Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged amanda hamilton, audra stang, bad boyfriends, disa wallander, jonathan yee, naginata jutsu, PIX, retrofit comics, sophie franz

Sally Ingraham

Posted on April 8, 2016

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10/24/2018

Juan FernándezOctober 24, 2018NewsJuan and Andrew with an invitation to participate in 2018’s #30dayscomics Juan here! November is right around the corner which means that not only will I finally let myself turn on the heat at my apartment in Pittsburgh, but #30dayscomics will soon be upon us! As the weather chills and most of us become indoor creatures in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s good to come together by working on and sharing comics making challenges, connected by the internet. For those who don’t know, 30 Days of Comics is a month-long challenge. The parameters are pretty simple: Make 1 comic a day for the month of November. They can be anything you like, any format, any style, though most people do 1 page or 1 strip. Just do it everyday. This November, I’m excited to be able to allocate some time (likely at work) to working on my esperanza00 series and to see where these neurotrash digital collages of drawings, jpegs, clippings from articles, poems and facebook posts take me. The idea will be to create a 4 panel comic composed of 3-6 colors in this fashion daily: Needless to say, I’m excited. Here at Comics Workbook we’d like to invite you to participate in this year’s comics making journey. With me today is Andrew White to tell you more about a little this year’s #30dayscomics. Take it away Andrew. Starting on November 1st, I’m going to draw and post one comic per day for a month. I’ve done this almost every year since 2012, with varying success in terms of getting to the end of the month and in terms of the work itself. The cartoonist Derik Badman first took on this challenge, which he called 30 Days of Comics, in 2009 and invited others to join him in 2011. Derik describes the month as, “a time for experimentation, exploring short forms, and a great way to produce work.” That sounds about right to me. Often participants work with some kind of constraint, using the month to experiment with different approaches or new materials. See for example Kevin Czap’s A Lesson in Survival (2012), which appropriates text from Joni Mitchell and is visually very different from Kevin’s other work; or Simon Moreton’s set of printed zines produced near-daily; or Alyssa Berg’s Open Letter to Sleep (2016), an extended meditation on a single topic. Making one comic per day is of course a constraint itself. Personally, I’ve found the month most fruitful when I’ve gotten at a topic that I’ve been turning over in my mind for a while, which hopefully means that it will benefit from a rapid outpouring of work. The 30 Days of Comics Tumblr archive is another place to see how others have approached the month in the past. On that note, the community aspect of 30 Days has been essential for me. We encourage each other to keep going, and I’m still happy with the year when I riffed on the work of other participants. I’ve first met some dear friends thanks to 30 Days. Finally, implicit in the call to make comics daily for a month is the idea that making comics daily might not be possible through the rest of the year. We all benefit from a different balance between thinking about comics and making comics – and sometimes that balance is imposed externally by a day job or other life circumstance. We’re all affected, often negatively, by the idea that productivity is essential to our success as an artist, but we might wish we were more productive as well. For me, 30 Days helps with the difficult project of maintaining that balance. One comic per day isn’t too much work, but 30 comics in total is also significant. It’s okay if you miss a day. It’s okay if you aren’t happy with some of your work. This year I’ll be making four panel comics, inspired by people like Juan Fernandez and Madeleine Witt. My strips will be loosely based on this paper in the academic journal Science. I hope you’ll join us, and that you’ll use the hashtag #30dayscomics so that we can all find each other’s work! 10-24-2018 – Fifi Martinez 10-24-2018 – Niall Breen Share this page: [...]

