shortly after the solstice, so let's shoot to have it read by then.

And we (I) hear in Culturology's Miami Bureau (Culturology's only bureau) should also have some other literary treats in store for you later this month as well, so it should prove to be a most not heinous summer.

But what to blog about in the meantime. It's been a lousy spring for culture. I've mostly been wrapped up between work, teaching an undergraduate creative writing class, and plotting out the upcoming (only a month and a half away!) Time Log web comic with Nick (which, by the way, is going to be awesome, if I do say so myself). I think co-writing a comic gives me some decent street cred with my students, though I'm mostly trying to teach them about the wonders of poetry these days. Why? Because you know what many of my students seem to really like? Manga. Back when I was at Carnegie Mellon, I thought it was just a nerd-college thing that people would, like, like manga. But apparently not. Even at a giant public university in South Florida with, by my count, very few nerds, manga reigns supreme.

Which is not to make any judgment on manga one way or the other. As a matter of fact, the only manga I've ever read was the complete Akira (while at CMU, as a matter of fact). And I thought it was great. I also recall, a couple of years ago now, as Nick and I were still in the process of making Time Log happen, Nick mentioning that manga was, like, really popular, and that the easiest way to get TL made would be to make it a manga (which, as you now know, didn't happen). But now my students know that 17th-19th century British poetry is way cooler than comics!

There being some compulsion which I'm missing, to try and make poetry new and vital for my students, and use even vaguely contemporary examples. But my general opinion is that any poem worth its salt makes itself new and vital again and again across time. Of course, explaining this notion to modern students isn't easy, since it seems pretty arbitrary to them why one poem and not another would be chosen. And that's actually a really valid complaint, since who cares what a bunch of old bearded white men decide what makes for good poetry? Except that canonization is an inevitable process--and one could point this out with manga, or comics in general as well. As I've stated plenty of times before, some cultural things become recognized as being good because they are good. Or because they're good for good reasons. And it's a human enterprise; we've got to take someone's word for it. It's just a matter of not taking it for granted when we do partake of canonical pieces of the culture, and be sure to actively engage it and be able to decide for ourselves if it's worth passing on in our own personal canon of recommendations.

And so, yes, I would recommend both Akira and The Prelude. And now I command you to read The City & The City!

ACK! - An Indian Webcomic I Can Cosign

Published
by
neal
on June 3, 2010
in Comics
. 3 Comments

Occasionally my sister share's stuff with me on Google Reader. Often these things are from Sepiamunity- a blog that covers things related to India / South Asia. Today, she introduced me to ACK! and it totally made my day. Now I would like to share my enthusiasm for it with you.

ACK! is webcomic about two side characters from the epic Mahabharata - set in Jersey. The art is a dead ringer for the classic Amar Chitra Katha books that I grew up with - but don't get it twisted, the  the story is more Bill & Ted than Ram & Laksman. As noted on SM, the comic is only a couple weeks in, but the strip offers infinite possibility. It definitely has Axe Cop potential.

I've bagged on ACK Media and others (the publisher of the original ACK comics)  in the past - for not finding a way to modernize their catalog or appeal to the current crop of diasporized Indians. Obviously, ACK! is not the family friendly panacea- but it is a great example of adapting nostalgia to modern tastes and pop culture refs like Jersey Shore. It is similar to what Adult Swim / Cartoon Network did with the Hannah-Barbera library. So make sure you tune in next week, I know I will.

Culturology 036 - I Know What You Nerded Last Summer

Published
by
pete
on August 3, 2009
in Culturology
. 6 Comments

You might suppose that, since I've been away on vacation for a whole month, I must've dedicated some amount of that time to absorbing various cultural pursuits, in order to restock my depleted stores of cultural-critical commentary. Well, you're wrong. I did very little in my time away from article writing. In the month of July, I saw zero movies in the theater, went to zero music concerts, and even read fewer books than I normally do. Other than dedicating some quality time with Nick to producing our latest run of super-awesome ashcans, I really have little to show for myself. I did eat as many grilled portabella mushroom caps this month as about anybody might, I imagine. So I have that going for me, which is nice.

