The FenReview
the North Caroline WebComics Coffee Table Book
(18 Jul 2008)
"If you've heard of us you're probably a member."
This is the first phrase of content within the book, just below the title and by-line on the title page. It's a very familiar slogan to me. I'm part of a group that's been around since 2004 called the B.S. of Comics. We have a similar, if a bit more parochial and rather clumsy greeting, "if you have touched a comic while in Bellingham, you're already a member, sit!" So I have a particular interest in this book.
The North Carolina WebComics Coffee Clatch has been meeting monthly since August 15th, 2005, sitting around and BSing about comics while making them and drinking coffee. And yes, that's "Clatch" with a "C," as Larry Holderfield explains on the back, meaning the "noise caused by the collision of soft bodies." Groups like the NCWCC or the BSoC have been around for a while, popping in and out of existence probably since the Golden Age of Comics. I wouldn't be surprised if it's how some of the more well known publishing companies got started back then. But most of these groups just stick around long enough to make a few ashcans or chapbooks, publicize a particularly good comic or two, and then the members move on, often to start or inspire other groups later on!
I won't pretend to know where the NCWCC is headed, at least until I've attended a few meetings myself, but it does share a philosophy of groupdom that I hold myself, and it does have some members and contributors with names you may recognize:
Larry "McKenzee" Holderfield
Jennie Breeden
Jamie Robertson
Dave Milloway
Matt Wood
Peter Venables (some may know him as pvenables)
Stephanie Freese
Leah Riley
Will Wood
Mike Moon
Phillip Wright
Ursula Vernon
Brian Shearer
Thomas A. Boatwright
Thomas Mauer
And the book has an introduction by Shannon Wheeler of Too Much Coffee Man, which probably makes him a member, too!
The thing I really like about this book is that it shows the NCWCC to have an all-inclusive attitude when it comes to comics creation. It puts proven professionals right beside enthusiastic beginners, and the effect (as I have found with my own group shows) is that it shows off the merit of everyone involved. The positive is accentuated and everything looks better for being in the group. It also painfully increased my urge to hop on a plane and fly out to one of their meetings. Unfortunately, the airlines don't take self-published comic books and leftover T-shirt stock in trade for tickets.
As makes sense for a group produced book, they chose Lulu.com for its publication. I believe Lulu has the tools to track contributor royalties, if they chose to make a profit with the thing. And Lulu did a pretty darn good job of printing and binding my copy of it. It's a square book, 8.5" to a side, staple bound, with about 38 pages of comics or comic related art in it. It looks like contributors could submit 1 to 10 pages, or something like that, of work they felt was appropriate. It starts with a Too Much Coffee Catgirl by Jennie Breeden.
This is, again, the way I would have done it myself! Will do it, actually. Well, I'm not sure about the dimensions. It works for this book, again making it stand out from the crowd, and that's important. But something about that size of a square bothers me. I kind of want it to be a couple inches longer in one direction. Eh, it must be a personal thing. It really does help brand the book, because I cannot find another book on my shelves to match it.
There is also a lot of content besides the comics, including bios, introductions, fake coffee stains and the back cover, which deserves its own mention. Very well done.
I also really like how the book does not really showcase any one person. Yes, there is the awareness that Holderfield started the NCWCC, and that he was probably the ringleader behind the publication of the book, but his work is mixed in with everyone else's, and really takes up the minority of the space. And really, usually when it comes to a group like this, the real role of the founder is to roll his eyes when everybody points at him and says, "he started it!" With the North Carolina Webcomics Coffee Table Book, it's clear that the content was going to happen one way or another, and they just needed a catalyst to bind it together into one, well, clatch.
It is also just long and rich enough to make me happy with my purchase. Too many times have I bought an ashcan or comics compilation only to feel like there wasn't any substance to it. It's not just about the length of the book, either, it's also a matter of the quality of the content. Is each individual comic long enough to get a solid point across? If there's a lot of single illustrations, are they tied together with some sort of context or reading material? Are they interesting enough to look at again and again? In the case of this book, yes, but only just so.
I've owned my copy for a few months now, and I was proud to own it after my first read through, and I am more satisfied with it now than I was then. But I do remember thinking, "this is great, but I wish each artist had contributed just one more page, or something." It's not that I was left wanting for more, enough that I'd go searching for it, but that I hadn't gotten quite enough of a taste to know.
I'm not quite sure how I would have facilitated that improvement. Once you get the submissions from a group like the NCWCC or the BSoC, it's really hard to go back to everyone and say, "just one more thing, please?" It probably was hard enough to get the original work to begin with!
So I think this is really a bit of advice to individual comics creators, and not to the organizers of such books. The North Carolina WebComics Coffee Table Book proves the worth of these things, and shows how they can be done right. To do better requires that when you are confronted with the opportunity to share, submit as much as you can! Let the editor make the decision when to cut you off. Or, if you are collaboratively editing, make that editorial decision after you've filled a 150 pages of book. Not before.
Anyway, the NCWCC did one more thing that was really smart, that makes this book particularly useful for the contributors. They included links to all the webpages of the authors.
There's some good stuff in this book. It is really worth reading, mostly funny, some thought provoking, great art. More importantly, you can, in fact, use it to educate your relatives and just about anyone else as to what a WebComic is and why it is a good thing. It is also worth pursuing the other works by the NCWCC, and so I leave you all with the links!
Where to buy the Coffee Table Book:
http://www.lulu.com/content/1936905
The North Carolina WebComics Coffee Clatch LiveJournal Community, where you will find that perhaps some of my assumptions about the group are an underestimation of their prowess! They have some exciting things going on:
http://community.livejournal.com/ncwccc/
Contributors' sites:
www.gravyboy.com
www.fanboyalmanac.com
boatwright.deviantart.com
devilspanties.keenspot.com
www.freese-design.com
www.likelystories.com
mckenzee.comicgenisis.com
www.catgirlisland.net
www.myspace.com/tommauer
www.willrad.com
www.robohobo.com
www.leahstuff.com
www.clanofthecats.com
www.zacksmithwriter.com
www.petervenables.com
www.13seconds.com
www.metalandmagic.com
xodin.comicgenesis.com
Posted by Fenmere
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