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.