Archive for category comics
Interviews Delayed
Most of the time I have an inventory of interviews to run, but in recent weeks, I’ve been making it week to week. This past week, it just did not time out well. I hope to get back on schedule this week, but can make no promises. In the good news department, I was able to score a quick mini-interview that I will be posting later today.
Over at Robot 6, last week I had the pleasure of taking part in one of the best interviews I’ve gotten to do–with Joe the Barbarian artist Sean Murphy. Murphy gets the credit for the interview’s greatness.
Celebrating One Year of Robot 6
Posted by admin in Uncategorized, comics on January 3, 2010
Robot 6: Guy Davis
Over at my group comic book blog home, Robot 6, we are celebrating one year of blogging fun by unleashing a deluge of new content and site exclusives. Plus, I get to interview Cully Hamner. Also Guy Davis did this great piece of art in celebration of our anniversary (colored by the great Dave Stewart).
Podcast Recommendation: SLG Radio
Since joining Robot 6 almost a year ago (we celebrate our one-year anniversary at the end of this week) I rarely blog about comics here at Talking with Tim. But sometimes an item comes along that transcends the boundaries of comics (plus to be perfectly blunt Robot 6 is on holiday hiatus for the next few days). Anybody that’s read Evan Dorkin’s Milk & Cheese, or his blog, Big Mouth Types Again, knows just how funny he is.
Important side tangent here, Dorkin would understandably be unhappy if I neglected to mention his great Dark Horse miniseries with artist Jill Thompson, Beasts of Burden, wrapped up this week with the release of issue 4.
SLG Radio
Back in October, SLG Publishing head honcho Dan Vado launched SLG Radio, a weekly podcast where the focus is to discuss comics, SLG comics in particular. At least I think that’s Vado’s goal, but honestly the show has evolved into an incredibly hilarious back and forth between Vado and frequent guest/borderline co-host Dorkin. The most recent episode had the added bonus of Dorkin’s frequent collaborator (and spouse) Sarah Dyer. Dorkin’s bombastic personality (in a good way) just enlivens every episode, in this most recent one he was stuck in traffic while calling in to the show–and he dictated what he was passing (slowly) while stuck, and was able to make it both funny as well as indictment of the banking crisis at the same time.
This podcast is far more about comics, at its core it’s two old friends talking. There a great many podcasts these days where two friends just chat–and it rarely works. Why? Because a typical friendship has a series of inside jokes and personal connections that translate into incredibly bad podcasts. There has been many a podcast I have listened to where the hosts were laughing throughout the show because of inside jokes or behind-the-scenes aspects of their personal life that was darn funny to them, but annoying and alienating to listeners like myself. There’s none of that with Dorkin and Vado, while they typically talk comics for a spell the show goes off into tangents that may touch upon their respective personal lives, but in a manner that makes for engagingly fine storytelling.
Give the show a try, even if you don’t read comics, as it’s a fun listen.
Kaya Oakes on Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture
Posted by admin in Literature, Music, comics, commerce, pop culture on November 18, 2009
Slanted and Enchanted
In the introduction to her book, Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture, Kaya Oakes writes: “If we understand culture to mean something more than a style of music, a visual aesthetic, or a literary mode and try to define it from its Latin root, cultura—“to cultivate”— then we can see how indie artists have traditionally worked together to cultivate many things: credibility, freedom, the ability to promote their own work and to control how it’s promoted, self-reliance, open-mindedness, and the freedom to take creative risks. Likewise, if a culture is truly a group of people working and living together, independent artists have traditionally embraced the value of networking, making connections, and striving toward doing their art, their way. If being independent in your choices about what you listen to, look at, read, and watch implies a lack of compromise, then many of the people still making music and art independently would absolutely fit that definition. Indie’s ambiguity can partially be chalked up to its emphasis on making its participants feel individual and unique. But before any of us were able to be creatively independent, we had to build on the practice of our independent predecessors. Because indie’s history is in many ways a shadow history— one that parallels and reflects mainstream culture but also poises itself as being a subculture of outsiders— the threads connecting the twentieth- and twenty- first-century indie movements are not always readily apparent, especially in this day and age, wherein young artists face a plethora of choices about what kind of art they will make and how to distribute that art. Young fans often encounter art that builds on traditions of independence with which they may not be familiar.” (The entire intro can be read here at Oakes’ site). In the book, Oakes (who co-founded Kitchen Sink magazine) set out to examine the evolution of the indie movement and the scope of its impact. My thanks to Oakes for her time and insight into the DIY dynamics.
Caryn A. Tate on Red Plains
Caryn A. Tate's Red Plains
Since I joined Robot 6 earlier this year, my webcomics and overall sequential art interviews have run there, for the most part, rather than here. But given that Red Plains writer Caryn A. Tate was already interviewed by fellow great Robot Sixer Brigid Alverson recently (go read it, it’s a great interview [thanks to Alverson's questions and Tate's answers] as is this one [again, thanks to Tate's answers]), I opted to give Tate a slot here at my home site to discuss her work at Top Shelf 2.0, Top Shelf’s online comics program. I’m always happy to support a Top Shelf creator, partially as I often say, because I consider the publisher to be my home team (both the publisher and myself are Georgia-based). As detailed in a recent Top Shelf press release: “Written by Red Plains series creator Caryn A. Tate and featuring beautifully and brutally rendered art by Larry Watts, ‘A Nice Place to Raise Your Kids Up’ focuses on the violence, corruption, and crime of the Old West that is seldom deeply explored. While other towns may have tried it, can guns really be outlawed in a place like Red Plains? Sheriff Doles, the recently appointed lawman in Red Plains, may find himself out of a job–if he doesn’t lose his life first. As a new family comes to Red Plains, meet the Escovido clan and find out what role to they have to play in all of this. Who will vie for the favor of the vivacious Lupe, and who will be scarred in the attempt? How many people will be calling on Doc DeGraff–and how many more on the undertaker?” My thanks to Tate for her time. Be sure to go back and visit Top Shelf 2.0 site frequently, as there will be new Red Plains chapters every two weeks.
Tim O’Shea: What attracts you to telling this tale in particular–why as a comic, as opposed to prose?
Caryn A. Tate: The tale of Red Plains is one that’s really dear to me. I grew up and lived in the West on working ranches and farms, being around Western people, and there’s a distinct beauty to the land, its lifestyles, its people. I’ve been passionate about telling our stories for a long time, and Red Plains is the culmination of all of that.
I love comics, and one of the reasons I think the medium is so satisfying as a creator is because the final result manifests faster than prose work. And I’m a very visual writer – I have a visual art background – so I tend to see things very clearly and I have a desire to see that on the page. But, that said, I do love prose too, so who knows?
Other Interviews to Consider
Robot 6
I’ll be posting another interview later this evening, but it looks like I am fast approaching the end of my ability to post two interviews a week .
I may be able to post two interviews next week, but if not I hope to start doing some non-interview posts of interest. I am, as always, open to suggestions.
The past few weeks have been busy in terms of interviews at Robot 6 as well. In case you missed any, here are links to several of the pieces:
- Nick Tapalansky & Alex Eckman-Lawn on Awakening
- Nevin Martell on Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip
- Dustin Harbin on Storytelling
- Mark Waid on the Unknown
- Tim Hall on Uplift the Postivicals
If that’s not enough here’s a link to all my Robot 6 interviews or a link to all my interviews here at Talking with Tim.
Thanks for Your Patience
Posted by admin in Music, Uncategorized, comics on September 10, 2009
I’d really like to thank GoDaddy for bailing me out the other night. As you can see, the blog has a new look. Hope you like it.
Unfortunately, I’m still trying to rebuild the inventory of interviews, as I have several in the pipeline, but none to post this week.
Over at Robot 6, I interviewed Joshua Hale Fialkov, so please visit that interview to tide you over for this week.
And for my wife, because she always supports this blog, a Beatles performance to celebrate the re-release of the Beatles music this week. And my way of thanking her for all she does for me and our family.
Nancy A. Collins on Vamps
Posted by admin in Literature, comics on June 24, 2009
July will see the release of Nancy A. Collins‘ third installment in the Vamps (HarperTeen) series: Vamps: After Dark. As detailed in her bio: “Collins is the author of several novels and numerous short stories. In addition, she served a two-year stint for DC Comics’ Swamp Thing series. She is a recipient of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award and The British Fantasy Society’s Icarus Award, as well as a nominee for the Eisner Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and an International Horror Guild award. Best-known for her groundbreaking vampire character, Sonja Blue, Collins’s works include Dead Man’s Hand, Knuckles and Tales, and Sunglasses After Dark. Her most recent work is the Vamps series, published by HarperCollins. Collins makes her home in Cape Fear, North Carolina, appropriately enough.” My thanks to Collins for the email interview. It’s great that young adult readers are being introduced to her storytelling talents, giving them another novelist to seek out down the road.
Tim O’Shea: How did you first develop the Vamps concept?
Nancy Collins: The vampire society of Old Bloods and New Bloods emerged from a scuttled comic book series I created for Vertigo Comics called “Dhampire”. It was about a half-human/half-vampire hybrid and how he didn’t fit into either world terribly well. For several years I tinkered with the basic structure of that world, extrapolating on it, until it became the VAMPS world. I had the society and social structure down, but didn’t have a storyline/plot to go with it until my agent suggested that I try and pitch it as a YA series. After that, it was merely a matter of creating the various teenaged vampires and their families.
Popgun Editors Interviewed @ Robot 6
I have a new interview up at Robot 6 with Mark Andrew Smith and D.J. Kirkbride, the editors of Popgun Volume 3.
Eric Nolen-Weathington on Lee Weeks (Part II) & Nick Cardy
Posted by admin in Film, art, comics, pop culture, sequential art on March 26, 2009
Yesterday I featured the first part of an interview regarding the Lee Weeks installment of TwoMorrows’ Modern Masters series. The first part was with Tom Field. This second part focuses on Eric Nolen-Weathington, the co-author of the Weeks book, as well as the designer and editor behind the entire Modern Masters’ series. It’s always a pleasure to interview Nolen-Weathington, so I was game to also discuss another book that Nolen-Weathington co-authored: Nick Cardy: Behind The Art, a work that goes beyond Cardy’s comics work and into his commercial illustration career.
Tim O’Shea: Do you think you could have been able to do the Weeks book without Tom Field’s involvement? Were you afraid that because Weeks and Field were such old and close friends it might make it harder for Field to ask tough questions in the process? Or due to the nature of these books (which intend to honor modern masters) is there ever a need to ask tough questions, per se? (feel free to tweek this question if need be).
Eric Nolen-Weathington: Yes, I do think I could have gotten Lee without Tom’s involvement, as I know several artists who are friends with Lee. And Lee was already on my list of guys I wanted to cover at some point. What Tom’ pitch really did was move Lee off the “sooner or later” list and onto the actual schedule.
Tom had already done a book for TwoMorrows on Gene Colan, Secrets in the Shadows: The Art and Life of Gene Colan, which I feel is one of the best books TwoMorrows has published. That was all I needed to know that he would do a good job with the interview. And having known Lee since childhood, I think Tom knew exactly where that line was of what he could ask and what he shouldn’t. The result is one of the most honest, open interviews of the series thus far.