All of which is to say that I'm scrambling a bit to get my shit back together in time for this article that's already happening, and already more like a LiveJournal post than a substantial article with the high level of incisive acuity that I usual bring to the cultural table. The closest I got to any full-blown media consumption in July was reading a giant stack of comics that Nick loaned to me, and one particular afternoon sticks out in my mind, as I listened to some classic metal on headphones and read "Essential" issues of the Fantastic Four. Metal + Comics = the adolescence that I'm only getting around to having now. But I don't particularly fancy the idea of writing all about all the comics that I've just read that all of you have probably already read (though I thought Neveda was pretty awesome, and of course the Bill & Ted comics are a must-read for all humans everywhere).

In my metal listening (I was basically just listening to Slayer and Death), I also opted, briefly for a foray into the more brutal black metal kind of scene of music to listen to some scarier music. The motivation goes something like this:

a) sometimes metal is pretty awesome music (depending on which sub-genres of metal you're talking about--I being a fan, primarily, of the doom/sludge kind of stuff (e.g. The Melvins, Sleep, etc.)).

b) sometimes its good to try other (sub-)genres of music, and I had access to the internet on my vacation that I don't have in my real life, so was able to do more internetting re: metal than I generally would

c) especially because of my interest in classical music (and Sufjan Stevens), I have been exposed to a generally high volume of music written with Christian inspiration and content. I'm basically agnostic about it, caring more about the music and how it sounds than its motivation or what it means, figuring that, hell, people can believe whatever they want if it turns out a good product. Therefore, I should be similarly comfortable in listening to music that is written with motivation from the other end of the religious perspective, namely, with the whole black metal thing, satanism, or at least paganism, or whatever. Of course, I draw the line at anything explicitly bigoted, 'cause that's no fun (of course, its hard to hear what they're saying, so who knows, really...), but if the dudes believe in their religion and happen to worship that bad guy, that should be fine, if the music rips.

Of course, playing music for the dark gods tends to involve way more brutal riff-age, which encodes hours on top of lonely hours learning how to play such riffs, which tends to keep me from being a real metal-head, since I've been brain-washed by my own classical training in music to have a slightly hedged interest in virtuosity in general; that is, just 'cause the dudes can play fast, doesn't mean it's good at all--this, of course, lines up with my preference for the sludge, since the riffs there aren't so much about speed as slow-burning awesomeness.

But, long story short, reading comics and listening to metal makes you a nerd. No two ways about it. So I switched to hip-hop, but mostly Handsome Boy Modeling School, Black Elvis, and Ultramagnetic MCs, which keeps well profiled as an unabashed nerd. What can I do? Without the usual levels of content in this article, I can't mask the nerdiness which lurks under the surface of just about everything that I do. Oh well.

(P.S. The next book club entry, schedule for this week, Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road had been postponed until next week; get reading, folks!)

U.S.Agent vs. Iron Man Hyper Combo Wallpaper!

Published
by
nick marino
on August 3, 2009
in Comics and Video Games
. 2 Comments
U.S.Agent throws his shield at Iron Man

U.S.Agent tussles with Iron Man, 1980s style!

DOWNLOAD WALLPAPER :: 1280 X 1024 :: 1440 X 900 :: 1600 X 1200

Last week, you though I was @#$%ing with you when I put up a U.S.Agent wallpaper. I was 100% legit with that - he's a secret character in Marvel vs. Street Fighter (as well as a "helper" character in MvC).

However, this week is a bit of a cheat. But not because of Iron Man's Silver Centurion armor - you can at least mimic the color scheme in Marvel Super Heroes on the PlayStation by holding the down button for five seconds while highlighting Iron Man, and then pressing a punch or kick button to select him as your fighter.

