Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged aline lemos, Alison Bechdel, anneli furmark, barbara smaller, hannah k. lee, jen wang, Julia Wertz, katherine arnoldi, Katie Skelly, Leslie Stein, nnedi okorafor, shee phon lui

Sally Ingraham

Posted on March 1, 2018March 2, 2018

Explore

Comics Community Heart: an Interview with Kevin Czap

Alyssa BergNovember 1, 2016Interviews“The Emerging Talent Award – this goes to a cartoonist whom we feel has plenty of promise as a cartoonist and has shown themselves to be a solid and giving community member as well… We love everything we’ve ever learned about you, in terms of your comics community heart.” —Tom Spurgeon, during the presentation of Jeff Smith and Vijaya Iyer’s Emerging Talent Award to Kevin Czap at CXC, 2016. By a combination of good luck and being an early bird at a pick-your-own-table convention, I ended up tabling close to Kevin Czap of Czap Books during the recent Cartoon Crossroads Columbus expo. This proximity allowed for neighborly chats and also afforded me a front-row spot when they were awarded the CXC 2016 Emerging Talent Award. Jeff Smith and Vijaya Iyer presented Kevin with a $7,500, no-strings-attached award in the form of a novelty check. It was a special moment to witness at CXC – a generous display of support for a deserving artist. A week later, I met up with Kevin in Providence, Rhode Island, to continue the conversation about CXC, comics and community. Alyssa: Tell me a little bit about winning the Emerging Talent Award at CXC. What was that like for you? Kevin Czap: I’ve been going to shows in Columbus with that crowd for a long time. I do a lot of shows – this year I’m going to be doing a total of 14 or 15, more than I usually do. So I know a lot of people, but there are a number of people I don’t necessarily think they know who I am, or I’m not necessarily on their radar… I’m just going about my thing. I didn’t expect it at all. It felt nice in that regard – plugging away at this thing and trying to be a part of the larger conversation of comics that I feel a part of is being represented at CXC. So the award felt like acknowledgement, that you are being noticed and heard, which feels nice. I’m doing all of this stuff without expectation of reward, it’s just what I what I want to do, but it’s definitely nice to see some traction. A: You recently did a Kickstarter for the 2017 collection from Czap Books that more than doubled the amount of money you asked for, and you won this Emerging Talent Award, both within a short span of time. It’s pretty wild, right? KC: I was thinking about that on the drive home and I was crying a lot. Not only that, last year Annie Koyama approached L. Nichols and I about funding Ley Lines, and she gave us a big check for printing the whole line for a year (as well as to pay the artists). And she just did that again for next year. I’ve collected close to what my salary was at my old full-time job to put into making comics, just out of people’s kindness and support of me. It’s too much (laughs). A: It’s the perfect amount! What was your old full-time job? KC: I was a web and graphic designer for a marketing firm in Northeast Ohio. It took good care of me but as I was becoming more ambitious with comics-things that had various facets of identity, the time got to be too much. I was spending the whole day thinking about the comics work that I was not getting done. A: It’s a leap of faith, as an artist, to leave a full-time job. KC: This award validates that decision even more. And also with the Kickstarter, I’ve been able to see the gains that I’ve made since leaving that job, and all of the time I’ve been able to put to good use. A: You have a lot of projects going at once: your own comics, publishing other people’s work, Ley Lines… In addition to those projects you are going to 15 festivals this year. It’s a pretty basic question but how do you manage your time? KC: In the beginning of the year, I figured out a really nice system of dividing up the days into specific blocks so everything is being worked on continually. But then after the first couple of big shows I fell off that a little bit. Now I’m trying to catch back up and get in to it again. Generally I just have a million to-do lists. I realized there are things I really don’t want to do, like call somebody on the phone or ask a stranger a question where the ‘no’ could be a scary thing. But if I put it on the to-do list, I have to cross it off. A: Do you love crossing things off? KC: It’s the greatest thing in the world. A: I was just reading Fütchi Perf and I’m wondering about the process that goes into your comics. KC: I’ve been trying to speed it up a little bit. Generally I’ll have ideas and over a couple months, they’ll formulate. Different bits and pieces of an idea will grow and crystallize and an image will pop out of that. I feel like I work better in smaller chunks. Fütchi Perf was made in discreet units over time. The first couple stories were for specific publications or tasks. I was living in Cleveland and the local alt-weekly had a comics issue: ‘do Cleveland of the future.