10/31/2017

Aaron CockleOctober 30, 2017NewsAaron here today with Schneemann; Walker; Ernst; Reinhardt; Short Run 2017 ————————————————————————————————— Interior Scroll Here’s something from the Kinetic Painting show at MoMA PS1 (via PS1’s Instagram): While we can’t show you the photo documentation of Carolee Schneemann’s iconic performance work, “Interior Scroll,” on Instagram, above is a portion of the scroll itself on view in our new exhibition “Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting.” From the second of only two performances of the piece in 1977, the scroll reads: I don’t take the advice of men who talk only to themselves PAY ATTENTION TO CRITICAL AND PRACTICAL FILM LANGUAGE IT EXISTS FOR AND IN ONLY ONE GENDER These powerful reflections were a response to a screening at the Telluride Film Festival, where Schneemann’s films “Fuses” and “Plumb Line” were included in a program entitled “The Erotic Woman.” Schneemann objected to the program for being proscribed by the male imagination, and having a contradictory effect to the films themselves. Explore more documentation of “Interior Scroll” and other seminal performances by Carolee Schneemann in her retrospective #KineticPainting on view through March 11. ————————————————————————————————— ‘She said she was thinking of Thomas Eakins’s surgical theater paintings as she was also imagining house slaves disemboweling their master with a soup ladle.’ At the New York Review, Darryl Pinckney looks at the recently closed Kara Walker exhibit, Kara Walker: Sikkema Jenkins and Co. is Compelled to present The most Astounding and Important Painting show of the fall Art Show viewing season! I sometimes find myself remembering the great Sphinx of white sugar that Kara Walker built three years ago in an unused, emptied-out sugar refinery in Brooklyn along the East River: A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant. The refinery was enormous, the walls streaked with sugar. In the distance, the large figure of a Mammy rested in her Egyptian pose, a bandana on her head. The small basket-carrying boys made of dark red molasses who attended her were melting in the summer heat, folding over onto the floor. The large and roving crowd was quiet, as if under a spell. People took photographs of themselves standing between her creamy-looking arms. ————————————————————————————————— Max Ernst: Beyond Painting, Museum of Modern Art, NYC, through January 1, 2018 This exhibition surveys the career of the preeminent Dada and Surrealist artist Max Ernst (French and American, born Germany, 1891–1976), with particular emphasis on his ceaseless experimentation. Ernst began his pursuit of radical new techniques that went “beyond painting” to articulate the irrational and unexplainable in the wake of World War I, continuing through the advent and aftermath of World War II. Featuring approximately 100 works drawn from the Museum’s collection, the exhibition includes paintings that challenged material and compositional conventions; collages and overpaintings utilizing found printed reproductions; frottages (rubbings); illustrated books and collage novels; sculptures of painted stone and bronze; and prints made using a range of techniques. Several major, multipart projects represent key moments in Ernst’s long career, ranging from early Dada and Surrealist portfolios of the late 1910s and 1920s to his late masterpiece—a recent acquisition to MoMA’s collection—65 Maximiliana or the Illegal Practice of Astronomy (1964). This illustrated book comprises 34 aquatints complemented by imaginative typographic designs and a secret hieroglyphic script of the artist’s own invention. From MoMA’s Instagram: Max Ernst’s love of puns was likely fostered by Sigmund Freud’s book “Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.” Here, the Dada artist overpainted a page from a sales catalogue showing women’s hats printed in an orderly grid. Ernst added more cut-and-pasted hats to make the phallic tower at the left. This visual pun relates to Freud’s identification of the hat—the requisite accessory of the bourgeois man—as a common symbol of repressed desire, adding new meaning and gender ambiguity to the cliché inscribed on the work, “C’est le chapeau qui fait l’homme” (“The hat makes the man”). ————————————————————————————————— ‘A lot of the best horror movies give you the sense that the movie you’re watching is itself somehow evil.’ Today (Tuesday, October 31, 2017) is Halloween, and what better way to celebrate than looking back at Simon Reinhardt’s reviews of horror movies from this past month. Reinhardt reviews some classics (TBOF, seen below; The Fog) as well as some rarities and gems (Kuroneko; Beyond the Darkness) and newer works (Prevenge; Butter on the Latch). Take a look, maybe your favorite horror movie was reviewed. ————————————————————————————————— SHORT RUN 2017, Saturday, November 4, 2017 ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-31-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 10-31-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 10-31-2017 – by Juan Fernandez [1][2] Share this page: [...]

