RW in the Columbus Dispatch

Several months ago, I decided to start a webcomic about my new life here in Columbus. At first I wasn’t entirely sure how good it would be or how long it would even last. I just felt like it was something I needed to do. Who knew that anyone would even read it, much less want to write about it?

Dispatch article

Weekend Hangover

This post is very late...

I don't drink, but boy oh boy, did I get drunk last weekend! Not on alcohol but on comics. On Friday night, I hung out with a hundred or so people at the Wexner Center to celebrate Jeff Smith's Bone and Beyond show there. I got the chance to chat with the likes of Scott McCloud and Harvey Pekar (who was in town for the Ohioana Book Festival). I was telling my friends Chuck & Sam, who were with me, that it was the first time (in a long time) that I've been giddy about loving comic books. The party continued on Saturday afternoon with a "public conversation" between Scott McCloud (who acted more like an interviewer) and Jeff Smith at the Mershon Auditorium. The conversation was great and the Q&A session was fantastic. There was a book signing afterwards. and I ended up being close to the end of the line and had some great conversations with the other McCloud & Smith readers.


I scoured the internets to find some well-written and informative articles about the event(s) and came up with the following:

• From the horse's mouth-- Boneville's photo journal of Smith & Co. setting up the gallery at the Wex (part one & two).
• Local newspaper The Columbus Dispatch published a nice article in their Arts section.
• Local writer J. Caleb Mozzocco wrote two far superior, more in depth articles about the exhibitSmith/McCloud conversation on his blog, Every Day Is Like Wednesday.
• A great Comic Related Recap of the weekend. There's loads of pictures on the Comic Related website: here, here, here, here and here.
• Yours truly took a few snapshots, too.
  

I'm sure there's more to be found, but I'm still recovering.

Local Coverage for an International Story (Reviewing the reviews)

After reading some snarky music reviews in one of my local weekly papers today, I flipped over to the film review section and read this headline: "Coming-of-age tale trumps French rats." OMG! After nearly two months, Persepolis is finally playing in Columbus! (What does Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel-turned-animated feature have to do with "French rats?" If you actually want an answer to that question, you'll have to hunt down your own copy of The Other Paper, because they don't post much online.)

Over in the Columbus Dispatch, film critic Frank Gabrenya starts out his review with a variation on the "Comics Aren't Just For Kids" shtick and goes on to basically just retell the story. A favorite quote: "Because Satrapi and her collaborator, Vincent Paronnaud, live in France, the voices all speak French, even in Iran and Austria." Yeah, now I wonder-- if the movie were made in England (where they speak English)... what language their voices would speak? (Oops! Some of the snarkiness from the first paragraph spilled over into the second one. My bad.)

And finally, Melissa Starker of the Columbus Alive actually had a brief interview with the author/artist as well as posting a short review of the film. So that was nice.

There are literally hundreds of other reviews & interviews and what-have-you about this wonderful film (well, I assume it's wonderful...) from all around the world. So, I won't blather on any longer about it here; I'll just go, buy my ticket and see it for myself while it's here in town.