Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged artificial intelligence, Blade Runner, CAKE, chicago alternative comics expo, DMCA, László Moholy-Nagy, lauren weinstein, Manuele Fior, Matt Madden, mike Dawson, neural networking, Oliver East, Peter Kuper, U.S. copyright law, vintage contemporaries

Aaron Cockle

Posted on June 6, 2016June 6, 2016

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06/19/2018

Aaron CockleJune 19, 2018NewsParadise Systems; NYer at SOI; Desert Island; Dank Meme Machine ————————————————————————————————— Paradise Systems on publishing and distributing underground Chinese comics Fei Liu spoke with R. Orion Martin about comics in China: says the biggest challenge with indie comics in China is the lack of a network of independent bookstores. To overcome that, many artists distribute their stories in the form of tiaoman 条漫(web based strip comics — which can sometimes be like fan works, not unlike doujinshi of Japanese manga that have amassed huge cult followings) — of which many comics Paradise Systems prints are reformatted in. Tiaoman comics are popular on social media sites like Douban, a media site for youth culture that’s “a little like Tumblr but with Rotten Tomato’s review function” which allows for cult-like analysis and adoration. The comic artists Paradise Systems publishes are already Douban celebrities and now also have WeChat pages, which is China’s more mainstream social media network — though, finding indie comics on WeChat is often harder because you have to find and friend people already invested in the culture to see the content. ————————————————————————————————— Funny Ladies at The New Yorker: Cartoonists Then and Now July 24-October 13, 2018, The Society of Illustrators in NYC, curated by Liza Donnelly. In art, when the standards for what is considered “good“ are broadened to include more approaches, it leads to more diversity of thought and more creativity. That’s what happened under Lee Lorenz and Harold Ross’ editorship. In addition, the increase of women cartoonists under their editorships happened during times of positive cultural change in attitudes towards women. This is happening now. As the result of an effort led by senior editor David Remnick and newly hired cartoon editor, Emma Allen, The New Yorker now has a greater percentage of women cartoonists than ever. This exhibition is a commemoration of some of the women who drew cartoons for The New Yorker past and present. It’s a celebration of their creativity and fortitude as they pushed past cultural stereotypes to create humor and offer the world laughter from all points of view. ————————————————————————————————— Neighborhood Joint: The ‘Punk Rock’ Comic Book Shop Beyond the meritocratic inventory system, Desert Island proselytizes offbeat creativity through its annual fall festival, Comic Arts Brooklyn, together with the Pratt Institute. It also publishes an all-illustration newspaper, which comes out a few times a year called “Smoke Signal,” now in its 29th issue. Copies of the publication, whose pages have carried works by Mad magazine legends alongside up-and-comers like Abby Jame, are free to customers. ————————————————————————————————— Dank Learning: Generating Memes Using Deep Neural Networks Via Abel L Peirson V and E Meltem Tolunay We introduce a novel meme generation system, which given any image can produce a humorous and relevant caption. Furthermore, the system can be conditioned on not only an image but also a user-defined label relating to the meme template, giving a handle to the user on meme content. The system uses a pretrained Inception-v3 network to return an image embedding which is passed to an attention-based deep-layer LSTM model producing the caption – inspired by the widely recognised Show and Tell Model. We implement a modified beam search to encourage diversity in the captions. We evaluate the quality of our model using perplexity and human assessment on both the quality of memes generated and whether they can be differentiated from real ones. Our model produces original memes that cannot on the whole be differentiated from real ones. ————————————————————————————————— Thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers Summer Session starts NOW! Floating start date! Apply anytime between now and July 12th 2018 to join the summer course. Email santoroschoolATgmail for more details. Ask about the Fall Course if now is too busy for you! The course is 8 weeks – 500 bux for 8 weeks plus access to Frank’s coaching for as long as you need. Payment plans are available. Put your summer to good use! ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 6-19-2018 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-19-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/16/2018

Aaron CockleOctober 15, 2018NewsMid-October Process Post ————————————————————————————————— I was out of town last week. As with my last trip, I wasn’t really able to work on comics, but I tried to keep busy with sketching when I had the chance. Mostly quick exercises with negative space, nothing too intense. I was drawing in sketchbooks I made out of a portable speaker user’s manual and some books made out of tea bag wrappers. Examples below. ————————————————————————————————— I picked up some books as well: Moron der Schwachsinnige, by L.G.X., 1995 Mad Love, by André Breton, translated from the French by Mary Ann Caws, 1988 (Coincidentally, Caws participated in a panel discussion at Printed Matter this past Friday to promote Ideas Have No Smell: Three Belgian Surrealist Booklets Ideas Have No Smell collects the first English-language translations of three works: Transfigured Publicity, visual texts by poet and photographer Paul Nougé (1895-1967); the whimsical, hand-drawn artist’s book, Abstractive Treatise on Obeuse by Paul Colinet (1898-1957); and For Balthazar, a collection of aphorisms and observations by the ever skeptical author, lawyer, and anarchist Louis Scutenaire (1905-1987). Star Warriors : A Penetrating Look into the Lives of the Young Scientists Behind Our Space Age Weaponry, by William Broad, 1985 ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 10-16-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/20/2016

Sally IngrahamOctober 20, 2016NewsSam Ombiri is here today with some thoughts on his experience at the Pittsburgh Zine Fair, and then Sally Ingraham rounds up some other happenings in the greater comics community! ————————————————————————————————— thank you for attending the 2016 #pittsburghzinefair! we had almost 700 attendees this year, our largest turnout ever! another big thanks to our exhibitors, sponsors, and partners. watch this space for upcoming events soon! #zines #pittsburgh pic credit: @annesleyadventures A photo posted by Pittsburgh Zine Fair (@pittsburghzinefair) on Oct 16, 2016 at 6:49pm PDT Sam Ombiri was helping run the Pittsburgh Comics Salon table at the zine fair this past weekend. He writes: The Pittsburgh Zine Fair was a lot of fun, it was a such great environment. There was a constant wave of sound the whole time I was there. I’d try to make out what people were talking about from a small distance, but I guess that’s not how it works. I like how one person doesn’t see what the other sees – I maybe see person 1 and 3, but because I’m moving along too quickly I totally miss person 2. So I could think I found the coolest zines, but someone else shows me that’s not the case. This one guy’s book was about being in a place where someone else had previously left their mark there, and his fascination of the ghost like quality that comes with someone else being there before he’s there – but as he said, “I’m trying to avoid being didactic about it.” His name was Alex Lukas. I dig his marks, I wish I browsed more of his stuff, he has really cool work on his website. I talked to him a bit, then I went back to my table, then I went back to buy a book from him, then I gave him one of my zines (without intention of trading,) to which he generously gave me three, and then I walked away. He wanted to have a lot of ambiguity in the work, so that the readers draw their own conclusions to it – altogether irrelevant from his intentions. I started to think about what Alex’s intention was for his pictures of, say, rocks with chalk drawn on them by some mysterious people (who we don’t know what they looked like, their way of life, or their concerns – we know about them themselves through the marks that they left). In my view, the marks on the rocks were fueled by boredom, and the ones who drew it were moving their hands before they themselves realized they were moving their hands, and something else altogether powerful was moving through this, and that power is there in those marks they made. With that mark they left there’s not too much concern about design or maybe there was concern with design. So, Alex’s work, or at least the book, makes you think it’s design oriented. I guess this happens because Alex has designed the book, but the people who leave their marks not so much. There’s a couple of photographs of graffiti and signs, but he wasn’t taking a picture just because it just looked cool, I think. This will most likely be the only way we have of knowing them instead of seeing their face or hearing their voice. Then on top of that Alex copied the pattern on security envelopes and added them to confuse you as the reader, to my understanding it was just for having an effect there, but he said it also served in adding ambiguity. There was other people I got great stuff from as well – I did not leave dissatisfied, far from it. – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— Frank, Aidan Koch, and Connor Willumsen made it safely back from the U.K. earlier this week, after a wildly successful trip to The Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Kendal. Frank scribbled some thoughts about the show on the plane home, and we have shared them here on the site. A taster: “One of the current riffs about comics festivals is that many different shows exist within the show. Meaning, you can go to SPX and not even see everything or miss your friends completely – whereas in years past you could lap the room each hour and see everything and everyone there. LICAF is different insomuch as it is not situated centrally in a hotel or a convention center. So what happens is that one has their interactions in the town of Kendal itself. The Brewery Arts Centre provides ample space to host everyone and the short walk to the Clock Tower is where I found myself most often running into friendly faces – friends and strangers alike. It was very pleasant, I thought, especially because it was so unlike what we are used to in the States and specific to the town of Kendal.” – Frank Santoro Read the rest of the report HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Cartoon Crossroads Columbus for the Comics Workbook team – in one minute! Full festival report coming Friday, thanks to Whit Taylor – stay tuned! #comicsworkbook #cxc2016 A video posted by Comics Workbook (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 19, 2016 at 2:20pm PDT The rest of the team was in Ohio last weekend for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus – Whit Taylor will provide a full report for us soon – meanwhile you can get a taste of the show above! ————————————————————————————————— Alyssa Berg led a workshop for Comics Workbook at CXC, and as I was cleaning up afterward I noticed that attendee Phil Dokes had left his pages behind – check it out: ————————————————————————————————— #Repost @madegibbs with @repostapp ・・・ Ronald Wimberly at CMA, ey! A video posted by Ronald Wimberly (@ronaldwimberly) on Oct 18, 2016 at 6:16pm PDT Ronald Wimberly is the 2016 graphic-novelist-in-residence at the Columbus Museum of Art – over 100 pieces of his art will hang in the museum through this coming February, and he will be staying at the Thurber House through the end of this month working on his own projects and hanging out with high school students in the Young Writers’ Studio program. He got a lot of hype over the weekend of CXC, of course, and the Columbus Dispatch wrote a nice piece about him and the residency program. ————————————————————————————————— Copacetic Comics is hosting an auction of some SUPER scarce or rare Michael DeForge items – check it out HERE! ————————————————————————————————— P.S. A video about the Pittsburgh Zine Fair by Dan Scullin: Share this page: [...]

08/07/2018

Aaron CockleAugust 6, 2018NewsSAZ; TAZ; Dan Archer in Colombia ————————————————————————————————— Semi-Autonomous Zine Via the Asia Art Archive: Observing that the term zine has been in recent years co-opted to apply to nearly anything—cute, small, nicely printed, not entirely mainstream—our research led to the proposal of a new definition, one borne of conditions specific to this part of the world’s sociopolitical ecology. By exposing fluid streams of influence and proposing other possible routes for the formation of zine culture in Asia, we may begin to depart from a Western-dominated narrative and to rethink and refine what zines and independent publishing culture can be. ————————————————————————————————— TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE Always worth a revisit, Hakim Bey’s work from the 1980’s, 1990’s: And–the map is closed, but the autonomous zone is open. Metaphorically it unfolds within the fractal dimensions invisible to the cartography of Control. And here we should introduce the concept of psychotopology (and -topography) as an alternative “science” to that of the State’s surveying and mapmaking and “psychic imperialism.” Only psychotopography can draw 1:1 maps of reality because only the human mind provides sufficient complexity to model the real. But a 1:1 map cannot “control” its territory because it is virtually identical with its territory. It can only be used to suggest, in a sense gesture towards, certain features. We are looking for “spaces” (geographic, social, cultural, imaginal) with potential to flower as autonomous zones–and we are looking for times in which these spaces are relatively open, either through neglect on the part of the State or because they have somehow escaped notice by the mapmakers, or for whatever reason. Psychotopology is the art of dowsing for potential TAZs. ————————————————————————————————— Colombia’s Uncertain Road to Peace At The Nib, Dan Archer takes a look at Colombia’s past, present, and future. ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 8-7-18 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 8-7-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/17/2016

Juan FernándezOctober 17, 2016NewsJuan here with updates from this weekend. Just got back to Pittsburgh and wanted to write up some thoughts off the cuff before I headed off to work. I’m exhausted but energized <3 We had a doozy of a Comics Workbook operation running full force at LICAF in Kendal and at the 2nd Annual CXC in Columbus! I joined Sacha Mardou, Alyssa Berg, Whit Taylor, Kurt Ankeny, Sally Ingraham, Caleb Orecchio and Emil Friis Ernst in Columbus. I have lots of thoughts on the bang up show that the fine folks at CXC put on. For now, I’ll share what I can! Whit Taylor will be putting together a comprehensive Festival recap for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus later this week, so stay tuned for that! AND Frank Santoro will be reflecting on his time at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in just a bit . Things got deep for him and the rest of the crew over in the UK and you won’t want to miss those updates, loyal reader. ————————————————————————————————— First off, a HUGE thank you to everyone on the Cartoon Crossroads Staff including Jeff Smith, Vijaya Iyer, Kathleen Glosan, Lucy Caswell, Tom Spurgeon and Caitlin McGurk for all of the tireless work that they did to make this festival a unique experience for a multitude of comics reading perspectives: academics professionals, aficionados, and new readers – the team’s work has created a unique experience that offers both depth and breadth. Incredible. Mad props to Sergio Aragonés, Carol Tyler who received the 2016 CXC Master Cartoonist awards for their lifetime work in comics – and Kevin Czapieski for their CXC Emerging Talent award. What a time to be alive in comics. Highlights for me: ⚡Locations – The Billy Ireland is heaven on earth. The Metropolitan Library is glorious. Spacious, open spaces that look out to the treetops. I was able to breath and stay calm even at the most stressful moments of my experience. ⚡Scheduling – Smooth as silk. Attendees had oodles to choose from. Little to no double booking that prevented people from seeing all that they wanted to see. ⚡Exhibitor selection – The selection ran wide and deep, in one room. Great curatorial choices on CXC’s part. ⚡Volunteer Assistance – Always on hand to assist with tech for presentations, to get materials, to cover for people’s tables, to direct around facilities… invaluable. I’d like to share some moments from our time in Columbus: View this post on Instagram Sacha Mardou presenting on composing long-form fiction at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum for CXC @cartoonlibrary @msmardou #cxc2016 A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 14, 2016 at 8:21am PDT View this post on Instagram Alyssa Berg led a great workshop for Comics Workbook at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus today! @aaalllyyysssssa #comicsworkbook #cxc2016 A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 15, 2016 at 4:07pm PDT View this post on Instagram Digging right in on day 4 of Cartoon Crossroads Columbus with Kurt Ankeny's Comics Workbook session @kurtankeny #cxc2016 #comicsworkbook A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 16, 2016 at 9:41am PDT View this post on Instagram LIVE at CXC!!! #comicsworkbook A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 15, 2016 at 10:14am PDT View this post on Instagram Charles Burns stopped by the table at CXC to dig through the long boxes #cxc2016 #charlesburns #comicsworkbook A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 15, 2016 at 11:25am PDT View this post on Instagram Thee great Chris Diaz doing what he does best. Follow @cad_pictures for inspiring photographs of America's finest cartoonists and comics makers. #comicsworkbook A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 16, 2016 at 11:26am PDT View this post on Instagram Spotlight on Sacha Mardou at CXC @msmardou #cxc2016 A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 15, 2016 at 10:53am PDT View this post on Instagram A few more moments from Cartoon Crossroads Columbus – all-star photographer Chris Anthony Diaz, kids drawing at the CW table, Juan Fernandez digging in with a workshop attendee, and Caitlin McGurk getting Sacha Mardou's comic for the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum @cad_pictures @juan.jose.fernandez @msmardou @cartoonlibrary #cxc2016 #comicsworkbook A post shared by Comics Workbook ⚡️ (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 16, 2016 at 10:14pm PDT ————————————————————————————————— On the home front here in Pittsburgh, we had the 6th Annual Pittsburgh Zine Fair which saw record attendance. I’m one of the organizers of the fair, so I was overjoyed to see photos of everyone’s days over on FB and Instagram. And when I heard that we had record breaking attendance of over 700 attendees? Well, my heart just skipped a beat. Print is alive and well here in Pittsburgh. I can’t wait to join up with the rest of the organizing committee: Christina Lee, Maggie Negrete and Raiona Gaydos to debrief and start plotting and scheming for the zine fair’s next adventure. I leave you with the view that I got, homeward bound from Columbus. Suffice to say I left with energized, ready to lean in and make some new work and teach my heart out. until next time, JF Share this page: [...]

06/07/2016

Posted on June 6, 2016June 6, 2016 by Aaron Cockle

Aaron Cockle with Oliver East Comics; C.A.K.E. 2016; Moholy-Nagy; Exercises in Style; 5,000 km per second; Peter Kuper; Vintage Vintage Contemporaries; AI DMCA

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CW’s Featured Comics continues this week with Oliver East’s Cottonopolis, from 2014-2015.

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Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE)
Saturday-Sunday, June 11-12, 2016, 11am–6pm
Center on Halsted, 3656 N Halsted, Chicago IL USA
FREE and open to the public!

Panels & Workshops

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László Moholy-Nagy at the Guggenheim

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Matt Madden on Exercises in Style

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Lauren Weinstein and Mike Dawson on Manuele Fior’s 5,000 km per second

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Peter Kuper Deconstructing Comics

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Vintage Vintage Contemporaries
For book art nerds, a look at the line of Vintage Contemporaries softcovers from the 1980’s-1990’s, cover designer Lorraine Louie, lots of books, author quotes, lots of process, over at the Talking Covers blog.

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Do Androids Dream of Androids Dreaming of Electric Sheep?
Last week, Warner Bros. issued a DMCA takedown notice to the video streaming website Vimeo. The notice concerned a pretty standard list of illegally uploaded files from media properties Warner owns the copyright to — including episodes of Friends and Pretty Little Liars, as well as two uploads featuring footage from the Ridley Scott movie Blade Runner. Just a routine example of copyright infringement, right? Not exactly. Warner Bros. had just made a fascinating mistake. Some of the Blade Runner footage — which Warner has since reinstated — wasn’t actually Blade Runner footage. Or, rather, it was, but not in any form the world had ever seen. Instead, it was part of a unique machine-learned encoding project, one that had attempted to reconstruct the classic Philip K. Dick android fable from a pile of disassembled data.
-via Aja Romano at Vox

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Aaron Cockle

Posted on June 6, 2016June 6, 2016

Explore

01/10/2018

Juan FernándezJanuary 10, 2018los Cómics / NewsJuan empieza el día con el Puchi Award 2018 y Paul Karasik & Mark Newgarden charlando sobre Nancy! ———————————————— Los cómics y las noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: ~ In English and en Español ~ Deadline reminder: Jan. 10th 201 – TODAY -. La Horchata Zine is accepting submissions from creators of Central American ancestry. New Deadline: submissions for Ink Brick no. 9 are due Monday, Feb 19, 2018! Do yourself a favor and submit your comics-poetry, won’t you? Belgian cartoonist and autobio-comics champion, David Libens, is starting to publish his current notebook online. His recent comics and zines have been coming from this notebook. There’s some really amazing autobiography in here. First take cartooning, grappling with depression, love and the nuisance that is the call of the void. Earnest, painful and funny. The First 12 pages are available here. Happy reading. La Casa Encendida y Fulgencio Pimentel siguen buscando un libro. La convocatoria de #PuchiAward 2018 está abierta a todo tipo de géneros y formas: ficción, no ficción, novela, poesía, cómic, álbum ilustrado, ensayo, libro de cocina, geografía… Hasta el 25 de enero. The Latino Comix Expo is coming to Brownsville, Texas! Exhibitors can apply for a table, fans can get their your tickets! Cynthia Alfonso and Óscar Raña have created a new video for Spanish Psych-pop band Dois – this comes via with their new experimental animation studio called RAPAPAWN. Check out the European Fuzzy Vector Goop Abstraction in action. Paul Karasik & Mark Newgarden talk on the Virtual Memories Show with Gil Roth about their glortious achievement – How to Read Nancy, a decade-long experiment in close comics reading and visual literacy. Listen here. ————————————————————————————————— Frank Santoro and Simon Hanselmann, CAB 2013 – photo by Chris Anthony Diaz, colored by Graham Willcox International Students: The Winter Semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers starts January 16th 2018! 8 weeks – 500 bux – coaching for as long as you need. The course is hard, but Frank will push your comics making practice to a new level, getting you to think about timing and color in new ways. His experience and ideas have influenced the likes of Connor Willumsen, Michael DeForge, and Simon Hanselmann (quote “I consider Frank Santoro to be my L. Ron Hubbard”) among many others. Dig into something new in the new year! Full details and how to apply can be found HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-10-2018 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-10-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/05/2017

Sally IngrahamOctober 4, 2017NewsAdam Griffiths with an intro to his Cartoon Crossroads Columbus 2017 notes, Sam Ombiri on work by Jason Lee, and more cool items found in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum! ————————————————————————————————— Adam Griffiths will be bringing us an extensive overview of Cartoon Crossroads Columbus 2017, starting later today. We offer a teaser now, in the form of his intro to what will be a 3-part series on the show. “A Comics Id is Tenderness : Notes on Cartoon Crossroads 2017 The first book I purchased on the expo floor at this year’s CXC was Kyle Baker’s. Earlier this year, I had seen Baker speak at the Schomburg Center in New York about his book, Nat Turner, to a roomful of kids. At the time, I had been struck by his ability to communicate; his engagement with the audience seemed intrinsically connected to his unabashed and explicitly mercantile use of language. Odd, how this seemed to captivate both his panel members and the audience, young and old. The persona of the salesman is an American motif – a motif that, under our current political climate, is being reduced to prideless status by the huckster in the Oval Office. When exactly did Americans need to believe that a good businessman’s success is dependent upon rhetorical violence and winner-take-all bullishness? I chose the term ‘A Comics Id is Tenderness’ for this write-up because Baker’s work revisited me several times during this expo. Over the course of the week, it became more and more clear to me that Baker has been a creator who has deftly championed the stories he feels are important to him alongside of his commercial work, who has kindly informed peers of his intentions, who brushes from shoulder the allegedly unforgivable concept of sacrificing creativity for financial gain.“ Wow. Adam’s report, like the show as a whole, is terrific. Look for the rest of the Part 1 later today, and parts 2/3 over the weekend/next week! ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: At SPX Jason Lee, whom I see here in Pittsburgh every now and then, kindly gave me an installment of a new series he’s doing called Pyramid Inch (which appears in Sporgo 2, above). The title creates the feeling of a sharp, piercing, and somewhat distantly fading force. The comic reeled me in – it’s an amazingly accommodating comic. It’s a relief to read something like this. For a comic this rough, so to speak, to actually be this structured (and to have a narrative that flows with such ease,) to emerge in a setting like SPX, is great. Especially with my expectation of what might entail when I get a mini comic in a setting seemingly informed by a redundant sense of design. (Not just at SPX, but in a good amount of mini comics I see.) These rough drawings also work specifically well for Pyramid Inch. I’m grateful that the drawings don’t oversell the decadence that’s implied when the story is something like this: a character living in L. A. working on some art installation for Vice. With a setting like that, it would seem to demand that the design of the cartooning be a bit more posh, a bit more trendy and poppy. It’s very good that it doesn’t, because – as is written on the cover “a millennial gothic” – the dark underbelly is more readily apparent, especially towards the end where the main character is having a conversation. To clarify, this dark underbelly isn’t what excited me most about the comic. It feels like a perfect marriage in this case, where the art raises awareness to what would be otherwise hidden in a setting like the one in the story. This setting, by the way, is very alive, and I can understand why the characters are affected in the way they are. What’s more satisfying is that the art style isn’t announcing itself (not that it’d be a bad thing if it did). For the direction this comic is headed though, it’s what feels most needed – for the art style to not keep announcing itself and telling me to see the darkness through it. While the conversation toward the end of the comic is magnificent on the author’s part, the two characters’ conversation did test my patience. I was thinking to myself, “My god how long is this conversation gonna go on for?” That’s not to say that the conversation didn’t serve any purpose, or that I didn’t enjoy being forced to sit through it. It did tug on my heartstrings quite a bit at a certain point. It just feels that if the scene was redrawn another way it could’ve yielded a horrible reading experience. What I’m saying is that there are drawings I’ve seen Jason do that are way better than what’s drawn here in this comic, but evidently he didn’t make the comic based on the best drawings he could do – he prioritized the story first, and it yields much better results. It’s a really comfortable comic to read through, but the drawings don’t make it too comfortable to the point where it becomes unbearable to read. It’s also a really funny book. In fact it’s so funny that it doesn’t have to shove a gag down my throat every other panel, to remind me how funny it can be, at the expense of the story. Jason has been putting these comics out as Laura Pallmall, which is a pretty funny name in the most subtle way, and it’s emblematic of the humor in the comic. It’s also emblematic of the tone too – by replacing Palmer with Pallmall it simultaneously evokes a gothic feeling, and the mall part speaks to the idea of a valley girl, but it’s Laura Palmer who is a “valley girl”. Jason sets this tone by saying this “valley girl” version of Laura Palmer wrote this book – this book with fantastic drawings, sequences, dialogue, and a well told story. – Sam Ombiri Get a copy of this comic HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Sally here – above is a comic I found at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum last weekend during CXC – it was part of the Tales From the Vault: 40 Years/ 40 Stories exhibit, which pulls especially interesting, groundbreaking, or controversial comics from a 250 year span of items in the museum’s collection. The comic above is a Luther strip, by Brumsic Brandon Jr., from 1973. Luther was launched the year after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (1969), and was one of the first nationally syndicated comic strips made by an African American creator that featured a black main character. The strip ran until 1986. Here’s a page of Krazy Kat, by the wondrous George Herriman, from 1943, also on view at the BICLM: ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-5-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie- 10-5-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/23/2018

Aaron CockleOctober 22, 2018NewsAnne Carson; Boiled Angels; Gabe Fowler; Mary Ann Caws ————————————————————————————————— “Flaubert Again” Anne Carson has a piece of fiction in the most recent New Yorker issue: Once, she and Martha had gone to Greece together, to an international writers’ conference. While they were there, she’d renounced writing. Instead, she made sketches in a sketchbook and titled it “The Glass of Water,” as if that were what everyone was looking for, a glass of water in Greece, not a different kind of novel or some not-stupid sentences. The sketches were a bit cartoonish but loving. We see the glass of water disappearing up the stairs with a Russian poet. Or gripped fast by a Turkish Cypriot novelist (who has poured it into two glasses). Or lost by a Spanish writer behind a mountain of toast at the breakfast table. She found toast difficult to draw convincingly, from a side view. Drawing the Peruvian poet, on the other hand, who claimed to have videotaped his llama drinking from the glass of water, was a joy, as she already knew how to draw llamas. ————————————————————————————————— Color Giants – Cinema Comix Expo 2018 The third year of the free Color Giants Expo moves (temporarily) away from animation to feature two events featuring iconic underground cartoonists. Nov. 10th at 7pm is the second-ever NYC screening of the 2018 feature documentary Boiled Angels: The Trial of Mike Diana directed by Frank Henenlotter (Basket Case). The titular Mike Diana (“Boiled Angel”)—the only artist in US history convicted of obscenity, whose legal battle is the subject matter of this important film—will be present for a Q&A with director Henenlotter. Nov. 11th at 8pm are new programs of occult-related films, with a live Q&A and tarot readings with cartoonist and witchcraft-enthusiast Dame Darcy (“Meat Cake”). Films will include works by Dame Darcy and Lisa Hammer, Zev Deans, H.R. Giger and more. Programmed by Kenneth Filmer as part of the Brooklyn Fire Proof Screening Series in association with Comic Arts Brooklyn and Robyn Chapman. Both programs are free. Address: Seltzer Room Studio 3 at 102 Ingraham St., Brooklyn, NY 11237. (Two blocks from L Train at Morgan Ave.) This program is for adults only, and no children will be admitted. ————————————————————————————————— ‘Do you keep up with the comics news–and what does the term “comics news” mean to you?’ Gabe Fowler is interviewed over at TCJ: What gets you most annoyed about comics right now? I try not to sustain annoyance. There’s a lot of regrettable beating-of-dead-horses in comics, and the horse-beaters need to grow a brain or get out of the way. Let me say this: if you look at comics history or comics present and are troubled by problematic material or problematic creators, THAT’S GOOD. When you spot a problem, that’s the world telling you it’s your turn to correct it. This is literally why I run a store. All the other stores were full of stale garbage, run by assholes, had no sense of style, and were always playing shitty music. I realized it was my duty to address these problems and try to find a better way. ————————————————————————————————— The Art of Interference: Stressed Readings in Verbal & Visual Texts I recently started reading this book, by Mary Ann Caws, published in 1989. Here’s a bit from the introduction: Marc Shell, in his Money, Language, and Thought, points out the limits of our institutions of philosophy and criticism, given our more than complex relation to economy, exchange, and coinage, particularly in America. Our money complex and our frequent refusal or incapacity to separate the interrelations of coin and paper, cash and symbol, investment and expenditure, are themselves bound up with our production of writing and our theatricalized productions of textual interpretation, with our reading and our perception of all the former. To expand on this thought, then, could we not imagine that what we institute in our thought and speech, and are likely to have instituted, is bound and limited, even as what we think we are defending nationally is the freedom of thinking and discoursing against what would bind and censor? ————————————————————————————————— 10-23-2018 by Niall Breen ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 10-23-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

11/18/2016

Sally IngrahamNovember 18, 2016NewsSally here with comics from Jessica Campbell and Gabriella Tito, interviews with Keiler Roberts and Roz Chast, a look at the book Black Women in Sequence, Mardou on Clowes, a moment with Frank Santoro, and the Winter Correspondence Course details. ————————————————————————————————— I was startled to discover an illustration by The New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast on the cover of Birding, the monthly magazine published by the American Birding Association, of which I am a member. Although I often think about the parallels between the two worlds that I stand with feet planted in, this was an amusing direct collision. Roz Chast, like many cartoonists , prefers to spend her time safely indoors with her two pet birds – but has also been coaxed as far as the Pantanal to check out Jabirus, Hyacinth Macaws, caracaras, Wattled Jacanas, toucans, and wild parakeets. Her parents had parakeets when Roz was a girl, and ever since then birds have been part of her life, and often pop up in her work (her two children’s books feature a red parrot named Marco, modeled after a bird she owned in real-life). One of her famous cartoons features a very classic New Yorker pigeon: I grew up in “the birding world”, paling around with my Dad on birding trips and to festivals where bird enthusiasts flocked, much like a comic con. I still go searching for odd birds in interesting corners of the world, and now I make comics about that, because as Roz Chast put it so well: “Birds are fun to draw and interesting to think about. I think they’re a lot smarter and more verbal than other animals. They’re like us in some ways. … I’m 100% sure birds talk to one another. I would guess it’s mostly gossip.” I agree, Roz! I’d direct you to the full interview, but you have to be an ABA member to see the online article (you can join HERE if you’re interested in letting your bird-nerd flag fly.) Check out more of Roz Chast’s work HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Jessica Campbell has a comic on The Nib, and as usual I find her work extremely relatable… Read the rest HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I picked this book up while at work at Copacetic Comics yesterday, and spent some time digging into this essential, important discussion of race, feminism, exoticism, and the social development of the comics community. Recently published by the University of Washington Press, it finds a balance between scholarly text and lively investigation – and has plenty of pictures of rare and unusual comics. (Right off the bat I learned that the very first black superheroine was The Butterfly, who debuted in Hell-Rider #1 in August 1971 – there’s a full write-up about this comic HERE for those interested.) The author of Black Women in Sequence – Deborah Elizabeth Whaley – is an Associate Professor of American Studies and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. She has been studying how mass media reflects and shapes culture for her entire career. This book started out as an article about the representation of Catwoman over the years, but a brief search through the writing on women in comics revealed that there was NO writing to speak of about Black women in comics as producers, readers, and characters. Whaley quickly, thoroughly fixed that, and there is information in this book that until now has been almost impossible to find. “I tried to read every comic book, comic strip, and graphic novel with Black female characters. This meant reaching back to the 1930s. I went through a lot of Black and mainstream newspapers from the 1930s to the 1990s and tried to find storylines in comic strips that addressed larger issues in culture, especially concerning politics, nation-making, gender, class, race, and sexuality. I approached as many Black women writers and artists doing comics that I could find to conduct interviews. I worked to make connections between the print representations and representations in film, video games, and anime. I of course had to read as many secondary sources as possible, address all relevant historical contexts, and did research on the background of artists and writers and other things they were involved in like civil rights and the Communist Party. For one of the artists and writers I write about I had to obtain and then read her 250-page FBI file.” – Dr. Whaley There’s an interview with her about the book on Sequart that gets into her research process and her hopes for the work, as well as her next project. Check it out HERE. I’ll be continuing to read the book over the next few weeks and will report back on what I find! ————————————————————————————————— Rob Clough interviewed Keiler Roberts for The Comics Journal. “Roberts is also a keen observer of character dynamics and the humor of awkwardness, as a hilarious strip about a trip to a day spa that involves comparing bodies with a friend demonstrates. Roberts writes a lot about social anxiety and the ways in which she copes with the world, but her strong storytelling and character focus prevents it from being didactic. Her stories are little bursts of truth that trust the reader to make connections, and even the most emotionally wrought situations are tapped for their humor. She won an Ignatz award for Outstanding Series at SPX 2016, a couple of years after she drew strips in which she discussed her dread in potentially attending the show. She addressed all of these topics and many more in this interview…“ Read the interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Frank Santoro gave a talk at the ToonSeum last night as part of the Pittsburgh Comic Salon’s monthly lecture series. The clip below catches him speaking about his comic Kora. ————————————————————————————————— There are always decent comics over on VICE – Leslie Stein is running diary comics there right now, while Dame Darcy‘s Ghost Castle series continues, and Anna Haifisch has at least Three Jolly Autumn Strips. ————————————————————————————————— Sacha Mardou has a feature here on Comics Workbook this week – an essay On Being a Woman in the Manly World of Daniel Clowes. She really digs in, exploring her own relationship with the characters in Clowes’ work as much as the the topic of her piece. “What is going on here? The women get more choices than Clowes’s men. From Clay Loudermilk to Daniel Pussey to David Boring the men inhabit this spectrum of sad indignities like Fate’s blind somnambulists. The women are operating on a more awakened level I think. Dan Clowes writes women so damn well that they overshadow the men they deal with on every page that they interact together. Why is this so? Is it because of feminism? Post modernism? Punk rock? What’s driving this?“ Read the rest HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Comics Workbook has announced the Winter Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers – course starts Dec. 29th 2016! 10 spots available – apply by Dec. 13th 2016 and get $100 of course fee! Email santoroschoolATgmail for more details. Santoro School Application guidelines: -3 figure drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards -3 landscape drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards -3 still life drawings done on blank 3 x 5 cards -draw in a contour line style – Think Matisse – no under-drawing – draw directly in ink -just send small jpgs of images – dont post to your blog pls -specific url links to any comics work you have done. Send applications to: santoroschoolATgmail ————————————————————————————————— Connor Willumsen is selling the original pages from his Punisher story – check them out here. ————————————————————————————————— Inspired by a story that originates with Bill Boichel and Frank Santoro, Gabriella Tito and I have been drawing Suzy & Cecil strips this week. #suzyandcecil #comicsworkbook A photo posted by Gabriella Tito (@gabriella.tito) on Nov 15, 2016 at 1:02pm PST #suzyandcecil #fairvale #comicsworkbook A photo posted by Sally Ingraham (@sally_ingraham) on Nov 17, 2016 at 1:53pm PST Keep an eye on us via Instagram for more strips in the coming weeks – @sally_ingraham and @gabriella.tito! ————————————————————————————————— Have a great weekend folks! – Sally Share this page: [...]

Comics Workbook Workshops at SPX 2019

Juan FernándezAugust 19, 2019Festivals and Shows / NewsJoin Juan Fernandez and the Comics Workbook gang for a series of workshops featuring hands-on instruction from some of the most talented makers of independent comics. All workshops will held in the Glen Echo and Oakley rooms downstairs at the Marriott Hotel. Please consult the workshop schedule and sign up in advance to insure a spot. Walk-ins will be welcome, however, space permitting. (Curious about this years panels? Check out the rest of the fantastic programming available at SPX this year.) SIGN UP HERE FOR ANY OF THE SPX 2019 COMICS WORKBOOK WORKSHOPS. SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 14 11:00 – 12:00 pm Glen Echo Room Take a crash course in comics making – for kids big and small. We will bring the grids, the markers, the know-how – you bring your personal spark. Discover the comics-maker within you and let them out! Join Richie Pope for an easy foray into comics making – the perfect thing to start a weekend at SPX! All ages. 12:00 – 1:00 pm Glen Echo Room Join Jessica Abel and design your days with clarity and purpose, so the things that get done are what you care about most. Figure out where your time really goes, and use that information to create an action plan for your week built around your current reality, not some fantasy version of your life. Make smart, conscious decisions about your time, and take control of your creative life. 1:00 – 2:00 pm Glen Echo Room Learn how to make miniature clay cakes with Sweet Success & Sweet Competition author/sculptor Liz Reed. Attendees will create their very own unique clay character as Liz guides the class through different sculpting techniques using everyday household items. 2:00 – 3:00 pm Glen Echo Room Loglines aren’t just for screenwriters. If you’ve ever put together a pitch for a publisher or just needed 1-2 sentences for a Kickstarter project description, knowing how to communicate your story in a concise and effective way is essential for any comics creator. Led by Kickstarter’s Comics Outreach Lead Camilla Zhang, this workshop will help you craft a compelling logline or refine one you already have in the works. If you have a pitch you’d like to workshop, please bring up to 20 copies. 3:00 – 4:00 pm Glen Echo Room Tom Hart, the founder of The Sequential Artist’s Workshop (SAW), will help you with your storytelling flow! Feeling stuck? Tense? Like you can’t figure out which way to turn? Not sure which idea to build on or how to tell a good idea from a bad? Do you feel overwhelmed or underwhelmed by your own ideas? Loosen up and follow your story ideas from beginning to end in this workshop. Daydreaming, not drawing skill, is necessary. 4:00 – 5:00 pm Glen Echo Room Rachel Masilamani will lead a workshop for people who draw and people who don’t think that they can draw of all ages. We’ll work on shaping stories together. What comes first? What comes second, and how can we tie it all together? 5:00 – 6:00 pm Glen Echo Room Join cartoonist Fifi Martinez to learn how to explore how we can capture and share the emotional essence of what our subjective lives feel like in real time through comics. Using drawing, writing, diagramming and the collage-like capacity of comics, attendees will experience what it is like to keep a comics diary and how their comics can be used for reflection, meditation, and healing. 6:00 – 7:00 pm Glen Echo Room Emil Friis Ernst takes you through the basics of spatial design to boost your visual vocabulary with a third dimension. In this workshop, you will learn how to put characters in perspective easily, use the space around a character to tell a story, and use the third dimension to make poetry. SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 15 12:00 – 1:00 pm Oakley Room The ability to draw is a basic human ability, and sequential images are prevalent across human history. This fundamental aspect of human expression yields several important questions, such as how are such individual and sequential images structured, and how do people process and comprehend them? Join Juan Fernandez to learn how Visual Language Theory offers a framework to answer these questions and how principles and methods of the linguistic and cognitive sciences can enrich and expand our ability to make, read, and teach comics. 1:00 – 2:00 pm Oakley Room Estate Planning, Preventative Care, and Health and Wellness: these often neglected issues can up have huge impacts on the lives of cartoonists and those around them if not considered early on in life. Join Carol Tyler for an intergenerational community discussion on how we can create a better world for cartoonists to work and live. 2:00 – 3:00 pm Oakley Room In this workshop, you will work with NPR’s Malaka Gharib, the author of I WAS THEIR AMERICAN DREAM: A Graphic Memoir, on using the mini-zine format to explore your personal histories. In a brief presentation, she will discuss the power of mini zines in inspiring artists to make short and completable creative projects that are perfectly sharable in the Instagram age. Using deliberate questions aimed to have participants reflect on their own personal immigration stories, participants will create their own zine. This workshop is intended for anyone with an immigrant story to share, and all are welcome! At the workshop, we hope you will be able to complete one mini zine using a template or your own design. 3:00 – 4:00 pm Oakley Room Cartoonists can work in many different ways, shared studios, solo studios, and from home, each of which are conducive to very different kinds of work. Join Aimée De Jongh & Kenny Rubinis to discuss the art and craft of the cartoonist’s workspace. Among the topics covered will be the advantages and disadvantages of each kind of workspace. 4:00 – 5:00 pm Oakley Room Kickstarter may be the place to expose your comics project to a wider audience, but the secret to crowdfunding will always lie in the crowd! Build your community building muscle and learn some outreach tips and tricks at this fun workshop, where you can make new connections and reaffirm old ones. This session will be led by Kickstarter’s Comics Outreach Lead, Camilla Zhang. 5:00 – 6:00 pm Oakley Room Comics language and cinematic language are two distinct, yet related visual dialects. Each offers unique advantages in creating engaging experiences for audiences. We’ll dive in and dissect the work of a few specific animation designers as we broadly discuss composition and sequential storytelling tools as they might pertain to all visual storytelling media, focusing on emotion, engagement, charm, and clarity. Bring a sketchbook to record your visual thoughts as we take a deep dive into some tools that might help broaden your approach to storytelling. Check out the rest of the fantastic programming available at SPX this year – HERE! SIGN UP HERE FOR ANY OF THE SPX 2019 COMICS WORKBOOK WORKSHOPS. Share this page: [...]

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