Art & Story Supreme, Stick Figure Comics and more!

Art & Story Supreme:

On Wednesday this week, my friends Mark Rudolph, Jerzy Drozd and Kevin Cross launched Art & Story Supreme!

I’ve been an avid listener of the regular Art & Story podcast for quite some time now. The show focuses on the craft of making comics – and while there are other podcasts that attempt to cover similar ground, in my humble opinion, nobody gets “under the hood” with the medium better than Jerzy, Kevin and Mark. These guys not only speak with passion about their medium of choice, they truly *GET* comics.

So what is A & S Supreme?

It’s premium (paid) content for Art & Story listeners, which includes 29 additional audio podcasts, 3 video demonstrations, a forum to hang out with all your art buddies (minus the riffraff), AND office hours with Kevin, Mark and Jerzy. If you’re a cartoonist looking to hone your skills, whether it be writing, pencilling, inking, coloring, etc. – you’ll really appreciate the time and energy these gentlemen put into their shows.

More information about Art & Story Supreme is here. You can even “test drive” the premium content for 15 days to see if it’s your cup o’ tea.

Stick Figure Comics:

With the massive popularity of XKCD, there seems to be an abundance of “stick figure” webcomics out there. The humor and the aesthetic seem to fit well with XKCD…. BUT…. there are a whole host of imitation XKCD-type comics out there that just seem to fall flat.

Are artists just being lazy or is the aesthetic done purposely as part of the humor? Or are cartoonists just jumping on the bandwagon of what’s currently popular? I suppose that’s open to debate. My guess is that is a combination of laziness and bandwagon jumping. And that makes me sad. I shed a unicorn tear everytime I see a stick figure comic on the web.

So I’ll come right out and say what’s been bothering me for months:

STOP MAKING STICK FIGURE COMICS THAT RIP OFF XKCD and LEARN HOW TO DRAW.

(And listen to the Art & Story podcast!)

-Krishna