Toybox's blog

Something I ran across a while ago through Chris Hazel's excellent webcomic Misfile is the WOWIO website. WOWIO deals in downloadable .pdf books, including comics and graphic novels. WOWIO deals with both print comics and webcomics, and usually has something free to download every month. Alternatively for a few dollars other content may be downloaded.

While I used to find WOWIO to be a great resource lately their content has underwhelmed me. WOWIO is definitely taking on more of an erotic theme in some areas, especially with regards to their comics. Most of the smart comics I used to read through this service have pulled out due to financial disagreements with the company. Hazel in particular has been keeping a running counter at Misfile for how long it's been since WOWIO paid him his earned royalties (currently over $7,000). Likewise, Sarah Ellerton of Phoenix Requiem and Inverloch is no longer on WOWIO for probably similar reasons.

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This TV season Joss Whedon aired his latest T.V. creation, Dollhouse, which has receive a lot of fan attention due to the length Whedon has been away from T.V. and the fact that it's been airing on FOX, the same station that killed Whedon's cult classic Firefly back in 2002. I got to thinking about Whedon today now that it's basically confirmed that Dollhouse is canceled. While technically an official statement has not been released, FOX has said they're not going to air the 13th episode they filmed because it's not as good of an end as the 12th. End of the season or end of the series? Hopefully an official statement will be made soon so the few fans of this show can stop having their emotions toyed with.

This got me to thinking about Whedon's going to do when Dollhouse ends and I hope he sticks with Internet shorts like the amazing Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog (Watch it, you won't regret it) or film rather than comic books.

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Lately a lot of my life has been spent deciphering codes. I'm also a part of Dr. Whalen's Electronic Literature class, and we're currently reading Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. I've had to look for enough codes that I've began looking for them in places where they don't exist.

Take the cover to Matt Kindt's Super Spy. I noticed the Morse code around the title circle and had to take the time to translate it. It simply reads "Super Spy by" and then repeats on the bottom. But then I noticed something else, little gray bumps on some of the letters. Could this be a code? While I haven't confirmed it, I did talk with Kemlo about it and it looks like the gray bumps vary from book to book. Kemlo suspect they're just imperfections in the front of the book.

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While coming a week late, this seemed a pertinent topic to address, the use of music in Watchmen. A little over a week ago I ran into a friend and we soon fell into conversation about the new Watchmen film. Rather than talk about the protrayal of the characters, the change in the story's finale, we ended up talking about the choice of songs in the film for an extended period.

Music is important to the graphic novel. Bob Dylan is quoted in the original graphic novel on several occasions. The novel begins with lyrics from "Desolation Row" as the opening chapter and end quote. The film also decided to open with some Dylan, his song "Times They Are a-Changin" was played over the opening montage that showcased the Minutemen flashbacks. " "Times They Are a-Changin" was also the tagline for Nostalgia perfume (interview with Veidt in the additional materials of Chapter XI). The other Dylan song with roots to both novel and film, "All Along the Watchtower", is the Chapter X chapter title and end quote and is played in the film in roughly the same place.

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First as one final disclaimer, the title is just a title and a reference to that beloved cartoon show Captain Planet but in fact this blog post has nothing to do with him (though maybe there should be a blog post about him.)

Mac Hall and Three Panel Soul writer Matt Boyd is a plethora of information with his blog posts and borderline essays in his and Ian McConville's published materials. Boyd has talked on many topics and has some truly interesting things to say about webcomics. In the first Mac Hall compilation one of his mini-essays is about merchandising in webcomics.

"Merchandising is kind of an interesting thing about webcomics. For a long time, merchandise has been seen as he ultimate sellout of comic strips, the most famous example being Bill Watterson who eschewed it altogether to maintain the integrity of his comic. (Assuming you don’t count books as merchandise, of course, because otherwise I have a whole rack of Calvin and Hobbes merch sitting on my shelf at home.)

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Super SizedOver spring break I was flipping through a lot of my comics. I came across a Mac Hall strip "Choke-A-Horse Sized" (later renamed "Super Sized" by IMG). The artist, Ian McConville had this to say about this strip “I really enjoy doing the comics based off my home crew since each of them have their own word bubble style. ‘Brocky’ has a refined text-book font, Matt Moore’s balloons are smoke clouds, and Anthony’s got the inverse bubbles . . . ‘cause he’s evil.” --Ian McConville. While this strip takes the use of unique speech bubbles to an extreme, used in limited amounts they can convey a difference in speech patterns. I think Alan Moore's Watchmen makes excellent use of this technique.

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This is probably more of a bonafide rant than anything but it's on a topic that seems worthy to cover even if it's not all that intellectual. One of my biggest complaints with the large comic publishers and long-standing superhero universes are the recent and overwhelming number of cross-over stories with every other character in that universe. I've had little exposure to DC Comics so I can't speak from experience about them but the little Marvel I've read has made it all too apparent that Marvel Comics is obsessed with combining its stories. My primary examples of this are the recent Civil war storyline and the only Marvel comic I keep up to date with, Runaways.

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Over the last few weeks I've been visiting, with more and more frequency, The New Frontiersman. Dr. Whalen placed a link to it in the "Library" section of the site a few weeks into the semester. The New Frontiersman is a multimedia collection that expands upon the upcoming Watchmen movie.

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OOTS FallingWhen Dr. Whalen showed us the "Infinite Canvas" on Friday’s class it reminded me of a Mac Hall strip I read in their first volume collection. It was a small and very smushed together comic that took four pages by itself. On the side bar writer Matt Boyd referenced the original strip as it was presented online. Online the comic is larger, easier to read, and goes from top to bottom without stopping. Boyd attributed this strip to Scott McCloud’s idea of the “Infinite Canvas” or the webcomic artist’s ability to have a never ending canvas in all direction’s, allowing infinite freedom for panel layout.

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In my experience most webcomic readers stick to the traditional joke a day webcomics like XKCD or Penny Arcade , most of which are well done and are some of the best examples of webcomicry around but I'm far more fascinated with the serious side of webcomics, those artists and writers who seek to tell a story that lasts over several years. You might call them Graphic Webcomics.

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