SISTER MARY DRACULA by Gerry Mooney

My friend Gerry Mooney has finished his SISTER MARY DRACULA graphic novel. He sent me a copy, which I read and liked very much. I'm posting some information and links below that Gerry sent. Please consider looking at SISTER MARY DRACULA.

Take it away, Gerry:

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press release
For immediate release

Sister Mary Dracula Halloween Treat, No Trick!

For the month of October, you can read "Sister Mary Dracula", the graphic novel by Gerry Mooney, online at www.sistermarydracula.com.

The 103-page story, in the works for 4-1/2 years and completed this summer, tells the tale of Terry Malloy, a ten-year-old at St. Egregius the Stricter Catholic School, who is convinced that his teacher is a vampire. Even his best friends think he's crazy.

Sister Mary Dracula began as a Flash animation created in 2000. It gained a following online and was selected to be shown at the San Diego Comic Con's Independent Film Festival in 2004. The animation can still be seen on the Sister Mary Dracula website.

Gerry Mooney has been drawing funny for most of his life, doing humorous illustration in the New York market for 20 years for such clients as Forbes, Parents Magazine, American Express, The Daily News, Newsweek, Mad and lots more, including a dozen covers for The New Republic.

His humorous feature "Mooney's Modules" (www.mooneysmodules.com) appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine for three years and spawned the now-legendary Gravity Poster (www.thegravityposter.com) which has sold over 4,000 copies and has been cited in Scientific American.

Lately Gerry has moved into animation and is developing independent projects as well as being involved currently in two online animation jams, one of which is Bill Plympton's "Guard Dog" animation jam, a project that includes 70 animators from all over the world, each one animating a single shot from the five minute short.

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A real paper edition of the graphic novel will be available later this month.

Related: I reviewed the first chapter of SMD when it was released as a comic book in 2007.

THE OATMEAL's Matthew Inman Interview

There are some NSFW images and words linked below. Above: a recent OATMEAL cartoon.

Matthew Inman is best known as the cartoonist who draws THE OATMEAL. OATMEAL is described as "one of the Web's top cartoons" in this Seattle News Weekly profile by Abe Aboraya.

He isn't a waiter/cartoonist or a barista/cartoonist or a housepainter/cartoonist. He's not even a freelance computer geek/cartoonist. He stopped doing that work a year ago. Now, at 28, he draws comics, posts them to his website, sells merch, and turns a serious profit.

This is good news, and then the writer writes at length about Mr. Inman's cartoons. Sounds like Mr. Aboraya is a fan.

Now, what's a serious profit?

Well, here it is -- and this whole paragraph is just unbelievable:

Inman didn't know how much he was making until a few weeks ago, when he sat down and did some tallying for the Weekly. He estimates his take-home pay for 2010 will be just over a half-million dollars.

Uh .... if I was making that kind of money, I would know. It's hard to believe that a fellow as savvy as Mr. Inman appears to be has no idea that a half a million will be in his pocket this year.

The Business Model is Dead, Long Live the Business Model

Nate Anderson writes about the XKCD Web comic by Randall Munroe in his Ars Technica piece titled Disruption: How One Webcomic Welcomes the Future That so Many Fear.

"Munroe's approach to 'protecting' his content might be best defined as 'lenient'

"'You are welcome to reprint occasional comics pretty much anywhere (presentations, papers, blogs with ads, etc),' he writes. 'If you're not outright merchandising, you're probably fine. Just be sure to attribute the comic to xkcd.com.'

"Somehow, giving the comic away for free has turned into a lucrative business for the now full-time cartoonist."

More here.

Related: Randall Munroe draws Cory Doctorow ("who likes to draw me as a superhero in cape and goggles") for the cover of a new limited edition book of Doctorow's.

Cartoonist Tim Buckley on "Americanized" DOCTOR WHO

There are rumors that DOCTOR WHO will be transferred overseas and redone as a US TV series. Bringing UK shows over to the US and retooling them for American audiences in nothing new, and there have been some commercial and critical successes (ALL IN THE FAMILY, SANFORD AND SON, THREE'S COMPANY) -- but also a good share of downright, absolute failures. (I'm thinking of the 3 bad remakes of FAWLTY TOWERS -- with Harvey Korman, Bea Arthur and John Larroquette -- there are others, many others.)

Anyway, so DOCTOR WHO -- which can be seen on BBC America -- is quintessentially British and I cannot imagine how or why a US version would be better.

Tim Buckley's cartoon take on a US version is, sadly (and funnily) spot on.

Hat tip to Discover Magazine.

Related: Wikipedia's (Incomplete) list of American TV shows based on British TV shows.