No, the cheat is actually this image, which is a depiction of Iron Man battling the Captain, not U.S.Agent. However, Steve Rogers wasn't the Captain for long, and the black and reds would soon belong to John Walker instead. You can just use your imagination to pretend he's already wearing them in this picture.

Thanks to Mark Bright, Bob Layton, and Bob Sharen for giving us this awesome art from Armor Wars' Iron Man #228. And thanks to Marvel Avalon for the image. This has been the second part of a U.S.Agent Double Shot, so be back next Monday for an unrelated Street Fighter Hyper Combo Wallpaper!

Click here to visit the AudioShocker Store!

The Top 9 Things Most People Don't Realize About Comic Book Fans

Published
by
nick marino
on July 10, 2009
in The Top 9
. 3 Comments

Comic book fans get a bad rap AND IT'S NOT FAIR!!! I've compiled this "Did you know?" list for people who DO and DON'T consider themselves comic fans (no assholes, I mean "comic fans," not "comic sans").

For people who don't read comics, remember that these nine qualities may not apply to every comic book reader out there. However, you may find that these traits have a greater presence in comic book fans when compared to other people you know.

And comic book fans, if you have someone in your life that gives you a hard time about reading comics, show them this list and see if they understand you better after reading it!

9. Comic book fans are passionate. While many people would probably opt to use the term "fanatic," I think the word "passionate" is far more accurate. For example, a comics fan gets upset when a movie does a character's origin wrong. Why? Not because they're deluded and obsessed - it's because a vast majority comic book fans have affection for the source material and they want everybody to understand why the original comics are so great.

8. Comic book fans are detail-oriented people. Again, this is where detractors would use a different word or phrase. The clearest way to represent the stereotype of detail-oriented comics fans would be to call them "obsessed with irrelevancy." But that's just wrong. To a comic book fan, details aren't irrelevant - they're important aspects that add to the story. To remove details is to remove the richness of characters and settings.

7. Comic book fans are emotionally sensitive. By "emotionally sensitive," I don't mean that comics fans are crybabies. What I mean is that comic books fans tend to have a greater degree of understanding when it comes to a range of emotions, particularly sadness and anger. Because the act of reading a comic book is often very introspective, emotional story events resonate strongly and generate extensive thought in comic fans.

6. Comic book fans are generous. While I'm sure there are some misers out there, I'll bet you there are way more generous fans than stingy fans. You just have to ask them about the right stuff: namely, comic books. Comic book fans will devote their time, words, resources, and (the greatest gift of all) their comics to help you understand why they love the stories that they love so much. If you get cornered by a comic book fan who can't stop talking about a particular body of work, it's not because they're weird or stupid - it's because they want to share something with you that's given them something special.

5. Comic book fans have a strong sense of justice. Specifically, superhero fans. Superhero comics are often psycho-dramas that play out situations through a variety of moral filters. By exploring these situations from a multiplicity of angles, comic book fans actively hone their notions of justice and fairness.

4. Comic book fans crave inspiration. Whether it's visual inspiration, artistic inspiration, emotional inspiration, or spiritual inspiration, comic book fans seek out stories of perseverance and triumph to inspire themselves. This is a quality that's particularly strong in those who follow superhero comics, because superhero protagonists often seek to improve the world around them by helping others.

3. Comic book fans have tons of imagination. Obviously, after spending your days reading stories about the improbable, you develop a finely-tuned imagination. And don't confuse imagination with detachment or delusion - imagination means the ability to envision multiple possibilities across many different situations. That can come in handy in unexpected ways - at work, in the service of others, or even in an emergency.

2. Comic book fans have a great respect for storytelling. At the core of the comic reading experience is the story. Because comics are basically separate pieces of visual art intended to be experienced over time, story is integral to the act of comic book reading. Fans develop a passion for well-told stories and for those who tell quality stories. Comic fans reward the creators who tell the most engaging tales with awards, accolades, loyalty, and adoration.