06/29/2017

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

04/24/2018

Aaron CockleApril 23, 2018NewsAaron here today with Global Art Comics; Frank in Italia; Print Slam #8; Paradise Systems; Cy Twombly; Remote Mind Control ————————————————————————————————— Save the date! April 27th: SPRING GROUP SHOW | GLOBAL ALT COMICS! Featuring work by Trina Robbins, Mary Fleener, Lauren Weinstein, Powerpaola, Gina Wynbrandt, Conxita Herrero, Tommi Parrish, Gabrielle Bell. ————————————————————————————————— Do you have any peculiar habits or routines before starting to draw? I try to do drawing warmups. I like to copy Archie comics. It lets my brain draw without thinking, without inventing. And Archie comics have a type of cartoony realism which I think is perfect to copy. Ideally, I warm up for 30 minutes or so before beginning to work on my own comics. Although as my comic nears completion, I warm up less because I feel confident about my direction. Also, I obsessively make coffee on the stovetop with my Bialetti caffettiera. I have to drive far away to find Lavazza coffee at the Italian grocery in a different neighborhood. American coffee is crap. Frank Santoro is interviewed at Fumettologica, in support of the publication of Pompeii in Italy, and Frank’s trip this week to Naples Comicon. An excerpt from the Italian edition has been posted as well. ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— Paradise Systems: Woshibai, Lisk Feng and Jun Cen in conversation April 27, 2018, 6-8 PM Shanghai-based cartoonist Woshibai reads from his new book Migraine, newly released by Paradise Systems. Woshibai will be joined by New York-based cartoonists Jun Cen and Lisk Feng in conversation about Chinese comics and the illustration community. Jun Cen will also have copies of his book Negative Space availanble, which was recently published in China. ————————————————————————————————— Cy Twombly: In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008 Through April 25, 2018, 522 West 21st Street, NY Cy Twombly: Coronation of Sesostris Through April 28, 2018, 980 Madison Avenue, NYC ————————————————————————————————— ‘EM stands for electromagnetic.’ Curtis Waltman at Muckrock found some good graphics in a recent Freedom of Information Act request: As part of my ongoing project looking at fusion centers’ investigations into Antifa and various white supremacist groups, I filed a request with the WSFC. I got back many standard documents in response, including emails, intelligence briefings and bulletins, reposts from other fusion centers – and then there was one file titled “EM effects on human body.zip.” ————————————————————————————————— Vison Box – 4-24- 2018 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-24- 2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

11/30/2016

Juan FernándezNovember 30, 2016los Cómics / NewsJuan con un poquito sobre The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey; GRAF Madrid documentado; Fotos de la Muestra colectiva: Ciudades Imaginadas; Berliac’s TANGRAM; Suzy y Cecil. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Pittsburgh, PA – The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey La gran Vanesa R. Del Rey le ha dado permiso a Comics Workbook para publicar unas selecciónes de sus cuadernos de bocetos. Hemos diseñado esta publicación para que parezca uno de esos libros de de artistas los años 80. El texto es una transcripción de la entrevista que hicimos con Vanesa cuando visito la Residencia Rowhouse en 2016. Vanesa es un artista impresionante y inigualable, quien estudió con George Pratt y quien a dibujado con Grant Morrison. Estamos ofreciendo compras adelantadas a un precio reducido. Sigan a Vanesa por Instagram – @vrdelrey – y http://vrdelrey.com/ ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Madrid, España – GRAF en Video #GRAFMADRID2016 resumido en este vídeo de @MIIS3RIIA con música de @afeite_al_perro y @golondrinamente. Si quieres ver lo que la proxima si quieres ver lo que la próxima edición del gráfico Madrid os ofrecerá no te pierdas los vídeos que GRAF grabo hace unos meses en Barcelona (y más). Estan todos en su Youtube! ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Rosario, Argentina – Fotos de la Muestra colectiva: Ciudades Imaginadas. Festival Furioso a compartido sus fotos de la Inauguración del festival, muestra colectiva ciudades imaginadas a cargo de: Feli Pablo, Bruno Crispino, Estefania Clotti, Guardabosques y Juan Vegetal y presentación de la Editorial Furiosa 8/11 Ph: Paganini Conforti. Dale un vistazo! ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Berlin, Germany – Berliac’s TANGRAM is now for sale! los detalles: 16 pages 29,7 x 21 cm (A4) Duotone Risograph on newsprint Published by FOSFATINA (Spain) 6€ BUY IT HERE: http://berliac.tictail.com/product/tangram ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Comics Workbook ha anunciado el semestre de invierno del Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers – el curso empieza Dec. 29th 2016! Curso de 8 semanas – 500 dolares – 10 estudiantes – presentate para el curso antes del Dec. 13th 2016 y recibiras un descuento de $100! Email santoroschoolATgmail for more details. Direcciones para la Solicitud de Ingreso al Santoro School : -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. Manda tus solicitudes a: santoroschoolATgmail ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Pittsburgh, PA – El comienzo de Suzy y Cecil Suzy y Cecil es una tira diaria, creada por varias estudiantes de Comics Workbook. Pueden seguir sus aventuras y su amistad en instagram: @Suzy_and_Cecil. ————————————————————————————————— hasta la proxima! Share this page: [...]

04/08/2016

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Sally Ingraham

Sally here with the good news from Retrofit, the Bad Boyfriends collection, and comics from Amanda Hamilton, Disa Wallander, and Jonathan Yee to send you into the weekend with light feet – plus Gabriella Tito on Audra Stang’s new piece!

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Kicking things off with a couple of forays into comics that’ll give your Friday a colorful start!

From Amanda Hamilton comes this piece in marker – a new medium for her, and one that seems to suit! The comic came about “…during one very anxious night where it was too noisy to sleep. I was inspired…to do something with markers instead of colored pencils and I had a set of Rose Art neon markers I thought would be good to convey that jarring, discordant feeling and combine the colors in interesting ways.”

