Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged abraham riesman, caleb orecchio, gabriella tito, Heidi MacDonald, jenny zervakis, landry Q. walker, the complete strange growths, youth-comics

Sally Ingraham

Posted on June 23, 2017

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03/08/2016

Juan FernándezMarch 8, 2016NewsThey did it. 2dcloud reached their Kickstarter goal. It was a stretch but they had that long game. Art wins again. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the work that they are publishing i their upcoming season, I encourage you to check out their crowdfund campaign. There might be something right up your alley. Now in their twenty-eighth year, the Lambda Literary Awards have announced their nominations. The Lambda Literary Awards celebrate achievement in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) writing for books published in 2015. The awards ceremony on June 6, 2016, will be held at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts (566 LaGuardia Pl, New York, NY 10012). It’s exciting to see the work that was chosen from the world of comics. Check out all the nominations here. LGBT Graphic Novels Curveball, Jeremy Sorese, Nobrow Honor Girl, Maggie Thrash, Candlewick Press The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal, EK Weaver, Iron Circus Comics O Human Star: Volume One, Blue Delliquanti, Self-published Wuvable Oaf, Ed Luce, Fantagraphics Books NEW at SPIT AND A HALF!!! Lisa Carver, Ian Sundahl, and some great French imports from Editions Tanibis (in English and/or wordless!): Sylvie Fontaine and Paul Kirchner! All the good stuff over at www.spitandhalf.com. John P. is doing God’s work. Andrew White made a free PDF collection of his favorite among the one page comics he posted on Comics Workbook from 2012 to 2014. You can still read all 350 or so strips online, but Andrew thought it might be nice to have a pared down and easier to read version of the material available. Even if many of the strips are rough or haphazard, this was an important body of work through which I began to address some of the topics that are important in my comics today. I hope you like it. Nick Gazin chit chats with Peter Bagge over at VICE. While you’re at it, read up on the 5 Musical Urban Legends comics Bagge has done already for VICE. The series continues with the form that Bagge developed for Magnet Magzine. The Who, Mick Jagger, Chuck Berry, Michael Jackson and Prince. Who’s next?! Read the whole thing over on VICE. You never really learned how to draw, but your comics look great. Most people who try to make comics without learning to draw make garbage. How did you figure out the drawing style you have? Well, I can draw people and things that look like what I’m drawing while looking at it/them. But that bores me, and I assume it would bore the viewer of the results as well. So I prefer to draw from my mind’s eye, and I take my chances from there. I’m almost never happy with the results, though, so I have a hard time arguing with anyone who thinks my art looks awful. Initially, I was trying to duplicate the way old cartoons look, specifically ones directed by Bob Clampett. Later on, I was also mimicking early comics drawn by Harvey Kurtzman, in his old Hey Look! one-pagers and such. It’s a very polarizing drawing style, though. Goodreads has all these rave reviews ofWoman Rebel by all these woman’s studies majors who love the content of the book but give it three or four instead of five stars, simply because they can’t stand my art! Cartoonist and movie critic, Julian Lytle, sat down with Rocky Hadadi to talk 2015 Film on the most recent installment of Ignorant Bliss. This was recorded before the Oscars so there is a lot of talk about the nominees and a little TV talk. Good talk, good music, good banter. Listen in for a while. Chris Mautner took some time to write about Michael Deforge‘s latest work, Big Kids and the themes and story mechanisms in Deforge’s work more generally. Read on. Despite its small size, Big Kids manages to hold just about all of the ideas and themes DeForge has been exploring up to this point. The secret societies, the adolescent angst, the strange body transformations, the antisocial hero desperate to find acceptance — they all coalesce in this slim book. If you were looking for a starting point in DeForge’s bibliography, this might be the place. Would you like to be Nat. Brut’s first Artist-in-Nonresidence? It’s like an artist residency – but not. You will get a month’s worth of gift cards to cafés around New York City and activate the whole city as your workplace! The residency will last April 1-30, 2016, at the end of which all or part of your work will be published in Nat. Brut. Who can apply? Artists or writers of any medium, with a work sample. We are limiting our first round to applicants who identify as people of color. HOW TO APPLY Apply now until 11:59 on March 31 using our online application here:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1XSbc4qqQQOOPGYm0TjplyLGWOpqJlMlXY7o8EFcdFp4/viewform?c=0&w=1 that’s it for today. juan fernandez, over and out. Share this page: [...]

