Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged al jaffee, Bernie Wrightson, caleb orecchio, cartoonist studio prize shortlist, jack brougham, Michael DeForge, Patrick Kyle, sally ingraham

Sally Ingraham

Posted on March 19, 2017March 19, 2017

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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: [...]

03/15/2018

Comics WorkbookMarch 14, 2018NewsSam Ombiri on Benjamin Marra’s Night Business. ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: When I first read Night Business by Benjamin Marra I was really mesmerized. I was coming into the book with Terror Assaulter in the back of my mind – and it had blown my mind. Reading Night Business feels like trying to look up at the sky but then having your head forced to the ground, the ground that you were avoiding looking at because of the mess afoot. At the beginning of the comic, however, Marra gives good reason for the reader to engage with it. I mean it’s not like this isn’t a fun book to read, but the calamity that the characters face feels all too real, and the hope that they reach for seems even more real. At least until nearly the end of the book it does. How can I not keep reading; I can’t! For example, at the beginning we are introduced to a character who is just awful, but the death that she almost immediately suffers kind of counterbalances how awful she is, and I suddenly found myself really sympathetic to this character whom I had disliked. To me it’s just like “How?” I mean murder is such a horrific thing to witness, and Marra goes out of his way to present the murder (and really all the other murders in the book) in the most perverse extreme possible, but the narration of what happened and the way it happened was lyrical and unexpectedly heartfelt. The book was mourning for the tragedy it was indulging itself in a couple seconds ago and the “mourning”, so to speak, doesn’t feel any less heartfelt. There’s another character who sums up that while Krystal wasn’t the nicest person she didn’t deserve to die like she did. Then next time this killer strikes it’s with a much more likable character, and it’s more devastating. I’ll admit I was pretty suspicious of how well Ben Marra knew what my reaction was going to be towards the first character’s death. I’ve been going back and forth on whether the reader should be told what to feel so well; as in the proper reaction being dictated for the reader to have. It seems important for a maker to dictate or at least consider what the reader’s reaction should be, but there’s something that’s a bit disheartening, as reader, to know that the author has gone ahead of me to dictate what I should feel. At the same time, however, that’s what I kind of expect a maker to present to me; isn’t it? There’s this brilliant thing that Austin English said: “Cartooning is made up of artistic choices (like all art) but also information. Bad when info is used unsubtly (most biography comics), interesting when silently embedded into every choice.” That’s what constantly impresses me with Marra’s work – that the information, as Austin puts it, is “silently embedded into every choice.” The comic is also a constant rush, but with a lot of finesse. It’s like watching a Ballerina dance gracefully to heavy metal. The clock is ticking and with every panel I feel it ticking. The bodies are, sadly, piling. At points, one of the main characters (Johnny) keeps taking these pills that give him extra strength, so there’s a moment where he’s captured and we spend that part of the comic just waiting for the torture he’s going through to activate the effects of the pills he took. It’s really cool how this is an element – it’s like a countdown inserted in another count down which causes me to get more invested in the story. It reminds me a lot of Man O’ Metal, where the bulk of the comic is where this superhero is powerless unless electrocuted or set in flames. So there are moments in both these comics where everything becomes about waiting for the character’s powers to activate, to get him out of whatever hurdle he’s in. I resonate with this idea of being empowered by what would ordinarily kill you, which also feels like a major theme in Night Business. Especially with this other character, Cathy, who goes through the most radical shift after she’s been attacked and becomes this unstoppable vigilante. Her transformation is also really lyrical – both the words and the sequence of events and how they’re presented have this amazing feeling. I heard Marra describe Night Business as climbing a mountain after a lot of false starts in trying to make comics. I’m assuming he’s talking about the first part – he clearly feels no qualms in confronting any challenge, be it the way the story unfolds, or the subject matter, despite how impossible it might feel to execute. At no point does it feel like Marra was second guessing himself, but I did get the sense that what he was trying to pull off was difficult, and I could see all the work that went into certain moments when reading it. – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-15-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

The Drawing Power Report (2013)

