Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in los Cómics, NewsTagged ANdrea Galaxina, berliac, Dolores sanchez, Francisca Carcamo, panchulei

Juan Fernández

Posted on January 31, 2018January 31, 2018

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07/20/2018

Sally IngrahamJuly 19, 2018NewsSally Ingraham here with a look at Lale Westvind’s Grip Vol. 1! ————————————————————————————————— I am usually swept along by Lale Westvind‘s work, but her latest comic – Grip Vol. 1 – swept me away. It “grips” you immediately, as your eye catches sight of the bright screen-printed cover and the lovely risograph interiors. The rise of riso printing has brought a wealth of pretty books, but a pretty book does not always equal a great comic. Lale’s voracious drawing style and the way she bends the comics medium to her will is in this case thrillingly complimented by the work of Chicago-based Perfectly Acceptable Press. Lale’s storytelling is particularly good in this comic. It begins with a transformative encounter with a force that sets the hands of the protagonist in motion. Her hands remain the focus of the story throughout, visually and thematically. She moves from one adventure to another, from one job to the next, meeting people and traveling, and her hands manipulate and influence what happens around her both at her will and perhaps against it. Without words and using only a few written sound effects, Lale Westvind crafts a moving tribute to working women, a wild celebration of female power and skill. Whether sorting mail, serving tables, piloting aircraft, traversing mountain heights, or sharing long significant eye-contact, the women in Lale’s comic are moving, building, holding the world together while tearing it apart. Although there is no regular rhythm in the structure of the panels, there are a lot of interesting design choices from spread to spread. There are visual rhymes and mirroring that I find satisfying, and a color scheme that balances and harmonizes with the lines. Grip Vol. 1 mixes reality with fantasy in a way that feels familiar to me. It’s like Lale got inside my head – and likely the heads of many women – and illustrated how the work of the moment, the task at hand, is transformed by the inner fantasies and landscapes of the heart, the joyous and violent riot of thought that leads to action or survival. Whether physically or metaphorically, often getting a grip and keeping it becomes the only motion that really matters. Recommended. Get a copy of the comic HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-20-2018 – by Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]

01/19/2017

Sally IngrahamJanuary 18, 2017NewsWe’re here today with news from Ronald Wimberly and Rep. John Lewis, work by Phil Dokes, thoughts on Michael DeForge from Sam Ombiri, and our Thursday collection of daily strips by Comics Workbook students and alums! ————————————————————————————————— Ronald Wimberly is on an international tour! He was at Gosh! Comics in London yesterday speaking to a packed house about his work and process and his series Black History In It’s Own Words, which will be released by Image Comics in early February 2017 to help commemorate Black History Month – check it out HERE. Here’s a nice little video about Ron which was made for the Attack on Titan Anthology: ————————————————————————————————— I love the pieces that Phil Dokes has been posting on Instagram lately (follow him @phildokes67). He’s an OH cartoonist and comics historian, and a regular attendee of our comic salons here in Pittsburgh, PA. ————————————————————————————————— Representative John Lewis won’t be attending the inauguration ceremony on Friday, much to Trump’s dismay. As sales of the March trilogy rocketed to No. 1 on Amazon, amid this dustup, The Washington Post published a nice piece that focuses on what Rep. Lewis believes his story will continue to fuel. “I’m hopeful…that young people can see another generation that acted in a peaceful, nonviolent fashion and never gave up.“ Read the whole piece HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: A couple of weeks ago I saw an Ant Colony book. I didn’t think much beyond “Oh wow it’s Ant Colony.” Then later I thought about the digital one that I had read – wait that was Michael Deforge back then! Of course I knew that, but it didn’t fully render in my mind that it was the same Michael that made all the other work I think of when I think of him. His work is still the same but at the same time, (as obvious as this is to say) it’s different. Like in my mind I think of that Michael and the Michael doing comics now as different (obviously this can be attributed to passage of time, but I’m kind of ignoring this aspect to say what I’m saying here). The way he changes his work so often, it creates this weird effect that I find in anonymity. It feels like Michael cloned himself and multiple Michaels make different work, but we can’t tell who the “original Michael” is. It feels like a less convoluted and less contrived way of working under different pseudonyms (not that I begrudge anyone for having a pseudonym whatsoever, but what I mean is that it’s tough to pull off in a way where the new person created through the pseudonym interacts with the work being made.) I also don’t know if I buy into what I’m saying. – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— Always available on our school store – Thee Santoro School Handbook for Making Better Comics (one page of the book is pictrued above) by Frank Santoro and Kurt Ankeny. Printed offset on cardstock by the professionals at The Prolific Group, Winnipeg, Canada. This is not some cheap color xerox or risograph. Looks great, feels great, and even smells great. This 16 page handbook is a quick guide to the tenets of our school. A smash hit – get a copy HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Dungeon Lollers – 1-19-2017 – by Tyler Landry ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-19-2017 – by Kate Harmon ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-19-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— 1-19-2017 – by Juan Fernández Share this page: [...]

