Coiled Comics

One ever-popular topic in the comics industry involves weighing the advantages and disadvantages of making a webcomic versus finding a traditional publisher. When you make a webcomic, you own all the rights, you have full control, and nothing gets in between you and your audience. When you have your work published, you have access to expert editors, printing is taken care of for you, and you have the legitimacy of being accepted by a publisher.

We’ve gone back and forth, and right now we’ve decided the time is right for talking to some traditional publishers. There are many out there who have published amazing graphic novels. We are under no illusion that this is an easy road, but for Coiled, we think it’s the right one.

Please sign up above so we can notify you when we fire-up the online version again, or when we become available in print. We swear we will not use your email for anything else.

Thank you so much for your great feedback and support over the past year!

Peter & Amanda

Jet City Comic Show

By Peter

Last weekend, I went to the Jet City Comic Show in Seattle Center. It was as if someone took the Emerald City ComicCon and aimed a shrink-ray at it. It had all of the elements of the bigger show: vendors selling old comics books, people dressed in costume, and artists selling their graphic novels.  But it was about a fifth the size. I’m hoping we can have a table there next year.

I talked to a number of artists and ended up buying several books.

One of the coolest artists I talked to was a guy who is part of the Cloudscape collective, a group of artists in Vancouver, Canada, who put together anthologies on different themes. He also has a webcomic called Teaching English in Japan, written by Jonathan Dalton and Jeffrey Ellis (not sure which one he was), based on real life experiences of teaching English in Asia. It’s totally delightful, and really gives you a sense of being there.

I also met Nick Dragotta, who makes a living drawing for Marvel comics, but his real passion is HowToons, a collaboration with MIT where two cartoon kids build wild inventions that you can actually make from everyday objects.

I also met the writer/artist team that makes Wayfarer’s Moon. It’s a beautifully-drawn fantasy graphic novel with female protagonists. It’s your basic good vs. evil battling it out with arrows, axes, and magic, so not a lot of depth, but very enjoyable.

Lazy Food and Documentary on Comics

By Peter

New chapter! We’re back with Joshua at his home. In my household, I’m in charge of making dinner for our family most weekdays. I usually make something reasonably interesting and nutritious, but when I’m feeling especially lazy, I’ll make hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. I imagine Joshua and his dad having this at least a couple of times a week.

On another subject, Dave Kellett, who draws the webcomics Sheldon and Drive, is a partner in creating a documentary on the comic strip industry – past, present, and future. I’ve heard Dave talk about it on the webcomics weekly podcast, and it sounds fascinating. They created a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for it, and raised the goal in just a few days. I recommend checking it out and watching the trailer. On Kickstarter, you can pledge $25, and when the DVD is done, they’ll send you a copy. I think it’s well worth it.

Take a look: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smallfish/stripped-the-comics-documentary