Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Al Jarnow, Begoña Garcia-Alen, Daryl Seitchik, Dr Fausto Fanzine, Edward Muñoz, Fumetto, Fumetto 2016, Missy, Tim Hensley

Juan Fernández

Posted on April 27, 2016April 27, 2016

Explore

Residency Report: Homemake at the Rowhouse

Comics WorkbookJune 15, 2016Residency Reports / School UpdatesWe kicked off the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency over Memorial Day Weekend with a visit from Matthew Conway and Mahmoud Hashemi. Matt is an architect and very recent Harvard grad (congrats Matt!), and Mahmoud is the lead developer of the Python Infrastructure team at eBay/PayPal. Neither of them had ever made a comic before. However, Matt and Mahmoud were men on a mission. They arrived at the Rowhouse with the clear intention of using its many resources and the full breadth and depth of Frank’s knowledge and techniques to make something great. They were challenged and inspired during their time here, and in return they challenged and inspired the whole Comics Workbook team. And yes, they did end up making their first comic! During his flight home Mahmoud wrote a detailed report of his experience at the Rowhouse, and it offers a lot of insight into what made the experience extraordinary for everyone involved. Below you will find excerpts from Mahmoud’s report along with some commentary from me. There’s a lot to unpack! – Sally ————————————————————————————————— Mahmoud Hashemi wrote: “From May 28th to June 2nd, 2016, I visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I went to work with Frank Santoro on Matt Conway’s game Homemake. Overall it was a great vacation because it wasn’t your typical beachside retreat. Rather, it was mounting an effort to renew creativity and productivity on Matt Conway’s longstanding project, Homemake. The timing was great, as it was right before Ramadan for me, and right after Matt Conway’s graduation from Harvard GSD. Started in 2013 and Kickstarted to the tune of 18,000 in 2014, Homemake is an experimental art game that is unique for its focus on architecture and music, and its lack of traditional game elements like enemies and time limits.” Mahmoud, who serves as an editor, instigator, and cheerleader for Matt and the game, recognized that his friend needed a burst of new energy and that the game itself needed more concentrated story development. Mahmoud continues: “Homemake was designed as a system, meaning that it was designed nonlinearly. It was a procedural way to achieve certain preconceived moments. But there were no sentences between the punctuation. Almost all games, including HM, result in linear gameplay. The player sequential acts or chapters. My goal became to quickly build the best linear structure with what was already there. In a way, there was a middle act, but no opening or closing. So, the goal was to use a comic book as a storyboard to create the opening act.” Sally here – like I said, these fellows arrived at the Rowhouse with a fire under their tails! Mahmoud had known for a while that he needed to sit down with Matt and really hash out a narrative for the game. When he discovered Frank’s Kickstarter for the Rowhouse last fall, Mahmoud knew that he wanted to support this new comic book institution, and guessed that a residency might provide the right sort of space for he and Matt to work. He wasn’t 100% sure that Frank’s methods would be the magic pill they needed, but he was willing to come to Pittsburgh to find out. Back to Mahmoud’s report: “Frank’s own creative methods have a focus on systems, especially jazz-inspired rhythmic systems, making them an exceptional fit with Homemake‘s motivations and goals. I was skeptical at first, but it worked wonders. This effectiveness may have been magnified because half of Homemake‘s vision was disparate moments, a grab bag of mental notes about certain aesthetics. This method allowed Matt to express all his thoughts and editors, like me and Frank, to come through, see the patterns a reader would want to see, and develop the most coherent narrative. Everyone wins.” ‘With Frank’s method, images come first, then words. There should be no script. The images tell almost the whole story, and those images must be allowed to find their own rhythm. A script disrupts that. Similarly, a grid is like an empty script. Frank’s method of modular, card-based creation was as effective as it was simple. Hard-earned simplicity. … Matt ended up drawing 52 cards. I found a cohesive story with 40, and we expanded that to use 48 cards to create 6 pages, 3 spreads. … With this new direction, and Conway’s drive, I expect that development will continue on the comic book and game. For the comic book, we’ll start having real deliverables within a couple months. The game has 80% of what it needs now, and may be approaching a playable version within the year.” Matt and Mahmoud did more work in about three days than most people get through in three weeks. They also found time to explore Pittsburgh a bit, catch a hockey game, and even read a few comics in the midst of drawing their own. However, the majority of Matt and Mahmoud’s time here was spent in a lively discussion which looped back to comics regularly, but ranged all over the place. It was almost a bonus that some work got done, but really it was this discourse, this rapid-fire exchange of ideas and experiences that made the time uniquely valuable. It certainly made the line between “teacher” and “student” very fluid. Mahmoud had incredibly generous things to say about the experience as a whole, and I’ll let him finish this report in his own words. Mahmoud concluded: “Frank is inspirational, completely earnest, and almost totally pure. He is not jaded, not burned out. He is hopeful and hard working. He has lived a lot of places, from Pittsburgh to New York to San Francisco to New Mexico and back to Pittsburgh, just down the street from his mom (who is very nice). Compared to my expectations of independent comics artists, Frank is well-adjusted and well-equipped, with good taste in more than just comics. This expectation is likely skewed by my reading of so many “journal comics” artists. I feel like I learned about creating and collecting in general, not just about comics. Frank never stops relating things to comics, education, and community-building. Passion is fleeting compared to this. His motivation is closer to second nature. This nature was my original hopeful realization with Frank, before I met him. I feel a deep kinship with him, as I think about creating code the same way he thinks about creating comics. Independent, expressive, and individually valuable. Corporate partnerships are inevitable and, while they can be good, ultimately these looming entities don’t care about the potential of comics/code, they just use creators opportunistically. I see Frank doing for independent print comics what E-40 does in hip hop. He seems to know everyone past and present. E-40 and Frank both act upon this knowledge, combining it with the deeply ingrained understanding that respect is the real currency of the business. Money is an inescapable reality, but it’s possible and laudable to address the group as a community first and an industry second. Economies have a tendency to be treated as zero-sum. But respect is not zero-sum. Through his music, E-40 pulls everyone together, adding to their respect, and his own. And above all he respects himself, setting a good example. So it is with Frank. Suffice it to say, we need more creator-mentor-educators like Frank (as well as Sally, who I think recognizes all this and more, and actively assists Frank in the mission). In my ideal world I would be able to spend one week per year with a creator of his caliber, but I feel lucky to even have this one trip. … Long story short, I wish Frank and team the best of luck in “reddin up” the residency in time for another visit in the next year or two.” – Mahmoud Hashemi Many thanks to Mahmoud and Matt for coming to the Rowhouse and contributing their considerable energy and talents to Comics Workbook. We’re humbled and thrilled to have hosted them, and look forward to channeling what we learned from them into future residencies. ————————————————————————————————— Please take a moment to check out Homemake, as well as some of Mahmoud and Matt’s other interesting projects. Homemake (coming soon! – keep up with the progress) Chill Anime Beats (a musical curation collaboration) Matt Conway’s website Sedimental (Accretionary thoughts by Mahmoud Hashemi) Listen to Wikipedia (seriously, check this out it is SO COOL!) Here’s a taste of what Homemake will offer – P.S. Mahmoud and Matt had a funny encounter with Frank’s Mom and a real pap-pap (Mr. Greene) at the airport. Check it out below. Share this page: [...]

