Every aspiring cartoonist or wannabe comics-writer who's reading this should immediately pick up DRAWING WORDS AND WRITING PICTURES, the new comics textbook by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden. They've done a really great thing, compiling all sorts of arcane knowledge that's previously been passed down by oral tradition, or learned from scratch in the school of hard knocks.

It'll teach you practical stuff about drawing tools, and all this ethereal stuff about page layouts and panel choices. There's even a great chapter on the foundations of storytelling - stuff that I've gleaned bits of over years from bloated, confusing screenwriting books, and the magic of Todd Alcott. Jessica Abel breaks it down for us in this book, and she learned it the hard way too.

If I'd had this book (and MAKING COMICS) when I was in high school, I'd probably be a better cartoonist today.

Hell, after reading it, I plan to be a better cartoonist starting tomorrow. I'm just sad that you guys will get a head start on me.

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Pictured: A Chi's Sweet Home sticker on my ipod. I just ordered a bunch of Japanese stuff this past week, thank you James. We just found out there's a Chi anime (it's mine and Hope's favourite untranslated manga - imagine if Yotsuba was an adorable kitten!), which I am downloading right now. So stoked.

A really nice review of Lost at Sea.

I'm finishing the book today. I'll be back later on.

I did a book. I kind of forgot. Someone else read it and reviewed it. They liked it except for apparently the cover, which is okay, because I don't like the cover either. I apologize. I hope we have to do a second printing because maybe then I'd do something good for the cover.

Here is the text of Chris Allen's review:

LOST AT SEA by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Oni Press. $11.95

As catholic of tastes, as open a mind as I strive for as a reviewer, sometimes a book is passed over for fairly unimportant reasons such as, in this case, an unattractive book cover. So it took seeing a few good reviews of this graphic novel before I decided to go ahead and investigate it myself.

LOST AT SEA tells the story of fragile teenager Raleigh, who finds herself broken-hearted and “with no soul” on a road trip from California to Vancouver with some acquaintances from school. She’s in some sort of depression over her Internet boyfriend, her family life, and the fact she’s the outsider in the car. Will she “rally” her spirits, make friends and regain her “soul”? These are questions O’Malley sets out to answer.

O’Malley has a thick, confident line, and his characters are cute and affecting, looking appropriately childlike for their eighteen year old innocence rather than like magazine models. Like Craig Thompson, it’s a stylized but very warm, earnest style of art. And as with Thompson’s style in BLANKETS, it’s an extremely complementary style for a story of an adolescent’s intense emotional turmoil.

Raleigh has a very real voice, depressed without being depressing; melodramatic but charming; given to fantasies where the random incidents of life all tie together, conspiring against her. Cats are always nearby, and she’s allergic. Do they mean something? Do they know where to find her soul? O’Malley doesn’t indulge in magic realism, nor does he suggest Raleigh is disturbed. She’s just a sweet girl going through something deep and shattering. Thankfully, she’s not alone, and it’s moving and played just right the way the other girl on the trip, the tough-talking chain smoker, befriends her. And O’Malley really builds toward a wonderful scene of friendship, youthful adventure and catharsis when her new friends help her round up stray cats late at night to get her soul back. The others may look back at it and laugh, but it really does help her, and in the process she gets a new best friend in Stephanie. O’Malley remembers this age and conveys it with a wealth of emotion, but tempered by real storytelling craft and the instincts not to go too far. It’s an excellent debut, one of the better graphic novels of 2003.

moviepoopshoot.com

"If you went strictly by the title, you'd probably think Lost at Sea was about people riding the ocean waves, wondering if and when they'd ever find land again. That, needless to say, is not strictly what Lost at Sea is about. But if you strip away the boats and the salt air and the crashing sound and focus on the sensation of helplessly drifting away from the rest of the world, with no return in sight... well, you're getting much, much warmer."

http://www.icomics.com/rev_121103_lostatsea.shtml

Dur haw haw!