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Next up, something from Jonathan Yee –

Jonathan made this comic last weekend at PIX, during a Comics Workbook workshop with Juan Fernandez and Frank Santoro.

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Gabriella Tito taking a turn here! Attention:

Audra Stang is branching out into new territory (following her recent wrap up of “Love Me Like An Autograph“) with her new comic “April 2008“ (see panel above). Most noticeably, in her recent series taking place in the fictional town “Star Valley”, is her change in technique! Instead of using bold line art for her characters and traditional color, she’s now transitioning into using sleek pencil shading without too many lines – and I think it’s absolutely fabulous. Audra keeps the style current with light digital color overtones, not breaking the mood and flow even the slightest. Once again, check out my good friend Audra’s new comic HERE!

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Back to Sally, with the stellar news that Retrofit did it! All those lovely books will be coming out soon – including the title above by Sophie Franz – with the first ones hitting the world in May. Congratulations!

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Bad Boyfriends is out now. It has comics by Cathy G. Johnson, Celine Loup, Hannah Kaplan, Laura Lannes, Julia Gfrörer, Laerte Coutinho, Mariana Paraizo, Paula Puiupo and Hazel Newlevent (above). This collection is important and gut wrenching – available as a free download HERE, and for sale as a physical copy HERE.

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Disa Wallander posted a cute spring comic, which offers a glimpse of sunlight unlike anything I personally have seen recently…! Spring is around here, somewhere.

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Something to take with you into the weekend –

Practice your craft, whatever it may be, stay nimble and sharp and badass! Catch you later – Sally and Gabriella

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged amanda hamilton, audra stang, bad boyfriends, disa wallander, jonathan yee, naginata jutsu, PIX, retrofit comics, sophie franz