10/11/2018

Caleb OrecchioOctober 11, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with some comics I bought from The Billy Ireland’s overflow collection. ————————————————————————————————— This year at CXC, The Billy Ireland Museum was selling comics, magazines, fanzines and books from their collection. These were items that they had multiples of and needed to purge to make space. It was a treasure trove. I passed up a lot of good stuff, but am incredibly happy with the few things I did pick up. I basically picked up trash. I love comics trash. Comics trash is beautiful. Shopping for comics with Frank Santoro and Jim Rugg really made me appreciate this facet of comics. “You’ll never see this again,” they always say when they come across some forgotten comic that was self-published in West Virginia in 1986. One of my favorite aspects of comics is finding this wonderful garbage and then showing it to everyone who is willing to look. I passed around these books like a crazy person with a shopping cart passing out occult books and warning people to not join the boy scouts because they will use you (some people react to these comics in the same way one would react to a crazy person). Others are fellow admirers. When I showed showed some of these comics to Nate McDonough, he picked up this gospel and spread it around to more people. I flipped one of the comics, a William Black comic, I got and sold it to Chris Pitzer, a fellow admirer. “Are you sure you want to sell it?” he asked. Yes! Finding and subsequently showing this stuff around is the best part of the process! Below are the comics I bought, minus Tara of the Lost Continent which I flipped to Chris. Obviously not everything is “trash.” I found a Chinese comic and a Jewish comic about the power of prayer. I use the term “trash” to refer to comics that people don’t want or care about for whatever reason. There is also an issue of The Comics Journal herein which is obviously far from trash. Maybe a better word to use is weird? You decide! ————————————————————————————————— The Lair of Madness No. 1 by various artists (Ellen Balliet, S. Geary, L. Ogan, Dale and Jim Pinkoski, 1972 (D.B. Features) ————————————————————————————————— *someone will have to help me out with the info on this one. I can’t read Chinese ————————————————————————————————— Mendy and the Golem vol. 2 no. 1 written by Leibel Estrin and drawn by Dovid Sears. Colored by Barry Grossman. 1982 (Mendy Enterprises) ————————————————————————————————— The Comics Journal no. 120 edited by Gary Groth, 1988 (Fantagraphics) ————————————————————————————————— Photo by Chris Pitzer featuring Kurt Ankeny and a dumpster diver. See you on Monday folks! I promise I will have the review of Andrew White’s Yearly 2018 I have been hinting at then. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

