Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Juan Fernández

Posted on May 16, 2018

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Comics WorkbookNovember 13, 2016Santoro SchoolHere at Comics Workbook we’re testing a new type of learning institution for comics-making. We are committed to: the exploration of comics as a community form, rather than as a commodity form. creating a hub for comics-making and writing about comics-making that emphasizes the healthy growth and development of its contributors and readers. maintaining a space for makers by makers. Got something you want to contribute? Email me at juan@comicsworkbook.com. I’d love to hear about what’s on your mind. – Juan Fernandez, Managing Editor Share this page: [...]

10/30/2018

Aaron CockleOctober 29, 2018NewsKatie Fricas, Kim Jooha/Conor Stechschulte, ‘Endless Enigma’, AI Halloween ————————————————————————————————— Via Whit Taylor at Pen America: I selected cartoonist Katie Fricas to create an original comic for Illustrated PEN because of her unique approach to the medium. Fricas’s autobiographical work regularly addresses the complexities of gender, sexuality, culture, and agency with a smart, quirky, and often humorous storytelling style. ————————————————————————————————— Comics Reading as Voyeurism and the Illusion of Continuity and Narrative: Kim Jooha on CHRISTMAS IN PRISON by Conor Stechschulte Comics consist of discrete units (panels), and we assume that these separate units (panels) are related to each other. We suppose that the similar image that appears in the later or previous panel refers to the same object. This is the principle of comics reading as the dialectic of repetition and difference as Thierry Groensteen argued in The System of Comics (1999). The reader creates a continuous story out of the discrete units. Christmas in Prison, with its aforementioned self-reflexive instruments, questions this principal assumption of comics. Our habit of finding sameness among different images as a comics reader deludes us to look for the sameness that does not exist, just as the book at the end of Christmas in Prison is not Christmas in Prison. It is an illusion. ————————————————————————————————— Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art This show closed this past weekend, but there’s a good deal of info about it online. It’s based on this MoMA show from 1936. The exhibition will provide a unique opportunity to examine affinities in intention and imagery between works executed across a broad span of time. Organized into six themes—Monsters & Demons, Dreams & Temptation, Fragmented Body, Unconscious Gesture, Super Nature, and Sense of Place—Endless Enigma will explore the ways in which artists have sought to explain their world in terms of an alternate reality, drawn from imagination, the subconscious, poetry, nature, myth, and religion. Works on view range from gothic gargoyles; masterworks from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by a contemporary follower of Hieronymus Bosch, Piero di Cosimo, and Titian; seventeenth- century paintings by Jan Brueghel the Younger and Salvator Rosa; eighteenth-century works on paper by Francisco de Goya and Giovanni Battista Piranesi; nineteenth-century works by William Blake, James Ensor, Gustave Moreau, and Odilon Redon; and works from the twentieth century to the present day by Eileen Agar, Francis Alÿs, Michaël Borremans, Louise Bourgeois, Giorgio de Chirico, Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Dzama, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Alberto Giacometti, Robert Gober, Alfred Kubin, Sherrie Levine, René Magritte, Kerry James Marshall, Roberto Matta, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Sigmar Polke, Man Ray, Kay Sage, Yves Tanguy, and Lisa Yuskavage, among other artists. ————————————————————————————————— ‘Happy Halloween’ To create them, he used what’s called a generative adversarial network (GAN) to recognize patterns in data such as Halloween masks – Reed fed his computer thousands. The AI then tried to create its own that would fit the pattern, supposedly getting better over time. “What’s so scary or unsettling about it is that it’s not so detailed that it shows you everything,” Reed told New Scientist. “It leaves just enough open for your imagination to connect the dots.” ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

09/13/2018

Caleb OrecchioSeptember 13, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on Trench Dogs by Ian Densford ——————————————————————————————— What a monstrous dream Ian Densford has conceived. His new graphic novel, Trench Dogs (which originally ran on on the Comics Workbook Tumblr in a different incarnation), left me sitting and blinking and thinking about what I’d read in quiet contemplation. The book is a series of alternating accounts of World War I told as a continuum in a 3-panel-per-page meter. With an omniscient eye and no regard for the faint of heart, we are swept through the perils of The Great War and witness the utter destruction of sixteen million people. Densford does however depict these people as “funny” animals which keeps the visual horror at arms length and digestible; but despite the “Maus-ian” approach, and like Maus, the pain of the events depicted retain their power. Trench Dogs is obviously influenced by Art Spiegelman’s Maus. This is an easy observation due to the “Roll Call” page preceding the story in which each nationality therein is labeled and depicted as their respective animal avatar, but I see a handful of other and possibly more vital influences or comparable works. The first and most important to me is Suiho Tagawa. Most savvy American readers will remember his war comic Norakuro from Kramers 6. When I first saw that Trench Dogs was 3-panels per page I could not stop thinking of Norakuro. Plus, unlike Maus, both Trench Dogs and Norakuro allow for whimsy. Trench Dogs is mostly not very funny, but there are moments of “cartoony” bliss that fall through the bleak cracks and relieve the senses of the total desolation burdening the bulk of the book. Similarly, Hayao Miyazaki’s manga Tiger Im Schlamm blends war (specifically tank battles in WWII) with the cartoony anthropomorphized soldier. And like Tiger Im Schlamm, Trench Dogs is rendered in watercolor. Though not quite done justice by the book’s glossy paper, (I am generally underwhelmed by the production choices of Dead Reckoning – the publisher) the paints give vibrance to the story and, again, cast a little light on the dark subject of WWI. And I would be remiss to not mention Joe Sacco’s panorama huge foldout illustration, The Great War, as an influence. I would lay money down right now that The Great War was a major influence for Densford. The real key to Trench Dogs is the steady and uninterrupted 3-panel grid (Yes yes – this is Comics Workbook and we love grids). Densford keeps perfect timing with the grid. Every panel carries the same weight so the pace is consistent throughout the entire comic. He makes good use of the middle of the page and, as I read, I noticed I would let myself wander around the spread. Sometimes I read the first tier on the left page to the tier on the right without reading the other two panels on the left, and to my pleasant surprise it did not affect the reading. Sometimes I would look at the middle panel first, and then “spiral” out. It all still made sense. This is high praise. Being a student of Frank Santoro’s, I can’t help but assume that Densford’s way of using layouts was conscious and not a fluke. The fact that Trench Dogs is essentially wordless aids in this amorphous way of reading. The reader is not locked onto a stream of dialogue that guides the action around the spread. We are free to see what we see without the confines of conversation or narration. The story itself is incredibly poignant and quite vicious. It is a war story or a story of a war. It does not pretend to do anything other than depict war and war’s violent consequences. Page after page, the reader is bombarded with terrifying realities of actual events. The rhythm of the constant chaos and depravity, 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3, starts to mess with you. After a while, you forget you are looking at drawings of animals and eventually you accept these images as the actual events they depict. There is little catharsis in reading Trench Dogs. I was quite shocked at the end when (no spoilers) after the war is over and medals are awarded, the violence continues back on our own soil completely separate and tangential from the war “over there.” Still, there is wisdom in this book in its depiction of human suffering, selfishness, selflessness and survival. Ian Densford steps back and triangulates the brutality of a war that laid waste to an entire continent and more as we stare in horror and amazement hoping we never share their fate, and yet it is difficult not to sympathize and even admire the victims whoever they might be. Death is the great equalizer and, when people encounter it, we can learn a lot from that. Ian Densford has masterfully managed to encapsulate that fact into a comic book. ——————————————————————————————— You can buy Trench Dogs directly from the publisher here. OR if you want to buy Trench Dogs directly from Ian, you can attend these shows on the following dates: – New York Comic Con, October 4-7 – UMBC Comic Con, October 27 – CAB, November 11 ——————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 9-13-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

