Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Alexander Provan, caleb orecchio, Cameron Arthur, Cremaster, David Horvitz, INK BRICK, juan fernandez, LA Times, Matthew Thurber, PaperJazz Festival, Pete Toms, sally ingraham, triple canopy, whit taylor

Aaron Cockle

Posted on February 27, 2017February 28, 2017

Explore

10/12/2017

Sally IngrahamOctober 12, 2017NewsSally here with announcements and excitement from Adam Griffiths, Kyle Baker, Derick Jones, Ronald Wimberly, and more! ————————————————————————————————— East City Art featured an official shout-out regarding Adam Griffiths‘ forthcoming graphic novel Washington White: “Science fiction meets the aftermath of the 1960s civil rights movement in Adam Griffiths’ forthcoming self-published graphic novel, Washington White, a pseudo techno-thriller about corporate greed, gentrification, and corruption set inside the District of Columbia. Drawn in pencil with digital coloring, Griffiths has been working on the 600-page book for nine years; the first installment will be published as a 70-page newspaper tabloid. Written in the form of a spy thriller, the civil rights science-fiction plot and the mad-cap challenges that the story’s range of characters face make for a bombastic, silly, and disturbing experience.“ If you’re in the D.C. area keep an eye out for this newspaper and perhaps catch Adam at CAB this year with copies of the comic. Adam gave Frank and I a peek at the manuscript of this work when he was here in January for a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency, and I can tell you right now, it exists in a parallel dimension. I am eagerly anticipating this one! ————————————————————————————————— Like Derick Jones says, sometimes you gotta just use brute force to dig into a comics project, or page, or panel…! Above is part of a page from his new minicomic Rhythm Man, written by Storme Smith and recently published by Buno (which was founded in 2016 by Ulises Farinas and Storme Smith). You can see more pages and learn some of Derick’s thoughts behind them over on his Instagram – @skudsink – and get a copy of the comic HERE. ————————————————————————————————— An exciting announcement that came out of the New York Comic Con last week was that the Milestone imprint is coming back to DC Comics. A number of characters will return to or be born in the world of Earth M, including Static Shock (above) drawn by Kyle Baker and written by Denys Cowan and Reginald Hudlin. Cheers of delight met the announcement, made by Kyle Baker himself, as the character is a fan favorite. I’m just excited or anything and everything drawn by Kyle Baker, so we all must keep an eye out in 2018 for Static Shock #1…! Read the full report HERE on The Comics Beat. ————————————————————————————————— Ronald Wimberly is the featured artist at Superchief Gallery NY tonight (Oct. 12th 2017), so if you’re in the area you should go hang out with him from 7 PM – 12 AM. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-12-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 10-12-2017 – by Juan Fernandez ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 10-12-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

07/28/2017

Sally IngrahamJuly 28, 2017NewsSally here with Lale Westvind’s work at Printed Matter, Ellen Forney’s Virtual Memories, Fabulous “Flo” Steinburg, and more. ———————————————————————————————— You have just a few days left to catch the “Something Unusual Is Happening” show at Printer Matter – it is up until July 31st 2017. Featuring work by 15 international comics artists, it delves into experimental comics and the art of visual narrative. More details about the show HERE. Over on the LA Review of Books Megan N. Liberty writes about the show and features the work of some of the specific makers. “Lale Westvind’sJoan the Drone Pilot & Mary the Drone (2017), printed with blue ink on pink pages (except the cover which is red ink on cream), is the story of a world that exists in several dimensions, with those in charge controlling those trapped in the lesser plane for profit, until Mary arrives and attempts to escape. A heavy-handed metaphor for our use of technology, or technology’s use of us when in the hands of advertisers, it has a more traditional structure, with spreads divided into panels and text in word bubbles and boxes. But its dense imagery, heavy lines, and block shading, reminiscent of ‘70s and ‘80s pulp comics, make it at times visually dizzying and challenging.” Read the rest of the report HERE. ———————————————————————————————— Gil Roth of Virtual Memories sat down with another female cartoonist of note recently, inviting Ellen Forney onto the show for Episode 228. “The great Seattle cartoonist Ellen Forney joins the show to talk about comics, civic art, being bipolar, and the challenges of maintaining! We get into her 2012 graphic memoir,Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me, finding a graphic representation of her depressive states, the evolution in her drawing style, the letter she stole from Michael Dougan, the process of going from comics panels to enormous murals for a light-rail station in Seattle, the influence of the Moosewood Cookbook, the importance of a psychology stats class she took in college, how she learned to teach comics, the moment when she felt she was using all her artistic tools, and why she needed Kaz to design her back-tattoo!“ Listen HERE. I went back through some of the past episodes and bookmarked shows with Posy Simmonds, Leslie Stein, Jennifer Hayden and Summer Pierre, Phoebe Gloeckner, Glynnis Fawkes, and Karen Green. I’m sure there are more good ones to dig up as well! Check out The Virtual Memories Show every Tuesday for a new interview about books and life. ———————————————————————————————— Flo Steinburg, longtime secretary to Marvel’s Stan Lee, died this week. She was 78, and still fabulous. At the San Diego Comic Con 2017 there was a panel on “Women of Marvel” which understandably kicked off with a remembrance of Flo. Rachel Maurer reported for The Comics Beat: “Many of the panelists have worked directly with Flo at some point in their Marvel careers, noting that she was more than Stan Lee’s assistant – she was the original Woman of Marvel, someone who forged a path for female comics creators and whose legacy will continue to do so. One major indicator of this is the panel itself, a useful benchmark for progress in gender equality. Nine years ago Marvel had zero female-led titles, while this year’s panel had nearly 20 on the roster.“ Read more about how these women are walking in Flo’s footprints – HERE. ———————————————————————————————— New page from Iona Fox‘s Almanac – check out more of her work HERE and keep an eye out for her strips in Burlington, VT’s alt paper Seven Days. ———————————————————————————————— Supplemental “A Brief Appreciation” of Leslie Stein – by Ken Perille on The Comics Journal. Also on tcj.com – An Interview with Katie Skelly. Carta Monir on Process Party Episode 42 – HERE. Gabrielle Bell‘s July Diary is close to concluding – here’s Thursday’s offering. —————————————————————————————————— Here it is – get ready to comic your socks off – thee Comics Workbook Composition Competition 2017 has been announced! This year it’s a riff on the 6-panel grid, in the traditional North American comic book size – but with a twist! Full details HERE. ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-28-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 7-28-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

09/18/2018

Aaron CockleSeptember 17, 2018NewsOld Drawings; Flocks; ‘Against Clarity’; Her garden, a mirror; RM; NYABF 2018 ————————————————————————————————— This South African cave stone may bear the world’s oldest drawing Other finds have included 100,000- to 70,000-year-old pigment chunks engraved with crosshatched and line designs, 100,000-year-old abalone shells containing remnants of a pigment-infused paint and shell beads from around the same time. ————————————————————————————————— Shea Hennum reviews the new book by L. Nichols, Flocks The way that Nichols visually renders these pleasures is similarly worth noting. Throughout the book, Nichols signals emotional states by drawing arrows towards himself. These arrows sometimes take the form of lightning bolts, scraggly and castigating lines, or straight lines annotated with mathematical formulae. Whenever he is made to feel bad, insulted, or harassed, he represents this by drawing a line—literally—from the elicitor to himself, as if to say that these figures are pushing in on him, enforcing themselves on him. The lines coming at him are signs of oppression and hate. He reverses this to represent the love he feels in communion with God, rendering those scenes with a halo of lines emanating outward, emerging from within himself. This is part and parcel of Nichols’ broader aesthetic, which merges expressionistic portraiture with elements of naturalistic cartooning. The world is, by and large, rendered realistically so that it resembles the world and the people resemble people. Nichols renders himself, however, as a doll—alternately resembling a ragdoll and a crash-test dummy. This method of portraiture makes Nichols’ self-image infinitely pliable, and, I imagine, less emotionally taxing for him to manipulate. We see his body altered—in some cases, expressionistically disfigured; in some cases, literally disfigured—and Nichols can be explicit without being graphic. He can affect us deeply without it repelling us with viscera. The story is a deeply emotional one—that is, it is about emotions, emotional turmoil and distress—and Nichols affectively renders that core thematic visually. He makes it felt in not just what he draws but also in the way he draws it. ————————————————————————————————— Against Clarity Austin English continues his deep dive into comics, art, and art comics, this time looking at work by Megan Kelso, William Blake, 400 year-old paintings from India, and some contemporary political cartoonists (to name a few). A masterpiece like “Three Trees of India”, an illuminated 16th-century manuscript (sometimes on view at the Met), feels like a grand lost artifact of sequential art that, again, fits uneasily with contemporary comics’ self-conception as vessels of clarity. The peaks and valleys of emotion that this work suggests has been traded for a photocopy of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, which in theory sounds fine, as Bushmiller’s simplicity rivals the complexity of Blake. Yet few (if any) cartoonists are Bushmiller. ————————————————————————————————— Her garden, a mirror Chitra Ganesh continues her exploration of gender and power in a futurist imaginary in this solo exhibition taking as a point of departure the utopian, feminist, sci-fi novella from 1905 called Sultana’s Dream by Bengali author and social reformer Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. These new works in printmaking, sculpture, and video engage art historical and literary sources to further reimagine the roles of the individual and the collective during periods of societal turbulence. Curated by Matthew Lyons. ————————————————————————————————— Reclamation Project: Rob Clough reviews Josh Bayer’s RM Bayer veers from an open page format with no panels to hand-drawn panels. He carefully employs a lot of negative space in order to let his drawings breathe a little and to make the otherwise blocky aspect of his figures more legible in terms of their actions on the page. Bayer is once again interpreting the drawings of Sal Buscema here, a master storyteller in terms of pacing, panel-to-panel transitions, and clarity, and he maintains these aspects of the original art while putting his own unique stamp. ————————————————————————————————— http://nyartbookfair.com/ ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

11/21/2016

Juan FernándezNovember 21, 2016NewsJuan here with: Recent work by Juan; the Pittsburgh Comics Salon; Moomins across media; CAKE application deadline; Mike Diana’s arrest warrant cleared; QuickDraw; Secret Acres CAB 2016 report; Tillie Walden and Anna Selheim; March and the National Book Award; Santoro School’s Correspondence Course applications. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️What have I been working on? Lots of event planning and strip thumbnailing. I’m getting a little too precious in that process as I build a backlog of ideas to work from before going live so I’ve worked out a way to make fast, loose and spirited comics to be shared through instagram. First take drawing. Doodles while reflecting on a couple of ideas. Through widely available tech, I’m arranging comics on the go. No panels, lots of space, text and image in a free floating tension. I’m using the instagram layout app and then editing the images to have. These are digital ephemera. They are jpegs. I’m making art and I don’t care about the publishability of this in print. It’s more relevant to make the work and distribute it digitally. Follow me over on instagram @juan.jose.fernandez to keep up with whatever comes out of this process. It’s a digital process where only the editing and composing happens digitally. All the drawing is done with pen on paper. Usually Pentel Rolling Writers or Papermate Flair tip pens. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Just had a session with the Pittsburgh Comics Salon on Saturday at Biddle’s Escape. Warm space, good people. It was good to be together for Pittsburgh’s first snow. I’ve been exhausted these past couple weeks and these gatherings get me through it all. Thanks to the core crew that always comes hungry for comics making I had everyone study, copy and remix some comic books. Jenn Lisa knocked her Multiple Warheads studies out of the ballpark… Top secret exercises. Come to Pittsburgh to find out what’s up. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️My great friend, Jena Tegeler sent me a link to this funny page, Little Gems, that documents all the stop motion animation Moomin television shows via screen caps. The site, Little Gems is brought together by Steve Wright. Lots of different tv shows captured to keep them from fading into memory. I want to focus on The Moomins. 16 episodes have been captured and summarized by screenshots and text. It’s a beautiful thing to see these miniature puppet worlds bring the Moomins to life. Take a look at the one for “The Winter Bonfire”. The Moomins was a stop motion animated children’s television series based on the Tove Jansson’s Moomin series of books. produced by Se-ma-for and Jupiter Film between 1977 and 1982 for Polish, Austrian and German television. Above all, though, it’s funny to me because of how they mirror Tove and Lars Jansson’s strips – distilled through the web from TV episodes based on novella’s. 3 panels tell the story – Comics all the way through… ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Alright comics peddlers, don’t forget: the exhibitor application for #CAKEChicago2017 is open until November 28th. People make good money out in the Midwest at this show, so try applying! Apply here. NOTE:If you live way out on the East or West coast and haven’t tabled at too many shows in your life as a comics maker, I would discourage you on applying to go so far to Chicago for CAKE. Look more locally and regionally. You’ll reap better rewards from the energies you spend. These things can get stressful and I want to spare you that.Print some comics and share them in your tristate area first ;)————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Good news in the history of free speech in America – the Kickstarter for Mike Diana film raises enough to clear arrest warrant. Does Freedom of Speech mean anything when authorities see only obscenity? Does an artist’s vision matter when community standards conspire to suppress it? In a small town in Florida back in 1994, Mike Diana learned that the answer was a resounding no. Freedom of Speech doesn’t mean anything when your art is declared obscene. And one man’s art could be another man’s obscenity. Diana’s crime? Publishing a hand-made comic zine called Boiled Angel full of graphic, outrageous, often hilarious confrontational art, full of sex and violence, meant to shock and disturb. But it was a zine only sold to adults by mail. With a print run of only 300 copies, Diana’s zine was NEVER available in comic racks or in stores. And only one copy – count ‘em, one! – was ever sold to a customer in Diana’s hometown. And that one customer was an undercover cop! You can get the details on the completed campaign here. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/ This Google Computer is a baby right now but with the right teaching, it’ll know how to decipher your poorly drawn bicycle! I live in Pittsburgh, home of Carnegie Mellon where they run computers round the clock just to build these kinds of neural networks. Go on and try your hand at QuickDraw. It’s fun. I’m always fearful of everything AI related, so this kind of thing scares me, obviously. Nevertheless, this can definitely expand the ways that humans interact in digital environments. Instead of communicating to a database via language abstracted through letters, humans can begin to communicate queries with language abstracted through images. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️the Secret Acres crew reflects on Comic Arts Brooklyn (CAB) 2016. Sean Ford takes the lead in the recap with Leon and Barry. They write about the feeling that I got this year, that because of the circumstances in the lead up to CAB, there was dominance of many exciting, yet relatively unknown cartoonists. I reckon reviewers and buyers will be unpacking much of the work that was on display over this winter… Perhaps due to the late announcement of CAB this year, (and like eighteen competing comic shows happening across the globe that same day), the show missed a few stalwarts like D+Q, Koyama, AdHouse, Fantagraphics and a spiked punch bowl full of eggnog. Who needs the carbs, anyway? Instead, artist tables dominated for once, interspersed with royalty like Charles Burns, Richard McGuire, and Dame Darcy. This left more time and space to find less obvious gems than one might otherwise. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️ Over on the Washington Post, Michael Cavna writes on the breakthrough success of Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell, and Congressman John Lewis’s March. “March: Book Three” is the first graphic novel to win a National Book Award. What a time to be alive. This is a huge achievement for the March team. Michael Cavna writes: “March: Book Three,” the third installment in Rep. John Lewis’s powerful civil rights memoir, received the National Book Award on Wednesday evening in Manhattan. Five times before, a graphic novel had been named a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature — beginning with Gene Luen Yang‘s “American Born Chinese” a decade ago. Yang, now the Library of Congress’s national ambassador for Young People’s Literature (and a 2016 MacArthur grant recipient), repeated that feat three years ago with “Boxers & Saints.” David Small’s “Stitches” and Noelle Stevenson’s “Nimona” also have been finalists. Yet this year, the building achievement that is “March” could not be denied the ultimate prize. ⚡️ And over at the Guardian, they’ve spoken with Congressman Lewis on his thoughts on the win. It’s especially interesting in the context of the emboldening that racists and misogynists have gotten through the recent election. Congressman Lewis speaks of hope: “I never lost faith, because for every racist idea there was an anti-racist idea,” said the author. “For every killer of the mind there was a lifesaver of the mind. And in the midst of the human ugliness of racism there is the human beauty in the resistance to racism. That is why I have faith. And I’ll never lose my faith that you and I can create an anti-racist America … where black lives matter.” ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️“Novel Graphics” Over on NPR Glen Weldon talks to himself about the usefulness of the term “graphic novel”. Wanting to strike a faux-populist contrarian note about the whole the graphic novel, comics, sequential art taxonomy it comes off as a dizzying bore. As you’ll likely be talking about this great achievement of the March team with grandma and auntie over your turkey when avoiding discussing politics, someone’s going to bring up their confusion over what constititues a comic vs. a graphic novel. Maybe this article will help? Fundamentally, though, only new forms of comics will be able to continue to express the continuum of what comics are and aren’t. The question isnt anymore “how” to make comics or what to call them but what to do with them. For what it’s worth as a bookseller, terms like comic book, trade paperback and graphic novel are all very useful to help understand what people are looking for. And in this world, that money is key. It’s how commodity art forms survive. For what it’s worth, here’s a little throwback from The Comics Journal for flavor. “GROTH: Let me ask you something that was nagging at me. It’s A Good Life is subtitled a “A Picture Novella.” Which seemed like a very self-conscious effort to put a tag on it. SETH: Yeah, it is a pretty self-conscious effort. I very consciously tried to come up with an antiquated-sounding term. I went through a couple of the normal varieties of labels. “A picture story,” or I could have just put “a comic book,” which crossed my mind. It goes without saying that I didn’t want to use the term graphic novel. I just don’t like that term.” – Gary Groth, “Seth,” The Comics Journal 193 (1997) ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️You might remember this comic about Tillie Walden and Anna Selheim‘s experiences at Planned Parenthood. I shared it with you all a while back, when they made it. They are now selling physical copies of this comic for $6, and all proceeds will go to Planned Parenthood. If you want it or if you’re just willing to spread the word, I’m sure they’d appreciate it. You can paypal $6 to Anna Selheim at bighappyjet@gmail.com. You can read the whole thing here: http://tinyurl.com/hwbozlw . ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Comics Workbook has announced the Winter Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers – course starts Dec. 29th 2016! 8 week course – 500 bux – 10 spots available – apply by Dec. 13th 2016 and get $100 off course fee! Email santoroschoolATgmail for more details. Santoro School 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 small jpgs of images – dont post to your blog pls -specific url links to any comics work you have done. Send applications to: santoroschoolATgmail ————————————————————————————————— until next time 😉 juan Share this page: [...]

