Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Dash Shaw, Marvel Comics, sally ingraham, Spider-Man, strange tales II

Caleb Orecchio

Posted on January 15, 2018January 15, 2018

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03/02/2016

Sally IngrahamMarch 2, 2016NewsMarch is Women’s History Month, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is celebrating female cartoonists. First up was Barbara Hall, the main artist for Girl Commandos, which appeared in issues of Speed Comics in the 1940s. Read a bit more about her HERE, and check the CBLDF throughout the month for more biographical snippets of women in comics. How about a female cartoonist who is working today? Anna Mancini, or Manzanna, is a Brazilian artist. Click on the image above for more info about that particular comic. You can find much of Anna’s work on her tumblr, but it is nice to experience her comic Sadnesses HERE. A simple slideshow format brings a different rhythm to the panels, forcing, or allowing, you to slow down and really see it. This different type of viewing experience leads to a discussion of Stela, a subscription-based iOS app for reading comics that just hit the stores. The app was reviewed over on Polygon. Stela is experimenting with a variation on a format known as…the Infinite Canvas, a term coined by that mad scientist of sequential art, Scott McCloud. For obvious reasons, comics on screens don’t have to obey the physical limitations of print, and in his 2000 book Reinventing Comics, McCloud proposed that the screen could be treated as a window. Will it work or won’t it? That’s probably up to personal preference and the quality of the content. Fortunately comics like Ronald Wimberly’s GratNin are trying the app on for size, and if Ron can make the endless scroll bend to his will then there’s probably hope for it. On a somewhat related note, Simon Reinhardt has just released Mystery Town #4 and announced that it is going to be “officially a monthly thing for 2016″…! Who else is excited? Follow the link above to check out the whole thing, and read issues 1-3 as well. Tyler Landry has finished publishing The Jaundiced Eye on Comics Workbook. Stumble into a shadowy state that mesmerizes and terrifies almost equally. If you’re hungry for more CLAV after this, Tyler just loaded all of Shit and Piss #3 on Ello – check it out HERE. I hope these bits and bobs help you get through hump day! Cheerio – Sally Share this page: [...]