1. Comic book fans are art lovers. This is possibly the most overlooked quality of comic book fans. On the whole, they love illustration and visual art. After all, they do spend endless hours viewing diverse art styles spread across thousands of pages. Comic book fans love art so much that they devote their time and resources to pursuing it in single issues, graphic novels, t-shirts, posters, and with action figures and statues (both forms of sculpture, mind you). A love for art fuels the medium of comics and, in turn, fuels the minds and hearts of those who read comic books.

More: The Top 9 Reasons I Still Haven't Seen the New Star Trek Movie

Why the Top 9? Because 10 is too many and 9 is better. 3 X 3 = Awesome. Now that’s what I call math.

Zombies, Vultures, and Crack at Pittsburgh's Small Press Festival

Published
by
nick marino
on July 6, 2009
in Behind the Scenes and Comics
. 0 Comments

Okay, not exactly. It's more like Zombie Palin, Apartment 307, and Cracked Magazine (or nowadays what the kids would know as Cracked.com). See, I'm going to be at this year's Small Press Festival in Pittsburgh from July 18-19. There's actually a lot more to SPF than the vendor expo I'll be at, but that's the part where the zombies, vultures, and crack come in. Let me explain...

Zombie Palin will have an ashcan out at SPF. Maybe you remember her, maybe you don't. She was the star of a webcomic that Pete and I did here at the AudioShocker for a couple of months. Featuring the classic 11 Zombie Palin strips and more, this ashcan has a sweet new cover I just whipped up yesterday. Here's a preview:

Zombie Palin ashcan cover

Apartment 307 is a minicomic Pete and I contributed to this spring. Pete, along with the other two creators involved, lives in apartment 307. The three stories in this ashcan all have wildly different premises but still manage to involve apartment 307 in their bizarre content. I'll have this comic with me at SPF, but you can always order one from (organizer, editor, and contributor) Josh Blair or pick one up at Phantom of the Attic comics. Check out a preview of Apt. 307 over on Josh's blog.

Cracked won't actually be at SPF. They're too popular for that. But there was a time five years ago when the Cracked name was all but dead. That's when Pete and I got in touch with comics legend Tom DeFalco and pitched some ideas at Cracked for their impending relaunch.

We're printing up an ashcan for SPF featuring our failed Cracked pitches, as well as some behind the scenes material. Then, on the Tuesday following SPF (July 21, 2009), we'll run a very special podcast with even more behind the scenes discussion and anecdotes dating back to our frantic couple of months we spent creating and pitching content to Cracked.

That's all I got for now. Expect more shameless self promotion regarding Pittsburgh's Small Press Festival in the near future. And check out tomorrow's podcast where Pete (you know, the writer of Culturology) will join Justique and I for a special episode that's sure to offend your grandma, your mama, and probably just about everybody else you know.

War Machine What If? Hyper Combo Wallpaper!

Published
by
nick marino
on June 22, 2009
in Comics and Video Games
. 0 Comments
What if War Machine kicked your ass?

Ye olde fist of War Machine is coming at cha, baby!

DOWNLOAD WALLPAPER :: 1280 X 1024 :: 1440 X 900 :: 1600 X 1200

Obviously I have some sort of weird addiction to War Machine. He's in about 50% of all the Hyper Combo Wallpapers I've ever published. And my love for Marvel vs. Capcom certainly doesn't diminish my infatuation with War Machine whatsoever.

While browsing the Internet for more hi-res Rhodey art, I stumbled upon an early Dan Slott issue - What If? #63: What if War Machine Had Not Destroyed the Living Laser? The art you see here is courtesy Manny Galan. I extracted the War Machine image from the cover, Photoshopped it at a high DPI using the cutout filter, and ended up with the excellent desktop wallpaper you see here.

Thanks to Demian's Gamebook for the cover scan. Now go make sure that you get your ass back here next Monday for a new Hyper Combo Wallpaper!

More: War Machine Hyper Combo Wallpaper Archives!