06/29/2017

Sally IngrahamJune 29, 2017NewsSam Ombiri on Simon Moreton’s “Plans We Made”; PBS looks at Comics In Transit; catching up with Ronald Wimberly; Indie publishers/inclusive comics; and more. ———————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: Plans We Made by Simon Moreton is a great book. It’s been a comic that excites everyone I show the book to. For some reason I found myself comparing it to New School by Dash Shaw, although in my mind these two books don’t complement each other at all. They’re very different books. New School feels like an Adventure Comic and Plans We Made feels like Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes. The connection is that as the reader you are demanded by the book in both cases to project your attitude into the comic. Of course every comic does this, but New School and Plans We Made are books that are really asking you, very loudly, “Know what I mean?” It’s like this weird extreme where it’s not the most familiar territory, but in sacrificing familiarity, it ends up being the most familiar. I was thinking about how Dash Shaw said the intent of the dumb line is to add ambiguity to the story. Maybe I’m remembering it all wrong, but maybe the reader would project more into the story. I guess the first part of the idea is that it’s like the person making the drawing makes the drawing what it is. Like a cool guy is making marks like a cool guy would, and the dumb line tells you it could be anyone who drew this, and it’s maybe more a reflection of you, the reader, that determines the attitude it’s drawn with. I didn’t interact with New School this way too too much, I was just into the way the drawings looked, but the way New School was drawn was more for Dash himself than the reader. He’s introducing the dumb line so he doesn’t have to re-summon the same exact attitude every time he’s drawing, so he draws with what he quotes Mazzucchelli saying, “a line that doesn’t know what it’s saying.” The personal connections I made in New School were maybe more, because of specific circumstance and situations that ended up overlapping with Danny, or what Dash described as the feeling of what he felt when he went to Japan. Whereas for Plans We Made, I hadn’t had 97% of the specific experiences, but I could relate to it more. At times, I could say I had a similar feeling, but in both cases it seems that both cartoonists are removing this idea of what happened being a specific thing that only happened to them, and seem interested in the idea of it having happened to other people as well. Simon seems way, way more interested in pursuing this than Dash is. There’s this great sequence in Plans We Made, where Simon’s misery is being reenacted by his drunk friend, like it manifests in his drunk friend, and there’s isn’t a huge distinction made between the two characters, so the feeling transfers seamlessly in between the two of them. Dash feels like he doesn’t rush straight to his goal, he takes a long winding path and barely cares if he gets there, but spares no effort. He only cares for the spirit or the attitude that comes with trying to get “there”(that’s kind of my theory on Kramers 8‘s theme btw, like when Sammy Harkham’s describing the mysterious characteristics of the cartoonists that were picked for it). The way I was introduced to Plans We Made was that I should read it like those faceless characters are people you’ve known. It’s never a big deal that these characters are faceless – it feels needed for the drawings. It doesn’t have this unnatural feeling, like say how in Yokoyama’s books there are those characters who can’t, characters who don’t, exhibit any emotion on their faces besides their suspicious scowl. Simon, at least from what I gather, isn’t so concerned with making a huge statement on the comics form, something that’s against previously conceived thoughts of what comics are. New School is pushing a new way of looking at color or approaching color and line work, but there are also undertones in the story in New School. For example with Clockwork, or this fictional idea of an avant garde theme park movement of consciously challenging the form for the sake of challenging it, reveling in the supposed immaturity of it, and being unapologetically romantic regarding the direction it will take the form, whatever it may be. I’d even argue with the title of New School, keyword being “New” – it’s all about making a grand statement in the form. Not so much with Simon – he just contextualizes himself as lazy. One of my favorite pages is him saying in a similar tone to the rest of the book, “Wrote awful songs,” and a great drawing of him sitting with guitar (pictured above). – Sam Ombiri Get a copy of Plans We Made from Uncivilized books – HERE. 6-29-2017 – by Sam Ombiri ———————————————————————————————— Sally here – Johnathon Dalton spoke to the PBS News Hour earlier this week about his part in the Comics In Transit project. Comics In Transit was started by the Cloudscape Comics collective, based out of Vancouver, Canada, and since 2015 it has been placing comics featuring refugees’ stories in bus transit stations. “In 2015, Canada began that country’s largest refugee resettlement program since the Vietnam War. Over the last year-and-a-half, 45,000 Syrian refugees have made Canada their home, more than double those admitted in the U.S.“ Johnathon’s comic is about Mohammed Alsaleh, who was imprisoned after documenting a protest and uploading pictures to the web. He was eventually released, but decided to leave Syria rather than risk being arrested again. The comic will appear in a bus shelter in Vancouver later this year. You can read more about the story HERE. ———————————————————————————————— The above video was made by Ronald Wimberly and Chase Conley for Nike. You can see a bunch of process pics and other related imagery on Ron’s Instagram – HERE. Also from the world of Ronald Wimberly comes the news that his comic Gratnin is back on the comics app Stela. “GRATNIN is short for Gratuitous Ninja. KGMR stands for Kyoku-gen Muron-Ryu, a style of ninjutsu practiced by the now pacifist Namba family who run a karate/yoga-studio/farm/food co-op out of Gowanus Brooklyn. The Namba take in three local delinquents and teach them ninjutsu. When the new chunin break clan rules to fight a couple of local trap boys they wind up making more problems then they solve. How to get the comic? Download the Stela Unlimited app here: -iOS: http://bit.ly/2eQc4om -Android: http://bit.ly/2f14Idm“ It can be hard to keep up with Ron – he rides the high and fast currents of the world, always moving and grooving – so for those of us on the slower planes, he provides the Wimberly Newsletter – sign up for it HERE! ———————————————————————————————— Huffpost reports that Indie comics publishers are doing a better job at being inclusive than mainstream ones. Not shocking. The piece features video comments from Roxane Gay, author of the Black Panther spin-off series World of Wakanda and Marvel’s first black female writer. Incidentally, both series’ have recently been canceled. While Marvel and DC are fighting it out with their sales numbers, indie comics publishers are having more success at supporting interesting work and creators. “ “Inclusivity is absolutely important and is achieved by actively seeking out and embracing voices that might otherwise not be heard if we didn’t provide them a platform,” Eric Reynolds, associate publisher of Fantagraphics, told HuffPost. Dafna Pleban, an editor at another alternative comic publisher, BOOM! Studios, echoed this sentiment. “I don’t think inclusivity can be achieved in one fell swoop.” she said. “I think it’s a process, and it’s something that we’re constantly working on to improve and grow. I think we can be better. Luckily, BOOM! Studios has been a place where they’ve encouraged us to reach out to creators that excite us and develop stories that inspire us, not just what we might think can sell now.” ” Read the rest of the Huffpost article HERE. A piece at Vox earlier this month cited the comic industry’s sales structure as the root of the problem – and the only solution at the moment to keeping diverse, inclusive comics on the shelves is to work with the system and pre-order them. “The comic book industry isn’t going to magically change its distribution system overnight, and in order to flourish within the system, comic books must be preordered. Since comic books are sold to retailers as final sale and are ordered three months in advance, walking into your local comic book shop and buying a book off the shelf does nothing to directly support the book in the eyes of the publisher or Diamond’s sales. The only real way around this is to preorder a book from your local shop in advance of its release, which alerts the shop owner that there’s interest in a title, and that they should stock it in on their shelves.“ Read the rest of the Vox article HERE. ———————————————————————————————— Todd Hignite Comic Art is the new official representative of art sales for Jaime Hernandez and a select few other contemporary comics artists, including Daniel Clowes and Julie Doucet. Todd Hignite plans to use the site not only to facilitate the art sales but to maintain a conversation about the artists and their ongoing work. Read more HERE. ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 6-29-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-29-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

02/28/2017

Posted on February 27, 2017February 28, 2017 by Aaron Cockle

Aaron here today with Whit Taylor Comics; PaperJazz; LA Times Book Prize Finalists (Comics Category); Pete Toms Gets Reviewed; Another Look at Matthew Thurber; Horvitz/Provan in Conversation; Congrats to INK BRICK

—————————————————————————————————

What is Race? Just the Facts.
Whit Taylor has a comic about race and its perception throughout history posted at the Nib.

—————————————————————————————————

Poster by @adactivity; Typography help by @1990-present

—————————————————————————————————

Graphic Novel/Comics of Note (in Los Angeles, California)
The Los Angeles Times has released its list of finalists for their annual book prize awards, with a strong list of contenders for the ‘GRAPHIC NOVEL/COMICS’ category:

“Beverly” by Nick Drnaso
“The Artist” by Anna Haifisch
“Don’t Come in Here” by Patrick Kyle
“What Is Obscenity” by Rokudenashiko (translated by Anne Ishii)
“Demon: Volume 1” by Jason Shiga

—————————————————————————————————

A Comic Whose Characters Swim in Apathy and Cynicism
At Hyperallergic, R. Orion Martin digs in to Pete Toms’s Dad’s Weekend, published by Hic and Hoc:

Every middle-aged character in the book except for Manny seems to be in a state of resigned existential crisis. One middle-aged woman interrupts Manny to tell him about a realization she’s had,

Once you unpack, you’re left with an empty suitcase. What’s at the foundation of who you are? Animal instincts? Some shit your parents said to you when you were a toddler? It’s all so simple and unimportant. I had this dream where I hung myself with my own DNA strand.

—————————————————————————————————

‘The pre-production of Cremaster 3 is kind of just rolling along without me.’
Sally and Juan linked to this Max Morris/Matthew Thurber interview last week, but I wanted to take another look at it, especially this part from the start of the Q&A:

Max Morris: Back in 2014, you wrote this article for The Comics Journal Website , “Letter to a Young Cartoonist”, that stirred some controversy at the time. A bulk of the article dealt with the ramifications of posting comics work on Tumblr and Social Media, among other issues of challengers to the new generation of comics artists. This was in a time when that felt like the primary way to see new work being made by current creators. A little under 3 years after you posted that article, a lot has changed. Looking back at this article, what words do you have to say to the young cartoonist today?

