Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

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Juan Fernández

Posted on January 25, 2016January 25, 2016

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02/06/2018

Aaron CockleFebruary 6, 2018NewsAaron here today with FUNHOUSE; 3 Comics from E.A. Bethea; Jog on Ditko; Necromancers of the Public Domain; Austin English; Fukushima Devil Fish ————————————————————————————————— FUNHOUSE An Interactive Book Fair by Desert Island at The Drawing Center On the weekend of March 24 – 25, Desert Island and The Drawing Center will present FUNHOUSE, a new, interactive book fair at which guests can make their own books in collaboration with resident cartoonists and illustration artists. FUNHOUSE Book Fair March 24–25, 2018 11am–5pm Tickets $10 via Eventbrite here. FUNHOUSE guests will interact with resident artists to create unique pages for one-of-a-kind books to be assembled at the fair. The resident artists will also have their own publications available for purchase at General Store within the FUNHOUSE fair, with games of chance, author signings, special activities, and giveaways of artists’ books. A SIDESHOW of talks, lectures, and presentations will be organized by FORGE. art magazine’s Matthew James-Wilson. Additional spectacles, like life-size interactive cut-outs and funhouse mirrors will provide wacky fun and photo-ops galore! FUNHOUSE artists include: Gabrielle Bell, Lilli Carré, Rob Corradetti, Joanna Fields, Laura Perez-Harris, Abby Jame, Jeff Ladouceur, Sarah Lammer, Gary Lieb, Richard McGuire, Ben Passmore, Oskars Pavlovskis, Monica Ramos, Jim Schuessler, R. Sikoryak, Whit Taylor, Matthew Thurber, Thu Tran, Mark Wang, Kriota Wilberg, Kelsey Wroten, Gina Wynbrandt, and JooHee Yoon. FUNHOUSE is organized by Gabe Fowler of Desert Island and Molly Gross of The Drawing Center. SIDESHOW Talk Series Saturday, March 24 and Sunday, March 25 at 11:30am, 1:30pm, and 3:30pm Programing TBD. Sideshow will be programmed by Matthew James-Wilson of FORGE. art magazine kuš! Magazine Comic Zine Workshops Saturday, March 24 and Sunday, March 25, 12:30–4:30pm Tickets $40 via Eventbrite here. kuš! comic zine workshop, lead by artist Oskars Pavlovskis from Riga, Latvia, will be a collaborative comic drawing experience suited for participants of any age and skill level. The workshop will focus on the creation of short experimental comic stories based around the FUNHOUSE theme. Together the participants will take part in creating a unique self-published comic zine, which will be printed and assembled during the workshop and each participant will receive a copy. ————————————————————————————————— The Olcott Hotel/Jamaica Bay/Tonight We Try Every Position At Bomb Magazine, Three Comics from E.A. Bethea ————————————————————————————————— The 206th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Joe McCulloch on Total Language: Steve Ditko at 90 Ask a person today who created Spider-Man, and they’ll probably tell you Marvel Comics, that inescapable entertainment brand. Some of them might say Stan Lee, the man whose profile is highest in mass media. Others, perhaps fewer, will know about Steve Ditko (b. 1927), a cartoonist of an unusual trajectory: his vision and craft gave concrete form to commercial characters still adored across the globe, half a century later, but his passion would soon pour into deeply personal, experimental, and furiously divisive works, comics emboldened by the freedoms of artist ownership, yet antagonistic toward the compromised values of society. Few agreed with the ideology espoused by these comics, but Ditko kept working, undeterred – through the rise and fall of the underground era, through the transition from newsstand racks to comic book stores, through the graphic novel boom and the advent of crowdfunding. He is still working now, here in New York City. Since 2007, Steve Ditko has published more than 800 pages of new comic book art, and they are among his most fascinating: comics where text and image work in a simultaneity of intent, a total language that invests the tautness of line and the hatching of shadow with thematic roles in the story, where the function of the black and white page is a statement of the artist’s worldview, by which there is only good and evil, and where the individual must ascertain the objective nature of the world, lest they reject their own lives. Come and see for yourself. Joe McCulloch has been writing and speaking about comics for 14 years, sometimes to audiences other than his bathroom mirror. ————————————————————————————————— Necromancers of the Public Domain “There are certain beings who bear the stamp of the divine seal and are preordained to receive the higest favours within the gift of glory; they are fated to pass through life like those brilliant meteors which are seen to flash across the heavens and disappear in the same instant. Bastien-Lepage was one of those meteors.” Each month, we pluck a long forgotten volume from the shelves of the New York Society Library and resurrect it as a low budget variety show. This month Masterpieces in Colour: Bastien Lepage by Fr. Crastre February 8, 2017, 8pm, at The Tank, NYC Featuring: Nick Balaban (Pianist extraordinaire) Raquel Cion ( Me & Mr. Jones: My Intimate Relationship with David Bowie) Katie Fricas (The Guardian / Fashionique) Greg Kotis (“Urinetown: The Musical”) Susan Hwang (The Bushwick Book Club / Lusterlit) Charlie Nieland (Lusterlit) Reverend Jen Miller (Reverend Jen’s Anti-Slam) Jason Wachtelhausen (Monologist extraordinaire) Hosted by Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / Queen of the Apes) Bring a blank shirt, pillowcase, or bag for LIVE STENCIL FUN. Make your own free Necromancers souvenir! Read Masterpieces in Colour: Bastien-Lepage for free online Thursday, February 8, 8pm / 312 West 36th Street / First Floor / New York, NY 10018 ————————————————————————————————— Where I’m Coming From (Part 1) At The Comics Journal, Austin English continues a strong run of posts. Mini-comics, even the “classic” ones, often disappear. Some of the most beautiful ones are never reprinted. Many artists choose not to have their earliest work collected, seeing the flaws ever so clearly, while the reader from the past holds the work close to the heart, aware of all the undeniable beautiful moments it also so obviously contains. Those private moments have shaped so many readers who went on to make mini-comics (or regular comics) of their own. The works disappear, remaining only in the hearts and minds of a happy few, but their essence (whether aesthetic, political, formal, etc.) live on as new shapes in new works of art. ————————————————————————————————— Fukushima Devil Fish Launch Event: The Art of Gekiga with Ryan Holmberg ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 2-6-2018 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 2-6-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio 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: [...]

