This post is both a shameless self-promotion and an explanation of sorts. Over the past while, the site has been quieter than usual. While there’s still more to come from Fan Expo, and we’ll still be writing other pieces, a lot of time has gone into another endeavour – The Practical Dead. It’s a new web comic written and drawn by myself and RGB’s own Rebel Scum. What is The Practical Dead you ask?

Diana McCallum joins the rgbFilter crew by taking up mic duties in our interview with Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Sol, the creators of the comic Kill Shakespeare.

Sure, it’s Canada Day, and we all should be outside.  In the meantime, if you haven’t added Texts From Superheroes to your regular list, you really should.

The Anthology Project has become one of the favourite pieces of comic art amongst the RGB crew. Bucking the online trend, The Anthology Project volume one os presented in a luxurious hardbound edition with vibrant colours. Between the covers are some great shorts from a variety of North American creators, which was nominated for an Eisner Award.

Ryan talks with Viktor Kalvachev, writer for the Image Comic “Blue Estate”, a deliciously lurid pulp comic with some of the best covers I’ve seen around in a while. Given the twisty nature of the plot, a team of artist take turns drawing different sections of the story. Viktor talks about some of the unique challenges working on a multi-artist book, including supplying maquettes of the main characters so that the artistic team has a similar frame of reference.

While at the Image booth during Fan Expo, we had a chance to talk with Owen Wiseman and Nam Kim, writer and artist, respectively, of Samurai’s Blood, a gorgeously drawn samurai revenge tale. Unlike many tales in the genre, especially in comics, Samurai’s lood avoids the more fantasy-based trappings, and weaves a tale more firmly grounded in reality.

We first talked to Mike and Ian of the comic Freelance Blues at Fan Expo last year. After that conversation, we just had to find out how things were, especially with the then embryotic project RoboHorse. As it turns out, that project lives with a written script and all.

Ken and Alex Steacy were manning a table at Fan Expo, showcasing Alex’s project Shards, which highlights the artistic talents of a number of artists.  Peter talks with them about the Shards project, as well as a wide range of topics from Ken’s Desert Bus stint, the shrinking role of middle men in the industry and what exactly is the best metaphor for Shards: apparatif, canape or hor d’oeuvres…

Ryan talks with Sam Sarkar, writer of The Vault, a 3 issue mini-series put out by Image Comics. Sam talks about Oak Island and its infamous Money Pit, which was the real life inspiration for the story, and about the comic being optioned for a film.

This month, the fine folks over at tdotcomics.ca started up a poll slash contest to find out which comic shops in the GTA are the best in a number of categories…

It’s that time of year again, when nerds and geeks of all stripes descend on Toronto and congregate at the shrine of pop culture known as Fan Expo. To alleviate the major congestion problems of last year, the expo is returning to the larger South Building of the Metro Convention Centre, and has added a fourth day to the event.

Fan Expo 2011 runs from August 25th to 28th, and you can catch all the details in the press release below…

Alex talks with Rich Stevens, creator of the long running Diesel Sweeties webcomic, who was on hand at TCAF this year.  The conversation ends up being less about comics and more about his love of robots, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise.