On your left, Allan Pinkerton standing next to Abe Lincoln. If you've read this week's installment of HIGH MOON, it might make a little more sense.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
HIGH MOON: Pinkerton and Lincoln
On your left, Allan Pinkerton standing next to Abe Lincoln. If you've read this week's installment of HIGH MOON, it might make a little more sense.
HIGH MOON: James Bowie
The following information is cobbled from Wikipedia to aid in your enjoyment of this week's installment of HIGH MOON:James "Jim" Bowie (April 10, 1796 – March 6, 1836), a nineteenth-century American pioneer and soldier, played a prominent role in the Texas Revolution, culminating in his death at the Battle of the Alamo. Countless stories of him as a fighter and frontiersman, both real and fictitious, have made him a legendary figure in Texas history.
Shortly after his marriage Bowie became fascinated with the story of the "lost" Los Almagres Mine, said to be west of San Antonio near the ruin of Santa Cruz de San Sabá Mission.[26]
After obtaining permission from the Mexican government to mount an expedition to search for the legendary silver mine, Bowie, his brother Rezin, and nine others set out for San Saba on November 2, 1831. Six miles from their goal, the group was ambushed. The citizens of San Antonio believed the members of the Bowie expedition must have perished, and his wife, Ursula Bowie began wearing widow's weeds.[54]
To the surprise of the town, the surviving members of the group returned to San Antonio on December 6.[54] Bowie's report of the expedition, written in Spanish, was printed in several newspapers, further establishing his reputation.[55]
Sunday, May 25, 2008
HIGH MOON: Commentary Track
Last week, Steve and I sat down with the folks at Comic Book Resources to put together a DVD-style commentary track for some of the pages in HIGH MOON. You won't see any major spoilers, but if you are interested in the thought process behind some of the pages, check out the feature here!
Sunday, May 18, 2008
NOT HIGH MOON: Atomic Robo Love
We love Atomic Robo. And you should too!
Not only does it share the fabled Tesla connection with High Moon and Five Fists of Science but it is a superb series with lots of action, adventure, and a whole lot of awesome robotic super fighting!
The trade paperback, collecting the first six issues of Eisner-nominated series, comes out in June.
Do yourself a favor and pick it up!
Monday, May 12, 2008
Weekly Webcomic Round-Up
Good morning,
To start things off, I thought I'd take a moment to mention that HIGH MOON, Act III begins tomorrow night - and boy - is it a doozy! Be sure to check it out tomorrow night at sundown!
And now for the rest of the news:
So, that's it for now ...
To start things off, I thought I'd take a moment to mention that HIGH MOON, Act III begins tomorrow night - and boy - is it a doozy! Be sure to check it out tomorrow night at sundown!
And now for the rest of the news:
- If you are in the New York area tomorrow night, be sure to join fellow webkomikers, Molly Crabapple, Kevin Colden, and Neil Kleid for Comic Book Club - Live!
- Foolstrip took a moment to present a Zuda Comics Roubtable. Got read what the creators of Supertron, Pray for Death, High Moon, and Road had to say about the Zuda experience!
- The Webcomic Promotion Guide is a brand new site for your webcomic promotional needs. It's got some great bits about social networking, building communities, and promotion. So, if you are looking for a way to spruce up your marketing skills, go give it a read.
- While it has nothing to do with webcomics, in particular, ComicDorksCast, has a nice little piece about the refound popularity of Westerns. It's well-worth the read.
- Comic Fencing is looking for comics to review - so check out the site and send in yours!
- High Moon gets a Facebook page! And a listing on StumbleUpon.
- The Midnight Cartooner takes a look at the series Under Review. Go read what he thought of the printed edition of the webcomic.
So, that's it for now ...
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
HIGH MOON Gets An 'A'
The folks at WeeklyComicBookReview.Com took a look at HIGH MOON. This is just a little of what they had to say:
The story is well paced, grabbed my interest very quickly, and kept me turning the page. The protagonist is intriguing as is the nature of the man, Conroy, whom he is pursuing. The artwork by Steve Ellis is solid as well. The style of his art really suits the tale and is evocative of the hot and dusty setting where the story dwells. The highest compliment I can pay this comic is that by the end I found myself needing and wanting more. ... (Grade: A)
There's more to the review, so give it a read right here!
The story is well paced, grabbed my interest very quickly, and kept me turning the page. The protagonist is intriguing as is the nature of the man, Conroy, whom he is pursuing. The artwork by Steve Ellis is solid as well. The style of his art really suits the tale and is evocative of the hot and dusty setting where the story dwells. The highest compliment I can pay this comic is that by the end I found myself needing and wanting more. ... (Grade: A)
There's more to the review, so give it a read right here!
HIGH MOON #8 on AMC's MonsterFest's PowerRanking!
After a week off the charts, the werewolf western webcomic series, HIGH MOON, jumps into the #8 spot on the AMC MONSTERFEST PowerRanking!
The series, by David Gallaher, Steve Ellis, and Scott Brown, is available to read for FREE on ZudaComics.Com.
HIGH MOON, which updates fortnightly, is the only comic to be featured in this week's collection of all things horrorific!
Check out the PowerRanking here!
HIGH MOON: Gallaher Gigcast
Last week, JT and Scott over at the Gigcast took some time to sit down and interview David Gallaher about the webcomic series: HIGH MOON.
Go give it a listen
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Free Comic Day and Iron Man
I don't know if this is appropriate to have on this blog but...
It was pretty cool to see the turn out for free comics day at Midtown Comics West in Manhattan. There wa a line outside down the street to get in. David and I were on a city wide drop off of free Zuda samplers to the cities finest comics stores and Midtown was the first on our list. We told the who we were and we skipped the line and gave our samplers to Gaul, one of the managers.
Gaul handed us a paper bag full of free comics. I've only read some so far, but my first impression are pretty positive. One of the things I've become particularly sensitive to is comics for kids. I have a five year old and he likes comics but it's hard to find ones that aren't filled with post modern jokes( none of which he gets...they seem mostly written for the parents) references to long ago stories(and so aren't complete stories in and of themselves) and are well written and drawn. There seems to be a feelings among a lot of creators(not all mind you) that taking the same story you would give to an adult and replace grown up superhero with a fuzzy animal in a spacesuit and you've got instant kid material. It's tougher than that.
It's one of those things you can know when you see it but it's hard to define. Kids don't understand most pop culture references...they don't get the humor or the reference...and even if they recognize the reference they don't get irony...at all. Irony comes with life experience. Also, writing that relies too heavily on irony and pop culture ref is poor writing, the writer using glyphs( meaning writing using symbols that pretend to be story elements but are just lifts from other sources used as shorthand thus debasing your own work as derivative); and nods and winks to tell a story.
Kids don't care about continuity...or realism. In my experience kids love free standing stories which have and end in the book (if you've ever read a comic to a five year old you will also know that trying to explain all of the continuity winks and the hanging storylines, you will understand the frustration the kid feels)
As a grown up who can't pick up all the titles from a given publisher to follow the continuity, I appreciate individual issues and complete stories as well, if I'm gonna plunk down my $3-$4 on a comic...it damn well better have some kind of a resolution at the end of it's flimsy 22 pages.
There seemed to be several things in the bag which satisfied the older reader in me and the young reader in my son....I haven't read them all yet.
Iron man was cool...distilled forty years of confusing often baroque storylines into a clean elegant origin story....which it seems is the essence of good comics movies...take tons of material and cherry pick the essence of the story....cool...it's almost four AM...I'm going to bed
Steve
It was pretty cool to see the turn out for free comics day at Midtown Comics West in Manhattan. There wa a line outside down the street to get in. David and I were on a city wide drop off of free Zuda samplers to the cities finest comics stores and Midtown was the first on our list. We told the who we were and we skipped the line and gave our samplers to Gaul, one of the managers.
Gaul handed us a paper bag full of free comics. I've only read some so far, but my first impression are pretty positive. One of the things I've become particularly sensitive to is comics for kids. I have a five year old and he likes comics but it's hard to find ones that aren't filled with post modern jokes( none of which he gets...they seem mostly written for the parents) references to long ago stories(and so aren't complete stories in and of themselves) and are well written and drawn. There seems to be a feelings among a lot of creators(not all mind you) that taking the same story you would give to an adult and replace grown up superhero with a fuzzy animal in a spacesuit and you've got instant kid material. It's tougher than that.
