”Comment
ZAMPANO BLOG
Once in a while I’d like to talk about things that are not directly tied to Zampano but would certainly be of interest to the comic-reading community. One of my big area of interest has always been the mythology and culture of India. Those of you who know me from my comic book series Kaos Moon know what I’m talking about. In the late nineties I created a series of art pieces that showed Kaos Moon with the Indien god Ganesha. I’ve been following the rise and fall of Virgin Comics closely and even had some talks with them at the NYCC at the time. Unfortunately, it was pretty predictable that Virgin wasn’t gonna last. The legacy that Virgin Comics left behind, namely to deliver classic Indian mythology in a new and contemporary fashion was filled quickly by a young upstart publisher, Vimanika.
Vimanika is mostly the brainchild of the 28 year old pop-culture fanKaran Vir Arora. With lots of enthusiasm and a clear vision the young entrepreneur started the company from scratch in 2008 against all odds and made it quite a success in India, as can be seen on the videos on Vimanika’s Facebook fanpage. The very first title is called Dashaavatar (see cover below) and which focuses on the many avatars of Vishnu.
(All artwork copyright Vimanika Ltd.)
The artwork and the presentation of the comics, that Karan calls graphic novels (although they look like saddle-stitched comic books to me), look fantastic and I spontaneously decide to order a copy of the first book. So expect a more in-depth review once I receive my copy.
(All artwork copyright Vimanika Ltd.)
The American eBook giant DriveThru Comics has chosen TELL: The Return of William Tell! as their “Pick of the Week”. We’re delighted that the American readers are interested in a story about our national symbol (although the story is not particularly patriotic). It would be pretty cool, if we would also be able to get a print edition going…
In the third issue of the new German magazine COMIX is featuring my series Endless Sky on the cover. Now mind you that this is not some obscure fanzine but a full-blown newstand magazine with a pretty hefty print run of almost 10’000 copies. Endless Sky has been serialized since its inception and has proven among the most popular comics in the magazine. COMIX is monthly, printed on newsprint and contains 80 pages for 2 Euros ($ 3) with diverse variety of mostly German, Austrian and Swiss (that’s me) comics. Let’s hope the project is gonna do well enough to feature all 240 pages of Endless Sky which is to published as a graphic novel in June 2012.
It’s no big secret that the American comic book market is practically impenetrable for small independent companies. Therefore I made the decision early on to focus our print efforts on Europe, mainly Germany and France where the market are still somewhat willing to accept new books. But I certainly would like for our English and American friends to be able to check out our books. The closest digital version to the actual comic books are eBooks and we have teamed up with the three leading stores to offer you two of our series as eBooks. The interfaces of those online store are pretty sophisticated these days and you’ll be able to sample an 8-page preview of each issue. We’ll be basically releasing new issues after they’ve been serialized on the Zampano website and been re-edited. Also new covers, as well extras will be added to make the content more appealing. Please check out the previews and let us know what you think…
I’ve neglected upgrading the site for a while but this weekend it just had to be done. All the sites are currently running under WordPress 3.0 with Comicpress 2.92. This upgrade fixes the biggest problem that we had with the site since the beginning; the navigation. From now on you’ll be able to comfortably navigate all the comics from the beginning to the end without the somewhat shaky system I used previously. Lots of other small things have also been fixed (big thanks and shout-out to Comicpress master dev Phil *Frump* Hofer for his excellent work!)
The comics buttons with the update schedule from the top of the main page has been moved from the front page of the comics page but the comics are also accessible from the drop-down menu in the menubar under the header. So much easier…
Still left are some browser compatibility tests and a long overdue face-lift. Please let me know, if something behaves oddly or just strange….
Loading ...