Juan here covering for Aaron, who’s been traveling far and wide. I’ve got a juicy preview Frank Santoro’s Pittsburgh, thoughts by Spike Trotman, David Brothers and Ron Wimberly talking radical application of black aesthetic and Michael Deforge comics. Fun for the whole family.
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And here is a great review which was in Libération, (a nationwide daily newspaper), slam that google translate button, me hearties. You can read it HERE.
Pittsburgh’s splendid graphical instability helps to create a space of evanescent memory, as if it were dangerous to remember too much, that to try to materialize things would lose their souls. Barely sketched, the details of a bus ride escape us but not the enveloping heat of the sun that taps on the skin through the windows in the early morning.
Condemned to wander between California where he lives and Pennsylvania, which recalls him all the time, Santoro ends up looking like a ghost come to haunt his family while rehearsing the past. The territory he travels also has something unreal, since instead of Pittsburgh, he surveys its peripheries. Perrons, hardware, living-room: a space that only the family seems to frequent. Places that change over time, replaced by a no man’s land of bridges, roads and deserted railways. “Pittsburgh is like Pompeii, a ruin of what it was,”wrote Santoro in a previous book.
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In case you missed the talk this year at TCAF, Ronald Wimberly and David Brothers jammed out on radical application of black aesthetic at TCAF 2018. Sit back, tune in and take notes!
David Brothers asks Ronald Wimberly questions about his thoughts on how the black body is depicted in pop culture. Ronald reads from his LAAP magazine in regards to that issue and other images he created in it. Why the depictions of the black body was bad and what their purpose was. They spoke briefly about the Cotton Club, the production of Cotton and it’s impact on Europe. There was just discussion on Jay Z’s The Story of OJ and the Sambo character. Other topics touched on was Anime and appropriation, seeing stereotypes as kids and changing it for modern audience (eg the Mammy character from Tom & Jerry cartoons), black women vs black men depictions, blaxpoitation done by white creators, the 1975 Coonskin animated movie, Donald Glover’s / Childish Gambino’s This is America video, the White Gaze & David Chappel and Monsters & black bodies.
Listen HERE.
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Spike Trotman offers up “unpopular creative opinions” on twitter. Unpopular, honest and useful. Some gems:
– What is happening in the superhero book scene, unless you explicitly want to be part of it, literally doesn’t matter and should occupy zero percent of your thoughts.
– If you want to make comics, read something other than comics.
– If your publisher doesn’t do promo, doesn’t at least attempt to get you nominations and reviews, and doesn’t grant your work access to wider dissemination than you could manage by yourself, you have no reason to be using them.
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The Comics Journal posted an excerpt of Michael Deforge‘s A Western World you can read HERE. Soak it up.
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Joanie and Jordie – 5-29-18 – by Caleb Orecchio