It's one of those things you can know when you see it but it's hard to define. Kids don't understand most pop culture references...they don't get the humor or the reference...and even if they recognize the reference they don't get irony...at all. Irony comes with life experience. Also, writing that relies too heavily on irony and pop culture ref is poor writing, the writer using glyphs( meaning writing using symbols that pretend to be story elements but are just lifts from other sources used as shorthand thus debasing your own work as derivative); and nods and winks to tell a story.
Kids don't care about continuity...or realism. In my experience kids love free standing stories which have and end in the book (if you've ever read a comic to a five year old you will also know that trying to explain all of the continuity winks and the hanging storylines, you will understand the frustration the kid feels)
As a grown up who can't pick up all the titles from a given publisher to follow the continuity, I appreciate individual issues and complete stories as well, if I'm gonna plunk down my $3-$4 on a comic...it damn well better have some kind of a resolution at the end of it's flimsy 22 pages.
There seemed to be several things in the bag which satisfied the older reader in me and the young reader in my son....I haven't read them all yet.
Iron man was cool...distilled forty years of confusing often baroque storylines into a clean elegant origin story....which it seems is the essence of good comics movies...take tons of material and cherry pick the essence of the story....cool...it's almost four AM...I'm going to bed
Steve
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Friday, May 2, 2008
Steve Ellis draws the NIGHT OWLS (plus news!)
Over at the Twin Comics Blog, Bobby Timony posted a sketch of Mindy Markus having tea with a werewolf - drawn by none other that Steve Ellis!
So go check it out ...
And if you are in the New York City area, you can see the Timony Twins talk on Tuesday at the Comic Book Club! It'll be awesome - and tickets are only $5!
Deleted Scenes
I've always been interested in deleted scenes - the material from your favorite film that never makes into the final cut of a movie. You know the stuff that just sits on the cutting room floor, until the DVD is eventual released.
When I wrote the outline for HIGH MOON, I tried to pack as much action and excitement into 60 screens as possible - but there are one or two bits (not even full scenes) that are in my original outline that never made it to the final cut of the series.
Why did I leave out this material?
Well ...
Although it was an action beat, the first sequence I had written did nothing to advance the plot and revealed nothing to the readers that they didn't already know. The sequence was just filler without consequence - and honestly - I don't want to waste our reader's time giving them something incidental to read. Readers invest their time into the strip - and I want to give them a good return on that invenstment.
The second sequence I deleted from the final screens was also a action bit. Steve and I went back and forth as to whether or not we'd include it. Sure, it might look really awesome - and be a really fun sequence to write - and it'd be a sequence with a whole lot of consequences - but as time went on, we both felt that it revealed too much information, way too soon. We are crafting a mystery/horror piece - and with any good horror piece - you need to leave some of it to the readers' imaginations.
I don't regret taking these bits out of the strip, and I think the story is stronger for it, but if you ever wanted to know about some of the stuff that hits our cutting room floor, now you know.
When I wrote the outline for HIGH MOON, I tried to pack as much action and excitement into 60 screens as possible - but there are one or two bits (not even full scenes) that are in my original outline that never made it to the final cut of the series.
Why did I leave out this material?
Well ...
Although it was an action beat, the first sequence I had written did nothing to advance the plot and revealed nothing to the readers that they didn't already know. The sequence was just filler without consequence - and honestly - I don't want to waste our reader's time giving them something incidental to read. Readers invest their time into the strip - and I want to give them a good return on that invenstment.
The second sequence I deleted from the final screens was also a action bit. Steve and I went back and forth as to whether or not we'd include it. Sure, it might look really awesome - and be a really fun sequence to write - and it'd be a sequence with a whole lot of consequences - but as time went on, we both felt that it revealed too much information, way too soon. We are crafting a mystery/horror piece - and with any good horror piece - you need to leave some of it to the readers' imaginations.
I don't regret taking these bits out of the strip, and I think the story is stronger for it, but if you ever wanted to know about some of the stuff that hits our cutting room floor, now you know.
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