Great post by Aaron Diaz on Focal Points.

[via several people, including Kate Beaton, but I think the first was an email from Spencer Greenwood]

Well, okay, probably not.

But Dark Horse has a new Bee comic by Jason Little so off to MySpace we go!

Matthew Bogart writes with news of a simple 3D comic he made the old fashioned way: two frames which viewers can merge by crossing their eyes.

Not everyone can see the effect, but when I was a kid I loved making 3D pictures this way using colored pencils and small-grid graph paper, so this made me smile.

These days, the most efficient way to get this effect might be using layers in a program like Photoshop or Illustrator, but anyone, using even the simplest tools, can pull this same trick with a little planning.

Anyone else want to try?

Not comics, but everybody keeps sending me I am Sitting in a Video Room (be sure to watch the other 999!) and this recent news piece on “the writer who couldn’t read” on the assumption that I’d find them interesting—which I did, so here they are.

Via Spurge, his annual Comic-Con Survival Guide and an awesome Jack Kirby Quote.

Finally, here are some nice immersive comics pages from concept artist Justin coro Kaufman.

So, yeah… truly random, but there you go. Go back to playing Angry Birds and enjoy the weekend!

I didn’t know this would be New Site Week when I started, but here we go with another and it’s a big one.

Jon Rosenberg of Goats fame has launched his brand new Scenes from a Multiverse and (after a few hiccups) it’s up and running smoothly. Check it out today, click back to last Monday and read it from the beginning!

True to his word, Patrick Farley has begun posting new pages at electricsheepcomix.com: A new prologue for his epic, SF, alternate history gulf war comic “The Spiders.”

Mr. F. writes:

“‘The Spiders’ will update WEEKLY, from now until the story concludes. Also in the works: the site redesign (I’m *going* to make it work on the iPad if it kills me) as well as the reboot of ‘Apocamon’ and ‘Delta Thrives,’  both of which will appear later this summer.

Thank you thank you THANK YOU for allowing me this opportunity!  You’ve made me a very happy primate. “

Regarding the iPad mention, this is a decision a lot of cartoonists and other artists are making this year: abandoning Flash for the uncharted territory of HTML 5’s equivalent offerings.

Flash was a key ingredient for experimental webcomics artists like Farley and Daniel Merlin Goodbrey. It’s not clear yet how easy the transition is going to be, but Farley at least has decided it’s a necessary one in the long run, and I tend to agree with him.

Been reading and enjoying two very different autobiographical comics; Tracy White’s memoir GN How I Made It to Eighteen and Lea Hernadez’s Near-Life Experience entries at LJ.

White’s book delivers literally on the title, detailing her recovery from mid-teen traumas, and how treatment helped her to not die before becoming the successful and accomplished adult she is today. And like her webcomics at traced.com, How I Made It to Eighteen is “guaranteed 95% true.” She’s changed names and details, but you know you’re getting the facts that matter.

Hernandez’s NLEx also struggles with those 5% quandries, in her case because she’s not writing about events and friends from decades ago, she’s writing about stuff that happened Tuesday, and about a family that might be in the next room. You can feel the inner struggle as she writes about how much she’s willing to write about her son’s ongoing struggles to fit in to society’s limited expectations of him.

It’s a real open question whether any autobiography can ever be more than 95% true. Mark Twain stipulated that his memoir not be published until 100 years after his death (this year!), presumably so that he could be 100% honest—a full implementation of the Mystery Quote—but from what I’ve heard, the old guy doesn’t come across as particularly objective while ranting about his many late-in-life grudges.

Emotional honesty and factual accuracy aren’t the same thing after all. Twain may have thought he was hitting 100%, but maybe nobody can ever get past 95%. And maybe saying so upfront, as White and Hernandez both do in their own fashion, is the most honest way to start.

Alan Rose checks in via email with a link to his memoir comic L’il Rose of Corn, a Sunday Paper-style strip about growing up in Nebraska, complete with newsprint colors to complete the illusion that it’s been printed (it hasn’t—yet).

I was impressed by the confidence and craftsmanship of both writing and art on display. It has a classic feel to it; bolstered by the simple fact that Alan’s stories are genuinely interesting.

In his email Alan shared a great quote attributed (perhaps wrongly) to H. L. Mencken about the great Nebraska-based writer Willa Cather: ”I don’t care how great of writer she is, nobody wants to read about Nebraska.”

After reading Rose’s memoir comic, I’ll upgrade “nobody” to “one” at least.

Here’s a cool idea: Rene Engström and Rasmus Gran have a long distance relationship and have decided to chronicle it in parallel diary comics (I would say it’s a unique idea, but I’ve actually seen at least one other!).

From the site:

“Every Tuesday, since the 16th of March, Rasmus Gran and myself have documented our lives in the form of autobiographical comic strips. We have quite the buffer now so we feel pretty good about finally launching the comic. Our hopes are to give a little glimpse into the lives of a modern family spread out over the Swedish landscape, from downtown Östersund to Möllevången in Malmö. Sometimes we do things together but a large part of the time we have to live our lives apart.”

In other news, my host in Barcelona, David Macho Gomez, is launching Spanish comics site spanishinq.com.

For those of you who enjoyed Choose Your Own Carl (back in the Jurassic era), here’s another crossword-style comic.

And finally, on the work front, I’ve now finished the second rough draft of my graphic novel (working title The Sculptor). Next step: Beginning many months of finished art (and probably going back to make some more changes to the roughs, but that’s to be expected.) Wish me luck!

Okay, first of all, gotta love Dean Haspiel. Great guy, great comics. He has a new one up at Zuda. Go take a look.

Unfortunately, I haven’t finished Dean’s story, because I have a book to draw and thanks to Zuda’s interface, it would take me half the morning to finish reading the thing.

I asked this once before and one of our posters (Matthew Marcus) had a theory, but I’m still unsatisfied.

Why, oh why, oh WHY does every single page turn in Zuda require blurring the page I was just on and subjecting me to an unreasonably slow loading bar?

Why can’t it remain in focus and simply put the progress bar out of the way so I can keep reading and get a head start on loading? Or perhaps dim the next button until the page is ready?

Why don’t I have the option of loading the whole comic in advance as I would a song or TV show? (or am I just missing that feature?)

Failing that, why doesn’t Zuda at least pre-load one or two pages in advance? (Note that if I walk away for 10 minutes, I’ll still have to wait just as long once I return).

Why is the load time for Zuda pages any slower than, say, this?

The reason I’m frustrated with Zuda has nothing to do with its business model (a separate issue for another day—also a moving target it turns out) or its corporate parent.

The reason I’m frustrated is because I actually LIKE the basic design of Zuda. The screen-fitting, full screen option is so natural. Such a great way to lose yourself in a story.

But with every page, the interface intrudes and rips you back out.

WHY?