VELIA, DEAR by Rina Piccolo

Rina Piccolo announces a new Webcomic: her own VELIA, DEAR. The comic begins today, with updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Rina's new strip is "a humorous look at the life of Velia, a young woman who trades her inner city lifestyle to move in with her aging Italian mother."

Rina notes:

"While I continue to love the world of the newspaper comics page, I just feel I have so much more to give, and — I gotta tell you — the independence of an on-line strip, with its liberties and lack of censorship, sounds like a hat I want to try on right now, just for laughs.

"Oh, and something more … I’ll be blogging often — not just words, but cartoons and comics, too. Check in regularly here and at rinapiccolo.com and I promise I’ll try not to bore you."

Yes, this is in addition to Rina's own 2 syndicated comic strips (TINA'S GROOVE, SIX CHIX) and her gag cartoon output. Not to mention her work in the SYNCOPATED COMICS books.

This may make her the hardest working woman in the comics biz!

Draw, Rina, draw!

Related: From August 8, 2006: A Visit to Rina Piccolo's Studio.

Interview: Trade Loeffler

I remember seeing Trade Loeffler's ZIP & LI'L BIT "The Upside Down Me" and being impressed with the story and art. I sent him an email and told him point blank: I am a fan.

We emailed back and forth about his comics and cartoons in general, and slowly found out that we both lived in Brooklyn at the time. After a couple more emails, we realized we lived within a couple of blocks of each other. Since then, we've gotten together for beers and burgers, and become pals.

ZIP & LI'L BIT, the Web comic that he created, began in 2006. They are a series of all-ages friendly adventures of a brother and sister.

2010 brings us his new ZIP & LI'L BIT story, "The Captain's Quest," which began last Sunday. And Trade's first work in print, ZIG AND WIKKI IN "SOMETHING ATE MY HOMEWORK," has just been published by Toon Books.


Above and the below 2 panels: the beginning of the mystery of "The Upside Down Me."

Your ZIP & LI'L BIT stories seem inspired by McCay and Sendak (and maybe a wee bit of Lewis Carroll), who dealt with kids in strange dreams and having to use their wits to resolve their situation. This latest one promises to maybe have some hints of Segar. What cartoonists do you think of when producing ZIP & LI'L BIT?

I've definitely been inspired by all the artists you just mentioned. I would also list all the artists who worked on the old Disney cartoons and movies as having a tremendous influence on Zip and Li'l Bit.

How far ahead do you work? Is the story finished as of now or do you still have to write the ending? What percentage of the art is done before you post the first page on average?

The written portion of The Captain's Quest is finished. Other than the thumbnails I'll draw out as I'm writing, I won't do any artwork until I've got the story figured out. I find that I usually have to re-work my stories quite a few times before I'm happy with them. As far as the artwork goes, now that I've started posting the strip, I'm about ten pages ahead. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep that buffer there for the whole run of the story, but it's tough to keep up sometimes with a job and a kid.

What part is your favorite: the writing or the drawing?

The writing is definitely my favorite. I've always got a good idea of what's going to happen, or what needs to happen in a story, but I never know how it's going to happen. Figuring that out is always surprising to me and that's the funnest part of the whole process I think.


What is your workspace like?

Well, since I live in the city, my workspace is small and cramped. I've got my computer set up in our living room, and my drawing table is actually a dresser from IKEA. It's kind of silly because the surface of the dresser isn't even particularly smooth, so when I'm drawing or inking and I need a line to be nice and clean, I'll have to move the paper so it's over the smooth parts of the dresser. That probably doesn't sound too professional, does it?

What tools do you use when you draw?

I use markers. When I started drawing comics, I tried using those because they were nice and quick and I always told myself that as I got better, I'd switch over to a brush and ink, but those dang pens are so nice and quick for me, I haven't made the switch yet. Someday…

What cartoonists' work do you enjoy buying and reading now?

John Stanley's Thirteen Going on Eighteen is hands down the best comic book I've read lately. Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac strip is awesome! I've gotten my whole family hooked on that one.


Are there any plans for ZIP & LI'L BIT stuff to buy: books, t-shirts?

I wish I could say yes to that, but sadly the answer at this point in time is no.

You illustrated the book ZIG AND WIKKI IN "SOMETHING ATE MY HOMEWORK," which will be out soon from TOON Books. How did you get the gig?