‘ I did a single page that I later adapted to the first story in Fütchi Perf. A lot of them are based off of experiences I’ve had. I try to shove across any plotting ideas I have. ‘Alright that doesn’t matter, what is the feeling, what do I keep obsessing over?’ The story I was just talking about, I was trying to capture the feeling of going to my first house show – going down this hill and there is this weird house and it’s going to change your life but you don’t know it yet. From there I’ll have the images and then I try to run through the actions in my head. I’ll write out the lyrics or phrasing of the song. I’ve always been obsessed with this idea of somehow translating the feeling or structure of a song to a comic. Some of the more recent work I’ve done I’ll literally try and dissect the structure of song lyrics and try and transcribe that to panels. But for Ley Lines, it was different. I wrote all of the words first. I had some images like I usually do but it was writing out the actual lines, then rewriting and editing before drawing. A: Your Ley Lines book, The Letting Go, was inspired by a conceptual artist (Bas Jan Ader)? KC: Yeah, it’s an artist I learned about in college who I’m still interested in. I was reading a lot of writing about his work and my friend gave me a copy of a documentary about his life and work. I was thinking about these things in general and trying to shove that into a more personal, auto-biographical thing. A: I work with auto-bio in my own work but I try to pull away from the specific and make it more of a relatable feeling. With the auto-bio stuff, is that really close to you? KC: I feel like it’s really personal but it’s heavily coded. There’s a very thick screen. Some of the lines or words are directly things I’ve thought about my own situation but taken out of context to be more relatable and capture a feeling. Everything I do is really earnest, but there is a layer of self-consciousness about that because you have a sense that people don’t take earnestness seriously or it’s an easy route to being bad. There’s always an awareness of that. I don’t want it to be naive, but I do think that earnestness and honesty are important. A: When I made Alpenglow for the Comics Workbook competition, I made a conscious decision to re-imagine that story through kinder eyes. I have the tendency to go toward a heavy-hearted place but I wanted to be more positive, for myself and the people who would read it. When you’re making your work are you conscious of what’s being put out into the ether…of wanting to put positive vibrations into the universe (I’m sorry, I’m a half-hippie!)? KC: No, totally. That’s a lot of where Fütchi Perf started coming from. That idea of how can I turn this into positive energy that I can put into the world? It’s partly what I’m putting out into the world but it’s also what I’m putting into myself, too. I realized at some point it’s very easy to grow negativity in your own mind and I could see where that path leads. How can you correct that behavior, or view it another way? It is a lot of explicitly taking something and flipping it to see, what’s another outcome of this, what do you actually want to happen? A: That’s interesting that you say ‘what do you actually want to happen’ because as I was reading Fütchi Perf, in the first story, a character is “chosen to receive a sizable arts grant.” KC: Oh, ha, I forgot about that. That’s so funny because that specifically came out of not getting a grant and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I had? A: Tell me about the comics community and how you might add to it. KC: As far as the community goes, my role – if I can do anything, I want to be able to bridge some gaps and constantly be true to my idea of comics being a very diverse and interesting medium full of possibility and not about any one particular way a comic looks or is made. A lot of it involves me constantly questioning and revisiting my own assumptions and tastes. I think it’s valuable to revisit those assumptions. Part of why it seemed important to me to go into publishing, besides liking it – promoting other people’s work and putting books together which is fun – is being very aware that the culture and history of comics is editable. It’s created by active involvement. ———————————————————————————————————————— One of my favorite things to see is a work in progress or sketchbook from an artist I admire. I asked Kevin if they would bring something in progress along to our meeting. KC: Right now I’m working on some things, but it’s all writing at this point. This is a recent sketchbook. It started as all ballpoint pen, and more recently I brought in the highlighter. With the line drawings, it’s like a wall I can’t get past. I want to do more blocky color. ———————————————————————————————————————— Kevin Czap – a.k.a. “Comics Mom” – has been making comics since they were a child in Northern Virginia. They live in Providence, RI, where they run the publisher and distro Czap Books. Their most recent work is The Letting Go (Ley Lines #8 – August 2016). Catch up with Kevin at Comic Arts Brooklyn this weekend (Nov. 5th 2016)! Alyssa Berg makes comics in Brooklyn, NY. You can find her work HERE. Share this page: [...]