05/03/2018

Comics WorkbookMay 3, 2018NewsSam Ombiri on Daniel Clowes’ Eightball No. 20: The Further Adventures of David Boring! —————————————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: More often than not, I sense some dishonesty when people talk about their work – as opposed to when their work does the talking. When I say “people’s work doing the talking” I’m not commenting on the overall quality, necessarily, but on how much the creator believes in the power of the form with which they are engaging. If they have to talk so much about what they’ve done with their work, do we really need the work at that point? Is it anything less than a prop for a prepared monologue? I couldn’t get a specific statement out of issue #20 of Eightball: The Further Adventures of David Boring – and this was for the better. It was all about characters being pushed in certain directions, and through engaging fully with the characters the story really goes places. The comic doesn’t need to convince me of the reality the story is taking place in – the story is so engrossing and captivating. There are turns that seemingly come out of nowhere, but fit in. Are these characters really just “characters”? They seem like humans to me. I’m going to risk navel gazing for a moment and I hope I won’t come off as Νάρκισσος falling in love with his own reflection, talking about what I’m about to talk about…but when confronted by a name like Dan Clowes, these days I’m skeptical of my reaction to it, because my reaction might be based on a large number of other people’s reaction to it. I feel like I run the risk of attempting to replicate variations of that collective reaction towards his wonderful work. I guess in some ways that can show that I’m not really one to think for myself, but I read comics to feel first and think later, and I personally think it’s good to gauge my reaction. I question whether my reaction is sincere, however, under these circumstances. I could just be having a sincere attempt without lucidity, which is the last thing I want to have! Luckily, this didn’t happen when I read David Boring. All that happened was I was hit by the story with an unforgiving gravity. David Boring didn’t seem to be pandering to a sensibility – it felt like it was doing its own thing, which happened to catch on. There’s a whole thing of, “No, duh,” with me saying this, but I was really struck with it. This issue of Eightball, like all issues of Eightball, feels like it exists in spite of a trend – and not at the service of a trend. The first time I read something by Clowes, I think I was 13-ish or 14. I could feel a bowling ball form in my gut and sink – there was so much gravity in the work, and I wondered, “Who is this, who has so much contempt for his characters?” Whenever I read Clowes work now, I really feel there’s something special about how we’re following the characters that we follow. When I opened the comic it’s so sudden, and for some reason or another I was really taken with that. At a certain point in the story I’m told, “You’ve placed yourself above another individual based on your own morality or whatever, so that it is only you who decide who should be dehumanized while pretending it’s at the service of humanity.” Manfred, possibly the most despicable character, is accused, but the accusation that’s made of him isn’t dehumanizing – still his actions seem foreign and distant, but not unhuman. The story between David and Pamela; the story between Manfred and Iris; the story of David and his father, told through David reading a comic that his father drew, David trying to savor every panel, not reading more than a panel a night, not knowing what he’s looking for – we’re suddenly presented with all these things that are equally compelling. I was suddenly presented with the issue, and then just as suddenly I am so involved in these people’s lives. This was the realization for me – that when Clowes is remembered and canonized the way he is, it isn’t done as a favor to him. It’s done as a favor to his readers. Clowes’ work cares about your understanding of what it is and what’s going on, even if what’s going on is supposed be a form of estrangement. From panel to panel, there’s plenty to read into. Clowes is putting things on display that are very straightforward. It doesn’t feel like dishonest work – even when it’s optimistic or pessimistic about humanity and the way that it can be. – Sam Ombiri Share this page: [...]

08/01/2018

Juan FernándezAugust 1, 2018los Cómics / NewsNo news for today. I’m home with a sick cat on my lap. On the local front, The Pittsburgh Comics Salon meets tonight at Kaibur Coffee in Polish Hill. Audra Stang and I will be leading Pittsburghers in some comics calisthenics exercises. It’s always a good time – coffee, shop talk, solidarity. Commodity form as community form. If you’re around, come on out. More info here. On the personal front, my sweet baby boy cat Boris, who is only 6, has been sick for the past month and a half. We’ve gotten some medical attention for the little guy, but after all the time in ER, no diagnosis. He is eating a little more, is a little more active, but is still not back to his normal self. You can imagine how frustrating that can be. I’d never had a cat until Boris and this kind of thing is devastating. I’ve been thinking about KING-CAT #75, the issue that John Porcellino dedicated to the life story of his beloved cat Maisie Kukoc, who lived with him for 15 years. In a lot of ways it prepared me for this kind of love and pain. For today, just a photo of the guy. -Juan Share this page: [...]

