Never fear though, because even though it isn’t friday, I’ve got some great comic reading for you to check out this week. It’s called Carpe Chaos and it is by a number of talented guys, one of them being Jason Bane who was very patient with me as I got all “elitist webcartoonist” with him about the use of flash in the presentation of the comic. Sure it can be difficult to navigate at times, but it is a very interesting way of presenting your work to an audience.

The work itself is very nice. The characters are unique and engaging and the environment is lush and detailed. The stories are intriguing and is very much in line with the type of sci-fi fantasy that I really respond to. Each comic can be read as a stand-alone story, yet It all takes place within the same vast universe which is really awesome. I’ve always wanted to create my own space adventure in my own unique universe and until I get a chance to do so, (if ever) this will satiate that hunger in me.

There is even a nice blog to go along with the comic, so be sure to check that out while you are there. Seriously, this comic is not to be missed.

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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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If this comic looks to beautiful to be true, it might have something to do with the fact that Eddie is a former Disney artist who has worked on films like Mulan, Emperor’s New Groove (a personal favorite) and Lilo and Stitch. He has the pedigree, and it is certainly on display here. The line work is beautiful and the character construction is amazing. I am always extremely impressed when an artist can construct a character in many different poses and angles and it still looks correctly proportioned. That is perhaps the hardest trick for a cartoonist to do, and Eddie pulls it off so effortlessly here. His characters are also extremely expressive which is such an important yet so often overlooked aspect to cartooning. You just don’t see a lot of it in webcomics. I also really love the way he uses color and light to help set the mood. Again, a very important, yet rarely seen aspect of fine cartooning. I’ve learned a lot from the few pages that have made their way to the web so far. (EDIT: The Artist just posted an article on how he designs his characters. Very informative!)

The plot of this comic is wonderful as well. It’s about a little girl named “Red” who runs away from her foster home and is mistakenly abducted by aliens and then marooned on a deserted planet. Although we have yet to see much of this, (Eddie just finished up the prologue) I am looking forward to seeing where this comic goes.

It is rare that I catch a webcomic of this quality right at the beginning of it’s run, so I am very excited to get a chance to share this with you before it breaks out and becomes HUGE! So what are you waiting for? Go check out Red’s Planet today!

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Mike is the amazing mind behind Pinkerton Park. He describes his comic as “A furry little drunken soap opera.” A very apt description for sure. His characters tear through the strip with wreckless abandon and leave behind a trail of shamelessness and hilarity.

Mike’s style is fantastic. His characters are composed of sharp purposeful lines that are carefully crafted yet remain very loose and expressive. They are at once huggably soft, and rough around the edges. I love that certain hand-crafted look in comics and fewer and fewer of them have that feel nowadays. It’s very refreshing to see it in Mike’s work. (PLUS, he is one of the only people I have ever seen that has been able to pull off the whole arms-missing-from-body-when-not-in-use thing.)

The writing mirrors the artwork beautifully. These characters can charge off on an alcohol-fueled zombie squirrel hunt, yet Mike never looses track of the warmth that makes the strip so wonderful to come back to each day.

Perhaps it is that line between the “good” and the “Bad-to-the-bone” that has attracted me to Pinkerton Park. It feels like the natural evolution of the classic newspaper strip as it makes its transition from print to the web. Pinkerton feels like the kind of strip that Calvin would have drawn when he finally grew up and placed Hobbes safely away on a bookshelf.

If you enjoy my strip, and are among the very few who aren’t already reading Pinkerton Park, I highly encourage you to head over there and check it out. You will not be disappointed.

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Mike’s style is one of deceptive simplicity. A few quick strokes are all that make up his character Swoop. Yet Mike is able to bend those simple lines in ways that can deliver a range of emotion that I am still trying to dissect and steal for my own work.

His writing is beautiful as well. One Swoop Fell is essentially an adventure story with plenty of action in exotic locals and yet the characters never suffer for it. Each character feels deep and well thought out with an air of mystery about them that, as the story unfolds, reveals itself in entertaining and unexpected ways.

It is no wonder why after only seven updates, Mike Dutton was asked to contribute to the next Flight book. His work stands as some of the best that the comics community has to offer.

UPDATE: I embedded a video of Mike creating a comic. Truly a master at his craft. I’ve learned so much just by watching him work!

One Swoop Fell – Never the Task at Hand from David Dutton on Vimeo.

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Many of us “creative types” have that epic tale that we would love to one day tell. Perhaps if we find the time we will get around to finally writing that novel. Or if we can take a half hour every evening to read a little further into that book about screenwriting, we will be that much closer to starting that screenplay we’ve been talking about for years. We have all had our excuses. We love the IDEA of creating an epic, but the time and energy it takes to actually produce it is enough to keep us in the realm of “armchair storytelling.” Tom said “to hell with all that”, picked up a pencil, and started drawing.

When I found his work and started reading through his archives, I found it fascinating to be able to quite literally watch him develop as an artist and a story teller. His early strips were perhaps a bit rough. (Tom admits as much.) But they were funny and engaging and the seeds of that grand space opera that it would soon become were there in those early strips.

In many ways, Marooned was what convinced me to get up off the couch and start working. I saw that it was ok if my early work was a bit rough. I could always go back and fix it later. (as Tom did.) We all have to start somewhere, right? Artists are often very insecure about things we hold dear. Our work means very much to us and the thought that someone may stumble onto our site and not like what they see can be crippling.

Marooned also served as proof that my idea of telling an epic story, wrapped in a gag-a-day comic style was not only feasible, it actually works very well as a story telling device. Since discovering Marooned I have found other strips that do similar things, but this strip remains special to me. I hope you find it as fun and compelling as I do.

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