04/15/2016

Sally here with sweet morsels to start the weekend off right – Simon Hanselmann and Eleanor Davis dazzle in interviews this week, while Alabaster Pizzo and Jim Rugg offer up comics overflowing with life-hacks, and Chris Ware via Comics Workbook provides us with the perfect way to spend that plump tax return we’re already dreaming of…

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Chris Ware – from Heads or Tales, 2014

What a day, what a day. Friday, April 15th, and in a stroke of great good fortune, it is NOT tax day…! Thanks to some obscure holiday celebrated only in Washington, D.C., the penny savers of the world can hold on to their riches for a few more days. If you still feel an urge to count coins, however, check out this comic by Chris Ware, which ran in the New York Times a few tax seasons ago. I say some obscure holiday…

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*sigh*

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Anyway, once you get those taxes filed, hopefully there will be a sweet refund landing in your coffers – and in anticipation of that, you could certainly at least take a gander at the INCREDIBLE AUCTION of original Chris Ware artwork that is being held to benefit the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency. Check it out:

The auction is live HERE, and will continue through next week.

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We can’t get enough of Jim Rugg this week – after blowing his mind with the Chris Ware package, Comics Workbook followed up by paying his studio a visit and getting into the details of Jim’s process. Check out part 1 of 3 below:

Part 2 HEREPart 3 HERE.

Jim is cranking out some new high octane Street Angel comics too – Fist Fight Funnies features our kick ass hero enduring the horrors of middle school…the story so far. Can she survive MATH CLASS…??

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Keeping things somewhat connected here, in a new interview with The Guardian, Simon Hanselmann mentions his confusion over how to read comics by Chris Ware. “I believe in the grid,” he says. This of course is the least interesting aspect of the article, which begins with Simon and HTMLflowers watching the sun rise at the top of a 12-storey crane in the middle of a construction site.

‘When not putting himself in mortal danger, Simon Hanselmann is responsible for the cult comic series Megg, Mogg and Owl. “If I don’t do stupid things every now and then, I will run out of stupid things for Megg and Mogg to do,” he says. “If I stop being a fuck-up, then Megg and Mogg will soon just be about managing European translations and Skyping with network executives.”’

Oh Simon, never change. Read the full article HERE.

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Annie Mok dives in deep with Eleanor Davis over on The Comics Journal. The conversation is lively, and the interview features a full banquet platter of Davis‘ styles – she’s a creative beast! There’s going to be something in there for everyone, and for me it was her thoughts about drawing as a form of play – holding on to the “kids drawing”, versus a more polished style.

DAVIS: I feel like there’s a lot of different stages, and when you get to a certain level of maturity you realize that people are looking at your drawings, and that your drawing can be judged as good or bad. And then you clench up like crazy, and that’s when your drawing starts getting bad. Usually. Like, objectively. And then you have to learn and do “How to Draw the Marvel Way” or whatever, and learn to be good. But before that, you’re drawing as a way of play. It makes the drawings a lot more linear. Not aesthetically linear, but the way that the drawing is built is more linear, ‘cause each line is—it’s not preplanned, so each line is responding to the previous line rather than trying to build an overarching image. I think that that lends kids’ drawings a sense of integrity that maybe gets lost when you’re trying to do something that’s pre-planned…

Read, and be staggered by, the whole interview HERE.

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Alabaster Pizzo has a new comic up on Vice, and it’s all about urban farming – a trickier and more treacherous endeavor than you might think.

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Czap Books just released a new collection

Inaction Comics 1: Productivity

This book is a challenge to action. An attempt to break free of it, and to come to terms with it. So much of life is inaction, is just breathing or waiting. Is joys and shames, all so quiet you deny them or forget them a moment later. This book is made up of a group of very different artists with very different perspectives, but pulled together into an exploration of a single idea. A single story, in a way. Contributors include: Kimball Anderson – MJ Robinson – Paul K. Tunis – L. Nichols – LB Lee – Laurel Lynn Leake – Kelsea Rain – Alyssa Berg – Andrew White – Susie Oh – Klára Grancicova – Cathy G. Johnson

Get it HERE.

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Drew Miller

Alrighty folks, make the most of your weekend – go on wild adventures (channel Simon Hanselmann perhaps) and if you don’t make it back by Monday, who can blame you? If you do make it back though, we’ll be here with more comics news! – Sally

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