09/25/2018

Aaron CockleSeptember 25, 2018NewsJulie Doucet; L. Nichols; Best American Comics; Richard McGuire; Everything is Connected at the Met Breuer; Art in Brussels ————————————————————————————————— Dirty Plotte—The Complete Julie Doucet by Austin English By the end of Dirty Plotte, the panels become increasingly dense and claustrophobic—beautifully so, but a trap all the same. The imposition of the rules of comics come to a head: clear, pure storytelling, the same character over and over, refine-refine-refine your style—a far remove from the infinitely open plane Doucet grafted onto the medium when Plotte began. An author of endless skill, she observed these principles and easily mastered them. Could the wide canvas of the early issues have been similarly exhausted? ————————————————————————————————— L Nichols: Day One ————————————————————————————————— The Best American Comics 2018 Panel discussion at Strand Book Store, NYC, Wednesday, October 3, 7pm “I love comics. Comics is (Comics ARE?) a perfect language, robustly evolving and expanding like any other living language,” writes Phoebe Gloeckner in her Introduction to The Best American Comics 2018. This year’s collection includes work selected from the pages of graphic novels, comic books, periodicals, zines, online, and more, highlighting the kaleidoscopic diversity of the comics language today. Join us as panelist Bill Kartalopoulos, Julia Gfrörer, Julian Glander, Kevin Hooyman, and Julia Jacquette talk about this year in comics. ————————————————————————————————— Richard McGuire: Art for the Street – 1978-1982 September 27 – November 4, 2018; Opening: Thursday, Sept. 27, 6-8 pm Alden Projects, 34 Orchard Street, NYC “A shadow is a strong and simple graphic,” McGuire explains. “The titles evolved from a Burroughs-esque cut-up method — just grabbing selected phrases that caught my ear. I would make lists. Later, I made a stencil. I would see what worked best with that image as a ‘sound picture’.” Incorporating cryptic phrases such as “Moved Then Set on Fire” (1979); “Holes and Corners” (1980); “Doubles are Inevitable” (1980); and “Different Nervous Rhythms (1981); McGuire’s Ixnae Nix drawings transmogrify the layout and content of quotidian newspapers into personalized tabloids in which the central silhouette appears with “a crypto-mystical graphic style, a great touch,” to borrow Glenn O’Brien’s 1981 praise in Interview magazine. The stream-of-consciousness poetics of McGuire’s Ixnae Nix drawings share explicit aesthetic dialogue with Basquiat and his early poetics, but later, these conversations arguably go both ways. McGuire’s Incident Instantly Becomes Memory , to name one, shared a pivotal stage with Basquiat, Haring, and others at the New York / New Wave show, curated by Diego Cortez at P.S. 1, Queens in 1981, and clearly anticipates some of Basquiat’s later pictorial developments. The Ixnae Nix drawings also confabulate with Keith Haring’s early street-based work, particularly with the latter’s Xeroxed collages of cut-up newspaper headlines, which he began in 1980. McGuire stopped his wheatpasting activities in early 1981—around the same time that Haring first began making chalk drawings in the subway. ————————————————————————————————— Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy The first half of the exhibition comprises works by artists who hew strictly to the public record, uncovering hidden webs of deceit—from the shell corporations used by New York’s largest private landlord, interconnected networks encompassing politicians, businessmen, and arms dealers. In the second part, other artists dive headlong into the fever dreams of the disaffected, creating fantastical works that nevertheless uncover uncomfortable truths in an age of information overload and weakened trust in institutions. ————————————————————————————————— 09-25-2018 – by Niall Breen Share this page: [...]