Rochester, NY Scene Report

Juan FernándezMarch 10, 2016Scene ReportsThis week’s Scene Report is brought to you by Steven Arenius of Panoptic Press. Rochester is located in Western New York along Lake Ontario, right across from Toronto. Much of the town as we know it today is thanks to Kodak founder George Eastman, an old-school tycoon who hunted elephants with Teddy Roosevelt and left one of the most concise suicide notes of all time: “My work is done, why wait?” Rochester is also home to Xerox, whose tower is the tallest building in our skyline. Rochester is bisected by the Genesee River, which lends its name to the local brewery and like the Nile runs south-to-north. It has been home Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. We have an abandoned subway, brutally frigid and gray winters, and a signature dish called the Garbage Plate that is best left undiscussed. Rochester’s newsprint art and comics anthology of choice is Hope Mountain News, curated by Mike Turzanski and Pete Lazarski, which has circulated locally since 2011 and has since been archived in full on their website. Their fifth and latest issue, The Million Dollar Canoe, takes a leap in format and style and is (in their words) “64 pages of weird comics, drippy monsters, and two color mysteries.” Pete also has an expansive collection of comic strips full of ghouls and wizards on his website, Imaginary Monsters. Local musician Dave Chisholm is an accomplished comic artist and author of the graphic novels Instrumental and Let’s Go To Utah as well as Tyranny of the Muse, an ongoing webcomic with Eddie Wright. Clayton Cowles is an illustrator and letterer currently working on a number of Image and Marvel titles. Ant Hill is an original ongoing comic series created by Nigel Carrington. The Rochester Teen Set Outsider (now National Teen Set Outsider) is the longest running zine in town and perhaps at the forefront of the medium’s resurgence here. Local poet, publisher, and H_NGM_N Nate Pritts is a wealth of comics knowledge, insight and enthusiasm. We first met him at the Visual Studies Workshop‘s Pub Fair, a great show that specializes in small press and handmade print. Given its size, Rochester is fortunate to have a number of great comic shops. We share a building with Comics Etc., which spotlights local artists and creators with a small exhibition on Free Comic Book Day. The back issues at Wonderland run the deepest and they host a biannual comic show. Dan from Comic Book Heaven has been very supportive in getting our first book on his shelves. All Heroes is home to a holy grail of 50-cent comics running over 20 longboxes deep, where a great deal of time has gone unaccounted for indeed. NeedleDrop Records carries zines and local print as well. The scene is alive and well elsewhere in Western New York as well. Over in Buffalo, the Itinerant Printer Chris Fritton runs the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair with help from the Western New York Book Arts Center. We met Stephen Floyd from One Percent Press there, who along with JP Coovert has been releasing comics for over ten years. Hex Records is a Syracuse-based hardcore label whose Translate zine features comics in addition to reviews, tour diaries, and interviews. The oldest annual convention in the country takes place in nearby Ithaca and is run by their Comic Book Club. We were guests at Ithacon 40 along with Camilo Nascimento and Hunter Schindo of Arhanta Comics, whose atmospheric comics are layered with sound and immersively framed by responsive web design. Queen City Comics and Comics For Collectors are the shops to check out in Buffalo and Ithaca, respectively. Share this page: [...]

