Extra Ordinary

Right on the same day I discovered Li Chen's webcomic, she had a problem with wordpress and all the website content disappeared. I managed to still read all the strips on flickr and was left wanting more, so it's great to see the blog up and running again.

Quite appropriately named, the webcomic is a mixture of simple everyday situations and out of the ordinary daydreams, featuring Li, her boyfriend and her cat Shoelace. I'm addicted already!



www.exocomics.com

The Everyday

The Everyday is Adam Cadwell's online comic about.. err.. the everday. It hasn't been updated much lately (Cadwell's a busy man, working as a freelance storyboard artist and visualiser) but his site has 3 years worth of archieves of the strip and it's a lot of fun to go thru them. They are also available in paper form, printed in 3 collections from the shop in his website.  Fingers crossed there will be more coming soon!

www.adamcadwell.com

Super person of the week: Paul Grist

I just only discovered Paul Grist a couple of months back and am now a big fan. He has had published work since the 80s, both in mainstream and small press publishers, but what is the most well known for are his tittles - the unorthodox superhero series Jack Staff and hard-boiled police series Kane, both of which he is the writer as well as the penciler and inker.

www.bigcosmiccomic.blogspot.com

Ming Doyle

I don't know how I could have missed Ming Doyle's work for this long. She's had a lot of work out there in the past couple of years, including stuff for Image comics, Boom! Studios and Tokyopop. Awesome style!


www.mingdoyle.com

Real life

The other day I was reading Anna Petterson's (one of the main characters of Marc Ellerby's comic Ellerbisms) comments about how weird it is to be parf of an autbiographical comic and have so much of your life shared with people you don't know, and I realized it's also kind of weird for us, readers, to see characters we are so used to, and whose life we know so much of, as real-life people.

I always find it strange and amusing to see a real photograph or video of somebody I know so well in the cartoon form... I guess that in my head, I almost expect them to be animated. Here's some of my favourite comic people, and the corresponding flesh-and-blood versions of themselves in all their glory.

James Kochalka - The American Elf

Adam Cadwell - The Everyday
  Natasha Allegri - Normal life
   Emi Lenox - Emitown

Marc Ellerby - Ellerbisms
Jacob Borshard - Creebobby
Lucy Knisley - ArtJournal

Paris Journal

Chicago based illustrator Lucy Knisley has just posted the last couple of pages of the diaries she kept while on holidays in Paris last week. I don't even like Paris, but this makes me want to go there too. So nice!

Check the whole Paris journal here.

Ellerbisms

Over the past few months Ellerbisms (the comic diaries of Marc Ellerby) became one of my favourite webcomics - it's funny, clever, full of pop culture references and, as what you’d expect from a diary, it chronicles every day life situations. Just like real life, they’re sometimes fun and sweet, and sometimes a bit less so, but either way, they are always good to read. Incredibly personal, these strips slowly made me feel like these characters are old friends of mine - I want them to be ok and happy… and to keep being awesome!

www.ellerbisms.com
www.marcellerby.com