Chip Zdarsky
Kickstart My Art | Ryan North’s chooseable-path version of Hamlet
Ryan North’s (Dinosaur Comics, Adventure Time) Kickstarter for his illustrated prose book, To Be or Not To Be is way past being fully funded with 24 days still to go, so this isn’t a plea for action so much as it is a public service announcement. Because, dude …
North is putting together something that he can’t call Choose-Your-Own-Adventure for legal reasons, but totally is, only it’s for grown-ups, based on Hamlet, allows you to play as various characters including the ghost, and is illustrated by an insane line-up of artists like Kate Beaton, Chip Zdarsky, Chris Hastings, David Malki, Dustin Harbin, Jim Zubkavich, Kazu Kibuishi, Ray Fawkes, Vera Brosgol. … Seriously, I’m going to embarrass myself by leaving someone awesome out and the list is loooong. Check out the Kickstarter page for the full scoop.
$15 gets you a PDF copy, but $20 gets U.S. residents the PDF and a paperback copy too. Backers outside the U.S. are asked for a $30 pledge to cover shipping costs. And of course there are other goodies for pledging more.
NYCC | A roundup of news from Saturday
The Last of Us
While I was enjoying my time at APE up in San Francisco, the New York Comic Con was raging on with announcements and such. Before I get into a rundown of the comic-related news coming out of the East Coast today, let’s jump back to yesterday real quick so I can update one of the items from my Friday round-up. I mentioned that Dark Horse would publish a comic based on the upcoming video game The Last of Us, but I didn’t know at the time the most important part — the always awesome Faith Erin Hicks is co-writing AND drawing the comic. That’s a “Stop the presses” moment if I’ve ever seen one.
Ok, now on to Saturday …
• Apparently space is the place at NYCC … following DC’s announcement of Threshold yesterday, Marvel officially announced the return of two of their cosmic titles — Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova. Guardians, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Steve McNiven, comes out in February and apparently will feature Iron Man, or at least someone in his armor. Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness are the creative team for Nova, which features Sam Alexander, the Nova from Avengers vs. X-Men.
Steve Murray takes a look at the weapons of The Avengers
We’re in the middle of a massive build-up to the May 4 opening of Marvel’s The Avengers, and The National Post‘s resident cartoonist Steve Murray has focused his trained eye on the tools of the hero trade. Published earlier this week, his illustration catalogs the weapons of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes with nerd acumen intact and not without some humor.
From his description of Thor’s hammer: “Forged from the core of a dying star, Mjolnir is Thor’s very multi-purpose hammer. It can control the weather, open inter-dimensional portals and turn Thor into a weak human by tapping its handle on the ground. When this happens the hammer turns into a pretty boring stick. Also, the hammer returns to you when you throw it, like a Home Depot boomerang. Only people who are worthy may lift the hammer, which is a great way to test out a blind date.”
Click on the image at the right to see the entire infographic.
Murray, who sometimes goes by the nom de guerre of Chip Zdarsky, is a cartoonist with an uncommonly sharp wit. In addition to his gig as columnist/cartoonist/illustrator for The National Post, he’s also created some comics worth tracking down, like the print series Prison Funnies and the very-much-missed Zdarskyverse webcomic he did for Act-I-Vate which is now archived on his website.
Cartoonist Steve Murray running for mayor of Toronto (sort of)
Longtime comicker and my vote for comics’ great modern humorist Steve Murray has announced his candidacy for mayor of Toronto. Murray, a prominent writer and cartoonist for the city’s National Post, entered the race despite having missed the deadline to register for the election.
I grew up with an actor as president, saw Arnold Schwarznegger become governor of California and an Icelandic comedian win the mayoral post in Reykjavik, Iceland. Maybe Murray has what it takes.
If Murray wins, I hope Chip Zdarsky has a place in his administration.
Straight for the art | Chip Zdarsky’s Lost cast drawing
Lost by Chip Zdarsky
The National Post has a really cool interactive drawing of the cast from Lost, which allows you to add characters to the drawing by the season they were introduced. You can also scroll over the characters for biographical info.
“The original is on two large sheets of bristol taped together,” said Chip Zdarsky, who created the piece. “I looked like a madman working on it in the office. And then I had to learn Flash. That program is stupid!”
Lost wraps up tomorrow night.
Straight for the art | Chip Zdarsky’s 101 Muppets of Sesame Street
from 101 Muppets of Sesame Street by Chip Zdarsky (aka Steve Murray)
Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street? Oh, wait, never mind, I know how — all you need to do is click over to Canada’s National Post and check out merry prankster Chip Zdarsky’s interactive illustration of 101 of the show’s most memorable Muppets. Scroll over any of the characters in this Sgt. Pepper meets George Perez illo to find out some fun, furry facts. Above is just a sample — you really need to see the whole thing if you’ve still got love for the Street.
(Via Chris Butcher)
