Links! (or, how sausage is made)

It's been busy around the GCP-HQ today, so I'm being a weenie and taking the easy way out by giving you links to other peoples' content. (Seriously, though, it would be a shame to miss out on any of these, so make with the clicky-clicky.)

First up, something from the local paper about a graphic novel born out of a national tragedy. Struck by the disaster that was the response (or, some might argue, lack of response) to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, author Josh Neufeld volunteered to help with the clean-up in the storms' aftermath, keeping a blog of his experiences and conversations with the people of New Orleans. Eventually Neufeld merged the vignettes of seven survivors into the comic book stories that would make up "A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge."

The Austin-American Statesman has a Q&A with Neufeld available online here, as well as some samples of art from the book. (If you're in town, you might also want to catch Neufeld's reading and signing tomorrow.)


Speaking of local news, if you do happen to find yourself in Austin you should also pencil in some time to spend with Paul Benjamin, Alan J. Porter and Jack Mitchell, who will be at Austin Books from 4:30 to 7 p.m. tomorrow (Wednesday, Aug. 19) to sign the latest issues of their BOOM! Studios titles. Porter will be signing copies of The World of Cars: The Rookie, Mitchell will be there with Poe, and Benjamin (who you might know from all the awesome Marvel Adventure stuff he's been cranking out, as well as his own Pantheon High) will be lovingly adding a personal touch to Monster's Inc: Laugh Factory.

The staff at Austin Books are always great, the place has recently been renovated to make the best use of all its cavernous space, and Paul Benjamin is a hell of a nice guy. I can't vouch for the other two but I'm assuming they're not jerks, so give it a whirl!


Speaking of jerks, Chris Sims of the mighty Invincible Super-Blog seems intent on pulling off some sort of nerdly hat-trick and recently finished up his second Web comic AND launched a new podcast.

Besides making it nearly impossible for anyone to ever complain about not having time to post ever again (ahem), he's raising the bar by churning out material that — dammit — is good. If you haven't already, I'd recommend heading for the Action Age and checking out the complete Woman of A.C.T.I.O.N. #1, a slightly more straight-forward than usual story from Sims (with art and letters by Chris Piers and colors by Steve Downer) about a British secret agent who finds herself up against her old enemy, Doktor Heinrich von Killswitch, and his casino of death. You can also download it if you'd like to hold it close to your computers' bosom (what?).

Somewhere in between writing a daily comic book blog and producing his own comics, Sims also went ahead and broke the laws of physics, somehow finding the time to join Eugene Ahn and unleash the podcast War Rocket Ajax on a grateful nation. The first episode is already up, with Matt Fraction — MATT FRACTION — as their first guest, so go give it a listen.

The return of Staple! and other items of interest (plus a question!)

I don't go to a lot of comic book conventions, but Staple! is one I try hard not to miss.

Staple! is an expo for independently produced comics and other self-published literature, art and any other creative endeavor that fits the vibe of a hip mini-con, here in Austin, Texas. I have an unnatural love for Staple!, and though I've said it before, it really does get bigger and better with each year.

This year is the fifth for the expo, and the organizers have some pretty exciting guests lined up. At the top of the bill is Stan Sakai, legendary creator of Usagi Yojimbo (and this year's Staplegator logo). If I can keep from going into a fanboy coma, I'm really looking forward to meeting him. He'll also be joined by Chris Onstad (of Achewood fame) and Jeffrey Brown (Incredible Change-Bots and other great comics) — not to mention a host of other guests and vendors. You can get the latest information on guests and programming at the Web site.

If you're anywhere near the Austin area, I recommend carving out a couple of hours to take in what's ultimately a very cool meeting of the comic book-minded.

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Speaking of very cool, the Staple! podcasts are being taken care of by the guys over at Dial-A-Stranger, which is itself one of my favorite regular podcasts. The concept is simple; people e-mail or call in with queries on ... well, anything ... and then hosts Mercedes and Zach randomly call someone from a list of other people who have volunteered to take a question.

It sounds simple and it is, but the interaction between the hosts and the person on the other end of the line is frequently hilarious and often poignant.

It's also well worth a listen.

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So, Scans-Daily was shut down, huh? I only went to the site a few times — usually when someone else's blog linked to it — so I can't pretend to know too much about it. But I do know that a lot of the people who populated S_D tended to skirt the definition of Fair Use and made a lot of noise, both about how creators didn't know how to use their own characters and about how the posters had some sort of right to do whatever they wanted with someone else's work.

Let me say right off that I'm a big free speech and fair use guy. But that doesn't mean that anything created by anyone else is mine to use as I will. It's illegal and it's disprespectful to the creator. And to not only post almost complete (and in some cases, entirely complete) issues online AND THEN crow about it ... well, that just isn't very smart and you deserved to get shut down. No amount of hand-wringing, cries of man-hate (I didn't even realize S_D was supposed to be a "female space" until recently) or claims of comic book evangelism will change that.

Lisa Fortuner and Andrew Weiss have very good points to make about the whole thing, so go check it out. For myself, I'm sorry people will miss their sense of community, but I'm not sorry to see Scans_Daily go. I tend to avoid message boards and the like because they always seem to end up making me depressed and angry; we'll see how long the mods can keep some of the more interesting new boards to pop up in S_D's place from spinning out of control.

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You may have noticed (or not — what am I, a mind-reader?) that there were some strange goings-on here at the blog yesterday. Blogger has been giving me more and more trouble lately, so I ask you, Internet: Is it time to switch to Wordpress? Tell me, Internet, tell me!!