Juan FernándezMay 15, 2016Festivals and ShowsThis article was co-written with Simon Reinhardt. It originally appeared at Dog City Press. This past weekend a couple of us from Dog City trekked down from Vermont to Pittsburgh, PA for the Drawing Power conference at the Carnegie Museum of Art. The museum setting established a wonderful tone for the conference. It was a breath of fresh air to go to an intimate event with such a clear focus on discussing comics. A big thanks is due to Jude Vachon, zine librarian at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Vachon was the core organizer of this event and responsible for steering it toward such a success. The days events ran from 10 AM until 5 PM. Each panel was a jam packed 45 minutes. The first panel of the day was moderated by Bill Boichel, owner of the Copacetic Comics Company. It focused on the idiosyncrasies of the local Pittsburgh comics scene. The panel consisted of Lizzee Solomon, Andy Scott, Paulette Poullet and Nate Mcdonough. The panelists spoke about their experiences self-publishing and the role that the Pittsburgh community played in their work practices. Scott spoke about his anthology, Andromeda and the restructuring of the publication in late 2012 from a monthly to a quarterly format. Solomon spoke about cartooning being at the core of her multi-disciplinary work practices while Nate McDonough retold the beginnings of hisGrixly publication. McDonough, Solomon and Scott spoke of their times drawing together during the early issues of Andromeda and the competitive one-upmanship that their drawing parties would foster. The panel explored the inroads that the four cartoonists had made into self-publishing and the external factors in their lives that had driven them to continue to self-publish in Pittsburgh. Following the Pittsburgh cartoonists panel, French cartoonist, Boulet (Gilles Roussel) , author of the 24-hour comic Darkness took the stage to give a lecture on the evolution of his cartooning practices. He spoke about streamlining his creative process and the increased emphasis on improvisation that he had developed in his work. He spoke about working with Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim on the series, Dungeon along with the exquisite corpse comic, Chicou Chicou, that he developed with several French cartoonists. The aim of Chicou Chicou was to create a fictional “auto-bio” group comics blog. The cartoonists would pass strips back and forth over the internet adding pages until they were complete. Each of the cartoonists involved created a persona and crafted a drawing style that suited their character. Boulet played a small, geeky girl named Ella. Besides discussing the subtleties of drawing stories from the perspective of a female character, Boulet talked about the harassment he received online when writing under a female pen-name. He reported receiving unsolicited love letters and invitations on dates and noted that when he got into disputes people would ask “are you on your period or something?” At the end of his talk, Boulet spoke succinctly of his influences and of his current project, a 200 page improvised story in which he is neither pencilling nor scripting. He showed several of the 60 pages that he’d completed and the audience was in awe. Freelance writer, illustrator and graphic designer, Joan Reilly then took the stage and talked about her work editing the forthcoming feminist anthology, The Big Feminist But. Joan presented the book’s contents and the genesis of the project. The Big Feminist But arose from Reilly and O’Leary’s attempts to learn why so many of us, women and men, couch discussions around feminism with the phrase “I’m not a feminist, but…” or “I am a feminist, but…”. They decided to embark on the journey of making a comics anthology as the first step in starting a conversation about the issue. The result is a promising book that features “graphic musings on life, love, lust and liberation,” by talents such as Jeffrey Brown, Gabrielle Bell, and Lauren Weinstein. The book’s list of contributors is especially notable for including a number of couples working together, as well as single men and women. Reilly mentioned that a number of Kickstarter backers expressed their gratitude that men were involved with the book as well– an observation that highlights The Big Feminist But’s drive to create an expansive and inclusive conversation about feminism. Subsequently, John Porcellino, took the stage to talk about the story of his life of zine-making and distribution. He talked about the story of King Cat, and the Spit and a Half zine and comix distribution service. Porcellino touched on his artistic development and the early years of King Cat (focusing on the first 50 issues, collected in King Cat Classix). Porcellino has created books, comics, and publications since he was 7 or 8, and was creating zines for years before he discovered Factsheet 5 and learned that other people were doing it too. He read some highlights from early King Cat issues and talked about his work processes and goals in creating that work. One revelation from this portion of the talk was the influence of Marvel’s monster comics from the 50s and early 60s. While the relationship between these fantastic stories and Porcellino’s chronicles of everyday life might not be immediately apparent, Porcellino emphasized the drab, repetitive nature of the monster stories as well as the alienation of their typical mad scientist protagonists. “As an artist I’m very interested in repetition and boredom,” he said. Porcellino also talked about the sales and distribution history of King Cat, which was instructive for the many self-publishers in the audience. Gesturing to the cover of the first issue of King Cat to be sold in stores, Porcellino noted the 35 cent cover price and remarked “in true zine fashion, I probably charged 35 cents because it cost me 36 cents to print.” He also talked about his history of working bizarre or menial jobs to support his comics, and pinpointed King Cat issue 42, which he wrote, drew, and edited entirely on company time, as “the point I became a professional cartoonist, because I was being paid to draw comics.” Porcellino spoke about his interest in the idea of real life and the ineffable experience of being alive. One thing he mentioned—and we think this is a big part of what makes King Cat so special—is that he tried not just to describe the event of his experience, but to communicate the feeling of that experience. Porcellino characterized the subject matter of his comics as “this weird feeling I had… the underlying mystery in every moment,” a description we think King Cat readers will agree is quite fitting. Caitlin McGurk, librarian at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum moderated the following panel on self-publishing. Porcellino remained on stage to join Ramsey Beyer, Rachel Masilamani and Bill Boichel to chat about their experiences self-publishing in the United States. Similar to the first panel of the day, the panelists spoke of how they’d found their way to comics and more generally towards self-publishing. Masilamani recounted first encountering zines through Christina Kelly’s zine of the month column in Sassy magazine. She spoke about the experience of receiving the Xeric grant and the consequences that it brought along with it. It allowed for her to get her first comics into the world and to hit the ground running with her first collection of RPM, but from the get go she was on her own. The panelists thoughts on the pricing of mini comics were particularly interesting. Not surprisingly, Boichel as a vendor and Porcellino as a distributor had a lot to bring to the discussion of the relationship between self-expression and the commodification of desire. Boichel mentioned that artists sometimes come to him with $20 minicomics, reporting that they sold a lot of copies in New York, but he knows they won’t sell at that price point in Pittsburgh. Beyer emphasized the importance she placed on the ethics of the production process and mentioned having worked with 1984 Press in Oakland California. Boichel, suggested that aspiring cartoonists always pick someone to write to; a friend, an acquaintance, a stranger, someone. By thinking of their audience’s interests and their budget, they could be more likely to create works that would move through the world more freely. Dash Shaw followed the self-publishing panel. He began his talk by showing some recent animation work. One of the most striking animations that he played was the music video,Seraph, which he had made in collaboration with Frank Santoro and other artists for Sigur Ros’ valtari film experiment. Shaw took the audience through a brief survey of his cartooning work, starting with his three current publications– the minicomic New Jobs, published by Uncivilized Books, the pamphlet3 New Stories, and the graphic novel New School, both published by Fantagraphics– and working his way backward to the mammoth graphic novel Bottomless Belly Button. One through-line of Shaw’s talk was his thoughts regarding line and color. “I could talk about color forever,” he said, and it’s hard not to get excited by his original and distinctive ideas. Many of the pages Shaw showed from New School use color in ways that are entirely divorced from traditional comic book coloring. Shaw rarely uses colors to simply fill out the drawing, preferring instead to use the collision between the color and the line-art to create meaning and emotion, often in oblique and subtle ways. This unwillingness to spell things out directly for the reader was evident in Shaw’s discussion of line and drawing as well. He spoke of being inspired by David Mazzucchelli’s idea of the “dumb line,” (which he describes in more detail here) and by trying to push back against the conventions of “good” illustration. “So much illustration is about telling people what something is and how to feel about it,” Shaw said, adding that he wanted to make drawings that don’t tell their reader how to feel. He also spoke about his fascination with the house styles found, among other places, in manga and Archie comics, speculating about an ideal, impossible Archie style. In Shaw’s conception, even the best Archie artists fall short of this Platonic style, and their own personal style would be the accumulation of their failings at achieving a true Archie drawing. All in all, it was a dense, stimulating talk, and we can’t wait to dive into New School and read it with the attention Shaw’s work demands. The final panel of the day, “A Career in Comics” was moderated by Caitlin McGurk and featured Jim Rugg, Ed Piskor, Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw. The fluidity of the discussion was really satisfying. Without much effort it hopped from discussions of style (and avoiding “style”) to explorations of narrative collapse. Of course, a highlight of the panel was the discussion of the differences between making money around comics and making money in comics. Career development and survival were recurring topics, and every member of the panel had a different way of approaching making a living as a cartoonist. The common thread was work ethic and hustle. Santoro half-jokingly described himself as “basically a used book dealer at this point.” Rugg spoke about doing design work and also discussed the Flight School fellowship , a professional development program for Pittsburgh artists he recently participated in. To see the comics medium getting the attention of an established institution like the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and for it to occur at the Carnegie Museum was inspiring. Here’s hoping for more small events around the country with this level of intimacy and intensity of dialogue. all in all, you could say… Share this page: [...]

Niall Breen on LICAF 2016

Comics WorkbookOctober 23, 2016Festivals and ShowsTo the lake district! AWAY!!!! A video posted by Niall Breen (@niall.breen.comics) on Oct 14, 2016 at 9:17am PDT Last week I traveled from Ireland to join the Comics Workbook crew in Kendal, England for The Lakes International Comic Art Festival. The Lakes Fest (LICAF) is an unusual beast in today’s world of heavily branded industry conventions. Marketing itself as a “comic art festival” immediately stands it apart from the large majority of sales-orientated cons which exist in most larger towns and cities throughout England and Ireland. While there is a venue at LICAF for artists and publishers to sell their work, this is not what pulls in the tens of thousands of visitors each year. LICAF instead focuses on education and appreciation of craft, with a packed roster of artist talks and workshops spread over the weekend. This love of craft and appreciation for artists seems to be a reflection of an attitude that naturally exists in Kendal; a town which, despite its modest size boasts a number of cinema spaces, theatres, art groups, and live music venues. Kendal is a town which thrives on art and when it came time to host this years LICAF, the whole town seemed fully on board. The weekend’s events were held in numerous locations throughout the town, from local pubs and cafes to the town hall and library. Even businesses not directly connected with the event went to great effort to create window displays fitting the Festival. The talks and workshops held throughout the weekend were well attended. There was an air of excitement buzzing all over as people were given the opportunity to sit and talk with their heroes. Even on the streets of Kendal the public brushed shoulders with comics superstars in a way which seemed exciting and yet, completely natural. I attended the Comics Workbook Composition Competition workshop which was run by Mr. Comics Workbook himself, the great Frank Santoro. Connor Willumsen and Aiden Koch were also in attendance, providing moments of insight and balance throughout the talk. The workshop was well attended and drew a wonderfully diverse audience. Children and adults, amateurs and professionals – it was a wonder to see how Frank’s process worked so well for everyone in the group. Each person was guided through so confidently and with such positivity that nobody felt unable or less capable than anyone else. In fact, many of the experienced British comic artists in attendance marveled at Frank’s aura of positivity, a trait which seems to be rare in the industry. The standard of work which came from the group was very high as everyone seemed to get on board with Frank’s ideas very quickly. We all left having completed a 4 page, pamphlet style comic. Not bad for a two hour session! I also managed to sit in on Connor Willumsen‘s workshop later that day. This class drew a small group of dedicated artists. We took great inspiration and warning from Connor’s industry stories. Seeing him describe his composition method was great as I could see how it was tied to Frank’s fundamental ideas, even if they go about the process differently. Another huge moment of inspiration for me was when Connor talked about how his ability to program code meant that he had greater control over how his work can be displayed. This seems more relevant now than ever as we are in a time of uncertainty over how to show our work on the internet. Each of the current options for artists (Tumblr, Instagram) seem to come with some level of restriction. It was great to see that Connor had taken the matter into his own hands and made a site which worked for him. It shows a level of ingenuity and determination which I think we will all need to strive for to stay afloat in the digital age. Overall, my experience of LICAF was one of community, of inspiration. For one weekend, makers and fans came to Kendal to share ideas, work together and grow. There was no line separating the novice and the master. There was only respect and the flow of ideas. LICAF is a rare and beautiful thing. ———————————————————————————— Niall Breen makes comics in Sligo Town, on the west coast of Ireland. You can find more of his work HERE. Share this page: [...]

05/22/2018

Aaron CockleMay 22, 2018NewsThought Bubble; Recently Closed Exhibitions: LeWitt, Nevelson, Pendleton + Hockney; English on Wood; If Crisis or War Comes (To Sweden) ————————————————————————————————— THOUGHT BUBBLE Through June 23 at Aicon Gallery, 35 Great Jones Street, NYC. From NY Art Beat: a group exhibition featuring the work of Dhruvi Acharya, Chitra Ganesh, Amitabh Kumar, Sa’dia Rehman, Nisha Sethi, Anuj Shrestha, Himanshu Suri and Salman Toor. The exhibition explores the use of comics, graphic novels, and art which unites text and image into a single work, to examine how artists from South Asia and its diaspora are deploying new ways of seeing, representing and communicating their experience in the visual realm. ————————————————————————————————— LeWitt, Nevelson, Pendleton Mar 21, 2018 – May 04, 2018 David Hockney: Something New in Painting (and Photography) Apr 05, 2018 – May 12, 2018 ————————————————————————————————— Notes Toward a Future Understanding of Wally Wood Austin English looks at the life and work of Wally Wood: Here’s one more sad story from The Life and Legend of Wallace Wood related by Wood’s peer and art-partner Harry Harrison, describing what it was like to work for Fox Comics in 1949: The art director would say, ‘Well, yeah, this is great stuff but we don’t pay very much. Know what I mean? I think the rate at Fox was $23 per page for ten-page stories. And while he was talking, he’d slip you a note saying something to the effect that they also expected kickbacks of $5 a page. This made a big difference to us in the rates, of course. But all these guys took kickbacks, and if you didn’t go along with it, you wouldn’t get any work…We would slide in this ten-page pile of crap with a real good splash page for the first page on top. He would look at only the first page and count the other nine, flipping through them fast. Nobody really cared about the quality. Nobody looked at these books, no one read the things very carefully. So he’d count the pages. We’d give him the $50 or whatever it came to—-$5 a page in kickbacks—and then we’d get our check in the mail from Fox, not necessarily in a week or two but in a month or so, sometimes slower than that. The money owed would add up… ————————————————————————————————— IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR THE POPULATION OF SWEDEN ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 5-22-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-22-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

03/20/2017

Posted on March 19, 2017March 19, 2017 by Sally Ingraham

Sally here to bid farewell to Bernie Wrightson, cheer on Al Jaffee, and watch Patrick Kyle reinvent web comics (again!) – no lazy cartoonists to be seen here. May the rest of us scramble to keep up!

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Patrick Kyle cracked the code for Instagram comics last week. As the platform has developed, cartoonists have constantly experimented with what will work on Instagram, collectively settling on the 4 panel square as the ideal form and sparking something of a revival for 4 panel gag strip comics. When Instagram added a gallery view to the app, it only took Patrick Kyle a few days to figure out that you could finally make longer comics in one post using the gallery view. He then made a GREAT comic which is ideal for this platform – he maintained the 4 panel gag so the gallery view becomes the “page turn”, if you will, and the size, colors, and level of detail in the comic are perfect. See it on Instagram HERE.

I look forward to seeing more cartoonists catch on to this! The evolution continues.

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One of Bernie Wrightson’s illustrations which accompany an edition of Mary Shelley’s *Frankenstein*

Bernie Wrightson passed away this weekend. He is a beloved comics artist, best known for creating the character Swamp Thing for DC Comics with writer Len Wein, as well as Destiny, which Neil Gaiman later wrote into The Sandman series. The 50 pen illustrations he made for an edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein were a 7-year labor of love. He considered them to be among his most personal work, and they are widely viewed as one of the greatest achievements by any artist in the comics industry. Rest in peace Bernie – fans around the world will be curling up with their copies of Swamp Thing in the next few days and missing your spirit.

Read a message from Bernie’s widow, Liz Wrightson, HERE.

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The shortlist for the 5th annual Cartoonist Studio Prize has been announced. The prize is given by the Slate Book Review and the Center for Cartoon Studies. The two categories are best print and web comics and the winner receives $1,000. There are some great comics represented here – read more about the prize and check out the shortlist HERE. Last year’s winners were Carol Tyler for Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father and Boulet for I Want to Believe.

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The Comics Alliance digs into Michael DeForge‘s new book, Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero (get a copy from Copacetic Comics HERE). In this black and white and PINK comic strip-turned-graphic novel, “DeForge has created an entire working ecosystem that gets teased out, explored, and mined for comic potential…“

“By the end of the book, everyone has changed, some quite drastically, others only slightly. No one has changed less between the first and final strips than Sticks Angelica herself, however, and her change is simply superficial: She gets a new hairstyle. The celebrity, the hero might be at the center of everything, but in DeForge’s comic, as in real life, the real story is what happens to everyone else.“

Read the rest of the review HERE.

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Al Jaffee holds the Guinness World Record for the “longest-running cartoonist of all time.” Now 96 years old, he has drawn every single Fold-In featured in Mad magazine – that’s 52 years of Fold-Ins.

“Whatever your last experience with Mad, you probably did the Fold-In on the back cover. Nobody reads a Mad without starting with the Fold-In. For the uninitiated—and if you’ve never heard of the Fold-In, your childhood must have been very bleak—it’s essentially a sight gag. It starts with a drawing and a question; something like, “Who conducted the most exhaustive Washington probe recently?” But then you fold the page together and a different image appears, along with a punch line that defies your expectations, something like “the president’s doctors.” ” – Vanity Fair

Eric Spitznagel of Vanity Fair sat down with Al Jaffee to discover how he has kept going all these years, and what he’s learned about the process.

“After 73 years of doing this, have you successfully proved the moral unreliability of adults?

Well, I don’t think I’ve proved anything. I’m not an educator or a preacher. I think the important thing, in my line of work anyway, is that you’re helping the reader to think for himself.

How so?

It’s not just about getting a chuckle from them. When you expose hypocrisy or nonsense or plain ol’ stupidity, you want to do it in a way that makes the reader connect the dots. Don’t tell the joke, just hint at the joke. If you over-explain it, it’s no good.“

Read the rest of the interview HERE.

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Mars Bars

Fabian Rangel, Jr. and Warwick Johnson Cadwell sat down to talk about their new comic Helena Crash, coming from IDW on Wednesday of this week. The story involves a world where coffee has been outlawed – a horror scenario that is just the beginning. More HERE.
Check out a collection of punk music fliers made by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez over on Dangerous Minds.
The I’m Drawn This Way: Cartoonists on Cartooning panel (recorded March 13th, 2017) is now available online to view in full – HERE.
The Comics Journal remembers Skip Williamson (1944-2017).
The latest Inkstuds podcast features Anna Haifisch in conversation with Rob McConnell – listen HERE.
Street Angel gets invited to a birthday party – new comic by Jim Rugg up on Tapastic!
What Things Do got an overhaul and there is a new Crickets 6 from Sammy Harkham and a Ganges 6 from Kevin Huizenga available for pre-order – shipping April 10th!

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Bring new energy to your comics game, see panels and color in a new way, discover the music in the structure of comics – check out thee Santoro School Handbook – 16 pages of comics-making gold!

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Blinkers – 3-20-2017 – by Jack Brougham

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Suzy and Cecil – 3-20-2017 – by Sally Ingraham

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Joanie and Jordie – 3-20-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged al jaffee, Bernie Wrightson, caleb orecchio, cartoonist studio prize shortlist, jack brougham, Michael DeForge, Patrick Kyle, sally ingraham