08/18/2017

Sally IngrahamAugust 18, 2017NewsSally here with new work by Ulli Lust, Redlands #1 by Jordie Bellaire and Vanesa Del Rey, a look at Simon Hanselmann’s character Booger, and more! ———————————————————————————————— I have really enjoyed all of the New York Review Comics as they have come out, so I was THRILLED to discover that new work from Ulli Lust will be in my hands soon via NYRC! Look for Voices in the Dark (an adaptation of the novel The Karnau Tapes by Marcel Beyer) in October 2017. The site has a good write-up of the book and some excerpts from it – view them HERE. From Publishers Weekly: “The narrative switches between two small cogs in the relentless machinery of the Reich: Hermann Karnau, a sound engineer who progresses from arranging the speakers at Nazi rallies to conducting bizarre aural experiments on concentration camp prisoners, and Helga, the eldest daughter of Joseph Goebbels, who, along with her siblings, is destined to be murdered by her parents in Hitler’s bunker. Lust’s loose, deceptively simple art, tinted in washes of faded color, creates a mood of deepening claustrophobia as the complicit Karnau and the innocent Helga descend toward the same fate. It’s a rare adaptation that, rather than simply transcribing the source material, transcends it.“ This is the English version of the comic Flughunde (Airports) which came out in Berlin in 2013. It was well received there – here’s some of the press that Ulli has collected on her website. An excerpt from the original version: The comic that Ulli Lust has been working on for the past 3 or 4 years will be released in Germany and France this autumn…which means we probably won’t see it in the States until 2018 if not later. Sad face. That makes the NYRC edition of Voices in the Dark that much more exciting of course! ———————————————————————————————— Vanesa Del Rey and Jordie Bellaire bring fury and flame in the opening chapter of Redlands. I like the rich red and gold and black coloring of the comic, and the way it crashes straight into a violent moment of pain and power, as a coven of witches wrenches a Floridian town out of the hands of the patriarchy. The intentions of the creators are definitely on display in the first issue, and I can get behind the “righteous anger” that Jordie Bellaire has spoken of a couple of times. I am curious to see where the story goes, how the wrath of the first issue transitions into something more nuanced – what the “calm center” of the storm will be. I believe I linked to this interview on Multiversity Comics with Jordie Bellaire and Vanesa Del Rey before, but reading through it again today after having seen Redlands #1 myself is interesting. This bit rings true for sure: “Without giving too much away, this issue read completely unlike anything I was expecting. What’s it like trying to create a sense of horror in the reader when what most of the characters in the issue are afraid of are your main characters? JB: I wanted the characters to appear very morally ambiguous and again, tie into the trope that men fear educated, strong, liberated women. If the readers are afraid of the main characters (the witches), that’s great! But they should also be afraid or at the very least disgusted by the rest of the cast. It’s a pretty upsetting place, as is the world. Everyone is an enemy of someone, anyone could be a villain.“ Read the rest of the interview HERE. And hustle to your comics shop to pick up Redlands #1 if you haven’t already! ———————————————————————————————— I found this article by Sam Riedel on Medium to be a thoughtful read – Let’s Talk Comics: Booger, Gender, and Simon Hanselmann’s “One More Year”. Booger doesn’t get a lot of press time, generally, but she is one of the more complex characters in Simon Hanselmann’s wild world. Unlike many transfem characters, she is not “virtuous”. Riedel addresses that point: “On the still-uncommon occasions that transfem characters show up in fiction (and aren’t two-dimensional stereotypes), they’re often forced to be virtuous because they represent all trans people everywhere. Who wants to be represented by a douchebag? Other marginalized communities also suffer from this tendency, an unintended consequence of “diversity casting” that maintains structural whiteness, cisnormativity, and so on. … Since our stories are so often misunderstood, there’s an implicit demand that we be shown in the most palatable light, but that robs our stories of the all-important shades of grey.“ Booger has the shades of grey covered. She is never quite as actively “bad” as the other characters, but her particular ways of being messed up are, in a way, more brutal. Read the rest of Sam Riedel’s thoughts on Booger HERE. Get a copy of One More Year HERE. ———————————————————————————————— Other News in Brief The Ignatz Award nominees have been announced, and there are lots and lots of comics by women on the list! Michael Cavna shares the list on The Washington Post. Katie Skelly is on Episode 22 of Comic Book Decalogue – here on The Comics Journal. Also on the Journal, Rob Kirby reviews Glynnis Fawkes‘ Greek Diary, and Katie Skelly covers Kabi Nagata’s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness. Jason Rhode tries to navigate the maze of gender diversity in the comics industry, doing a decent job of summarizing a lot of the conversations and controversies that have been going on in the last year, in particular, and across the decades more expansively – read the article on Paste Magazine HERE. Here’s a nice review of Maggie Umber‘s Sound of Snow Falling. Part 2 of Gabrielle Bell‘s comic Little Red and Big Bad is up on The Paris Review – read it HERE. Boundless by Jillian Tamaki is reviewed on Paste Magazine by Zainab Akhtar – she calls Jillian “undeniably one of the finest cartoonists of this generation.“ ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 8-18-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ———————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 8-18-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

01/31/2018

Posted on January 31, 2018January 31, 2018 by Juan Fernández

Juan empieza el día con un PSA y con Bombas Para Desayunar!

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Friendly PSA to Santoro School Students past,present, and future:
Ever get that feeling when you’re trying to write plot and explore narrative, but your brain only provides you with out-of-sequence snippets built on vague ideas and an endless number of potential outcomes that develop and branch out unnaturally over an unspecified timespan?

This is how our brains work. Recent findings in neuroscience confirm this notion. (Baldassano, Chen, Zadbood, Pillow, Hasson & Norman – Zacks, Speer, Swallow, and Maley) When we work on narrative art we’re reverse engineering much of our brain’s natural event and detail segmentation. Straight up, it’s hard work to create work that reads like it’s own reality. This is why we at the Santoro School use index cards.

We crystallize thought through action onto index cards, and then can, theoretically, stand outside of time in the editing process to make narratives come together.

So remember, do your warm ups, then jump into your index cards and let the thoughts flow. Don’t be precious, just keep the thoughts, feelings, images and words flowing. Jot that “noise” down. When you pull away from that flow, rest assured you’ll be able to rearrange them into coherent sequences for readers or viewers to parse.

-JF

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Los cómics y las noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana:
~ In English and en Español ~

Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo tienen una nueva edicion de La Polola Podcast! Las chicas conversan con Panchulei (Francisca Cárcamo) dibujante, escritora, editora de Pánico Ediciones y dueña de la librería del mismo nombre. Hablaron acerca de la injusta diferencia en la cantidad de hombres versus la cantidad de mujeres invitadas a festivales, conversaron acerca del mundo de la historieta, los festivales, las mejoras que pueden construir y los espacios que aún faltan por explorar.
Aquí hay fanzines de Bombas para Desayunar para leer de gratis – Bombas para Desayunar es una microeditorial de fanzines que nació en 2009 en Oviedo de mano de Andrea Galaxina. Después ha estado unos años afincada en Muriedas (Cantabria) y en Bergen (Noruega) y en la actualidad tiene sede en Madrid.
Te invito a leer: ‘Dolores Sánchez’, el segundo capítulo del comic biográfico sobre Emilia Pardo Umaña (1907-1961), primera periodista colombiana. una historia de @canelaflorez y @altais
Crítica de Sadboi de Berliac a cargo de Álvaro Arbonés en CuCo 9.