Sean Ford’s SHADOW HILLS

Chris Anthony DiazJuly 9, 2016The Diaz ArchiveSHADOW HILLS 1-8 by Sean Ford in new square format versions. Looking forward to the conclusion in issue 9, due out this fall and a forthcoming book collection of the series! Photo of Sean Ford taken at CAB 2014 and colored by Graham Willcox Share this page: [...]

07/25/2016

Juan FernándezJuly 25, 2016NewsJuan Fernandez here with: Tom Kemp’s MIDDEN FEEDER; building your goddamn website;Roxane Gay and Yona Harvey to Write Black Panther spin off World of Wakanda; Mark Newgarden’s Garbage Pail Kids interview; Zara rips off illustrators; Comic Arts Brooklyn 2016; The NIB takes Philly; 2016 Eisner Award Winners; new Street Angel; latest Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency Auction. ————————————————————————————————— midden feeder by Tom Kemp I’m happy to announce that we are featuring Tom Kemp’s midden feeder on the site this week. midden feeder was made by Tom Kemp in 2015 and was printed for Safari Festival 2015. Kemp will be surfing the new waves in contemporary comics and art at this year’s Safari Festival in London on August 27th. Don’t miss him! ————————————————————————————————— Build yerr own damn Website Max Riffner lays out how to build a comics website that works for you. It takes some effort but with Riffner’s detailed tips, you can make the most of the best tools available online today to make the site that best suits your work. and can keep you from getting stuck with antiquated web hosting services. No one else is going to do it for you, so get cracking! Your cartoonist website is your digital hub. Get that through your head right now. Your website is home base for everything that you do. It’s going to represent you and your work. It needs to be professional. It needs to work, and it needs to work for you. In fact, this is all about you and your freedom. Some of the hosting services may offer to provide domain name registration. And whichever domain registrar you use may offer hosting. The temptation to have everything in one spot is high. Don’t do it. Sometimes, either one will hold the name or the hosting hostage. You want to have these pieces all separate from each other so you can easily move services. ————————————————————————————————— Taking trash with Mark Newgarden – 2016 Interview The Garbage Pail Kids website has a wonderful, extensive intervew with Mark Newgarden on his time working for GPK. They go into lots of juicy production details and discuss Newgarden’s formative years. Exciting. What was it like working with the many artists involved in creating GPK? Correspondence and communications is so different now-a-days; I would imagine receiving Pound’s paintings with paint strokes would be a lot different than receiving a scanned electronic image these days. Can you explain the teacher/student relationship you had with Spiegelman and were you comfortable directing the GPK artists? I have to say, the original sets are untouchable when it comes to the level of quality (even printed on lesser-grade card). There was always a lot of creative back and forth, it was a big part of the job. Phone meetings, faxes, Fed-Exed tracing paper overlays with notes. Art and I were usually on the same page. John’s pencils or paintings would come in on a Monday and I’d make notes all over them. Then on Tuesday, Art would make notes on my notes and we’d usually call John in the afternoon and hash it all out. Tom Bunk and James Warhola were local, so they’d take the subway. We’d all do lunch in the fabled Topps cafeteria and then go through the same routine in person. At times (when there was time) we’d go through 2, 3, even 4 rounds of revisions on a single image to get it just right. The input usually focused on emphasizing clarity and amplifying (or extending) the gag. The goal was always to balance impact with visual clarity. May sound obvious, but it really isn’t always so simple. The initial staging or composition of a GPK gag was crucial as to whether it lived or died. Then the execution needed to be solid and plausible and never distract, or get in the way of the concept. John set a very high bar from the start. Tom brought a wacky energy to the mix. James added an air of foreboding mood and mystery. Seeing what these guys would come back with was always the highlight of my week. It was fun and collaborative, and I think our fresh eyes and brain cells helped make better GPKs. ————————————————————————————————— Roxane Gay and Yona Harvey to Write Black Panther spin off World of Wakanda The New York Times has announced that Ta-Nehisi Coates has brought on Roxane Gay and Yona Harvey to work on Black Panther: World of Wakanda, an upcoming Black Panther spin off. News out of left-field from the world of the Big 2 but a relief and a ray of very necessary light. And just like the current Black Panther series, which is written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author and a national correspondent for The Atlantic, the new comic will be written by newcomers to the industry: the feminist writer Roxane Gay and the poet Yona Harvey. “My agent was not thrilled that I was taking on another project,” Ms. Gay said. But learning to write comics exercised different creative muscles, which she said she found exciting. “It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever done, and I mean that in the best possible way,” she said. ————————————————————————————————— Comic Arts Brooklyn 2016: It’s a go! The premiere NYC art comics show, CAB, has announced that the festival WILL be happening this year. It will take place on November 5th. Exhibitor applications available soon. ————————————————————————————————— Artists Take a Bold Stand After Accusing Zara of Ripping Off Over a Dozen of Their Designs Spanish clothing retailer Zara, like many corporations, has no qualms at throwing their weight around when it comes to plagiarizing the designs of illustrators for their own use. Zara was found to be ripping off illustrator Tuesday Bassen’s designs. Bassen took matters into her own hands and spoke publicly on twitter last week about the incident. The internet took notice. Marie Solis has comprehensive coverage of the whole corporate debacle over on Mic.com. In an interview with the Daily Dot Bassen said, “It absolutely hurts my business and waters down the brand I’ve slowly built based around my original artwork.” She added that the legal fees alone are enough to tear down an independent artist: She’d paid $2,000 just to send her claims to Zara. But Bassen isn’t giving up — not just for her own sake, but for the recognition of at least a dozen other artists who also believe Zara has stolen their designs. New York City illustrator Adam J. Kurtz said when Bassen’s tweet blew up, he and a handful of other artists were texting and Facebook messaging each other, realizing the brand had stolen a slew of their designs all at once. ————————————————————————————————— The NIB takes Philly The NIB is taking over an art gallery and transforming it into their headquarters, bringing in six cartoonists to cover the 2016 Democratic Convention. If you loved their coverage of the Republican Convention last week, you’re not going to want to miss them this week. They’re going full force. ————————————————————————————————— 2016 Eisner Award Winners Announced Tom Spurgeon reports this years Eisner Award winners from San Diego Comic Con. The award ceremony was held Friday July 22nd. The winners for this year’s Eisner Awards were announced last night at a fancy program at the Hilton Bayfront. It was a well-received program, with a little bit of something for everyone: John Barrowman making nerd-culture and penis jokes, emotional speeches, people being adorable, Ed Brubaker and Gary Groth and Peggy Burns kind of mixing it up acceptance-speech wise. It was great to see a night where Kate Beaton got an award and Lynda Barry got in the Hall Of Fame. Two great cartoonists. I thought the winners were all pretty good. There were two I’d change if I could — actually more, because I’m a jerk, but two stood out to me as personal “aw, man” moments. That’s actually really good for an awards show. Biggest surprise was Bill Schelly’s Kurtzman book, I think. Spurgeon’s full reporting from SDCC 2016 is now online and available HERE. It’s always a pleasure to see this world through Spurgeon’s eyes, especially if you’ve never stepped foot in SDCC before. ————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————— New Private Rowhouse Auction – 7.24-7.30 Last but not least, we have a new private auction up at auction.comicsworkbook.com! Lots of old and new comics for you to take home. email Frank Santoro at santoroschoolATgmail for a password, if you don’t already have one. If you already have a password, it is the same from last week. All funds go to helping keep the lights on and further developing the school. until next time! Juan 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: [...]

