Both the Monday and Wednesday Meltdown U classes are moving forward, full speed ahead.  The Monday sessions are going to break for the holidays on December 8th.  Before that we’ll look at Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s brilliant graphic novel Signal to Noise that was reissued, thankfully, this year by Dark Horse.  To my mind it’s the best thing Gaiman has done though McKean collaborated a lot on the story which complicates who the actual “author” is.  The students are working on their minicomics and scripts and will use the break to finish up.  That class will meet once more on January 12th, 2009 where everyone will bring in their projects, feel the love from their colleagues, and bask in a sense of satisfaction at having completed something.  The new Monday class, which is the next one available to join, starts on January 19th.

The Wednesday class has finished learning story structure and are nailing down their stories.  This week we’ll get into visual storytelling and look at Comics and Sequential Art by Will Eisner to help us along.  That class will break on December 10th, and resume on January 14th.

ALSO — for students who finish either the Monday or Wednesday class, we’ll be starting an ongoing workshop on Fridays from 6:30 to 8:30pm for people who want to continue to work on their comics or comics writing.  To join this Friday group you’ll need to have completed the one of the 13-week classes since we’ll be referring back to the material from the class regularly in the workshop.

BTW — if you want something good and different to read try Whiteout by Greg Rucka and Steve Leiber, which I just finished.  It’s not new but it’s a really good read.  It’s a great crime story with a scrappy but realistic female US marshal as it’s lead with lots of other engaging characters.  It all takes place at various ice stations in Antarctica. 

That’s all for now.  Ciao, folks.