“How we were thinking” – The Zeitgeist and The Complete Wimmen’s Comix

MardouMay 26, 2016EssaysMystic novelist Doris Lessing interspersed her autobiographies with news clippings and thought-snippets that she’d saved from the years she was writing about. It’s not something you see very often in personal biography; history books are preferred when pulling in contextual ‘fact’. Instead Lessing supplies us with flavors of 60’s London (such as “in cinemas and theatres we stood up for the national anthem”). There’s something so evocative about how she pulls on that shared current of her time. Some of ‘the times’ get culturally hardened and recorded in history books, but lots of it doesn’t. In a similar vein, singer Ian Svenonius notes the transient attitudes of the Then-and-Now, using The Velvet Underground as an example , “…groups that failed in their own era despite catchy tunes, cool shades, turtlenecks and solid connections might have ‘felt’ bad to their audience…conversely, groups which might have felt ‘right’ at the time (the Grateful Dead, Grand Funk, Free etc) may seem confusing to listeners of a later era who are not privy to the pheromones said groups were releasing at their concerts.” Reading the two-volume release of The Complete Wimmen’s Comix made me think about those sort of cultural assumptions and blank spots. The first volume in particular feels like a powerful raw gust of real comics history. The pretty pink and black covers (with inset blue, bruise-like half moons) kicks off with Trina Robbin’s anthology It Aint Me, Babe (1970) and then the complete run of Wimmen’s Comix. I’ve read individual issues before and was somewhat ambivalent. Getting to read the whole gamut is a much different experience, especially the aforementioned first volume (1970-1985). The second volume contains a lot of great stuff too (and more of the artists I’d cite as direct influences on my own work such as Julie Doucet, Phoebe Gloeckner and Alison Bechdel) but the first volume stands out. It seems more experimental, wilder and much less conventional. I wouldn’t have name checked any of these artists in the 70’s/early 80’s as personal influences but this book has made me look with fresh eyes. There’s bold storytelling, some crazy comics layouts and lewd, unapologetically sexy content. It’s in stark relief to the relative lack of risk-taking I permit myself. (And yeah, I’m going to keep thinking about that one). Another aspect that occurs to me is that volume one is essentially my mother’s generation making those comics (I was born in ’75) which makes the lack of respect for cultural niceties and cartooning norms seem even more punk rock and revelatory, as well as being somewhat nostalgic. It reminds me of looking though my aunt’s closet in the early 1980’s and finding all her old platform shoes and boots. My childish trespassing got me yelled at after the event, but I’m glad to own that childhood memory of trying on and walking around in those beautiful and weird, too-big-for-me ‘space’ shoes. It’s not just surface and style though, the content is a match to the macho mores of its time. I’m old enough to remember the casual chauvinism of early 80’s primetime TV shows, as much as I remember seeing housewives with black eyes in the supermarket on Saturday mornings. Though, I was in 1980’s Northern England and not 1970’s San Francisco – yet it’s close enough to spark that consciousness. It’s kind of the thrust these feminist cartoonists were aiming at I think. This volume has also made me re-evaluate Aline Kominsky-Crumb’s work. I found her book Need More Love a little tiresome in tone but reading her juxtaposed with other women artists in this context is such an enjoyable experience. Set amongst her generational peers it’s easier to see the frank humor and flippant skill in her work. She’s so great! A lot of the comics here do miss their mark artistically but it’s not important overall. There was enough I found exciting (and fun!) in these volumes to remind me of the direct power of comics in print – a single cartoonist to a single reader through ink and paper, sharing the highs and degradations of the female experience. This is a big, beautiful, door-opening book and I’m really glad it’s out there. ————————————————————————————————— Sacha Mardou is a Brit making comics in St Louis, Missouri. Sky in Stereo is her most recent comic. Share this page: [...]

Michael Deforge’s Sticks Angelica: Folk Hero Release Tour

Chris Anthony DiazApril 6, 2017The Diaz ArchiveMichael Deforge signed his awesome new book from DRAWN & QUARTERLY at Comix Experience, Wednesday, April 5, 2017, San Francisco. All photos colored by Graham Willcox Share this page: [...]

