Comics Are Great!

It’s some more visual storytelling talk, this time with Simpsons storyboard artist and cartoonist Luis Escobar! We spend a little bit of time at the top discussing his work on a recent controversial Simpsons couch gag, followed by an attempt to find a proper name to what people have been calling “motion comics”. It’s a […]

This time it’s a one-on-one conversation between me and Ryan Estrada, the cartoonist who is taking on the brobdingnagian challenge of animating a feature-length film in one month! As we discuss the project and the perils it presents to Ryan, we wind up investigating some topics that apply to any cartooning endeavor, such as: Story […]

If we agree to the conceit that most of us want more people to read comics, the next question is: How do we recommend works to people who don’t normally read comics? Do we base our recommendations on the genres that the person is interested in, do we try to get them to read something […]

Hot on the heels of last episode’s celebration of American Comics, this time we’re paying tribute to the wonderful world of comics from Japan, otherwise known as Manga! I’m joined by one of my favorite roundtables of cartoonists: Brandon Dayton is the cartoonist behind the comic Green Monk and contributor to the Feature Creeps process […]

This time it’s a celebration of the bombastic storytelling found in American comics storytelling with Norwegian cartoonist Kim Holm. Given the popularity and influence of Manga over the last decade, and considering the terrific outpouring of new indie comics artists who are breaking all kinds of new ground in comics, it’s easy to overlook the […]

On October 30, 2010 I sat in on the Kids Read Comics panel at Detroit Fanfare. The panelists and I discussed a wide range of topics surrounding the mission of KRC, including the specific concerns facing all ages cartoonists and writers, the importance of cartoonist leadership in comics advocacy, creative marketing, and breaking the stereotypes […]

Whether you’re an extroverted or an introverted creator, I think this discussion has something to offer you. This time I talk with Kim Holm about audience engagement and expressing emotions in comics storytelling. We begin with some talk about the possibilities for interaction and collaborative storytelling provided by webcomics models, using Kim’s excellent Space Monkey […]

This time we take a trip to the murky waters of definitions in writing and storytelling. To complicate matters we take on a term first coined in fanfiction: the Mary Sue character. Though opinions differ on which characters stand as good examples of a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu, read the Wikipedia article), most agree […]

This time I have the pleasure of talking visual storytelling with two guys who are way smarter than me. Dave Roman is the creator behind Astronaut Elementary, Agnes Quill, Jax Epoch and the Quicken Forbidden, Zuko’s Story, Comics Bakery, and more. Brandon Dayton is the artist behind Green Monk and the newly launched Feature Creeps […]

It’s the first episode of the Comics Are Great! podcast, a new show where I’ll be discussing with various people who make comics just why comics are so great. There’s no one better to start the new series with than Dan Mishkin, not only because he’s the inspiration of this site’s name, but because he’s […]