09/06/2017

Juan FernándezSeptember 6, 2017los Cómics / NewsEmpezamos el día con Autoras de Tebeo de ayer y hoy; Bef, Decur y Paloma Valdivia en La Polola; Convocatoria El Publicadero 2017; Mónica Ceberia y Mireia Pérez; Muriel Bellini y los tebeos de Cómics Workbook! ————————————————————————————————— Los cómics y las noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo tienen una nueva edicion de La Polola Podcast! Las chicas conversan con 3 invitados: Bef, dibujante y escritor mexicano, Decur, dibujante argentino y Paloma Valdivia ilustradora chilena, los tres invitados del V Encuentro de Ilustración y Cómic de La Reina este 2017. Hablaron acerca de sus vidas y el dibujo, sus referentes, y contaron acerca de sus publicaciones y al final respondieron algunas preguntas de los asistentes. ‘Presentes: Autoras de tebeo de ayer y hoy’ documental del colectivo @AutorasComic esta en linea en Vimeo. Genial. Edúcate. Fanzineros y proyectos editoriales de Colombia, El Publicadero quiere que los acompañen a celebrar la diversidad editorial en Manizales el 29/30 Septiembre! Convocatoria El Publicadero 2017. Álvaro Ortiz viene de subir en pdf el cuaderno de bocetos que se editó hace unos años para celebrar que hace 5 años salió Cenizas! Reportaje en cómics de Mónica Ceberio y Mireia Pérez sobre la vida en la cárcel de Soto del Real. TIK TOK Comics os presenta una nueva entrega de DOMINGO, la serie conversacional de Muriel Bellini ¡Disfrutadla! ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 8-30-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 9-6-2017 – Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

03/01/2017

Juan FernándezMarch 1, 2017los Cómics / NewsJuan José con un poquito sobre #GRAFBCN2017; Bas Backer on Chicks on Cómics; Inés Estrada’s Booklyn 2012; Mireia Pérez; Núria Pompeia; Berliac; Salva Rubio on Jiro Taniguchi; 100 Años de TBO; CW Daily Comics. Cómics y noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: ESTE FIN DE SEMANA: #GRAFBCN2017. Esta a la vuelta de la esquina. GRAF is coming to Barcelona. Here’s all the info you need for #GRAFBCN2017‘s programming. March 3-5 at the wacky warehouse space, Fabra i Coats. It’s the ninth edition of the Festival so it should get pretty wild. – If you’re following from home, check out twitter and tumblr for the #GRAFBCN2017 to get some insights on. Want to know who’s going to be there? Here ya go. Need more info? Here’s Mireia Pérez with the scoop you need on #GRAFBCN2017 over on RTVE’s La Hora del Bocadillo, Spain’s weekly national comics radio hour. (Fast forward to minute 48). Descubre a Núria Pompeia en la exposición ‘Núria Pompeia, sola ante el peligro’. Fundación Gin‘s digital editorial cartooning museum, Humoristan, has got a great online exhibition of Pompeia’s work with highlights from Maternasis and Las Metamorfosis. Berliac‘s got some new comics on Vice – Asian Food Store Junkies – S01-E03 This week will horrify your taste buds. Inés Estrada’s dropped a zine she made, quick and dirty after her time at Comic Arts Brooklyn in 2012. “I was going to make a zine of my comics diary of Brooklyn 2012 (cus I never did) but fck it… who cares about 2012″ Now you can read it online. Inspiring, fast, six panel autobio. Salva Rubio offers a great reflection on the work of the late Jiro Taniguchi. Especially of interest given it’s a Spanish perspective on the manga titan. The theme here is the eternal return. This March, it will be the 100th anniversary of the first issue of “TBO”, the popular illustrated magazine that gave name to Spanish comics, tebeos. To commemorate this the newly published, Antoni Guiral‘s 100 Años de TBO, tells the history of a publication which passed the great names of twentieth century Catalan comic. Take a tour of a century “TBO”. (In Catalan!) Bas Backer ha hecho un relato hermoso de su paso por Buenos Aires, el encuentro con amigos y actividades de Chicks On Comics. A nice report, filled with photos and drawings of time passing through the amazing Chicks on Comics show and Buenos Aires. A nice long distance relationship travelogue, haha! ————————————————————————————————— Berliac offers some fresh cuts over at Fumettologica, the central axis of the conversation being his work editing and contributing to Kuš! #25’s Gaijiin Manga. Short and sweet but goes in deep with his thoughts on gekiga, the western gaze and his own evolution as an author. How do you explain the current popularity of Gekiga in the western comics scene? Now they’re getting published and before they were not, simple as that. If you want to dig deeper, I guess the publishers finally realized that since the late seventies, Western adults grew up with manga and anime, and we just needed a cultural approval from well-respected publishers, to re-unite with our childhood love without feeling embarassed about it. Put that together with the concept that publishers from liberal countries have of what a Graphic-Novel is supposed to be (basically realistic stories about the suffering of people from far away countries, to be enjoyed from the comfort of our sofas), and there you go: Gekiga provides us with both. Here lies another reason why I like to call my own work Gaijin-Gekiga: if Gekiga was the Japanese expression, in a dramatic comics form, of their own collective anxieties in times of hypercapitalism, then I can undoubtedly say that the main focus of my work is the very same one, only about my own place and time, of course. I have the impression that not many well-known cartoonists are really talking about what’s going on right here and now, on this side of the world, on a collective scale. In Graphic-Novels, all I see is either boring lectures about foreign or past war conflicts from an “objective”, Western point of view, or feel-good stories about individual self-improvement, and in the most successful cases, a combination of the two. These stories are just two different ways of patting our backs and telling ourselves how great we Westerners are. Gekiga was a beautiful, dignifying way to accept the crushing reality of post-war defeat. Western narratives of today, on the contrary, insist on that we’re on the winning side, even when our reality clearly points to the opposite (see Donald Trump). I’m not saying there’s dignity in being a loser, but in seeing reality for what it is. Drama without exaggeration. That is the essence of Gekiga. Now that a few months has passed from the release of the Kus, can you say that the anthology also served as a bond between the artists of this possible new western manga scene? Bonds among artists always exist, but maybe not explicitely. to the point not even we are aware of it. Many of the artists involved discovered each other’s work in that issue of š! As I said in another interview, it is not the artists’ task or responsablity to make that bond intelligible for the public, but the publishers’, gallerists’, and journalists’. As an author, I’m not too concerned about it. As a co-editor of š! #25, I certainly hope we provided a grain of sand to this cause. ————————————————————————————————— The Spring Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers is starting soon! The semester has a rolling start date, but it will officially kick off on March 7th. We will continue taking applications past that date – Frank is always willing to make it work for your schedule. Just apply! The course is 8 weeks long – 500 bux – payment plans are available. More details can be found HERE. Email santoroschoolATgmail to apply ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 3-1-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-1-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-1-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 3-1-2017 – by Juan Fernandez Share this page: [...]