Rowhouse Residency Report – Patrick Bonato

Comics WorkbookAugust 14, 2017Residency Reports / School UpdatesPatrick Bonato is an Austrian illustrator, graphic designer, and comics maker. He joined us in Pittsburgh for a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency for the month of May 2017. Here are his thoughts about visiting the city and his Rowhouse Residency experience. ———————————————————————————————— I owe one of my artistically most intense and helpful experiences to a moment of clarity, luck and just trying. I had been travelling and working abroad for half a year already, mainly to take a time-out from my client’s jobs as an illustrator and graphic designer and to focus on my personal work, which are comics. I hesitated on what to do next, but I knew what I wanted: an artist residency for comic artists especially. I tried my luck by just typing exactly that in Google. One of the two (!) results to consider was the Rowhouse Residency, which appeared more and more fitting and interesting, the more I found out about it. I mailed them – the always helpful good soul Sally Ingraham to be more precise – and from then on everything went fast. Only two weeks later I found myself in Pittsburgh for a one month comics residency! I arrived there in the middle of my Toubab story (above), and felt I needed some guidance and professional feedback on it, as in my education as a graphic designer and illustrator in Austria and Switzerland I never have experienced any training in comics. So the first two weeks I proceeded to create new pages of this story and showed them to Frank and Sally. Frank helped me a great deal to understand and analyze what I had been doing to that point mostly intuitively. He also revealed to me some influences of mine that I had not fully been aware of and partly even where the inspiration to my inspirations came from! So I basically got a crash course in comic’s history and traditions and left every conversation with Frank full of motivation and inspiration and a huge pile of comic books to read from his seemingly infinite library. I could have spent the whole month just reading comics and was thankful for the rainy days, making it easier just to dig in and lock the outside world away for a while. In these first feedback sessions with Frank and in my conversations with Sally, we often talked about Frank’s “magical method” using index cards and about the online course he’s giving. At first, I adapted a modified version of the index cards to the ongoing Toubab comic and was already enthusiastic about the freedom and ease it unleashed in the drawing process. Therefore, as I felt ready to start a new story, one that had been on my mind for a long time already, I asked Frank and Sally to do the Comics Course in the second half of my stay. And that’s when I felt my residency was really taking off and getting intense. My goal was to accomplish an 8-week-course in two weeks! I decided to simply follow instructions and completely trust my masters Frank and Sally. Which proved to be very helpful, because all I had to really think about were my drawings and the story, whereas any formal decision (format, grid, number of pages and so on) was already given. The first two assignments propelled me to a formerly unknown speed of creation, that I had not even thought to be possible. Although tough tasks, they allowed me to access a spontaneous, natural flow of my thoughts and ideas about the story. And I’ve finally realized how much more inspiring and fun that was, compared to planning everything in advance and then just executing the plan. I am not exaggerating when I say it was a revelation that really changed my ways of working. I managed to complete the 16-page comic just before the end of my residency (a teaser can be seen above!) and had accomplished something way more quickly and way better and more fluidly than anything I had worked on before. I really owe that to Frank’s method, and his and Sally’s guidance through the course. I appreciated a lot having the possibility to have real conversations during the process, being able to ask questions, discuss things further and pick the comic books that related to them. Another very influential and unique experience to me was to see Frank work. While I was there, he was very occupied with his new book (which I hope will be available by spring 2018 as Frank assumed – learn French to read it, Americans!). So while it was not always easy to get to see him and catch some feedback on my work in this situation, at the same time it taught me how important it is, in the process of creation, to sometimes just retreat from the outside world and ignore it’s needs and wishes. I personally consider this a lesson for a lifetime, and one I constantly should remind myself of (i.e. thinking of how persistent and reckless some clients sometimes can be!). I had to travel for months and to three continents to finally get some peace and tranquility from clients, friends and family (no offense to you all, I like most of you clients and love you friends and family) – but I’ll need to find a way to just focus on my work when back to a more “normal” life. A few more things I want to mention: the Rowhouse and Pittsburgh in general felt like a new home by the end of my stay. It’s a good place to work but also to take a break from it. I appreciated a lot that Sally introduced me to Bill Boichel and the Copacetic Comics store, to the monthly Pittsburgh Comics Salon and the lovely people who form that group. And that we had this fun ride around town and – of course one of the highlights – a canoe trip with her and Frank. I am deeply thankful for this great experience and the many things I’ve learned about the art of comics and life, and I thank Sally and Frank in the first place for that, and everyone I had the luck to get to know during my month in Pittsburgh. I hope to be back soon! ————————————————————————————————————— Check out work by Patrick on his website, and follow him on Tumblr and Instagram. For more information about the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency visit this page or email santoroschoolATgmail Share this page: [...]

11/08/2018

Comics WorkbookNovember 7, 2018NewsSam Ombiri on Men’s Group The Video by Ben Jones ————————————————————————————————— I find I am often longing for a great comic. This longing has the feeling of a hole with a specific shape that only allows a corresponding shape to fit in. I suppose there’s no sense in wondering why I want to read a good comic; I mean I don’t want to read a bad comic as far as I know, although I don’t mind reading a bad one. There’s a lingering dissatisfaction that often comes from reading good work, taking it for granted how good the work is, and then moving on to the next good work to take for granted. There’s something rather depressing about it. It seems to me that Ben Jones’ work is often consumed along in this manner. It’s apparent when I run into a knock off of Ben Jones’ or Paper Rad’s work that it’s being done by someone who totally missed the mysterious and vague point of Ben Jones’ work. Which to be fair seems mysterious even to him. In an interview in his book, Men’s Group The Video, Ben Jones says “I don’t get Gumby. You can’t say he’s well animated. I didn’t even watch Gumby all that much as a kid. I’m not trying to call back to some 1970s nostalgia. I’m not using characters for their pop iconographic value. I’m using them as language.” He later says “I’m trying to use Gumby for what Gumby was intended for…” to which he adds “I’m deadly serious about my characters. I don’t mean this as a joke: I feel like Shakespeare, and I’m using star-crossed lovers. I’m very much interested in my characters as much as Shakespeare was interesting in using cheesy things like lovers and kings to tell interesting stories.” Men’s Group The Video benefits by not being jam packed with a lot of comics. This allows the comics to be more closely examined by the preceding text casually asking questions about the comics. In the case of Gumby, Ben finds himself optimizing what Gumby’s presence in Ben Jones’ work represents or invokes or communicates. There’s an interview where Kevin Huizenga says “Ben Jones has always been really inspiring to me, I think it’s because- this sounds stupid- he is very creative. He just comes up with amazing things. His work is unified in a strange way, too. It’s hard to explain. The way he’ll just draw a comic about muppet babies as if it’s no big deal and they’ll be rapping or something. It’ll be really funny but beautiful and scary too.” Men’s Group The Video is packed with what appear to be, metaphorically speaking, a magnifying glass to what Ben Jones is doing with the comics language (as well as other mediums). He has created this mythology of this collective called Men’s Group The Video that in a certain sense exists. The idea or the impression of the existence of the collective is used as a language of sorts to communicate a certain feeling Ben Jones is trying to get at. It also allows him raise new questions in this mode of communicating. Some “members” of this collective write essays, some, like the painter Joe Bradley, write poetry. Some “members” like Dan Nadel interview Ben Jones. Reading these texts are important in relation to the comics, because while the comics are immensely strong on their own, the comics are even more so felt with a certain depth. They also give loads of clarity, and somehow create more mystery simultaneously to the comics and art Ben did in Men’s Group The Video and the work he did with Jessica and Jacob Ciocci in the past. Ben’s work often seems to be about solving the mystery of him drawing what he did at the time that he did it. Ordinarily with most other comics, it would seem goofy to question the drawings in this way. It seems fitting to ask the question despite the goofy nature of the question, but the ingrained nature of what he’s drawing is goofiness. Ben doesn’t have a big answer to this question he just keeps circling it with more art and comics that don’t cease to be compelling. ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 11-8-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

09/25/2017

Caleb OrecchioSeptember 24, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on work ethic, and other news.————————————————————————————————— I was talking to my dog recently. I says to her, “Zoe, I’ve rearranged my life around making comics and I still can’t finish a daily strip on time. I moved to a secluded lighthouse outside an old, cheap rust belt town and work the bare minimum to pay off school loans and rent and I still can’t manage to keep a consistent comics work schedule. What am I doing wrong?” She looked up from licking her privates and and answered, “You complain too much.” You probably already know this, but SPX 2017 was last week. I put my daily comic strip on hiatus because I was “too busy to be bothered by it” (if you’re a loyal CW Daily News reader, you’ll have noticed that Joanie and Jordie has been absent from this site for a minute). But lo and behold, Sally Ingraham (star cartoonist of Suzy and Cecil fame, comics educator, and managing editor of this very blog–among other things) made all her strips for that week in her hotel room at SPX AND executed her Daily News duties–PLUS! managed to manage the Comics Workbook Workshops being held throughout the weekend and keep tabs on us “kids.” I’m sorry to be so conflict of interest, but I didn’t do nearly as much and I was still more fatigued than she was by the end of the weekend. I mean, I still drew throughout the weekend. I did my drawing exercises and drew funny faces and dogs running every day. That counts right? Yes, but then I look over at Audra Stang and she has basically filled up a sketchbook with comics, documenting the journey from Pittsburgh to Bethesda and has Frank Santoro literally rolling on the floor with laughter reading them. Then Kurt Ankeny comes in with his sketchbook where, that morning, he had more-than-adequately redrawn some old masterpiece painting from some museum in D.C. He probably did it in 5 minutes while standing up. He invited me to go with him that morning but I was asleep when he messaged me. I could go on and on. What’s my point? My point is, to just keep going. Yes you’re tired. Yes you’re broke. Yes you’re busy. But guess what–we’re all in the same boat and we all want to be the next Gilbert Hernandez or Lynda Barry or whoever. Welcome to comics, it’s hard. Just keep going. ————————————————————————————————— The fall semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers starts October 1st 2017. 8 weeks of comics instruction that will bang your practice into shape – 500 bux. Full details about the course and how to apply can be found HERE. ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know now you know Noah Van Sciver talks to Peter Bagge at The Comics Reporter. I always enjoy an interview with Alan Moore no matter the subject. Go to The Beat for more. Frank Young writes about Chester Gould’s “meta comics” over on TCJ. Darkseid model sheet by Jack Kirby. The Village Voice has published their last issue (the cover features the great Bob Dylan signing off) and have a history of their art directors at SPD.org. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 9-25-2017 – by Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]