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Convocatorias + Deadlines:

¡¡Convocatoria abierta del I Concurso Nacional de Cómic Biblioteca Insular de Gran Canaria!! 3 premios y 9 accésits con una dotación de entre 3.000 y 400 euros y la publicación de las obras ganadoras en un volumen conjunto editado por Astiberri. Bases.
Deadline Reminder: submissions for Ink Brick no. 9 are due Monday, Feb 19, 2018! Do yourself a favor and submit your comics-poetry, won’t you?
Call for Chapter Contributions: Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America.

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Collected from the thousands of pages of material that Frank has left scattered all over the digital landscape, these 4 PDF collections contain Frank’s best writing on comics and comics making from the past decade. Theory and process, reviews and discoveries, journeys both physical and spiritual.

Check out the “Best of Frank Santoro” PDF collections, available HERE!

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Suzy and Cecil – 1-31-2018 – by Gabriella Tito

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Joanie and Jordie – 1-31-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in los Cómics, NewsTagged ANdrea Galaxina, berliac, Dolores sanchez, Francisca Carcamo, panchulei

Juan Fernández

Posted on January 31, 2018January 31, 2018

Explore

06/03/2016

Sally IngrahamJune 3, 2016NewsSally here with an update from the Rowhouse, a conversation with Phoebe Gloeckner, a new Art Trip with Sacha Mardou, wise words from Lynda Barry, and a couple of unique interpretations of visual or non-visual communication – plus, a very chill anime beat. ————————————————————————————————— It was a busy week around the Rowhouse in Pittsburgh, as the Comics Workbook team had our first residency! Matt and Mahmoud worked with Frank on a comic book based on a game they are developing – but beyond that (the nitty-gritty of arranging and rearranging index cards!), the days were spent in a ferociously exciting exchange of ideas on comics, architecture, music, social-media communication, and so much more. The time is NOW, folks! ————————————————————————————————— Ariel Schrag interviewed Phoebe Gloeckner at MoCCA this year, and a video of the whole conversation is available to view (below). It is a lively discussion between two powerful female voices in comics. Phoebe Gloeckner is known for A Child’s Life and Other Stories and The Diary of a Teenage Girl – both considered to be essential works about adolescent girlhood. Ariel Schrag has also been known to dig into the trials and tribulations of adolescence, via comics such as her autobiographical high school series Awkward, Definition, Potential, and Likewise. The two women talk about Phoebe’s work as a medical illustrator, the filming of The Diary of a Teenage Girl, and many other things. Take an hour to sit down with them! For more information about Phoebe, check out THE Phoebe Gloeckner interview on The Comics Journal. ————————————————————————————————— Having recently moved from Santa Fe, NM, to Pittsburgh, PA, I was somewhat miffed to discover that within a week of my move, the extraordinary Lynda Barry came to speak at a theater in Santa Fe…! Fortunately, a close friend of mine went to the event and was kind enough to report back for me/us. In the words of Comics Workbook extra-special correspondent Julie Kirby: “Rather than field questions she insisted we already knew the answers to, cartoonist Lynda Barry ended her talk at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe Tuesday night with a dirty joke and a song. Such a satisfying finale after an already intriguing presentation was precisely why nearly 800 people turned out to see her speak, and surprisingly, to hear her sing. While Barry was indeed entertaining and undeniably hilarious -who doesn’t love a collection of awkward figure drawing anecdotes? – I believe she had a much more important purpose. To encourage! To inspire! An adamant proponent of the 30 second drawing, Barry suggested that allowing ourselves too much time, too many opportunities for regret inhibits our art. That recognition does not require exact duplication. Barry demonstrated how familiar shapes – the profiles of Popeye and Marge Simpson, or the outline of the United States – can be reproduced with little accuracy, yet great familiarity still results. She lamented that by 8, 9, 10 years of age we often quit drawing because we believe we are unable to properly depict a nose. (In my personal experience, it was hair.) Barry basically said STOP. Stop editing, stop erasing. Start writing with a paintbrush and without expectations. While even she acknowledged that many of her ideas are not entirely original, her unconventional delivery of them certainly was.” Thanks Julie! ————————————————————————————————— Today on Comics Workbook we’re featuring a new Art Trip piece. Sacha Mardou had a run-in with an iconic dress, and scribbled down her impressions and thoughts for us. Check out Art Trip: Little Black Dress HERE! ————————————————————————————————— On Tuesday, Aaron Cockle featured the work of Ilan Manouach (a cartoonist, musician, publisher, and more from Greece) in his Daily News post. He highlighted part of an essay by Bill Kartalopoulos about Manauach’s work Katz (which is a riff on Art Spiegelman’s Maus). I bring this up again for two reasons – ONE: because Bill Kartalopoulos guest-edited a whole section on comics for World Literature Today, which features numerous essays, interviews, and book lists. Check it out HERE. AND TWO: because the part of the essay on Ilan Manouach that caught my interest was his project Shapereader. Manouach is working on developing a system of comics for the visually impaired! Incredible stuff. Check out the image above. It is a laser-engraved communication board, one of six that accompany a graphic novel called Arctic Circle, which employs the Shapereader repertoire. Below is another such board. The communication boards “…carry the index for 210 different shapes, providing the tactile equivalents for the specific features of the story. They are divided into groups according to their semantic content and function: characters, props, settings, actions, affections as well as graphic and textual devices forming the well-known toolbox of graphic storytelling craft.” In Manouach’s words: “I think comic books are interesting because they are both very material and very immaterial. … Comics is a language, a very immaterial thing, but at the same time it’s a very tangible thing. There are books, they take space, they are printed in Singapore, they travel back to the States, they are carried in distribution, sold in bookstores, etc. I wanted to do a work that takes both of these directions and puts them to the extreme.” Take the time to learn more about this fascinating new “tactile” comic form, and read Bill Kartalopoulos’s essay on Ilan Manouach a few times – there are more projects and ideas in there that neither Aaron or I even touched on…! ————————————————————————————————— Here’s another interesting angle on communication – The Toronto Symphony Orchestra uses “listening guides” that use symbols and what looks almost like Morse Code to aid a listener experiencing a (sometimes overwhelming) live orchestra performance. Over on Creative Review they get into the details of the project with it’s creator – Hannah Chan-Hartley – the managing editor and musicologist at the TSO. ‘In developing the listening guides for Key, Chan-Hartley says she “wanted to remove some of the barriers to comprehension that more ‘traditional’ guides you see in print tend to have. For one, these traditional aids often have a lot of descriptive text, which you have to read through and then remember as you listen to the piece. I wanted my guide to be visual, and one that you can follow along with in ‘real time’ while listening. “Secondly, only people who can read musical notation would find the excerpts in the traditional guides useful, so I wanted a graphic way to represent what is being heard so anyone could understand. “And finally, I wanted the guide to be in a format through which you could visually grasp the overall structure of a symphonic movement or an entire symphony – by showing when the main musical themes are presented, developed, and recur, and thereby help to structure your listening”.’ Read the rest of the article and see lots more pics of the “visual listening guides” HERE! ————————————————————————————————— https://vine.co/v/iEObIUemwFP Our recent Rowhouse residents are guys of many talents – one of their projects is the curation of the Chill Anime Beats tumblr, where you can find many soothing, lonely, lovely Vines like the one above – CHECK IT OUT HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Have a fantastic weekend folks! More sock-knocking-off comics news coming your way on Monday. Cheers – Sally Share this page: [...]

