Sunday, October 5, 2008

Why not finish off with a blog post?

Wow, I'm actually getting stuff done this weekend - first a revised outline of The Thing for That Emmy Guy, then a new version of THE HOLIDAY MEN pitch that better reflects the actual comic (the only official proposal I ever did for the project was written up as an animated series. When the ChemSet asked if I had anything I'd be interested in doing and Nick got on-board, it became a comic - refreshingly, without my having to go through a "It's A Christmas Carol meets Die Hard, by way of Looney Toons" type of sales pitch to get someone, artist, publisher, whoever, interested in it. Which was great till I actually decided to start seriously trying to find a publisher and realized I didn't have a proposal written in a suitable format...), even got a decent start on a short essay on something that's been eating at me. And this after finishing four new comic reviews on Friday. What--what's happening to me...?

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SHE'S A (COGNO)MANIAC, (COGNO)MAAAANIAC, I KNOW-OH

The Future of Comics (I) Fiona Staples returned to blogging recently to make a post noting on her blog Vicious Ambitious member Cognoman's started a daily webcomic, COGNOMANIA. While Nick Johnson's got the most polished, commercial art style of all the VAers, Cog's is by far the most idiosyncratic - in a way I can't quite put my finger on, it reminds me of Sergio Aragones, though his images are much less detailed, more open and relaxed. These done-in-one surreal comedy strips are a great showcase for an artist I've long believed had a lot of potential. From what I've read, each installment seems to be set in its own weird little world, but that variety of set-ups and settings produces some genuine laughs on a surprisingly consistent basis, at least so far.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

"It is clear that superrich people should be punished, because they didn't get where they are today without having eaten a live human baby at some point in their career..." Cintra Wilson, in her book A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease and other cultural revelations.

A

3 comments:

Scott said...

I ate a live human baby once. Where's my financial windfall?

FS said...

Returned? I never left blogging! Well, not for more than three weeks. I'm a free spirit!

Cognoman said...

Thank you very much for the supportive sentences, Fair Foley. It brightens my entire month whenever I see that your fingers have typed out my little alias.

To be honest, I'm still not sure what direction I'm going to take the strip in yet, but I'm thinking I might actually drop the 'comedy' angle. I'm not really a very funny person (as anybody who's talked with me for than 5 minutes can attest, heh heh), so I kinda want to treat the strip more as just an outlet for general 'creativity' instead of forcing myself to churn out a quick gag every day.
...On the other hand, though, I ALSO keep worrying that if I DO just do 'whatever I want' like that, that doing so will alienate both the readers who are looking for humour AND the readers who are looking for 'serious' strips, because some days the strips will be humorous and some days they won't be, at all.
And THEN I think, welllll, I shouldn't really be doing this comic for the readers anyway - I'm doing it mainly for myself, to help myself develop a better work ethic, to get some new ideas going through my head and to hopefully improve my skills a bit.
...But if I'm just doing it for myself, why even put it up on the 'net in the first place.

So yeah - in a nutshell, I'm fairly unsure what the heck I'm doing right now. It's still very early, though; I should hopefully settle on a direction for the strip...at some point.

This is DEFINITELY waaay too long-winded to have put in a reply to a blogpost, heh heh, but I kinda need to work this stuff out, so I figured this little cranny on the 'net was as good a place as any, heh heh.

You truly are Awesomeness Incarnate, Mr. Foley. Thank you again for the mention!