Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in los Cómics, NewsTagged caleb orecchio, Frank Santoro, gabriella tito

Juan Fernández

Posted on June 21, 2017June 22, 2017

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Frank’s Comics Corner #2 – John Byrne’s Fantastic 4

Comics WorkbookFebruary 16, 2017EssaysFrank Santoro on John Byrne’s Fantastic 4 – 2-10-2017 Share this page: [...]

03/31/2017

Sally IngrahamMarch 30, 2017NewsSally here to finish the week with work by Keiler Roberts, Emma Rios, Julie Doucet, Nicole Burton, and more! ————————————————————————————————— Heidi MacDonald of The Comics Beat gives a shout-out to Keiler Roberts on the “Year of Free Comics” feature. Keiler’s Powdered Milk (above) is an ongoing autobiographical web comic that has been winning awards and garnering praise recently. You can read it HERE. Keiler’s book Sunburning will be coming out from Koyama Press this May – keep an eye out for it. ————————————————————————————————— There is a nice write up and interview with Emma Ríos on ComicsVerse. Emma’s recent work includes Mirror with Hwei Lim and Pretty Deadly with Kelly Sue DeConnick . She got her start in Spain self-publishing fanzines and the comic series APB: a prueba de balas (Bulletproof) before debuting in the States with Hexed for Boom! Studios and a few Marvel projects. She says that she learned how to read by reading comics, so this is a life-long passion. Early influences and loves were Roy Thomas and Buscema’s Conan, and New Mutants by Claremont and Sienkiewicz. Then Akira came along and blew her mind. The interview quickly veers toward the discussion of “being a women in comics” and Emma shares her optimism for the scene. “The main challenge is being continuously branded, I think. For better or worse. Talking more about being a woman than about the work you actually produce. Experience has probably made me quite paranoid, but I feel there are continuous attempts at stealing the concept of “feminism” from us, from a marketing point of view. So it is difficult to distinguish when you’re going to be exposed in a zoo, from when your perspective is going to be celebrated in terms of representation and fairness. In any case, I feel the debate got a lot better in the past three years, and yep, I see more celebration of women in comics. Especially regarding sisterhood and collective support. Gathering together makes us stronger and helps a lot in terms of acceptance. In Spain we do have an Association of Women in Comics, a collective I feel very proud to belong to. Aside from trying to recover and promote pioneers, nobody seemed to remember, with an honorific prize every year, and organizing exhibitions and events, it totally feels like a girl gang to me and a safe space.“ Emma also worked on Island with Brandon Graham, hates digital coloring, and was an architect until 2007 when she switched to comics full time. Read the rest of the interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I discovered Nicole Marie Burton this week. She is a cartoonist and Publisher at Ad Astra Comix, which specializes in comics that have a social justice theme. The Comics Beat listed her piece Eugenie Shark (above) in their “A Year of Free Comics” feature – you can read about it HERE and see the whole thing (which ran as an exclusive feature on The Mary Sue in 2015) HERE. Nicole is currently re-working and re-coloring a 2nd edition of this work, which Ad Astra will publish soon. Nicole founded Ad Astra Comix in 2013 and has used the platform to promote social justice topics, publish comics, teach workshops, and build community. Learn more HERE and help support her work. ————————————————————————————————— Andalusia Knoll Soloff came into Copacetic Comics, in Pittsburgh, PA, yesterday with a copy of the first chapter of the graphic novel she is making, along with a team of artists (Xavier Corro, Avril Lopez, Anabel Aguirre, and Adriana Ronquillo – with editor Anahi Hernandez). The comic is about the Ayotzinapa 43 – a group of students who were kidnapped on Sept. 26th, 2014 by the Mexican government from a teachers college in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. The comic shares the story of the parents’ continuing search to find their sons. Andalusia, who lived in Pittsburgh 15 years ago, was back in the city briefly, and gave a presentation on the comic this week. She has been printing and distributing it herself but is now looking for a publisher who can help her broadcast the story further. You can learn more about the project HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I have been doing a little research on Julie Doucet, and spent some time letting Google Translate help me navigate her website. She is one of only a handful of female comics creators from the 80’s who has continued to make work – although she doesn’t call her current work comics. Her first comic (below) was made in 1983 when she was 17. Although Drawn & Quarterly published her Dirty Plotte series and a number of other international publishers have picked up her work, she has always self-published as well and pushed herself to experiment. She started her own publishing house in 2013 – Le Pantalitaire (The Pants) – where she exclusively publishes her own work. She was born in Montreal, and aside from time spent in New York City and Berlin, has lived there for most of her life. See more of her current work HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Apples and Cheese Kristen Gudsnuk talks about her series Henchgirl on Paste Magazine – the interview is HERE. Françoise Mouly has put out the call for submissions for RESIST! Vol. 2 – HERE. The theme is “Grab Back!” and the deadline is Friday, April 21st 2017 at 11:59 pm EST. Check out the Valkyries, a community of women working in comic book stores around the world – here’s a write up about them on SyFyWire. I enjoyed this creator profile of Carol Swain written by Paul Gravett. Carol is one of my favorite cartoonists, whose book Gast is one I come back to all the time and force all my friends to read. I was trying to find out if she is working on anything new these days, but was not successful. I guess I’ll just have to track down old issues of her Way Out Strips (published periodically from 1988 to 1994) to tide myself over… Alison Bechdel will be Vermont’s next Cartoonists Laureate – details here. Torch passes on April 6th 2017! The Comic Book Decalogue speaks to Maggie Umber for Episode 18 – HERE. Check out Pénélope Bagieu‘s Les Culottes HERE – comic portraits of numerous interesting women (be sure to check out her piece on Tove Jansson). Although the webcomic has been released in “album” form, it’s all in French, so the English-speakers among us will have to patient awhile longer… ————————————————————————————————— Gloria Rivera (above right) was just in Pittsburgh for a week for a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency. A cartoonist and painter from the Los Angeles area, she managed to bring some of that warm weather – and a whole lot of comics-making energy – to Pittsburgh with her. She finished a project while she was here, helped plot some CW Roller Derby League stuff, and picked Frank’s brain regarding comics history and publication. We’ll hear her own take on her residency next week. Stay tuned! If you’re curious about the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency, please email santoroschool@gmail.com and follow @rowhouseresidency on Instagram. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 3-31-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-31-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-31-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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: [...]

11/08/2018

Comics WorkbookNovember 7, 2018NewsSam Ombiri on Men’s Group The Video by Ben Jones ————————————————————————————————— I find I am often longing for a great comic. This longing has the feeling of a hole with a specific shape that only allows a corresponding shape to fit in. I suppose there’s no sense in wondering why I want to read a good comic; I mean I don’t want to read a bad comic as far as I know, although I don’t mind reading a bad one. There’s a lingering dissatisfaction that often comes from reading good work, taking it for granted how good the work is, and then moving on to the next good work to take for granted. There’s something rather depressing about it. It seems to me that Ben Jones’ work is often consumed along in this manner. It’s apparent when I run into a knock off of Ben Jones’ or Paper Rad’s work that it’s being done by someone who totally missed the mysterious and vague point of Ben Jones’ work. Which to be fair seems mysterious even to him. In an interview in his book, Men’s Group The Video, Ben Jones says “I don’t get Gumby. You can’t say he’s well animated. I didn’t even watch Gumby all that much as a kid. I’m not trying to call back to some 1970s nostalgia. I’m not using characters for their pop iconographic value. I’m using them as language.” He later says “I’m trying to use Gumby for what Gumby was intended for…” to which he adds “I’m deadly serious about my characters. I don’t mean this as a joke: I feel like Shakespeare, and I’m using star-crossed lovers. I’m very much interested in my characters as much as Shakespeare was interesting in using cheesy things like lovers and kings to tell interesting stories.” Men’s Group The Video benefits by not being jam packed with a lot of comics. This allows the comics to be more closely examined by the preceding text casually asking questions about the comics. In the case of Gumby, Ben finds himself optimizing what Gumby’s presence in Ben Jones’ work represents or invokes or communicates. There’s an interview where Kevin Huizenga says “Ben Jones has always been really inspiring to me, I think it’s because- this sounds stupid- he is very creative. He just comes up with amazing things. His work is unified in a strange way, too. It’s hard to explain. The way he’ll just draw a comic about muppet babies as if it’s no big deal and they’ll be rapping or something. It’ll be really funny but beautiful and scary too.” Men’s Group The Video is packed with what appear to be, metaphorically speaking, a magnifying glass to what Ben Jones is doing with the comics language (as well as other mediums). He has created this mythology of this collective called Men’s Group The Video that in a certain sense exists. The idea or the impression of the existence of the collective is used as a language of sorts to communicate a certain feeling Ben Jones is trying to get at. It also allows him raise new questions in this mode of communicating. Some “members” of this collective write essays, some, like the painter Joe Bradley, write poetry. Some “members” like Dan Nadel interview Ben Jones. Reading these texts are important in relation to the comics, because while the comics are immensely strong on their own, the comics are even more so felt with a certain depth. They also give loads of clarity, and somehow create more mystery simultaneously to the comics and art Ben did in Men’s Group The Video and the work he did with Jessica and Jacob Ciocci in the past. Ben’s work often seems to be about solving the mystery of him drawing what he did at the time that he did it. Ordinarily with most other comics, it would seem goofy to question the drawings in this way. It seems fitting to ask the question despite the goofy nature of the question, but the ingrained nature of what he’s drawing is goofiness. Ben doesn’t have a big answer to this question he just keeps circling it with more art and comics that don’t cease to be compelling. ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 11-8-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/31/2017

Aaron CockleOctober 30, 2017NewsAaron here today with Schneemann; Walker; Ernst; Reinhardt; Short Run 2017 ————————————————————————————————— Interior Scroll Here’s something from the Kinetic Painting show at MoMA PS1 (via PS1’s Instagram): While we can’t show you the photo documentation of Carolee Schneemann’s iconic performance work, “Interior Scroll,” on Instagram, above is a portion of the scroll itself on view in our new exhibition “Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting.” From the second of only two performances of the piece in 1977, the scroll reads: I don’t take the advice of men who talk only to themselves PAY ATTENTION TO CRITICAL AND PRACTICAL FILM LANGUAGE IT EXISTS FOR AND IN ONLY ONE GENDER These powerful reflections were a response to a screening at the Telluride Film Festival, where Schneemann’s films “Fuses” and “Plumb Line” were included in a program entitled “The Erotic Woman.” Schneemann objected to the program for being proscribed by the male imagination, and having a contradictory effect to the films themselves. Explore more documentation of “Interior Scroll” and other seminal performances by Carolee Schneemann in her retrospective #KineticPainting on view through March 11. ————————————————————————————————— ‘She said she was thinking of Thomas Eakins’s surgical theater paintings as she was also imagining house slaves disemboweling their master with a soup ladle.’ At the New York Review, Darryl Pinckney looks at the recently closed Kara Walker exhibit, Kara Walker: Sikkema Jenkins and Co. is Compelled to present The most Astounding and Important Painting show of the fall Art Show viewing season! I sometimes find myself remembering the great Sphinx of white sugar that Kara Walker built three years ago in an unused, emptied-out sugar refinery in Brooklyn along the East River: A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant. The refinery was enormous, the walls streaked with sugar. In the distance, the large figure of a Mammy rested in her Egyptian pose, a bandana on her head. The small basket-carrying boys made of dark red molasses who attended her were melting in the summer heat, folding over onto the floor. The large and roving crowd was quiet, as if under a spell. People took photographs of themselves standing between her creamy-looking arms. ————————————————————————————————— Max Ernst: Beyond Painting, Museum of Modern Art, NYC, through January 1, 2018 This exhibition surveys the career of the preeminent Dada and Surrealist artist Max Ernst (French and American, born Germany, 1891–1976), with particular emphasis on his ceaseless experimentation. Ernst began his pursuit of radical new techniques that went “beyond painting” to articulate the irrational and unexplainable in the wake of World War I, continuing through the advent and aftermath of World War II. Featuring approximately 100 works drawn from the Museum’s collection, the exhibition includes paintings that challenged material and compositional conventions; collages and overpaintings utilizing found printed reproductions; frottages (rubbings); illustrated books and collage novels; sculptures of painted stone and bronze; and prints made using a range of techniques. Several major, multipart projects represent key moments in Ernst’s long career, ranging from early Dada and Surrealist portfolios of the late 1910s and 1920s to his late masterpiece—a recent acquisition to MoMA’s collection—65 Maximiliana or the Illegal Practice of Astronomy (1964). This illustrated book comprises 34 aquatints complemented by imaginative typographic designs and a secret hieroglyphic script of the artist’s own invention. From MoMA’s Instagram: Max Ernst’s love of puns was likely fostered by Sigmund Freud’s book “Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.” Here, the Dada artist overpainted a page from a sales catalogue showing women’s hats printed in an orderly grid. Ernst added more cut-and-pasted hats to make the phallic tower at the left. This visual pun relates to Freud’s identification of the hat—the requisite accessory of the bourgeois man—as a common symbol of repressed desire, adding new meaning and gender ambiguity to the cliché inscribed on the work, “C’est le chapeau qui fait l’homme” (“The hat makes the man”). ————————————————————————————————— ‘A lot of the best horror movies give you the sense that the movie you’re watching is itself somehow evil.’ Today (Tuesday, October 31, 2017) is Halloween, and what better way to celebrate than looking back at Simon Reinhardt’s reviews of horror movies from this past month. Reinhardt reviews some classics (TBOF, seen below; The Fog) as well as some rarities and gems (Kuroneko; Beyond the Darkness) and newer works (Prevenge; Butter on the Latch). Take a look, maybe your favorite horror movie was reviewed. ————————————————————————————————— SHORT RUN 2017, Saturday, November 4, 2017 ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-31-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 10-31-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 10-31-2017 – by Juan Fernandez [1][2] Share this page: [...]

06/21/2017

Posted on June 21, 2017June 22, 2017 by Juan Fernández

Empezamos el día conFebrero para galgos de Peter Jojaio; Frank Santoro en vivo;Pati Aguilera e Isabel Molina; Galería Plop!; Álvaro Pons; y los tebeos de Comics Workbook!
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Peter Jojaio: La Violencia de lo Sublime

Elizabeth Casillas comparte sus impresiones sobre una de las mejores sorpresas que nos ha llevado este año: Febrero para galgos de Peter Jojaio en Revista Cactus:

Febrero para galgos es una obra sublime porque implica dolor, porque se aleja de la complacencia o el agrado y entra a formar parte de ese otro círculo que conforman las obras que nos enseñan la decadencia de la sociedad –sin atisbo de humor, sin redención– y en el que podríamos englobar algunos relatos de Adrian Tomine, como el devastador Búhos de Intrusos (Sapristi, 2016), o ese compendio de dolor que es Beverly de Nick Drnaso (Fulgencio Pimentel, 2016). De hecho, lo primero que uno tiende a pensar al terminar esta novela gráfica es que no ha podido hacerse aquí, en España. Por lo arriesgado de la propuesta, por su estilo. Aquí es cuando salen a relucir los referentes del autor, porque más allá de los evidentes –como Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware o Charles Burns–, surgen nombres de disciplinas variadas. «Intentaba usar como buenamente podía todo aquello que iba viendo y me gustaba: de Aki Kaurismäki, el tipo de intensidad que alcanza a través de un lenguaje y un humor frío y áspero. De Jean Pierre Melville, cómo hace que los actores se muevan como piezas de un reloj, cómo explica los personajes y el mundo en el que viven a través de la acción, sin apenas recurrir al diálogo. El uso de la perspectiva en las pinturas del gótico. Leer Hijo de la ira de Jim Thompson y El señor de las moscas me dio algunas ideas de base. Los cuadros de Paula Rego, James Ensor, Caspar David Friedrich», enumera Jojaio.

Léanlo AQUI.

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RiYL Episode 219: Frank Santoro
Our fearless leader, Frank Santoro speaks up in the latest edition of RiYLcast with Brian Heater. They met up at the Row House Residency in Swissvale, PA for a rich, cafe style discussion: Pittsburgh comics, regionalism, self-publishing and the long shadow of Andy Warhol – it’s all there.
Póngale play!

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Cómics y noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana:

Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo tienen una nueva edicion de La Polola Podcast! Las chicas conversan con Pati Aguilera e Isabel Molina, ilustradora y periodista, además de ser el elemento femenino de Galería Plop!. Hablan acerca de la historia de la Galería, sus aventuras, proyecciones, momentos altos, y momentos complicados.
Plop! Galéria ha compartido un trozito de la exposición Casa Ajena, de Mathias Sielfeld, Nico González, Matías Prado y Pablo Luebert. Denle un vistazo.
La fanzinoteca del Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM) calienta motores con una exposición con los fondos de Álvaro Pons.
Al igual que ocurre con nuestras parejas de baile, en los contratos también debemos elegir bien a quien concedemos nuestra obra. Ceder o no ceder en exclusiva? Esa es la cuestión de la que hablan hoy en el post, ¿Me concedes esta obra? en firmado por.

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Suzy and Cecil – 6-21-2017 – by Gabriella Tito

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Joanie and Jordie – 6-21-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in los Cómics, NewsTagged caleb orecchio, Frank Santoro, gabriella tito

Juan Fernández

Posted on June 21, 2017June 22, 2017

Explore

11/30/2016

Juan FernándezNovember 30, 2016los Cómics / NewsJuan con un poquito sobre The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey; GRAF Madrid documentado; Fotos de la Muestra colectiva: Ciudades Imaginadas; Berliac’s TANGRAM; Suzy y Cecil. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Pittsburgh, PA – The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey La gran Vanesa R. Del Rey le ha dado permiso a Comics Workbook para publicar unas selecciónes de sus cuadernos de bocetos. Hemos diseñado esta publicación para que parezca uno de esos libros de de artistas los años 80. El texto es una transcripción de la entrevista que hicimos con Vanesa cuando visito la Residencia Rowhouse en 2016. Vanesa es un artista impresionante y inigualable, quien estudió con George Pratt y quien a dibujado con Grant Morrison. Estamos ofreciendo compras adelantadas a un precio reducido. Sigan a Vanesa por Instagram – @vrdelrey – y http://vrdelrey.com/ ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Madrid, España – GRAF en Video #GRAFMADRID2016 resumido en este vídeo de @MIIS3RIIA con música de @afeite_al_perro y @golondrinamente. Si quieres ver lo que la proxima si quieres ver lo que la próxima edición del gráfico Madrid os ofrecerá no te pierdas los vídeos que GRAF grabo hace unos meses en Barcelona (y más). Estan todos en su Youtube! ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Rosario, Argentina – Fotos de la Muestra colectiva: Ciudades Imaginadas. Festival Furioso a compartido sus fotos de la Inauguración del festival, muestra colectiva ciudades imaginadas a cargo de: Feli Pablo, Bruno Crispino, Estefania Clotti, Guardabosques y Juan Vegetal y presentación de la Editorial Furiosa 8/11 Ph: Paganini Conforti. Dale un vistazo! ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Berlin, Germany – Berliac’s TANGRAM is now for sale! los detalles: 16 pages 29,7 x 21 cm (A4) Duotone Risograph on newsprint Published by FOSFATINA (Spain) 6€ BUY IT HERE: http://berliac.tictail.com/product/tangram ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Comics Workbook ha anunciado el semestre de invierno del Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers – el curso empieza Dec. 29th 2016! Curso de 8 semanas – 500 dolares – 10 estudiantes – presentate para el curso antes del Dec. 13th 2016 y recibiras un descuento de $100! Email santoroschoolATgmail for more details. Direcciones para la Solicitud de Ingreso al Santoro School : -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. Manda tus solicitudes a: santoroschoolATgmail ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Pittsburgh, PA – El comienzo de Suzy y Cecil Suzy y Cecil es una tira diaria, creada por varias estudiantes de Comics Workbook. Pueden seguir sus aventuras y su amistad en instagram: @Suzy_and_Cecil. ————————————————————————————————— hasta la proxima! Share this page: [...]

05/27/2016

Sally IngrahamMay 27, 2016NewsSally here with new stuff from Sacha Mardou, wise and funny words from Dan Nadel and Alexi Worth, clowns with Nils Balls, and a Philadelphia walkabout from Meghan Turbitt. ————————————————————————————————— Sacha Mardou has a double hit today on our news, with a comic she made for The Common Reader (a publication of Washington University in St. Louis) and a review she wrote for Comics Workbook. First up, Sacha’s review of The Complete Wimmen’s Comix is a rumination on an important and challenging anthology, recently collected into a two volume set by Fantagraphics. “Reading the two-volume release of The Complete Wimmen’s Comix made me think about those sort of cultural assumptions and blank spots. The first volume in particular feels like a powerful raw gust of real comics history. … Another aspect that occurs to me is that volume one is essentially my mother’s generation making those comics (I was born in ’75) which makes the lack of respect for cultural niceties and cartooning norms seem even more punk rock and revelatory, as well as being somewhat nostalgic. It reminds me of looking though my aunt’s closet in the early 1980’s and finding all her old platform shoes and boots. My childish trespassing got me yelled at after the event, but I’m glad to own that childhood memory of trying on and walking around in those beautiful and weird, too-big-for-me ‘space’ shoes.” Read the rest of Sacha’s review HERE. For a different look at The Complete Wimmen’s Comix, check out this in-depth review by Alex Duebin on The Comic’s Journal from March 2016. Well, I say “review”, but it includes conversations conducted via phone, skype, google chat, and e-mail over a period of a year or so with many of the women who made comics for the anthology – a true “oral history”, well worth a gander. ————————————————————————————————— Sacha Mardou’s comic for The Common Reader (above) was published in “The Aging Issue”. It feels very, very real somehow…! ————————————————————————————————— Art in America published a followup to Dan Nadel‘s killer essay on Paper Radio recently. It’s a conversation between Dan, Alexi Worth (who wrote an article in January for A.i.A about Jack Kirby’s superhero art) and A.i.A‘s editor Julia Wolkoff. They dig into the complexities of comics, and more specifically, the intentional and accidental wonders that appeared under a culture of crushing deadlines. As Alexi Worth describes: “The earlier comics artists were, for the most part, pencil serfs. Kirby began as an inbetweener for film, and much of the work he produced early on wasn’t credited at all. But there was something productive and interesting about the lack of art expectations. Kirby was reflexively creative. And his creativity was, somehow, enabled by the ruinous deadlines and enormous production demands of the industry. At one point he was pretty much drawing all of Marvel himself—one guy. Instead of making him more of a hack, it made him more of an artist.“ Dan Nadel breaks out some more stories about the Paper Radio guys – Benjamin Jones and Christopher Forgues, or CF – whom he continues to call “the two most important cartoonists of their generation.” “One famous story: they sent Gary Panter, who was their artist spirit-god, one of their early zines that was baked in chocolate. Gary thought it was LSD and immediately threw it away. It’s one of the only copies of that work they made.“ It’s good stuff – check out the whole discussion HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Nils Balls is staying on top of the Pittsburgh City Council with his comic reports for The Glassblock – see above and more HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Meghan Turbitt released her Philadelphia Sketchbook this week! Developed for Comics Workbook between 2015-2016, it features full-color sketches of her varied adventures and the details that caught her eye around the city during that period. Get a glimpse at more pages here, and a copy for yourself HERE! ————————————————————————————————— See you knocking round the universe next week folks! Cheers – Sally Share this page: [...]

05/02/2018

Juan FernándezMay 2, 2018los Cómics / News Marcela Trujillo, Power Paola, Elisa McCausland, Autoras de Cómic + Digital Comics Museum’s Access Month —————————————— Los cómics y las noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: ~ en Español y “sometimes in English” ~ —————————————— Digital Comics Museum – Access Month For this month of May 2018 every user who donates to the Digital Comics Museum, the best site for downloading FREE public domain Golden Age comic books, will be given FTP access as an alternate method to download files from the 21000+ Digital Comic Museum collection. For each dollar donated donors will receive 5 gigs of file downloads over the next 31 days from the day the donation was made. Click on the Donate link here (or at the top of the page) to contribute to the cause and receive your FTP login info in an email. For the last two years our FTP Access Month has been remarkably popular. Donations to the site are vital for keeping our server bill covered. These FTP Access Months help DCM build a reserve fund for those months we come up short in our monthly goal of $288 or if there is an emergency such as a hard drive that needs replacing in our servers. —————————————— De Frente Me Escondo – Cali, Colombia Este sábado 5 de mayo, desde las 3:00 p.m. en el Museo la Tertulia inaugurará la exposición y conversatorio “De frente, me escondo”, que intentará poner en escena el mundo de la artista colombo-ecuatoriana Power Paola con sus dibujos. —————————————— Marcela Trujillo y los Abusadores de Poder – Chile Hoy en el DesconCierto, dibujante Marcela Trujillo revela vergonzoso episodio de abuso de poder y acoso laboral de Rodrigo Salinas, Carlos Reyes y otros editores de Feroces Editores. Me acusaron que me había robado la plata. Llamé y les devolvieron la plata al día siguiente. Y a la semana hicieron programa en Internet donde invitaron a dibujantes y dijeron: ‘Invitamos a una dibujante chilena muy conocida, Marcela Trujillo, que venga Maliki’… y llegó una vedette argentina, casi en pelotas, con plumas, bailando. Estaban todos súper curados en el video. Le tocaban el poto, le ponían la cabeza entre las tetas y en la tele ponían ‘Marcela Trujillo, Maliki‘, ¡todos mis nombres! La hicieron dibujar y ella dibujó un corazón y empiezan ‘ah que dibuja bonito la Maliki’. Yo no lo podía creer, eran mis editores, mis amigos, eso no se puede hacer. Cómo tan machista, tan indigno. Después me llamó la hermana de Rodrigo para retarme porque hablaba mal de su hermano en Internet. Eso fue lo único que recibí de ellos, porque nunca nadie me pidió disculpas. Léanlo todo AQUI. —————————————— Fanzine Magazine – 26/04/2018 Ya disponible el #FanzineMagazine donde Mireia Pérez y Víctor Coyote hablan largo y tendido con Elisa McCausland sobre la trayectoria del colectivo de Autoras de Cómic y de otras cosas ocultas… Además Cynthia Alfonso les recomienda a viva voz sus canciones para dibujar. —————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 5-2-2018 – by Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]

The Rowhouse Report: May-June 2016

Sally IngrahamJune 18, 2016School UpdatesThe Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency is a GO! The Rowhouse is a busy place these days! The end of May brought the first official residents to the doors of the school, with Matthew Conway and Mahmoud Hashemi‘s visit. They came on a mission to work on the back-story of a game they are designing. They enjoyed the adventure of being the school’s first residents, and brought a unique energy that set a tone for the summer and the school. Mahmoud wrote an extensive report on Matt and his experience of the school, which I am quoting from below: “Compared to my expectations of independent comics artists, Frank is well-adjusted and well-equipped, with good taste in more than just comics. This expectation is likely skewed by my reading of so many “journal comics” artists. I feel like I learned about creating and collecting in general, not just about comics. Frank never stops relating things to comics, education, and community-building. Passion is fleeting compared to this. His motivation is closer to second nature. This nature was my original hopeful realization with Frank, before I met him. I feel a deep kinship with him, as I think about creating code the same way he thinks about creating comics. Independent, expressive, and individually valuable. Corporate partnerships are inevitable and, while they can be good, ultimately these looming entities don’t care about the potential of comics/code, they just use creators opportunistically. I see Frank doing for independent print comics what E-40 does in hip hop. He seems to know everyone past and present. E-40 and Frank both act upon this knowledge, combining it with the deeply ingrained understanding that respect is the real currency of the business. Money is an inescapable reality, but it’s possible and laudable to address the group as a community first and an industry second. Economies have a tendency to be treated as zero-sum. But respect is not zero-sum. Through his music, E-40 pulls everyone together, adding to their respect, and his own. And above all he respects himself, setting a good example. So it is with Frank. Suffice it to say, we need more creator-mentor-educators like Frank (as well as Sally, who I think recognizes all this and more, and actively assists Frank in the mission). In my ideal world I would be able to spend one week per year with a creator of his caliber, but I feel lucky to even have this one trip.” – Mahmoud Hashemi You can read the whole report HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Lale Westvind came through Pittsburgh on her motorcycle in June and spent some time at the Rowhouse. Maybe there’s something in the air here, or maybe it’s just Lale’s own incredible drive – either way she managed to knock out half a comic over the course of the evenings she spent at the Rowhouse. She simultaneously explored Frank’s comics collection, and matched him story for story. Her visits coincided with an interview that Comics Workbook conducted with her, which you can read HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Sammy Harkham and Kevin Huizenga buzzed through Pittsburgh in June and Copacetic Comics hosted an evening of conversation with these comics geniuses. Afterwards they came back to the Rowhouse for the night and of course they couldn’t just sit around chatting. Drawings were made, comics were discussed, and the Rowhouse got to soak up their combined creative energy. The place is already approaching Kryptonite levels…! ————————————————————————————————— In addition to hosting residents and other roaming cartoonists, the Rowhouse serves as the headquarters for the Comics Workbook team. Local team members like Juan Fernandez and Sally Ingraham pop round most days to work on planning things like The Pittsburgh Comics Salon and to help with packing up orders that come through Frank’s ongoing auction. This “work” often morphs into drawing sessions or a visit to the basement to check out the incredible comics vault that Frank has been building for years. ————————————————————————————————— Yes indeed, the Rowhouse is humming and July promises to be just as exciting, with residents Audra Stang and Caleb Orecchio coming to visit. Stay tuned for more residency reports and other news soon! Share this page: [...]

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

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

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