05/01/2017

Caleb OrecchioApril 30, 2017NewsCaleb here with Crickets 6 and Ganges 6, comics news out of Columbus, OH, Tom Scioli, and more! ————————————————————————————————— Tom Scioli’s weekly webcomic, Princess, continues to utterly mop the floor with most other contemporary genre comics. Scioli’s recent oeuvre has impressively combined the aesthetic intelligence of an “art comic,” with the most entertaining aspects of a mainstream superhero/scf-fi comic. It’s amazing to me with what he got away with on his fantastic run on Transformers vs G.I. Joe for IDW, and not to mention his current run of “Super Powers” shorts for DC’s Cave Carson. Once a bonafide and accepted Kirby clone (or Life Model Decoy), Scioli has cracked his own code and has morphed into something more uniquely himself while continuing the Kirby tradition in a similar way Barry (Windsor-) Smith did in the early 70’s. Check out Scioli’s recently re-released love letter to Kirby, American Barbarian. ————————————————————————————————— I recently got my copies of Crickets 6 by Sammy Harkham and Ganges 6 by Kevin Huizenga from What Things Do, which included an attractive print by Sammy Harkham. I cannot say enough about just how good these two cartoonists are. In a way they make an interesting yin and yang. Harkham’s straight-forward narrative style somehow combines the efficiency of a one-shot American comic with the lackadaisical European take-your-time-and-relax way of storytelling. Does that make sense? It’s slow and fast at the same time which creates this steady line-drive of a story that is clear, organic, and wholly satisfying to read. I particularly enjoyed (SPOILER!) and funny fist fight on a flight of stairs. Kevin H’s comic is a line drive too, but it’s claustrophobic (in a good way) and not nearly as light and atmospheric as Harkham’s. Ganges 6, in the tradition of it’s past issues, demands that you scrutinize the comic as thoroughly as the comic scrutinizes its subjects. Every panel is crammed to the borders with information and symbols and word balloons. Most of it anyway. The parts that let us breath are welcome and help to balance the overload of information. We are just as relieved as Glenn is when he finally finds some peace before being thrown back into a world of endless thinking and distractions. Get these comics at whatthingsdo.com. ————————————————————————————————— Sally touched on this particular subject last week, but I was in Columbus, OH on Saturday, just passing through on my way back from my little sister’s college graduation, where I came across a copy of Alive, Columbus’ weekly alt newspaper. It contained an article on the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum founder Lucy Caswell and the “The Billy’s” 40th anniversary, a highlight of an exhibit called “Tales From the Vault: 40 Years/40 Stories” by curators Caitlin McGurk and Jenny Robb, AND Noah Van Sciver’s weekly comic for Alive -“The Introvert’s Club”. This isn’t the first time I’ve been passing through C’bus and found an issue of Alive that covered comics pretty heavily (granted one of those times was during CXC, but still). The folks at the Billy Ireland and the Columbus comics community in general seems to be pretty in-tune with the overall culture there. When people call Columbus “Comics Town, USA” I think it may be a bit of an overstatement, but you certainly can’t deny their involvement in their community. ————————————————————————————————— If you don’t know, now you know British cartoonist Leo Baxendale dies at 86. The Guardian has an obituary. Simon Moreton reflects on 10 years of comic-making, autobio comics, and his fathers passing. Just Indie Comics has a preview of William Cardini’s new Retrofit book, Tales From the Hyperverse. You can preorder/support Cardini’s new book plus several other new Retrofit releases by donating to their Kickstarter. It’s probably worth it for the new English-translated Yokoyama book alone! TCAF is just around the corner, eh (Saturday May 13 through Sunday May 14). Check out what is planned for programming during this big honking festival. Here’s a review of Luke Healy’s How to Survive in the North from Women Write about Comics. Free Comic Book Day is this coming Saturday. Overall it’s a sucky day where I wait in line with a bunch of smelly nerds and civilian parents holding their kids’ hands just so I can get the Fantagraphics contribution. This year though I’m going for the Fanta book AND The Incal for the Humanoids FCBD debut featuring 30 pages from the classic. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 5-1-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-1-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

