Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged caleb orecchio, dominique goblet, jack brougham, juan fernandez, julia gfrorer, noah van sciver, sally ingraham, toon books

Juan Fernández

Posted on February 6, 2017February 6, 2017

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03/19/2018

Caleb OrecchioMarch 19, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on a temporary comic book artist, Jeff Purves, and other news. ————————————————————————————————— I really liked Sally’s report last week on Paty Greer/Cockrum. I had a similar experience with a comic book artist’s name I did not recognize. For me it was the name “Jeff Purves” in a copy of The Incredible Hulk #349–I found that Purves, after some digging, had a 19-issue run on The Hulk in late 80’s with Peter David. He’s taking over after the McFarlane run, which is self-evident in the contrived effort of maintaining a McFarlane-y looking Hulk. That’s not a knock on Purves, just something I noticed. This is work-for-hire comics after all. When I initially read the issue, the layouts and action were interesting to me because the clarity and simplicity of the images wreaked of professionalism (as opposed to fanboy-gone-pro, though I’m not ruling that possibility out), which to me meant he had to be some sort of successful illustrator trying his hand at comics. I was more or less right. According to Lambiek and IMDb, he’s an animator. I mean, look at that Spider-Man above, the guy is clearly an educated drawer. I found Purves’ style to be bit stiff at first, but I think it had more to do with the inking of Terry Austin of issue 349; I eventually warmed up to the drawing and am now rather impressed by Purves’ professional, hired-gun vibe. I have a feeling Purves was pretty dependable schedule-wise due the successive amount of issues he contributed to. The work has both a sense of urgency and careful calculation like he knows how to bust out the good stuff that kids love, but ultimately understands that the issue must get out on time. Just thought this was interesting. I’m interested in these weird here-today-gone-tomorrow comic book artists (though nearly 2 years is not an amount of time to sneeze at), because it adds to the wacky history of comics. This guy probably wanted to draw comics as a kid but needed something more financially stable as an adult, so he quits comics and goes to work in animation on such titles as The Simpsons and Mulan. ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Dash Shaw on How to Read Nancy at The New York Review of Books. David Barnett offers up the possibility of Kirby finally getting the praise he deserves from the public at large due to the upcoming New Gods movie. Due to the popularity of his characters in the current line-up of Marvel movies, Jim Starlin allegedly has his own museum exhibit, according to Todd Allen at The Beat. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-19-2018 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

07/28/2016

HarrisonJuly 28, 2016NewsH*rris*n returns with news about various forms of pictures arranged in a sequence of boxes and the people who make them and read them. ————————————————————————————————— Help Out – Czap Books Hello hello! My name is Kevin Czap and I’m the Comics Mom, aka the publisher, of Czap Books(pronounced “chapbooks”). We’re a micro-press based in Providence, RI dedicated to publishing genre-defying comics that celebrate the poetic, the personal, and the weird. We’re turning to you to help us fund the production of our next three titles: Witchlight by Jessi Zabarsky; don’t tell me not to worry (i’ll worry all i want) by Kelly Kwang; and Egg Creme #1 by Liz Suburbia! Read on ————————————————————————————————— Out of Step Arts – Chris Visions Original Art for sale BUY ART Follow Chris Visions to stay up to date with what he’s up to: https://instagram.com/chrisvisions/ ————————————————————————————————— https://www.instagram.com/p/BIYlJQoANQj/ LOOK AT ART Salute to the RVA king prof_weston. ————————————————————————————————— Zeanie Weenies “We want to print your zine and put it inside VICE Magazine, so we’re giving you the next few weeks to download the Zean.it app, upload your finest 16 images into one print-ready publication, and hashtag #TCPOffensive. Then, a special panel of guest judges, including VICE photo editor Elizabeth Renstrom, The Creators Project’s Editor-in-Chief, Marina Garcia-Vasquez, and a super special guest judge TBA, will select the top zine, to be printed and distributed as an insert within the September Issue of VICE.” Sure. ————————————————————————————————— Ghosts and Flesh – Patrick McHale. Here’s the first half of an 8 page comic called “The Blood Ghoul” I did for a german comic anthology called “Mondo #4: Fear”. I did it right before i started work on the C.W. Stoneking music video for “The Zombie”, and used it as an opportunity to figure out the right style for that video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvNCGtZlQso) The color image at the top was a test; I had been hoping to color it, but I ran out of time. Same thing happened with the music video; I’d been hoping to color it, but just ran out of time. Oh well. I’m not sure of the best place to get the anthology, but seems like you can get it here: https://www.kwimbi.de/Kwimbi-Shop/Comics/Mondo-4-Fear.html Maybe someday i’ll post the rest of it. Oh, and maybe I’ll post a different comic that I ended up not using which was not scary at all. –Patrick McHale. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️ ? “Let all the cosmos see reality, illusions will decompress ya dome.” Share this page: [...]

05/14/2018

Caleb OrecchioMay 14, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on Betsy and Me by Jack Cole, and other news.———————————————————————————— Hey comics lovers, doing alright? I’m doing alright. I’m a bit tired. My cousins, brother and brother-in-law destroyed me in spikeball on Sunday during a Mother’s Day get together, so I am also sore and a bit grass-stained from jumping and flailing around. They all had a good laugh about it. Good for them, I left all my dignity behind in the 7th grade so I’m happy to be the weird family member who rolls around in the grass during family games. Anyway. Last week I wrote a bit about going to Copacetic Comics here in Pittsburgh and taking advantage of the Free Comic Book Day deals. Reading through my FCBD haul this past week, I was really taken with the collection of the short-lived Jack Cole strip, Betsy and Me. A really charming, funny strip about two parents and their genius son that only ran for a handful of months before Jack Cole bought a .22 and took his own life. Dwight Parks took over the strip after his predecessor’s death, but despite his strengths, could not live up to the legend of Jack Cole. The strip ran from May to December in 1958, Cole’s run ending in September. In the introduction, siting such Cole biographers as Art Spiegelman and Ron Goulart, R.C. Harvey paints this ironic image of a man who at the height of cartooning power (having a daily strip), ended his own life. The couple in Betsy and Me (Chet and Betsy) have a son they so dearly love that it verges on absurdity, but in reality, the Cole’s could not have a child which they so definitely wanted. There is this dark musing on Cole’s part when you know this part of the story. He practically invents an ideal situation that could medically never happen. You can see the Sun set and turn to eternal night on our hero’s psyche. I recommend the book even if just for the Harvey’s introduction. The strip itself expertly balances word and picture. There is a bobbing and weaving of narration, dialogue and action that unfolds in a very sophisticated way, and delivers a satisfying punchline most every time. There is nothing in the strip that would suggest this was the same cartoonist who invented Plastic Man, visually or otherwise, but the expertise and cartooning skills are present and undeniable. ———————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Connor Willumsen answers questions at CBC. At TCJ.com, Tom Kaczynski is the latest guest on “Comics Decalogue” and The Dragon (featuring owner and founder, Jenn Haines) is the latest comic shop showcased on the “Retail Therapy” column. The Comics Reporter has the scoop on Koyama Press’ Fall 2018 lineup. TCAF was this past weekend and the results of the 2018 Doug Wright Awards are up. A. Degen is the latest guest on Process Party. The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center had a pop-up show on Kirby’s work on 2001: A Space Odyssey. The show was this past weekend, but I figured I’d write about it anyway:) ———————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 5-14-18 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

08/08/2018

Juan FernándezAugust 8, 2018NewsBoris is still sick, so no news from the “world of comics” for today. Just hunkering down and being with the beloved. For the Boris lovers: he’s been eating and drinking more thanks to some cortisone injections and an appetite stimulant called Entyce. Baby boy has required a lot of attention and I’ve had to keep my head down for the most part away from contemporary comics news. For the comics lovers: here are some Boris comics by the great Jenn Lisa: Share this page: [...]

02/16/2017

Sally IngrahamFebruary 15, 2017NewsSam Ombiri riffs on Henry Darger and Hideo Furukawa, and Sally shares updates from the Fifth Annual Black Comic Book Festival and other comics news! ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: I’ve really been into this Henry Darger documentary – The Realms of the Unreal. It’s really good. There’s this amazing part where they are recounting a time when Henry lost one picture – one that I think was one of his main references for drawing the girls. (Editor’s Note: “The girls” are the Vivian Girls, characters in Darger’s 15,000 page fantasy novel The Realms of the Unreal.) He held in such high regard that the story changes as a result, and he punishes his characters until he can find the picture. That part was amazing. I kind of skipped all over the place as a result of my low attention span, so I don’t remember where it was. I think my attention span wass also lowered because this documentary reminded me of the ones I’d see in elementary school that I wouldn’t pay attention to. At times I feel Henry Darger would purposely lie to himself in order to go through with a certain aspect of the story, and then get away from that lie. At least I’d like to think that, but maybe I’m the one doing that. There’s a part in this video where Jesse Moynihan talks about how there’s still power in rearranging history and things aren’t tied down to one telling. Or in what feels like a similar spirit, Hideo Furukawa, who is known for sometimes writing remixes of already written books, says “Music can be divided into melody and the rest, and you can take out either of them separately. If you take out the former, you “cover” that music; if you take out the whole of the latter, you “remix” it. Likewise, fiction is divided into the narrative and the rest.” At the beginning of his novel Belka Why Don’t You Bark he puts at the beginning, “Yes I admit this is fiction but then what isn’t?” He also put after that, “This book is dedicated to Boris Yeltsin; Hey Boris I know your secret!” Hideo continued, “The narrative needs some vehicle, which is provided by different storytellers each age. In other words, the same narrative can change their vehicle, and in that sense the simple re-telling (covering, you might say) is always possible. Remixing is, for me anyway, an attempt to go beyond that, to take the whole of the preceding work.” Hideo Furukawa is someone who’s often referred to as a chameleon for doing all kinds of experiments with the way he writes his books. (Side Note: I like CF’s idea that experimenting just means not taking yourself seriously and that you go into a state where the ordinary laws of creativity don’t apply. I think it’s what he said.) Here’s one experiment Hideo Furukawa did, for example: There’s this book called Tribes of Arabian Nights that takes place in Cairo. Because there were more and more books coming into Japan that needed to be translated, he claimed that he didn’t write the novel, he was just translating it. (At least that’s what I think could be his reason. This is just speculation on my part – this was the automatic reason that formed in my mind. The more I think about it though that’s like every country.) I’m not too sure what Hideo’s remixes are like. Thankfully there’s gonna be one that’s being released in English in June which I’m excited to read. Although, I’d rather just read one of his actual novels. I read part of something he did for Tale of Genji, but it wasn’t strictly speaking a remix – it wasn’t a retelling. To my knowledge it doesn’t have the same rules as his remixes. For one thing, he re-titled it 300 Treacherous Women, instead of Tale of Genji Remix (which would make for a pretty hilarious title. My one friend was telling me about how this musician who I think is part of the Brainfeeder collective recorded Pomegranates by Parajanov. My immediate reaction was ha ha oh no!) Hideo’s version of the story was more based on a ghost coming and proclaiming how, until the story was modified back to how it actually happened, this one woman would keep giving unrest to this other woman. I assume his remixes are different. Hideo said, “For the remix of Kenji Miyazawa’s The Bears of Mount Nametoko the bears appear in the ‘Mount Nametoko’ story. In Japan bears are something of a deity, reigning over the mountains (the natural world). They don’t appear in towns (the human world). Hunters, however, play the role of mediators, and turn part of the mountains into commodities, which are circulated in the towns. What we witness here is the violent contact between nature and man. We are made to face the fact that bears are something which are not cattle but are eaten, and humans allow themselves to take something out of nature to keep themselves alive in this world. Kenji Miyazawa, as author Kenji, kept writing about this staggering fact. When Japan was violently attacked by nature in 2011 (the year of the Great East Japan Earthquake), I thought I, as author Hideo Furukawa, had to retell those stories written by Kenji. I could re-tell the stories, precisely because Kenji had already told them.” – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— Sally here – Over on Vice there’s a video of Ronald Wimberly speaking at the Schomburg Center during the Fifth Annual Black Comic Book Festival. Wimberly tells us about growing up in D.C., his new book, and what it means to have black representation in comics. Check it out HERE (watch the full episode of ‘Daily VICE’ on go90.) There was a nice write-up of the Fifth Annual Black Comic Book Festival (which took place Jan. 13th and 14th 2017) on Okay Africa – it includes lots of pictures! Even better than pictures, The Blerdgurl offers up Part One of her interview series with creators at the Black Comic Book Festival this year – check it out below! ————————————————————————————————— The Comics Reporter draws our attention to a treasure-trove of Ta-Nehisi Coates‘ thoughts about writing The Black Panther, posted on The Atlantic – HERE. From his interest in the Dora Milajae – the all-female troop of bodyguards to the King – and how he uses them to talk about feminism in the story, to the poetry that opens and closes issue #3, to his thoughts on Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, there’s a lot of interesting stuff to unpack. ————————————————————————————————— From the Comics Workbook TV archives – Bill Boichel riffs on Jackie Ormes. She was the first African-American woman to be a syndicated cartoonist. She is one of the nominees for this year’s Will Eisner Hall of Fame inductees. ————————————————————————————————— Announcing the Spring Semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers! The course starts March 7th 2017. Apply by February 26th to get 100 bux off! The course is 8 weeks long – payment plans are available. Application guidelines: – 3 figure drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards – 3 landscape drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards – 3 still life drawings done on blank 3 x 5 cards – draw in a contour line style –think Matisse – no under-drawing – draw directly in ink – just send me small jpgs of images – dont post to your blog pls – send specific url links to any comics work you have done. If you haven’t done comics before that is not a problem. Email santoroschoolATgmail to apply! More details HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 2-16-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 2-16-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 2-16-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 2-16-2017 – by Juan Fernandez Share this page: [...]

02/06/2017

Posted on February 6, 2017February 6, 2017 by Juan Fernández

Juan here. Back in action and ready to start a new week with you! Today: A stroll through the 44th Angoulême International Comics Festival; Frank Santoro’s Comics Corner #1; a look at deep learning through coloring and sketching algorithms; Toon Books’ spring list; Julia Gfrörer’s Laid Waste reviewed; preview of Dominique Goblet’s Pretending is Lying; Noah Van Sciver’s 2nd installment of The Introvert Club; Comics by Jack Brougham, Sally Ingraham, Caleb Orecchio, and Juan Fernandez.

Juan Fernandez, Emil Friis Ernst, and Jennifer Lisa in the Nouveau Monde tent at Angoulême 2017

44e Festival de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême

I’m BACK – OOF! I was on the ground at the Angoulême International Comics festival 2017. Joined by Jennifer Lisa we took in the sights and sounds of this incredible happening.

The second largest comics festival in Europe, and the third largest in the world runs every year since 1974, Angoulême saw the 44th iteration of its city wide comics festival the weekend before last. More than 200,000 visitors come each year to the fair, including between 6,000 and 7,000 professionals and 800 journalists. I’m still unpacking so much I saw and heard there…

Today on the site, we’ve got the first of a 3 part series on the Comics Workbook Experience at the 44th Angoulême International Comics Festival.I’m unpacking this life changing experience here for Comics Workbook. This first part of this series is a collection of photos.Intentionally presented free of commentary, this series of photos invites you to take a look and see what tickles your eye. In depth reflections on this edition of the annual festival appears in the next next installment of this Comics Workbook Festival News series.

Enjoy a stroll with me and Jenn through the festival HERE.

If you have never been to Angoulême or need to be reminded of what it is like—here is a good primer by Brigid Alverson, and Frank Santoro’s 2014 Tour Diary.

Paints Chainer: A free Japanese neural network that colors illustrations for you

The robots are coming. The new web service, Paints Chainer, created by mechanical engineer @tai2an shows how “creative fields” can soon be automated. Human capacities augmented through the automisation of “drudgery”.

I bring this up because automation is moving into every possible sector of human labor. What does that mean for how define work and what it gets us?How do our values as a society change? Who gets thrown under the truck? Can automation be an agent of positive change? So long as work is necessary, how do humans remain relevant as part of the production and consumption of commodity cultures? With developments like these do wae have a say in inventing the future?

Anyway, just wanted to share this to get your minds thinking about how to best engage in a world where these processes are realities. The future will continue to be carved by these ideas.

Think you can use this weird tool in your arsenal, ninjas? Go for it. Get weird.

I’ve talked about deep learning and convolution networks before on this site, but I think it’d be good to cover it in the context of this web service. How does this work? Simosela Edgar, has got a great site that’ll help you wrap your mind a little better around these algorithms. Slam that translate button because this is all in Japanase.

To understand it better, let’s look at a similar web service, the Fully Convolutional Networks for Rough Sketch Cleanup by Edgar Simo-Serra*, Satoshi Iizuka*, Kazuma Sasaki, Hiroshi Ishikawa.

Automatic drawing of rough sketches:

The proposed model is a multilayered neural network in which all layers are composed only of convolution layers, and when a rough sketch is input, the line drawing is outputted. This model consists of three types of convolutional layers: down-convolution, flat-convolution, up-convolution. For down-convolution, setting the stride number of the filter to 2 halves the map resolution, flat-convolution does not change the map resolution, up-convolution halves the stride number by doubling the map resolution . As a result, the image is first compressed and processed into a small feature map, and finally it can be returned to the original resolution and a clean line drawing can be output.

You can test drive it over HERE. It’s an “auto-inker”. Sure, the line is dead and things are clunky. But, you get my drift. What does it mean to learn to simplify? How do computers simplify? What kind of visual literacies do humans have. Consider this set of developing AI as examples for active and passive visual literacies. If you’re interested, be sure to learn more about the team’s research.

Last but not least, let’s think about here are the politics of datasets. The AI we develop NEEDS a data set to be its world to reference as it gauges its attempts at replication of “reality”. Who supplies that information? What gets left out? Why? For those curious, I plugged in some Julie Doucet pages and some Xaime Hernandez panels and got some hilarious colour guesses. What would you need to feed this algorithm to handle non-shojo/shonen looking images?
I have some thoughts and I bet you do too.

Needles and Threads

The Comics Beat checks out Toon Books’ spring list, which includes work by Kevin McCloskey and Ivan Brunetti. Toon Books, which was founded by Françoise Mouly, publishes comics for young readers.
Hyperallergic reviewed Julia Gfrörer‘s Laid Waste – HERE.
There is a preview of Dominique Goblet‘s Pretending is Lying – coming out February 7th 2017 from New York Review Comics – over on The Comics Journal. There is also an advanced review on NPR – HERE.
Noah Van Sciver‘s 2nd installment of The Introvert Club was posted on Columbus Alive. The strip updates every Friday.

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https://vimeo.com/202576902

Frank riffs on John Byrne’s Fantastic Four run – stay tuned for more from Frank’s Comics Corner!

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Here at Comics Workbook we are passionate about sharing our love for the medium through Daily News posts like these, through our online correspondence course, the Rowhouse Residency, the Pittsburgh Comic Salons, and through our Comics Workbook tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We promote and share comics and their makers, provide a platform for makers – both professionals and students – to publish their work, and provide educational opportunities at local events and international comics festivals. If you like any aspect of what we are doing please consider supporting us – it’s easy to donate directly to the project, or we have a plethora of interesting work available for purchase at our school store. Check it out HERE.

THANK YOU!

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Blinkers – 2-6-2017 – by Jack Brougham

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Suzy and Cecil – 2-6-2017 – by Sally Ingraham

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Joanie and Jordie – 2-6-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio

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Cozytown – 2-6-2017 – by Juan Fernández

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged caleb orecchio, dominique goblet, jack brougham, juan fernandez, julia gfrorer, noah van sciver, sally ingraham, toon books

Juan Fernández

Posted on February 6, 2017February 6, 2017

Explore

02/09/2018

Sally IngrahamFebruary 8, 2018NewsSally here with Caitlin McGurk talking Edwina Dumm, the Apple Mary/Mary Worth comic strip story, and Six Chix! ————————————————————————————————— Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Associate Curator Caitlin McGurk was a guest on Episode 4 of the Library of American Comics & EuroComics Podcast, with Dean Mullaney and Kurtis Findlay. She talked about the upcoming American Comics Essentials Vol. 11, which collects Edwina Dumm‘s “Tippie” comic strip from 1945. Listen to the podcast HERE. Check out the Edwina Dumm LOAC Essentials book HERE – it will be coming out soon, and features an introduction by Caitlin McGurk. I am a huge fan of Edwina Dumm and am personally so excited for this collection! ————————————————————————————————— I like to root around in the archives of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, both in person and online. I was systematically going through the list of creators the other day, looking for WOMEN, and I came across June Brigman. I remembered that she was the last artist who worked on the comic Brenda Starr, Reporter (a long-running strip that has a fantastic, complete history of female creators – but that’s a tale for another day!) I looked into what she is currently working on, and noted that she is the artist behind the strip Mary Worth (syndicated by King Features). Mary Worth is an interesting comic strip. It’s been around since 1938 or so, making it one of the longest running “continuity” strips ever. It’s like a soap opera, with loads of characters and swirling plot lines, but it is centered on Mary – a 60-something widow and former teacher. Currently written by Karen Moy and drawn since 2016 by Brigman, it touches on all sorts of social issues and features classic cliff-hanger endings. You can read it HERE. Mary Worth was created by writer Allen Saunders and artist Dale Connor in 1938, but it has an interesting and somewhat debated connection to an earlier strip called Apple Mary. Martha Orr (the niece of Carey Orr, a cartoonist with the Chicago Tribune) started Apple Mary in 1934. It was about an old woman named Mary, who sold apples out of a pushcart, and tended to her crippled grandson Dennie. (You can see an example of the strip at the top of this section.) The strip was successful, but Martha had to quit making it after about 4 years, in favor of raising her own family. This is when Mary Worth appeared, but whether it was made to fill the popular hole that Apple Mary had left, maintaining some of the same tone and subjects, or whether it was the true evolution of Apple Mary, is up for continuing debate. Don Markstein notes on his Toonopida page for Apple Mary that “Whatever the case may be, as the Great Depression lifted, Apple Mary was left behind. There is little to be seen of her in the Mary Worth of today.” Here’s another Apple Mary strip by Martha Orr, one that does feature her being called Mary Worth by name. I like the idea of this character existing for 84 years, bookended by female creators. Next time I’m at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum I’ll have to take a look at the one original Apple Mary strip by Martha Orr that they house in the archive! See it online HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I recently discovered a really unique comic strip called Six Chix. It’s a daily strip syndicated by King Features and created by six women cartoonists – they each have their assigned day, and then they rotate for the Sunday strip. “Isabella Bannerman draws Mondays; Martha Gradisher draws Tuesdays; Susan Camilleri Konar draws Wednesdays; Mary Lawton draws Thursdays; Benita Epstein draws Fridays; and Stephanie Piro draws Saturdays. Each cartoonist writes and draws with her own style and perspective. In any given week, you might find gags about the economy, technology, zombies, pirates or health care — and the main characters will be female and funny.“ The strip began in 2000 and was the idea of Jay Kennedy, the editor-in-chief at King Features at the time. You can read it online at the Six Chix website and learn more about the cartoonists HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Collected from the thousands of pages of material that Frank has left scattered all over the digital landscape, these 4 PDF collections contain Frank’s best writing on comics and comics making from the past decade. Theory and process, reviews and discoveries, journeys both physical and spiritual. Check out the “Best of Frank Santoro” PDF collections, available HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 2-9-2018 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

11/30/2017

Sally IngrahamNovember 30, 2017NewsSam Ombiri on Carlos Gonzalez’s Test Tube, Meg Lemke and Gene Luen Yang in conversation, and a bit more diversity in comics news. ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: I have been reading Test Tube by Carlos Gonzalez, and this comic feels like it’s mutating me and my reality. I wasn’t aware that a comic can wrap around my brain. It did this by using very familiar images, with unfamiliar modes of presentation that somehow mysteriously register. Carlos is bringing to attention how unfamiliar these familiar drawings are. He’s somehow simultaneously doing so much and so little to convey what objects, characters, and settings are, yet it all somehow renders so clearly. Which I guess is cartooning, but there seems to something in this system Carlos has introduced. He’s really mastered manipulating our mind at the bare minimum, but with the effort in design turned up to the maximum, to indicate at every turn of the story that something’s afoot. It also could just be satisfying at an aesthetic level. On my end it’s great to look at, but it simultaneously conveys the nature of the story. From what I’ve seen, it seems when Carlos is making comics he’s not always fully aware of where the story’s going to go. Of course there’s always an element of improvisation with most every art form. Whether it’s at the beginning or later down the road in the whole process, there’s always an element of improvisation. For Carlos it seems to be late in the whole process. Where it’s too late to make changes as a result of committing to a certain feeling. He seems to sacrifice control in order to stay true to the feeling he set out to express. For some makers this can cheapen their work, but it’s not the case for Carlos. I think it’s how welcoming and sensitive he is to surprises – these surprises that come along the way, that I’m guessing he ran with because of his commitment to satisfy that longing for a complete story. That’s what I get personally as a reader. It’s not just the way the story plays out – the jokes have this immediate, intuitive, and spontaneous punchiness to them that isn’t in anyway contrived. After wandering back and forth, back and forth through these characters lives, the story all leads to an event, unexpectedly. The way Carlos introduces us to all these elements that will eventually take shape is brilliant – he starts with when the event has already taken place, and then the one character whom we are familiar with is recounting. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be shocked, after seeing all the strange things that had happened to the characters before what happened towards the end. By the time I got towards the end of the book, I was convinced there wasn’t anything stranger that could happen. I was wrong. I had to know that something had to be building up. I did, but I didn’t expect it to be a smallish incident. Towards the end of the book the characters don’t feel like pawns in a big sci-fi epic as they did at the beginning. I imagined the book going that direction, that it’s in this claustrophobic, personal macro state, and it’ll expand and expand. However, the story to my surprise and to my delight stayed in the same scale, no matter what was going on. So even this scientist’s big experiment felt like a homemade experiment. “Low key” is the word for the event towards the end of the story, that’ll supposedly continue in our world. I was thinking about the ending to Videodrome – of course if you watch that movie in Pittsburgh, that movie’s going to have an even stranger effect on you. Basically Carlos made it seem like this character is somewhere out there, and she’s gotta do this thing to survive emotionally, so I sympathize with her, even though she’s going doom us all. Maybe I ought to be more optimistic about this higher form she’s going to turn us all into. Read this book if you can, you’ll be glad you did. There’s also a really cool intro by Noel Freibert at the beginning that’ll make you even more confused about this book than you thought you could be. Noel told me he included some stuff from knowing Carlos into the intro, so it might function more to introduce the reader to Carlos more than the book itself, which made it make more sense. – Sam Ombiri Get a copy of Test Tube by Carlos Gonzalas HERE. For another review of this comic, read Anya Davidson’s thoughts on The Comics Journal – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Sally here – Mege Lemke interviews Gene Luen Yang, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, over on Mutha Magazine. They talk about his project Reading Without Walls, and it’s mission to get kids and parents “exploring books about characters who look or live differently than you, topics you haven’t discovered, or formats that you haven’t tried.” They talk about how to get reluctant readers to read, how kids are now usually allowed to read comics in school, and the big issue of diversity in comics/publishing as a whole. “MUTHA: What’s your take on this: As I’m sure you’re aware, there’s a real focus in young adult publishing community right now on responding to the criticism from the Own Voices Movement, essentially the idea that there needs to be more space for people of color and people of different sexualities to write their own stories. Resulting in pushback against, say, white writers writing as another character of color, but also characters of color writing other characters of color. This has caused writers to become cautious about writing across cultures. GENE LUEN YANG: Here’s how I approach it. In my own writing life and in my work teaching writing, I believe that writing is an act of bravery. You have to get over so much fear just to put your story on the page. Facing that blank page is terrifying. When I sit down to write, I’ll want to do anything else. I’ll want to go wash dishes, I’ll want to go reorganize my label collection, anything, right? I am very reluctant, especially when I think about my students, of introducing more fear in their heads. So, I would never tell a writer that they cannot write outside of their experience. I almost think that it’s the defining job of a writer to be able to go outside of their own experience. But I would say: don’t let that fear that you feel allow you to stop writing the story you want to write. You should let that fear drive you to do homework. You should let that fear drive you to humility. Approaching experiences that aren’t your own with a certain humility. Including people who are insiders into your support group, either as editors or as beta readers. There is a greater responsibility. However, you’ll see like 80 percent of the stories told about minority demographics are told by outsiders. That is a problem. That is a problem.“ Yang goes on to say that ultimately it is on the publishers, the gatekeepers, to make sure they are publishing work by POC creators and not just asking their “stable” of white writers to toss some diversity into their work. Plenty of other interesting notes in the interview – read it HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Speaking of a white writer tossing some diversity into their work, The Comics Reporter has a breakdown of the recent shocker from Marvel’s new Editor-in-Chief, CB Cebulski – he once wrote comics under the pseudonym Akira Yoshida, and had a whole secret identity for this person. Understandable uproar has ensued. Tom Spurgeon writes: “Comics culture is not just a roll-your-eyes cattle prod these days, it’s as under fire as any individual publishing move. Rightfully so: comics culture dictates a lot in terms of how our industries operate. This latest looks like a series of actions possible only in the context of a broken professional culture. This is not just the case of a freelancer adopting a pseudonym to get more work. This was someone giving themselves work that could have gone to someone else, and creating a context for that work more attractive than the work would be by itself. By assuming a Japanese identity and writing stories soaked in orientalist stereotypes, Cebulski and Marvel slipped any blame that might be theirs for the content of such work, and avoided criticism for the general breakdown of creators being hired by the company. “ Read the rest of the story HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 11-30-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

PIX 2016 | Bill Griffith Interview

Juan FernándezJune 20, 2016InterviewsCWTV interviews Bill Griffith, one of underground comics’ founding fathers, about his almost 50 years of making work. Bill is the creator of Zippy the Pinhead (among 3,407 other things) // en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Griffith Get Bill’s latest, the beautiful graphic memoir INVISIBLE INK // copaceticcomics.com/comics/invisible-ink-my-mother-s-secret-love-affair-with-a-famous-cartoonist Video by Michael Pisano and Di-ay Battad // michaelpisano.com // cargocollective.com/di-ay Share this page: [...]

03/29/2016

Aaron CockleMarch 29, 2016NewsMarcel Broodthaers in NYC; Bernadette Mayer & Experimental Writing; PMF VII; FUCK OTHER FORMS OF ART; O Risograph, my Risograph! ————————————————————————————————— Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976) is experiencing something of a renaissance here in NYC, what with the room devoted to his book work at the most recent New York Art Book Fair, a show currently at Paul Kasmin Gallery, and the expansive career retrospective now on view at the Museum of Modern Art. ————————————————————————————————— Bernadette Mayer’s List of Journal Ideas + Writing Experiments ————————————————————————————————— Aidan Koch @ Open Space + the Seventh Annual Publications & Multiples Fair (PMF VII), April 9-10, 12-6pm each day at the Baltimore Design School, 1500 Barclay Street. The fair is free and open to the public. ————————————————————————————————— Jef Czejak’s essay from 2001 about funding for comics projects within the art-funding community still has relevance. That whole issue of The Comics Journal, #238, guest-edited by Tom Devlin, is full of useful information. ————————————————————————————————— Risograph Tutorials on YouTube. There are some semi-slick, corporate videos that are kind of fun to watch, if you’re in to that sort of thing. ————————————————————————————————— SPECIAL NEWS ITEM Please consider supporting the Retrofit Kickstarter. They have an ambitious publishing schedule in place with an amazing group of artists producing high quality comics work. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency – Fundraising Video

Comics WorkbookSeptember 29, 2015School UpdatesCampaign video credits: Video by Michael Pisano | michaelpisano.com Soundtrack by DJ Thermos | facebook.com/DjThermos Share this page: [...]

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