Sally Ingraham

Posted on March 19, 2017March 19, 2017

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04/26/2016

Aaron CockleApril 26, 2016NewsAtena Farghadani; Right-of-copy; Mok/Doucet; Lilli Carré; Roy Crane ————————————————————————————————— From Maren Williams over at the CBLDF: BREAKING NEWS: Atena Farghadani Set to be Released Next Month ‘After nearly 18 months in prison for a cartoon depicting politicians as animals, Iranian artist and activist Atena Farghadani will reportedly be released sometime next month. She had been sentenced to 12 years and 9 months, but according to her lawyer the sentence has just been reduced on appeal.’ ————————————————————————————————— What we talk about when we talk about copyright On Medium.com: ‘Myth #3. Copyright is an Attack on Artistic Freedom I have been a working, professional wrter for close to thirty years. I’ve felt my artistic freedom threatened by a great many things — state censorship, all manner of fundamentalisms, Internet bullying and shaming… to name but a few. Copyright law is not on that list, and it will NEVER be on that list. The very foundation of copyright is the insistence that if I create an artistic expression, I own that artistic expression. And if I own something, you best believe I will protect it from those who want to impose their restrictions on it.’ On Priceonomics.com: ‘Copyright law in America long predated Mickey Mouse. The first of these laws, the Copyright Act of 1790, stipulated that creative works were entitled to up to 28 years of protection (14 years, plus an additional “renewal” period of 14 years, supposing the original hadn’t died). This was followed by an 1831 act, which extended the copyright period to a max of 42 years, and a 1909 act, which elongated that period again, to 56 years. As the Art Law Journal clarifies, “very few works actually maintained copyright durations”: only a fraction of those who secured copyrights protected them, or opted to renew them. Mickey Mouse was brought into the world in 1928, under the 1909 Copyright Act, entitling him to 56 years of protection under the law — no more. In accordance with the law, his copyright was set to expire in 1984.’ ————————————————————————————————— Annie Mok Interviews Julie Doucet ‘DOUCET: Yeah, but the dictionary—the new language that I created—has nothing to do with the words that are in Carpet Sweeper Tales. MOK: I meant just a new language in general, I guess. So major themes of the book are masculinity, toxic masculinity, and cars? And it’s so interesting—you’re taking these images from these ‘60s Italian fumetti, which are this incredibly butch series of scenes, some of them very threatening men—like, threatening to women, and women in compromised positions, and then there’s this constant iteration of cars and men speaking of women as if they are cars in some cases, or alluding to them that way. And talking about, like, where someone can take you, and what is freedom. How did this playful thing around cars develop, and what does that mean to you? DOUCET: In those fumettis, for some reason, there’s lots and lots and lots of action going on in cars—a lot of conversations. And I talked to my aunts, my older aunts, and they told me that was just the way it was at the time, because people didn’t really have any places to go to flirt or anything like that, so pretty much everything happened in cars. So in that sense, it makes sense in that context. But I just loved the car thing, so I just cut out everything I could find going on in the cars.’ ————————————————————————————————— Lilli Carré MFA Thesis Show May 5-June 19, 2016 Opening & Reception: Thursday, May 5, 6-9PM Alsdorf Gallery, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL This exhibition presents work by: Lilli Carré, Max Guy, Erin Hayden, Dan Miller, and David Sprecher. Culminating their Master of Fine Arts (MFA) studies in the Department of Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University. ————————————————————————————————— Roy Crane’s Scrapbook Share this page: [...]

01/31/2017

Aaron CockleJanuary 30, 2017NewsAaron here today with Quimby’s NYC Grand Opening Extravaganza; Philip Guston and the Nixon Years; a review of some Obama Family Comics; Russian Futurist Sound Poems; Kartalopoulos at Angoulême; Festival of the Photocopier; Laura Park; Box Brown Wrestling Comics. ————————————————————————————————— GRAND OPENING QUIMBY’S BOOKSTORE NYC SATURDAY FEBRUARY 4, 2017, 7–10pm At 7:00 PM, Steven Svymbersky will give a short slide show talk on the history of zines followed by champagne and hors d’oeuvres. This event is also the opening for the first major survey of works by sculptor and collage artist, Eric Kirsammer. Quimby’s Bookstore NYC 536 Metropolitan Ave Brooklyn, NY 11211 ————————————————————————————————— Guston on Nixon Hauser & Wirth recently concluded it’s exhibit of Philip Guston‘s work from the 1970’s focusing on Richard Milhous Nixon, former president of the United States. The New York Times wrote a piece about the show, and Guston’s relationship with Philip Roth: Mr. Roth owns several of the Nixon drawings. “I always wanted Philip to publish them in a book,” he said. “But he was loath to do that then. He wasn’t sure about whether to go public with them. I think he didn’t want to be sullied as a cartoonist. But actually the people who didn’t like those wonderful last paintings sullied him as a cartoonist anyway.” Through the ’50s and most of the ’60s, Guston was a leading Abstract Expressionist, greatly admired for the shimmering elegance of his painting. But in the mid-60s, in one of the most famous about-faces in art history, he began to repudiate his own work. “American Abstract art is a lie, a sham, a cover-up for a poverty of spirit,” he wrote. Abandoning abstraction, he started to make paintings that weren’t just figurative but amounted to a catalog of comic-strip crumminess: light bulbs; rusted nails; old shoe soles; hairy legs; hooded, slit-eyed Klansmen smoking fat cigars. The world of Guston eventually came to look, as a number of critics pointed out, a lot like the world of R. Crumb. ————————————————————————————————— ‘He doesn’t have a name but his first name is Allergy Doctor’ J. Caleb Mozzocco takes a look at Steven Weissman’s second book chronicling the Obama administration (and family), Looking For America’s Dog, still the most accurate depiction of those times that we are ever likely to see. The Obama that emerged was maybe the ultimate comics character; after all, there are few figures that are at once as iconic and as protean as our presidents, upon whom we project, well, everything. The President of the United States, any president of the United States, is the Comics Character of a Thousand Faces. (And do note that most newspaper comics characters are confined to a single strip by a single artist or studio, whereas whoever the president is appears in scores of different editorial cartoons by scores of different artists every single day.) Looking For America’s Dog is similar in format to Barack Hussein Obama, filled with discrete, four-panel gag strips that wind in and out of an overarching quest narrative. And it’s similar in construction; a black-and-white sketchbook comic constructed with judiciously chosen uses of bright color and dialogue balloons with their long, thin tails apparently glued atop the pages. The aesthetic is a peculiar mix of dashed-off and labored-over. It is also, owing to the fact that it is of course a more recent work, a much more confident and accomplished book, with a much stronger through line: Bumbling Biden left the White House gate open, and America’s dog Bo ran away. (“God Damn You, Joe Biden,” a frustrated president says as he trudges through the snow, calling “Bo-oh!!”) ————————————————————————————————— Zaum, which translates into “beyond the mind” At Hyperallergic, Claire Voon looks at Russian sound poetry, made available online by the Getty Research Institute, that serves as an interactive companion to Explodity: Sound, Image, and Word in Russian Futurist Book Art, curated by Nancy Perloff. “Recurring verbal, visual, and vocal references to the folklike and the primitive, reversibility and mirror forms, the fourth dimension, and apocalypse dominate the artistic expression of these books,” as Perloff writes in her introduction. “Moreover, futurist poets and painters intended their books to be heard as well as read.” ————————————————————————————————— Dispatch from France Bill Kartalopoulos was on the ground at this year’s Angoulême Festival, and posted some great images. ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— Info about the upcoming Laura Park workshop at the Sequential Artist’s Workshop, February 27 – March 3, 2017. ————————————————————————————————— The Great Sasuke: Japan’s Masked Wrestler Turned Masked Politician If there was ever a time for some Box Brown Japanese wrestling/politics comics, that time is now. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-31-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-31-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Talking Trash With Derf

