Celebrating the Comics, Cartoons and Creators of Central Ohio
Maryanne Rose Papke self-publishes comics online and in print. Her comics are usually weird, often silly, typically cute, sometimes sad, and occasionally epic. Check out her work at silverkraken.com.
Continue reading “Top Five with Maryanne Rose Papke”Comprised of Meredith Gran’s popular webcomic’s first two years of strips, Octopus Pie Vol. 1 tells the story of two twenty-somethings living together in New York. Ning is the uptight one who works at Ollie’s Organix, and Hannah is her friend from kindergarten turned stoner and pastry baker.
Continue reading “Octopus Pie Vol. 1”As she mentions in her introduction, Kate Beaton would often put off writing essays to do comics for the student paper. She would eventually start putting them online as she continued working on her degree in history. It would turn out that she was able to meld both of these worlds into something truly fantastic.
Continue reading “Hark A Vagrant”Published by Dark Horse Comics in 2020, I read the tenth-anniversary edition. This book is a well-deserved winner of both a Harvey Award and an Eisner Award.
Continue reading “The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack”Skylark Toys and Games is Grove City’s home for collectibles, comics, classic toys such as GI Joe and Transformers, and all things pop culture. Learn a bit about owner Daren Neff’s love of comics and what inspired him to open his own shop.
Continue reading “Comic Store Profile: Skylark Toys and Games”We’re in the middle of a dark moment in history, and our online spaces often reflect that. Comment sections are famously toxic, algorithms everywhere favor posts that generate controversy and conflict, and more than ever, our experience of the internet is one choked with insidious advertisements and steeped in commercialism. Social media has become, in general, a loud and unfriendly place. But if you’re an artist working in 2022, sooner or later, you pretty much have to go there.
Continue reading “Navigating the Social Media Landscape as a Comic Creator”In 2007 at the age of 26, I found myself living alone in a small apartment in Meadville, Pennsylvania. I had landed there a couple of years earlier, having accepted a job at the local newspaper, the Meadville Tribune, as a graphic designer/production artist. At the time in 2005, I was pretty happy with the $9.00 an hour I was earning ($2.00 more than my previous newspaper job out of college) as it allowed me to afford my basic bills and, to my delight, make payments on a new (to me) car. By 2007, though, the shine had worn off of Meadville.
Continue reading “My Freelancer Days for Zuda Comics”By the end of the nineteenth century, every newspaper had a comics section, and the comics featured in that section determined the popularity of the paper. Comics were the driving force in selling newspapers. Since they were popular with readers from every walk of life, it wasn’t long before books of various shapes and sizes began appearing at newsstands and general stores featuring reprintings of comic strips. The comic book we think of today, however, would end up being created out of a need to keep an expensive printing press running. It would be an innovation spawned by two crafty salesmen who would inadvertently create an industry.
Continue reading “Dawn of the Comic Book”Steve Hamaker is a local comic creator that has been in the business for over 20 years. Ever since he graduated from Columbus College of Art and Design in 1997, he has collaborated with some of the most notable cartoonists in the business. Steve is best known for his award-winning coloring work. His credits include the graphic novel series Bone and RASL by Jeff Smith, Table Titans by Scott Kurtz & Brian Hurtt, Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore, and Hilo by Judd Winick to name a few. He has even worked on Mylo Xyloto, a six-part comic by Mark Osborne based on the fifth studio album by the band Coldplay. Besides coloring, Steve is a successful cartoonist in his own right. His first graphic novel Fish N Chips was published in 2010 and followed up by his webcomic PLOX in 2013. PLOX, which is set in Columbus, follows the arcs of Kim, Chad, and Roy, three gamers struggling to navigate their offline lives. You can read it online at plox-comic.com. Currently, Steve is providing art for The Pathfinders Society. To date, two books in the young adult graphic novel series have been published, The Mystery of the Moon Tower (2020) and The Curse of the Crystal Cavern (2021). Steve lives here in Columbus with his wife and son.
Continue reading “10 Questions with Steve Hamaker”