Sally Ingraham

Posted on April 8, 2016

Explore

09/27/2016

Aaron CockleSeptember 27, 2016NewsAaron here today with Discipline; Dykes in Print/Boiled Angel/CBLDF; Maintenance Art; Nadel/Dunham; Remembering Kim Thompson; Ford/Walden; French Comics in the USA; Portraits & Swinespritzen ————————————————————————————————— Dash Shaw is posting Diary Comics this week at TCJ, where he discusses the process of his work-in-progress, Discipline: This book is a long comic book, but it does not have any speech balloons or panel borders. The illustrations and the hand-written cursive text float on the page. This activates the negative space of the page, which lends the book a spacious stillness, or a quiet, “Quakerly” tone. This spacing relates to Civil War-era illustration, where elements hover inside of articles. Also, this allows me to write and draw all of the elements separately, so the book is easier for me to edit. With the conventional comic approach, usually the insertion of a panel throws off all of the other panels in the book. Because of the collage-like structure of my book, I can easily insert illustrative moments and pieces of text and research/write while still making new drawings. ————————————————————————————————— Censorship: Don’t Do it! In celebration (?) of Banned Books week, Pen.org has a piece by Jennifer Camper, Dykes in Print: And the Guardian revisits the Mike Diana Boiled Angel trial and the origins of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund: Set up in 1986, the CBLDF exists to fight censorship of comic books, protect the First Amendment right to free speech and, more pragmatically, to provide legal representation for comics creators facing prosecution. Founder Denis Kitchen was running Kitchen Sink Press, a publisher of underground comics, when he heard about a police raid on Friendly Frank’s comic shop in Chicago. Six officers had seized seven titles, including erotic comic Omaha the Cat Dancer, Robert Crumb’s anthology Weirdo and SF-smut comic Heavy Metal, and arrested manager Michael Correa. Friendly Frank’s was shut down for five days, but not before one of the arresting officers told newspapers there was a “satanic influence” in the comics seized. Kitchen was appalled. “I realised immediately that if police officers with built-in Satan detectors could get away with making arrests and seizing objectionable comic books, much more than the comics industry was at stake,” he says. He swiftly raised $20,000 for a fighting fund, helped by comics heavyweights like Crumb and Frank Miller. “It was gratifying to see that sudden unity among the comics community,” Kitchen says. “I was more used to people squabbling.” ————————————————————————————————— Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art at Queens Museum This first survey of Ukeles’ work is organized by the Queens Museum’s Larissa Harris and guest co-curator Patricia C. Phillips, who initiated the project in 2012. The show will span five decades, from her work as a pioneer of feminist performance to a practitioner of public art, in which Ukeles invites us to reconsider indispensable urban systems and the workers who maintain them. Ukeles is undoubtedly best-known for her 36+ year role as the official, unsalaried Artist-in-Residence at New York’s Department of Sanitation. Unprecedented when it began in 1978, this residency has now become a model for municipalities engaging with artists as creative agents. ————————————————————————————————— Dan Nadel on Carroll Dunham’s drawing at Hyperallergic: Dunham and his peers had emerged from a conceptual and process-oriented New York milieu in which a number of artists were exhibiting and redefining drawing as a primary medium, including Barry Le Va, Dorothea Rockburne (who Dunham and Kendrick assisted), Mel Bochner, and Sol Lewitt. Connecting these and other artists was the removal of both the image and the artist’s sensuous touch, replaced with rigorous conceptual procedures. In contrast, Terry Winters notes that he and Dunham “saw drawing and making things by hand as a way out of or into art. We were reconnecting with gesture and touch, and their capacities to register other kinds of information not available through logic.” They were also finding kinship with artists that were not highly considered at the time, such as the mid-20th century German painter and photographer Wols and the American post-war painter William Baziotes, both of whose work defied categorization and remained outside of the contemporary dialogue. ————————————————————————————————— At the ever-enduring Comics Reporter blog, Tom Spurgeon remembers Fantagraphics publisher Kim Thompson, and looks at the aging of the ‘alt-comics’ crowd: The thing that stuck in my head, though, throughout today, was how many people texted and e-mailed that they thought Kim was older than 60 when he passed away. I think that’s because Kim and Gary Groth and their roughly same-age peers were either the first generation of alt-comics publishers or the first generation since the first generation to enter mainstream comics in a significant way. So you have a lot of people 55-65 with trackable careers two, three, four decades long in an established arts industry, which is rare outside of a few precocious creative talents. ————————————————————————————————— Sean Ford recently conducted an interview with Tillie Walden, posted on Inkstuds. ————————————————————————————————— French Comics Framed Festival NYC, 27 September-5 November Sept 27 – Nov. 5: French Comics Framed – Exhibition The Cooper Union, Foundation Building, 7 East 7th Street, NY 10003 Oct. 4: Panel by Asaf & Tomer Hanuka The Society of illustrators, 128 East 63rd Street, NY, NY 10065 Oct 6-9: Meet our artists on booth #1558 at New York Comic Con and on the Artist Alley Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 655 W. 34th St., NY, NY 10001 Oct. 6, 7pm: French Comics On Screen: Film Adaptations of Franco-Belgian Graphic Narratives The School of Visual Arts, 209 E 23rd St, 3rd floor Oct. 7, 6:30pm : How to Draw a Life: The Rise of Graphic Biography in France Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, NY 10029 Oct. 8, 1:30-2:30pm: Drawing From the World: Franco-Belgian Comics in Global Context New York Comic Con (room 1B03), Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 655 W. 34th St., NY, NY 10001 Oct. 8, 7pm: Reconstructing Comix: The “Architecture” of Franco-Belgian Graphic Narratives, from Tintin to Today The Great Hall of Cooper Union, Foundation Building, 7 East 7th Street, NY, NY 10003 Nov. 1, 7pm: Panel discussion: Drawing the unspeakable Columbia University 116th St & Broadway, NY, NY 10027 ————————————————————————————————— Help send Connor Willumsen to the UK for The Lakes International Comic Arts Festival in October! He will be teaching workshops with Frank Santoro and Aidan Koch while there – if you’re in the area check it out. To help him get to the show, Comics Workbook is offering two new Connor publications. Portraits and Swinespritzen – both limited editions, both incredible. Share this page: [...]