02/06/2017

Juan FernándezFebruary 6, 2017NewsJuan here. Back in action and ready to start a new week with you! Today: A stroll through the 44th Angoulême International Comics Festival; Frank Santoro’s Comics Corner #1; a look at deep learning through coloring and sketching algorithms; Toon Books’ spring list; Julia Gfrörer’s Laid Waste reviewed; preview of Dominique Goblet’s Pretending is Lying; Noah Van Sciver’s 2nd installment of The Introvert Club; Comics by Jack Brougham, Sally Ingraham, Caleb Orecchio, and Juan Fernandez. 44e Festival de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême I’m BACK – OOF! I was on the ground at the Angoulême International Comics festival 2017. Joined by Jennifer Lisa we took in the sights and sounds of this incredible happening. The second largest comics festival in Europe, and the third largest in the world runs every year since 1974, Angoulême saw the 44th iteration of its city wide comics festival the weekend before last. More than 200,000 visitors come each year to the fair, including between 6,000 and 7,000 professionals and 800 journalists. I’m still unpacking so much I saw and heard there… Today on the site, we’ve got the first of a 3 part series on the Comics Workbook Experience at the 44th Angoulême International Comics Festival.I’m unpacking this life changing experience here for Comics Workbook. This first part of this series is a collection of photos.Intentionally presented free of commentary, this series of photos invites you to take a look and see what tickles your eye. In depth reflections on this edition of the annual festival appears in the next next installment of this Comics Workbook Festival News series. Enjoy a stroll with me and Jenn through the festival HERE. If you have never been to Angoulême or need to be reminded of what it is like—here is a good primer by Brigid Alverson, and Frank Santoro’s 2014 Tour Diary. Paints Chainer: A free Japanese neural network that colors illustrations for you The robots are coming. The new web service, Paints Chainer, created by mechanical engineer @tai2an shows how “creative fields” can soon be automated. Human capacities augmented through the automisation of “drudgery”. I bring this up because automation is moving into every possible sector of human labor. What does that mean for how define work and what it gets us?How do our values as a society change? Who gets thrown under the truck? Can automation be an agent of positive change? So long as work is necessary, how do humans remain relevant as part of the production and consumption of commodity cultures? With developments like these do wae have a say in inventing the future? Anyway, just wanted to share this to get your minds thinking about how to best engage in a world where these processes are realities. The future will continue to be carved by these ideas. Think you can use this weird tool in your arsenal, ninjas? Go for it. Get weird. I’ve talked about deep learning and convolution networks before on this site, but I think it’d be good to cover it in the context of this web service. How does this work? Simosela Edgar, has got a great site that’ll help you wrap your mind a little better around these algorithms. Slam that translate button because this is all in Japanase. To understand it better, let’s look at a similar web service, the Fully Convolutional Networks for Rough Sketch Cleanup by Edgar Simo-Serra*, Satoshi Iizuka*, Kazuma Sasaki, Hiroshi Ishikawa. Automatic drawing of rough sketches: The proposed model is a multilayered neural network in which all layers are composed only of convolution layers, and when a rough sketch is input, the line drawing is outputted. This model consists of three types of convolutional layers: down-convolution, flat-convolution, up-convolution. For down-convolution, setting the stride number of the filter to 2 halves the map resolution, flat-convolution does not change the map resolution, up-convolution halves the stride number by doubling the map resolution . As a result, the image is first compressed and processed into a small feature map, and finally it can be returned to the original resolution and a clean line drawing can be output. You can test drive it over HERE. It’s an “auto-inker”. Sure, the line is dead and things are clunky. But, you get my drift. What does it mean to learn to simplify? How do computers simplify? What kind of visual literacies do humans have. Consider this set of developing AI as examples for active and passive visual literacies. If you’re interested, be sure to learn more about the team’s research. Last but not least, let’s think about here are the politics of datasets. The AI we develop NEEDS a data set to be its world to reference as it gauges its attempts at replication of “reality”. Who supplies that information? What gets left out? Why? For those curious, I plugged in some Julie Doucet pages and some Xaime Hernandez panels and got some hilarious colour guesses. What would you need to feed this algorithm to handle non-shojo/shonen looking images? I have some thoughts and I bet you do too. Needles and Threads The Comics Beat checks out Toon Books’ spring list, which includes work by Kevin McCloskey and Ivan Brunetti. Toon Books, which was founded by Françoise Mouly, publishes comics for young readers. Hyperallergic reviewed Julia Gfrörer‘s Laid Waste – HERE. There is a preview of Dominique Goblet‘s Pretending is Lying – coming out February 7th 2017 from New York Review Comics – over on The Comics Journal. There is also an advanced review on NPR – HERE. Noah Van Sciver‘s 2nd installment of The Introvert Club was posted on Columbus Alive. The strip updates every Friday. ————————————————————————————————— https://vimeo.com/202576902 Frank riffs on John Byrne’s Fantastic Four run – stay tuned for more from Frank’s Comics Corner! ————————————————————————————————— Here at Comics Workbook we are passionate about sharing our love for the medium through Daily News posts like these, through our online correspondence course, the Rowhouse Residency, the Pittsburgh Comic Salons, and through our Comics Workbook tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We promote and share comics and their makers, provide a platform for makers – both professionals and students – to publish their work, and provide educational opportunities at local events and international comics festivals. If you like any aspect of what we are doing please consider supporting us – it’s easy to donate directly to the project, or we have a plethora of interesting work available for purchase at our school store. Check it out HERE. THANK YOU! ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 2-6-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 2-6-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 2-6-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 2-6-2017 – by Juan Fernández Share this page: [...]