01/13/2017

Sally IngrahamJanuary 12, 2017NewsSally here, reveling in this week’s collection of cool women who have made or are currently making comics: Elizabeth Stohn, Julie Doucet, Rachel Masilamani, Jessica Abel, Sarah Glidden, Audra Stang, and more! ————————————————————————————————— I’m delighted that we are featuring Rachel Masilamani here on the site this week. Juan Fernandez wrote a thoughtful piece about her comics, highlighting work made between 2000 and 2013. Rachel began making comics in Baltimore in 1997, and has stuck with the form through thick and thin. She won a Xeric Foundation grant, moved to Pittsburgh, became a librarian, started a family, and never stopped self-publishing her comics, which often deal with intense subject matters. I am a big fan of her work and have so much respect for her as a creator – it’s an honor to share the city of Pittsburgh with badass cartoonists like Rachel. Read Juan’s thoughts on her work HERE. Juan doesn’t dig into Rachel’s more recent work, the NON PARTUM series that she published on Mutha Magazine – you can check those comics out HERE. Megan Purdy of Women Write About Comics composed a collection of essays about the comics as they were coming out in early 2015. Here are her thoughts on Plan B-200, followed by The Subject, Spontaneous, Habitual, Inevitable, and finally We Conceive. ————————————————————————————————— Dan Nadel shared this incredible blog post about the work of Elizabeth Stohn on The Comics Journal this week. The author of the post – Jim Linderman – found these comic strips (above) in a sketchbook and gathered as much info as he could about the young woman who made them 100 years ago. Really cool stuff – be sure to check it out. (Make time also to peruse Jim’s blog further – he’s been called “one of the world’s greatest pickers” by the New York Times, and his blog and the books he’s authored about the bits of American art and history he collects are wonderful!) ————————————————————————————————— Sarah Glidden has a new comic up on Tablet called A Temple in Time. “When the news became too much to bear, I tried observing an ‘internet Shabbat,’ where I could unplug one day a week. It didn’t quite work as planned.” The first page is shown above – you can read the rest is HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I got to read Jessica Abel‘s Trish Trash: Rollergirl of Mars while working at Copacetic Comics this week – I’d been looking forward to it for awhile. I love the world of rollerderby, and Jessica has basically taken that sport and propelled it into the future. Life on Mars is tough, and 15-year old Trish wants to become a pro “hoverderby” player and escape her family’s moisture farm. Things start to work out for her and her dream is within reach, but then a native Martian shows up and may just “dust” her plans. As it says on the Trish Trash website: “Check Trish out if you (or someone you love) is totally into sci-fi, rollerderby, reading about kickass girls, reading about kickass girls who are not white, and/or semi-dystopian post-environmental-collapse speculative fiction (oh wait, that’s everyone, isn’t it?).“ It certainly describes me, and despite not being entirely engrossed by the story I still have high hopes for it’s continued development. The “behind the scenes” Tumblr for the book is pretty fun, so while we’re waiting for the next installment you can explore the concept of rollerderby + Mars to your heart’s content. ————————————————————————————————— Poking around the 2dcloud website recently revealed an interview with Julie Doucet. It’s unclear who conducted the interview with her – the whole thing is oddly formatted and frankly frustrating to read – but it was interesting to dig into some of Julie’s thoughts about her present work, and her continuing relationship with comics – which is at the moment one of disconnect and disinterest, and extreme frustration over people trying to MAKE her current work “still be comics” in some fashion. “Julie: i simply had more than enough of it when i quit. had enough of the all boy crowd (something i was comfortable with for a long time) i simply lost interest in it. of course i kept reading my friends comics, but no more than that. when i say i feel i can’t connect, i mean i don’t know what’s going on in comics these days, i’m totally out of touch, i don’t know what the hell comics people are talking about, don’t know the new names, the new titles, the new publishers etc… 2dcloud: Reading Julie Delporte’s beautiful Journal recently, she mentions something about your new work still being comics in its own way. Do you think of your work in this way? Julie: i am not sure i agree with what Julie Delporte says. i work pretty much with words only! what i do is more like Dada poetry, if you like…i swear comics people INSIST to death, i HAVE to be doing comics whatever i do!! i’ve heard that kind of affirmation one million times!!! i don’t get it! why isn’t it normal to to other things?? like in visual arts, you can do whatever you like and be coherent in your work. why why why why am i not allowed to do just that?“ Check out the rest of the interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Various and Sundry’s Sara Lautman completes her week as The Comic Journal‘s diarist – her comics are HERE. She Does the City conducted a lovely interview with Annie Koyama this week – HERE. Mariana Harkness is organizing Headlocks for Hope – a fundraiser that brings pro-wrestling fans together in support of Planned Parenthood and The Southern Poverty Law Center. Check out the campaign HERE and pick up some artwork by Mariana, Box Brown, Pete Faecke, and others. Lauren Weinstein‘s strip on The Village Voice is quite exciting this week… The Rockettes Start the Revolution! Miranda Harmon drew up her memories from attending MICE last year – and shared a resolution: “In the coming years I will continue to make things, and resist, and survive.“ Eleanor Davis‘ upcoming You & A Bike & A Road (Koyama Press, May 26th 2017) made the National Post‘s list of 5 graphic books that are “a winning draw for 2017“. ————————————————————————————————— Superstar Comics Workbook student Audra Stang is back in Pittsburgh for her second Rowhouse Residency! She joined us in July of 2016 for a long weekend and drew the entire first draft of her comic Pale, Sick, and Magic (read it HERE – also check out Rob Clough’s review of that comic, as well as Love My Like an Autograph HERE.) Audra is joining us for a week this time. She is christening the new residency space for us, filling it with index card drawings and good energy – and digging into her new long-form comic project with the determination of a recent college grad who has every intention of making comics a lifetime adventure, and not just the thing she fought with her art professors about for 4 years…! It’s thrilling to have her back and I can’t wait to see what Audra gets done in the next week. You can read about her first residency experience HERE. If you are interested in applying for a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency or just looking for more info, visit this page or email santoroschoolATgmail – we will happily answer any questions you might have! ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-13-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-13-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— 1-13-2017 – by Juan Fernández Share this page: [...]

