 Try Out Comics Extra For Free
Test Your Comics Knowledge
The 2003 Comics Holiday Store Is Now Open
Q & A with Bob Thaves of "Frank and Ernest"
Working Daze Calendar for 2004
Now Introducing: A Case In Point
Buy The Complete Far Side Here
Try Out Comics Extra For Free
Get Free access to Comics Extra today! Sign up to a regular one-year subscription and get a three-week Free Trial to start. See the great comics, features, and exclusive extras you've been missing out on at absolutely no obligation to you during your Free Trial period. Act now though because this special Free offer is only available to you for a limited time!
https://members.comics.com/members/registration/showEvaluateEmail.do
Test Your Comics Knowledge
What comic strip character finds happiness in cold beer, girlie pin-ups and Nick-at-Nite?
Find out after the next section.
The 2003 Comics Holiday Store Is Now Open
Brighten the holidays with gifts featuring your favorite comics and comic characters! Choose from a selection of perfect gift items like holiday greeting cards, clothing, journals, wall clocks, and much, much more. Pick from titles including Dilbert, Get Fuzzy, Rose Is Rose, and other popular comics. Hurry and place your order now before the holidays are over!
http://www.cafepress.com/unitedmedia/31654
Answer to the Comics Knowledge Question
Monty's freeloading college roommate with a frat boy mentality, Moondog finds happiness in cold beer, girlie pin-ups and Nick-at-Nite. He is a fertile source of excess body hair and tasteless commentary.
Read Monty here
http://www.comics.com/comics/monty/index.html
 Questions and Answers with Bob Thaves of "Frank and Ernest"
"Frank and Ernest" is the rare comic strip that is both enduring and innovative. Its two main characters are beloved for their wit and ability to appear in all guises. The strip has built a devoted following and is now read by over 25 million fans in over 1300 newspapers. It's also broken many barriers -- it was the first panel in a strip format, the first to vary the roles of its characters, and the first to use block lettering. Now, says its creator, Bob Thaves, it's innovating in even more new ways.
Q: How did you get the idea to start "Frank and Ernest"?
Bob Thaves: I basically wanted to do a comic strip with the flexibility of magazine cartooning. I wanted to use a couple of characters with attributes consistent with magazine cartooning: diverse content and characters that could appear in any time and in any place. Frank and Ernest were characters in some magazine cartoons that I had done. An editor liked them and asked for more cartoons with them. This suggested that the characters had some appeal, so I then adapted them to the single panel format for newspapers.
Q: You're famous for puns. Is the name of the strip a pun too?
BT: The name of the strip is a pun?! I enjoy wordplay, but not all wordplay is puns. In fact, some wordplay or puns can be visual. For example, I recently did a strip ("Beware of the cog") that is a visual pun. In general, though, wordplay is only one part of the strip's content.
One reader described "Frank and Ernest" as being simultaneously "above it all and below it all". -- That tone, together with its ability to reach a broad audience, the use of diverse subjects, and the wordplay -- are its hallmarks.
Q: You've been doing the strip a long time. The world -- and the world of cartooning -- has changed a lot, yet "Frank and Ernest" has stood the test of time. To what do you attribute its longevity and continued popularity?
BT: "Frank and Ernest" has changed with the times. The fact that it uses diverse subject references and a wide array of settings has kept it current. If I were limited to one type of setting or subject, I'd find it challenging to do strips about the same issue day in and day out.
Instead, I enjoy being able to reference everything from the arts to zoology -- with the added interest for me of being able to do so from the perspectives of different time periods and with the characters in different forms -- bugs, Martians, cells, clowns, and more.
Of course, some of the references do change. For example, I've recently done a couple of strips about Google, and I wouldn't do some of the older material now. Who knows what the strip will address next year!
Q: What gives you the greatest satisfaction about doing the strip?
BT: Those times when I create something really new and different. Because the format is flexible and content diverse, there are few limits and constraints.
Q: You were an innovator when you created the strip. Are there any new ways you can innovate with this strip, or do you feel that would change its nature too much?
