Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged emily carroll, gil roth, jen wang, kate gavino, lauren weinstein, ulli lust, yona harvey

Sally Ingraham

Posted on February 15, 2018February 16, 2018

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03/18/2016

Sally IngrahamMarch 18, 2016NewsIt was a week for brilliant interviews, with Annie Mok talking to Michael DeForge, and the Inkstuds radio show with Gilbert Hernandez. Exciting new books came out this week, and we came across an important list of female Brazilian cartoonists that you’re going to want to investigate. Here we go! ————————————————————————————————— Let’s dive right into the interview with Michael, which came to us via The Comics Journal. Annie Mok and Michael DeForge begin by talking a bit about his new book, Big Kids, which came out February 23rd 2016 from Drawn + Quarterly. “DEFORGE: I’d sort of been circling adolescence for awhile in my stories, and I guess this is the one where I’m writing about it most directly, and the allegory is like very clear… It’s a time when people are most aware of the edges of the world. Not maybe able to see them yet, but aware they’re there. For me, things stop seeming limitless—which is maybe not how—I know you’re supposed to feel invincible and boundless as a teenager, but for me, that’s when I was aware of limits everywhere. But not really sure what all of them looked like, or the shape of all of it, or how to best escape them. That to me was what Big Kids was about, seeing a little bit more of the edges of things. And sometimes what seems like a radical shift in perception ends up not being very in the end.” From there, Annie leads the conversation to touch on memory, the artistic community a cartoonist builds for themselves or stumble into, and the cliché (but necessity) of comics as therapy. They also mention the musical puppet show that Michael is working on slowly but surely, and Annie’s reaction perfectly sums up my feelings about that – “Oh my god! Aaah, so happy!” Read the whole spectacular interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Oliver East just published a new book – Take Me Back to Manchester. It’s the story of an epic walk that took place in 1872, when an elephant and his trainer trekked the 220 miles between Edinburgh and Manchester. Why? You’ll have to check out the comic. As much as it sounds delightful, the story of how it came about is equally lovely. Oliver East is the “walking cartoonist”. Before creating Take Me Back to Manchester, he followed the route of his heroes on foot across Scotland and England, walking over 20 miles a day for 10 days. In this short documentary (below) made by Simon Sylvester and Dom Bush, Oliver walks through some wonderful parts of the world, and talks about his struggles with dyslexia, how he didn’t even start drawing until he was 26, and what it was like to compose a comic in motion with the ghost of an elephant at his side. Check it out. ————————————————————————————————— The new mini kuš! #38-41 are out, which means spring is pretty much here. “The creators of the newest minis are Ingrīda Pičukāne, Tara Booth, Hanneriina Moisseinen and Aisha Franz. The comics vary from an incredibly sad war story to a super fun and wild adventure of a young woman, a broad range of stories both fictional and non-fiction and drawn in different styles both digital and hand-drawn! A great bunch of comics for new discoveries!” More details HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The latest Inkstuds interview is particularly riveting. How could it be otherwise, with the likes of Gilbert Hernandez behind the microphone?! You’re not going to want to miss this. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/249959700″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] Robin McConnell always does his research, which makes for detailed conversations that really illuminate the life and work of the people he interviews. Gilbert Hernandez can tell a story out loud just as well as he can on paper, and between the stories are loads of interesting tidbits and comments on the comics scene he helped craft from the bottom up. Great stuff. (I especially liked when he compared superheroes to screwdrivers…!) Set aside some time to listen to the whole thing, because this guy is one of the reasons we’re all making comics today. ————————————————————————————————— I have a special guest today, here with a brief bit of Brazilian comics news for you. Anna Mancini (pictured above in her studio) recently shared with me a list of some of her favorite Brazilian cartoonists – folks like Julia Balthazar and Amanda Paschoal (see pic below) – and soon she will be providing a detailed scene report for Comics Workbook. For the moment though, she’s got something else to share. Anna here, reporting: “Aline Lemos has put together a collaborative list of *all* Brazilian women comics artists – from young students to established pros. Here’s the link if you’d like to check it out – https://goo.gl/AYyde5 Aline Lemos created it aiming to bring more visibility to female cartoonists in our country, since there’s a widespread dismissal of our presence and relevance to the scene. As I have noticed from following American blogs and artists, this situation is not exclusive to our experience in Brazil – I have that recent piece by Kim O’Connor in mind, having the situations she described ring a little too familiar with the attitude of many Brazilian male cartoonists.” Thanks Anna! Check out the list she mentions, and discover the legion of women in comics in Brazil! ————————————————————————————————— That’s my Friday news for you. Have a terrific weekend and meet us back here on Monday for the latest and greatest in comics news! – Sally Share this page: [...]

11/08/2018

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

04/04/2018

Juan FernándezApril 4, 2018los Cómics / NewsRaquel Echenique, Jim Puk, y un poquito sobre El Fruto Prohibido! —————————————— Los cómics y las noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: ~ en Español y “sometimes in English” ~ Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo tienen una nueva edicion de La Polola Podcast! Las chicas conversan con Raquel Echenique acerca de sus influencias, el lugar en donde pasó su infancia, su trabajo, muestran sus referentes, hablan de su amor por el cómic y se Echenique confiesa como rabiosa, entre muchas otras cosas. ————————————————————————————————— Entrevista a Ghor Bosch (2015) – dibujado por Pablo Delcielo – publicado en Buenos Aires por Yegua ediciones. Este comic es parte de una serie de entrevistas imaginiarias, que son bastante graciosas y serias con Ghor Bosch aunque. Léanlo AQUI. ————————————————————————————————— Caricaturista colombiano ‘Matador’ deja de usar redes sociales por amenazas de muerte Julio César González, más conocido como ‘Matador’ por sus caricaturas en el diario El Tiempo, anunció en la madrugada de este martes su retiro de las redes sociales, después de haber estado en el ojo del huracán durante varias semanas luego de haber personificado al candidato uribista, Iván Duque, como un cerdo en varias de sus publicaciones. Aunque hace menos de dos semanas la Jueza Hilda María Saffon negó una tutela interpuesta contra el caricaturista por el dibujo titulado ‘Duque reflexiona’, argumentando que “la creatividad e ingenio del caricaturista no debe limitarse por quienes no comparten su opinión”, los simpatizantes del Centro Democrático y el expresidente Uribe no han cesado de expresarle su descontento con insultos y agresiones en medio de la contienda electoral. Léanlo todo en El Espectador ————————————————————————————————— Jim Pluk – @jimpluk Estaré publicando en las historias de mi Instagram ( @jimpluk ) algunos cómics de autores contemporáneos que recomiendo personalmente, por si quieren indagar más sobre estos, tanto Colombianos como extranjeros. Estos posts estarán bajo el hashtag #leacomix y #hagacomix ————————————————————————————————— Por qué lo llaman vagina cuando quieren decir vulva – Elizabeth Casillas Puede que sea uno de los tebeos más controvertidos que vayas a leer este año, y no precisamente por decir sandeces. La historietista sueca Liv Strömquist firma El fruto prohibido (Reservoir Books, 2018), un cómic que repasa la historia cultural de la vulva con argumentación teórica pero, sobre todo, mucho humor. Anuncios de compresas o tampones que recurren, en exceso, a las palabras “limpia” y “segura”. Señores que se preocupan, en exceso, de lo que suele denominarse «el órgano sexual femenino». Autoridades, organizaciones, periódicos, médicos y demás organismos empeñados, en exceso, de producir (des)información sobre el sexo. Y así sucesivamente, Liv Strömquist termina enumerando una serie de cosas que están mal (muy mal) en nuestra sociedad en lo que a la mujer y su sexo se refiere. Léanlo todo en REVISTA CACTUS ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 4-4-2018 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-4-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

09/25/2017

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

07/19/2017

Juan FernándezJuly 19, 2017los Cómics / NewsEmpezamos el día con Sole Otero; La Polola EN VIVO; Vanesa R. Del Rey y Jordie Bellaire; Laura Vazquez; Pablo Vigo; Las charlas del Tenderete; Carmen de Mairen; y los tebeos de Cómics Workbook! ————————————————————————————————— “Oscilando entre claros y oscuros, entre momentos luminosos y agobiantes” Sole Otero charla con Micaela Soquiransky en Indie Hoy sobre su novela grafica más reciente, Poncho Fue: MS: Hay mucha síntesis en tu dibujo, pero a la vez es un trabajo súper gestual… SO: Esto tiene un poco que ver con que trabajo hace más de 15 años haciendo libros para chicos. Esos rasgos de dibujo infantil ya me quedaron y no se me van más. Supongo que ya es como un agregado del libro que una historia que es más bien oscura tenga ese contraste con el dibujo. Y en el libro me salió así porque yo dibujo así. De hecho ahora se me ocurrió hacer una historia que quiero que estéticamente sea oscura y me estoy empezando a proyectar de guionista para otra persona. Ese dibujo más macabro, estilo Edward Gorey, que a mí me gustaría para esa historia, no me sale. MS: ¿Y qué autores considerás influencias tuyas? SO: Mis influencias no son solamente historietas. Cuando arranqué con esta historia pensaba en Nick Hornby, por ejemplo, el de Alta fidelidad o En picado. Me gusta cómo analiza los vínculos entre las personas y trata de encontrar algo positivo en las cosas medio hostiles. También me gustan Boris Vian, Ítalo Calvino, Helen Oyeyemi, Sofia Coppola, Miyazaki, Murakami, Tezuka, Manu Larcenet, Marjane Satrapi… PowerPaola, por más que sea una amiga, también es una gran influencia. Como dibujantes también me gustan Isabelle Arsenault y Olivier Tallec. Ya no los miro tanto, pero en otro momento fueron los que me ayudaron a forjar un poco más el estilo. Un montón de cosas; hasta hice manga durante un tiempo… quería dibujar como Masakazu Katsura. Fui pasando por un montón de estilos; hubo una época en la que cambiaba de manera de dibujar de un año a otro. Léanlo todo AQUI. ————————————————————————————————— Cómics y 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 la dibujante argentina Sole Otero EN VIVO en la presentación de sus libros “Poncho fue” y “La Pelusa de los días” en Galería Plop!. Hablamos de como se gestaron esos proyectos, sus vivencias personales versus la ficción de sus historias, compartió con los asistentes sus procesos, bocetos e ideas, proyectos para el futuro y mucho más. Vanesa R. Del Rey y Jordie Bellaire hablan con Multiversity Comics sobre su nueva colaboración, “Redlads” – Brujeria y politica en tinta. Revista Kamandi les ofrece una reseña crítica de Laura Vazquez sobre “Lo Salvaje” de Pablo Vigo. Tenderete, Festival de autoedición gráfica y sonora por excelencia de Valencia ha grabado y compartido las charlas y los debates del festival 2017. Todos los videos estan en línea (Me resalta la charla: “Anarco: Gráfica y movimientos sociales“, un grupo de Ilustradores en debate.) “La mujer perfecta: tiene pene y tiene teta”: Elizabeth Casillas habla aquí sobre la biografía en cómic de Carmen de Mairena en Revista Cactus. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-19-2017 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

02/16/2018

Posted on February 15, 2018February 16, 2018 by Sally Ingraham

Sally here with comics and comments from Lauren Weinstein, Emily Carroll, Ulli Lust, and Yona Harvey – and much more!

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Lauren Weinstein is the most recent guest on Gil Roth’s Virtual Memories Show.

“Village Voice cartoonist Lauren Weinstein joins the show to talk about the balancing act of making comics. We get into how she integrates the political and the personal, finds humor alongside near-tragedy, and deals with the temptation to do self-help/identity comics.“

They also talk motherhood and comics-making, teaching comics, and other challenges of navigating the working cartoonist’s life. Listen to the episode HERE.

You can get a copy of Lauren’s first collection of the Normal Person comics that run in Village Voice HERE. Her most recent strip dealt with Valentines Day…

Find more of the Normal Person comics HERE!

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From *Speak: the Graphic Novel* drawn by Emily Carroll

Emily Carroll has adapted the incredible YA novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (which came out in 1999). I read this book when I was a teenager and it has stuck with me. I’ll be curious to see how it translates into the comic form, but a story that is about a girl not speaking should work pretty well – and Emily Carroll’s imagery seems to be up for the visual task. Paste Magazine has an exclusive preview of the book HERE.

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A page from *Voices in the Dark* by Ulli Lust

There is an excerpt on Lit Hub from Voices in the Dark, the graphic novel by Ulli Lust that came out last year (based on Marcel Beyer’s The Karnau Tapes). Check out a few pages of the comic HERE (one that Publishers Weekly said “transcended” the source material) and get a copy of the book HERE.

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Yona Harvey, writer on two Black Panther spinoff series

Yona Harvey, poet and English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, continues to talk about her experience as the writer on two comic book stories that were part of the Black Panther series.

” “My work — poetry, essays, teaching and comics — primarily aims to make Black women’s lives visible, vibrant and recognizable for other Black women, but I also want my writing to speak to women of all backgrounds,” said Harvey, who calls comic-book writing the unparalleled challenge of her career. “Writing for a comic book takes an unbelievable level of cohesion between the writers and the illustrators. As a poet, accustomed to writing in isolation, that took some getting used to. At the same time, I’ve always loved visual art. So, the biggest joy of the experience was seeing those amazing illustrated pages come together every few weeks.”“

As Black Panther, the latest Marvel movie offering, comes out this weekend, Yona Harvey sees this as a promising moment.

” “Literature should reflect the face of the world in which we live. Comics have always had a diverse readership and the books should reflect that,” said Harvey, who is currently working on a nonfiction collection of essays on depression and mental illness as well as other Marvel projects. “This era in the comic book industry is opening doors for a diverse set of artists and writers, and that is beautiful to see and be a part of. It is as though comics and mainstream media in general is waking up to the imagination, creativity and economic influence of people of color. The Black Panther franchise was at the very beginning of that.”“

Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged emily carroll, gil roth, jen wang, kate gavino, lauren weinstein, ulli lust, yona harvey

Sally Ingraham

Posted on February 15, 2018February 16, 2018

Explore

08/06/2018

Caleb OrecchioAugust 6, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with early morning thoughts and other news. ————————————————————————————————— “Sometimes I think that I know too much.” Talking to a friend recently while he was visiting Pittsburgh, we discussed this feeling of knowing “too much” about comics. The thought seems silly in retrospect. Obviously you can’t know too much about comics, but the breadth of history and accessibility of the medium can be overwhelming. We asked ourselves: Should I try to draw like Jaime Hernandez? Should I try to write like Alan Moore? Should I learn to paint? Will I ever be as good as my heroes? Who is better, Ditko or Kirby? Ware or Mazzucchelli? Bushmiller or Schulz? Fisher or Herriman? Crane or Caniff? Does it matter? Will there ever be another publisher like PictureBox? Was Moebius actually a good cartoonist? Do these pants make my ass look fat? Have you been eating your vegetables? Do you watch gladiator movies? We are frustrated to find that our work does not live up to our knowledge. “It’s a slow process,” we have to remind ourselves. “But Mazzucchelli was working at Marvel while still in college! And Trevor Von Eeden started working for DC on his own character when he was 17! And don’t get me started on Xaime!” Hahahaha! We had a big laugh at the expense of our lack of confidence. What else can we do? Quit? We put the success of our heroes aside, and went back to our drawing boards. ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Matt Seneca wrote about the BWS classic Weapon X over on TCJ.com. Speaking of The Comics Journal, you might know by now that it is coming back as a printed object (separate from TCJ.com). AND Nemo is coming back too! Rob Clough reviews the new King-Cat on High-Low. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

10/11/2017

Juan FernándezOctober 11, 2017NewsReflections on the existing comics festival paradigm in the United States + your daily strips from Comics Workbook! ————————————————————————————————— Juan here: Expanding the Festival Tool Kit – 2017 has been floating around the internet since Monday and people have been chiming in their thoughts, reflecting on the existing comics festival paradigm. Warts and all. Seeing as how the goal of this post on Comics Workbook was to start a conversation, I’d like to keep that conversation going today. I just came back from CXC 2017 and I am still bathing in its warmth. It’s a good feeling. As I do around this time of the year, I’ve been thinking about the future of comics events in America. How we move into that future. I’m typing out loud, so forgive me for dreaming too big. Comics, as we engage with them today in the United States’ existing festival ecosystem, are facing a cultural choking point. There’s a huge role that comics can and should be playing in broader cultural discussions. But they’re not and our Festivals have something to do with this. It’s 2017 and it is essential to reframe the discussion of comics shows. Comics making and comics reading practices need more breathing room. To grow. To continue expanding. We need to nurture interdisciplinary approaches to experiencing comics. We need our festivals to make this their guiding principle. Read it here. ————————————————————————————————— Rob Clough has posted his reflections on CXC over on The Comics Journal. They touch on many of the things I bring up in the Toolkit, with the focus being on CXC. Check it out: This gets to the heart of what should make a successful comics show. Whatever local resources are available, make sure to use them. If you have a good local comics scene, make sure to include it. If there are beautiful or unusual venues available, take advantage of them. If there’s a local university nearby interested in comics, get their support. If the organizers have ways to incorporate arts other than comics, by all means one should do this. Mixing music, zines, video games, photography, or other arts into the event has been successful for many. Programming should be more than a distraction; it should be carefully considered and the heart of your show. Keep your ambitions low to start, don’t look to make money, and consider getting sponsorships and/or crowdfunding to cover your costs instead of passing it on to the artists and attendees. Below are some thoughts I’d like to highlight from comments here and over on Facebook. They’re loose and scattered but they offer good starting points to several discussions: Hold shows in a nice bar with some music, have a big comic car rally and everyone pull up and sell them out of the trunk of your car, have it at a train station, We keep talking about people reading comics more, well, it we’re only selling them in the same old places, what do we expect. Make it more a part of society, not just social media. – Phil Dokes The Caption Show in the U.K. had the kind of format you’re talking about, you’re free to interact, go to workshops, listen to talks and hangout in the bar and at the end of the show you get a wad of cash from sales at the big mutual table. I went twice and it was beautiful. Location was a big part of it, on the banks of the river in Oxford, England. – Mardou The fear on the part of an organizer of of course is of course that comics makers won’t attend a festival that they are not tabling at. It’s too foreign a concept to many comics makers. They might balk at the idea of having to be involved with programming as opposed to hand selling their books. So, one idea proposed is to make the exhibition aspect of the fest to be geared towards book debuts. The festival becomes an event for press. In such an ecosystem, everyone in local and national press knows that if they want to interview artists, this is where they do it. Like a “Comics-Cannes”. CXC is doing this well, already in its third year. While it’s true that SPX is where a lot of people shoot to debut books, that’s not the focus in the market place. For the most part it’s a free for all. If a festival handled this in a way that was considered across the board… that’d be interesting. – Juan Fernandez Two of the big keys for the future: 1. shows held in places with academic institutions willing to help fund aspects of the show; 2. shows held in places with city councils that earmark money toward the arts. – Rob Clough One other thing that I wrote about in my upcoming article that I think Juan would agree with–simply cloning the flea market +/- some programming model in every city ignores the unique resources that those cities might have available. When putting on a show, it’s important to tap into every local resource possible, be it a library, a university, a unique venue, a blended arts scene, a vibrant downtown, a monthly art walk, a great local comics shop, etc. – Rob Clough creating better transparency about the application process. Some shows are great about this, but others are inconsistent in their messaging. Of course this is tied in to Juan’s point about how a show deals with increased applications and growth. – Whit Taylor I think that The Projects’ “show store” idea (was) a good one, but anecdotally at least 1-2 of the guests felt like they missed out on the part where they interact with the fans/may have had softer sales because of this.The Projects wasn’t really “about” selling books- more about getting artists in dialog and collaboration, but I do feel like something similar that also had dedicated signing times might be a good balance. – Zack Soto After reading the article, I’d have to say that the only reason Short Run wasn’t singled out as part of the way of the future is that the author hasn’t attended. They are fast becoming the hub of the Seattle scene because of their year long programming and outreach. I also think it’s weird that TCAF is listed as “the future” (I agree in many ways) but TCAF is just as much a flea market show about collecting the hot new books by the hot new creators as any other show. Maybe more than most! – Zack Soto That’s a good point about the confusion with seeing TCAF as the future – It’s confusing because it has one of the “hottest” show room floors for buying books out of most show imo – for me the future oriented aspect is the programmatic one with TCAF – In the ways that they link up with cultural embassies from different countries to put together exhibitions and to bring guests to the show + use the city as a campus. CAB does this too but their center of gravity has hovered close to the gymnasium flea market + the gaming/comics/cartooning programming – and the educational panels earlier in the week. There’s also the aspect of how the programming starts up a month or so in advance with happenings across Toronto and then builds up steam for the main weeekend. – Juan Fernandez It would be awesome if someday there was a grand database indexing each individual archive. So if I typed in “Supermonster 12”, it would tell me which archives had physical copies, and where digital copies existed. So much art has disappeared from my generation of cartoonists (1987-2000, roughly), the last generation prior to the internet. That’s why projects like John P. collecting Jenny Zervakis’ book are so important. – Rob Clough I think every good show should consider having a gallery space associated with it. The Laura Park show associated with CXC was eye-opening, but it doesn’t have to be in a formal institution. We did this at DICE, and while it got a little clunky, it helped connect people with original art in a indirect, non-transactional manner. (And people could sell art if they wanted.) – Rob Clough What do you think? ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-11-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 10-11-2017 – by Juan Fernandez ————————————————————————————————— Caleb Orecchio – 10-11-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/24/16

Juan FernándezOctober 24, 2016NewsJuan here with Comics Workbook’s ongoing CXC and LICAF coverage; my own thoughts on strip cartooning; HTML Flowers’ No Visitors – Issue One; Anya Davidson interviewed by Paste Magazine; a shout out to Good Comics by Kim; The Economist takes a look at the power of comics journalism; a Pepe oriented call to action from Matt Furie; Robyn Chapman soliciting stories about challenges or financial woes tabling at North American comics shows; Comics Assistant Professor Job opening at CCAD. One week out and we’re still thinking about CXC on our end! It was a hell of a weekend. Reports and thoughts seeded by CXC have been coming in left and right. I’ve wrangled them all for your convenience. Check them out and if you like what you read, consider making CXC part of your comics adventures in 2017. Here’s what we’ve got for you: The collective blow by blow take on the CXC experience, think of it as a Master post, if you will! Sacha Mardou’s personal CXC adventures Juan Fernandez’s (me ;)) CXC-inspired thoughts on expanding the “comics festival toolkit”. Kurt Ankeny’s post-CXC thoughts Alyssa Berg shares her first convention experience Caleb Orecchio’s detailed and hilarious tale of his CXC experience CXC 2016: 3 Questions for the Crew ⚡Frank and Niall Breen have taken some time to reflect on their experiences in Kendal during the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. You can check those out here to find out why if you’re anywhere near the UK, you’re going to want to add LICAF to your comics appreciation schedule next year. The Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2016 report by Frank Santoro Niall Breen on LICAF 2016 ⚡ On my end, I’ve been thinking about 4 panel comics. A lot. Reading them, drawing them, teaching them… Through all those thoughts,one that I keep coming back to is that of openness of narrative. In today’s cultural landscape of fractured narrative and more broadly the idea of narrative collapse, I’m finding I’m interested in constellations of narrative. Non-linear experiences through a narrative world. Just as how comics creates fertile liminal spaces between panels, it’s my belief that comic strips have the potential to foster inviting spaces between individual strips. No large structures, just small moments. Some link together. Many don’t. Think Cul de Sac, Moomin, Macanudos. All that said, I’m excited to announce that come Mid-November I’ll have a weekday comic strip going live online. I tried the experiment of Daily Comics from 2013-2014. But I fell off that horse. That was at the Center for Cartoon Studies. After I graduated from the Center for Cartoon Studies I had to transition back into a more regular pattern of life. Life’s commitments made it very hard to find that time. I’ve used these past two years to work on different forms and to experiment with technique. I realized that when it comes to comics, I’m here for the bliss of creation. The strip is where I feel that bliss most strongly. I’m ready and I hope you are too! ⚡ It’s exciting to see that The Economist is running a piece on the power and vitality of comics journalism in the current news media environment. It’s great to see the ascendancy of work like Sacco’s and Glidden’s happen real time. Comics journalism is nothing new. It has been around for decades, kept alive by such talented artists as Joe Sacco, who has used the medium to depict everything from a war-torn town in the Gaza Strip to the Eastern Bosnian war. But it has only been in the last few years that it has really started to find its place in the mainstream media. The Nib, founded in September 2013, consists entirely of comics, many of which contain journalism and non-fiction. It has published more than 2,000 works on its website and released a popular 300-page book of its best offerings. The Cartoon Picayune has been around even longer—since April 2011—and showcases a variety of comics journalism online as well as in its yearly publication, which it offers to readers for $4. Even some of the more established publications, such as the New York Times, are making use of the format. In May, it published Patrick Chappatte’s moving five-part piece that takes an in-depth look at the lives of four death row inmates. It is surprising, in the age of tight newspaper budgets and the 24-hour news cycle, that comics journalism is thriving. Ms Glidden says it’s because “it can make people stop and take notice.” Everyone is constantly bombarded by so many images and text that they can simply grow numb to all of the information being thrown their way. It helps that comics journalism is still novel to many people; its format encourages people to take an extra minute to fully consider the information being presented. ⚡ I wanted to share a short and sweet letter from Matt Furie: Dear friends, I need your help making positive pepe the frog memes to battle against evil trolls: Please make a kid-friendly pepe in your style and send it to me at: hashtagsavepepe@gmail.com I’m creating a positive pepe artist database, so include your name. also, please share nice pepe’s with the hashtag: #savepepe thanks! -matt ⚡ Don’t miss this juicy interview with Anya Davidson over on Paste that goes into her work on Band for Life! Paste: I think that love for your characters really shows in the work. A lot of these characters—and it was what really struck me about School Spirit, which was the first work of yours that I encountered—already feel distinct and fully formed when you first meet them. I’d be curious to know more about your process, especially for something serialized like this. How much do you plan, how much just comes from working with them for a few strips, etc.? Davidson: I had a story arc for Band for Life, but I wrote the strips week to week. It kept the project fresh and spontaneous. Sometimes I’d write a few weeks ahead when I knew there was a thread I wanted to draw out. I had a lot of fun working that way. Lovers in the Garden, the book I just finished for Retrofit Comics, was scripted start to finish before I put pen to paper. And my next book is going to be fully scripted, too. For a graphic novel, in my case, just so I can keep everything straight, and so I can hone dialogue, I really prefer scripting. But the strip form uniquely gave me the freedom to improvise. Every cartoonist has their preferred methods—there’s no right way. As far as character development, all my characters are me. I went to see George Saunders speak and a woman asked him how he was able to write the adolescent girl so well in his short story “Victory Lap,” and he said, “Because she’s me.” I also think about people I know: their mannerisms and speech patterns and personal histories. So all of my characters have elements of friends, acquaintances and myself put in a blender. And I like to drop people into stories as they’re happening. I want people to feel like they’ve been dropped in a world that is fully formed—like the story started before they got there. I think that’s most engaging, most surprising. ⚡ If you’re a comics educator that is looking for a new opportunity, check out this job opening at CCAD – Assistant Professor – Comics & Narrative Practice, Illustration ⚡ I want to give the great Robyn Chapman of Paper Rocket Comics a signal boost for her “poll”. She is looking for your thoughts about challenges or financial woes tabling at North American comics shows. She does a great job at compiling small press and minicomics trends in her zine, The Tiny Report. Hey, micro-publishers. I’m looking for a quote or two about the challenges of tabling at conventions. I’d be happy to hear numbers or about financial woes. You can remain anonymous. Please PM me in the next few days if you’re interested. robertaraechapman@gmail.com ⚡ I want to give a shout out to Good Comics by Kim Joo Ha. <3 Kim’s always turning me onto the good stuff via their posts. Kim makes it easier to find art comics and wild zines in this crazy fractured hyperactive internet mediated comics landscape. What a godsend… If you don’t follow their twitter or the Good Comics by Kim blog, I’d check that out. I don’t know how they stay on top of everything, but that doesn’t keep me from appreciating their eye on comics or their writing… Don’t sleep on Kim! Until next time! Juan Share this page: [...]

