Blog

Don’t be too intrigued by the title, I’m not here to rant about where I see the industry heading or why digital will die and holographic book coverings will take over as the most accessible form of comics. I’m posting to let you all know about a show that opens tonight in Wellington.

This exhibit is showcasing works from a group of comic creators aged 5-17, one of the people involved just happens to be Theo MacDonald (creator of this piece of genius)

It’s not often you come across a 17-year old who has seen every Kubrick film, is working his way through the entire Woody Allen back catalogue, has dozens of published (both self published and one through us) to his name and likes to sometimes live life in a Max Fischer costume. There’s no denying it, one day Theo will either rule over us or crush us with his terrifying mind.

I first met Theo in 2008 when he was wandering through a convention. Instantly I was struck by his unusual view on the world. Somehow this (at the time) 13-year old kid was able to see through anything that confronted him and reveal the flaws/irony/inconsistency that lay at its heart. Also, he was selling comics.

Several years passed and Theo (at this time 15) produced a mini comic called ‘I Lied’ (if you are in New Zealand I strongly recommend getting a copy). It’s only 5 pages long, each page is a one page story about Theo and his unusual observations and every part of it is a work of sheer brilliance.

Last year I got the chance to work with Theo and help him release his first full size comic. It’s the title pictured above. It contains all 5 pages of ‘I Lied’ (though lacking the clever joke that made ‘I Lied’ my favorite comic of the year) along with 19 new one page strips. We released the book at Wellington Armageddon last year and it was a huge success (it’s now in its second printing as a stop gap while Theo finished his new 72 page graphic novel).

So, while I am sure that the other 5 people in the show are also brilliant I urge you to check out the work of Theo MacDonald because if there is any justice in the World he will be a comic superstar (is there such a thing(?)) one day.

If you can’t make it to the show check back here in a few weeks when we’ll have ‘Theocracy’ for sale in our shiny new online store.

Recently it’s been brought to my attention that while in real life I am an overbearing Grammar Nazi, obsessed with syntactical correctness and the elegance of language, in my blog posts I ramble like the run-on sentence is going out of style. I would argue that the run on sentence suits the blog format and is therefore completely appropriate.

When blogs first ‘happened’ (back when the word blog would have elicited a squiggly red line from Word) they were primarily rants from opinionated computer owners who had spent too much time coming up with a screen name. They were rambling and they were hurried and they had the ferocity that only comes when your brain is going faster than your mouth and the first three rows are covered in your spit. I’m sorry to inform you that i have not moved on.

When I write a blog post I think of it as if I am saying it aloud, ignoring structure for the most part and just trying to get my points out as they occur to me. This may be due to my whopping 23 wpm typing skillz or it may be because I am so out of practice at writing prose after this many years of scripting comics almost entirely in dialogue form.

Here’s my point. I think that the English language is a wonderful weapon and I think that it should be understood and utilized correctly, but I also firmly believe that writing should suit the form. Blogs are rants, they are rambling, they are not well thought through (or at least the very narrow form of blog that I am writing, I’m well aware of the wide variety of blog styles used on this internet thing). I write this blog in the way that I speak, with excitement and tangential sentences that get lost halfway through. Sorry.

So, if you use the incorrect tense on Facebook or say ‘Pacific’ instead of ‘exact example’ then I will call you out on it and behave like a dick. If you blog like Courtney Love by bashing your face into the keys then I will accept it and read it like a puzzle. So, stop with the complaints.

That is all

-Richard