08/02/2016

Aaron CockleAugust 1, 2016NewsAaron Cockle here today with Mickey Z circa 2012-2013; Bill Sienkiewicz revisits old work; syndicated comic strip pulled for some reason or another; The Routledge Companion to Comics costs $240???; Dabaie/Hart Comics; Rowhouse Auction continues ————————————————————————————————— Mickey Z‘s 2012-2013 output for CW is this week’s Featured Comic. ————————————————————————————————— X-Men: Post-Apocalypse At the big comic convention recently held in San Diego that promotes all of the big super-hero movies, artist Bill Sienkiewicz spotted some work he’d made for a super-hero comic 30 years ago being used to promote the release of a super-hero movie. As an artist with a grievance, Sienkiewicz went to the only place these days where one’s frustrations can be vented, and stated: This practice is hardly unusual standard operating procedure for corporations. Even so, it still rankles. I’m one guy. I’ve been doing this comic-book thing for years. I’m aware most everything is Work-Made-for-Hire. Still, I received no prior notification (a common courtesy), no thank you ( ditto), no written credit in any form whatsoever either on the piece or in connection with the premium, absolutely no compensation and no comp copies of the album. Aside from the discussion of why these corporate, hegemonic, known-to-be-exploitative structures are still propped up by consumers (and creators), there’s a conversation to be had about making a living through your art-making. Is the short answer ‘We deserve better’? Or do we get the comics, art, culture, politicians, etc we deserve? ————————————————————————————————— Grammar Confusion or Terrorist Plot? Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis had a comic strip pulled from syndication on July 27, possibly due to an implied reference to the Islamic State, the Salafi jihadist militant group that follows a fundamentalist, Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. Facebook has blacked out the strip on Pastis’s page, but it’s been posted numerous times in the comments section. Apologies for linking to Facebook so much today. Betsy Gomez at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund had this to say about the matter: As private entities, newspaper editorial staff are certainly within their rights to make decisions about the content they run in their papers. However, the removal of the strip raises concerns over self-censorship. Further, removal of a cartoon as relatively inoffensive at Pastis’s buys into the fear that terrorists like those who attacked Charlie Hebdo and other cartoonists around the world are trying to instill in the populace. The answer to such fear isn’t to remove a cartoon, but to support the free expression of those who would question the terrorists’ actions and the authorities that overreact to terrorist attacks by stepping on fundamental freedoms. ————————————————————————————————— I Can’t Believe This Book Costs $240 The Routledge Companion to Comics, edited by Frank Bramlett, Roy T. Cook, Aaron Meskin, 456 pages, $240. I understand that this is a textbook of some kind, or as the book’s description says: This cutting-edge handbook brings together an international roster of scholars to examine many facets of comics and graphic novels. Contributor essays provide authoritative, up-to-date overviews of the major topics and questions within comic studies, offering readers a truly global approach to understanding the field. Maybe the whole thing was Risographed, and that’s why it costs so much? There don’t appear to be any samples or excerpts available, but if anyone at Routledge/Taylor & Francis would like to send CW a review copy, we’d be happy to take a look at it and let you know what we think. ————————————————————————————————— Ali’s House The strip, made by Marguerite Dabaie and Tom Hart for King Features Syndicate back in 2008, has found a home at Go Comics. ————————————————————————————————— Rowhouse Auction Items: July 31-August 6 New items available for this week. Email Frank Santoro at santoroschoolATgmail for a password if you don’t already have one. If you already have a password, it is the same from last week. All funds go to helping keep the lights on and further developing the school. Share this page: [...]

MoCCA Arts Festival 2018

Chris Anthony DiazApril 12, 2018The Diaz ArchiveHeld during the weekend of April 7-8, 2018 at Metropolitan West and Ink48 in New York City Jaime Hernandez Leslie Stein and Jaime Hernandez Leslie Stein and Jaime Hernandez Leslie Stein sketched a beautiful watercolor in my sketchbook of cartoonists, only 10 pages left until it’s filled which i started in 2012! Hazel Newlevant and Julia Gfrörer Kevin McCloskey and Jaime Hernandez Jaime Hernandez Matthew James-Wilson Patrick Crotty and Jane Mai Patrick Crotty, Wren McDonald and Jane Mai at the Peow! Studio table Ann Telnaes J.t. Yost Gary Panter Jaime Hernandez and Marc Sobel Paul Karasik Mark Newgarden Mike Mignola Emily Silva of Fantagraphics Books John Cuneo At his Fantagraphics Books signing, John Cuneo sketched in his new book for fans JooHee Yoon is the cartoonist who did the beautiful MoCCA Fest 2018 program cover Robyn Chapman of Paper Rocket Robyn Chapman, Colin Lidston and Mike Diana at the Paper Rocket table Max de Radigués and Anna Haifisch Mike Diana Max de Radigués Gregory Manchess Jaime Hernandez Leslie Stein Gregory Benton Anna Haifisch Tom Daly Bill Kartalopoulos Liz Suburbia Share this page: [...]

03/02/2018

Posted on March 1, 2018March 2, 2018 by Sally Ingraham

Sally here with comics and wisdom from Shee Phon Lui, Alison Bechdel, Katherine Arnoldi, Julia Wertz, and many more!

—————————————————————————————————

Philippe Leblanc’s excellent small press and indie comics roundup for The Comics Beat brought a new comic by Shee Phon Lui to my attention (above). You can see several more pages of the piece HERE.

—————————————————————————————————

Mo, a character from Alison Bechdel’s comic strip *Dykes to Watch Out For*

Alison Bechdel is Vermont’s 3rd cartoonist laureate – congratulations! HERE is an interview with Bechdel and a look at her show at UVM’s Fleming Museum called “Self-Confessed! The Inappropriately Intimate Comics of Alison Bechdel”. The show is up through May 20th 2018.

—————————————————————————————————

From *The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom* by Katherine Arnoldi

There’s a great interview with Katherine Arnoldi on Mutha Magazine, about her adventures as a teen mom and her activism and advocacy for teen moms everywhere. Her graphic novel/instruction manual came out in 1998, and was republished in 2015. It continues to find an audience who can identify with the content and draw inspiration from her determination and drive to make a good life for herself and her daughter. Read the interview and see more scans of the comic HERE.

—————————————————————————————————

Hilary Brown reviews Swedish cartoonist Anneli Furmark‘s Red Winter on Paste Magazine, calling it “just about the most Swedish book ever“. The comic “focuses on the affair between a married woman with three children (Siv) and a younger man (Ulrik).” Although the story isn’t spicy enough for Brown, she likes the artwork and the chapters told from the perspective of the children.

“These are the chapters that breathe, as Marita takes advantage of her time alone in the house to snoop through cupboards and her brother’s comic books and Peter rides around with his friends drinking beer. These chapters have the feeling of real adolescence, when you’re pushing a little to see how much you can rebel, and they contrast with the slow bits of the actual revolutionaries, who worry that Ulrik’s relationship with Siv could be turned against them. There are, as you might expect, plenty of nice sweaters, and it’s always snowing. Furmark’s colors lie loosely on top of her pen lines, which have a good bit of wiggle to them, suggesting a lack of sunlight. When hints of red flood the sky, it feels like life and renewal are on the way, in contrast to the darkness of most scenes. Maybe that’s a political metaphor? Or maybe it’s just beautiful.”

Read the whole review HERE.

Rachel Davies also reviews Red Winter, over on The Comics Journal.

—————————————————————————————————

Recently on The New Yorker‘s Daily Shouts feature: Julia Wertz‘s Conversations with Ma: Cheez Wiz and Tree-Climbing (pictured above); Leslie Stein‘s Yelp for Babies; and Barbara Smaller‘s Course of Empire: Part 2.

Although the “New Yorker cartoon” holds an iconic place, I really appreciate that The New Yorker now makes space for full comic strips with this feature. And that it is full of comics by women!

—————————————————————————————————

Chocolate and Crackers

Aline Lemos makes a lot of comics, which you can find on her Tumblr (HERE). One of her ongoing projects is about female Brazilian artists, and she recently posted the newest in this series (#35) which is about Lídia Baís. See it HERE.
Rob Clough reviews Hannah K. Lee‘s Language Barrier (Koyama Press, 2017) – read about it HERE.
Katie Skelly wraps up a week of A Cartoonist’s Diary on The Comics Journal – HERE.
Here’s your reminder to read all of Nnedi Okorafor‘s books – and more specifically, the issues of Black Panther: Long Live the King that she wrote recently (#1, #2, #5, and #6 which features Ngozi, a character from Okorafor’s novel Venomverse: War Stories!)
Cory Doctorow highlights Jen Wang‘s The Prince and the Dressmaker for BoingBoing – read the review HERE.

—————————————————————————————————

It’s the last day to get in on the blind auction for a copy of Fantastic Four #52 (pictured above) that Frank is running. Proceeds from the auction will go towards purchasing a season-long farm box for the full time Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residents – so it’s a good cause, and a terrific comic (first appearance of Black Panther!) Plus the story behind the comic, and why Frank has it is pretty cool – full details on the auction are HERE.

—————————————————————————————————

Joanie and Jordie – 3-02-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio

—————————————————————————————————

Suzy and Cecil – 3-2-2018 – by Sally Ingraham

Share this page:

Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged aline lemos, Alison Bechdel, anneli furmark, barbara smaller, hannah k. lee, jen wang, Julia Wertz, katherine arnoldi, Katie Skelly, Leslie Stein, nnedi okorafor, shee phon lui