03/16/2017

Sally IngrahamMarch 15, 2017NewsSally here with comics and news from Kyle Baker, Aphton Corbin, Shannon Wright, Keith Knight, Sam Ombiri, and more! ————————————————————————————————— Shannon Wright has a new comic about Bessie Coleman, made for KAZOO Magazine – the first part is above and you can see the rest HERE! ————————————————————————————————— I dashed headlong through Kyle Baker‘s I Die At Midnight (2000) the other day when it turned up in the library at the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency. One of Baker’s favorite short stories, it was the 2nd comic he made that used 3D graphics and his 1st comic that was drawn entirely on the computer. Perusing it 17 years after the comic was first published, I am astounded by how good it looks. Even though the technology has improved since then, most comics I’ve seen recently that employ digital artwork don’t look this good. What Baker was doing in 2000 with these “new” tools and tricks still looks fresh, and there’s an inventiveness and joy here that hasn’t faded or grown dated. It’s crazy to think that this was his starting point for digital artwork and he only got better from here – gasoline on a flame type stuff. This comic, and his work that followed, doesn’t look like it was “built” in Photoshop – there is a naturalness to it which comes from Baker’s outrageous drawing chops, expressive characterizations, and eye for color. The story in I Die At Midnight also happens to be a wildly entertaining piece of chaos – as Baker describes it: “The Good News is Muriel has decided to take Larry back. The Bad News is Larry’s just swallowed a bottle of pills and he can’t tell her about it, or she’ll leave him again. With a stomachful of poison, Larry must race across Manhattan to meet up with the only person who can save his life and keep his secret. But first he’s got to get through a crowd of millions in Times Square – and Muriel’s Murderous Ex-Boyfriend.“ 64 pages of non-stop action, with sequences that somehow combine 3 plotlines at once (employing a blur/fade technique that really puts digital art to WORK), this comic is worth tracking down if you’ve never read it and reading again if you have. You can get a copy from Kyle Baker himself HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I came across this comic made by Aphton Corbin recently – she is a storyboard artist at Pixar but has also been publishing a comic about her life and experiences as a black female on her tumblr. The start of the most recent episode is above, but there are plenty more HERE. Check them out! ————————————————————————————————— Coming to the Brooklyn Museum this spring is the exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 (APRIL 21–SEPTEMBER 17, 2017). “Focusing on the work of black women artists, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85 examines the political, social, cultural, and aesthetic priorities of women of color during the emergence of second-wave feminism. It is the first exhibition to highlight the voices and experiences of women of color—distinct from the primarily white, middle-class mainstream feminist movement—in order to reorient conversations around race, feminism, political action, art production, and art history in this significant historical period.“ Not comics, but definitely worth checking out if you’re in the area! More details HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The latest strip from Keith Knight. ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri – 3-16-2017 ————————————————————————————————— The Spring Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers has begun! There is a rolling start date for this semester of the course and we are continuing to take applications. Just apply! The course is 8 weeks long – 500 bux – payment plans are available. More details can be found HERE – or email santoroschoolATgmail. Recent comics by course grads November Garcia and Drew Lerman can be seen HERE and HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 3-16-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-16-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-16-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

11/08/2016

Aaron CockleNovember 7, 2016NewsAaron here today with Triple Canopy CFP; Montreal Expozine & Philly Small Press Zine Faire; Moaz Eleman Comics; Ben Jones Interviewed; CAB Photos; Goethe Color Studies ————————————————————————————————— Canopy Canopy Canopy Triple Canopy has announced a call for proposals for it’s 23rd issue, Vanitas. In an age defined by extremes of finitude and excess, deprivation and luxury, what is vanity? How do we register our own transitoriness even as we strive against decay and senescence, by way of cryogenics labs, biotechnology innovations, spa treatments, and the hoarding of material goods and digital files? This issue explores contemporary meditations on mortality as well as the delights, delusions, and pressures of fleshly existence, and ranges from the much-heralded “end of death” to collective processes of aging to the pursuit of impossible—or nearly impossible—forms of beauty. The name is taken from the opulent, hyperrealist still lifes popularized by Dutch and Flemish painters in the seventeenth century, which symbolize the brevity of human life and essential emptiness of earthly pursuits, even as they advertise the artist’s ability to fix time. These paradoxical images prompt us to consider how and why we strive to overcome death while reminding us of our certain mortality. Apply via the online form. The deadline for submissions is Sunday, November 13, at 11:59 pm EDT. Commission recipients will be announced on December 15. ————————————————————————————————— Upcoming Shows in N.America In Montreal: EXPOZINE 2016 Saturday-Sunday, November 12-13, 11h-18h, free admission. Église Saint-Denis, 454 Laurier E. (main entrance 5075 Rivard, accessible entrance 5050 Berri) In Philadelphia: Philly Small Press Zine Faire Saturday, December 3, 12-5pm. Fleisher Art Memorial, 719 Catharine St, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19147 ————————————————————————————————— Distant Fires: A Sudanese-American ponders how much death a presidential candidate can be responsible for, by Moaz Eleman ————————————————————————————————— Lines of Thought: An Interview with Ben Jones – via Nicole Rudick at Hyperallergic: NR: Do you mean that shows like Adventure Time were created because imagery from the sixties and seventies has become more readily available through sites like Tumblr? BJ: Contemporary animation like Adventure Time is a complete celebration/homage/furthering of the language that Miyazaki, Crumb, Mœbius, and Disney created. If you watch that new Werner Herzog documentary Lo and Behold (2016), he interviews one of the three guys who invented the Internet, who says, “The Internet’s all wrong. A hyperlink isn’t a link. You don’t put Nike.com and click on it and it takes you to Nike, I never meant for that to happen.” A hyperlink was excerpting a stanza from Shakespeare, and when you would click on it, you would go to that part of the play. That’s all that hyperlinks were meant to do. Now, I don’t really care about that, but it shows you that the system of organizing information on the Internet is the Internet. And the fact that we have URLs that are links controls your whole reality, so much so that when you look at how we’re organizing data into platforms like Instagram – I mean, the fact that people are on Instagram all day and not the Internet just shows that how you’re linking to and presenting data is incredibly important. Tumblr was a platform that sped up kids’ understanding what good art was. Now, there are plenty of dolphin GIFs that are shit, but also in three minutes, Johnny Negron — sorry to keep using him as an example — could see every good thing ever made, whereas Chris Forgues and I were lucky to get half of that in our first twenty-four years of life. The Internet is decentralized, but Tumblr is a black hole of curation and appropriation and aggregation. It figured out art. It didn’t figure out the stock market or pornography. ————————————————————————————————— Some photos from this past weekend’s Comic Arts Brooklyn show, if you’re into that sort of thing – From the Publisher’s Weekly blog. See if you can spot your favorite cartoonist and/or human being (who attended CAB on Saturday, November 5). ————————————————————————————————— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Via Maria Popova at the Brainpickings blog, some lovely words and images regarding Goethe‘s theory of color. Goethe believed that there were only two pure colors, blue (“a darkness weakened by light”) and yellow (“a light which has been dampened by darkness”), but he was particularly interested in morphology — the study of forms. His theories of color were also heavily rooted in morphology — from his color wheel, a symmetrical arrangement of six colors against Newton’s asymmetry of seven, to his geometric diagrams of how the relationship between darkness and light shapes color. ————————————————————————————————— Also, today (Tuesday, November 8, 2016) is Election Day in the United States of America, please vote if you are eligible to do so. Share this page: [...]

