This article by Austin Kleon offers some good solid advice. I don’t agree with everything, but it’s an inspiring list he offers, and almost anyone with creative aspirations will find something useful. [link via Cat Garza]

Meanwhile, thanks to writer Matt Cohen for an unexpected shoutout in HuffPost Business earlier this week (and hey, while we’re at it, thanks to another Huffington Post Writer, Kate Kelly, for another shoutout at the beginning of the month). Comics readers are everywhere!

Some of you may have seen the Newsarama report that I helped design the six variant covers for Marvel’s limited series X-Men: First Class adaptation this fall. That was obviously a typo. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I hardly needed help.

And finally, THESE KIDS are clearly ten kinds of wonderful, as are their teacher and her very cool site. Consider swinging by their Kickstarter page and lending your support to make their dream of a printed collection a reality.

Off to Maryland in a couple of days (check out the travel sidebar at right for the updated list of my busy spring schedule). Enjoy the weekend!

Here’s site curator Daniel Leonard’s note from the 3eanuts site:

“Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comics often conceal the existential despair of their world with a closing joke at the characters’ expense. With the last panel omitted, despair pervades all.”

A lot of people are comparing 3eanuts to Garfield minus Garfield, but this one has its own charms.

Its own bleak, fatalistic, existential charms.

[via Tom Hart]

Connor Willumsen is coming from a strange place, but there’s method to his madness.

His experimental webcomic Everett includes some very solid drawing—somewhere between early Moebius, and a young Chester Brown—and his layouts and storytelling are really interesting.

Regarding yesterday’s discussion, Willumsen’s story might fall less into the what-happens-next category and more into the what-just-happened category, but it’s still compelling stuff.

Everett also features some interesting expanded canvas pacing, something I’ve been seeing more of lately, which, predictably enough, makes me happy.

Image from Willumsen’s Blackhold. Thanks to Zach H for the pointer.

The Lay of the Lacrymer by Molly Hayden does a very simple thing that I’m surprised (and a little sad) that more comics don’t do.

It makes me wonder, on nearly every page, what’s going to happen next.

Simple as that. A little thing, really. And yet, in the end, it’s everything.

[Thanks to @geminica]

Here’s a question that has nothing to do with comics (or sports, for that matter*). It’s a family dilemma.

Sky just got accepted into two universities she likes and is having a tough time deciding between them.

The choice is between two University of California schools; UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz.

We have plenty of basic information. We know their rankings (edge to Berkeley) and Ivy and Sky have visited both and will make return visits soon.

Sky likes both schools for a lot of reasons, but every time she starts leaning toward one, the other starts gaining on it again. It’s driving her bananas.

So, I figured I’d risk embarrassing her and crowd-source this one a bit. What do YOU think? Any experience or opinions about these two schools?

Sky is visually impaired (pretty significantly, though her peripheral vision is good, so she can get around well). She’s a socially-lefty nerd (like her parents), a vegan (unlike her parents — sorry), and would like to study film and video with an eye toward making same in the long run (possibly after two years of post-grad at a place like USC).

Big questions center on the relative quality of their film departments and related media studies, academic culture, disability services, neighborhoods, local art and culture, faculty strengths and weaknesses, equipment, housing and food services, and anything else you might have an opinion on.

(And feel free to email me instead if you’d like to share your thoughts in a less public way.)

Thanks for your help, The Internet! Back to our regularly-scheduled comics blogging tomorrow.

————–

*’Cause that would be just sad.

I’m off to the Finnish Comics Society’s International Comics Seminar in Helsinki this week, flying bright and early on Tuesday, so I’ll be taking this week off from blogging (probably, unless something huge comes up).

Enjoy some Chopin and Liszt in the meantime.

See you again Monday, March 28th. Have a great week/weekend!

Hit full screen on your browsers. BLUE by Australian cartoonist Pat Grant is an impressive debut with rich designs and an intriguing narrative style.

Just a few installments online so far, but each one is its own little world and worth setting aside a few minutes to let it all soak in. Grant plans to print the final result, but I think it looks great on the screen as well.

Thanks to Melbourne-based Rebecca Clements of KinokoFry fame for the link. Grant’s guest strip for KinokoFry is up this week.

Terry Laban has begun online serialization of Muktuk Wolfsbreath, Hard-Boiled Shaman (gotta love that name).

It’s a funny and smart strip so far, but that’s no surprise. Laban is a terrific writer and cartoonist and I’m sure he’ll have many great surprises up his sleeve in the coming weeks.

Definitely bookmark this one.

If any of you still “bookmark” things.

[link first seen on CR, I think]

***

Meanwhile, Shaman on YOU, anyone who’s stealing t-shirt designs from Jess Fink (or anyone else for that matter). There are some sick people out there!

Okay, I officially love these guys now.

Got this letter this morning.

Dear Scott,

Mind if I call you Scott?

Oh, Scott, you have done so much for us comic geeks.
Reading comics is no longer childish. It’s «de la culture» !
One book and everything changes. *sigh*
Thank you for that.

I have to tell you first how much my friends and I like you. We admire you.
But I have something else to say, and it won’t please you. Ooooh no.

Do you like french people, Scott?
You don’t have to answer. We know how Americans see us… They think they know us, they think froggies are full of self-esteem, arrogant… even rude sometimes.
Do YOU think we are? Do you, Scott?
You are so far from the truth.
We are worse.

This «24 hour comics day» you created, you know… it was a really good idea. Congrats for that.
But, eventually, we realised it was way too easy.

We decided to do the same, but in 23 hours.
Yep, 23 hours.
Because we choose the shortest night of the year, when daylight savings time begins.

And we did it. We’ve been drawing faster than you and your pals for 3 years now.

We just wanted you to know. We are just the best.

And on march 26th, we’ll do it again.
In your face!
But with respect.
And a lot of compassion.

Yours faithfully,

Zia, for the amazing Turalo, Piak, Paka, Kéké and hundreds of french comics artists.

(So who else is surprised they even *have* daylight savings time?)

Good luck from all us slowpokes!

One of the things I like the most about this pitch, apart from the fact that The Wormworld Saga looks really nice on the iPad, is that it wouldn’t have made any sense just a few short years ago.

This scene is moving fast, People.