J KellyMarch 17, 2016InterviewsDerf’s The City was one of the most popular alt weekly newspaper comic strips of all time, appearing in 140 papers at its height, and his international best seller My Friend Dahmer won the Angoulême Prize and named by Time magazine as one of the “top five non-fiction books of the year” in 2012. His new graphic novel, Trashed, is a great break-down of the garbage industry inspired in part by the time Derf himself worked as a garbageman. You can meet Derf on April 2nd here in Pittsburgh at PIX, where he’ll sign books and talk during the evening’s programming. We asked him to fill us in on a few things: John Kelly: You spent years as one of the most visible alt-weekly cartoonists. Other than the medium being pretty much dead or at least diminished what do you see as the biggest changes in that world? Is it even an option for cartoonists today? And what, besides Craigslist, killed it off? Derf: Sadly, that is a genre that no longer exists. Neither do daily strips for that matter, not as a viable career anyways. The weekly guys who are still at it have all transitioned to a paid web model. Seems to be working for them. I chose to go in a different direction. I was bored with it. Turns out, judging from the reception my books have received, I was toiling in the wrong genre all along! Oh well. Twenty years down the crapper! The internet wiped out the weeklies, for sure. Not only by absconding with its main sources of revenue personals and classifieds but by taking its content. The weekly press was the internet before the internet. The weeklies were also plagued by lousy management and stupid decisions. Look no further than getting rid of comic strips for evidence of that! I pin this on the bizarre corporate takeover of the alternative press. The first generation of activist, local owners all cashed out by the end of the 90s and sold their papers to corporate media companies. It was pretty much all over at that point. Everything has its time, and the era of the vibrant weekly press, and of weekly cartoons, is long over. Its too bad, because it was great fun and we did important work. Kelly: Did you always hope to expand your work into these longer pieces like Dahmer and Trashed? Both started out as smaller projects. Did you envision longer pieces with them from the start? Derf: My Friend Dahmer, absolutely. I always envisioned it as a long book. The early, short versions were little more than samples that I hoped would interest a larger publisher in the project, which didn’t happen. And also was me working out how to tell and draw a longform story. There was a bigger learning curve there, especially with the art, than I expected. Trashed started as a 50-page floppy in 2002. I had no expectations there of a larger work. But when it was so well received and got me my first Eisner nomination, I decided it would be an ongoing project. I came back to it in 2010 and 2012 as a webcomic. It only took that long because of cancer and my decision to make Punk Rock & Trailer Parks first. I was planning to keep adding to the Trashed webcomic until it eventually became a book. I considered it a side project. It was my editor at Abrams, Charlie Kochman, who prodded me to make it a book now, which was a great call, it turns out. So the new graphic novel is basically the entire web series I had mapped out. Kelly: Rate your own garbage disposal/recycling habits. It all seems pretty hopeless. Is it? Derf: I do as well as I can. Im not an eco-fanatic. I recycle absolutely everything, but, like all Americans, Im faced with over-packaging and commercial waste at every turn. Until we cut down on that, at the production end, our garbage will continue to be a huge problem. As I explain in the book, the biggest part of our waste, almost a third, is packaging. So the largest part of our crap is the crap our crap comes in! That’s America. I am, however, really obsessive about how my garbage is put out. Nothing is too heavy, everything is neat and tidy and lined up for the garbagemen. No piles of trash, no boobytraps. My wife laughs at me because I spend so much time arranging the trash. Kelly: Its clear that both Dahmer and Trashed were extremely researched. How did your background at newspapers and as a journalism student help with this process? Can you pick out anything you found during the research process for either (or both books) that stands out as something that surprised you to learn? Also, as someone who who was there for the Dahmer story, were there things that the media just got wrong in their reporting? Derf: The media got just about EVERYthing wrong about Dahmer’s young life. That was really aggravating, since I was still working in the press at that time. It was thoroughly depressing watching the 24-hour news cycle in action, right on my doorstep, actually. The biggest surprise for me regarding Jeff, was how close to that first murder my friends and I were. Mere feet away from the body, at some points. When he carved up his first victim, the rest of us were just a few houses away at a friends party! I had quite a few sleepless nights over these revelations. But its all ancient history now. I have to keep reminding myself Jeff was real. Hes become a character in a comic book to me now, 23 years after his death. Thats a psychological defense mechanism, I imagine. Kelly: Can you talk about any other graphic novels that you feel really stand out? Derf: I dont read many comics anymore, to be completely honest. I stopped reading comics when I started making comics. Its just something I needed to do for my own creative development. Im aware of whats out there and whats good, but I dont feel I can offer any opinions. I will say this, its a golden age of graphic novels right now. Every month sees a dozen incredible books, and thats not even counting the avalanche of material coming from micro-publishers. Its a fabulous time to be a comics fan. Kelly: Any advice for people trying to break into the field? Derf: Do good work. I firmly believe that good work finds a way to be seen. It’s as simple as that, but, of course, thats not an easy accomplishment. That’s the thing. Kelly: What are you working on next/now? Derf: Right now Im dabbling with another webcomic, The Baron of Prospect Ave. Its a sequel to my first book, punk Rock & Trailer Parks. Another fun side project. Except I actually got a big arts grant to do it! In Ohio we have these Cultural Workforce grants and they gave three of them to comics creators this year, which is pretty damn cool. You can read it on my website www.derfcity.com. Its another side project, just for fun, but it too will be a book eventually. My French publisher nags me about it incessantly, in fact. But hell just have to wait. I’ll also have more volumes of True Stories coming out later this year, from the fine folks at Alternative Comics. These collect my stories from my comic strip, The City. I have three more volumes planned. Its a nice way to wrap up that part of my career and have an archive of all those True Stories. And then this spring and summer I’ll decide what my next new book will be and start working on that. I have more ideas than I have time. I wish I was faster. Work until you die! That’s my motto. Share this page: [...]

Brazil – Scene Report

Anna ManciniApril 29, 2016Scene ReportsHello! This is Manzanna, or Anna Mancini. I’m a Brazilian freelance designer, illustrator and comics artist. I make zines, murals, t-shirt designs, animation, lettering and more – you can see my work on my tumblr and my website. I also have a facebook page, where I usually post my comics firsthand. Right now I’m managing client work, teaching a workshop on zines at the UFJF university and working on three new zines. ———————————————————————————————— Today, I’d like to talk to you about comics making in Brazil: In the last couple of years, Brazilian comics have had quite an influx of new folks and initiatives, myself included; so let me walk you through some of the most exciting and relevant aspects of our scene in this report. I am from Juiz de Fora. Home of the first television transmission in Latin America and of a widespread claim of inaugurating electric street light earlier than New York City (wrong by a year!), my hometown – Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais, is not your first thought when it comes to Brazilian comics. Most artists, publishers and events in Brazil are situated in state capitals like Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Brasília, Belo Horizonte and Porto Alegre so I wouldn’t blame you. Despite that, coming from an uneventful city didn’t stop me from working on my own stuff and getting in touch with other artists (thanks, internet). I’ll start with my state in Brazil, Minas Gerais: our capital, Belo Horizonte, hosts the biannual International Comics Festival (Festival Internacional de Quadrinhos, or FIQ). With five days of panels, debates, workshops, exhibitions, it welcomes all sorts of enthusiasts, from the superhero fans to the more DIY, indie and experimental kinds. Every odd-numbered year, FIQ takes place in a historical lumberyard-turned-convention-center and proves itself as a great opportunity for attendees to meet in person with artists from different parts of the country, get to sell/buy/swap books + zines and hang out happily exhausted afterwards. On a smaller scale, Belo Horizonte has a monthly fair called Faísca, which showcases not only comics but all things illustration and graphic arts. Also from Belo Horizonte are the Lady’s Comics and ZiNas collectives, both committed to empowering women in comics; the former, a relevant content source on the topic, mobilized its first event in 2014 via crowdfunding and launched a magazine, Risca, in late 2015. ZiNas, in turn, are currently working on a project that includes a new book and free workshops on the subject of diversity in comics. One of the ZiNas members, Aline Lemos, was featured previously on the Daily News section of the Comics Workbook website for compiling a collaborative list of all Brazilian women involved in comics, of all time. There are more than 400 names, an impressive number that contrasts with the often assumed lack of women in the field. Other names that come to mind when talking about comics in BH are Ricardo Tokumoto, or Ryot, who makes lighthearted, funny, sometimes nonsense b&w strips, and Lu Cafaggi, who’s lending her super soft and expressive illustrations to a new release published by Nemo. As not to neglect my hometown, here are local highlights from Juiz de Fora: Raphael Salimena, an illustrator and cartoonist with a dynamic, plymptoonian style who recently set up a Patreon to support his bi-weekly strips; and Ramon Vitral, a journalist currently based in São Paulo whose blog Vitralizado, about comics and pop culture, features insightful interviews with great names like Scott McCloud, Chris Ware and Liniers. ———————————————————————————————— In the southeast but towards the coast, there’s Rio de Janeiro. There you can find the small indie publishing house A Bolha. With a staff of no more than 5 people, their passionate approach to publishing comes across with their well curated, intriguing and innovative books and warm newsletters. Among their staff is Gabriel Carvalho, who along with Mazô (this super talented young cartoonist) created Jornal Altamira, a newspaper-sized publication featuring comics by André Dahmer, L.M Melite, Fabio Zimbres, Alexandra Moraes and many others – it’s a stellar team. If you want to read more comics from Rio, make sure to take a look at the diversified, often satyrical catalog by small publisher Beleléu; and the recently published Hermínia, a graphic novel by Diego Sanchez. His wiggly, charming drawings and stories quickly gathered online praise in the last couple of years, notably in his facebook page Quadrinhos Insones. ( Facebook, by the way, has played an important role for this new wave of comics in Brazil, allowing otherwise isolated self-publishers to reach numbers people unfamiliar to independent comics. Also from Rio and this facebook-driven scene is Tombo, curator of Zine XXX, an anthology of five 24-page zines from 2014 that jumpstarted comics by women in Brazil – it featured Laura Lannes, Bárbara Malagoli, Gabriela Masson (Lovelove6) and Sirlanney, to name a few.) When it comes to events, there’s SIQ, the International Comics Week at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; Feira Pão de Forma, which gathers small publishers, artists and collectives (also produced by the folks from A Bolha); and with a similar premise is Feira Tijuana, a solid event at its 10th edition from São Paulo which is making its debut in Rio in May (days 7 and 8) at the insanely beautiful School of Visual Arts Parque Laje, located at the foot of the Corcovado mountain. ———————————————————————————————— Let’s talk São Paulo. With its strong visual arts, publishing culture and centralizing tendency, the city is packed with collectives, artists and exhibitions. One can find comics and zines by Brazilian indie publishers events like: Kraft (at the State University of São Paulo), Avessa (at Sesc Pompeia), Miolo(s) (at the Mário de Andrade Library). Miolo(s) is a production by the same folks of Lote 42, a small publisher of literature, poetry, careful & crazy formats and, yes!, comics. They’re also related to Banca Tatuí, a newsstand transformed into a pocket book shop at the heart of the city, where not only the works by Lote 42 can be found but also self-published, hand-made titles from other parts of the country. The greatest, most anticipated independent event in SP, though, must be Feira Plana. Ever-growing, the latest edition offered, for the first time, a residency program and the next one is announced to happen at was it to be the largest venue to date, the Bienal of Ibirapuera. Comics by women get the spotlight at Mina de HQ, an initiative by Gabriela Borges; also from the city is the hugely influential, outspoken genius Laerte Coutinho. Her son, Rafael Coutinho, also works in comics, being at the front of initiatives like A Nébula, an anthology of contemporary Brazilian comics, the book Teen Kiss and the publisher Narval. Collaborating with Narval there’s the talented Julia Balthazar, and since I’m dropping names, let me also recommend Puiupo, Wagner Willian, Pedro Cobiaco (from the publisher Mino), and still in the SP state but from the interior – Felipe Nunes and Amanda Paschoal. Back to the city, you don’t miss a chance of visiting Ugra – a store, and an online shop and a publishing house that releases every year a comprehensive compilation of ibero-american zines. ———————————————————————————————— Now to Brasilia, closer to the actual geographical center of Brazil and capital. From its number-named urban-planned streets comes a group of active, prolific comics artists such as Lucas Gehre, aka LTG, who makes a page everyday for his experimental, contemplative series Quadradinhas (he’s also part of the collective/magazine SAMBA); and Daniel Lopes, Augusto Botelho and João Diniz, who make MÊS, a series of zines published every month, with comics by themselves and open-call guests. Worth mentioning again, more in-depth, is Gabriela Masson and her character Garota Siririca (something like Masturbation Girl). Defying taboos and misconceptions about sexuality, her story is updated every week at her website, which also sells sex toys. Gabriela is also part of the collective Batata Frita Murcha (Stale French Fries), along with Daniel Lopes and Heron Prado, that creates bummer stories on classic strip format. All the folks mentioned above, plus Selo Piqui and Extraterrestre, organize the event Dente, whose second edition happens in June. ———————————————————————————————— Despite often being underrepresented, northeast Brazil has been stirring with comics-related news. There’s Felipe Portugal, from Piauí, who’s on a super fast pace releasing new strips for his series O Eremita (The Hermit); There’s Netuno Press, from the state of Ceará, which despite only having been launched recently has nine published titles under their belt and a consistent presence on events and fairs. Events like GeekExpo and Tabuão are shaking up the scene, as are artists like Luiza de Souza, Éff, Sirlanney and Aureliano Medeiros, who all have published works at Tribo and have found caring audiences through social media. Tribo has also published Laura Athayde, originally from Manaus (North Brazil), an illustrator who makes funny strips about everyday life, but who transitions well to more somber themes in her longest stories. Worth mentioning, too, is Ramon Cavalcante, a partner at Cosmic, a comics streaming service focused on independent Brazilian authors; creator of a very quiet, movie-like comics series called Inoffensive Comics and of a project that produced around 4000 screen-printed single-page comics that were offered in place of coin change at the local commerce in Fortaleza. ———————————————————————————————— At last, let’s talk about the South. One of its states, Rio Grande do Sul, is home to Estúdio Complementares. This comics and illustration studio is formed by some really great names of comics in Brazil: Ana Luiza Koehler, author of the historical graphic novel Beco do Rosário; Cris Peter, colorist for Marvel and DC and Eisner nominee; Ariane Rauber and Ursula Dorada. They often teach comics and illustration classes at Galeria Hipotética, in Porto Alegre. The city also hosts its own indie publishing event, called Parada Gráfica – this year’s is going to happen in August. Artists from Porto Alegre include Samanta Flôor, a freelance cartoonist who makes sweet, endearing comics; Chiquinha, whose work might remind you of a dirtier, more daring Maitena; Odyr, both a skillfull painter and synthetic cartoonist; Fefê Torquato and Giovana Medeiros. Curitiba, in the state of Paraná, often hosts book releases at the Itiban Comic Shop, as well as talks and debates. One of the latest featured was Estelle Flores, co-founder of Selva Press – one of the few risograph printing studios in Brazil. ———————————————————————————————— For more information on Anna Mancini, visit her online on her website, tumblr or her facebook page. Share this page: [...]

04/10/2017

Sally IngrahamApril 10, 2017NewsA report from PIX! plus a few other comics happenings to start your week. ————————————————————————————————— Sally here, still riding the wave of the Pittsburgh Indy Comix Expo – I’m writing this after midnight at the Comics Workbook Rowhouse, where Connor Willumsen is holding court with some of the CW crew, and Anya Davidson and Lale Westvind are on their way over to close out the night. The comics community in Pittsburgh just keeps on getting stronger. This year PIX took place right in the triangle of downtown. The expo at the August Wilson Center was well attended, the ToonSeum was packed out the night before for the opening of Ed Piskor’s “Hermetically Sealed” art show and then throughout the day on Sunday as programs and panels took place there. Comics Workbook students and instructors led workshops around the corner at the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council building for local kids and adults alike, and hosted a talk by Carol Tyler, and a conversation with Connor Willumsen and Lale Westvind. It was warm and sunny where the three rivers of Pittsburgh meet, and the comics energy managed to lure away, or at least detour, some of the anime characters attending a nearby convention, as well as a few baseball fans from the Pirates game! Shown above from left to right, top to bottom…Connor Willumsen sewing a new comic together at his table; the “Do-be-do” workshop for kids led by Juan Fernandez; a Pittsburgh Comics Salon workshop; in front of the August Wilson Center; Lale Westvind in conversation; Bill Boichel purchasing an original art page from Anya Davidson’s Lovers In the Garden, with Lane Milburn and Lale Westvind looking on; Carol Tyler talking comics-making; Connor Willumsen doing the same; Carol Tyler’s workshop. Just a small sampling of what was going on and a tiny glimpse of who was there – more to come! ————————————————————————————————— Elsewhere New in the Diaz Archive – photos from Michael DeForge‘s Sticks Angelica tour, thanks to Chris Anthony Diaz! 11 O’Clock Comics has a great interview with Jim Rugg – check it out HERE. Street Angel: After School Kung Fu Special will be released April 26th 2017! Sequential State reviews Lale Westvind‘s Yazar & Arkadaş – HERE. Seth has a new show at the Richmond Art Gallery – April 9, 2017 – June 25, 2017 – which combines his comics with the music of Mark Haney. Details HERE. Pictures of Seth and the show can be found HERE. The Comics Beat has notes on a conversation between Frank Miller and Klaus Janson (remembering Will Eisner) which took place last week at the SVA Theater. There is a lengthy interview with Vanessa Davis over on The Comics Journal – check it out. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 4-10-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 4-9-2017 & 4-10-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-10-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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