The webcomics blog about webcomics

Stumped

For those of you in the Portland area, Comics Month (as declared by Mayor Hunky) is in full swing, and that means it’s nearly time for the Stumptown Comics Fest to get under way. The exhibitor list may now be cross referenced against a map, and there’s only a few zillion webcomickers gonna be there.

  • Among the attendees (“Guest”, if you wanna be pedantic, presumably “of Honor”) will be Hope Larson, whom some of you may be able to see at the West Coast iteration of Drink and Draw Like a Lady (with props to Dylan Meconis for local organization and Hurricane Erika for the poster — if you see Erika, ask her to do a shot in honor of me pre-ordering her book).
  • While there, you might want to congratulate Larson for her latest news. As surely all have heard by now, she’ll be adapting Madeleine L’Engle’s classic of YA SF, A Wrinkle in Time as a graphic novel. This is terrific news, as I can’t imagine anybody less talented than Larson able to tackle a book that’s so widely read, so intensely beloved, and which contains concepts and characters that are so difficult to visualize, forcing every reader to come up with mental images that are surely unlike anybody else’s.

    Handled poorly, everybody that picks up the book would protest That’s not what travelling through a tesseract/Mrs Which/IT looks like!, but I have every expectation that Larson will rise to the challenge and produce something her own, yet recognizably familiar to all and sundry.

    Still doubting? Consider that every work that Larson has done has somehow been stronger than the previous. If, a few months ago, I thought that Larson had reached a peak of visual storytelling with Mercury, I previously thought the same of Chiggers, and Gray Horses, and Salamander Dream. True, adaptation is a different kind of beast, but I’m hopeful.

  • Speaking of Mercury, might it be possible that one of you creative types could ensure that it’s properly considered for a Harvey Award? Nominations (from anybody who writes, draws, inks, letters, colors, designs, edits, or otherwise makes comics) remain open until the 23rd of April, so hop to it. While I’m on the topic, any number of people over there to the right are also probably deserving of your nomination.
  • Finally, this: having previously been made into an opera, Dinosaur Comics (which sometimes gets no love from the arbiters of taste) has now crossed over into the ultimate of musical expressions: a marching band routine via the justly-famed¹ (and slightly deranged) Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band.

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¹ It wasn’t me; I was still in high school and can’t even play the trombone.

Regarding that TCJ link – while I share the reviewer’s Beaton Love, everything else about it, from the pretentious art school references to the massive condescension on other web strips, makes me want to beat the reviewer with several hammers.

Mercury just came out – Harvey noms are for 2009 work…

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