Frank Santoro’s 2016 LICAF Workshop – Notes for Attendees

Frank SantoroOctober 6, 2016Classesthee Comics Workbook crew from the USA Aidan Koch, Frank Santoro, and Connor Willumsen at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2016 presentation notes and videos During this presentation I will be referring to this master blog post – please open it in a separate window: http://coldheatcomics.blogspot.com/2015/02/notes-for-comics-symposium.html ================================ Watch these videos later – https://vimeo.com/185881298 ================================ watch the above and consider that “comic books” are the intersection of art and commerce and watch at the end for the doodle by Michelangelo ============================ 1:02 inversion of the traditional hierachy of art – where the doodle, so to speak, is the height of the craft ============================================ 1:04 on becoming a writer incrementally =============================== watch the above and draw a loved one from memory – in your sketchbook – or on a scrap of paper – but it has to be a drawing made with real effort – as if you had someone like a parent or respected elder or friend who knew the loved one and were judging if it looked like the person or not =============================================== Aidan’s work connects to what Dyer speaks of–the inversion of the traditional hierarchy. She isn’t so interested in the “graphic novel” as a proving ground for being a cartoonist in 2016 – the fragments expand the conversation of what is possible within the form and much like Lawrence’s most poetic and mysterious works, like his travel diaries, expand what the idea of a novel is or can be. ============================== Connor’s work connects to Berger’s idea of fighting disappearance Connor’s drawings of loved ones are done “in real life” and through video phone calls and his sequential narratives are often presented “unbound” and exist as numbered drawings and not necessarily as a book at all ========================================================== =================================================== Berger on Storytelling as a space time that exists like music ========================================================= I read a Guy Davenport essay about a Eudora Welty novel which used a very clear symbolism of the Persephone myth and I adapted that symbolism into a “melody” with a 4/4 time signature – I was also thinking about the 8 of an octave–or at least humbly attempting to draw a myth in 8 panels without the normal sequencing–I want a more “all at once” reading. The panels are numbered and it can be read “across the spread” or in a traditional zig-zag or even out of order and I believe the “song” is still heard; the melody is clear and the symbolism there to peel away like an onion. In the Welty novel the symbolism is spread through the characters and the period drama of a southern American wedding in the early 20th century. A sprawling literary use of the symbolism. I wanted to see if I could distill it down to the most core “notes” or “sounds” by using words and pictures (color and line) in the most simple and (i hope) clear way possible to present the symbolism with drawing. =================================== Watch the above “Berger 4” video and then watch the video of Aidan’s “original” drawings made for her books (below) ============================= I feel that Aidan’s work, like Connor’s, and my own, is rooted in the belief that drawing is a language. Letters and words are symbols after all. Lines. Shapes. Words written are but lines drawn, aren’t they? Even the printed word or the word on a computer screen is an image. Comic books are simply words and images together. Comic books and graphic novels and even comic strips have been overly concerned with character serial narrative “soap operas” than they have been with the poetry and mystery of visual literacy. ============================= =========================================== ============================================= Click on the below and then click back. Layout Workbook 3 Back? Great. Then, of course, there is the idea and the reality of genre narratives, like a vampire story or a science-fiction story. These comic books are very different than the “poetic comics” we are discussing here today. HOWEVER, I think that as Berger says “Metaphor is our guide” and so the super-hero escapism of many mainstream comics reflects our 2016 world me thinks (like a Black guy who wants to be bulletproof). In cartooning circles, how one draws is like how one speaks or writes. Connor’s “digressive” drawn line offers a type of “familiar” language that comics are often phrased. The digressiveness is disciplined in service of the genre. Genre and style are just raincoats, umbrellas under which to play within convention and to stretch the idea of what is familiar–the time in the narrative is experienced through the space depicted on the page with such stylized lines—a language unto itself within complex, many drawer-d toolbox that is the craft of comics. (said with a straight face – comic book drawing and this type of pen and ink drawing is often impenetrable by non-initiates) ============================================================ Dyer talks about metaphor and the fictive below (:48) and I think his ideas connect to how cartoonists can use style like a jazz musician and metaphor and invented scenes to serve the wild heights of style – even Aidan can engage in the style game, the dynamism of comics and the space, the glimpse, between the “genre” of western art’s depiction of the figure and how the figure is depicted in *most mainstream comic books ========================== ================================================================== ============================== ============================== ============================== Share this page: [...]