Matthew Thurber: I feel more than ever that printed media contains autonomous power that is almost magical. All internet publication is embedded in and framed by another corporation. With print, as soon as it flies off the press it belongs, like the land, to “you and me”. The disturbing thing about social media is they change the terms of publication from one of total freedom, to one where you are being allowed to express yourself. Because they grant it… they can take it away. Social media echo chambers are destructive: look at what they have helped to do in terms of ripping our country in half, replacing everything with a simulation of reality. Is that what you mean by “a lot is changed”? We’re opting into 1984 because it feels good. It’s so seductive to feel like you’ve done something in pseudo-reality. We need to learn to live without the internet, to distribute artifacts in physical space, to know how to talk to each other again. It is so much more meaningful and beautiful. And guess what??? I’m part of the problem because I’m on INSTAGRAM (@mtshelves)! What a miserable hypocritical worm!!!! And the worst part is….I LOVE it! I love the ego pampering attention and the immediacy despite my complete conviction that it sucks!

—————————————————————————————————

David Horvitz, Somewhere in Between the Jurisdiction of Time (detail), 2014, document sent to the United States Secretary of Transportation to indicate how and to where the time-zone line had been moved.

Ask the Stone to Say
Via Triple Canopy, David Horvitz and Alexander Provan discoursing on time, space, discourse, discoursing:

Horvitz’s work as an artist often suggests how to live outside the bounds of time, how to recover forms of experience that are rooted in natural rhythms and not the dictates of international bureaucracies. “A lot of people are into yoga and meditation, but I see those as ways of relaxing your mind and body so that you can continue to work efficiently and productively, at absurdly accelerated rates,” he says. “I’m interested in forms of meditation that cultivate the enjoyment of time, that oppose efficiency, that make you miss every deadline.”

Horvitz and Provan cover ancient Egyptian astrology and atomic clocks, the auditory landscapes of nineteenth-century villages and the contemporary landscapes offered by geostationary satellites. They find the origins of Brexit in the imposition of the Gregorian calendar (“European-elite time”) on the British in 1752, which vanquished eleven days and gave rise to a protest slogan after Boris Johnson’s heart: “Give Us Our Eleven Days.”

—————————————————————————————————

INK BRICK’s crowd-funding goal for it’s 8th issue was met with some time to spare, so congratulations to them. The new book has a great list of contributors, and frequent readers of this news-blog will see some of their favorite cartoonists/people involved:

Vidhu Aggarwal | Alyssa Berg | Warren Craghead | Erin Curry | John Hankiewicz | Keren Katz | Mark Laliberte | Matt Madden | Paul Madonna (cover) | Alexander Rothman | Alexey Sokolin | Bishakh Som | Deshan Tennekoon | Andrea Tsurumi | Paul K. Tunis | Andrew White | Sophia Wiedeman | Shahar Sarig

More info, as well as details about their ‘Stretch Goals’, are noted on their Kickstarter page.

—————————————————————————————————

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

—————————————————————————————————

A Cosmic Journey – 2-28-2017 – by Cameron Arthur

—————————————————————————————————

Suzy and Cecil – 2-28-2017 – by Sally Ingraham

—————————————————————————————————

Joanie and Jordie – 2-28-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio

—————————————————————————————————

Cozytown –2-28-2017- by Juan Fernandez

Share this page:

Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Aaron Cockle

Posted on February 27, 2017February 28, 2017

Explore

01/16/2017

Juan FernándezJanuary 16, 2017NewsJuan and Sally here to start your week off with George Herriman strips, Richard Diebenkorn sketchbooks, Illustrated PEN’s State of Emergency, the GOUFFRE anthology, and other comics and news bites. ————————————————————————————————— Here on the site, Comics Workbook student and cartoonist Jesse Rimler shares a report on the Richard Diebenkorn Sketchbook show that hung at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University last summer. “This exhibit made me think about the general use of a sketchbook. Diebenkorn called his sketchbook his “portable studio,” and it’s clear he took drawing in these beatup spiralbounds as seriously as he did etching on a copper plate or painting on a canvas. I think some comics makers, myself included, tend to treat their sketchbooks as something completely different from their final art. The idea of closing the gap between the two is appealing to me, and Diebenkorn’s example is inspiring.“ Read the rest of this “Art Trip” HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Illustrated PEN published an online graphic narrative series called State of Emergency, which is intended to help “amplify the voices and stories of the communities most at risk in this new and hostile reality“. Edited by Meg Lemke, Rob Kirby, and MariNaomi, it features pieces by Iasmin Omar Ata, Dylan Edwards, Thi Bui, Rachel Masilamani, Robert Kirby, Whit Taylor, Tyler Cohen, and Cristy C. Road. Check out the whole series HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Juan Fernandez here. Ain’t got too much to say today, just wanted to share some strips I made with you a while back. I’ve been going through the new IDW 1934 Krazy Kat Dailies book every day this year. It’s been a wonderful experience. I’ve been clamoring for an economically formatted collection of Herriman’s dailies for some years now since Fantagraphics started doing their reprints of the Sunday pages. Those are exquisite. This IDW collection features the complete run of Krazy Kat dailies from 1934, reproduced full size on high quality newsprint, in a chunky, horizontally formatted hardcover volume from IDW’s Library of American Comics Essentials series. Woo boy. That thing is amazing. In light of this, I’ve been thinking about a couple of strips I made at the Center for Cartoon Studies in 2012. The following strips were made for the second assignment in Jason Lutes’ Cartooning Studio. Aping as the building of discipline. Style as functional raincoat. The objective was to recreate faithfully the visual and narrative style of an American strip artist and to tell 3 autobiographical stories using the strip as the vehicle. The assigned artists ranged far and wide, from Walt Kelly to Scott Adams. You know, a very CCS “traditional” cartooning exercise. I was lucky enough to get George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. Thanks Jason. It was a really satisfying exercise. I won’t lie, the strips turned out nice but they don’t really work. I had never done comic strips that weren’t just Dada-ist doodle non-sequitors, so this exercise proved to be a challenge. Not because I didn’t want them to make sense, but rather because I wanted so badly for them to make sense. I wanted to express so much in a single strip and it came out garbled. Clean, but garbled. I understand structure, but traditional narrative? Man, that’s hard to do and not ham up! To make these studies I read a great deal of Herriman’s dailies, across collections, but I found that the most useful was a big green copy of Fantagraphics Books’ The Kat Who Walked in Beauty. The “Panoramic” Dailies from 1920. If you’re only familiar with Herriman’s broadsheets, you really ought to take a look at his dailies. While the broadsheets are beautiful and hyperbolic, the daily strips are immaculately fine tuned little nuggets. It’s staggering to know that he churned out these little finely crafted gems on a daily basis for 31 years. In my opinion, it’s there that you’ll find his genius. Day in and day out. At least, that’s the work that I most want to read. Speaking to what I said about structure, I want to share some of the process of thinking about Herriman’s pacing. Diagrams of panel organization schemes that appeared throughout the strips from 1920. You have the pacing of his language in balloons but, more importantly you have the pacing across his panels. Horizons dip up and down. Panels tuck themselves behind others. Panel sequences exist as objects, embedded in the desert landscape. CW Students: I recommend blocking out the essential shapes and forms of any comics that you enjoy. It’s a good warm up for thinking about structure. Roughly block out panels and black regions. Squint your eyes. Take off your glasses if you wear them. Block out a lot of pages and spreads. This can really help internalize the structures of the works that you love. And that can help you synthesize those things into work of your own that you will love. ————————————————————————————————— The new anthology GOUFFRE from Lagon Revue is now available online from revuelagon.com. Edited and conceived by editors Alexis Beauclair, Bettina Henni, Séverine Bascouert, Sammy Stein & Jean-Philippe Bretin, GOUFFRE combines multiple printing techniques: Silk-screen, Riso printing, and offset printing. A spectacle of daring comics and all out production. Grab yourself a copy and be on the cutting edge of comics. It’s 45€. GOUFFRE stands for polymorphic, plastic comics. The magazine celebrates new perspectives and unique approaches of the medium: Minimal, maximal, without characters, made of sensations, or of emptiness, mute, aesthetic, close to abstraction. You will discover toxic undergrowth, extinguished suburbs, melancholic sci-fi stories, fake magazine covers, modern love relationships and visions of the near future. ————————————————————————————————— Tea and Crumpets Maurice, Son of Noah Pt. 4 by Roman Muradov is up on Hazlett – HERE. You can catch the rest of the story as well – and check out the previous comic series’ published by Hazlett, including the story by Annie Mok and Natalie Andrewson – Straight Expectations. The Will Eisner Hall of Fame 2017 Nominees have been announced. It’s the 100th year since Eisner’s death so the list is a little longer than usual, with four judge-appointed Hall of Fame inductees instead of the usual two, and seventeen names up for the public vote – including the Hernandez Brothers. Check out Tom Spurgeon’s comments on the list HERE. Michael DeForge now has a designated Instagram for his comic series Leaving Richard’s Valley – follow along @richardsvalley. There is an interview with Erik Nebel in Fluide Glacial, the famous French comics magazine. Erik translated an excerpt and shared it HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Check out Zona #2, a unique look into Frank Santoro’s process. Full color, 24 pages. Magazine sized. Cardstock covers. Edition of 100. Signed and numbered. Get a copy HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-16-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-16-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— 1-16-2017 – by Juan Fernández Share this page: [...]

Juan Fernandez @ CAB 2016

Juan FernándezNovember 14, 2016Festivals and ShowsComic. Arts. Brooklyn. 2016: Comics, zines, prints. A shmorgasbord of color. A dazzling display of print. The 2016 Comic Arts Brooklyn (CAB) presented by Brooklyn’s Desert Island Comics was held on Saturday, November 5th. Organized by Desert Island proprietor Gabe Fowler, this marks the fourth year that the show has been called CAB and the eighth year of the show, which was originally called The Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. Gabe has turned the fest into a well-oiled machine and this year featured satellite events the day before and the day after the Saturday exhibitors showcase at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church. Friday saw Altcomics 8, a night of music, live comics readings, and art hosted by 2dcloud, along with the opening of Buzz Saw, an exhibition of art from the Sequential Artists Workshop. Sunday saw Color Giants, the Brooklyn Animation Expo, which was held in conjunction with Art Brooklyn Fireproof. Screenings were programmed by Kenneth Filmer. There were no panels or artist spotlights this year. A bummer in some ways, but given the last minute green lighting of this year’s CAB, it makes sense to not have wanted to rush programming only to wind up with subpar panels. I exhibited as Comics Workbook and tabled next to the great Julia Gfrörer and Sean T. Collins, alongside Patrick Kyle(and Lala Albert who set up shop at Patrick’s table towards the end of the day). The Comics Workbook table consisted of myself, Jenn Lisa, Ronald Wimberly and Simon Reinhardt. I thought it was a wonderful show. Rumors had been going around earlier this year that it wasn’t going to happen. Well, IT HAPPENED! A huge thank you to Mr. Fowler for the last minute opportunity to exhibit at this year’s CAB. Comics Workbook got word late in the week that there was a need for another exhibitor. Of course, we agreed to go. You don’t miss CAB. We hunkered down prepared a wide array of comics to bring to the good folks of New York. Unfortunately Frank’s car had been giving him trouble all week and was in the shop. We planned everything carefully. I would leave with Jenn Lisa and haul what I could. He would get it out of the garage Saturday morning and he would book it to make it in the afternooon Saturday to catch the second half of the buzzing show. Unlike Frank though, I can’t haul short box after short box of comics in my VW Bug… We had to decide what would go first and then did some intense tetris outside the Rowhouse Residency to fit in as much as we could. We slammed the trunk and hauled ass to NYC! Frank would bring the rest in the morning. Jenn Lisa and I hit the road, spirits high. We arrived early Saturday morning, got some shut eye and then booked it for Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in the morning. I was worried about parking, so Jenn and I took off to set up as early as we could. Frank’s taught me how critical these kind of considerations are for making these exhausting days fall into place. We lucked out out and found a spot right in front of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Unloading and setting up was a breeze. We were tabling next to Patrick Kyle, Lala Albert, Julia Gfrörer and Sean T. Collins. Good folks. I told Jenn to get ready, because CAB’s prime time is 11-1:30. A choc-a-bloc that builds to a fever pitch. Everyone’s oogling and oggling round that time. Most attendees hope to make a full tour of the show before breaking out their wallets, but within that first hour I heard that attendees just couldn’t wait on buying so-an-so’s latest book or zine. They knew that things were going to fast. We sold a Truth Zone within the first 20 minutes of the show. That set the tone for the show. It was wonderful to meet so many people. Lots of people were familiar with what we’d been doing over the past year in Pittsburgh with the house and with the residencies. It emboldens the spirit to know that what we’re doing is rippling out. A HUGE shout out to all former students that came by and traded your books with us! You know who you are <3 Jenn and I brought a lot of our own books and were excited to share them with New Yorkers. I sold out of my zine I Can See the Birds, which was awesome. What else sold well? Connor. Willumsen. This is his show! Everyone was asking for his stuff. We sold out of all the copies of Swinespritzen that we brought which was a real thrill. That Connor… The great Ronald Wimberly stepped up to the plate at 2PM to do a signing and the fans start piling up. He brought the goods. While his fans waited, to chat with the shinobi himself, they dug through our shortboxes. We riffed on the primo comics Frank had curated. It was a good time. They found some 80s gold. No one curates a small selection of comics like Frank… Ron had brought the Artist edition of Prince of Cats, the Attack on Titan anthology he was in and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Ron is one of the most exciting comics makers I can think of right now. His blade cuts across a thousand forms. He gives his fans, new and old, the attention they deserve while he signs. It was a real honor to work by his side on Saturday! Image did right by this edition of Prince of Cats. It’s glorious. Lots of people asked for Frank. In the end his mechanics in Pittsburgh let him down. This CAB was lacking in it’s requisite levels of Santoro. Alas! For all of those who left messages, rest assured, we passed along all the memos to Frank. There were so many amazing books of all shapes and sizes. Here are some of my favorites: Lale Westvind’s Breakdown Press book, Hax Anya Davidson’s Gloom Planet Alabaster Pizzo’s Mimi and the Wolves Act 3: The Howl Conor Stechschulte’s new self published print masterpiece, Christmas In Prison. Richard Short’s Klaus Magazine 2 On a personal level, I was especially startled by how many people were familiar with my own zines and comics. Comics Workbook has been sharing some of them through our social media network over the past year, but I never expected people to be hep to my work just yet! The reach that the blog and the social media network has is really inspiring. There’s still some viral mystery to it all… CAB is such a whirlwind of a show. It’s definitely the New York City atmosphere. It all just goes by so fast. It was busy. Sales were solid. There are so many comics festivals these days (curated and non-curated) that I know for a fact that I can’t handle more than regional shows around Pittsburgh and the heavy hitters around the East Coast. It’s a delight to end the season with CAB, you leave inspired with work that invites you to pore over it all winter long. I firmly believe that the most interesting, and arguably pioneering comics makers are all in a room at CAB(some come every other year). Wish that I could have gone around and interviewed people about their work! That’ll be for next year. I wound up holding down the fort at the Comics Workbook table. The comics weren’t going to sell themselves 😉 Towards the end of the show Simon M. Reinhardt arrived to hold it down and I was able to make the rounds. Thanks Simon! Here are some photos of only a few of the many amazing people I bumped into. Gabe’s got the market place down to a science. So, naturally, I’m interested to see the ways in which CAB continues to evolve. Will it stabilize into being an amped up zine fest and wild style art book fair that focuses exclusively on the marketplace? Will someone step in to lend a hand to the team to develop some track of programming during the weekend or the week before? To return to it’s BCGF format. Does that matter? Who’s ready to step up to the plate? On the floor I heard some people discuss this being the last CAB. And damn, that’s a little pessimistic. For what it’s worth, CAB can’t be beat for a lot of reasons. Easy access via transportation. Trains, plains, buses, cars all make their way easily to NYC. For the most part either you know someone in the City or there’s an affordable place to stay for a night or two. The crowds are great. People are squeezing CAB into their busy Saturday. It’s just one of many things they’re doing so they bring an incredible energy into the space. Most people likely just heard that there was something cool with comics going on in that one church in Brooklyn. That’s a good place to be. Gabe’s curation can’t be beat. You wan’t to find the coolest books published in a year? You can’t do any better in the US than coming to CAB. Oh and people come ready to spend money. Real money. I think it’s been year of a lot of change for comics shows. A new regime of shows is definitely falling into place. CAB showed that it is definitely a part of that new regime. As a show, it does what so few comics can do. It’s got the verve of Montreal’s legendary Expozine. When it comes to art comics and accessible art from the outer limits – It can’t be beat. Mr. Fowler’s extensive knowledge of “what’s happening” in comics comes directly out of his experience as a retailer and it’s clear he curates the show like he curates his store. Desert Island is a great store which serves its community. In my eyes, it’s a must stop for an any all comics pilgrims that travel along the East Coast. I urge everyone to go to CAB next year. It’s a different show than TCAF and a very different show then SPX and CXC. Whether you are a maker or a reader, it’s good to go to them all if you can. It bears repeating – to soak up all these shows and to be at the epicenter of new work and current conversations – YOU DON’T NEED TO BE EXHIBITING. Just pack your bags, grab a bunch of your zines and hop on a bus. While you’re there, give away some books, maybe trade some, take some photos and notes! You’ll come home with lots of ideas and inspiration. There’ll be a lot of new encounters with other makers known and unknown. These shows are where it all happens. You get to meet the authors who are making some of the most amazing work in the world at the moment. Worth it’s weight in gold. -can’t wait for next year, Juan Share this page: [...]