01/15/2018

Posted on January 15, 2018January 15, 2018 by Caleb Orecchio

Caleb Orecchio here with thoughts on Dash Shaw’s Spider-Man story from Strange Tales II, and more news.—————————————————————————————————

Last week I talked a bit about Dash Shaw’s Doctor Strange comic from the first volume of the indie-cartoonist-superhero-anthology, Strange Tales. This week I was thinking about his Spider-Man comic for Strange Tales II. A meta, meditation on the Sam Rami movies, with a quote from Toby Maguire about his famous upside-down kissing scene with Kirsten Dunst at the end. This idea runs parallel with a Spider-Man v Mysterio fight with the latter using his “vapors of deception! Deceit!”

I enjoy this comic as much as I enjoy all Dash Shaw comics. Shaw is usually not without something to say in his work: Spider-Man is on “some kind of elaborate film stage,” trapped by Mysterios deceitful fog until he finds his way out and falls into “Garbage! […] That’s where the spiders thrive!” Out of the theater and into the trash where he belongs. Where Spider-Man is best.

I like this comic because Shaw is “selling out” (one could argue by working with Marvel) whilst simultaneously calling a childhood obsession (from Marvel) “garbage,” yet, lovingly. There is an irony that resides in this story and its circumstances that I relish. It’s an earnest love letter to trash. I always enjoy rereading this one.

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if you don’t know now you know

Alex Wong talks to Jason Shiga at TCJ.com.
I somehow missed that Chris Ware was a guest on RiYL.
Conan the Barbarian is returning to Marvel in 2019.
The latest guest on Inkstuds is Zach Hazard Vaupen.
Have you checked out our own Sally Ingraham’s birding blog?
Check out William Cardini’s Skew on Study Group if you’ve been snoozing.

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Suzy and Cecil – 1-15-2018 – by Sally Ingraham

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Dash Shaw, Marvel Comics, sally ingraham, Spider-Man, strange tales II