BT: Innovation has been -- and continues to be -- a constant characteristic of the strip. It has, at times, created some unprecedented challenges and actually almost prevented the strip from being syndicated at all.
When I was submitting the strip to syndicates, most liked the humor but declined the strip because they felt they could not sell to newspapers a single panel in a strip format. This view was compounded by concerns about characters who changed from day to day, by the lack of a consistent story line, and by the perception that the lettering was sloppy. Different syndicates provided suggestions for changes to address these concerns, but I decided that I wanted to do "Frank and Ernest" as I saw it or not at all. Finally, Tom Peoples, the then editor at NEA, liked the strip as submitted, and agreed to syndicate it.
More recently, with the help of a digital coloring studio, "Frank and Ernest" was the first to use digital color for Sunday pages -- which produced some interesting moments. The lack of industry experience with digital files resulted in one of the first Sunday pages we colored digitally being distributed to newspapers so that the image ran with color only -- no outline and no lettering. Luckily, the newspapers understood what had happened and we had no adverse reaction from them -- although we did receive a slew of e-mails from readers. We now color all strips and offer these to newspapers and post them on the web.
"Frank and Ernest" also was the first strip with distribution above 1,000 newspapers at the time to include an e-mail address.
The launch of the web site brought a number of innovations. We created navigable 360-degree environments that allow readers to experience the comic in a completely new way. The user first sees a comic as it has run in the newspaper and then, based on clicks and choices they make, they "enter" the strip and experience an expanded version of the story suggested in the strip. For example, in one they go to the moon with Frank and Ernest and discover that they are there to look for a lost satellite. In another, they go to Egypt to help build a pyramid and, in the course of the interactive comic, they go inside the pyramid where they find an ancient Egyptian mall. The interactive comics remain on the site and, judging by the e-mail, users continue to be amazed by them.
The web site also was the first comic strip web site to feature 3-D characters and to offer a keyword searchable archive. Currently, we are doing some work with simple animations and will soon release at least one new simple animation of an archival strip weekly.
The unifying element of these recent innovations has been an attempt to embrace changing technologies while complementing, not competing against, newspaper distribution. This has contributed to the strip being able to change with the times. When I started the strip, I could not have envisioned some of the recent innovations - and who knows what lies ahead!
Read 30 days of Frank And Ernest at:
http://comics.com/comics/franknernest/index.html
 Working Daze Calendar for 2004
Count off the days to your next work year with this funny and colorful Working Daze 12-month wall calendar, featuring strips from the popular comic by John Zakour and Kyle Miller. Available to you exclusively from our Comics Store, the Working Daze calendar is a hilarious reminder that your own office space could probably be far, far worse than it actually is.
http://www.cafepress.com/workingdaze/182867
 Now Introducing: A Case In Point
A Case In Point, the new comic from artist Rob Esmay, gives an imaginative and unexpected vision of the not-quite-ordinary world through irreverent one-panel strips, presented to you for your reading pleasure, six days a week at Comics.com.
Get acquainted with A Case In Point at:
http://comics.com/comics/acaseinpoint/index.html
 Buy The Complete Far Side Here
Called an "18-pound hernia giver" by Gary Larson, this gigantic, beautifully packaged 2-volume set is the ultimate compendium of all that is Far Side. Featuring more than 4,300 single panel strips, with over half of them in color plus a quarter of them never-before available in book format, this high-quality slip-cased collection also includes a foreword by comedian and actor Steve Martin plus a multitude of letters, essays and comments from fans, critics, editors and the author himself.
Act fast though, because this 1,250 page masterpiece and collector's item is now available at 40% off and is already flying off the shelves!
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=unitedmedia&path=tg/detail/-/0740721135
-------------------------------------
To change your subscription preferences or to request a new subscription, click the link below or paste the URL into your browser.
https://members.comics.com/members/
To unsubscribe from this newsletter, click the link below:
Unsubscribe
To view an online version of this Comics.com Update, click the link below:
http://www.comics.com/comics_update/1103.html
To report problems in subscribing or unsubscribing, send an e-mail to:
unsubscribe.update@unitedmedia.com
|
