Darrin Bell, artist of Rudy Park and creator/writer/artist of the wonderful Candorville is our guest on show 39. We discuss his clear and cutting social commentary, his journalistic past, and Star Trek. Darrin is such a hard-working guy, and as if two comic strips weren't enough, he owns and operates the famous  ToonTalk forum board. Stick around after the end music and hear some stuff that Brian recorded when we didn't know he was recording, and posted without our permission.

Ah, we do have fun on Comics Coast To Coast.

Our webcomic pick of the week this week is the beautifully done 'Worked ' over at Comics Sherpa. Check it out.

Links:

Candorville

ToonTalk

Rudy Park

Listen Now! 

Music by V-Project : Disclaimer

These are the Comics Coast To Coast guys comics:

A Mission Deep by Brian Dunaway

MythTickle by Justin Thompson

Booksmarts by Tom Racine

    We make our 4th international call, on show #38. Not too shabby for three comic geeks with a brush pen and a dream. We've been to Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada once or twice, and this time we go DOWN UNDER to Brisbane Australia to have a chat with the artist/creator of "SWAMP ", Gary Clark. Wow, soon we might have to change the name of the show!

Click the image to the left there, to order Gary's new book, "Full Power Duck". Interviewing Gary, along with being fun, was very interesting. It's great to get an international perspective on this business. We found out what Gary has gone through in trying to reach an international audience and how he cracked Europe! Anyone out there, after listening to Gary's story, are urged to write us here and tell us your comments and any helpful hints you may be able to impart to him. We'll be sure to pass them on.

  This was a jam-packed show, so here's how it breaks down: First up, we read an article from last week's San Francisco Chronicle about their comics page. They substituted one of my favorite strips: Candorville for the vacationing Gary Trudeau and asked for comments (being a concerned comics page devotee, I of course wrote in). Well, what they heard from people was fairly surprising. Not as much concerning Candorville, as much as all of the other comics on the page. We'd love to hear what you think about what they found.

Then we welcome an old friend back to the show, Mr. Mike Witmer calls in to give us an update on his strip: Pinkerton .

It would appear that the critters at Pinkerton Park have found a syndication home at Th3rd World Publishing! Click HERE to check that out. Congratulations, Mike. 

Finally, an item about a 16 year old fan in Brisbane Australia named Declan Byrne. Declan is an up and coming cartoonist who is a great admirer of Mr. Clark and at his urging, I contacted Gary for this interview. Although Declan could not join us for the interview (he is 16 people, no point draggin' the boy out of school for something he can always listen to later), we asked a few questions on his pimply behalf. Declan shows amazing potential for such a young Padawan and his strip Duxter shows a very sharp writing style that can only get better as he gets older and keeps working. So thanks Declan, keep at it, and this Foster's is fer you, mate.

G'day! 

Listen Now! 

Music by Adam and the Couch Potatoes : What Are We 

These are the Comics Coast To Coast guys comics:

A Mission Deep by Brian Dunaway

MythTickle by Justin Thompson

Booksmarts by Tom Racine

 SMALL WONDER

On this show we drop the whole pre-prepared list of questions stuff and just have a nice hang with Worth Gowell , brilliant creator and artist of Small Wonder. We also look at his latest project:

   Kid Houdini and the Silver Dollar Misfits.

  Click the image to the left and get a preview of this amazing effort.  Kid Houdini and the   Silver Dollar Misfits will be available this June, and a special preview print copy will be  available as part of Viper Comics’ Free Comic Book Day Book on May 3. So start saving up  those pennies for free comic book d... oh, never mind..... It's FREE! So no excuses. Check it  out, it's brilliant.

 And check out Worth Gowell on this episoide of Comics Coast To Coast. A great guest who can just hang out and talk like a regular guy. I know we'll be hearing a lot more from Worth in the months to come.

Listen Now! 

Music by Candy gram for Mongo : What Are We 

These are the Comics Coast To Coast guys comics:

A Mission Deep by Brian Dunaway

MythTickle by Justin Thompson

Booksmarts by Tom Racine

Today, I tried to open my GoComics page to check Yenny and my other favorite comic strips, and "wha-...?" It's all kerfuffled, and reformatted, and different.

  I know that GoComics redesigned the site a while back but this change to the subscription page Is all different to me. I had to re-sign in and construct the page again, which took a while. Why didn't they tell me this was coming? I get up on a Saturday morning, groggy and creaky, knees all-a-snappin' and eyes a-sting, ready to ease into my weekend with a titter and chuckle from a comic strip or two, and pow! Change! "Awww, c'mon! What's this poop???"

   Well, once I finished making the list, I kind of liked it. The site is more streamlined and has a better overall format than it did previously. I'm really pretty happy with the way it looks. I think it was good to go back and edit out the strips that I don't read anymore and I actually picked up a couple of new strips. I took comfort from the chilly changes, in thinking that when some other poor shlub shuffles down to his comics page with his coffee this morning that he'll run through the list and see MythTickle and check it out. He may even like it and add it to his queue. Which means BIG CENTS for ME! Maybe even an additional ¢5! So if you were thinking about subscribing but were teetering on whether or not to do it, I'd say 'go for it'. It's really very cool now.

   The only thing I DON'T like about this, is once you have a comic on your subscription page, you can go WAAAAAAY back in the archive to the first strips. Well, I haven't checked the others, but you can in the case of my comic. On the old page, you could only go back about a month and a half. This bugs me because of late I've had several people asking me about making a book collection of my strips, and I've been seriously considering this. However, if people can just go back and see them all there at GoComics, then why bother printing up a book? Who'd buy it?

Anyway, I just wanted people to check out the changes and tell us what you think about them. And if you don't have a subscription page, where you can see all of these amazing comic strips on one page everyday (like Opus, MythTickle, Garfield, Yenny, Calvin and Hobbes, Baldo, and tons of other great cartoons- plus scads of political cartoons) then your status as a real comic strip fan is really in question. Don't be a shween.

The great David Alvarez is the subject of our latest Q and A. He is the creator and artist of the comic 'Yenny' .

We make our 4th international call in this show, this time to David's home in San Juan Puerto Rico. David talked to us about his great comic, his rise to comic glory, and his prolific history with Warner Brothers and Disney. It's a great interview with an incredible talent.

This is a very special interview for me (Justin) because I've always wanted so badly to actually speak with David. When I started this web comics thing about 3 and a half years ago, David was instrumental in guiding my perspective and  extremely encouraging. He was the first friend I made in this web comics fraternity and Yenny is still my favorite web comic of all.

 Yenny's MySpace is www.myspace.com/yennylopez

To join the Yenny Yahoo Group, just click here . 

Here's our webcomic picks of the week:

Thurbear by Casey Shaw, and the new and improved Windsor and Albert by Matthew Thompson.

Listen Now! 

These are the Comics Coast To Coast guys comics:

A Mission Deep by Brian Dunaway

MythTickle by Justin Thompson

Booksmarts by Tom Racine