11/29/2016

Aaron CockleNovember 28, 2016NewsAaron here today with the Micro-Press run-down; RESIST! Reminder; a look at Formalism and Historicity; Marlene Frontera; Gerhard Richter; CALA; O Correspondence Course, My Correspondence Course! ————————————————————————————————— Micro-Press Yearbook Robyn Chapman has released her third annual review of micro-presses. This one recaps 2015, which seems like such a quaint time as we stare down the last days of 2016. These books have been invaluable in assessing and giving some perspective to the current small-publishing comics landscape. ————————————————————————————————— RESIST! RESIST! will be published as a special issue of Gabe Fowler’s tabloid newspaper, Smoke Signal. We are aiming to make the print version an all-women issue though we’ll remain open-minded and we will consider all submissions. 30,000 copies will be distributed for free on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, in Washington D.C. Further distribution will occur at the Women’s March on January 21st and throughout the United States. It is guest-edited by Françoise Mouly, art editor of The New Yorker, and writer Nadja Spiegelman. The site is updated on a daily basis, so be sure to check back, and please consider submitting work. ————————————————————————————————— “authoritarianism,” “proto-Fascis,” and a “seizure of state power” Paul Mullan reviews Benjamin H.D. Buchloh’s Formalism and Historicity: Models and Methods in Twentieth-Century Art at the Red Wedge Magazine blog: The initial analysis of neo-expressionism was weighted towards its national(ist) origins, whether German or Italian, given, again, fears of a new, continental “authoritarianism” and “proto-Fascis.” However, the analysis by 1984 is more weighted towards the painting’s engagement with abex, US abstract expressionism. The relation between the US and Europe is here explicitly characterized as “colonialized.” Abex had arisen by the end of the Second World War, and the dominant military and economic position of the US – given the destruction of much of Europe and Japan – allowed for a strong cultural position as well throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. (See the histories of CIA support for art exhibitions that traveled globally, as instruments in Cold War propaganda.) The real, objective conditions that can provide an explanatory framework for this change should be evident. There was a new primary political contradiction developing on the ground: the mass movement – spanning multiple, national borders – against the “euromissiles” and new, US imperialist offensive. ————————————————————————————————— I Go Go Back and Forth Marlene Frontera will be launching her new risograph book of illustrations this Wednesday, November 30, 6-8pm at Picture Room, 236 Mulberry Street, NYC. Drawing inspiration from a childhood picture book in which a girl is seen next to a rippling pond that grows as the pages progress, Frontera documents the evolution of a single drawing at different stages. Working alongside Jeremy Jams and Dominic Fortunato of Soft City Printing, Frontera captures the subtle construction of an illustration, filling space with environment around her centric female character. This beautiful risograph book is an edition of 200, and was printed in Brooklyn by Soft City Printing. ————————————————————————————————— ‘Looked at in this way, all that I am trying to do in each picture is to bring together the most disparate and mutually contradictory elements, alive and viable, in the greatest possible freedom. No paradises.’ An interview with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh and Gerhard Richter from 2009, via the MIT Press: BB: So, in 1966, when you started to paint nonfigurative pictures, Color Charts, did that also have something to do with a head-on confrontation with minimal art? Was that another conflict situation, a rejection of American dominance, or was it through an evolutionary process of your own, rooted in the immediate, local context here in Düsseldorf? Was it through meeting Palermo, perhaps? GR: Yes, it certainly did have something to do with Palermo and his interests, and later with minimal art as well; but when I painted my first Color Charts in 1966, that had more to do with pop art. They were copies of paint sample cards, and what was effective about them was that they were directed against the efforts of the neoconstructivists, Albers and the rest. ————————————————————————————————— Comic Arts Los Angeles 2016 ————————————————————————————————— The Winter Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers Starts December 29, 2016. 8 week course, $500, 10 spots available, apply by December 13, 2016 and get $100 off course fee. Share this page: [...]

08/28/2017

Caleb OrecchioAugust 27, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here on Jack Kirby’s 100th birthday ———————————————————————————————— What’s out There? …and so I live with a lot of questions—and I find that entertaining. If my life would have went tomorrow, it would be fulfilled in that manner. I would say, “The questions have been terrific.” -Jack Kirby from the Harlan Ellison hosted documentary, Masters of American Comic Book Art. All images herein are written and drawn by Jack Kirby ———————————————————————————————— Today is Jack Kirby’s 100th birthday, and though he passed away in 1994, his spirit lives on as strong as it ever was. Undoubtedly, his influence has stretched across the four corners of the medium of comics–and culture in general. Over the past months in anticipation of this day, there has been an extra electricity in the air, surely not altogether separate from the social and political shifting of the last several years. Many feel the doomsday clock is winding down to midnight and the writing on the wall says the times are changing, and I couldn’t help but think of the recent solar eclipse as a sort of omen. Whether the eclipse was an omen for good or bad, I have no idea; but as the Jacques Prévert poem says, The earth it turns/The earth doesn’t stop turning. Another recent omen I encountered, just two days before the eclipse, was a screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey in a vintage 70mm print. As you know, it’s a complete and utter visual experience–a feast for the eyes–but seeing it in 70mm left me changed by the time the credits were rolling. “What did we just watch?” was a popular question asked among friends while ruminating over shared cigarettes. I couldn’t stop thinking about Kirby. More than a few readers will be well acquainted with Kirby’s comic book adaption of 2001 and his subsequent spin-off series. I think these works unhinged something in Kirby. The series, up to the point until Mister Machine (or later, Machine Man) takes over as protagonist, leans heavily on the evolution of early humans into a higher being: The New Seed. It’s a continuum: we’re born, we live, we die, we’re born again. During and after 2001, Kirby became unleashed. His “mature style” had fully formed. A New Seed emerged from his diminishing back and forth relationship between Marvel and DC. Back at Marvel once again for the last time, Kirby’s images obliterated the comparatively civilian drawings of his contemporaries. Smashing and gnashing his way through, arguably, some of industries worst years creatively and financially–standing as a monolith among the poor, hungry apes incapable of grasping the knowledge he was revealing to them. He, The Monolith, still stands to this day and we apes are still trying to figure out where the signal is pointing to. xoxo CO ———————————————————————————————— select Kirby links This special edition of the Kirby Collector looks like a banger. The Comics Journal interview with Kirby conducted by Gary Groth, with Roz Kirby in attendance. Masters of American Comic Book Art clip A really great Art in America piece on Kirby by Alexi Worth. Radio interview conducted on Kirby’s 70th birthday with surprise guest–brace yourselves True Believers–Stan Lee. A really excellent series by Robert Steibel on the collaboration between Kirby and Lee Kirby at War BANG! POW! Kirby on Entertainment Tonight A particularly good presentation by Arlen Schumer on Kirby’s influence in culture. Jack Kirby Musuem and Research Center Kirb Your Enthusiasm BONUS SPREAD ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 8-28-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ———————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 8-28-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