01/25/2016

Posted on January 25, 2016January 25, 2016 by Juan Fernández

Hello world,

Sophie Yanow‘s got a new comic, Cozy out in Quebec’s comics magazine, PLANCHES. It’s a wordless, blizzard time revelry comic. Good reading for all of you out there buried under a couple of feet on the East Coast.

Berliac‘s announced his latest project. SADBØI will be 128 pages long, and will initially be published by Norwegian publisher Jippi Forlag sometime this summer. English version will come out sometime after. Here’s where Berliac’s head is at with SADBØI.

Social structures shape the individual into what we call “goodness”, and when it fails, correctional punishment is employed. Is goodness a real choice, then? In a world where Evil is the last bit of freedom left, SADBØI will heroically choose it, and craftfully make it visible to the eyes of everyone.

Connor Stechschulte‘s second installment of Generous Bosom is now available for purchase through his online shop. He’s got a special package deal for anyone interested in purchasing Generous Bosom 1 and 2.

Matt Seneca has said of GB1, “It’s a beautiful piece of work. It’s tough to make work better than this.” and “Probably the best sex scene I’ve seen in a comic in terms of realism. It’s perfect.”

Heidi Macdonald of the Beat called GB2 the “most mindboggling comic of the year”.

Dazzling, risograph printed erotic psychological thriller about the rain-soaked night a stranded motorist is forced to spend with a strange, isolated couple. Well worth your time.

Sophie Goldstein‘s made the second installment of her 3-part House of Women series available for digital download on Gumroad. Science fiction meets psycho-sexual drama. Mysterious, tense and expansive.

On the Pittsburgh front, I’m happy to relay the official communiqué that Comics Workbook’s latest publication, Zona, is now available for purchase on the school store. Zona #01 2016 – includes the work of Gabriella Tito, Harry Moyer, Jack Brougham, and Frank Santoro. 44 pages of comics – check it out HERE

Pittsburgh Comics Salon – Saturday Comics Studio Jan 23 2016 Pittsburgh. Great turn out this past Saturday. Good vibes. Real cozy. Comics makers of all ability levels came out and held it down. Had lots of quality books for folks to peruse and copy from. Worked on modular comics composition. I was afraid that the snow was going to keep everyone at home, but folks came out full force.