07/09/2018

Caleb OrecchioJuly 9, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with brief thoughts on Steve Ditko, and other news! ————————————————————————————————— You’ve probably heard by now that Steve Ditko has passed away. Thee great Steve Ditko. I’ve been going through my annual Ditko obsession these past few months which makes his passing all the more surprising. For a while, I’d figured he’d live forever–and he will, being survived by his work. Often, I can’t decide if I’m more in awe of his strange imagination, his incredible storytelling chops, his amazing formalistic skills or his unstoppable work ethic. Ditko is a true inspiration to cartoonists, or at least to this cartoonist. I could go on and on, but am wary of adding to the noise. “What can be said that hasn’t been said before?” I’ve already written multiple columns about Ditko’s work and will continue to do so, so I’ll not exhaust my praise and admiration here. I constantly find new challenges as a cartoonist, formalistically and idealistically, in Ditko’s work. I am constantly blown away by the man’s innumerable innovations. I am sure he is on the Astral Plane, navigating the cosmos with the other long-lost comic book greats. Or maybe not. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d spend the afterlife working in isolation, and mastering his art as he did in this life. Below are three of my favorite Ditko spreads lately. Two of which I’ve written about on this site. ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Michael Dean has written an obituary for Ditko over at TCJ.com. Also on TCJ.com, an obituary for Harlan Ellison (also by Dean), along with the infamous 1979 Comics Journal interview with Gary Groth. In case you are curious what The Comics Reporter’s latest Five For Friday was… Scott Cederlund on Young Frances by Hartley Lin at Panel Patter. Robin McConnell has read some comics recently, and talked to Mariko Tamaki. Finally, on TCJ’s latest installment of Retail Therapy, we get a look at Mission Comics. Share this page: [...]

06/23/2017

Posted on June 23, 2017 by Sally Ingraham

Sally here with plenty of things to dig into this week – Jenny Zervakis’ The Complete Strange Growths; the new Warmer anthology; a lively discussion of “youth-comics”; and much more.

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The Complete Strange Growths 1991-1997 by Jenny Zervakis (lovingly published by John Porcellino via Spit and a Half Distro, 2017) is one of the best collections of comics that I have read in some time. The 13 issues capture the story arc of a few years of Jenny’s life, finding and illuminating incidental moments and making a world out of visits to botanical gardens, a trouble-making brother, the war-time Spam eaten by a Greek father, road trips, comic con visits, and fever dreams.

The drawing isn’t interested in itself, it is merely a vessel there to hold and pour out stories – and therefore the drawing is full of life and perfect small details. The collection also captures the time it was made in and for – 90’s mini-comic culture, the rush of making and giving away zines on a regular basis, the fun of mailing a letter and a stamp to a maker and getting back their latest effort. Influenced by the work of Harvey Pekar, and an inspiration to the likes of John Porcellino, Jenny was riding some quality currents.

A Visit to the Botanical Gardens – Jenny Zervakis

In a way Strange Growths is also a comic that I feel like I’ve been searching for since I embarked on a study of alternative comics (and ones made by women, specifically). The poetry, the thoughtfulness, the desire to capture the mood of a moment…I was certain that there were women who were making work like this in the 90’s, who were making comics that weren’t as focused on the body and the blunt reality of being female. While I am interested in comics about sex, body image, and self-esteem, I’m even more interested in what the bus driver has to share, dreams about grandmothers, and interactions with nature. There is a different mystery and truth to discover there, and Jenny is tapped into that font of wisdom in a way that I aspire to.

I loved The Complete Strange Growths, and put it immediately on my shelf next to Today Is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life by Ulli Lust, Gast by Carol Swain, and One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry. You can get a copy of the comic from Copacetic Comics, or from Spit and a Half.

For a much less subjective review of the book, check out Rob Kirby’s thoughts over on The Comics Journal.

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A scene from *Drama* by Raina Telgemeier

Abraham Riesman writes about the rise of “youth-comics” on Vulture, citing them as the driving force behind sales and interest in the medium at the moment.

“Eva Volin, a librarian based in Alameda, California, told me, “We’re in the middle of a graphic-novel renaissance inasmuch as not only are kids reading comics, but comics are being written for kids.” ”

“At a glance, it all makes perfect sense. Why wouldn’t young readers gravitate toward a medium that can so brilliantly mix visuals and text in a way that makes a story relatively easy to digest? And why wouldn’t publishers cater to them? And yet, up until recently, there was a near-total disconnect between kids and comics.“

Riesman notes that the shift began with manga, the forever disdained comics medium which many (librarians) turned their noses up at. In a Twitter response to thoughts along these lines, Landry Q. Walker (creator of many “youth-comics”) affirmed that it was manga that made the difference – although the effect wasn’t felt immediately because…manga.

“Over 15 years ago I spoke to a comics club at a high school – all girls. I talked about this at a panel at SDCC, and the crowd got angry. The consensus of the crowd was that these girls weren’t reading “real comics”. Just manga. And for some reason, this was “bad”. All those years of discussion on “how do we get girls to read comics”. They were, but apparently they were doing it “wrong”? WTF? It’s this failure to embrace trends that is choking the life out of the mainstream comics industry. The fear of change.“

It took the appearance of Bone by Jeff Smith and Babymouse by Jennifer L. Holm and her brother Matthew Holm to really start the engine in the mid-2000’s. Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese was the first comic-book finalist for the National Book Award. And then came Raina.