10/21/2016

Sally IngrahamOctober 21, 2016NewsSally here this fine Friday with exciting news from Meg Lemke, comics from Shannon Wright, Lauren R. Weinstein, and Leela Corman, a unique Con this weekend in Detroit, Sacha Mardou’s report on CXC, and a few other tidbits. ————————————————————————————————— Here on the site Sacha Mardou shares her recent adventures at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. “CXC happened last weekend in Columbus, OH, and I got to represent Team Comics Workbook and also myself as a special guest (this has never happened to me before – count me overexcited and also terrified!) I get in on Thursday night and head to the President’s Reception feeling very wallflowerish as I know literally no one except through Facebook and Instagram. First off I meet Tom Spurgeon (finally!), Jeff Bone and his lovely wife Vijaya, Caitlyn McGurk, and Robin the Inkstud. I nervously nurse my wine and then I am rescued by Sergio Aragonés, who sits next to me with a plate of meatballs and a beer. I’m a vegan but I don’t even care about the meatballs! It’s Sergio Aragonés and I proceed to fannishly monopolize him for the next hour. Sergio! I’ve loved his comics in Mad Magazine since I was eight years old.“ More on what she did and saw at this terrific event HERE. ————————————————————————————————— PEN America announced this week that Meg Lemke is the newest guest editor of the Illustrated PEN series. This series “aspires to be at the intersection of literature, journalism, and visual storytelling, where images and words come together in an ever-emerging and essential creative form.” Meg Lemke has 15 years of experience with comics in a number of roles, and is currently the editor-in-chief of MUTHA Magazine – so she has a lot to bring to the series, not least – “…exemplars of the form that showcase the power of comics to tell stories in surprising ways. We talk often about literature letting us ‘see’ a new perspective. Comics can do that quite literally, and when it’s done well, there is a magical interaction between the visuals and text that stimulates a different part of our thinking. In our lives lived online, as readers we are inundated with imagery on the Internet, much of it advertising in margins (or popping up mid-screen). But comics can skillfully interrupt this oversaturation, as it necessitates we slow down and take in visual narrative, for example to parse a plot carried in background scenic details. Reading comics has been compared to reading poetry—they both invite play between the reader and the text on the page (be it broken into stanzas or word balloons).” – Meg Lemke Read the rest of the piece HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Meg Lemke’s first official post for the Illustrated PEN series is about Leela Corman‘s piece PTSD: The Wound That Never Heals, which is an excerpt from We All Wish For Deadly Force (Retrofit, 2016). Read Meg’s thoughts and the piece by Leela HERE. ————————————————————————————————— And if you haven’t checked out the comics on MUTHA Magazine in awhile, here’s your reminder – there are a bunch of new ones by Lisa Brown, Tyler Cohen, and Amy Kurzweil among others! ————————————————————————————————— Today’s comic is pretty personal; not only have I chosen to reveal how much I weigh, but I’m showing a tad of family judgment (which I know EVERYONE has). I started my diet today, it’s a complete 180 of how I’ve been eating all my life and I’m kinda excited about it. So when my grandma asked how I had been, I debated on sharing my health journey because of this very reason. Family can be the worst when it comes to body image. Also, I’m not necessarily doing this diet to lose weight, but to feel better. My sleep pattern has been off, my skin has been getting worse, and I just feel sluggish. I wish people would realize everyone is built differently and weight gets distributed differently. #inktober A photo posted by Shannon Wright (@shannondrewthis) on Oct 18, 2016 at 9:55am PDT Shannon Wright has been posting a comic almost every day this month – follow her Instagram account to keep up. ————————————————————————————————— Lauren R. Weinstein has a new piece in The Village Voice – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— ComiqueCon is this Saturday, October 22nd 2016, in Dearborn at the Arab American National Museum. “ComiqueCon is a one-day celebration of the contributions of women to the sequential arts. Launched in 2015 in Metro Detroit, the event brings together comics all-stars and their fans for a wicked awesome day of comics and cosplay! … In an industry that consistently under-solicits women, we’re spotlighting the work of women in comics and encouraging representation and inclusiveness.” This year’s special guests include Mariko Tamaki, Ashley Woods, and Carolyn Nowak among others. The con founder, Chelsea Liddy, and Kathleen Hiraga, founder and CEO of Pop-Post, were interviewed by Michigan Radio for the Stateside show. ‘ “It’s a really special atmosphere that just happens naturally when you have a bunch of supportive women working for the same industry in a room,” said Liddy, on the differences between ComiqueCon and some of the larger comic cons. She also noted that it’s a safe place for female comic creators to talk about their craft, which hasn’t always been the case. … “It’s about that community becoming a voice and together expanding into a force,” said Hiraga. ‘ Listen to the rest of the interview HERE. Next year I think the Comics Workbook Roller Derby League needs to check this con out! ————————————————————————————————— Frank’s report on The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is up on the site – HERE. Check out this video from his Instagram feed last weekend of Aidan Koch leading a workshop: Aidan Koch discussing her collaborative workshop project from LICAF UK 2016 #comicsworkbook @aidanalexiskoch #licaf A video posted by @santoro.frank on Oct 15, 2016 at 2:11pm PDT ————————————————————————————————— Today is the last day to get in on the special Michael DeForge auction hosted by Copacetic Comics – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— It’s Connor Willumsen’s birthday today! Check out his work and help him celebrate. 🙂 ————————————————————————————————— I share Sacha’s excitement about Cartoon Crossroads Columbus – and the Comics Workbook team will be presenting more thoughts, videos, and the official report from Whit Taylor soon. Stay tuned! Cheers – Sally Share this page: [...]