05/07/2018

Caleb OrecchioMay 7, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on Free Comics Book Day 2018. ———————————————————————————————————— Another year, another Free Comic Book Day. I’m mad at myself because I can’t seem to find the stack of free comics I cherry-picked at Copacetic Comics, and am beginning to have the suspicion that I left them at the shop while perusing the sweet deals Bill Boichel was offering. D’oh! There were some real good free comics this year. Jim Rugg’s Street Angel represented Image while D+Q offered an excerpt of Jason Lute’s recently finished Berlin, and I was looking forward to reading some Prince Valiant and Mickey Mouse strips. But if I’m being honest, the deals are really the reason I look forward to FCBD every year. The free comics are the icing on the cake. Of course, going to Copacetic and talking to Bill is worth the trip in and of itself. When someone mentioned Prince Valiant, Bill pulled out some Valiant Sunday pages from some 1940’s newspaper. You can ask Bill most anything about comics and he probably he has an opinion on it. I like to throw clay pigeons and watch Bill shoot them out of the air. Like I said, I seem to have forgotten my FCBD comics, but as one does at Copacetic I found plenty of gold. I did mental math to budget my indulgence since I was bringing copies of my comic Poor Little Joanie for restock (they were nearly sold out) and figured they’d help supplement my comics buying. We talked about this we talked about that. Bill gave me some feedback on my latest secret project, and made me feel good about what I’m doing. I left the store with an amplified electric charge. Then to Spirit, a really cool pizza place slash bar here in Pittsburgh where Juan Fernandez had a zine table set up as part of Spirit Walls 3 where local graffiti artists were collaborating on a mural on the restaurant’s outside wall facing the parking lot. I bought some comics from Juan’s table and he graciously offered me his chair while he sat on two stacked milk crates and we talked comics. Juan has a lot of ideas, so many ideas and so little time. I always learn something with Juan. He told me the Spanish comics magazine TBO was so popular, it became the generic word for comics in Spain, “tebeo.” Think how people in New Jersey call all soda, “coke.” Eventually it started to rain so I helped him pack up, then we got a couple of slices at the bar and talked more comics and life. There was a pro wrestling match going on upstairs which would sound like claps of thunder occasionally. Then J. Malls, the great Pittsburgh DJ, was getting warmed up for Title Town. The bartender told us that it’s a real popular show where Pittsburghers gather and form lines around the block to get down. Juan and I however, needed to get to Schenley Park to catch the end of Pittonkatonk Brass BBQ where we saw What Cheer Brigade and Keleta and Super Yamba Band. Both bands were like snake charmers and all the Pittsburghers crammed into Vietnam Veteran’s Pavilion moved together like a city possessed. I’m happy to be here in Pittsburgh. The city is gradually pulling me out of my shell and reversing some negative introverted tendencies one accumulates when you work from home. It helps that I hang out with a lot of cool cartoonists around here and they help get me out of the house in a way walking my dog can’t. ———————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Jim Rugg talks Street Angel with Chris Aiken at BlackNerdProblems.com. Kevin Huizenga “teases” a Ganges graphic novel. Tegan O’Neill interviews Craig Thompson at TCJ.com in support of the re-release of his graphic memoir, Carnet de Voyage. Sam Theilman talks with the infamous Frank Miller at The Guardian. ———————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 05-07-18 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

