The webcomics blog about webcomics

All Webcomic Artists Lie #2

David Malki ! apparently employs a cast of thousands in the production of Wondermark.

At least, if you believe a single word of his three page missive on the Making Of Wondermark. According to this missive, no I say it’s a manifesto, David employs the following persons or groups of people:

  • creative staff
  • research department
  • writing staff
  • Creative Director
  • Executive V.P.
  • compositing team
  • Line Cook
  • auditing agency
  • liners
  • ballooner/balloonist
  • penciller (six)
  • layout artists
  • Korean roughing studio
  • research team
  • letterer
  • inkers (three)
  • Distribution Chief
  • freelance antiquers

Counting the timeframes given and doing some estimating of my own for the rest… it takes somewhere between three and six months to produce each Wondermark strip.

The piling on of lies in this “making of” document compound to the point of indecency and beyond to a level that is clearly illegal.
It makes my head ache so bad I wish it would explode!

That sounds more like Jim Davis’ staff.

ZING!

He lists Bret “the hitman” Hart as a creator of “Wizard of Id”. I don’t think you should take this manifesto as a factual account of anything. I bet the author secretly finds it’s verboseness, it’s obvious inaccuracies, and the fact someone actually read the whole thing, quite funny.

I don’t think you should take this manifesto as a factual account of anything.

What was your first clue?

I tried to read that today being recently introduced to the strip. I wanted to know certain things about how it was made and being presented with that made my head hurt. Bad for business?

“What was your first clue?”
It’s hard to tell if you’re seriously asking me, or just being sarcastic. You’re writing style confuses me Jeff. However, I will answer the question anyway.

The “clue” is simply the overly detailed process of things having nothing to do with creating a comic. Surveys, proposals, and even scripts, written out in script format. Pages 2 and 3 just get even wackier. Also, the pictures of the comic process, aren’t even of Watermark. The comics on the cutting board are 8 different Sunday paper comics. Watermark is a clipart comic, and these pictures show sketches supposedly done by Korean artists? No-one goes through all this trouble.

Either you belive what you posted about Watermark. Or, you’re post is a marketing piece, purposely instructing us “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” and of course we look. So if you’re having fun at my expense, wondering how “I figured out”, you got me.

David Malki is clearly making a big long joke, and intends nothing about his three page “making of” to be taken seriously.

I’m playing along.

OTOH, maybe he just has a case of multiple personality disorder. In-head committees tend to work a lot faster than real-world ones. :)

[…] Witness: there’s ham-fisted editorial cartoons (courtesy of The Onion Syndicate) and bad syndicated strips (courtesy of King Features), right next to Wondermark by David Malki !. This may be more significant than Malki !’s recent addition to the Modern Tales lineup, since even a niche offering like The Onion has the potential to reach people who would never otherwise come across webcomics. […]

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