Abraham Riesman likens Raina Telgemeier to Elvis – and makes a good argument for it. Read the rest of his excellent article on the “youth-comics explosion” HERE.

Over on The Comics Beat Heidi MacDonald is also looking at the numbers, and seeing similar trends in comics readership. She offers up the top 5 bestsellers on the Bookscan chart for last week:

“1. BITCH PLANET, VOLUME 2: PRESIDENT BITCH
2. MY LESBIAN EXPERIENCE WITH LONELINESS
3. WONDER WOMAN VOL. 1: THE LIES
4. WONDER WOMAN VOL. 2: YEAR ONE
5. MARCH: BOOK ONE”

Delving into the intricacies of each publication for a minute, and quoting Abraham Riesman’s article a bit, Heidi then offers up her own response (with me in the background waving pompoms and punching the air):

“Let me spell it out for you: girls and women, black and white, cis and trans alike, are the driving force behind comics readership expansion. This has been happening for a while, but it’s a full on avalanche now. It’s also something I saw coming 25 years ago. (No one else is gonna pat me on the back so I gotta do it myself.) Seeing the devoted fandoms that female content-consumers developed for anything that interested them, ESPECIALLY genre material like paranormal romance, horror and fantasy – I had a hunch that once they turned their spotlight on comics, the full force of female fandom would bowl over the fragile shreds of male safe spaces like a Mack truck through a pile of empty Axe cartons.

What does this shift mean? Well, for one thing, it means that Marvel–and DC too! – had better start paying attention to new readers instead of pandering to the dwindling ranks of AARP-card carrying pap-pap Bronze Agers. I mean, I know it’s hard to move beyond your own viewpoint, but business is business.“

Read the rest of Heidi’s thoughts HERE.

As for me, I’m off to CCS in a week to attend a workshop/think-tank with New Yorker art editor Françoise Mouly, who among numerous other ventures, is the driving force behind the publishing company for early readers called Toon Books. I plan to spend a lot more time and energy thinking about this stuff and probably making comics for, and with kids in the future.

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The Huffington Post featured the comics anthology Warmer which is being edited by Madeleine Witt and Andrew White.

“In an interview with HuffPost, White said, “As co-editors of Warmer, Madeleine and I wanted to make a book to offer comfort for those already fearful about climate change. So for the most part, Warmer doesn’t aim to convince anyone of anything. We imagined Warmer in part as a book that will function to encourage and support activists; to comfort those who, like ourselves, are wrestling with the grief of climate change.” “

There is an excerpt from the collection accompanying the feature, with comments from the makers. Check it out HERE.

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Noticed via Facebook – Caitlin McGurk was unpacking a new collection of art recently donated to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.

“…incredible collection of original cartoon art just donated. Phoebe Gloeckner! Dori Seda! Carol Lay! Lynda Barry! Roberta Gregory! Mary Fleener! And more! 113 original pages by 15 amazing women.”

“I could spend the rest of my career writing about the stuff in this collection that was just donated to The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum… maybe I will!” – Cairlin McGurk

I smell a new exhibit, and it’s one I will be at the opening for…!

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Fish and Chips

Bill Boichel reviews Boundless by Jillian Tamaki for the Copacetic Comics website – we’re sharing the review HERE on the site.
BookRiot interviews Grace Ellis and Shae Beagle, creators of Moonstruck – HERE.
Cory Doctorow reviews Emil Ferris‘ My Favorite Thing is Monsters on BoingBoing.
The Comics Beat reviews new comics by Laura Kenins, Sophie Yanow, and Tyler Landry.
Sacha Mardou recently revisited a comic from 2015 about her pregnancy – it originally appeared on Mutha Magazine, but is seen here on Narratively.