05/16/2018

Posted on May 16, 2018 by Juan Fernández

Powerpaola, Liniers, y José Antonio Suárez Londoño

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Los cómics y las noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana:
~ en Español y “sometimes in English” ~

Feminismo y Autogestión: Elisa Mccausland entrevista a Powerpaola

Incluir la palabra “poder” en el nombre siempre ha sido toda una declaración de principios. ¿Qué ha cambiado desde entonces ahora? ¿Qué has comprendido en torno al poder como autora después de más de una década dibujando y publicando, y qué crees que queda por hacer?

Al principio esa palabra me fue dada. Creo que esa historia la he contado muchas veces. Por una confusión, creo yo, un hombre en el metro de París entendió que mi nombre era “Power”. Yo insistí con el mío y, al final, quedó un tiquete de metro con el Power escrito por él y mi nombre escrito por mí, todo junto. Lo tomé como una señal y luego, cuando abrí mi primer blog, lo puse como mi seudónimo.

Siempre pensé que estaba fingiendo ese poder, me sentía muy insegura en muchas cosas; pero esa palabra me hacía inventarme un personaje que no le tenía miedo a nada. Y como dice esa frase de autoayuda: “Finge hasta que lo consigas”.

Con respecto a qué queda por hacer, me parece que la clave está en seguir cultivando la imaginación y creando comunidad. Es la única manera en la que creo que las cosas avanzan.

Léanlo todo en TEBEOSFERA!

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King Features Picks Up “Macanudo” by Liniers.

King Features Syndicate is picking up a new comic strip, something that is surprising in it’s own right. A heads up, though Macanudo has actually been around since 2002 in Argentina.

Created byArgentinian cartoonist Ricardo “Liniers” Siri, Macanudos is a constellation of characters and gags that click and hum to make you laugh and make your heart warm. If you liked Pablo Holmberg‘s Eden, you’re likely going to enjoy Macanudos. It’s interesting to see Liniers find a home at King Features given that it seems American daily strip cartooning(Schulz, Herriman and Watterson) has been at the center of his practice. The circle nears completion…

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La mente automática – José Antonio Suárez Londoño
Bernal Espacio Galería presenta un conjunto de treinta grabados del destacado dibujante José Antonio Suárez Londoño (Medellín, Colombia, 1955).

Todo el conjunto está lleno de tanteos, bifurcaciones y huellas. En el trabajo de Suárez Londoño todo se aprovecha, cada cita y cada circunstancia, y todo tiene más de una lectura. Ocurre también en los dibujos de Marcel Dzama con el que hay cierto parecido. O con los de WilliamKentridge, de quien tampoco está lejos. De hecho, el diálogo, aquí sí, fluye entre estos tres creadores que se conocen más allá del papel y de la magia, Doré, la botánica, la infancia, Goya y el presente. Los tres hablan de lo aprendido, lo cotidiano y lo imaginado comprimido en un tiempo conquistado. Lo que tantas veces llamamos fábula. Pocas veces pueden verse trabajos de este nivel y con esta cercanía, rozando la miniatura y el preciosismo, así que esta es una exposición para detenerse y para descubrirse.

Más sobre la exposición.

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Suzy and Cecil – 5-16-2018 – by Sally Ingraham

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in los Cómics, News

Juan Fernández

Posted on May 16, 2018

Explore

brb ;)

Juan FernándezOctober 19, 2019Festivals and Shows / Newshello! This is just a little smoke signal to let you know we are tending well, but quietly, to the fire over here in the Comics Workbook hearth. It’s been a BUSY fall IRL with workshops at SPX and CXC. You can catch us at Comic Arts Brooklyn, November 2nd. We’ll be slingling rare back issues, wild art books and wonky zines + new comics by the Comics Workbook crew. Stop on by for some surprise NYC guests at our table. Big picture-wise: We’ll be back soon with some robust regular comics and writing. For now though, I’m finishing some unfinished non-comics business, disentangling some wicked knots in my life. All is well. I’m just laying low before powering the signals up to 11. Ever wanted some CW merch? Something neat is on it’s way ;^) If you’d like to write reflections on comics, comics making process or comics pedagogy, please email me at juan@comicsworkbook.com – we pay. I’d be happy to talk more at length. Simply send me a line. take good care of yours selves until we next meet on the internet or IRL. yours in visual language, juan Share this page: [...]