04/27/2016

Posted on April 27, 2016April 27, 2016 by Juan Fernández

Fumetto 2016; Begoña García-Alén’s El Espectador; Dr Fausto Fanzine 10; Daryl Seitchik’s Missy for sale; a first look at Tim Hensley’s Sir Alfred No. 3 ; Al Jarnow & Edwin Rostron.

—————————————————————————————————

13043220_1158915994133030_1554425521970041222_n — Lorenzo Mattoti presenting Oltremai – Photo by Monica Tarocco

FUMETTO 2016

Fumetto, one of Europe’s leading international comics festivals wrapped up this past weekend in Luzern, Switzerland. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the festivities lasted from April 16-24. Among the many guests this year were Lorenzo Mattoti, Joost Swarte, Gabrielle Bell, Caroline Sury, Fremok, Max and Ben Katchor. Fumetto has captured glimpses of all the lectures, workshops, pop-up studios, gallery exhibitions, market places, and parties in a recently posted archive of photos. (If you want to get lost into the nitty gritty of the social media coverage of Fumetto, explore Fumetto’s social media wall here.)

Screen shot 2016-04-27 at 2.27.51 AM — Franz Suess

Among all of the goings on this year was Fumetto’s annual competition exhibition. The theme this year was “Temptation”. View the winning entries from the 2016 competition here. For those of you really hungry for more of Fumetto’s competitions, you can read all of the winning entries from 2014 and 2015.

—————————————————————————————————

(the spectator)
The fourth installment of Begoña Garcia-Alen‘s El Espectador (the spectator) is now up over on TikTok cómics. Her spectator series is a nice collection of work that explores the idea of observation and reflection. It’s done in a playful, formalist Koch/CF hybrid.
Check it out here.

—————————————————————————————————

Llegó nuestra Décima Edición. 10 Autores de Colombia, Argentina y Chile.
Toda la info en: https://t.co/0OsmwQUpyN pic.twitter.com/Qhq901Nfmf

— Dr Fausto Fanzine (@DrFaustoFanzine) April 25, 2016

Dr Fausto
The 10th edition of the Colombian publication, the Dr Fausto Fanzine is here! This edition comes out thanks to the support of Editorial Universidad de Caldas. Ya llegó! It’s now available in cities throughout Colombia, starting in Bogotá. This is issue features 10 cartoonists from Colombia, Argentina and Chile:

Edward Muñoz (Editor) http://eddmunoz.tumblr.com/
Un reptil http://relampagarto.tumblr.com/
Truchafrita http://www.truchafrita.net/
Wil Zapata http://wilcomix.blogspot.com.co/
Lutocorps http://lutocorps.blogspot.com.co/
Pablo Bofelli (https://www.facebook.com/PUNCH-590883774340172/?fref=ts)http://felipunch.com.ar/
Toto Duarte https://www.flickr.com/photos/sergalletas/
Javier Fabregas http://www.javierfabregas.co/
Pablo Pérez http://periodistailustrado.tumblr.com/
Jko Sánchez http://jkosanchez.net/
—————————————————————————————————

Screen shot 2016-04-27 at 3.43.33 AM — Missy by Daryl Seitchik

Digital Missy
Daryl Seitchik has collected and made all of her issues of her comic Missy available digitally over on gumroad. Check it out. The first one’s free 😉

—————————————————————————————————

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJZjfcMR2fc

Comics Movie Tie-in
Fantagraphics has just shared a detailed look at Tim Hensley’s latest book, Sir Alfred No. 3. It’s beautiful stuff, full o hyucks.

Sir Alfred No. 3 is an oblique biography of the world’s most famous film director, Alfred Hitchcock. In fact, despite being numbered “No. 3,” no other issues exist. The comic book is composed of multiple gag strips based on anecdotes found in tomes of film lore in the public library and used book shops. As Hensley’s previous work Wally Gropius referenced the ’60s teenager genre, Sir Alfred pays homage to ’50s personality comics and movie tie-ins. It ends up being something of a cross between Marge Buell’s Tubby, who bears an unforeseen resemblance to the famous director, and Miss Beverly Hills of Hollywood.

Have a closer look at the book over on Fantagraphics’ site.

—————————————————————————————————

Asymmetric Navigations
Take a walk and join Al Jarnow in conversation with Edwin Rostron over on Edge of Frame as they reflect on his life of creation that has move seamlessly across artistic mediums. Paintings, animations sculptures, software, exhibits – his ideas have taken every form you can imagine. Tune into his frequency for a little energy and inspiration.

EoF: In the documentary Asymmetric Cycles you describe your process onCelestial Navigation as “setting up an experimental environment in which I could more or less improv and riff off of different ideas to do with time, the passage of time and the passage of light.” Was this typical of how you worked with your animations? Did this kind of experimental process relate to how you worked as a painter? Was there a lot of material generated through this kind of process that didn’t make the cut?

AJ: Yes, always! In painting as in film, the process has always been a dialogue. What happens with the first stroke is a determining factor in what happens with the next. An experiment is an act in which you don’t know the outcome. It’s a learning process. You might have expectations and anticipate your results, but those can color your results. In film, a lot of snippets ended up on my cutting room floor (or at least in cans still stored in my attic). In painting, pieces ended up in re-cycling, painted over, cut in half, and again stored in my attic studio.

—————————————————————————————————

Have a good one and see you soon. Here’s one some reverie for the road.

Share this page:

Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Al Jarnow, Begoña Garcia-Alen, Daryl Seitchik, Dr Fausto Fanzine, Edward Muñoz, Fumetto, Fumetto 2016, Missy, Tim Hensley

Juan Fernández

Posted on April 27, 2016April 27, 2016

Explore

11/06/17

Caleb OrecchioNovember 6, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on Alyssa Berg’s risograph comics. PLUS! some insight into Alyssa’s process from the author herself!—and other news. ————————————————————————————————— I think Alyssa Berg’s current work is a step in the right direction for a modern day cartoonist—being an exploration in printing, risograph specifically, and how that process can present her comics in the best way a riso machine can. Alyssa makes painted comics that live online as photographs of the actual paintings, then “adapts” the paintings into risograph printed comics—the latter being slightly different than the former naturally due to how a painting transfers to this particular printing process. As a cartoonist, I can literally see her “thinking” when comparing the “actual” versions with the riso versions. Looking at her two versions of Alpenglow (winner of the 2015 Comics Workbook Composition Competition) I’m fascinated at the choices Alyssa made when “adapting” the paintings to print. At CXC 2016 I bought her first printing of Alpenglow, which was digitally printed. At SPX 2017, I bought the second printing, which is adapted to riso. Look at the differences below. The differences are interesting because both versions are good, obviously, but I find the riso version to be particularly intimate. Her paintings are beautiful, and I miss seeing the brush strokes and nuance of color the digital version provides, but the way the riso strips everything down really sings for me. For one, riso just flat out looks better than digital. Anything looks better than digital really. Second, the choices Alyssa makes are in service to the clarity of the image while also retaining the spirit of the painting (which we’ll get to in a second in Alyssa’s own words). This pruning of the work through the filter of riso really circumnavigates any distractions (though they are enjoyable) the paintings provide, and allow the reader a wholly immersive comics reading experience. I should be clear, I don’t necessarily think the painted version is better than the riso version, or vice versa; but it’s the fact that these very excellent comics exist in different ways is what is exciting to me. I asked Alyssa to give some brief insight into her process of adapting paintings to riso prints, and this is how she responded: “I started printing my painted comics last winter at the SVA RisoLab. I had this short-lived fantasy that I would be able to use a simple CMYK color separation in Photoshop to make faux-CMYK prints on the Riso. I realized quickly that while certain prints looked okay using this method, most of them came out with too much visual information/noise because of the texture & subtlety of the color mixing in the paint combined with the imperfect registration of the Riso. Also, registering the text with this method is not ideal. “Over the summer and currently during my residency at the RisoLab, I’ve been experimenting with ways to keep the integrity of the painting in the reproduction. I use a mix of “CMYK” in certain areas, spot colors with texture layers on top in other areas, and other spot colors without any mixing. This method reduces the noise and keeps the print painterly. The text is almost always one color so it’s crisp and clear. All of my color separation is done in Photoshop. I’m not much of a technology-person so there has been a big learning curve. By now doing color separation has become pretty intuitive, but still, I’m not always sure what the outcome will be. I like that little surprise. I rarely look at Riso color mixing charts/percentages. I rely on my knowledge of color mixing and grayscale from my painting background. I tried once to design a specific zine for the risograph & it came out kind of boring. It required too much thought while I was painting the pages and I prefer to not think in this phase! For now, I’m happier painting freely then putting in the hours on Photoshop.” Thanks Alyssa! If you want to pick up her comics, Alyssa will be at Comics Arts Brooklyn this weekend at Table K6. As a cartoonist, there’s a lot to learn from watching Alyssa transform her work for print. I highly, highly recommend seeking her books out, and compare the books to the paintings; she has most of them up on her site. I leave you with some pages from my favorite Alyssa Berg comic, Open Letter to Sleep. -CO ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Ron Wimberly and Beehive Books launched a Kickstarter for a newspaper magazine, LAAB Magazine. Two IDW imprints, The Library of American Comics and Euro Comics, have a podcast together. Tessa Strain reviews Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov’s follow up to their very popular and well-recieved Nick Fury comic. This time, it’s the Punisher. Not a link, but word around the campfire is Robin McConnell will be interviewing Chris Ware on occasion of his epic Monograph book for an upcoming episode of Inkstuds. So stay tuned. In other news, the latest Inkstuds episode features an interview with Cecil Castellucci and Marley Zarcone, the driving force behind a mainstream comic I like, Shade the Changing Girl. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 11-6-2017 – by Gabrielle Tito ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 11-6-2017 – by Juan Fernandez ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 11-6-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

08/14/2017

Caleb OrecchioAugust 13, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on comics by Matt Seneca, and other news. ———————————————————————————————— Flipping through my some of my magazine-sized comics, I ran into my copies of Matt Seneca’s Trap; The Magazine About Drugs. Seneca is someone who I feel like doesn’t get talked about enough. Below are some thoughts: Matt Seneca‘s comics are painfully brutal and at times seem gratuitously so. His work reads like the cartoonist has been to hell and back. The work never flinches, never covering up the grotesquely violent or sexually perverse. It has been a while since I have read a cartoonist’s work that is so consistently visceral. You can read his debut work online, here. You can buy his other in-print comics here. I think a lot of people know Seneca from the podcast Comic Books Are Burning in Hell and his comics criticism. I was a bit suspicious when I heard he was also a cartoonist AND a critic, but the latter he is no longer unless you count the podcast. I was pleasantly surprised by his comics. Though at first glance they seem a bit rugged, his storytelling is what won me over at first. Seneca’s religious horror epic 200 Deaf Boys is a very conscious and complete story, a quality that seems to be lost on most self-published cartoonists (or really most comics makers in general); and though many would argue that Seneca’s drawing is a bit lack luster, I would argue that it gets exponentially better with each comic he makes–particularly when he uses color. In his latest and greatest work so far, Trap: The Magazine About Drugs vol. 2 no. 3: Frankie Teardrop, Seneca reaches new personal bests. He continues, as he’s always done, to not draw panel borders. This technique really comes to life in this particular strip where he will often alternate colors within a panel, rendering the use of borders unnecessary. He also expands on his use of not automatically using black lines as outlines. The color and use of black are one and the same for Seneca which makes for really nice and bright images that feel loose and alive. Not a lot, that I can find, has been written about Seneca’s comics. The links on his tumblr to reviews have been moved, removed or deleted. Like I said before, his work is riddled with the brutally violent and sexually explicit. Their is a lot of pain and anger in his work–but it is all completely and utterly earnest with little irony which gives his stories a sense of reality that the most autobiographic of cartoonists struggle to render. Seneca has an upcoming comic called The Infinite Prison. It looks great and the pencils already suggest that it will be awesome. Excited to see how it turns out. ———————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Never Comes Tomorrow – Frank Santoro, our illustrious founder/editor-in-chief, is raising some money for a book-making project, and is offering a good deal of historical comics documents in support of this. Please consider helping out. Check out the latest episodes of Study Group’s Process Party. The latest guest being Darryl Ayo and Gina Wynbrandt. There was a fair amount of hubbub around Rich Tommaso’s recent lamentations on the poor amount of comic shops ordering his latest book. Seems like he took a breath and talked a bit about it with Aaron McPherson on TCJ.com. Not sure how I feel about this League of Regrettable Heroes stuff, but Heidi Macdonald’s interview with the author at least has me intrigued. SPX is almost upon us. This will be my first year attending and look forward to the experience. Check out their site and read up on what’s happening with the show this year. I like hearing when libraries intensify their focuses on comics. The people in Salt Lake City have spoken! ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 8-14-2017 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

Frank’s Comics Corner #1 – Fantastic Four #233

Comics WorkbookFebruary 11, 2017EssaysFrank’s Comics Corner 2-4-2017 Share this page: [...]

Bill Griffith’s Weird Pittsburgh

J KellyMarch 25, 2016Art Trip / SketchbooksLegendary Underground cartoonist Bill Griffith has often set his long-running daily newspaper strip Zippy the Pinhead in the city of Pittsburgh. Griffith has visited Pittsburgh several times, including in 2009 when Pittsburgh’s cartoon museum, The ToonSeum (then still located in the Children’s Museum), put on the show Zippy’s Pittsburgh and More, which included some of the strips seen below. On April, Griffith will return to Pittsburgh to talk about “45 Years of Zippy” at the ToonSeum on April 1st at 7 pm and to take part in our Pittsburgh Indy Comix Expo (PIX) on April 2nd. As part of PIX, Griffith will sign books during the day, run a cartooning workshop for Comics Workbook at the Carnegie Library at 3:30, and speak about his new book, Invisible Ink at 7:30. In preparation for all that activity, we thought it was a good time to re-visit a few of those Zippy strips, as well as take a look at some never before seen pages from Griffith’s sketchbook composed during a 1990 trip to Pittsburgh. But first, here’s a couple where Zippy, Griffy and others note Pittsburgh’s “more enlightened and weirder” culture: Here’s a few (and there are many more) Zippy strips that are set in familiar Pittsburgh locations: Ritter’s Diner in Bloomfield. The Big Day Wedding & Event Center, Strip District. Charlie’s Diner (now known as Peppi’s, and also once known as Scotty’s, as well as Downtown Diner), Lincoln Highway. Glowing Sculpture Thing, PPG Place. In early June of 1990, Griffith visited Pittsburgh to take in the Thomas Rowlandson show at the Frick Art Museum. The images below are taken from sketches he made at the time. While in town, Griffith also spent some time at the historic Kennywood Amusement Park in West Mifflin, as seen below. Griffith, who arrived for that trip via the rail road, also sketched the train ride and station. “For me, Zippy is funniest when his craziness bumps up against the ‘real world’, which is why I put him in diners and have him talking to Bob’s Big Boy,” Griffith said in 2009. “It doesn’t get much more real than Pittsburgh, PA – it’s Zippy Country!” Hopefully he’ll find some additional examples of that “more enlightened and weirder” pop culture on his trip back here in April. Share this page: [...]

2/15/2016

Juan FernándezFebruary 15, 2016NewsThe comics world suddenly lost Alvin Buenaventura last Thursday. This time is a time of reflection. He left an incredible, indelible mark as a publisher and advocate of the comics medium in the early 21st century. His absence will be sorely felt. You can help keep his legacy alive today by reading any one of the great works he helped usher into the world from the Buenaventura Press + Pigeon Press catalogue. Buenaventura Press Boy’s Club 2 and 3 by Matt Furie Comic Book Holocaust and Klassic Komix Klub by Johnny Ryan Elvis Road by Elvis Studio by Helge Reumann & Xavier Robel Hunter and Painter by Tom Gauld Destined for Dizziness and The Neighborhood by Souther Salazar Yeast Hoist #12: Stop Thinking Start Sleeping Stop Sleeping Start Living by Ron Rege Jr. Spaniel Rage by Vanessa Davis Injury #1, #2 and #3 by Ted May, Jason Robards, and Jeff Wilson Boy’s Club #1 was published by Tim Goodyear’s Teenage Dinosaur. Comic Art Magazine issues 8 and 9 edited by Todd Hignite (2006, 2007) Kramers Ergot 6 edited by Sammy Harkham (2006) Kramers Ergot 7 edited by Sammy Harkham (2008) New York Sketches; a portfolio of drawings by Adrian Tomine (2004) Private Stash: A Pinup-Girl Portfolio by 20 Cartoonists by Robert Crumb, Adrian Tomine, Jaime Hernandez et al. (2006) Dawn by Phil Elverum (2008) The Complete Jack Survives by Jerry Moriarty (2009) Pigeon Press Incubation by Charles Burns (2015) In the Garden of Evil by Charles Burns and Killofer (2015) Worst Behavior by Simon Hanselmann (2015) The Libertarian by Nick Mandaag (2014) Facility Integrity by Nick Mandaag (2014) ECHO ECHO by Charles Burns (2014) Rest in peace, Alvin. Leslie Stein has a new comic up on VICE that recounts the second half of her recent, positive trip to Montreal. Good vibes in her diary. Open, airy reflection with juicy colors. Refreshing stuff that’ll warm right up. David Brothers has interviewed Zainab Akhtar over at Inkstuds. They talk about Mads Mikkelsen, Akhtar’s childhood experience with comics, what led to her critiquing comics, being focused on narrative, the community she has found herself in, serializing comics for others, friendship, a brief aside into Masamune Shirow, and much more. A particular highlight here is the questions they pose about the current landscape (or lack thereof) of active comics criticism across social media. No one is chiming in on the conversations that people are working hard to encourage and it drives them mad… [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/246110878″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] If you want some good studio talk and a solid dose of traditional comics craft, go spend some time with the video of Pittsburgh’s own Ed Piskor that Heather and Rob Beschizza put together over at Boingboing. While drawing a Happy Mutant, he takes you through the tools of comics past, his “war chest”: zip-a-tone sheets, letraset, a Leroy lettering gadget, and the immortal spirit of great cartooning. He also muses on what it’s like to teach students who have spent all their comics making lives drawing solely digitally on tablets and the issues that can pose for their process later on. Speed is king ’round these parts. Bill Boichel riffs on camera on his Remedial Comics segment about the latest issue of the one and only Kevin Huizenga’s GANGES: Ganges #5 is a unique reading experience (well, unique outside of the Huizengian oeuvre, at least). Huizenga boldly commits exponential shifts in the temporal scale, weaving a narrative that stretches from a traditional panel-by-panel rendering of second-by-second shifts in mood during a domestic argument to experimental fractal depictions of the natural soil erosion cycles repeating over eons that build up and breakdown the earth in the course of millions upon millions of years; from the immediate to the eternal. The result is a work that succeeds (where others have failed*) in presenting both in a manner that effectively situates each within the other in an equivalence that brings to mind the title of Samuel Delaney’s classic science fiction novel, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (if not so much the novel itself). – Bill Boichel This latest effort is available for you to purchase over at Copacetic Comics. Share this page: [...]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply