Midnight Ramblings - recent blog entries

Foster Nabs Another Hugo
Congratulations to Brad W. Foster for winning the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist. I believe this is Brad's 6th Hugo. You can check out most of this year's nominee's work just by clicking their names: Terry Harvia, Sue Mason, Steve Stiles, and Taral Wayne.

Coming Soon
Editor/cartoonist Josh Blair reports this week that the fourth issue of Candy or Medicine is deep into production and will be released on Saturday, September 13 at Ithacon. Contributors to the 16-page mini comic include Olivia Arrow, Blair, Simon Corry (cover), Abby Mullen, Molly Mullen, Ray Negron, Kevin Richardson, and Russ Walton.

Art and Story
Back in the newave comix era, for me, the artwork was king. Of course story was important too, but it was always the artwork that first caught my attention, pulled me in, and brought an imaginary world to life and gave it depth. I poured most of my effort into improving my drawing skills. As time went on, earning a living took more and more hours away from my comix work and I dropped out of small press publishing entirely.

Years passed and I channeled my creative juices and energies into other outlets. But the allure of self-publishing never left completely. When I revived Midnight Fiction as a website, it seemed like an ideal venue to repurpose all those newave comix and give them a second chance to reach a wider audience than they had in their original limited print runs.

Since then I've created a few new pages of comix for Dan Taylor's Weird Muse Productions and done a few other projects here and there. But now I've got a new perspective. Now, the story is king. I've been a professional copywriter for years, but creative writing is a different beast. So I've started focusing more energy on writing and learning about writing.

In truth, the story and artwork are equally important to illustrated fiction. I still devote time and energy to improving my drawing skills, but the craft of writing gets at least equal time these days.

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August 9, 2008
Blog Entry

Classic Schomburg Reprint
Age of Adventure's Wayne Skiver announced this week a one shot special featuring The Fight Yank with a classic cover by Alex Schomburg and interior stories from the pages of Startling Comics and Fighting Yank Comics. $6.99 printed or $1.25 download from their Lulu.com shop.

Otto Two
BT Livermore has released the second volume of The Life and Times of Otto Zeplin, the fake story of a real boy. It's available for $4 through the Robopocalypse store.

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August 2, 2008
Blog Entry

Special thanks this week to Steve Willis for his August calendar cartoon. Why did he place a penguin in the desert during the hottest month of the year? Perhaps Ronald Coleman said it best on the Suspense radio program when he uttered that fateful line, "A man's not responsible for what he does in this heat."

Astonishing Adventures
Publisher John Donald Carlucci and Editor Katherine Tomlinson recently launched a major refresh of the Astonishing Adventures Magazine website and announced their 4th issue. Check out the new look here. You can read the new issue of AAM, as well as past issues online. Plus, a print version of the new issue is available through Amazon.

String 6
Bram Meehan reports the lastest issue of String is now available for download here. The sixth issue is 32 pages and features the work of the Northern New Mexico comic collective 7000 BC. If you've missed any back issues the same webpage includes the links to download issues #1-5. While you're there, it's easy to post a comment and the group loves to get feedback about their work!

Promote Your Mini Comic
If you publish your own mini comics, it's likely you're always on the lookout for good ways to promote your comic and cartoons. Members of the social networking site Poopsheet Foundation can now publish Blog entries on their member's page and see them feed through to the front page of Poopsheet moments later. Even if you already have your own site, this is a terrific way to put more eyeballs on your work and spread the word. Site Editor Rick Bradford is constantly adding new content, news items, and new features to the site, so traffic is building every week. Join now!

Bash Magazine
The first issue of Bash Magazine will be on the streets of Washington DC and on the web August 1st. You can download the entire 16 pages of the monthly comic alternative on their website. Contributors include Dan Archer, Pascal Blanchet, Ken Cursoe, Theo Ellsworth, Eamon Espey, Keith Knight, Morgan Pielli, Jesse Reklaw, and Jen Sorenson. (Add a pdf file extension if you have trouble opening the file.)

Thanks for items and links to:
Cory Doctorow
Mike Lynch
Alan Gardner

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July 26, 2008 Blog Entry

Traces
The latest free PDF download from the 7000 BC comics collective is available here. This time out the southwestern comikers jammed on a tracing pad and the result is a canine metamorphic treat.

Blazing Adventures #6
A special edition of Blazing Adventures was announced by Dash Courageous this week spotlighting the work of writer TJ Glenn and his character Dr. Shadows. This heroic pulp fiction zine is available as a free PDF file on the Blazing Adventures website. Issue #6 was edited by Robert S.P. Lee and features a cover illustration by Craig Shepard.

The Adventures of Gabriel Hunt
Writer and Editor of Hard Case Crime fiction books Charles Ardai announced last week a new pulp fiction venue. The Adventures of Gabriel Hunt is coming in 2009. To subscribe to the email list for updates stop by the website.

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July 19, 2008 Blog Entry

The Cloak
In the late 1960's many of the stories from monthly Marvel and DC comics were being reformatted and reprinted for weekly comic magazines and newspapers for readers in the UK. One of the tabloid weeklies was called Pow and Wham. In addition to the reprints of the Fantastic Four and Spiderman, the title also included original comics by English cartoonists featuring wacky characters like Sammy Shrink and Georgie's Germs.

A good friend of mine took a trip across the pond one summer and brought back three issues of the title. For me, one feature made the whole comic worth buying. In fact, the first time I saw it, I was an instant fan. It was called The Cloak. Each issue included a two page segment of a longer story. Mysteriously signed MIK, I learned years later The Cloak was created by cartoonist Mike Higgs.

Over the years I've searched the web from time to time for more information about The Cloak and/or Mike Higgs. There was never really much out there until I chanced upon a fabulous post by cartoonist Lew Stringer on his blog. Cloak fans rejoice, this is golden! Stringer also includes some wonderful posts about English fanzines of the 1970s, so check out his archives.

Tranny
Indie cartoonist Steve Lafler has a new book called Tranny scheduled for release in Sept. In Tranny, Fiona Mallratte provides a $99 Drag Makeover for those times when boys will be girls. MF.com will provide a review of the new book at release, but if you're anxious for more of that transformational funny feeling right now, check out Fiona on YouTube. Probably not safe for work . . .

Daniel Merlin Goodbrey
Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon interviewed Daniel Merlin Goodbrey last Sunday. Goodbrey is collaborating with Sean Azzopardi on Necessary Monsters, which runs online here.

Largecow Shop
I just love the cartoon Hunt Emerson did for this year's MF desk calendar. Mr. July has been busy this month expanding his website. In the news section you can preview the beautiful cartoon illustration he's just completed for the first day cover of postage stamps celebrating Air Shows. Plus he's added nearly a dozen new titles to the Largecow Shop!

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