The editor at RAW Junior, Francoise Mouly, had seen Zip and Li'l Bit online and contacted me about doing a book for her TOON Books series, which is a series of comic books created for early readers. The lineup of artists and writers that have created books for the series is amazing, and the books are fantastic. My son who's six years old reads them over and over and over, which is the best endorsement you can give for a kids' book. Can I give a shameless plug for the TOON Books site? Go to: http://www.toonbooks.com/



Was it more challenging working with a writer and editor (Francoise Mouly) on ZIG AND WIKKI than doing your Web comic by yourself?

The big challenge for me was that it was the first time I'd done a lot of things. It was the first book I'd done for print. It was my first time working with an editor. It was my first time collaborating with a writer on a comic. The writer of the ZIG AND WIKKI book is Nadja Spiegelman (who is Francoise and Art's daughter), and the characters she came up with for the story were awesome, which was also challenging because then I had to come up with illustrations that could do justice to Nadja's characters. Overall, I think everyone was really happy with the finished product. I'm definitely proud of how the book turned out. I hope that kids will dig it.

What did it feel like when you saw it on the shelf at your local Rocketship Comic Book Store in Brooklyn?

I don't know if I should say this, but I wasn't as excited as I'd expected. I had finished work on the book awhile ago and had advance copies and all, so when I saw the book in the store, it didn't seem like that big of a deal. Now, if they're all sold out next time I go in the store, I'll be ecstatic.

Above: some behind the scenes images from Trade Loeffler's "Storytelling 101" series.

Your wife is a successful working actress. Do you show her your work in progress?

Yes, I make my wife look at my comics as I'm working on them. Thankfully, she puts up with it and just gives me encouragement.

Will there a fourth ZIP & LI'L BIT? What future projects will there be?

There will definitely be a fourth Zip and Li'l Bit. I started writing it a while back, hit a wall with it, and have now started getting back into it. It's got some great characters that I'm really excited about. I don't know what projects other than that I'll have going on in the future. I've got a really fun twenty page story that doesn't star Zip and Li'l Bit that I've got written, I just don't know when I'll get a chance to do the artwork. If I could quit my job, that'd leave me more time to spend drawing and I could post more comics. Pray for me to win the lottery, will you?

Julie Larson: Making Newspaper Comics Pay

I was nodding with agreement as I read Julie Larson's (THE DINETTE SET) analysis of the newspaper comics industry ("No Laughing Matter," by Steve Tartar for today's Peoria Journal Star).

"Cartoons are directly tied to the fate of the newspaper, Larson said. When the Seattle Post-Intelligencier dropped its print edition last year to produce an online-only publication, Larson saw her compensation drop from $375 for four Sunday strips to $40.

"Larson recently decided to drop her affiliation with Creators Syndicate. Instead, she plans to market 'The Dinette Set' herself."

By taking the duties of marketing and networking THE DINETTE SET away from the syndicate, she may save the money that the syndicate was charging, but now there's that new challenge of balancing the business side of the long-running panel with the creative side.

Tartar goes on to get a few views of the state of comics today. I'm a big believer that the comics page is like TV: you don't necessarily look at everything. My "stale and recycled" poison is another person's meat.

Mike Gioia and roommate Alex Tuller,who create a Web strip APOKALIPS, are featured as part of the "new model" of cartooning, which isn't making them money -- but they still love it. And Mike can afford to love it, he splits the rent with Alex and he works fulltime for a Manhattan office of PricewaterhouseCooper. This is not a "new model" for a working cartoonist, this is cartooning as hobby.

From the article:

"'The Internet is the monster that ate reason, a thief in the night that turned loyalty to a 150-year profession into a homeless shadow of itself,' she said. 'There needs to be a way to compensate cartoonists fairly or there will be no more comics.'"

I think Julie's wrong about this. There will always be comics, but more and more of them will be drawn by people like Mike Gioia, who has the fulltime job and the health coverage that allow him the luxury of creating a cartoon for free.

Hat tip to Tom Spurgeon for this. Thanks, Tom.

Related: Mike Lynch Cartoons: Monetizing Your Cartoons.

Julia Wertz: I F***ing Love Food

I liked Julia Wertz' "There Are Certain Kinds of Foods I Can't Stop Eating Once I Start" cartoon today at her Fart Party site.

Today's HI AND LOIS Talks About Webcomics

Today's HI AND LOIS talks about the Webcomics economy. The entire strip is here.


Via Dave Kellett who got it from Gary Tyrrell. Thank you!

Corey Pandolph Consolidates His 4 Strips

Editor & Publisher reports that Corey Pandolph, who lives just the next state over from me, is going to take the 4 comic strips a day and put them all up at GoComics.com.

The 4 comic strips are:

• THE ELDERBERRIES
• BARKEATER LAKE
• TOBY, ROBOT SATAN
• GREENE WITH ENVY

Corey explains in his "Things Are About to Change" entry at his Fake Rockstar blog:

"I’ve had enough.