03/14/2016

Juan FernándezMarch 14, 2016NewsJuan Fernandez here with lots of interesting bits and bobs from the comics world. There’s something here for everyone. Let’s jump right in. Here’s a juicy one for ya, Rachel Davies in conversation with Julie Doucet over at Rookie Mag! They talk about embracing the unknown and following creativity to new media. Good stuff. Doucet is an interdisciplinary artist that has historically been pigeon holed as solely a comics maker. They talk about all that and more. Read it here. You said you did printmaking in college but did you ever experiment with printmaking when you were younger than that? What did you work in as a teenager? Oh, I was drawing with a felt-tip pen all the time. Did you always see art as something you would do professionally? I guess so, yeah. At the time, there was a crisis in the ’80s so there were no jobs for anybody. You could go to school and be an artist and it wouldn’t make it any difference because you wouldn’t have a job anyway. Being an artist sounded like the right thing to do because I was drawing all the time and I had a talent for it. Robyn Chapman has launched a new crowdfunding campaign to fund the spring line of Paper Rocket Comics. Chapman is smart in how she uses kickstarter as a pre-order system to help defray the cost of production. She has run 7 successful funding campaigns for Paper Rocket so you can be sure she knows what she’s doing. She’s in it for life and it’s worth seeing how she’s does what she does. Learn more about the Kickstarter on their page! Whit Taylor is giving a talk tomorrow on Autobiography, Identity, and Self-Reflection in Comics Tuesday, March 15, 2016 7–9pm Join NYC-based, New Jersey-born cartoonist, editor, and comics writer, Whit Taylor as she talks about her work in the context of autobiography, identity, and self-reflection. She will present and discuss several of her comics, including The Anthropologists, a semi-autobiographical account of three strangers venturing into the Australian Outback together for a week of unexpected adventures, and her most recent work Ghost, a mind-expanding journey to remote and unanticipated landscapes, in a story of exploration, self-discovery, and healing. You can listen and be part of the conversation at the Interference Archive – 131 8th St, Brooklyn, New York 11215. More info over on facebook. Kendra Yee has posted a short new comic that reflects on windows and how we percieve others while securing privacy for ourselves. Great imagery that really breathes and colors that swim together well. – read Part 1 – read part 2 – 2d Cloud has announced the nitty gritty details of Mirror Mirror 2, the second edition of their flagship anthology. It’s going to feature new comics and drawings by: Lala Albert / Clive Barker / Heather Benjamin / Sean Christensen / Nicole Claveloux / Sean T. Collins / Al Columbia / Dame Darcy / Noel Freibert / Renee French / Meaghan Garvey / Julia Gfrörer / Simon Hanselmann / Hellen Jo / Hadrianus Junius / Aidan Koch / Laura Lannes / Céline Loup / Uno Moralez / Mou / Chloe Piene / Josh Simmons / Carol Swain From what they’ve announced, seems that the focus is going to be around horror / pornography / the Gothic / the abject, which should come as no surprise with Julia Gfrörer and Sean T. Collins at the helm. It’ll be out next winter, with some advanced comics floating around in the Fall. And for a little boost in assuring you that what you’re doing is important, how ’bout you reflect on Chuck Jones legacy? Zach over at Practice Positive takes a look at Chuck Jones and what it meant to master both craftsmanship and universality in art. Really useful ideas that can be put into practice by any and all comics makers. Read it here. The whole essence of good drawing—and of good thinking, perhaps—is to work a subject down to the simplest form possible and still have it believable for what it is meant to be. A heads up for you Chicagoans, The Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE) will be holding its 4th annual art auction fundraiser at 7:00 pm on Friday, April 8th, at the The Hideout Inn, located at 1354 W Wabansia Ave. The event will be hosted by intermedia artist Lyra Hill. The event will feature live and silent auctions of over 20 pieces of art by past special guests and exhibitors of CAKE, including Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, Eleanor Davis, and Dash Shaw. The event will also feature live comics readings by local artists Samuel Nigrosh. Molly Colleen O’Connell, and Sam Nigrosh. More info here. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/249959191″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] Simon Moreton joined Robin McConnell over on Inkstuds to chat about his new book from Uncivilized Books, Plans That We Made. Simon has a really beautiful minimal style of story telling that works really nicely. Simon’s work can be found in his Smoo mini comics. If you’ve been sleeping on Simon Moreton, I suggest you dig into his work soon. It’s quiet, but extremely grounded work in the tradition of minimal autobiographical cartooning pioneered by John Porcellino. Well worth a listen! This Nicole Georges‘ Sagittarian Matters brings you a BETH DITTO MAILBAG TAKEOVER!!! Musician & fashion designer Beth Ditto & Nicole Georges answer questions & riff on self-deprecation, grace, gratitude, punk feminism, polyamory, and MORE. The self-deprecation riff alone is worth the listen! To close things off, I wanted to let you know that Archive.org has recently made David W Niven‘s incredible archive of early jazz available for download. Feast your ears, babies. 650 tapes · 1,000 hours · 1,378 WAV files · 637 GB · 691 JPEG scans of cassette liner cards & literature. Meticulously Collected, Compiled, and Narrated by David W. Niven, 1930-1993. Generously Donated by David W. Niven to the Foxborough High School Jazz Program, Stephen C. Massey, Director, 2010. Archived to CD-Quality Digital Audio by Kevin J. Powers, 2010-2011.An Early Jazz Recording Collection by David W. Niven over and out, Juan Fernandez Share this page: [...]

