Tim and Mulele set out to review dharbin.com, but “the gold of the site” is hidden. Mulele explains where to find Dustin Harbin’s best work. Then an interview with (former) Tokyo resident Ed Siemienkowicz and a discussion of how to develop your own style. Tim continues to struggle with this as he is paid (!) […]

Comics are being used increasingly to get messages across visually, even those aimed at the business world. Doug Jackson, a Tokyo-based business consultant, was involved in adapting Patrick Lencioni’s “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” into a “manga version.” He talks to Tim about the challenges he faced in turning  Lencioni’s “business fable” into a […]

L. Frank Baum’s classic children’s story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published 109 years ago and still inspires attempts to adapt it to other media. While the 1939 MGM movie tends to define the story in the minds of many, subsequent adaptations do stick closer to the original book than to the movie, including […]

A bored, punk-dressing god of death and a genius high school boy are the main characters in Death Note, written by Tsugumi Ohba and drawn by Takeshi Obata. The boy, Light Yagami, receives from the god a notebook with which he can kill people simply by writing their names in it. A plot with many […]

Comics are increasingly read as bits and bytes, on PCs and handheld devices. Blank creators Brothers of the Silence are publishing the comic in Flash on their site, and as image files on Facebook and several other sites. “Brothers” Ian LeWinter and Don Richmond talk about creating the comic and promoting it via social media […]

Tim and Mulele review two Web comics that have little in common besides the nationality of their creators! Amya, a recently-started, manga- an fantasy-influenced comic; and Hark, a Vagrant, featuring contemporary, humorous takes on historical events. Then Mulele critiques Tim’s recent artwork, and discussion of how to draw facial expressions ensues (view full post to […]

Though Asterios Polyp made the point that comics and (written) music are similar, doing a comic about music is not such an easy task. But Reinhard Kleist beautifully presents the music, and life, of a country music legend in Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness, recently released in English. How does it compare with the […]

If you think the area where you live is too isolated and lacks a comics scene, consider the Pacific island of Guam: Fewer than 200,000 people, only about half of whom use the Internet. Few comics outlets, and a small selection. And even ordering online can be problematic. Tim visited Guam recently and spoke with […]

Reviews of Asterios Polyp blanket the Internet; why need we pile on? Well, for starters, to counteract all the reviewers who think that giving a story synoposis = explaining what the book’s about. That approach falls far short with Polyp, so Tim and Kumar are here to explain what they feel David Mazzucchelli’s masterwork graphic […]

Is having your work illegally downloaded the worst thing that can happen to a comics artist? If you work for a major, perhaps not, but every download can have a noticeable effect when you’re trying to make a living drawing comics that are less widely purchased. One such freelancer, Jake Ekiss of Dallas, Texas, joins […]