Ramblings and webcomics from LeEMS
Ok, so you know how I mentioned that Hanna is Not a Boys Name was awesome and then disappeared and then I found it for sale. Well, did you get the message? HINABN volume 1 is for sale! Go buy it you dummies! Go make it the first link that shows up in that darn google search! Go: 4th Dimension Entertainment :: Product Details.
10/19/2012 – link correction
4/7/2014 – another link correction: http://shop.4de.com/franchises/hanna-is-not-a-boys-name
is that they can sometimes live hard and die too soon. The ability of any story teller to put up their stuff as they spin it and countless web hosts to help them means that a lot of stories die half lived…forever frozen in history and the internet archive and destined to frustrate eager readers in perpetuity. This is a whole heck of a lot different from published comics that generally have a proposed story line and map to completion before presentation to potential readers. Webcomics are like swimming in comickers head soup–right there inside the ideas that make the stories, ideas that sometimes have no ending in sight.
As far as I can tell, this is exactly what happened with Hanna is Not a Boy’s Name. I stumbled onto it late, maybe a year or so from its first page and long after a devoted following had erected a facebook page for it. I bookmarked the site, subscribed to the RSS feed and checked back often as it continually did not get updated…not even a news item from the author. I wanted more, damn it! So I checked back again just as I was gathering my best of webcomics list and found out that the site had completely vanished. It was gone…I could not even scroll through the pages I had already seen, and as I fumbled through Google results I found it for sale! Oh my luck! Volume 1! I had wanted to possess it anyway…I am so giggly. I am waiting for the mail to arrive. (UPDATE: arrived and I am so ecstatic! Can’t wait for more.)
Ok, but not every stalled and deleted idea has a happy ending; case in point: Gjerde Sha: Part Time Zombie. It is markering genius! It is beautiful! It is not updated since June!
And, somehow even sadder, the comics that are killed…by an announcement that they will not continue. I was just getting all sewn into Will Work for Blood and now it is over. It was so promising, it was mysterious and bleak, it is over.
PIPA, SOPA and OPEN Act Quick Reference Guide | District Dispatch.
Here is a handy guide to the above acts made librarian style. I wish I had more time to keep track of rights and privacy movements, but I think it might just stress me out. I encourage knowledge though! Knowledge encouraged!
Le Tour Du Monde de Mouk by Marc Boutavant has been on my wish list forever! I am dying from cuteness. This is fantastic.
The Filigree – Martin Øbakke and Celena Cavala create this fabulous fairy newspaper complete with advertisements, classifieds, and photographs. And, as far as I can tell, all the photographs for the stories are of characters they have created in doll form. Do I have to say this is a fabulous idea? and it is fabulously pulled off.
Stone Monkey and Red Planet Ride by Jim Round – These are plane old adorable, and polished and full of color. The environments created within are amazing.
Ghosts of Pineville from CricketPress – I never lived in a place with a haunted house or a ghost story, but I’ve read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies set in towns that did. It’s kind of like the quintessential American mystery and that is probably why the Ghosts of Pineville felt so nostalgic. This is good stuff. Good stuff.
All of Them Witches by Patt Kelley – Tiny short stories and vignettes with a surreal fluid and pointy style.
Grickle things The Hidden – wait…NOT an Etsy purchase, but I must include it in the haul because it’s fabulous and was part of the same shopping spree. Sorry Etsy. This is an adorable story by Graham Annable.
Flesh and Bone – Julia Gfrörer put together this beautiful, painful lump of bound paper and story. Her details and the plethora of line and movement only emphasize a fantastical and tragic story.
When I first heard about it I was crazy frustrated that it was only airing in Australia. Then I forgot about it until some fabulous blogger in my feeds (sorry I forgot who) mentioned that it was available on Hulu. Well, I finally got around to watching it, and it’s just as dysfunctional as I’d hoped. I think I might love Australian television.
When people find out you like to read comics they always ask you which ones you like, you know, to compare with their own list. Webcomics are the same–and, oddly enough seem to have a different cast of fans than regular comics do…maybe it’s generational, dunno. Anyway, I am really bad at having an answer to such simple questions on the spot, so I am making a list to permanently, at least in this moment right here before I find more, answer it.
Hark, a Vagrant! — is fabulous literary and historical comics by K. Beaton. Yes, much more than a simple web comic now, I just bought the book and spend pleasant, multitudinous minutes paging through it.
Wondermark — by David Malki reminds me of the intermission animations in Monty Python’s Flying Circus…
Two Keys — “a noir-ish urban fantasy webcomic by Nuu and Schumie” took me a couple looks to get into only because I thought I wasn’t looking for anything with a complex and well constructed story. I’m totally head over heels for it now and bought the first volume to fuel my covetousness. Also via Manga Magazine.
Sailor Twain or The Mermaid in the Hudson — beautiful charcoal work and enthralling story.
Strange Investigations — arresting noir-pop bitonal illustrations and promising beginning.
Megan Brennan comics and illustration — isn’t actually one ongoing comic, it’s a collection of comics in various stages of ongoing-ness, or maybe only one is ongoing at a time. Anyway, really fun and colorful–which pleases my eyeballs.
Spare Keys for Strange Doors — includes something like the paranormal investigators who help the police set up while still being completely fresh and fun.
Plume — is painfully gorgeous, with a nice intriguing beginning and not enough pages!
Scarey Go Round presents Bad Machinery…read Murder She Writes — is a fabulous comic that comes from a fabulous comic with more fabulous comics to come by John Allison.
Two Guys and Guy — is a strip style comic about a group of friends by Rickard Jonasson. I like the style and I laugh, so it’s good, and even better than that I just found out it has a feed….A FEED! Now I can really keep track of it!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, that’s all she wrote for right now. I’m the kind of girl to search and gather until I’m tired and then come back later to examine and sort…so, I’ve got a bunch of things bookmarked that I just haven’t gotten to yet. I will add to the list later, after I’ve read more.
I have a confession to make: I went to college, I wrote poetry, I smoked clove cigarettes, worked in a music store, fancied myself a photographer, and took intro to psychology. All of the cliched college girl watchamacallit, I did it all, Losers! I mean, sorry, I don’t think you’re losers…I just got carried away. What was I saying? Oh, yeah…and I found proof, so in the spirit of digital preservation, I scanned Finally Famous, in a way not befitting any real archive, so I could share it with you.
Hey, hello, hi. I just wanted to take this opportunity to remember that I have comics and that three four of them are actually ongoing at the moment. You can catch them all at the comic launch–including the one or two that are in conception stages. Levi Levi is my forever going to be ongoing comic until I stop comic, and I have some some big plans for Flip Side and No Evil. They all have feeds over in the right hand menu, too, if you’re into feeds and stuff. I know I am. I’ve got a truck load of comic feeds going to my reader, and sometime soon I’ll talk about all the webcomic goodness I have found out there that other talented, better comickers are doing. Right now it’s about me. ALL ABOUT ME! Comics:
There’s something that tickles me about bringing some fiction into reality, I want more of it. I want to live in the town where Fraley’s Robot Repair shop warms the window of a vacant store shop: Toby Atticus Fraley, Public Art Installation. And, of course, when I saw this I immediately thought of the Echo Park Time Travel Mart by 826LA — an equally fascinating idea by a non-profit writing and tutoring center.
Richard of DoomedMoviethon has inspired me to look up, research, and obsess over movies from my birth year. That there link up there will take you to his posts on his own birth-year adventure. I’m not quite as intrepid as Richard; I don’t plan on seeking out and watching too many that I haven’t already seen. But I have made a couple of best of lists (in no real order):
List #1: the Hey that’s awesome! I didn’t know that came out in my birth year, list.
List #2: this actually looks like of interesting.
And finally, the best of the worst movie posters.
I know it looks horribly paltry and all, but I scrolled through lists and lists of French, German, and Japanese pictures, lists and lists of sisters sexually discovering everything, lists and lists and lists and lists. And no, Aliens and Apocalypse Now don’t make my lists, because I’ve never really enjoyed them. There you have it: the 1979 of cinema according to the infant LeEtta.
This is a parade in Austria (as far as I could figure out), I love the minor-key feel. Wait, does this still not explain the Krampus? Well, then go look it up!
Right, so I had a long think and I thought that the in-explanatory, gallery set up as my home page just didn’t cut it. There’s a place for being obtuse and my website is just not it, so I shot for an illustrated table of contents look. I think, perhaps, this might, maybe, be the final big website change…not including additions of other projects, or project updates, or comic pages, or whatnot.
Comic pages, by the by, are things I am working crazy hard at, they have not quite lapsed for you yet, but I’m running out of my stock and I need to get back into those stories. I hope my holiday vacation actually gives me some time I can use.
Cheers,
–LeE
Here is my Christmas card this year, inspired by Krampus cards from Victorian times. I’m still reeling from having a started and completed novel project for November. But now there are comic pages to draw, and old projects to get back to. I intend to make good use of my holiday vacation week.
But before that, I’ve got a commissioned painting to finish…oh and those comic pages I talked about. I’ve got plenty of penciled Levi Levi that need ink and scanning. Not so many of No Evil and Flip Side, but I’ve got plans man! Their stories will not falter!
I did it, after two years of enough obstacles and sabotage to ruin my chances of winning–I have triumphed ONCE AGAIN! That is, finally again after the first time in 2008. I have completed a brand new novel of over 50,000 words in the month of November. And what’s better–it’s not even another un-finished project. It’s over, it’s done! So, it’s really like a novella, but that’s ok because those cheesy 80s teen romances didn’t pack in a lot of verbiage anyway, and that’s what I was writing for.
It needs editing, granted, but man, I am so relieved that I could actually get to the end of something I put my nose to just for me. I will rest well. I will feel better and I will go on a date tomorrow. And it’s good that this here particular challenge is done because I’m running out of the pages I drew up in my comics to stock this month. Time to get back to the old stories.
From before: Nanowrimo update