08/30/2018

Caleb OrecchioAugust 30, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here. I think about Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli all the time and I know you do too. ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— Once I read a comic book At midnight, 2009, Asterios Polyp, the name of it, The Petty Bickering Deities Strike again (on the Page) Yes ma’am life never gets tired of resurrecting ————————————————————————————————— ———————————————————— Cement Mixer – 8-30-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Residency Report: Homemake at the Rowhouse

Comics WorkbookJune 15, 2016Residency Reports / School UpdatesWe kicked off the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency over Memorial Day Weekend with a visit from Matthew Conway and Mahmoud Hashemi. Matt is an architect and very recent Harvard grad (congrats Matt!), and Mahmoud is the lead developer of the Python Infrastructure team at eBay/PayPal. Neither of them had ever made a comic before. However, Matt and Mahmoud were men on a mission. They arrived at the Rowhouse with the clear intention of using its many resources and the full breadth and depth of Frank’s knowledge and techniques to make something great. They were challenged and inspired during their time here, and in return they challenged and inspired the whole Comics Workbook team. And yes, they did end up making their first comic! During his flight home Mahmoud wrote a detailed report of his experience at the Rowhouse, and it offers a lot of insight into what made the experience extraordinary for everyone involved. Below you will find excerpts from Mahmoud’s report along with some commentary from me. There’s a lot to unpack! – Sally ————————————————————————————————— Mahmoud Hashemi wrote: “From May 28th to June 2nd, 2016, I visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I went to work with Frank Santoro on Matt Conway’s game Homemake. Overall it was a great vacation because it wasn’t your typical beachside retreat. Rather, it was mounting an effort to renew creativity and productivity on Matt Conway’s longstanding project, Homemake. The timing was great, as it was right before Ramadan for me, and right after Matt Conway’s graduation from Harvard GSD. Started in 2013 and Kickstarted to the tune of 18,000 in 2014, Homemake is an experimental art game that is unique for its focus on architecture and music, and its lack of traditional game elements like enemies and time limits.” Mahmoud, who serves as an editor, instigator, and cheerleader for Matt and the game, recognized that his friend needed a burst of new energy and that the game itself needed more concentrated story development. Mahmoud continues: “Homemake was designed as a system, meaning that it was designed nonlinearly. It was a procedural way to achieve certain preconceived moments. But there were no sentences between the punctuation. Almost all games, including HM, result in linear gameplay. The player sequential acts or chapters. My goal became to quickly build the best linear structure with what was already there. In a way, there was a middle act, but no opening or closing. So, the goal was to use a comic book as a storyboard to create the opening act.” Sally here – like I said, these fellows arrived at the Rowhouse with a fire under their tails! Mahmoud had known for a while that he needed to sit down with Matt and really hash out a narrative for the game. When he discovered Frank’s Kickstarter for the Rowhouse last fall, Mahmoud knew that he wanted to support this new comic book institution, and guessed that a residency might provide the right sort of space for he and Matt to work. He wasn’t 100% sure that Frank’s methods would be the magic pill they needed, but he was willing to come to Pittsburgh to find out. Back to Mahmoud’s report: “Frank’s own creative methods have a focus on systems, especially jazz-inspired rhythmic systems, making them an exceptional fit with Homemake‘s motivations and goals. I was skeptical at first, but it worked wonders. This effectiveness may have been magnified because half of Homemake‘s vision was disparate moments, a grab bag of mental notes about certain aesthetics. This method allowed Matt to express all his thoughts and editors, like me and Frank, to come through, see the patterns a reader would want to see, and develop the most coherent narrative. Everyone wins.” ‘With Frank’s method, images come first, then words. There should be no script. The images tell almost the whole story, and those images must be allowed to find their own rhythm. A script disrupts that. Similarly, a grid is like an empty script. Frank’s method of modular, card-based creation was as effective as it was simple. Hard-earned simplicity. … Matt ended up drawing 52 cards. I found a cohesive story with 40, and we expanded that to use 48 cards to create 6 pages, 3 spreads. … With this new direction, and Conway’s drive, I expect that development will continue on the comic book and game. For the comic book, we’ll start having real deliverables within a couple months. The game has 80% of what it needs now, and may be approaching a playable version within the year.” Matt and Mahmoud did more work in about three days than most people get through in three weeks. They also found time to explore Pittsburgh a bit, catch a hockey game, and even read a few comics in the midst of drawing their own. However, the majority of Matt and Mahmoud’s time here was spent in a lively discussion which looped back to comics regularly, but ranged all over the place. It was almost a bonus that some work got done, but really it was this discourse, this rapid-fire exchange of ideas and experiences that made the time uniquely valuable. It certainly made the line between “teacher” and “student” very fluid. Mahmoud had incredibly generous things to say about the experience as a whole, and I’ll let him finish this report in his own words. Mahmoud concluded: “Frank is inspirational, completely earnest, and almost totally pure. He is not jaded, not burned out. He is hopeful and hard working. He has lived a lot of places, from Pittsburgh to New York to San Francisco to New Mexico and back to Pittsburgh, just down the street from his mom (who is very nice). Compared to my expectations of independent comics artists, Frank is well-adjusted and well-equipped, with good taste in more than just comics. This expectation is likely skewed by my reading of so many “journal comics” artists. I feel like I learned about creating and collecting in general, not just about comics. Frank never stops relating things to comics, education, and community-building. Passion is fleeting compared to this. His motivation is closer to second nature. This nature was my original hopeful realization with Frank, before I met him. I feel a deep kinship with him, as I think about creating code the same way he thinks about creating comics. Independent, expressive, and individually valuable. Corporate partnerships are inevitable and, while they can be good, ultimately these looming entities don’t care about the potential of comics/code, they just use creators opportunistically. I see Frank doing for independent print comics what E-40 does in hip hop. He seems to know everyone past and present. E-40 and Frank both act upon this knowledge, combining it with the deeply ingrained understanding that respect is the real currency of the business. Money is an inescapable reality, but it’s possible and laudable to address the group as a community first and an industry second. Economies have a tendency to be treated as zero-sum. But respect is not zero-sum. Through his music, E-40 pulls everyone together, adding to their respect, and his own. And above all he respects himself, setting a good example. So it is with Frank. Suffice it to say, we need more creator-mentor-educators like Frank (as well as Sally, who I think recognizes all this and more, and actively assists Frank in the mission). In my ideal world I would be able to spend one week per year with a creator of his caliber, but I feel lucky to even have this one trip. … Long story short, I wish Frank and team the best of luck in “reddin up” the residency in time for another visit in the next year or two.” – Mahmoud Hashemi Many thanks to Mahmoud and Matt for coming to the Rowhouse and contributing their considerable energy and talents to Comics Workbook. We’re humbled and thrilled to have hosted them, and look forward to channeling what we learned from them into future residencies. ————————————————————————————————— Please take a moment to check out Homemake, as well as some of Mahmoud and Matt’s other interesting projects. Homemake (coming soon! – keep up with the progress) Chill Anime Beats (a musical curation collaboration) Matt Conway’s website Sedimental (Accretionary thoughts by Mahmoud Hashemi) Listen to Wikipedia (seriously, check this out it is SO COOL!) Here’s a taste of what Homemake will offer – P.S. Mahmoud and Matt had a funny encounter with Frank’s Mom and a real pap-pap (Mr. Greene) at the airport. Check it out below. Share this page: [...]

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