Stand Up For Comics!

Virtual Memories: "During our promenade, we stopped by the booth of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which helps defend comic-store owners and publlishers in first-amendment-related cases. The director of the fund chatted with us a while, and told embarrassing stories about cartoonists and other industry figures. The CBLDF was having a fund-raising party that night in our hotel, so we promised to stop in. There are a lot of messed-up legal cases that the fund gets involved in, and which don't get much coverage in the mainstream press. But if they involved prose books instead of comics, you can be sure you'd hear a lot more about them. What I'm saying is, go to the fund's site and contribute a little cash, if you wanna help defend some freedom of speech in this country."


If you believe in comics as a profession, try to make a donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. I did.

Check out this ComicCon convention coverage.

Joe

Trudeau Attacked

The Tattered Coat » Blog Archive » Another One Bites the Dust: "Once upon a time, Garry Trudeau stuck it to The Man through an alternative form of media that the establishment considered trivial and juvenile."


Sounds like this Doonesbury strip on blogging stirred up an awful lot of ire in blogdom.

Joe

How Comics Started--Let's Go Back A Little Further

Superman, Batman & Co: New Comic Book Information - How Did the Comic Book Get Its Start: "How Did the Comic Book Get Its Start
The origins of the comic book are somewhat controversial and perhaps the jury is still out So lets go back to the cartoonish broadsheets of the Middle Ages which were parchment products created by anonymous woodcutters As mass circulation of these broadsheets became possible they soon developed a market particularly at public executions popular events for centuries ugh which drew thousands of happy spectators Many of these spectators would invest in an artists rendering of a hanging or burning and thus making a very lucky day for the broadsheet seller The broadsheet evolved into higherlevel content as humor was introduced "


If you want to get technical, Egyptian hieroglyphics may be as much a forerunner of the modern comic as these broadsheets were.

Joe

Explanation on the Style of This Comic

You may be wondering why the style on Stovepipe looks so much different from that of work on my portrait website or on the various book covers and illustrations I have done.

This just seemed like a story that should be drawn in a simpler fashion for best effect (I think Charlie Brown as rendered by Hal Foster would fall flat. But then, Prince Valiant in a cartoony style would be Groo.

So I drew these pages small--just a bit larger than an actual printed comic magazine page, both to help in simplifying the art and to speed the process. I'm not the fastest draw in the East or the West, and I've learned to employ tricks like that when I want to turn out a lot of material within a reasonable time.

On the other hand, I have some realistic strips which took a great deal of time because of how I thought they needed to look. I'll show those to you a little later.


Joe

Page Two

Preview of Mementous Upcoming Events

The adventures of Stovepipe and Zekey are not all sweetness and light. Is that a body those guys are burying in the woods?

Are they going to spot our heroes watching them?

Page One

Welcome to the World of Stovepipe

This story earned high marks from publishers we sent it to, but they were certain it wouldn't fly in today's edgy market. The expenditure of big bucks just wouldn't net a major publisher the proper returns.

So we're making Stovepipe available here for the type of people who have always enjoyed this kind of adventure about young people struggling to overcome difficult odds.

We have enough material on hand to eventually make at least four black and white comics (that you can actually hold in your hand) with color covers. I say four comics now but if this story touches enough people, we may continue the series. We'll offer these comics-on-paper for you to order if you enjoy Stovepipe online.

Joe