American Elf
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| American Elf | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | James Kochalka |
| Website | http://www.americanelf.com/ |
| Current status / schedule | Daily |
| Launch date | October 1998 |
| Genre(s) | Autobiographical |
American Elf is a daily online comic strip diary created by award-winning cartoonist James Kochalka. [1] Many critics consider these diary strips to be Kochalka's most significant work. [2]
Contents |
[edit] Style
Each strip usually portrays one event that happened to Kochalka that day. These events are sometimes momentous (such as the birth of a child) and sometimes relatively trivial (such as an entry which concerns eating a slice of cheese). Although the strips document real events, Kochalka's art style deviates from realism. For example, people aren't always represented as people; Kochalka and his wife Amy are elves, and Kochalka's friend Jason is represented as Jason X-12, a dog with a robot brain. This is a carryover from Kochalka's long-form works, many of which take place on the Moon in a magical duplicate of Kochalka's hometown of Burlington, Vermont, and which feature versions of people from his life.
Kochalka considers these strips to be an attempt to document the rhythms of his life, and as such refuses to either edit the strips or publish a "best of" collection — according to Kochalka, the value of the strips doesn't lie in any individual strip, but rather in the totality.[citation needed]
American Elf is syndicated online as part of Webcomics Nation. The webcomic version of American Elf used to be subscription based and only the daily strip was free to read, the archives only being available to subscribers. Recently the archives were made available to anyone. American Elf was used along with Penny Arcade, Fetus-X and Questionable Content as an example of comics using the web to create "an explosion of diverse genres and styles" in Scott McCloud's 2006 book Making Comics [3]
[edit] Books
The American Elf strips are collected and published in hardcopy as The Sketchbook Diaries, American Elf, and American Elf Vol 2 by Top Shelf Productions.
[edit] References
- ^ Glenn, Joshua (July 11, 2004). "This American Elf". The Boston Globe, p. D2.
- ^ Murray, Noel (July 28th, 2004). "Interviews: James Kochalka". The Onion
- ^ McCloud, Scott (2006). Making Comics, New York: Harper Collins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-078094-0. Pg. 227