04/11/2016

Juan FernándezApril 11, 2016NewsJuan Fernandez here with some comics news, hot and fresh out the oven for you: Laura Knetzger at ECCC, Assistant AI character design, Black Panther sells out, Mary Mack Tremonte on Paper Cuts, Connor Stechshulte reviewed, and Jim Rugg with a kick in the face. ————————————————————————————————— Laura Knetzger at ECCC Ooh boy, this is cool. Laura Knetzger’s gotta drawn diary of her time at Emerald City Comic Con, the show that seemed to go on forever… Laura goes with dad, eats some gyros, buys some manga! Check her comic out here. You might not be interested in Comic Con culture, but Laura’s loose unencumbered drawings are not to be missed. If you’ve been struggling with your own diary comics or simply documentary drawing and sequencing and feel that you’re overworking the form, check this comic out. No grand gestures, it just breathes life. Cool stuff. If you dig this, check out the first volume of her comic, Bug Boys. ————————————————————————————————— Character Design While some of you are busy working out the background story for your suite of characters for your latest story, somebody in Silicon Valley’s creating a fictional narrative for the AI that’s going to go on your phone’s time management app. What a time to be alive… The surge of investor interest in virtual assistants that can converse has been fueled in part by the popularity of messaging apps, such as WeChat, WhatsApp, and Facebook’s Messenger, which are among the most widely downloaded smartphone applications. Investors see that users are increasingly drawn to conversational platforms, and hope to build additional features into them. Who knows, if you’ve got some tight chops for dialogue, there might just be some good money in Silicon Valley for you. Read more about it all over on the Washington Post. This all horrifies me, but hey, to each their own. ————————————————————————————————— Black Panther Sales are Nuts Ta-Nehisi and Brian Stelfreeze’s Black Panther is selling like gangbusters. They sold out of their first 300,000 copy print run and have gone on to a second of this first issue. This is a big deal. Good on them. Over on the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a nice in depth look at his collaboration with Brian Stellfreeze on making Black Panther a reality: Ideally, the writer offers notes in his script on how the comic book should look. This requires thinking with intention about what a character is actually doing, not merely what he is saying. This is harder than it sounds, and often I found myself vaguely gesturing at what should happen in a panel—“T’Challa looks concerned.” Or “Ramonda stands to object.” I was lucky in that I was paired with a wonderful and experienced artist, Brian Stelfreeze. Storytelling in a comic book is a partnership between the writer and the artist, as surely as a film is a partnership between the screenwriter and the director. Read it all on The Atlantic. ————————————————————————————————— Zines on the Radio There’s some fresh new installments of Paper Cuts! Paper Cuts is an exploration of the contemporary world of zines and DIY publishing hosted by Christopher Kardambikis. It airs on Clock Tower Radio. Each program features writers, performers, and artists who have shared their work in print, on paper and in small editions. The series acts as a cross section of this varied landscape and rich history. Here’s a chance for you to listen to the voices that would normally live in your hands and demand your eyeballs! Mary Mack Tremonte and Darin Klein #BLKGRLSWURLD Primal Screams Zine Fest 2016 ————————————————————————————————— Phoenix Comics Salon Announced First ever Phoenix Comics Club meetup, their Salon, is happening May 5th at the Central Library in Phoenix. If you’re in the area, be sure to go out and meet other comics makers and cartoonists. You get to decide how this thing grows. For makers, by makers. Seems like for this first meeting the focus will be on figuring out what exactly Phoenix wants/needs out of a meetup like this. Learn more about it here. ————————————————————————————————— Generous Bosom 1-2 Reviewed Gabriele Di Fazio takes a good look at Connor Stechschulte’s recent work for Breakdown Press in Generous Bosom #1 & #2 over on the Italian comics review blog Just Indie Comics. Hit that google translate button for the inside scoop. Read it the review. ————————————————————————————————— Get Drunk Off of Visual Literacy Kevin Huizenga turned us on to this one. A LYRICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VISUAL PROPOSITIONS- RUGGED DESIGN IN OPPOSITION TO ELEGANCE – IT’S BIGGER THAN YOU COULD EVER THINK- JUST EXPLORE – NO CLUES FROM ME. Dive into Dr. Chris Mullen’s labrynth and see what you find! The website of The Visual Telling of Stories aspires to being a Visual Lexicon, dedicated to the primacy of the Visual Proposition. Above all it tries to create an overall consistency of structure and environment, as if it was all taking place in one characteristic landscape through which you are allowed to wander. The main delight and challenge is the invention of non-linear means of navigation through spaces of knowledge with a created balance of reference and discovery. Dr Chris Mullen ————————————————————————————————— A Kick in the Face Here’s some cool news from Bill at Copacetic Comics. The Street Angel Gang by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca has arrived! Welcome the week with a bracing onslaught of all-out Street Angel™ action! This is the latest in the small batch preview editions signed and numbered by Jim Rugg. A tough gang holds an open call for new members; has the Orphan Avenger finally found a family? A mere 300 copies of this sucker exist. File under: You snooze, you lose.HERE. The Street Angel Gang “Rough Edition” This features the complete issue in pencil rough form. See Rugg’s work up close and personal. HERE. The Street Angel Gang Script Facsimile A facsimile edition of the complete original full script, complete with ammendations, notes, changes, spot illos and initial thumbnail breakdowns. See how a Street Angel comic book is born. HERE. or, get all three together for a special price: The Street Angel Gang PROCESS PACK Here it is: an all-in-one look at the Street Angel Production Process™ (pat. pend.). This pack contains: the facsimile of the original script with thumbnail breakdowns; the “Rough Edition” of the full pencil roughs; and a copy of the signed and numbered small batch edition. Supplies are limited! HERE. Soon to be a collectors item,you better pick up a copy at Copacetic Comics. ————————————————————————————————— That’s it for now. Got some Latin American comics news on Wednesday. Here’s a slew of Chicha from Peru for you to move through your day and to keep you company until then. This album rules. Support Barbés Records if you can dig it. Share this page: [...]

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