Holiday time
No more posts until January. Have a great holiday, and read lots of comics!
Scott McCloud
Scott McCloud, author of the great books Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and the new Making Comics, was in Halifax last night, at the Strange Adventures Comic shop. I was lucky enough to meet him and to get him to sign a copy of Making Comics.
Scott has thought more about comics and how they work than anybody else I have read. When I read his books I feel that thrill that comes from reading something really insightful. And it happens over and over again.
When I started writing the Daisy Dreamer comic about six years ago, I didn't really know what I was doing. I had some idea, and a good example to follow in the scripts of my Daisy predecessor, Mark Shainblum. But I hadn't thought deeply about how comics worked. Reading Understanding Comics changed that. Suddenly, it all made sense -- and it helped make me a better writer too.
Scott asked me if thinking about what I was doing made it harder for me to do it. That can happen sometimes, but in this case, not at all.
Scott and his family are on a mission to visit every US state and Canadian province in the coming year. If he's in your town, try to go and see him.
Eric Orchard
I was in
Woozles, the great kids' book and toy store in Halifax the other day, and got into a conversation with Eric Orchard, who works there. We got to talking about Tintin comic books and went from there.
Turns out Eric is an illustrator, and a very fine one at that. If you visit his website (
www.ericorchard.com) you can see some of his art, which has a beautiful, old-fashioned look and is inspired by classic Victorian artists.
Look for his first two picture books as an illustrator next year. They are called
A Forest for Christmas and
Anything but Hank.