-juan fernandez

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in News

Juan Fernández

Posted on January 25, 2016January 25, 2016

Explore

04/28/2017

Sally IngrahamApril 28, 2017NewsSally here to close the week, joined by some of the cornerstones, gatekeepers, and “keepers of the flame” of the comics community – Lucy Caswell, Caitlin McGurk, Karen Berger, Dash Shaw, Frank Santoro, and more! ————————————————————————————————— Some weeks you get to meet and hang out with your heroes. Here in Pittsburgh we were lucky enough to not only get a screening of Dash Shaw’s new film My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, but Dash himself came to town for a few days. He and Frank Santoro, who created the main exterior background paintings for the film, were interviewed onstage before a special screening at the Row House Cinema, and then there was a meet and greet after the film (photos from the event are above). I had been eagerly anticipating seeing the film, and it exceeded all my expectations. It’s beautiful and funny, with characters that I immediately identified with. I plan to see it in the theater several more times before it leaves town, and will be harassing all my friends into going as well. It plays in Pittsburgh at the Row House Cinema April 28th-May 4th. For a complete list of showings around the country, visit the official website HERE. It was cool to hear Dash talk about this type of animation and storytelling, dig into his inspirations and plans for future projects, and hear Frank’s take on being part – for a unique moment – of an animation “studio”. Most of the comics community in Pittsburgh came out for the special screening. This support of Dash and Frank was well deserved, of course – but I was even more excited that one of my comics students – a 9 year old boy – was in the audience as well. I heard afterward how much he liked the film and how thrilled he was to see the creators in real life. I can only hope that he will be inspired to keep making his own work and really invest his energy in the things he’s passionate about. Maybe he’ll be the next torchbearer. Who knows? It’s an interesting moment in the timeline of comics history, and Dash’s film, and Frank’s school, and the Pittsburgh scene, and my 9-year old student are all part of that moment. I can’t wait to see what happens next. In the meantime, go see My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea – go meet your heroes – go make your comics. ————————————————————————————————— In other news (and following a theme here, in a way), Columbus Alive celebrates the 40th anniversary of of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum with a nice feature piece. They spoke to Lucy Caswell, founding curator of the museum, about the collection’s origins. “…Caniff himself dubbed “the keeper of the flame.” “It’s hard to go back, in a way, because people think about cartoons and comics in a very different way than they did 40 years ago,” Caswell said when asked to recall those early years, when clarity and stability were in short supply. “We were outliers. When I started, I did what all good researchers would do and tried to find out what similar people had done in similar circumstances, but I found that there were no similar circumstances. We were trying to make something new, different. But I believed it was important, and there were administrators on campus who also felt it was important. Funding was always competitive, and they — the administrators in the School of Journalism and in University Libraries — had to convince higher-ups this was something to pay for.” “We were very fortunate that Milton Caniff … lived until 1988 and was a wonderful advocate for us. I can’t emphasize how important that was,” she added.“ Read the rest of the article HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Congratulations to Caitlin McGurk, Assistant Professor and Curator for Outreach for the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum – she is the recipient of the Annual Award in Teaching Excellence for 2016 from Ohio State University! “Caitlin’s agility in teaching across a wide range of courses demonstrates her adaptability and resourcefulness in bringing the unique resources of the BICLM collections to life for many faculty and students, and for others in the local community. Her outreach role has brought increasing national attention to the resources of the BICLM and to their potential for enriching curricula and deepening community engagement, and for enhancing the creativity of students and community members themselves. “ I am as much a fan of the work Caitlin does for the comics community as I am of any of my favorite cartoonists – so thanks Caitlin, and good luck as you continue! ————————————————————————————————— John Porcellino is working hard to bring the work of Jenny Zervakis back to the attention of the comics world – he has been raising funds to print The Complete Strange Growths, 1991-1997, which he hopes to debut at CAKE this year. Jenny is one of his favorite cartoonists, and this is a publishing project that he has hoped to do for over 20 years. He writes: “Jenny Zervakis is one of the great unsung creators of 1990’s DIY comics. Her zine Strange Growths was gentle and sincere at a time when most alt-comics were loud and sarcastic. They were poetic and allusive, delving into the heart of the human experience, and they were one of my biggest influences as a cartoonist.“ John P. is currently selling old and rare copies of his own work in order to fund the printing of this book – check it out HERE. You can see work from some of the Strange Growth issues and hear another glowing opinion from Kevin Bramer over on Optical Sloth. ————————————————————————————————— Karen Berger, editor extraordinaire, is starting her own imprint – Berger Books – under the banner of Dark Horse Comics. “As founder and head of DC Entertainment’s Vertigo imprint, Karen Berger brought ambitious, outré series like “Sandman” and “Preacher” to mass audiences, helped prove that comics weren’t limited to superhero adventures and kickstarted the careers of writers like Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore.“ Karen was at DC for 30 years – she left in 2013, but is now returning – to the sound of trumpets and general fanfare. Considering that she likes “weird shit“, and that part of her incentive for returning to comics stems from the need she sees for an artistic response to the Trump election, I can only imagine her line of graphic novels are going to be exciting! “In the next few months, Berger Books will announce its first titles. “I think I’ve been known for not publishing expected stuff,” Ms. Berger said, “and I think people will see that the first few books I’m publishing are not expected.” Among the first batch of titles, she hints, are “a near-future eco-fiction love story, a psychological crime horror thriller, a personal tale of race and identity, (and) an unseen side of a notorious legendary figure.” “ The Wall Street Journal has the rest of the details – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Extra, extra! Teen Vogue featured an excerpt from Melissa Mendes‘ and Anne Elizabeth Moore‘s ongoing comic series about the water crisis in Detroit. The full series so far can be found on Truthout. The Comics Beat speaks to Mariko Tamaki about her new series Supergirl: Being Super (which features art by Joelle Jones, of Lady Killers) – apparently the new comic captures “lightening in the bottle“. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 4-28-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 4-28-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-28-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

