Episode 36: Machine of Breadth with David Malki

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David Malki’s biography would take five minutes to read out. You may know him best as the perpetrator of the cartoon Wondermark,
but he’s also a filmmaker, a movie trailer editor, an author, an
entrepreneur, and the Supreme Commander of Publicity & Promotions at
TopatoCo, a firm that handles
merchandise primarily for webcomics. He’s available for weddings and bar
mitzvahs. We talk about making films, making cartoons, and making
books, and having a great time at all of it.

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 Show notes

David Lynch’s peculiar cartoon strip, The Angriest Dog in the World. Penny Arcade is one of the most popular Web comics. Zach Weinersmith’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal dates back to that era (we talked in Episode 15), as does Diesel Sweeties by Rich Stevens.

I received a copy of Chris Ware’s Building Stories from my wife for Christmas, but his work makes me realize the keenness of life too fiercely. Or something. Dinosaur Comics
is produced by David’s friend Ryan North. It has the same drawing every
day; the dialog is all that changes. Jeff and Holly Rowland run
TopatoCo. Holly was my guest on Episode #21, in which we talked about Make That Thing! New England Web Comics Weekend took place in 2009 and again in 2010 and was hosted by TopatoCo.

Machine of Death was inspired by this episode of Dinosaur Comics. Futurama had a “death clock” in an episode in 1999, but David points out the death-predition thing is as old as the Greeks. David Pogue tried an experiment in removing DRM from an ebook in 2009; sold a lot more books. But he didn’t like the outcome.

Machine of Death spawned a game funded on Kickstarter and a second collection of stories just out called This Is How You Die.

You can find David at GenCon in Indianapolis this weekend (August 15–18), and at PAX in Seattle August 30–September 2.

Photo by Joshin Yamada.