In a rather generous move Bryan Talbot’s The Naked Artist, which regular readers will recall has featured on here before with its intriguing and often downright rude tales of what goes on between comics writers and artists at events (or more often in the event bar afterwards), which was published by Moonstone last year, is now free to read in an online edition on WOWIO.
(Hunt Emerson gives the term ‘body art’ a new twist in his own, inimitable fashion, deftly drawing Firkin the Cat on a fan’s bared breast. Its a hard life, the life of the cartoonist… Art by Hunt Emerson, text by Bryan Talbot, taken from The Naked Artist)
Writers and artists giving away free versions of their work online is something that’s come up several times on the blog and I think it is one of the interesting things about the easy access to digital media, that creators can do this. On the surface it seems like cutting their own throats – why would anyone pay to buy a book (or movie or album as the case may be) when they can read it for free (and legally, not in a ripped off bit torrent)? And yet advocates of this approach like Cory Doctorow have maintained that actually it boosts their print readership – those who read it online may find they only read so much on a screen (because lets face it, reading too much on a computer screen just isn’t as enjoyable as reading a print book), enough to let them know they really want to read it all so they then buy the actual book.Or it can also work as a way to entice in a new reader who may not normally read that type of book but has a look because its free, finds they enjoy it then go looking for more real books by those authors (I know I’ve certainly found several new musicians this way in the last few years). And in related Bryan news, swing by the official Bryan Talbot page where you can get a preview look at some pages from his next work, currently in progress, Grandville.
(a page from Bryan’s forthcoming graphic novel Grandville, art and (c) Bryan Talbot, borrowed from his site)
And since we’re in the let’s link to some cool comics page mode, the one and only Hunt Emerson, who provided the art for The Naked Artist, has been adding a few more bits and pieces to his revamped website, including, I am especially pleased to see, three pages of art from his recent adaptation of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat which featured in the Beano and which I have to say I absolutely loved. If you missed it, go and look, it will put a smile on your face.
(Edward Lear’s wonderful nonsense poem The Owl and the Pussycat, adapted by Hunt Emerson for the Beano, borrowed from Hunt’s site)
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