04/17/2018

Aaron CockleApril 17, 2018NewsAaron here today with Latin American Art; Remembering Geneviève Castrée; Banksy/Zehra Doğan; Retrofit Comics 2018 Subscription ————————————————————————————————— Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 At the Brooklyn Museum through July 22: The artworks on view range from painting and sculpture to photography, video, performance, and other new mediums. Included are emblematic figures such as Lygia Pape, Ana Mendieta, and Marta Minujín, alongside lesser‐known names such as Cuban‐born abstract painter Zilia Sánchez; Colombian sculptor Feliza Bursztyn; Peruvian composer, choreographer, and activist Victoria Santa Cruz; and Argentine mixed‐media artist Margarita Paksa. The Brooklyn presentation also includes Nuyorican portraits by photographer Sophie Rivera, as well as work from Chicana graphic arts pioneer Ester Hernández, Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez, and Afro-Latina activist and artist Marta Moreno Vega. ————————————————————————————————— “Poetry seemed useless in the context of actual annihilation.” On Studio 360, Kurt Anderson talks with Phil Elverum, husband of Geneviève Castrée, who passed away in 2016, about Elverum’s recent Mount Eerie albums, which are about Castrée’s death. Her last book, A Bubble, will be published in June by D&Q. ————————————————————————————————— Zehra Doğan/Banksy Patricia Mastricolo at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund wrote about the Banksy mural protesting the imprisonment of Turkish artist and journalist Zehra Doğana few weeks back: This first night the mural was revealed, a projection of the dark painting Doğan is imprisoned for showed over the mural. Based off a photo Doğan saw, she painted the rubble of a Kurdish town, destroyed by tanks, with the Turkish flag flying over the town. She painted the tanks as surreal monsters. The Turkish government said that the painting compromised military security, even though it was based on a government photograph. ————————————————————————————————— Retrofit Comics 2018 All the Sad Songs – Summer Pierre Fashion Forecasts – Yumi Sakugawa I Love You – Sara Lautman John, Dear – Laura Lannes Our Wretched Town Hall – Eric Kostiuk Williams The Prince – Liam Cobb Survive 300 Million 1 – Pat Aulisio Survive 300 Million 2: Serpentine Captives – Pat Aulisio The Troublemakers – Baron Yoshimoto TRUMPTRUMP vol. 2: Modern Day Presidential – Warren Craghead III Understanding – Becca Tobin The Winner – Karl Stevens ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 4-17-2018 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-17-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

03/04/2016

Juan FernándezMarch 4, 2016NewsComin’ up next week stateside is the next installment of Carousel. Comics presented in all kinds of ways. hosted by R. Sikoryak. You don’t want to miss this. There’s nothing quite like Carousel. (ok,ok OTHER than Chicago’s Brain Frame). This coming Wednesday, March 9th at 7:30 PM! If you need the deal to be sweetened for you, just know Meghan Turbitt is coming to the big city SPECIFICALLY to read to you. Don’t want to let a girl down, do you? Monica Johnson has written an interesting piece on the limited criteria it takes for work to be labeled as feminist work in 2016, primarily in the world of floppy comics. Interesting ideas, though there’s a great swathe of work that has been overlooked in making the article’s claim. Read it for yourself here, the comments aren’t too terrible either. Now, just seconds from turning forty, I’m both politicized and angry, and I long for the intensity of those ’90s comics. And I look around at comics written by and about women and they seem so understated. There is still so much to be upset about—Bill Cosby for starters, or why the Angoulême festival refuses to acknowledge that women, too, make comics—yet today’s feminist comics seem much less radical, less angry, less mobilizing compared with those of decades prior. I for one would like to hear from the aggressive and hilarious Diane DiMassas and Joyce Farmers of the 2010s! Where are those attitudes? Buried deep within the metaphors of fantasy comics like Bitch Planet and Monstress? Or in mild-mannered graphic novels and memoirs like Not Funny Ha Ha or Honor Girl? There’s a great conversation going on over on twitter, started by Celine Loup, focusing specifically on whose work Johnson’s short article is overlooking. If any of the names of the cartoonists mentioned are new to you, do yourself a favor and sit down with their work. https://t.co/OQQn1u3Gct I wanna talk about this with other women who would call their comics feminist. Thoughts? — NAZGUL QUEEN (@celineorelse) March 4, 2016 On the 4, 5 and 6 of March (this weekend, sleepy heads), the 7th edition of GRAF, Barcelona’s festival celebratings comics author and independent publishing, will be going down. A meeting of authors, publishers and independent groups that represent creative scene today more vibrant and fresh . Interestingly, for the first time GRAF will feature independent publishers from abroad. In total, there will be over 80 exhibitors with all kinds of fanzines, comics and prints for sale. On top of all that GRAF has got an extensive program of activities: round tables, meetings with authors, presentations of new books or comics and fanzines workshops for children and adults. Good stuff if you’re in Spain. You can stay posted with the happenings by keeping up with their twitter: @Grafcomic [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/249586417″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] The inimitable Leslie Stein was just on Inkstuds. They talked about her current return to working on Eye of the Majestic Creature, her painting and watercolor, took questions from twitter, discussed working as a bartender, her friendship with Noah Van Sciver and favorite winter birds. Fill your ears with Leslie’s optimism. You probably know this already, but it bears repeating: no one’s going to make the world you want to see for you. You have to do it yourself. It gets tiring, though and sometimes you need a little bit of reassurance that you’re not alone in this endeavor. Alice Bag and Allison Wolfe have your back. Listen to them chat about their the importance of having control of the means of productions in a societal context and more broadly what it means to have lived a life with zines at their centers. Very cool talk. No one could have known that when struggling illustrator R. Crumb self-published Zap Comix #1 in 1968 and began hawking copies in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, history would be made. By the arrival of issue #4 (1969) and Crumb’s Zap collective (S. Clay Wilson, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffiin, Gilbert Shelton, Robert Williams, and Spain Rodriguez) fully formed, the artists had broken every Comics Code taboo imaginable — and then some. Zap spawned an entire underground comix industry, establishing an adult market for the comics medium that, in turn, set new standards for creators’ rights and ownership that one day would liberate mainstream comic books from the tyrannical grip of corporate publishers, paving the way for literary work by the likes of Art Spiegelman, Lynda Barry, Chris Ware, and Daniel Clowes, among others. The underground is now canon, who woulda thunk it 40 years ago? Tonight is the opening reception of the big new ZAP comics exhibit at the Society of Illustrators. Underground junkies and all of you interested in the medium’s history in the USA, you won’t want to miss this. The exhibit runs through May 7th. Learn more here! Daniel Clowes and Nicole Rudick sat down on Wednesday to talk at The Strand in NYC. Clowes is on tour to promote his latest work, Patience. This is a great, widely spanning conversation between 2 deep thinkers. Great to draw or do the dishes to. Comics makers, take note around 20 minutes in for some interesting thoughts on constraints and their relationship to comics composition. Short Run, in Seattle, the annual curated festival which focuses on indie comix and self-published, small press, and handmade books of all kinds from the Pacific Northwest and around the world has some exciting news for ya: Applications for Short Run’s Dash Grant are now being accepted. With the Dash Grant you can: receive a $250 grant to produce your work to premiere at Short Run 2016 have free access to Fogland Studios silkscreen lab in Seattle to print your covers and optional instruction the week of the festival receive mentorship from comic artist Trevor Alixopulos via email have your artwork featured in our annual group art show at Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery receive a free half table at the festival More information is available over at Short Run Seattle’s site. Hop to it. Thought Bubble, the Leeds comics festival is taking applications for people to exhibit. Think you want to exhibit? Know of someone that this would be good for? Check out their site. Last but not least, there was a great sub of the 4th episode of Urasawa Naoki no Manben with author Takoa Saito that I came across thanks to @royalboiler but alas, it’s been taken down to copyright issues! The fourth episode peeks behind the curtain of Saitō’s workplace, where he has labored away at Golgo 13 for 47 years. Fingers crossed another sub floats to the surface… For now you can dig into the first episode. The first episode looks at Akiko Higashimura (Princess Jellyfish) as she draws her warring states era manga Yukibana no Tora (“Snow Tiger”), emphasizing her speed and the teamwork with her large team of assistants. Well worth your time if you’d like to learn more about the living history and craft of the wide world of the manga-ka. Urasawa Naoki no Manben (which, roughly translated, means “Naoki Urasawa‘s Manga Exertions”) is hosted by veteran manga artist Naoki Urasawa (Monster, Pluto,20th Century Boys) and follows different artists each episode, watching them draw their manga from scratch and exploring what differentiates their styles. Amazing show, with a great format for comics makers by comics makers. Hope that gives you enough to feast your eyes an ears on for the weekend. until next time, jf Share this page: [...]

10/31/2016

Juan FernándezOctober 31, 2016NewsJuan here with the good stuff: Chris Diaz photographs CXC 2016; Connor Willumsen’s LICAF report; interview with NYRB Comics Editor, Gabriel Winslow-Yost; Rob Clough on Patreon; Maggie Umber on great horned owls; Tom Spurgeon interviews Gabe Fowler; thoughts on CAB + APE. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡Want to see some of North America’s finest cartoonists? Chris Diaz has shared some photographs of the greats who showed up at CXC in the Diaz Archive here on the site – Seth, Sacha Mardou, Charles Burns and many more! This is just part 1 of 2, so stay tuned! ————————————————————————————————— ⚡Connor Willumsen’s LICAF report is live on the site. Mint Cakes, sheep-gazing, his workshop experiences, and Frank’s “intuitive” driving. All detailed in full. Hilarious and inspiring. You’re not going to want to miss this one! It is a struggle to reflect on anything without first commenting on the unfathomable number of sheep abstractly pacing between an ancient network of low stone walls up in the Lake District of northern England. I guess I saw, by virtue of my eyes being open, over a thousand sheep over the weekend. I became self conscious and learned to be discreet about my developing preoccupation with photographing them. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ The Arkansas International has an interview with NYRB Comics Editor, Gabriel Winslow-Yost. NYRB’s comics publishing in the last year have been a delightful curation over forgotten cartooning gems. All of which have been especially visceral. A hell of a reprint project! Perhaps related to the above — what do you see as the mission of the imprint? Our main inspiration is the NYRB Classicsseries, which we’ve both been huge fans of for a long time. It’s brought hundreds of absolutely wonderful books into English and back into print over the past decade-plus, and built an audience that is adventurous and open — readers who will take a chance on books from all sorts of times and places, and in all sorts of styles. The idea behind NYR Comics is simply that something similar could be done for comics. Because of the somewhat tortured history of comics publishing in the US, there are a lot of fantastic works that have fallen way out of print, or never really even got into print, or were never translated into English —but that are still vital and exciting. And that have an audience out there, waiting for them, if only they knew… ————————————————————————————————— ⚡Rob Clough has launched a Patreon. Clough is one of the most attentive small press comics reviewers out there. He can contextualize even the most seemingly ephemeral publication. It’s incredible. AND he makes the valiant effort to review the work of cartoonists and comics makers whose work has usually never been reviewed. I encourage you to support his writing through patreon. We’ve gotten to read his excellent writing for years for free, it’s time we support his craft. I’ve been writing comics criticism for fifteen years now, in places like Savant, The Comics Journal, Cicada, Sequart, Foxing Quarterly, Sequential Magazine and the Poopsheet Foundation. Of course, my home base for a decade has been my own High-Low site: http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com I’ve been providing criticism about comics from across the alternative/indy spectrum, including shedding light on new artists, short-run minicomics, YA comics, and of course the major releases from Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, etc. Anyone who’s been following my blog for the past six months has seen that I’ve been adding reviews five days a week. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡Maggie Umber has cooked up a cool little reflection on the development of her latest long-form comics work, the Sound of Snowfalling. Learn more about the whole process over on Medium. In my tenth grade biology class we did the usual things: dissected frogs, identified birds from slide shows, and raised plants from seedlings in paper towels. It seemed like the typical high school science experience until we were asked to write a research paper in first person from an animal’s perspective. My imagination went into overdrive. The idea took ahold of me like nothing has since. For three weeks in tenth grade I became a great horned owl. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡CAB is right around the corner this weekend in Brooklyn, NY! To get you into high gear for the comics freak explosion that will sound descend upon Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, you’ll want to check out this interview with head festical organizer, Gabe Fowler. Thanks to Tom Spurgeon for always asking the right questions over on Comics Reporter. SPURGEON: My impression is that this year’s show was not a sure thing, and as I recall you announced a bit later than most shows might announce. Why the hesitancy? What put you over the top in terms of wanting to do another one? FOWLER: I’m basically burned out. Organizing a show by myself is a lot of work, I care about it a great deal, and it takes a lot out of me personally. I also have seen a widespread proliferation of shows since I conceived of our first show in 2009, and I have mixed feelings about it. When I initially wanted to start a show I knew it had to be something vital to the culture and a kick in the ass.. I don’t want to beat a dead horse. I want to make an innovative and fresh show out of nothing. Since I lack the funds or institutional support of larger festivals it becomes exhausting to create a worthwhile show while I’m running a business and working on my own creative projects. But in the end, I love it, and I can’t not do it. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ As the latest iteration of CAB approaches, I think it serves us well to think about the constant change that these kinds of festivals take in the US. Take APE or example. The show used to be HUGE. In the early 2000s it was a juggernaut that rivaled SPX. It seemed that for everyone on the West Coast, APE was a rite of passage. Stephanie Tran‘s written a little on what it’s like today over on Women Write About Comics. It’s welcoming to new comers and is taking a different, smaller form, as demanded by the rest of the West Coast’s comics ecosystem. Interesting. It was held not in the San Jose Convention Center’s Exhibit Hall as I expected, but in its South Hall, a metal-framed structure that resembled more of a hanger than an actual hall. This turned out to be perfect for APE–unlike Heroes and Villains Fan Fest, APE spread out its exhibitors, leaving them with about a foot on each side instead of placing tables end-to-end. The setting was much more intimate and casual than Heroes and Villains, and, when coupled with the lack of a large crowd, encouraged dialogues and gave attendees the opportunity to mill around the booths and flip through a comic or look over the exhibitor’s art. According to veteran exhibitors and other attendees, the con has been getting smaller over the years (one person suggested that this was due to another independent comic fest in Berkeley though perhaps it has more to do with the SF Zine fest), but the size of APE was just right for my first time at an independent publishing expo. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡Even if you didn’t making it to one of the Comics Workbook-hosted workshops at SPX, CXC, or LICAF this year, you can still bring your comics game to a new level via thee Santoro School Handbook for Making Better Comics 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. Always available at our store HERE – free shipping worldwide! ————————————————————————————————— until next time! Juan Share this page: [...]

A Studio Visit with Jim Rugg | Part I: NINJATECH

Juan FernándezApril 18, 2016ClassesJim Rugg, creator of “Street Angel” and “Aphrodisiac” [ jimrugg.com ], shows Comics Workbook TV how he takes a story from script to final. Part I focuses on “NINJATECH”, a story from Street Angel. Video by Michael Pisano | michaelpisano.com More images of NINJATECH here: jimrugg.com/post/130097479739/copcomco-street-angel-ninjatech-to-those-who Soundtrack | Johann Sebastian Bach // Gott fähret auf mit Jauchzen, BWV 43 – 7. Aria: Er ists, der ganz allein // performed by Michel Rondeau Share this page: [...]

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