Sally Ingraham

Posted on March 1, 2018March 2, 2018

Explore

09/08/2016

Sally IngrahamSeptember 8, 2016NewsSally here today to unpack a fantastic week in the Comics Workbook community – we are celebrating the results of the Composition Competition, looking forward to even more new work with the announcement of the fall Correspondence Course, dancing with excitement over the amazing lineup of CW-hosted workshops at SPX, and eagerly anticipating unpacking the box of hot-off-the-press new books by Connor Willumsen…! ————————————————————————————————— I believe that people are still working on reading all the comics that were made for the Comics Workbook Composition Competition 2016 (the winning comics, by Cameron Nicholson, Shee Phon, and Cameron Arthur are pictured above)! With well over 100 entries, the competition inspired a phenomenal outpouring of talent and energy this year, from a diverse and international comics making community. This contest is utterly unique, with it’s focus on composition and the freedom that can be found in restriction, and folks world-wide respond to that in remarkable ways. Camerson Nicholson, who created the comic that won first place in the 2016 Comics Workbook Composition Competition, has been channeling that energy into loads of new projects, like the one above. That is exactly the momentum that the competition hopes to inspire in contestants – many of whom have never completed a comic before. Making a complete comic, releasing it into the world and hearing the world clap back, often inspires one to say “Again!” And so the circle turns. ————————————————————————————————— With that in mind, Frank Santoro has announced a new semester of his Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers! “Applications are due by Sept 16 2016 – The course begins Sept 23rd 2016 The application is: 3 landscape drawings, 3 still life drawings, and 3 figure drawings. All done on blank 3 x 5 inch index cards. Draw in direct pen with no pencil underdrawing. Also send me any specific urls of comics work you have done. If you haven’t done comics before that is not a problem. You will never meet someone as enthusiastic about comics as me. I’m a good coach.” Full details are HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Small Press Expo 2016 is fast approaching, and the Comics Workbook team is getting into high gear with a huge two-day schedule of workshops during the show. We will be hanging out with Jeffery Brown, Carol Tyler, Charles Burns, Cameron Nicholson, and some of the best comics makers from Spain all weekend. Find all the details HERE – and sign up for the workshops HERE! ————————————————————————————————— There are only a few days left until Connor’s new book makes it’s appearance – we are literally waiting for the mailman on the porch everyday, crossing fingers that he’ll have the box with him…! This means you have only a few days left to take advantage of the incredible pre-order deal – check it out HERE. This book is going to look (and smell) amazing, (thanks to the skills of WestCan) and fans of Connor’s work will no doubt find Portraits an essential part of their collection. ————————————————————————————————— I’ll be back tomorrow with more news and good energy to close out this first week of September. Cheers – Sally Share this page: [...]

10/12/2018

Sally IngrahamOctober 11, 2018NewsSally Ingraham here with a look at Rina Ayuyang’s “Blame This on the Boogie”- plus other news of note! ————————————————————————————————— In Rina Ayuyang‘s new memoir – Blame This on the Boogie (Drawn + Quarterly Nov. 2018) – bright colors and glamorous dance moves leap off of the page. They’re a sort of dazzle camouflage, nearly disguising a difficult childhood and a bumpy transition into motherhood – and that’s the point. That’s what “the Boogie” did for Rina. Her love for music in its many forms helped her cope with the realities of growing up in Pittsburgh, PA, in the 80’s – as the youngest member of a Filipino American family. Silver screen musical numbers saved her, and continued to bring her balance and comfort as she grew into an adult and became a mother. The story is a series of memories, pinned to the musical clothesline that ties everything together. Ordinary moments in life take on beautiful new proportions when they become mixed up with movie sequences. Is Rina dancing with a sibling or her husband or Fred Astaire? There’s something about the chaos and colors of the pages that compels you along, and I found myself exploring spreads in every direction. It is more of an experience that you dive into than a book you read – and you might feel your toes start tapping and get the urge to leap up and boogie along. The loose line work is joyful, even when Rina is describing postpartum depression or being ridiculed by classmates. And it is fascinating to me that while music has provided Rina with a means to escape or survive the rockiness of life, it is through comics that she processes those experiences. Hollywood musicals and TV shows like Dancing With the Stars can provide a “therapeutic distraction”, as the D+Q blurb puts it. In the end though it is comics that get Rina to the core of the matter. The rush and purge of these stories – the actual book in your hands – is her big theatrical number. Dive into this song and dance in November when the book officially debuts – or pick up an advance copy through Copacetic Comics HERE. Rina Ayuyang will be appearing at Short Run Comix and Arts Festival in Seattle on Nov. 3rd, along with Mimi Pond and Anna Haifisch. She will be releasing the comic in her hometown of Berkeley, CA, on Nov. 8th at Pegasus Books. ————————————————————————————————— Other News of Note The 3rd ComiqueCon is taking place this weekend in Detroit at the Arab American National Museum. The Detroit Free Press has a feature on it – check it out! Tegan O’Neil reviews Liana Finck‘s new comic Passing For Human – on The Comics Journal. The Comics Beat chats with the creative team behind Devil’s Dye, the latest 4-issue mini series in the Black Mask Studios’ Black AF world – read the interview HERE. The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum has announced an upcoming 2019 show featuring the work of Barbara Shermund. Read more about the show, titled “Tell Me A Story Where the Bad Girl Wins”, HERE. Share this page: [...]

