Jim Higgins here reporting in on some great happenings at Meltdown University. On a recent Wednesday night, one of the classes had the privilege of having Mark Waid, known for his past runs writing Fantastic Four and Flash, his present run on Amazing Spider-Man, for being editor in chief at Boom! Studios, and for writing a number of their titles, including the acclaimed dark superhero series Irredeemable. Mark spent about an hour giving an informal talk about constructing stories, while also giving key advice about writing techniques and things to know that are specific to comics. Both the writer/artists and the script writers had the chance to ask questions which Mark responded to with great information. Mark and I batted around some thoughts on plotting and building character and how to play to the strengths of the comics medium. I want to thank Mark for taking the time to come down and share his time. The Boom! crew are frequent visitors to Meltdown and have had signings and other events at the store. We like to think of Mark as one of the professional community’s “Friends ‘O Meltdown.” Thanks for stopping by, Mark!
If you’re interested in taking a class at Meltdown University we offer two types: one is a series where you have the choice of writing and drawing an eight to ten-page minicomic or writing a twelve to fourteen-page comics script; the other is a basic drawing class where artists can come and learn the fundamentals to apply to any type of drawing or art. Though it will touch on doing comics, that series is more of a straight art class. The next comics-making series starts on Monday, February 22 and the next Drawing Basics class will begin sometime in April and will meet on Saturdays. For information or to sign up, go here.
Irredeemable written by Mark Waid
“The Genius Pull” by Jason Vaughn
“The Genius Pull”
By: Jason Vaughn
It’s becoming extremely difficult these days to run into someone who isn’t an owner of one of the over 200 million iPods sold since 2001. However, if for some reason you’ve been living on Kandor for the past decade and have no idea what I’m talking about, I strongly recommend that you drop that Discman in your hand, go purchase an iPod, and let me be the first to welcome you to the 21st century! For the rest of us, I’m sure you’ve noticed that recently Apple has integrated a new program into their gatekeeper of music, iTunes. With this new addition, every iTunes library now contains a playlist called “Genius Mixes.” It’s a rather intuitive program that cycles through your library and pulls together multiple mixes from the different genre types in your music collection. So this got me to thinking? What if you could do the same thing to your comic collection and pull list? Just *click* and you have a selection of crime dramas, *click* a mix of superhero stories, *click* and there’s a handful of your favorite horror books to lull you into a blubbering nightmare-filled sleep before bed. So until the major publishers catch on and start doing something similar on their own websites every so often, I’ll be highlighting a random genre pull of current upcoming books and compare them to some back issue favorites. (By the way, I take full credit for the idea, guys! You can send the royalty checks to Jason Vaughn courtesy of… oh, who am I kidding.) This way, you don’t have to go digging around in that closet where you hide all of your comics from your girlfriend. And guys, don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.
The resurgence of horror comics from back shelf obscurity to a mainstream pull list property has been more shocking than a zombified Veronica munching on a tartar of Jughead brains. Personally, I’m still waiting for the “Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash vs. Predator vs. Aliens” – it’s bound to happen eventually. Let’s take a look at two recent titles, and one from that forgotten dust covered box in your mom’s basement.
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