Promoting Your Comics: Comic Review Sites

[John Freeman]

Can folk here recommend any good British comic review sites - not just for mainstream titles but indie material?

It would be useful to have a list for creators here to know where to send stuff (so if you have addresses that would be useful, too.

I've now started a page for this here: http://downthetubes.ning.com/notes/Comic_Review_Sites. More info and contact details welcomed.

The ones I can think of off the top of my head are:

• downthetubes (obviously, but bear in mind it's just me for the most part - anyone want to review Brit5ish comics for the site?)

• Forbidden Planet International (http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/) - an absolute must, since FPI may also decided to sell your title

• Comics Bulletin (http://www.comicsbulletin.com) - what used to be Silver Bullets

• Bugpowder (http://www.bugpowder.com/trs2/)
Send a sample copy of your comic to Jez Higgins, 34 Forest Road, Moseley, Birmingham, B13 9DH.

I know I've missed some. What's the name of that UK indie review site?

Print-wise of course, Comics International also reviews indie titles but what about music press etc.? Anyone know?

[The Emperor]

Great thanks for that. I have bumped the thread over on the 2000AD forum:

http://2000adonline.com/forum/index.php/topic,25424.msg440626.html#...

I also said if anyone has tips on lettering and colouring that might be handy. I have a few handy bits and bobs on lettering so I'll dig around for those.

[The Emperor]

I'll also drop in some thoughts on lettering, I've done a little bit (which is why I needed to find handy resources as I was pretty clueless) but your best source of top tips is Bolt, one of the best letterer in the British small press scene (so worth giving him a nudge).

Kevin Levell's blog is one I point to (like in the 2000AD link I give) of how an up and coming artist can use a blog to chart the process of working on their craft and he also has a few lettering tips:
http://kevlev.blogspot.com/2009/06/in-speech-balloons.html

I knew about Blambot, which is a great first stop for free lettering fonts:
http://www.blambot.com/fonts.shtml

But he also points out a service that makes a font from your handwriting (which could prove a time saver if you have a neat style):
http://www.yourfonts.com/

Tutorials:

Comicraft's tips (Richard Starkings and his crew are the leading letterers in American comic books so it is worth learning from the experts, although remember they have access to kick-ass aoftware and a range of expensive fonts):
http://www.balloontales.com/articles/tutorial/index.html

This is the tutorial I found most useful for making balloons (use layers and combine shapes - tricks that transfer across the various software packages):
http://tinyurl.com/lbj222

As I mentioned on the artist thread Gimpshop (or GimPhoto) are open source graphics packages that are a free alternative to Photoshop and should give you everything you need to get the lettering done.

So that should be enough to get the software, fonts (both for free) and some advice - you should be lettering in no time.

_________
The other main aspects are colouring and publishing - I haven't done the latter and the former is close to magic, in my opinion. However, there are some excellent and experienced folks around who can provide information on that, so it should be possible to at least lay the foundations for advice on the different areas.

[The Emperor]

Jim Campbell has been recreating his lettering tutorial site as a thread over on the 2000 AD forum:

http://2000adonline.com/forum/index.php/topic,26156.0.html

[The Emperor]

Hypergeek have a Small Press Sunday feature where they look at specific small press publishers (most recently Orang Utan Comics), with an overview and reviews. So it might not be something for everyone but FQP or Insomnia might get featured:

http://www.hypergeek.ca/category/columns/small-press-sunday

[azurechan]

Just noted a mistake on the page itself, It says Neo us a future publication to be honest I've not bought it for a while but I believe it is published by Uncooked Media and not Future. I believe the SFX team have done the occasional special but they don't currently run an anime mag.

[The Emperor]

Just a note to say there is now a creators forum on the 2000 AD site:

http://2000adonline.com/forum/index.php/board,26.0.html

There is a tips and tutorials thread which might have useful things and there are other general threads for different aspects of the process. So for example I added this link to D'Israeli's comics colouring on computer tutorials:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/lynnfo/educatio/colourin.html

I'll add anything good here (or the other threads) and throw in links back here and we should be able to ping pong between the two and build an interesting resource.

[The Emperor]

Another aspect to this - a handy discussion/list of comic shops that could take small press comics:

http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=6659&a...