Anthologies

Comics WorkbookMay 1, 2017EssaysRM Rhodes – curator of the Heavy Metal Magazine tumblr – brings some thoughts on the history of anthologies. ————————————————————————————————— Anthologies and episodic publishing arrived in Western Europe at more or less the same time, which makes sense. When you have four partial stories, it’s easier to bundle them together in a common publication and tell customers that the next installments will be available in a week or a month. And it’s less risky to convince a reader that has already bought the first part of a story to buy the next part than it is to convince a reader to buy a story they’ve never seen. My point is that the anthology has been around for ages. It’s a very old, very versatile, very robust format. And that’s what makes the format interesting. First, let’s talk terms. An anthology is a collection of short works. In this context, the works are comics, sequential art, visual narrative, comics-adjacent storytelling, informatics and some other lumpy labels for stuff that tells a story with pictures. The meaning of “short” varies greatly. Half and full page stories are common. As are stories that last dozens of pages. Notice that there’s no requirement about whether the stories have to be complete. Nor is there one about whether the anthology is standalone. It is very common for anthologies to be released periodically over a pre-advertised schedule (usually weekly or monthly or some multiple thereof). And is also common for stories to be told episodically over the course of multiple sequential installments. An anthology that met that criteria would then be an episodic periodical. But that term also fits the description of most magazines and publications – many of which are, in their own way, anthologies. If nothing else, precision of terminology will keep you from getting ripped off. This highlights one of the most intriguing aspects of the anthology format – the flexibility. Everyone and his brother has put together an anthology, but there is always the comfort in knowing that anyone can put one together. It’s an easy choice for what to do with random bits and bobs that don’t fit anywhere else. It’s also a great way to spread the risk inherent in publication around a bit. The more people in an anthology, the more people have a vested interest in its success. There are a huge number of decisions available to make: page size, page count, color vs b&w, binding, theme, creators, compensation, funding, printing, advertising, distribution. There is never a good reason to make an anthology, but every comics creator should try to organize one at least once in their life – it’s a very practical lesson in logistics, organization, motivation, and frustration. The student of the anthology has a lot of examples to look to for inspiration. Through the 1920s, there was a series of art journals and publications put out by various art groups in Europe: de Stilj, Dada, Cannibale, Le Couer, Cabaret Voltaire. Due to modern advances in printing technology, it is easier to self-publish zines with better production values. But it’s also interesting to note that the impulse to run an amateur publication of random stuff is perfectly normal. There’s a certain amount of debate regarding how and when the cartooning tradition in Western Europe became the comics tradition of Western Europe. Some point to the broadsheets of the 17 century that introduced the twin concepts of anthologies and episodic storytelling as a precursor to modern sequential art. But it’s more likely that comics as we know them grew up during the 19th Century. And anthologies were an important part of that maturation. The default format for professional episodic periodicals in American comics has been monthly comics of a set page length that may or may not have additional stories. Professional Franco-Belgian comics have been dominated by the weekly anthology format, featuring strips of half or full page in length. These were later collected into albums of 48 pages in length – which is how most English speakers have encountered this material. (If you’re wondering what was probably collected like this, flip through any album and look for a horizontal white gutter cutting straight across the book at the half-page mark.) Probably the most famous anthology from this tradition in the English speaking market is Heavy Metal. It started as a monthly anthology that contained a mix of episodic and stand-alone stories. It sort of still does most of that. In the mid-80s, Heavy Metal shifted format and centered their publication around a single complete story with a variety of shorter stories as supplements. This influenced later anthologies and we can see that Island, for example, followed the same general model. It is convenient to be able to read the more well-known stories in a mass market edition. However, it is also valuable to observe the original print runs of anthologies where- and when-ever possible. Reading material in the context that it was originally presented to the market in is very valuable. First and foremost, examining primary sources acknowledges the effort that was put into the anthology in the first place. Additionally, it highlights the kinds of commercial advertisements from the period printed next to the original material. Sometimes the juxtaposition is startling. It also provides a sense of the flow of the reader through the book. Arguably, the order that the stories are presented in is important because it shapes the mood of the reader from cover to cover. Knowing that a story beat in a completely different story occurred directly before this story may have changed how this one was perceived. Reading an issue of an anthology is like eating a club sandwich. There are a lot of different distinguishable flavors, but the combination is distinct. And that’s the whole point of producing an anthology. ————————————————————————————————— RM Rhodes lives and works in Washington, D.C. His current project is a weekly online anthology called The Rumor published on the Comics Workbook tumblr – see issues of it HERE. Check out more of his comics at Louis Deux. Share this page: [...]

08/28/2018

Aaron CockleAugust 27, 2018NewsL. Nichols; Risography!; NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium; Attentional Generative Networks; Ignatz Noms ————————————————————————————————— “Oh crap, I’m drawing myself.” L. Nichols is interviewed by Martyn Pedler at TCJ: You talked about about figuring things out through your art. Did making Flocks change the way you thought about faith, or thought about God? It was very healing. I printed out the first five chapters, made floppies of them, and had people come and tell me how much it meant to them to read it. It means so much to me to hear that. What making Flocks changed is my faith in other people. It helps me feel more connected to myself and connected to others. I always felt like my uncomfortableness about sharing it would be offset by the good that would come of it. Making this always felt like something I had to do. I needed to do this. It wasn’t easy to write. I feel like I relived so much stuff. I’m really glad that my wife is so supportive, and my in-laws are very supportive. I feel very lucky. I tried to end it on a good note. I’m a bit of a sappy person, just naturally, and I was trying to make it not too sappy. But I feel like I’ve ended up in a great place, and I have so much, and I’m so grateful that I have all that I have – so it’s hard for me to look at my past with too much pain. If I hadn’t have gone through that, I wouldn’t be here. If I changed anything, I wouldn’t be me. Writing the book has helped me embrace my past in some ways. To find new comfort in it, and new confidence in myself and who I’ve become. ————————————————————————————————— The Vintage Japanese Copy Machine Enjoying an Artistic Renaissance Atlas Obscura looks at the risograph machine and it’s use in contemporary book-making: Independent publishing houses like Perfectly Acceptable and TXTbooks are helping turn the grainy likability of Risograph printing into a global aesthetic. The myriad color combinations that are possible (Davis’ favorite being “mint and sunflower, 100 percent,” and Terzis celebrating the mix of “any of the complementary colors, because when you put them together they really vibrate”) makes it seem like the Risograph was destined for artistic flourish all along. But Issue Press founder George Wietor challenges the idea of the Riso’s “look” overshadowing its intended purpose: “The simplicity of the Riso brings a specific kind of arts publishing within reach and allows me to work with ink and paper in a way that I would otherwise have difficulty achieving,” he says, “but I am (only very mildly) concerned about elevating the Riso to something more than it is or, I believe, should be—which is a means of production rather than a specific style.” ————————————————————————————————— New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium Fall 2018 Events Calendar Presenters of potential interest to readers of this news-blog include (but are not limited to): September 11: Sharad Sharma on Grassroots Comics: By the people, for the people. In the last 20 years World Comics has conducted more than 1,200 comics workshops in the most remote and disturbed areas of the globe and trained over 1,000,000 people in making comics about local issues. November 13: Jason Lutes speaks about completing his two-decade-long project Berlin December 4: Lala Albert will read from various short and long comics created over the past 4 years, featuring mainly works in sci-fi, erotica and sci-fi erotica genres. She will also discuss the process that went into making some or all of the comics. Check the website for more info. ————————————————————————————————— Text to Image Via Rob Beschizza at Boingboing via AttnGAN: Fine-Grained Text to Image Generation with Attentional Generative Adversarial Networks by Tao Xu, Pengchuan Zhang, Qiuyuan Huang, Han Zhang, Zhe Gan, Xiaolei Huang, Xiaodong He. A research team wrote about how they trained a machine-learning AI to generate images from text descriptions. When fed birds as its dataset, it got very good at painting birds… Try it out here. ————————————————————————————————— Small Press Expo Announces 2018 Ignatz Award Nominees ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 8-28-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

11/28/2016

Juan FernándezNovember 28, 2016NewsJuan here with Ghengis Con Cleveland Check in; Gou Miyagi; Suzanne Ciani; Appplications for the Santoro Correspondence Course. ————————————————————————————————— I was just in Cleveland with the CW gang at Ghengis Con Cleveland. Sally Ingraham, Caleb Orecchio, Frank Santoro, Jenn Lisa and yours truly. I had a great time. Lots of fun. I love my team. John “draw hard” G. organized a cozy, profitable afternoon of comics sellers. He did an amazing job for this special show. This is my third year attending. I grew up in Cleveland, so there’s something very personal about coming back to where I grew up annually. It’s a good rustbelt comics reunion.The local seasons cycle is nice. Healthy. Ghengis Con in Cleveland November as winter sets in. PIX in Pittsburgh in April as spring cracks apart winters icy clutch. I’ll be sharing my experience there with you later this week in my Ghengis Con 2016 Report. The who’s who, the what’s what and favorite books from the show. Stay tuned Got some great photos.Lots of smiling faces, good conversations, hot coffee. No news for today. This is more important. Watch this: Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73hRNJ0YkiM&t=395s Do your drills. ————————————————————————————————— Oh yeah, and don’t you forget that we’re still taking applications for the Winter term of the Santoro School Correspondence Course. Applications are coming in left and right, don’t get left behind! 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! More details can be found HERE – or email santoroschoolATgmail. 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 Share this page: [...]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply