Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Alex Gimenez, Ana Oncina, Blade Runner, CCA, Chris Diaz, Connor Willumsen, CREEP HIGHWAY, Gabri Molist, the grid

Juan Fernández

Posted on May 25, 2016May 26, 2016

Explore

06/30/2016

HarrisonJune 30, 2016NewsJune 30th 2016, Harrison is filling your doggie bag with scenes from Chicago, a classic format returning, darkness on television, sex and mystery, and the ten greatest songs of June 30th 2016. Starships and Rockets LOVE AND ROCKETS: THE MAGAZINE returns! Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez to revive their beloved series. The new Love and Rockets marks Gilbert and Jaime’s return to the “floppy” format for the first time in a decade and will measure 8 ½” x 10 ¾”, with at least 32 pages per issue, retailing at $4.99. Get all the details on the Flog. Shadows “But one problem with the wave of technological change that has made dark lighting easy and cheap for filmmakers is that it doesn’t translate to all television sets. Old televisions did a better job of rendering dark colors than modern ones. Detail that’s visible on an expensive television disappears on a cheap one, and suddenly Game of Thrones is indecipherable. The same is true when a television is viewed in a brightly-lit room or from an angle: Dark scenes lose more detail than bright ones. There’s a reason Best Buy doesn’t have The Godfather playing on their wall of TVs show. (There’s also a reason they were running The Dark Knight in their more dimly-lit Magnolia showrooms for years, directed at people willing to buy their most expensive models.)” Read about Darkness. There is no try – Watching the George Lucas Fiasco “When plans to develop the Presidio site were shelved, Lucas went looking for a new city. Enter Rahm Emanuel. Lucas found an eager suitor in the mayor, who offered up a lakefront site in Grant Park and a sweetheart lease. And clearly the mayor provided Lucas something else, too, something the filmmaker was very accustomed to receiving in Hollywood, but certainly didn’t get in San Francisco: brash creative freedom.” Read about a mess. Dr. Paracletus! “You spoke of love. But I loved you! It was like sinking into a quicksand for me….” The Trash Twins Sarah Horrocks and Katie Skelly published THE COMPLETE AGENT 73 yesterday. Click below for cigs, sex, mystery, eyepatches, thigh highs, revolvers, and colors. Read it all here THE TEN GREATEST SONGS OF JUNE 30,2016 De La Soul “Ego Trippin’ Part Three (Egoristic Mix)” (1994) Young Thug “OD” (2015) Aphex Twin “Bodmin 3” (2009) Max Roach “Effi” (1968) Milton Nascimento “Volver a Los 17 (Violeta Parra) feat. Mercedes Sosa“ Jazmine Sullivan “Let It Burn” (2014) VAGUE001 “got em’ buzzing“ halpe “emerald“ Moses Sumney “Pleas“ Beyankha “Stones“ Share this page: [...]

06/09/2017

Sally IngrahamJune 8, 2017NewsFriday with the cool kids – Rhoda Kellogg, Eleanor Davis, Trina Robbins, Katie Skelly, Lisa Lim, Gabrielle Bell, and more! ————————————————————————————————— Brian Belott has designed an exhibition inspired by the work of Rhoda Kellogg, “one of the foremost, undersung researchers of the doodles, wiggles, and dreams that kids draw.” Among his varied art projects, over the last 15 years Belott has been studying children’s art and he repeatedly bumped into Rhoda Kellogg’s name. Her work as a child psychologist and scholar led her to collect over a million pieces of children’s art between 1948 and 1981, but it all wound up in a storage unit in Connecticut until Brian Belott took an interest in the collection. The show he put together includes 300 pieces from Kellogg’s collection, his own work and attempts at making child-like art (or “forgeries” as he calls them, of his favorite kid-produced originals), and the classroom component (pictured above), which is staffed by his friends and peers during weekend workshops. As a teacher of kids myself, and someone who is experiencing a growing fascination with how kids process the world through art, I recognize the “natural force” that Belott describes and am eager to see this show if it does travel (as he hopes) and will certainly be picking up some of the books that Rhoda Kellogg wrote on the subject of children’s art. Learn more about her HERE. Find out more about the “Dr. Kid President Jr.” show via this article on Artsy. ————————————————————————————————— Hillary Brown chats with Eleanor Davis about her new comic You & a Bike & a Road (Koyama Press, May 2017) for Paste Magazine, starting off by wondering if she is perhaps “the most renowned comics artist of her generation“. Eleanor talks about the process of making the book: “I started out drawing every day of my trip because I always wish I was the sort of person who draws every day on a trip. (I’m not). And I was nervous about essentially taking a two-month vacation—what if everyone forgot who I was, what if I lost all my clients, etc. So I wanted something to post online. I kept drawing, however, because my knees were slowing me down, and that meant I was spending less time biking and more time resting and bored. Otherwise I might have let the journal peter out, like most of my journals tend to. When I got home, I wanted to collect the comics because I’m not productive enough to draw 100 pages of comics and then just let them blow away in the wind. At first I only wanted to put out a mini comic, but it was too many pages. I felt very upset about the idea of making it into a book because I didn’t think it had the merit to be a book. The comics are sloppy and self-indulgent, and collected together they have real life’s irritating lack of narrative structure. But once I filled it out a little it came together a little bit. And folks seemed to respond to the comics emotionally, so I thought it might work out.“ Read the rest of the interview HERE. Get a copy of the book HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I have yet to see the new Wonder Woman film, and in an effort to not spoil it by reading too much about it, I have found myself reading about other takes on the character – from Trina Robbins’ solidly Amazonian Diana (no fancy flying or special powers, just TRAINING) to George Perez’s vision, which brought the “wonder” back to Wonder Woman. This article at The Fresh Toast details Trina Robbins’ adventures with Diana. Trina was the first woman to draw a Wonder Woman series, digging into The Legend of Wonder Woman in 1986 (with writer Kurt Busiek). Trina’s artwork in this 4-issue series brought back the Golden Age, and the little girl whom Wonder Woman saves looks more than a bit like Trina as a child. George Perez’s relaunch of Wonder Woman in 1987 was admittedly a bit more exciting. There is an excellent article on Vulture about Perez and what he brought to the continuing saga of the character. Now that a badass female director has made a Wonder Woman film that folks are pretty delighted by (despite it being a DC flick!), I can only hope that good things are in store for Diana and her creators down the road. ————————————————————————————————— And Also Katie Skelly joins Mike Dawson and Zach Soto for Episode 35 of Process Party. Dominique Goblet‘s Pretending Is Lying is reviewed on the Los Angeles Review of Books by Tahneer Oksman. Meredith Gran concludes her long-running web comic Octopus Pie. Lisa Lim writes and draws about how she went from being an “apolitical to a little more political Asian” on Mutha Magazine. Jillian Tamaki goes through her process for one of the stories in her new collection Boundless – at The Cut. Check out Madeleine Witt and Andrew White’s Kickstarter for their upcoming collection Warmer: A collection of comics about climate change for the fearful & hopeful. The Ladybroad Ledger, edited by Stephanie Zuppo, is campaigning for funds to print issue #2. Gabrielle Bell was on The Rumpus Book Club chat near the end of May – her new book Everything Is Flammable came out June 6th. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 6-9-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-9-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Alyssa Berg on CXC 2016

Alyssa BergOctober 22, 2016Festivals and ShowsEditor’s Note: Alyssa Berg joined the Comics Workbook crew at CXC 2016 as one of our workshop leaders. Comics Workbook hosted four sessions over the course of the festival, and Alyssa presented on her process, her painted comics, and her use of the 4- and 9-panel grids. She led an exercise using the 4- and 9-panel grids that challenged and excited the attending comics makers, including students from the Columbus College of Art and Design. A video from the exercise she led: And now, the rest of Alyssa’s CXC experience in her own words. My First Con At the airport on my way home from Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, I bought a legal pad because I had accidentally checked my sketchbook in my suitcase. I wanted to record all of the details from my four days in Columbus ASAP – I didn’t want to forget any of the moments that made CXC such a wonderful experience. Over the past week I have been able to zoom-out and see what shaped many of my positive experiences: access to comics history and connecting with the comics community. Upon arrival in Columbus, my first stop was the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. I appreciated having a couple days pre-expo to enjoy the reading room, archive and museum. The Winsor McCay exhibit was stunning. On the archive tour, it was amazing to be standing inside the chilly room filled with flat files, books and boxes that house the world’s largest cartoon & comics collection. I was able to see some rare gems at the Billy Ireland. CXC was my first time taking part in a convention and I was struck by the spirit of the greater comics community. The people – comics-makers, event organizers, curators, publishers, students, teachers, librarians, and volunteers – all came together to celebrate comics and create an open and interesting atmosphere filled with great energy. There was a variety of events (including, of course, the book expo held over the weekend in the beautiful Columbus Metropolitan Library) where I had the pleasure of connecting and having conversations with many lovely comics-humans, including the Comics Workbook crew. Some strong bonds were formed, and I’m especially grateful for that. Thank you to the organizers of CXC for hosting such a great event, thank you to the staff and volunteers at both the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum & Library and the Columbus Metropolitan Library. Also a big thank you to Frank Santoro at Comics Workbook for sending me to CXC with the CW crew. ————————————————————————————————— Alyssa Berg makes comics in Brooklyn, NY. You can find her work HERE. For the rest of our complete CXC coverage check out the special “round up” report HERE. Share this page: [...]

03/29/2018

Comics WorkbookMarch 28, 2018NewsHere’s Sam Ombiri on Sophie Goldstein’s House of Women! ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: At times when I read comics I’m really invested in the scenario being presented, and I don’t really identify the characters well enough. I’m reading the story and I have to interrupt myself to study who is who. With House of Women by Sophie Goldstein, however, I was really struck by the characters’ various expressions, and the gestures the characters would make. I was impressed by how much information was conveyed through this, and in ways that aren’t that obvious. I was just reading and reading, invested in the scenario, but I found that I was experiencing who each character was in a different way. It wasn’t just their distinctive design – it had more to do with their facial expressions, and the moments that took place really stuck in my mind after reading because I could feel who the characters were. Before the characters could speak, I felt a deep understanding of who they were. Whenever characters would act a certain way, it would come as no surprise because just their facial expressions would communicate so much. This was more so for Sarai, Kizzy, Rhivka, and Aphra than for Mr. Dean or the aliens (above). And that makes sense. It’s the equivalent of shining a spotlight. For example, it’s not unlike Aphra to look so cross – she’s clearly a very level-headed person, so when she looks cross or worried, it’s for good reason. When Kizzy appreciates the smell of the blossoms or is really taken by children, it’s very expected. Rhivka, for good reason, is hard to pin down and her absence is really felt. She looks like someone who would be mysteriously absent while the other women are gathered. All the expressions a character has ever made has molded that character’s face, and their gestures dictate the shape of their body. I was really struck by this – maybe because the style the book is drawn in is seemingly trying to get in the way of the story. It seems like there are things that should be obscuring my understanding and such, but the story is so clearly laid out – even the word balloons tell me where to go as a reader. What’s alluded to is what’s being said, making a rhyme with the image and words. Maybe I’m also thinking about how straightforward the visual narration in The Oven was, whereas in House of Women Sophie Goldstein is more specific with how moments should unfold. The book is very aware of a reader reading the pages – each moment is paced very distinctly. If a scene is of the women walking up a hill (above), the page is drawn in such a way that you feel it, you feel the moment passing slowly. It’s a case of using the comics medium to its full extent. This is perhaps like it’s filmic counterpart, Black Narcissus. I was anticipating a retelling of Black Narcissus because of how much Sophie emphasized it as a major influence – though truth be told, to me it was very far from that. I see maybe, for lack of a better term, iconography from Black Narcissus (like the title itself for example), and certain moments from Black Narcissus playing out in the book, but it simultaneously feels independent of the movie and any comparison to it would be inappropriate. What happened to Rhivka is perhaps comparable to Sister Ruth in Black Narcissus, but Rhivka is more aware of what’s happening to her. There is also this Cronenberg-esque mutation that one of the alien natives has gone through. This was actually a fantastic point in the book. The alien’s mutation was amazing. I really liked the design of the aliens in the book. All the drawings in this book are enjoyable both to look at, and to read – from the way the story is told through the panels, to the way the sounds the characters are hearing is communicated, and the words the characters say to each other. All great. – Sam Ombiri Get a copy of House of Women by Sophie Goldstein HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Announcing the Spring Semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers 8 weeks! $500 bux! 10 spots available! Rolling start date because of spring break – start as early as March 30th 2018. Deadline to apply is April 12th. Read all about the course HERE and email santoroschool@gmail.com for more details or to apply. ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-29-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

08/09/2018

Caleb OrecchioAugust 9, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here briefly comparing my old comics with Trevor Von Eeden’s. ————————————————————————————————— I was flipping through my dad’s childhood copy of Black Lightning no. 10. Look at how professional Von Eeden’s work was at eighteen. It’s good, good enough to be published by DC. The work looks Golden Age-y at times due to the artist’s unwieldy ambition combined with solid, albeit still developing, drawing chops. I enjoyed this elephant charging scene. Hahahaha! I horse laugh when I consider the comics I was making at eighteen! Oh look, here’s one from my vault. This is from my high school newspaper. Probably late 2010 to early-2011. Don’t laugh. ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 8-9-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

05/25/2016

Posted on May 25, 2016May 26, 2016 by Juan Fernández

Juan Fernandez with: the Chris Diaz Archive: Creep Highway & the Candy Boys + Connor Willumsen; Gabri Molist; Voltio #1; Ana Oncina; Grids on the Web; Canadian Centre for Architecture.

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On the site – New in The Diaz Archive:

http://comicsworkbook.com/creep-highway-the-candy-boyz/

http://comicsworkbook.com/connor-willumsen-draws-pris-from-blade-runner/

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ELSEWHERE:

Four Mathematicians – Gabri Molist

Don’t miss the Fibonacci progression in Gabri Molist‘s latest entry in the Four Mathematicians series. Over on TIKTOK cómics.

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A look at Voltio #1

Voltio is a recently launched an anthology published by La Cúpula chock full of emerging Spanish artists. Ana Oncina y Álex Giménez are at the helm of this production, which aims to present comics in a recently absent format – the comics magazine. (Spain has a tradition of this sort of publication: El Vibora, Trinca, Cairo, Creepy, Vampus, Métal Hurlant, 1984, Cimoc, Totem ) Lots of visual experiments and humor in this one. A spanish peer toImage’s Island if you will.

The first issues features work by: Alex Giménez, Àlex Red, Alexis Nolla,Ana Galvañ, Ana Oncina, Andrew Rae, Antonio Hitos, Aroha Travé, Fran Collado, José Domingo, Kensausage (Cristian Robles), Núria Tamarit yPowerPaola.

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Ana Oncina en el Spotlight

Barcelona based cartoonist, Ana Oncina was born in 1989 in Alicante and studied Fine Arts at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, specializing in illustration and animation. Her first comic , Croqueta y Empandailla became instant success thanks to its charismatic characters and Oncina’s sense of humor. A work that resonated A LOT with Spaniards reading comics. Her stories are in a similar vein of Philippa Rice’s Soppy, Croqueta y Empandailla are quotidian relationship comics with a twist of humor.

Traducir&Co Interview (2016)
Júralo por mi Interview (2015)

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Grid Webdesign Tutorial
Complement your time with yesterday’s Kirby grids with some thoughts on the grid and contemporary webdesign over on www.tutsplus.com .

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Mental Architectures
Still in the webdesign vein, Don’t miss the Candian Centre for Architecture’s new site. It’s a great example of empathetic presentation of content on the web that allows for the stories and articles to maintain a feeling of awe. Beautiful stuff, really.

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hasta la proxima 😉
Juan

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Alex Gimenez, Ana Oncina, Blade Runner, CCA, Chris Diaz, Connor Willumsen, CREEP HIGHWAY, Gabri Molist, the grid

Juan Fernández

Posted on May 25, 2016May 26, 2016

Explore

05/15/2017

Caleb OrecchioMay 14, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here. Some good comics are on Instagram. Did you know that? Plus I’m very very excited for Koyama Press’ Fall 2017 lineup. Are you? Also people can’t stop talking about Sammy Harkham’s Crickets. ————————————————————————————————— I made the lists below for a friend I was talking to about my comic strip (Joanie and Jordie—just scroll down), and how they enjoy seeing it everyday on Instagram (always nice to hear). It’s a very convenient way to view comic strips, they said. Do other people do comic strips on Instagram, they asked—of course they meant other than the legion of memes and bad nerd/fan clickbait crap civilians refer to as “comics” sometimes. I said yeah: It’s interesting to me—to my knowledge, Comics Workbook’s own “Suzy and Cecil” was the first real traditionally minded comic strip to come out of the comics community on Instagram. And one specifically made to fit the format to boot. I think maybe Michael Deforge’s “Leaving Richard’s Valley” came about around the same time (exclusively on Twitter originally) – followed closely by Jim Rugg’s “Running Comic,” where he documents his training for the Pittsburgh Marathon, and Mickey Z’s “Space Academy 123.” I like that cartoonists are constantly adapting to the next best available format to get our stuff out there. Since the slow and quiet fall of tumblr cartoonists are making their Instagrams a prominent place to put out work, and the work is morphing to its new platform. Instead of short serialized comic book pages every few weeks or months on tumblr, Instagram allows good use for square (literally) four-panel daily strips. I think it also helps that real civilians are on Instagram, whereas tumblr or deviant art was preaching to the choir. ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Koyama Press has announced their Fall 2017 lineup and it’s gonna be a good Fall. My favorite comics podcast, Comic Books Are Burning in Hell has a new episode where they talk about the new Crickets. I love to listen to these dudes talk comics. Speaking of Crickets, you all read TCJ’s great interview with the author, Sammy Harkham right? Part one here and part two here. TCAF was this past weekend. I’m sure we’ll have some sort of coverage this week. Stay tuned. Tyler Landry did a workshop, did you go to it? The NY Times has a weekly comic called Welcome to the New World, about “the true story of a Syrians family’s journey to America.” Which is great. Non-ficiton contemporary stories like these are what we need to help create empathy and awareness for a.) people who don’t know what this kind of thing is like and b.) the people living it. Cool cool. However, the actual cartooning is achingly dull and elementary. There is no emphasis or even an attempt at visual rhetoric here. It drives me crazy that “high-profile” mainstream comics fucking suck and are not done by cartoonists within the comics tradition; but instead are drawn by the most boring hack illustrators. Oh well, it’s comics journalism after all—I can’t help but notice that The Sculptor obviously had an influence on the look of this work. ————————————————————————————————— Announcing the Summer Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers! 8 weeks! 500 bux! Payment plans are available! Summer Course starts June 1st 2017! Applications are due by May 25th. Visit THIS page for more details and email santoroschool@gmail.com with applications and questions! ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 5-15-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 5-15-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-15-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/18/2016

Aaron CockleOctober 17, 2016NewsAaron here today with Mould Map 6; Leela Corman; Comics from Spain; Colette Gaiter on the work of Emory Douglas; More Pepe (Sorry, Pepe); Cecily Brown; (Notes For/Towards) Some Capsule Reviews ————————————————————————————————— Mould Map 6: TERRAFORMERS Group Exhibition & Events Series Bonington Gallery, Nottingham 17th September to 21st October 2016 In a break with the publication format of earlier editions, Mould Map 6 will take place as an exhibition / walk-in magazine running over 5 weeks and including talks, screenings, performances and open workshops. Set against the background hum of sci-fi imaginaries common to all Mould Map projects, TERRAFORMERS brings together over 50 practitioners whose work encompasses various approaches to world making, alongside historical visualisations of possible futures and their role in shaping the present. ————————————————————————————————— Life is an ambush. My two birth stories. A Leela Corman comic. ————————————————————————————————— Spanish Fever Panel Discussion from SPX now on Youtube Cómics, tebeos, and novelas gráficas have been making waves on the European comics scene for decades. SPX, in partnership with the Spanish Cultural Center, proudly presents some of the most exciting Spanish talent in the comics scene! Bienvenido a David Rubín, Javier Olivares, Ana Galvañ, José Domingo, and Santiago García. Moderated by cartoonist and teacher Matt Madden. ————————————————————————————————— The 164th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Colette Gaiter on “Emory Douglas: 50 years of Revolutionary Art” Colette Gaiter will talk about former Black Panther Party Minister of Culture, artist, designer and illustrator Emory Douglas’s work on The Black Panther newspaper in the 1960s and 70s. His subversive and proactive political cartoons, collages and drawings visualized the Black Power movement and galvanized activism that persists into the twenty-first century. He currently travels globally to give talks about his previous work and collaborates with indigenous activists in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico—any place where people use art for liberation from injustice and oppression. ————————————————————————————————— Pepe Pepe Pepe Heer/Pepe The great Jeet Heer has a piece about Pepe the Frog at the New Republic: When the alt-right kidnapped Pepe the Frog, they weren’t just seizing control of Matt Furie’s character, but also defiling an entire artistic tradition of using animal allegories to comment on racism. They were returning cartoon animals to the crudity of blackface creations like Flip the Frog and denying the artistic depth found in works ranging from Krazy Kat to the Muppets to Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus (where the cats are Nazis and the mice Jews). Pepe the Frog, as perverted by its captors, is a kind of inverted Kermit: a frog drained of any humanity. Furie/Pepe Matt Furie: political cartoonist? ————————————————————————————————— Cecily Brown at the Drawing Center through December 18 Via the NY Times: For years, Ms. Brown has taken the images that stay with her and drawn them, not just once but again and again. Sometimes these images are the overwhelming examples of her predecessors, like the masterly 18th-century debauchery of William Hogarth’s painting “Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn” or the postmedieval, religiously-tinged excess of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Fight Between Carnival and Lent.” But she also plucks shimmering fragments out of the contaminated tide of sexual imagery that is a fact of modern life — and whether it’s the ecstatically endless variation of the unchanging act itself or the compulsive repetition of pornography, sex seems especially apropos. ————————————————————————————————— Brief, Ephemeral Capsule Reviews Open Country #1, Michael DeForge, 2011, self-published According to Wikipedia: DeForge self-published Open Country #1 in May 2011 and issue #2 in fall 2011. Originally planned as a five-part series, DeForge abandoned it “midway through, destroyed all the artwork for and then threw away all the unsold copies”. We take great comforts in these assured and abandoned works. Late Era Clash #24 & #27, Mike Taylor, 2011 & 2015, Pegacorn Press Fin de siècle Bushwick etc apt-dwelling and loneliness, questionable behavior, the lure of the internet & a workbook about death, respectively. Les nouvelles béguines, Julie Delporte, 2015, self-published Paint and colored pencil and some tape collage. Placement of tape is extremely important. Use of tape in one’s art practice in general. Use of white space on paper – Negative Space etc etc. Hands: An Anti-story, Kimball Anderson, 2015, InkBrick Anderson as a body artist, transcription of hand gestures, process of talking to oneself, balance of pages panels and worded space rubbed out and smudged, first issue in a series. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden Part 1: My Own Private Portland & Part 2: Ken Death is Death, Annie Murphy, 2015 & 2016, self-published Murphy writing about ghosts. River Phoenix, balance of / cohesion of ruled notebook paper and space for image, lab books and writing out text, pacing it out. Portland as a haunted space. Gus van Sant/My Own Private Idaho/River Phoenix. Where it exists in Murphy’s memories. Part 2 and white supremacy in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. + Portland history 20 years on. A note on the printing aesthetic: photocopied inkwash. A note on printing aesthetic in general — OC: printed-out greyscale or Riso, maybe? LEC: Riso, screenprinted cover; LNB: Laser-printed?; H: good photocopier probably; INPYARG: see above. Also: wondering about the size of these print runs? Share this page: [...]

10/30/2018

Aaron CockleOctober 29, 2018NewsKatie Fricas, Kim Jooha/Conor Stechschulte, ‘Endless Enigma’, AI Halloween ————————————————————————————————— Via Whit Taylor at Pen America: I selected cartoonist Katie Fricas to create an original comic for Illustrated PEN because of her unique approach to the medium. Fricas’s autobiographical work regularly addresses the complexities of gender, sexuality, culture, and agency with a smart, quirky, and often humorous storytelling style. ————————————————————————————————— Comics Reading as Voyeurism and the Illusion of Continuity and Narrative: Kim Jooha on CHRISTMAS IN PRISON by Conor Stechschulte Comics consist of discrete units (panels), and we assume that these separate units (panels) are related to each other. We suppose that the similar image that appears in the later or previous panel refers to the same object. This is the principle of comics reading as the dialectic of repetition and difference as Thierry Groensteen argued in The System of Comics (1999). The reader creates a continuous story out of the discrete units. Christmas in Prison, with its aforementioned self-reflexive instruments, questions this principal assumption of comics. Our habit of finding sameness among different images as a comics reader deludes us to look for the sameness that does not exist, just as the book at the end of Christmas in Prison is not Christmas in Prison. It is an illusion. ————————————————————————————————— Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art This show closed this past weekend, but there’s a good deal of info about it online. It’s based on this MoMA show from 1936. The exhibition will provide a unique opportunity to examine affinities in intention and imagery between works executed across a broad span of time. Organized into six themes—Monsters & Demons, Dreams & Temptation, Fragmented Body, Unconscious Gesture, Super Nature, and Sense of Place—Endless Enigma will explore the ways in which artists have sought to explain their world in terms of an alternate reality, drawn from imagination, the subconscious, poetry, nature, myth, and religion. Works on view range from gothic gargoyles; masterworks from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by a contemporary follower of Hieronymus Bosch, Piero di Cosimo, and Titian; seventeenth- century paintings by Jan Brueghel the Younger and Salvator Rosa; eighteenth-century works on paper by Francisco de Goya and Giovanni Battista Piranesi; nineteenth-century works by William Blake, James Ensor, Gustave Moreau, and Odilon Redon; and works from the twentieth century to the present day by Eileen Agar, Francis Alÿs, Michaël Borremans, Louise Bourgeois, Giorgio de Chirico, Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Dzama, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Alberto Giacometti, Robert Gober, Alfred Kubin, Sherrie Levine, René Magritte, Kerry James Marshall, Roberto Matta, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Sigmar Polke, Man Ray, Kay Sage, Yves Tanguy, and Lisa Yuskavage, among other artists. ————————————————————————————————— ‘Happy Halloween’ To create them, he used what’s called a generative adversarial network (GAN) to recognize patterns in data such as Halloween masks – Reed fed his computer thousands. The AI then tried to create its own that would fit the pattern, supposedly getting better over time. “What’s so scary or unsettling about it is that it’s not so detailed that it shows you everything,” Reed told New Scientist. “It leaves just enough open for your imagination to connect the dots.” ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

12/30/2016

Sally IngrahamDecember 29, 2016NewsSally here, scribbling this as I’m making my way back to Pittsburgh, PA, from the wilds of Maine – through a nor’easter of course (2016 continues to deliver). I spent a week with family in Maine, chugging YA fantasy novels and drawing “Suzy and Cecil” strips and looking for Arctic Loons and of course reading (and gifting!) comics. Here are some things I found in the week the CW News team was taking a break. ————————————————————————————————— First of all, Disa Wallander updated her Slowly Dying comic (above!) Yay. ————————————————————————————————— Gloria Rivera posted her lovely comic Domestic Scene (named for the David Hockney painting of the same name) which she made last January but is sharing for the first time outside of the anthology it was published in. Start it below – finish it HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Tom Spurgeon has been publishing his annual “Holiday Interviews” on The Comics Reporter this week, and I was thrilled to see that Sarah Glidden and Tom had a lengthy exchange. Sarah got really introspective, probing her own motivations for telling the stories that she has this year. It’s good stuff. As Tom would say, “Go, read!“ ————————————————————————————————— From Summer Pierre via Mutha Magazine, an exciting birth story (above)…! ————————————————————————————————— From quite awhile ago, but finally read by myself – another type of birth story: Julia Wertz‘s A Friend’s Pregnancy on The New Yorker. The rest of the comic is HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The staff of The Village Voice put together a brief list of “The Ladies of Comics Who Made 2016 a Little More Bearable” – HERE. On the list is Giant Days (above), which certainly made my 2016 more bearable, and was one of the comics that I gave as a gift to a sister this year. ————————————————————————————————— Another comic I gave to a (different) sister this year was Anya Davidson‘s Lovers in the Garden. There is a nice review of the book by Sarah Miller over on Sequentialist – check it out HERE. While you’re at it, read some of the other comics reviews that Sarah Miller has written – it seems like Sequentialist is a site worth bookmarking. ————————————————————————————————— Nuria Pompeia died recently – she was a Spanish cartoonist, journalist, and feminist whose work often commented on social class, sexism, and censorship. As she was not well known here in the states, most articles I can find about her will need to be translated by Google…but here is a good one from earlier this year. (via The Comics Reporter) ————————————————————————————————— Here’s a great article that I found while poking around on Paste the other day, and since I got a good deal of joy out of the new Star Wars movie (Rogue One) I feel compelled to share it here. There is an obvious parallelism between Star Wars and some of Jack Kirby’s stories – but was Lucas inspired by Kirby or were they just riding the same creative waves? Get into it HERE (Pittsburgh’s Tom Scioli weighs in at one point!) ————————————————————————————————— I always like a good excuse to give a shout-out to Vanesa R. Del Rey – and the new Comics Workbook publication The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey has given me plenty of opportunity. Check out the book HERE and get yourself a post-holiday treat! ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 12-30-2016 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Amazingly, this is my last news post for 2016 – what a whirlwind it has been! See you next week and next year – Sally Share this page: [...]

02/07/2017

Aaron CockleFebruary 6, 2017NewsAaron here today with Roman Muradov; ‘Elitist Empathy’; What we talk about when we talk about ‘A study of issues relating to the collection, care, and accessibility of zines in institutional and alternative collections in the UK’; 2 Robs at TCJ, writing about comics; Ley Lines; INK BRICK; Furie explains Pepe, Pepe explains Furie ————————————————————————————————— Roman Muradov on How I Didn’t Write Certain of My Books To hell with narrative and self-expression! Instead: constraints and repetition (and repetition)! This talk sets Idleness against Inspiration, and namedrops an indecent number of French names in the process. Reader, attend!! The 176th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Roman Muradov is an award-winning illustrator and the author of (In A Sense) Lost & Found, Jacob Bladders and the State of the Art and the End of A Fence, as well as a French collection Aujourd’hui Demain Hier. He has a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators, a habit of long aimless walks, and an imaginary dog named Barchibald. ————————————————————————————————— NOTHING LEFT TO LEARN 13 nearly 60 pages of content regarding race, post-liberal America, and the election. essays and rants from Jason Lee illustrations by Laura PallMall “Things That Kill More Americans than ISIS” SPECIAL INSERT: for the first time in print “Greek Church,” a 15 page comic by PallMall for an extra 25 dollars you can purchase the original drawing of any illustration from the zine. please email laurapallmall at gmail dot com before ordering this option to confirm the availability of your desired drawing. 50% of all proceeds from this zine forever will go to CAIR. NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER. ————————————————————————————————— Zines in the Academy? Siobhan Britton’s University College London’s dissertation, What we do is secret? A study of issues relating to the collection, care, and accessibility of zines in institutional and alternative collections in the UK, has been posted for your downloading/reading pleasure. Here is the abstract: Fanzines, or ‘zines’ are self published magazines with small print runs, where the entire process from creation to distribution is done by the maker and generally not created for profit. Their subject matter can be almost anything. They are distinctly anti-commercial a, often acting as an outlet for alternative or marginalised voices, which are often ignored by mainstream publishing. The UK has a strong zine culture, and an increasing number of libraries here are developing zine collections. There are also a number of alternative spaces such as self organised zine libraries and anarchist social centres which do the same thing. The first chapter sets out the context of the dissertation, and flags up the fact that most of the research and literature about zine collections in both institutional and alternative spaces is very USA-centric. As a result the study of UK zine collections is important in terms of the focus of this dissertation. Chapter two considers the way that zines might be defined. Using a combination of face to face and written interviews with people responsible, and fieldwork in the form of visits, this dissertation examines a selection of both institutional and alternative zine collections located in UK and examines how they collect, care for, and make accessible their collections in the third and fourth chapters. The concluding chapter draws examines the issues that UK institutional and alternative zine collections face, including the argument for and against collecting zines at all. Although this study does not consider every institutional or alternative zine collection in the UK, and therefore cannot be considered comprehensive, it aims to give an idea of the range of collections that exist here. ————————————————————————————————— Dueling Roberts at The Comics Journal Rob Kirby reviews the recent Spanish Fever anthology, edited by Santiago Garcia: The talent roster in Spanish Fever ranges from well-known pros like Miguel Gallardo and Max, to newer artists like Ana Galvañ and Clara-Tanit Arqué. There’s a wide variety of narrative and visual styles, ranging from traditional underground comix to the ubiquitous European “big nose” style to work that would look at home in an American minicomic. In subject matter, the stories range from autobiographical, political, and quotidian to surreal and just flat-out weird. It’s an eclectic stew that comes together agreeably, making a good case for the vibrancy of the Spanish comics scene, though a few weaknesses keep it from being a truly top-notch compendium. In his introduction, Eddie Campbell notes that the new Spanish comics all share the importance of authorial voice, i.e., that they feature characters that are pure expressions of the authors, beholden to no meddling publishers or corporations. Garcia’s forward to the collection extrapolates on this theme, offering a mini-history of Spain’s comics leading to its current artistic renaissance amid the country’s current economic crisis. And Rob Clough gives a characteristically comprehensive run-down of some short-form comics highlights from 2016: 26. Faded Frankenstein, by E.A. Bethea. Bethea’s scratchy, scrawled line is a perfect complement for her poetic and heartfelt prose about missing friends, fading memories, and the images of jobs past. 27. Zebidiah Part 3, by Asher Z. Craw. Part autobio story about embracing one’s identity as a trans person, and part magical realist adventure, the genius of the story is the way Craw wrapped both up together in telling the tale of Zebediah and Eula-Lee, who were pursued by the forces of evil into their modern-day incarnations as Asher and Lillie (Craw’s actual wife) Craw. 28. Paper Pencil Life #4, by Summer Pierre. This is a clearly written and cartooned collection of diary strips about life as an artist, a mother and sharp observer of the world around her. 29. Sorgin, by Amelia Onorato. This is an immaculately constructed and heartbreaking story about genocide and resistance, told with a humane and restrained touch. 30. Self, by Meghan Turbitt. This is a warped, hilarious deconstruction of trashy women’s magazines reorganized around Tubitt’s own personal obsessions. ————————————————————————————————— ART, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY COMICS Ley Lines 2017 Subscription Ley Lines is a quarterly publication dedicated to exploring the intersection of comics and the various fields of art & culture that inspire us. Each issue features a different artist’s take on a different subject matter taken from the larger context of art making, past and present. Our 2017 Ley Lines are: Tommi Parrish on William Blake/Lydia Lunch (February 2017) Eric Kostiuk Williams on Kylie Minogue (May 2017) Shreyas R Krishnan on Abida Parveen (August 2017) Evan Dahm on the Surrealists (November 2017) Price includes shipping!(additional shipping applies for orders outside the US). Subscriptions include new 2″ vinyl sticker designed by Eric Kostiuk Williams. Each issue is 24 pages, 1 color risograph printing by Issue Press, half-letter size, saddle stitch binding. ————————————————————————————————— POETRY COMICS INK BRICK’s FIRST KICKSTARTER IS LIVE! Starting this fall, our journal issues will debut in bookstores across the country! To celebrate this milestone, we’ve invited some of our favorite cartoonist-poets to create a special issue. We’re crowdfunding it, and we need your help to support comics poetry and grow this movement. ————————————————————————————————— The iconic frog’s original creator finally clearly defines his enigmatic brainchild, once and for all ————————————————————————————————— Learn more about the Rowhouse Residency and apply HERE – join us for a week or two in Pittsburgh, PA, and take your comics making to a new level! ————————————————————————————————— The Cosmic Journey – 2-7-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— 2-7-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 2-7-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 2-7-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 2-7-2017 – by Juan Fernandez Share this page: [...]

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