BOY by Hellen Jo

Chris Anthony DiazJune 21, 2016The Diaz ArchiveHellen Jo’s watercolored portrayal of Tetsuo Abe as Toshio Omura and Tsuyoshi Kinoshita as Peewee in Nagisa Oshima’s BOY (1969, Japan) for my ILLUSTRATED MOMENTS IN CINEMA/TELEVISION collection. The illustration was completed around Spring 2009 in ink and watercolor, and Hellen’s photo was taken at Comic Arts Los Angeles, Sunday, December 6, 2015. And Graham Willcox did the color on Hellen’s portrait Share this page: [...]

03/15/2018

Comics WorkbookMarch 14, 2018NewsSam Ombiri on Benjamin Marra’s Night Business. ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: When I first read Night Business by Benjamin Marra I was really mesmerized. I was coming into the book with Terror Assaulter in the back of my mind – and it had blown my mind. Reading Night Business feels like trying to look up at the sky but then having your head forced to the ground, the ground that you were avoiding looking at because of the mess afoot. At the beginning of the comic, however, Marra gives good reason for the reader to engage with it. I mean it’s not like this isn’t a fun book to read, but the calamity that the characters face feels all too real, and the hope that they reach for seems even more real. At least until nearly the end of the book it does. How can I not keep reading; I can’t! For example, at the beginning we are introduced to a character who is just awful, but the death that she almost immediately suffers kind of counterbalances how awful she is, and I suddenly found myself really sympathetic to this character whom I had disliked. To me it’s just like “How?” I mean murder is such a horrific thing to witness, and Marra goes out of his way to present the murder (and really all the other murders in the book) in the most perverse extreme possible, but the narration of what happened and the way it happened was lyrical and unexpectedly heartfelt. The book was mourning for the tragedy it was indulging itself in a couple seconds ago and the “mourning”, so to speak, doesn’t feel any less heartfelt. There’s another character who sums up that while Krystal wasn’t the nicest person she didn’t deserve to die like she did. Then next time this killer strikes it’s with a much more likable character, and it’s more devastating. I’ll admit I was pretty suspicious of how well Ben Marra knew what my reaction was going to be towards the first character’s death. I’ve been going back and forth on whether the reader should be told what to feel so well; as in the proper reaction being dictated for the reader to have. It seems important for a maker to dictate or at least consider what the reader’s reaction should be, but there’s something that’s a bit disheartening, as reader, to know that the author has gone ahead of me to dictate what I should feel. At the same time, however, that’s what I kind of expect a maker to present to me; isn’t it? There’s this brilliant thing that Austin English said: “Cartooning is made up of artistic choices (like all art) but also information. Bad when info is used unsubtly (most biography comics), interesting when silently embedded into every choice.” That’s what constantly impresses me with Marra’s work – that the information, as Austin puts it, is “silently embedded into every choice.” The comic is also a constant rush, but with a lot of finesse. It’s like watching a Ballerina dance gracefully to heavy metal. The clock is ticking and with every panel I feel it ticking. The bodies are, sadly, piling. At points, one of the main characters (Johnny) keeps taking these pills that give him extra strength, so there’s a moment where he’s captured and we spend that part of the comic just waiting for the torture he’s going through to activate the effects of the pills he took. It’s really cool how this is an element – it’s like a countdown inserted in another count down which causes me to get more invested in the story. It reminds me a lot of Man O’ Metal, where the bulk of the comic is where this superhero is powerless unless electrocuted or set in flames. So there are moments in both these comics where everything becomes about waiting for the character’s powers to activate, to get him out of whatever hurdle he’s in. I resonate with this idea of being empowered by what would ordinarily kill you, which also feels like a major theme in Night Business. Especially with this other character, Cathy, who goes through the most radical shift after she’s been attacked and becomes this unstoppable vigilante. Her transformation is also really lyrical – both the words and the sequence of events and how they’re presented have this amazing feeling. I heard Marra describe Night Business as climbing a mountain after a lot of false starts in trying to make comics. I’m assuming he’s talking about the first part – he clearly feels no qualms in confronting any challenge, be it the way the story unfolds, or the subject matter, despite how impossible it might feel to execute. At no point does it feel like Marra was second guessing himself, but I did get the sense that what he was trying to pull off was difficult, and I could see all the work that went into certain moments when reading it. – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-15-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

05/29/2018

Juan FernándezMay 29, 2018NewsJuan here covering for Aaron, who’s been traveling far and wide. I’ve got a juicy preview Frank Santoro’s Pittsburgh, thoughts by Spike Trotman, David Brothers and Ron Wimberly talking radical application of black aesthetic and Michael Deforge comics. Fun for the whole family. ————————————————————— You can read a preview of Frank Santoro‘s newest book, Pittsburgh over on Éditions çà et là.‘s website. You’ll want to brush up on your french, because it’s not yet in English! It’s gorgeous, painful and well worth a look. And here is a great review which was in Libération, (a nationwide daily newspaper), slam that google translate button, me hearties. You can read it HERE. Pittsburgh’s splendid graphical instability helps to create a space of evanescent memory, as if it were dangerous to remember too much, that to try to materialize things would lose their souls. Barely sketched, the details of a bus ride escape us but not the enveloping heat of the sun that taps on the skin through the windows in the early morning. Condemned to wander between California where he lives and Pennsylvania, which recalls him all the time, Santoro ends up looking like a ghost come to haunt his family while rehearsing the past. The territory he travels also has something unreal, since instead of Pittsburgh, he surveys its peripheries. Perrons, hardware, living-room: a space that only the family seems to frequent. Places that change over time, replaced by a no man’s land of bridges, roads and deserted railways. “Pittsburgh is like Pompeii, a ruin of what it was,”wrote Santoro in a previous book. ————————————————————— In case you missed the talk this year at TCAF, Ronald Wimberly and David Brothers jammed out on radical application of black aesthetic at TCAF 2018. Sit back, tune in and take notes! David Brothers asks Ronald Wimberly questions about his thoughts on how the black body is depicted in pop culture. Ronald reads from his LAAP magazine in regards to that issue and other images he created in it. Why the depictions of the black body was bad and what their purpose was. They spoke briefly about the Cotton Club, the production of Cotton and it’s impact on Europe. There was just discussion on Jay Z’s The Story of OJ and the Sambo character. Other topics touched on was Anime and appropriation, seeing stereotypes as kids and changing it for modern audience (eg the Mammy character from Tom & Jerry cartoons), black women vs black men depictions, blaxpoitation done by white creators, the 1975 Coonskin animated movie, Donald Glover’s / Childish Gambino’s This is America video, the White Gaze & David Chappel and Monsters & black bodies. Listen HERE. ————————————————————— Spike Trotman offers up “unpopular creative opinions” on twitter. Unpopular, honest and useful. Some gems: – What is happening in the superhero book scene, unless you explicitly want to be part of it, literally doesn’t matter and should occupy zero percent of your thoughts. – If you want to make comics, read something other than comics. – If your publisher doesn’t do promo, doesn’t at least attempt to get you nominations and reviews, and doesn’t grant your work access to wider dissemination than you could manage by yourself, you have no reason to be using them. Read on! ————————————————————— The Comics Journal posted an excerpt of Michael Deforge‘s A Western World you can read HERE. Soak it up. ————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-29-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/05/2017

Sally IngrahamOctober 4, 2017NewsAdam Griffiths with an intro to his Cartoon Crossroads Columbus 2017 notes, Sam Ombiri on work by Jason Lee, and more cool items found in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum! ————————————————————————————————— Adam Griffiths will be bringing us an extensive overview of Cartoon Crossroads Columbus 2017, starting later today. We offer a teaser now, in the form of his intro to what will be a 3-part series on the show. “A Comics Id is Tenderness : Notes on Cartoon Crossroads 2017 The first book I purchased on the expo floor at this year’s CXC was Kyle Baker’s. Earlier this year, I had seen Baker speak at the Schomburg Center in New York about his book, Nat Turner, to a roomful of kids. At the time, I had been struck by his ability to communicate; his engagement with the audience seemed intrinsically connected to his unabashed and explicitly mercantile use of language. Odd, how this seemed to captivate both his panel members and the audience, young and old. The persona of the salesman is an American motif – a motif that, under our current political climate, is being reduced to prideless status by the huckster in the Oval Office. When exactly did Americans need to believe that a good businessman’s success is dependent upon rhetorical violence and winner-take-all bullishness? I chose the term ‘A Comics Id is Tenderness’ for this write-up because Baker’s work revisited me several times during this expo. Over the course of the week, it became more and more clear to me that Baker has been a creator who has deftly championed the stories he feels are important to him alongside of his commercial work, who has kindly informed peers of his intentions, who brushes from shoulder the allegedly unforgivable concept of sacrificing creativity for financial gain.“ Wow. Adam’s report, like the show as a whole, is terrific. Look for the rest of the Part 1 later today, and parts 2/3 over the weekend/next week! ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: At SPX Jason Lee, whom I see here in Pittsburgh every now and then, kindly gave me an installment of a new series he’s doing called Pyramid Inch (which appears in Sporgo 2, above). The title creates the feeling of a sharp, piercing, and somewhat distantly fading force. The comic reeled me in – it’s an amazingly accommodating comic. It’s a relief to read something like this. For a comic this rough, so to speak, to actually be this structured (and to have a narrative that flows with such ease,) to emerge in a setting like SPX, is great. Especially with my expectation of what might entail when I get a mini comic in a setting seemingly informed by a redundant sense of design. (Not just at SPX, but in a good amount of mini comics I see.) These rough drawings also work specifically well for Pyramid Inch. I’m grateful that the drawings don’t oversell the decadence that’s implied when the story is something like this: a character living in L. A. working on some art installation for Vice. With a setting like that, it would seem to demand that the design of the cartooning be a bit more posh, a bit more trendy and poppy. It’s very good that it doesn’t, because – as is written on the cover “a millennial gothic” – the dark underbelly is more readily apparent, especially towards the end where the main character is having a conversation. To clarify, this dark underbelly isn’t what excited me most about the comic. It feels like a perfect marriage in this case, where the art raises awareness to what would be otherwise hidden in a setting like the one in the story. This setting, by the way, is very alive, and I can understand why the characters are affected in the way they are. What’s more satisfying is that the art style isn’t announcing itself (not that it’d be a bad thing if it did). For the direction this comic is headed though, it’s what feels most needed – for the art style to not keep announcing itself and telling me to see the darkness through it. While the conversation toward the end of the comic is magnificent on the author’s part, the two characters’ conversation did test my patience. I was thinking to myself, “My god how long is this conversation gonna go on for?” That’s not to say that the conversation didn’t serve any purpose, or that I didn’t enjoy being forced to sit through it. It did tug on my heartstrings quite a bit at a certain point. It just feels that if the scene was redrawn another way it could’ve yielded a horrible reading experience. What I’m saying is that there are drawings I’ve seen Jason do that are way better than what’s drawn here in this comic, but evidently he didn’t make the comic based on the best drawings he could do – he prioritized the story first, and it yields much better results. It’s a really comfortable comic to read through, but the drawings don’t make it too comfortable to the point where it becomes unbearable to read. It’s also a really funny book. In fact it’s so funny that it doesn’t have to shove a gag down my throat every other panel, to remind me how funny it can be, at the expense of the story. Jason has been putting these comics out as Laura Pallmall, which is a pretty funny name in the most subtle way, and it’s emblematic of the humor in the comic. It’s also emblematic of the tone too – by replacing Palmer with Pallmall it simultaneously evokes a gothic feeling, and the mall part speaks to the idea of a valley girl, but it’s Laura Palmer who is a “valley girl”. Jason sets this tone by saying this “valley girl” version of Laura Palmer wrote this book – this book with fantastic drawings, sequences, dialogue, and a well told story. – Sam Ombiri Get a copy of this comic HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Sally here – above is a comic I found at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum last weekend during CXC – it was part of the Tales From the Vault: 40 Years/ 40 Stories exhibit, which pulls especially interesting, groundbreaking, or controversial comics from a 250 year span of items in the museum’s collection. The comic above is a Luther strip, by Brumsic Brandon Jr., from 1973. Luther was launched the year after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (1969), and was one of the first nationally syndicated comic strips made by an African American creator that featured a black main character. The strip ran until 1986. Here’s a page of Krazy Kat, by the wondrous George Herriman, from 1943, also on view at the BICLM: ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-5-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie- 10-5-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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