Robot Beach by Matt Forcum

What’s this!? a Fanboy Fridays post on a Wednesday? Stick with me here. I’ve been wanting to talk about Evan Dahm’s Rice Boy for a while now, but for one reason or another, I haven’t done it. Well, I am thinking about it right now, so before it slips my mind again, Let’s talk about Rice Boy.

Actually, there is a whole lot I could say about this comic. I am absolutely in love with the deceptively simple and beautiful art and the story evolves at a brilliant pace that is both surprising and satisfying. But my friend Tom over at Marooned Comics describes what makes Rice Boy so fantastic, and he does a better job at it than I ever could.

Heck, Tom even got to interview Evan about his work! Evan talks about the way he went about creating the wonderfully sympathetic character of Rice Boy:

He started as something I drew in high school; just a simple little person. Putting him in this sort of story seems to suggest an incongruously passive, meek character, and I liked how he contradicted the large scope of the story. It wasn’t that conscious, I guess; I just liked doing as much as I could with a severely visually limiting character.

Be sure to head over to Marooned and read the interview with Evan, then head over to rice-boy.com and check out the amazing world that Evan has created.

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The guys over at Digital Strips Podcast (one of the many podcasts I subscribe to) were kind enough to review Robot Beach on their latest show. They had many flattering things to say as well as a few fair bits of criticism. Do you agree with their final verdict? Leave some feedback and let me know!

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Friends, today marks the one year anniversary of my little comic! I was hoping to make it to 100 strips and my one year anniversary on the same day, but the gods have been conspiring against me lately.

I wanted to take a quick moment to thank everyone who has stopped by here and left a comment or sent me a personal email of encouragement. I have meet and befriended some brilliant artists in the past year who’s work I greatly admire. Their encouragement and helpful advice has been greatly appreciated. I continue to look forward to growing those relationships for many years to come.

I especially want to thank you readers who have for months and months, continued to come back and check on the latest antics of Carl, Larry, and Robot. This first year has certainly been a year of personal growth as a fledgling cartoonist, and the one thing that has kept me pushing myself to do better with each update is knowing that all of you are expecting something great. I do not want to disappoint. It may seem like a little thing, but knowing that my work is viewed by hundreds of eyeballs every day has been a huge motivating factor for me. I cannot thank you all enough.

So we’ve got one year in the can! Only thirty four more years to go! (assuming I fall of the face of the earth at the age of sixty five.) I hope you all will come with me, it’s going to be a crazy ride!

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It can be tough to make good money as a novelist these days. Heck, it’s tough just to make it on the bookstore shelves! But I have the key to success and it can be done in three easy steps!

Step 1: Write a novel.

It really doesn’t matter what you write about, just so long as you have some vampires or angels kissing in it. Also, make sure you write at least three books at the same time. That is Key. No one in Hollywood is interested in the film rights unless they can sell it to the studio as a trilogy. The key word here is FRANCHISE. You are not here to entertain. You are here to make money.

Step 2: Now that we have the boring first step out of the way. (Eugh, so many words. Writing a novel is annoyingly time consuming) Now it is time to move on to a more important part: Choose a title for your book.

This step is surprisingly simple. Again, like step 1, It doesn’t really matter what it is so long as the title is short and has some mystical element to it. Examples include: Creatures, Candlelight, Banished, Angelfire, Shadows, Potion, Dark Princess, Dark Sun, Dark Love, Dark Monkey, any title with the word “Dark” in it works well.

Step 3: Create an eye catching cover.

Creating a cover for your book is the most important part. It is very important for your book to stand out from all the other books on the store shelf and catch the eye, HOWEVER there are some hard-and-fast rules you MUST follow if you want to become a successful novelist. The cover must be black with the title of the novel in white or another bright, eye-catching color. You MUST use an ornate gothic-style font for your title, and you MUST have a feather-edged photograph in the background. Your choices for a photograph are limited to the following: Fire, smoke, A tight shot of a woman’s eye, a woman in a tank top, or a silhouette of a creepy looking tree.

And there you have it! You now have the keys to success. Now go out there and put your new found knowledge to work! (Just be sure to cut me a check when you make it big ok?)

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Hello all,

Well, life has a way of sneaking up on all of us doesn’t it? Without boring you with the details, Let me just say that some things have come up that require much more of my attention than I originally hoped. In light of all of this, I need to, for now, move back to a two-day-a-week schedule.

So look for a new Robot Beach strip on Thursday this week and after that, we will be back to the regular Tuesday/Thursday schedule until things calm down a bit for me here.

Thanks for your understanding!

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