01/20/2017

Sally IngrahamJanuary 20, 2017NewsSally Ingraham here to round out your week with an All-Star group of cartoonists and their work: Marie Severin, Dale Messick, Ramona Fradon, Trina Robbins, Em DeMarco, Audra Stang, and more! ————————————————————————————————— I am excited to see that this year Dori Seda will join the 7 other women who have made it into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame (their work is pictured above). The 2017 nominees were announced recently, and Dori is a Judges’ Choice for automatic induction. Out of 17 other nominees, 4 will be chosen by voters, and among those 17 cartoonists are 5 more female candidates. Here’s the whole list. A perk of working somewhere like Copacetic Comics in Pittsburgh, PA, is that when the need calls, I can tear the store apart and come back a few thrilling hours later with an armload of work by every woman listed above, plus all of the women on the 2017 nominees list. I have been sharing my findings this week over on the Comics Workbook Roller Derby League Instagram account – @cwrollerderby – and will continue to do so for the next few days. Here’s a taste of the tremendous talent and influence of a few of these masters of the comics medium: Marie Severin – (inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2001) – spent most of her professional career working for Marvel as a colorist, penciller, and inker. She drew stories for Sub-Mariner and the Hulk and other series. Pictured above is one of her Incredible Hulk stories, from Tales to Astonish #93 (1967), and a story she drew for Wimmen’s Comix #10 (1985). Dale Messick – (inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2001) – is best known for creating the strip Brenda Starr, Reporter in 1940. At it’s peak in the 1950’s the strip ran in 250 newspapers around the country. She drew the strip until 1980, and when she retired she left the ultimatum that Brenda Starr must continue to be drawn by other female cartoonists. Ramona Fradon – (inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2006) – was the artist who took over Brenda Starr, Reporter when Dale Messick retired, although she had been working in the industry since 1950. She worked for DC Comics throughout her career, drawing Aquaman stories and co-creating Metamorpho among other projects. Trina Robbins – (inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2013) – is an incredibly influential underground cartoonist who has worked tirelessly since the 1970’s to provide opportunities and platforms for women in comics. She established the first all-female comic book anthology – It Ain’t Me, Babe – and was one of the main editors of Wimmen’s Comix for 20 years. She worked on the Wonder Woman series, and is also a widely published comics historian – or “her”storian. Pictured above is one of her covers and a story from Wimmen’s Comix #10 (1985). I’ll be back next Friday with more ladies of the Will Eisner Hall of Fame – Marjorie “Marge” Buell, Lynda Barry, and Tove Jansson! ————————————————————————————————— I got a chance to get to know Em DeMarco better last night through a live interview at The ToonSeum – part of the Pittsburgh Comic Salon‘s Lecture Series. She is a cartoonist, journalist, and educator based here in the city of Pittsburgh. Between composing her monthly investigative reporting comics feature for the City Paper, photographing the local punk music scene, teaching comics classes through a partnership between The ToonSeum and the Lauri Ann West Community Center, and venturing into long-form comics projects, Em keeps herself busy…! Her experience with creating stories for radio programming informs her current comics journalism projects (the connection between oral reporting and visual storytelling is worth investigating fully at a later date!), and her insights into translating live interviews into compelling comics made for a lively and thought-provoking discussion. Check out more of her work HERE – and if you happen to be around Pittsburgh on a 3rd Thursday of the month, come join us at The ToonSeum for another conversation with a local comics creator. ————————————————————————————————— Jillian Fleck‘s Lake Jehovah was reviewed over on The Comics Beat – “Fleck mixes all the elements very skillfully, with a deadpan humor that alternates with frantic despair and an otherworldly creepiness that blends into its own tenor. The fantastical elements do well in elevating the psychological ones, and Fleck ends up perfectly plumbing the depths of the bottomless lake, both literally and figuratively, for a portrayal of what it is like to be overwhelmed by the invisible and burdened by the incoherency of the universe.” – John Seven Tom Spurgeon offers some commentary on the first round of voting for the Angouleme Festival Grand Prix over on The Comics Reporter. The artists who have made it to the final round are Chris Ware, Cosey and Manu Larcenet. There has been very little “buzz” around the process this year, which is surprising considering the volcanic eruption surrounding the award this time last year…! Tom delves a bit into the steps taken to oversee a more balanced and inclusive nomination process – and despite my own reaction of “YES!! Chris Ware for the win!” I agree with how Tom concludes: “…even with all three of those great artists in play I think my heart would rather see Posy Simmonds on that list than on the committee to help things run more smoothly.“ RESIST! was printed at 58,000 copies and is being handed out for free today in Washington, D.C. during the Inauguration and tomorrow during the Woman’s March, as well as at similar events around the country. For a complete list of where you can get a copy visit this page. Check out the work of Iona Fox – she’s a cartoonist and farmer working in Vermont. Her stories are always interesting, and while you’re browsing her website be sure to take a peak at the Beaver Cam! There’s a nice review of Inés Estrada‘s Impatience on The Comics Journal. Check it out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— This is Audra Stang‘s second visit to Pittsburgh, and she was getting so much done during her Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency that she extended it for another week! It’s been exciting to watch the story she is working on develop and see her commitment to the form and to her future in the industry and community. If you’re interested in applying for a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency visit our info page or email santoroschoolATgmail. Follow the @rowhouseresidency Instagram for regular updates on the program and the cartoonists who visit us this year. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-20-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-20-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— 1-20-2017 – by Juan Fernández Share this page: [...]

08/21/2018

Aaron CockleAugust 21, 2018NewsEmil Friis Ernst; Emila Medková; José-Luis Olivares; Katsumata Susumu ————————————————————————————————— Why We Don’t Use Chemical Weapons Emil Friis Ernst at the Nib: ————————————————————————————————— Emila Medková: The Magic of Despair From Krzysztof Fijałkowski at Tate Papers: Photographs such as Explosion insinuate a dry, bitter humour typical of the poems and paintings of post-war Czech surrealism, but it is not one that squares easily with André Breton’s ‘black humour’ characteristic of French surrealism during and after the 1930s. Indeed, as the Czechs already recognised, the conditions for their laughter were now radically different. Vratislav Effenberger, who had taken over effective leadership of the group after Teige’s death, was to note their shift, and how their pervasive and concrete nature made photography their appropriate witness: I wasn’t willing to swear on the dogma of ‘liberty-love-poetry’. This utopian maxim could only have muted everything that still blazed within surrealism. … The streets in which surrealists were looking for the marvellous had changed between the wars. And from the 1940s; it was a different irrationality that I had encountered there. This irrationality, produced by a decadent rationality, burst with a humour so objective that all you had to do was place it in front of a camera or on a stage for its rationalist shell to crack open and a purifying sarcasm to leap out. ————————————————————————————————— Cotton Story José-Luis Olivares at Popula: ————————————————————————————————— ‘Fukushima Devil Fish’: A Nuclear Pastoral Ryan Holmberg at the New York Review on newly translated work by Katsumata Susumu: Deep Sea Fish, with its juxtapositions of familiar folklore characters and motifs with themes of displacement and nuclear industrialization, provided an elegiac window onto how the Tohoku region has struggled not only because it is more prone to natural calamities (including three major tsunamis since the late nineteenth century), but also because the land and its peoples have been subject to discrimination and exploitation by government and industrial powers in Tokyo since the advent of the modern era. Saddling Tohoku with the nation’s three largest nuclear complexes—the Fukushima Daiichi facility, the even bigger Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station in Niigata, and the behemoth fuel reprocessing and waste storage facility in Rokkasho in Aomori—is just one example. In other words, Deep Sea Fish revealed Katsumata’s personal geography and compromised pastoral landscape as a map to a better understanding of how the 2011 disaster was, above all, a disaster for northern Japan. ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 8-21-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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