Check out: EVERYTHING SUCKS! on Netflix

I just finished watching a new show on Netflix called Everything Sucks!

My film school buddy Michael Mohan is one of the creators, and several other of our friends also worked on the show, so I admit to being biased, but my wife and I both really loved it. (I hate some of my other classmates’ work, so I don’t think the bias is actually a factor.)

It’s set in 1996, in suburban Oregon, and follows the kids in a high school AV club as they clash with the drama club. It’s about a lot more than just that, though — the trailer gives you a good sense of it.

As the season continues on, I really like how the filmmakers manage to subvert many of the typical stories you think you’re going to see.

Mike also directed the short film This Is How You Die for the second Machine of Death book, and helped me out quite a bit with the MOD Kickstarter videos as well! His name has popped up on this site from time to time. I’m a huge fan of his work generally and was excited to hear he’d have the chance to make this series.

The show’s musical score is by musician/podcaster Hrishikesh Hirway, also a friend, and the cinematographer is Elisha Christian, who also shot the commercial I made for Zach Weinersmith’s Single-Use Monocles.

Elisha and I worked together in our college AV department nearly TWENTY YEARS AGO. DANG that is a weird thought.

[ Everything Sucks! on Netflix ]

Check out: My interview with the WALLET INSPECTORS

Recently I had the pleasure of being interrogated by the Aussie podcastketeers of THE WALLET INSPECTORS.

It’s a short-ish (around half an hour) discussion in which they make me describe and explain the contents of my wallet, which happens to look like this:

Find out how and why I STOLE this “wallet” from the Hyatt Regency in Denver, on the WALLET INSPECTORS podcast!

Listen online at their site here, or on Overcast here.

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WALL BUDDIES UPDATE: We’re trucking along over on Kickstarter! We’re offering eight different pieces of laser-cut wall art, including this design:

Pre-orders are open all November, for an estimated spring 2018 delivery! Update: The campaign is over! Thanks everyone!

Check out: NPR’s list of “100 Favorite Comics”

NPR has just published a list of 100 Favorite Comics And Graphic Novels — and I’m thrilled that Wondermark made the list!

The list has all the usual suspects — Maus, Watchmen and the rest — but makes clear it’s a list of favorites, so there’s some variety as well:

This isn’t meant as a comprehensive list of the “best” or “most important” or “most influential” comics, of course. It’s a lot more personal and idiosyncratic than that, because we asked folks to name the comics they loved.

And they break the list down into sensible categories — graphic novels vs. comic books vs. webcomics, etc — which allows for a few favorites to be listed in each.

A lot of my friends are on the list too, which is great, because it means I have talented friends and good taste in friendships! Check out the links for plenty of new reading material.

Thanks, NPR! Sorry for making fun of you in 2006 and again, kind of, in 2012.

(But I know we cool, because I was also briefly on Morning Edition in 2010. And I did that whole thing for Sanden Totten where I impersonated Tesla.)

COMIC-CON ALERT: San-Diego Comic-Con is next week! I will be back at the TopatoCo booth as per usual, #1229!

Remember the mnemonic: Just think 1-2-3-4, and look for booth #1234! Then turn around, and I’ll be behind you!

Check out: Iguanamouth Comics

People sometimes ask me about “how to get into webcomics,” or “how to do a webcomic,” or “how to get people to read a webcomic.”

The truth is I don’t know! I had what could charitably be called a strategy a decade ago, but now I just make comics and put them in the places folks expect to see them — here, on Twitter, on Facebook, in your email.

But other people do it lots of different ways — there are a lot of comics that live on Tumblr exclusively, and there are comics that I only recognize because they bubble up on Reddit a lot.

Here’s an example of a comic that lives in a “comics” tag on the artist’s Tumblr… I happened across it because I saw it posted on Twitter, and then I checked out the other comic strips the author has posted. I don’t know if the comic has a name per se, but the Tumblr’s handle is Iguanamouth.

That’s just the first couple of panels! Click to read the whole thing! It’s very good.

I don’t know much about this artist (Lauren), but it seems like the comic strips are an occasional thing that she posts along with other stuff on her blog.

And I think comics are getting to be like that now — just another form of thing to post. There are people I follow on Twitter or Instagram who occasionally post comics in between regular tweets about whatever.

That’s a great thing for the comics medium and for artists, but it makes it hard to draw a line around “webcomics” in any specific form and say “This is how you do a webcomic.” It’s always been kinda fuzzy, and now it’s… just no more clear than it was, perhaps.

That’s a small tradeoff for seeing the explosion of work of a new generation of artists who grew up on comics, and are learning to speak that language natively. I think it invites more interesting voices to participate in the medium.

Lauren has more art in her “Scribbles” tag, here! They are fun drawings that aren’t comics per se, but exist in the same space as her comics; that is to say, a piece of art that tells a story. Comics is just one way of accomplishing that end, and I love that too.

Check out: ‘Double King’, a fantastic animated short

this doesn't give anything away, it's literally the first frame of the film

I absolutely loved this new animated short by Felix Colgrave, “Double King”:

“Double King” on YouTube

It’s well worth the nine minutes to watch. Just stunning animation (and sound). It’s crafted with a level of precision, but also whimsy, that mesh in surprising and fascinating ways.

BONUS LINK: Felix Colgrave has an entire YouTube channel of prior work for ADDITIONAL HOURS OF ENJOYMENT