Caleb Orecchio

Posted on January 15, 2018January 15, 2018

Explore

09/23/2016

Sally IngrahamSeptember 23, 2016NewsSally here to finish the week with Carol Tyler at SPX, the women who took the Ignatz Awards, Anya Davidson, Dame Darcy, V. Vale and RE/Search, Phoebe Gloeckner, and other Friday tidbits. ————————————————————————————————— One of my favorite parts of helping with the Comics Workbook hosted workshops at SPX last weekend was getting to meet Carol Tyler and dig into the process and story behind the making of Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand my WWII Veteran Father. It was a long and difficult journey, and one that favorite pens and a good scanner helped get her through – the type of details that other cartoonists in the audience ate up! We will have our own video footage from that excellent talk soon, but for the moment Derek Royal has a podcast interview with her over on Comics Alternative – “They spend a good deal of time talking about the current state of veteran’s affairs, the debilitating effects of PTSD, and how Soldier’s Heart both has and hasn’t resonated within the veteran’s community. Carol also discusses the current projects she has underway, including a follow up (sort of) to her father’s story and a project documenting the days leading up to her attending The Beatles concert at Comiskey Park in August 1965. As she tells Derek, in that work she’ll be channeling her inner 13-year-old-girl self. This is a moving and, at times, a deeply personal interview, one that reflects the sheer impact of Carol Tyler’s writing.” – Comics Alternative Check out the interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Although the list of Ignatz nominations was tipped toward male creators, in the end it was women who soundly won the day, with Tillie Walden earning two nods. “Walden was voted outstanding artist for her debut graphic novel, “The End of Summer,” and named most promising new talent for “I Love This Part.” Elsewhere, former Brooklyn studiomates Kate Beaton, Lisa Hanawalt and Meredith Gran all picked up Ignatz “brick” trophies. The event was held at the Bethesda North Marriott convention center.” – Michael Cavna at The Washington Post Michael Cavna has the full list of Ignatz Award Winners HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I didn’t get a chance to say hello to Anya Davidson while running around SPX, but I am eager to find a moment to sit down and read Band For Life, with debuted at the show last weekend. Keep an eye out for it in your local comic book shops in the coming weeks! ————————————————————————————————— Over on The Portland Mercury Dame Darcy gets a shoutout for her Meat Cake Bible – which is part of the proof in the pudding that history is full of female cartoonists – “When the great authorities of comics leave women out of their history, we listicle and fume. It feels like a victory, but I also worry such rants are only seen by people who already care about gender equality. That’s why it’s important to see Darcy’s groundbreaking comics wrapped up in a book so worthy of them. This tome cements it. Dame Darcy is an irrevocable part of comics history. I dare those French comics dads to ignore her now. Like any true independent spirit, Darcy is arriving, even if it is later than her due. The world is catching up.” – The Portland Mercury Read the rest of the article HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Over on Vice Nick Gazin digs into a different comics-related event that took place last weekend – The New York Art Book Fair. He wasn’t overwhelmingly delighted with it, but his report is worth scanning through if just for the few moments he spends with V. Vale, creator of RE/Search. “While other people at neighboring booths were making bootleg merchandise that ripped off cultures they weren’t a part of, Vale created and steered culture with these books. The Industrial Handbook, the book he’s holding, informed and helped give birth to whatever industrial turned into. Modern Primitives helped spawn the modern body piercing and giant full body tattoo culture. The RE/Search book of Pranks (titled Pranks!) is just one of the best books ever made and will give any oddball or misanthropic recluse hope.” – Nick Gazin Check out the full report HERE. ————————————————————————————————— When I think about RE/Search I think about Phoebe Gloeckner and The Atrocity Exhibition. I’ve always been interested in her background as a medical illustrator – in an interview with Varoom! she talked about working on The Atrocity Exhibition – “The illustrations inside are cold but soft. I wanted them to be harmless and approachable, like doing a fuzzy animal, so they have some humanity. It isn’t because of what they are but because of that softness, not rejecting of humanity. I tried to make them beautiful. I didn’t want it to be horror. It has impermanence but this is beauty as we live it.” – Phoebe Gloeckner Read the whole interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— A few other things that have caught my eye recently – The animation in this video is by Jon Vermilyea (who was a production manager for PictureBox back in the day). ————————————————————————————————— Sophia Fs was working on a comic for the Comics Workbook Composition Competition earlier this month when she was hospitalized – she recently posted the finished work on her tumblr – check it out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Help send Connor Willumsen to the UK for The Lakes International Comic Arts Festival in October! He will be teaching workshops with Frank Santoro and Aidan Koch while there – if you’re in the area check it out. To help him get to the show, Comics Workbook is offering two new Connor publications. Portraits and Swinespritzen – both limited editions, both incredible. Details about both and where to order them can be found HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Have a good weekend folks – Happy Autumn, and Happy Birthday to John Coltrane too. Drink some pumpkin beers and listen to some jazz, won’t you. See you next week. – Sally Share this page: [...]

Simon Hanselmann Bad Gateway Tour with Joe Matt Cameo Appearance

Chris Anthony DiazAugust 14, 2019The Diaz ArchiveSimon Hanselmann Bad Gateway west coast signing tour, Green Apple on the Park, San Francisco, Friday evening, August 2, 2019 and Skylight Books, Los Angeles, Saturday evening, August 3, 2019 Share this page: [...]

Tim Hensley Draws L.B. “JEFF” JEFFRIES from REAR WINDOW

Chris Anthony DiazMay 27, 2016The Diaz Archivetim hensley’s portrayal of jimmy stewart as L.B. “JEFF” JEFFRIES in alfred hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW (1954, USA) for my ILLUSTRATED MOMENTS IN CINEMA/TELEVISION collection. the illustration was done in april 2016 Share this page: [...]

01/09/2018

Aaron CockleJanuary 8, 2018NewsAaron here today with an Art from Guantánamo Bay Update; Comic Book Heroes of Taiwan; Austin English on the End of Krazy Kat (and Superman Comics); More Machine Learning ————————————————————————————————— Ode to the Sea An update regarding the Art from Guantánamo Bay post from a few weeks back, via Patricia Mastricolo at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund: Fortnunately, the Pentagon is backing off its previous threat of incinerating art by the Guantánamo Bay detainees. Unfortunately, they still maintain all of it is the property of the U.S. military and will not be permitted to leave the prison. … The exhibit is free and open to the public and runs through January 26, 2018, at Haren Hall (899 10th Avenue at 59th Street, on the 6th floor in the President’s Gallery, New York City). The exhibit is open Monday to Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (except January 15). ————————————————————————————————— Taiwan’s comic book heroes Via the BBC: Hsu Mao-sung, one of Taiwan’s earliest comic book artists, says it may be too late to save the industry. His generation endured censorship during the martial law period from the 1960s to 80s, but he says it didn’t kill off his passion for drawing. ————————————————————————————————— Anything But Reality At TCJ, Austin English takes a long look at some comics from the 1940s-1960s: The strip that follows is June 11th, with the stick now re-purposed to prop up the scarecrow. So, the final interactions of Krazy Kat and Ignatz map out like this: Ignatz tricks Krazy into getting hit by a brick toppling from a growing tree, Ignatz passingly confuses Krazy about oak trees vs. olive trees, Ignatz works to transform a weasel’s color in an issue whose subtleties are (seemingly) obscure to Krazy and finally Ignatz’ brick is discovered with a stick from Offisa Pup while Ignatz writhes in agony, his body beneath ground. After these events, the scarecrow emerges and Ignatz discards his brick. For a brief moment the strip is silent and empty. … The tone of the line defined itself in 1958, partly by a constraint that the comics world imposed on itself. Physical violence, while not banned by the comics code, was to be avoided. So Weisinger took a line of superhero comics and instead of emphasizing brawn, made them into intricate puzzles. Now, these are not puzzles that use the unreliable world as one of its factors in the way a Raymond Chandler novel might. Instead, every story has no relation to anything real (except basic outlines of things like ‘I have a job at a newspaper’ or ‘humans need to eat food to survive’ or ‘ice is cold’)—the comic book world of Superman itself is the only thing the stories use to set up their questions and render solutions. These are mysteries whose only logic is cartooning, and I’d argue that they are more beautiful as science fiction than anything EC ever published. ————————————————————————————————— Adversarial Patch An update from the machine learning front, via Boing Boing: Another key difference here: the researchers achieve their best results using a “white box” technique where they get to design their patches through detailed knowledge of the AI they’re targeting, unlike other adversarial preturbations, which achieved good results with “black box” constraints (designing attacks without any technical knowledge of the AI). The patches they created didn’t work very well on other AI image classifiers. We show that we can generate a universal, robust, targeted patch that fools classifiers regardless of the scale or location of the patch, and does not require knowledge of the other items in the scene that it is attacking. Our attack works in the real world, and can be disguised as an innocuous sticker. These results demonstrate an attack that could be created offline, and then broadly shared. There has been substantial work on defending against small perturbations to natural images, at least partially motivated by security concerns Part of the motivation of this work is that potential malicious attackers may not be concerned with generating small or imperceptible perturbations to a natural image, but may instead opt for larger more effective but noticeable perturbations to the input – especially if a model has been designed to resist small perturbations. Many ML models operate without human validation of every input and thus malicious attackers may not be concerned with the imperceptibility of their attacks. Even if humans are able to notice these patches, they may not understand the intent of the patch and instead view it as a form of art. This work shows that focusing only on defending against small perturbations is insufficient, as large, local perturbations can also break classifiers. ————————————————————————————————— The Winter Semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers starts January 16th 2018! 8 weeks – 500 bux – coaching for as long as you need. The course is hard, but Frank will push your comics making practice to a new level, getting you to think about timing and color in new ways. His experience and ideas have influenced the likes of Connor Willumsen, Michael DeForge, and Simon Hanselmann (quote “I consider Frank Santoro to be my L. Ron Hubbard”) among many others. Dig into something new in the new year! Full details and how to apply can be found HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 1-9-2018 – by Cameron Arthur Share this page: [...]

05/15/2017

Caleb OrecchioMay 14, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here. Some good comics are on Instagram. Did you know that? Plus I’m very very excited for Koyama Press’ Fall 2017 lineup. Are you? Also people can’t stop talking about Sammy Harkham’s Crickets. ————————————————————————————————— I made the lists below for a friend I was talking to about my comic strip (Joanie and Jordie—just scroll down), and how they enjoy seeing it everyday on Instagram (always nice to hear). It’s a very convenient way to view comic strips, they said. Do other people do comic strips on Instagram, they asked—of course they meant other than the legion of memes and bad nerd/fan clickbait crap civilians refer to as “comics” sometimes. I said yeah: It’s interesting to me—to my knowledge, Comics Workbook’s own “Suzy and Cecil” was the first real traditionally minded comic strip to come out of the comics community on Instagram. And one specifically made to fit the format to boot. I think maybe Michael Deforge’s “Leaving Richard’s Valley” came about around the same time (exclusively on Twitter originally) – followed closely by Jim Rugg’s “Running Comic,” where he documents his training for the Pittsburgh Marathon, and Mickey Z’s “Space Academy 123.” I like that cartoonists are constantly adapting to the next best available format to get our stuff out there. Since the slow and quiet fall of tumblr cartoonists are making their Instagrams a prominent place to put out work, and the work is morphing to its new platform. Instead of short serialized comic book pages every few weeks or months on tumblr, Instagram allows good use for square (literally) four-panel daily strips. I think it also helps that real civilians are on Instagram, whereas tumblr or deviant art was preaching to the choir. ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Koyama Press has announced their Fall 2017 lineup and it’s gonna be a good Fall. My favorite comics podcast, Comic Books Are Burning in Hell has a new episode where they talk about the new Crickets. I love to listen to these dudes talk comics. Speaking of Crickets, you all read TCJ’s great interview with the author, Sammy Harkham right? Part one here and part two here. TCAF was this past weekend. I’m sure we’ll have some sort of coverage this week. Stay tuned. Tyler Landry did a workshop, did you go to it? The NY Times has a weekly comic called Welcome to the New World, about “the true story of a Syrians family’s journey to America.” Which is great. Non-ficiton contemporary stories like these are what we need to help create empathy and awareness for a.) people who don’t know what this kind of thing is like and b.) the people living it. Cool cool. However, the actual cartooning is achingly dull and elementary. There is no emphasis or even an attempt at visual rhetoric here. It drives me crazy that “high-profile” mainstream comics fucking suck and are not done by cartoonists within the comics tradition; but instead are drawn by the most boring hack illustrators. Oh well, it’s comics journalism after all—I can’t help but notice that The Sculptor obviously had an influence on the look of this work. ————————————————————————————————— Announcing the Summer Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers! 8 weeks! 500 bux! Payment plans are available! Summer Course starts June 1st 2017! Applications are due by May 25th. Visit THIS page for more details and email santoroschool@gmail.com with applications and questions! ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 5-15-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 5-15-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-15-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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