03/08/2016

Juan FernándezMarch 8, 2016NewsThey did it. 2dcloud reached their Kickstarter goal. It was a stretch but they had that long game. Art wins again. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the work that they are publishing i their upcoming season, I encourage you to check out their crowdfund campaign. There might be something right up your alley. Now in their twenty-eighth year, the Lambda Literary Awards have announced their nominations. The Lambda Literary Awards celebrate achievement in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) writing for books published in 2015. The awards ceremony on June 6, 2016, will be held at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts (566 LaGuardia Pl, New York, NY 10012). It’s exciting to see the work that was chosen from the world of comics. Check out all the nominations here. LGBT Graphic Novels Curveball, Jeremy Sorese, Nobrow Honor Girl, Maggie Thrash, Candlewick Press The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal, EK Weaver, Iron Circus Comics O Human Star: Volume One, Blue Delliquanti, Self-published Wuvable Oaf, Ed Luce, Fantagraphics Books NEW at SPIT AND A HALF!!! Lisa Carver, Ian Sundahl, and some great French imports from Editions Tanibis (in English and/or wordless!): Sylvie Fontaine and Paul Kirchner! All the good stuff over at www.spitandhalf.com. John P. is doing God’s work. Andrew White made a free PDF collection of his favorite among the one page comics he posted on Comics Workbook from 2012 to 2014. You can still read all 350 or so strips online, but Andrew thought it might be nice to have a pared down and easier to read version of the material available. Even if many of the strips are rough or haphazard, this was an important body of work through which I began to address some of the topics that are important in my comics today. I hope you like it. Nick Gazin chit chats with Peter Bagge over at VICE. While you’re at it, read up on the 5 Musical Urban Legends comics Bagge has done already for VICE. The series continues with the form that Bagge developed for Magnet Magzine. The Who, Mick Jagger, Chuck Berry, Michael Jackson and Prince. Who’s next?! Read the whole thing over on VICE. You never really learned how to draw, but your comics look great. Most people who try to make comics without learning to draw make garbage. How did you figure out the drawing style you have? Well, I can draw people and things that look like what I’m drawing while looking at it/them. But that bores me, and I assume it would bore the viewer of the results as well. So I prefer to draw from my mind’s eye, and I take my chances from there. I’m almost never happy with the results, though, so I have a hard time arguing with anyone who thinks my art looks awful. Initially, I was trying to duplicate the way old cartoons look, specifically ones directed by Bob Clampett. Later on, I was also mimicking early comics drawn by Harvey Kurtzman, in his old Hey Look! one-pagers and such. It’s a very polarizing drawing style, though. Goodreads has all these rave reviews ofWoman Rebel by all these woman’s studies majors who love the content of the book but give it three or four instead of five stars, simply because they can’t stand my art! Cartoonist and movie critic, Julian Lytle, sat down with Rocky Hadadi to talk 2015 Film on the most recent installment of Ignorant Bliss. This was recorded before the Oscars so there is a lot of talk about the nominees and a little TV talk. Good talk, good music, good banter. Listen in for a while. Chris Mautner took some time to write about Michael Deforge‘s latest work, Big Kids and the themes and story mechanisms in Deforge’s work more generally. Read on. Despite its small size, Big Kids manages to hold just about all of the ideas and themes DeForge has been exploring up to this point. The secret societies, the adolescent angst, the strange body transformations, the antisocial hero desperate to find acceptance — they all coalesce in this slim book. If you were looking for a starting point in DeForge’s bibliography, this might be the place. Would you like to be Nat. Brut’s first Artist-in-Nonresidence? It’s like an artist residency – but not. You will get a month’s worth of gift cards to cafés around New York City and activate the whole city as your workplace! The residency will last April 1-30, 2016, at the end of which all or part of your work will be published in Nat. Brut. Who can apply? Artists or writers of any medium, with a work sample. We are limiting our first round to applicants who identify as people of color. HOW TO APPLY Apply now until 11:59 on March 31 using our online application here:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1XSbc4qqQQOOPGYm0TjplyLGWOpqJlMlXY7o8EFcdFp4/viewform?c=0&w=1 that’s it for today. juan fernandez, over and out. Share this page: [...]

Art Trip: Pots, Lamps and Comics in Rio

Anna ManciniJuly 29, 2016Art Trip / EssaysA couple of weeks ago, I visited the “Carlos Scliar – from reflection to creation” exhibition at Caixa Cultural, in Rio de Janeiro. With a friend by my side, who is also a designer and cartoonist, I had the chance to look closely at his paintings, drawings and screen prints. I wasn’t really familiar with Scliar’s work, although his name does figure among the greatest Brazilian artists. This ended up being a fortunate ignorance, because reproductions will never do his work justice. Getting to know it in person was a touching experience, especially regarding his colors and subtle use of texture (I’ll leave the pun). In many of his paintings, you can see layers of paper and fabric that serve only as a tactile hint beneath the paint. It left me wondering if it served in any way as a direction for the compositions, or if he had it all planned from the start. In other works, this layering is more evident as he uses collages of music sheets and book pages. It was a pleasure to take a closer look at the patterns of mite-eaten paper carefully incorporated to the paintings. I’ve been experimenting with layering and collaging in my sketchbooks and these observations have inspired me to explore it further. Another happy moment of this first close encounter was a realization similar to, I imagine, what occurred to Sally Ingraham at the Georgia O’Keefe exhibit (as she writes here). Not too far into the gallery, as I walk, noticing the artist’s synthesized depiction of flowers, candles, pots and lamps, I see comics. Two of his compositions follow the well-known 9-panel grid. Into the exhibition’s second room, this similarity becomes more evident and justified. Here are his drawings and screen prints, with more explorations of what can be seen as a comics grid, and a graphic style similar to what flat design trends and contemporary illustration seem to be channeling lately. The justification comes from a video interview with Scliar, played on loop at the center of the room. In this interview, the artist recounts his trajectory as an illustrator; the influence of pop-art and german expressionism in his work; his early experiences with typography for a newspaper; and later on, as an art director for an avant-garde magazine. After watching it in full, my friend and I left thinking how it all made sense now, to somehow “find” comics in a work coming from a background like that. ————————————————————————————————— Art Trip is a series that features reflections on art and comics, and the adventures that transform those who seek it out. ————————————————————————————————— Manzanna, or Anna Mancini, is a Brazilian freelance designer, illustrator and comics artist. Check out her work HERE. Share this page: [...]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply