Live from Tariq i’Suez

May 13

First off, I’d like to say thanks to the talented Shazia for rehauling the site; it’s almost embarrassingly good-looking. To everyone else, welcome to gwillowwilson.com version 2.0. The blog portion of the site is likely to be eclectic—there will be news (about me and about other things) for people who like news, comics stuff for people who like stuff about comics, the Islamosphere for people who follow the Islamosphere, and probably a lot of crossover between all-of-the-above that one wouldn’t immediately assume was possible.

“I got most of that, but what’s the Islamosphere?”

It’s a term that’s emerged within the last couple of years to describe the loose collective of blogs, news feeds and sites dedicated to the big discussions taking place within modern Islam. Most of these sites are run by Muslims themselves, but some are run by non-Muslims. Since new media is much harder to censor than print or television, the internet has become a popular place for debate and networking between Muslims who live under authoritarian or religiously repressive regimes (as well as those who don’t). One such debate is in full swing right now between this popular writer/activist and a traditionalist colleague.

I’ve been on a comics-writing (and revising) bender recently, and have discovered that a lettered comic and a finished comic are not the same thing. When you’re editing a prose piece, identifying and fixing the parts that don’t work is usually a straightforward process. (Usually.) When editing a comic, however, a lot of the problem areas don’t seem to ‘pop’ until you see the text physically laid out on the page with the art. I’m sure the process becomes more intuitive the more comics you write, but for me, a newcomer, it’s been a learning experience. More on that later.