"Enough of maintaining four websites, uploading comics to six different places and selling next to nothing. My first inclination was to end everything but the Elderberries and consider myself lucky to still have a cartooning job.

"Fortunately, cooler heads have prevailed. There will be cuts, but not to any strips. We’re scaling back and getting rid of inventory… and some websites."

The solution (he explains in his "Big Moving Day" entry ) "... will greatly reduce my workload, as I will no longer have to maintain the individual sites, blogs and updates. I’ll have one place to upload the strips and you’ll have one place you can read them. Win/win!"

I wish him much good fortune. May the road rise to meet you, my friend!

GIRL GENIUS Wins Hugo

Via Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter:

The first "Best Graphic Story" category winner being named was among the highlights of this weekend's Hugo Awards results. That winner was Girl Genius, Volume Eight: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones">Girl Genius, Volume Eight: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones, from the writing team of Kaja & Phil Foglio, Phil Foglio on the art and Cheyenne Wright on Colors from their own web/print company Airship Entertainment. The Hugo Awards are a science fiction awards with a 50-plus year history, and were held this year at Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention, concluding today in Montreal.

Phil Foglio gave a very interesting interview this spring on giving away your work on the Internet and then making money from it. Here's the item from the March 23, 2009 edition of this blog:

Phil Foglio on Giving It Away

How do you make money by giving it away? Phil and Kaja Foglio are living the answer.

Better than that; in this interview at ICV2, Phil Foglio gets into the hardcore numbers of their studio (the 2 features he draws, money, print run, work schedule, number of unique visitors, distribution, etc.) and why they went from a monthly comic book schedule to putting it on the Web every week, with a physical, paper book of the comic produced about every year.

And by cutting out the production of a monthly comic book, Phil has more time to draw, producing 6 pages a week.

" ... [W]e figured we saved around $20,000 a year by not having to produce the individual comics. Production time… I’m not just talking about printing, but paying for our time and the time it took to format it. Because then we’d have to re-format the same material differently for graphic novel format, which was the final form.

"We’ve been doing it for four years now, and at a very conservative estimate, I’ve got 270,000 readers."

Hat tip to Comics Reporter!

Corey Pandolph Interviewed by Scott Nickel

My friend and neighbor (he lives in the next state) Corey Pandolph talks about being a cartoonist and drawing 4 strips in this new interview with Scott Nickel.

Scott Nickel: Where do you stand in the print comics vs. web comics debate?

Corey Pandolph: Comics are comics, man. I've stopped caring about how and where they get published. I think the majority of the webcomics guys have a good idea, but
a shitty attitude and I think a lot of the print guys are narrow-minded and selfish. (Imagine that... selfish artists)

Phil Foglio on Giving It Away

How do you make money by giving it away? Phil and Kaja Foglio are living the answer.

Better than that; in this interview at ICV2, Phil Foglio gets into the hardcore numbers of their studio (the 2 features he draws, money, print run, work schedule, number of unique visitors, distribution, etc.) and why they went from a monthly comic book schedule to putting it on the Web every week, with a physical, paper book of the comic produced about every year.

And by cutting out the production of a monthly comic book, Phil has more time to draw, producing 6 pages a week.

" ... [W]e figured we saved around $20,000 a year by not having to produce the individual comics. Production time… I’m not just talking about printing, but paying for our time and the time it took to format it. Because then we’d have to re-format the same material differently for graphic novel format, which was the final form.

"We’ve been doing it for four years now, and at a very conservative estimate, I’ve got 270,000 readers."

Hat tip to Comics Reporter!

Mainstream Publishers + Webcomics = Oil + Water?

Joey Manley, in the Talking About Comics blog, writes about Web cartoonists and what happens when they get involved with big syndicates or sign publishing deals for print versions of their Webcomics.

This is old news, but here is, for instance, Rich Stevens, whose Webcomic Diesel Sweeties was a United Media launch, and why he decided, after a couple of years, to end his relationship with the syndicate (full interview here):

"'I did my taxes. I realized that I made less money than the last year that I wasn’t syndicated. It’s a hard business and it takes years and years to build up a client list and get paid. I just kinda thought to myself that I spent years and years learning how to make money off the Internet. Why should I continue to injure myself, when I could just do what I’m good at?'"

Strawberry Comics creator Gina Biggs on why she left Dark Horse to return to self-publishing:

"'This means they [her RED STRING series] will only be available through the website and at conventions, but it also means that I will see more of the profit from these books which could be very beneficial to someone striving to make a living through art and webcomics'"

Joey has a lot of interesting points, and, yeah, we all really don't know. But, in America, we are all entitled to our uninformed opinion.

Any time you (an independent cartoonist) get involved with a third party -- a syndicate, a publishing house -- that third party wants in on a piece of the action. Sure, this big company may have a crack publicity crew, sales staff, etc., but the deal is they want THEIR hand in YOUR pocket, in addition (let me pile on another metaphor) to being in the driver's seat. Your work will be referred to as "product." It's part of "their stable." It can be an upsetting experience.

It can be the road to great recognition and reward as well.

Unmasked: The Ariella Dadon Story

Inbal Freund-Novick and Chari Pere create a 3 page cautionary true story of Ariella Dadon and her struggle to get a "get" from her abusive husband:

This past June, following a struggle spanning several years, 28 year old Ariella Dadon managed to receive a get (a Jewish divorce) from her violent, abusive husband. "Unmasked: The Ariella Dadon Story" is her poignant story.

Hat tip to Chari.

Raina Telgemeier Interview

Cartoonist Raina Telgemeier is interviewed by Alex Dueben over at ComicBookResources.com.

They talks about her influences, her BABYSITTERS CLUB series of graphic novels, X-MEN, her new graphic novel SMILE and other things going on in her career.

"The first comics I read were in the newspaper. I was in third or fourth grade when I started reading them daily. Before that, I was big into animated cartoons and movies, and I read tons of illustrated books as a kid. Comics were a natural extension of those interests. I bought the bound collections of all my favorite strips as they came out, and read and re-read them, studying the language and the timing and the format. 'Calvin and Hobbes' is funny when you’re nine, but gets even better as you learn what all those words mean."

THE ORIGIN OF MAN by Kate Beaton

Here's Kate Beaton over at the MySpace Dark Horse Presents page giving us a 2 page tale of Mr. Darwin and his theory ... gone wrong. Dan Jackson did the coloring.

I like her work a lot and am seeing it around more and more.

Kate Beaton Web site.

Hat tip to Journalista!

OBJECT OF DESIRE by Stephanie Piro

In just 32 panels, my cartoonist pal Stephanie Piro writes and draws an autobiographical Web comic titled "Object of Desire," a story of passion kindled, then thwarted, and then ....

uclick Hopes to Roll Out Hundreds of Comics for iPhone

Above: image from uClick's home page today.

Here's an article by Heidi MacDonald from the December 8th edition of Publishers Weekly about putting comics on the iPhone.

"Each issue of a comic costs just $0.99, although eventually longer stories may have higher price points. The uclick store already carries titles from IDW (the just announced The Thief of by Always by Clive Barker), Image (Elephant Men and Godland), Papercutz and Mirage, as well as comic strips—Pibgorn—and self published titles—Jeff Smith's Bone. By next year uclick hope to have hundred of new comics available on iTunes, says CEO Douglas Edwards, and creating original content is not out of the question."

Hat tip to Comics Reporter.

Regardless of recent graphic novels sales declining, newspapers folding -- people still love comics. But will they pay for this kind of content on the iPhone?

SKIN HORSE by Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey Wells

SKIN HORSE, a comic strip written by Shaenon Garrity and drawn by Jeffrey Wells (although Mr. Wells has collaborated on the writing, and Ms. Garrity developed the character designs), launches over at Universal Press Syndicate's GoComics site soon. Currently, it's over at WebcomicsNation, where it's been since its 2007 inception.

(UPDATE: as Ms. Garrity points out in her comments below, I'm wrong! " ... [A]ctually I'm the artist and Jeff and I are cowriters." Sorry about that, Shaenon & Jeffrey!)

I've only read the first couple of months of the strip, having been unaware of it until now. (Sorry, Shaenon!)

Shaenon the writer puts us in the thick of it. She very quickly puts a foursome of characters (half of them human, half animal) in action in the initial week. We are plunked into the middle of the story and, through the pictures and conversations, are expected to grab on and ride.

It's the best way to start: in the middle. It pricks up the ears and eyes. And you have to pay attention. She has a whole world to introduce us to, starting with Tip, Unity, and Sweetheart.

I don't usually do reviews here, but I'd like to recommend the strip if you enjoy fantasy mixed with comedy. There are references to seminal fantasy stories (Baum, and, of course, THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, where the "Skin Horse" quote is from; "Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse, 'It's a thing that happens to you ... Then you become Real.")

I was laughing out loud at some of Unity's dialogue, like when she's urging Tip to resolve the problem in a more action-oriented way: "Less yap-yap! More boom-boom-pow!"