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Suzy and Cecil – 6-23-2017 – by Gabriella Tito

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Joanie and Jordie – 6-23-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged abraham riesman, caleb orecchio, gabriella tito, Heidi MacDonald, jenny zervakis, landry Q. walker, the complete strange growths, youth-comics

Sally Ingraham

Posted on June 23, 2017

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03/21/2018

Juan FernándezMarch 21, 2018los Cómics / NewsJuan, on the women who self-publish, the return of La Polola y más! —————————————— Mujeres Que Se Autoeditan – Fanzine Report Gerardo Vilches ha escrito un artículo en Revista Cactus super completo sobre mujeres que se autoeditan en España y Latinoamérica. Accompañalo y descubriras un montón de chicas haciendo cosas maravillosas: No es ningún secreto que en el activo y mutable mercado de la autoedición y los fanzines trabajan muchas jóvenes autoras. Cada vez más, de hecho. Algunas, con el objetivo de dedicarse profesionalmente al cómic o la autoedición; otras, simplemente por el placer de hacerlo. El festival independiente GRAF es un buen lugar para conocer la obra de muchas de ellas. Los días 2, 3 y 4 de marzo se celebró en Barcelona la undécima edición de GRAF, un festival de cómic de autor y edición independiente nacido en 2013 gracias al impulso de un grupo de personas relacionadas con el medio de un modo u otro, que querían crear un espacio de encuentro donde tuvieran cabida pequeñas y medianas editoriales, colectivos de artistas, iniciativas de autoedición y fanzines. Cinco años más tarde, la propuesta se encuentra consolidada y crece progresivamente. Pero dado que formo parte de su organización desde hace unos años, no creo ser la persona más adecuada para valorar todo esto. En su lugar, quiero hablar de un fenómeno que he observado en las últimas ediciones y que, en realidad, resulta evidente para cualquiera que se fije: la enorme presencia de mujeres. Calculando de un modo laxo —es decir: a ojo—, siempre había pensado que el panorama que se dibuja en los expositores de esta feria era paritario. Mi compañero en la organización, Iñaki Sanz, habló de un porcentaje entre el 60% y el 70% de presencia femenina cuando le preguntaron en un reportaje de Betevé. Al margen del porcentaje exacto, lo obvio es que el ámbito de la autoedición y microedición está lleno de mujeres artistas y editoras, la mayoría muy jóvenes, que están empleando estos canales para expresarse y difundir su trabajo, en muchos casos con una carga feminista y activista más o menos explícita. Para entender este fenómeno, recomiendo la lectura del ensayo de Andrea Galaxina ¡Puedo decir lo que quiera! ¡Puedo hacer lo que quiera! (Bombas para desayunar, 2017). ————————————————————————————————— Los cómics y las noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: ~ In English and en Español ~ Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo tienen una nueva edicion de La Polola Podcast! Las chicas conversan con Omara Arriagada (Nelson Correa) y el regreso de la revista Trauko – los inicios de la revista, del contexto sociocultural al que respondía y propone desde la contracultura. Conversan acerca de los encuentros y desencuentros, de los maestros, la comunidad y también de lo que se viene con este regreso tan esperado de Trauko. No puedo más que recomendar la revista de comics Argentina, Revista Clitoris – puede leerse online, tanto la primera antología como la segunda, recientemente liberada por el #8M. Jonathan Guyer looks at the political implications of an Egyptian comics boom. The emergence of alternative comics and graphic novels in the Arab world in the past decade. Carla Berrocal y Teresa Novoa explican los 10 problemas de los ilustradores autónomos. Liniers has an exhibition at the Society of Illustrators in New York: Art by Liniers: Macanudo, The New Yorker, and Good Night, Planet. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-21-2018 – by Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]

A Comics Id is Tenderness: Notes on Cartoon Crossroads 2017

Comics WorkbookOctober 5, 2017Festivals and Showsby Adam Griffiths The first book I purchased on the expo floor at this year’s Cartoon Crossroads Columbus 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. More on this later. To the lectures! (Editor: What follows are Adam’s notes and thoughts on the lectures and talks he attended in the two days of CXC programming held on the OSU campus (9-28/9-29), and the two days of the CXC expo which was held at the Columbus Metropolitan Library (9-30/10-1.) ————————————————————————————————— Dan Gearino on Research Methodology Applied to Comics-Making History (Thursday, Sept. 28th 2017, at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum) Dan Gearino on Phil Seuling: Phil Seuling is regarded as a pioneer of comics fandom during the late 60’s and early 70’s – first when serving as organizer of the annual New York Comic Art Convention and then with his Sea Gate Distributors Company, which laid the groundwork for the direct market system of distributing comics. Did Seuling’s arrest on March 11th, 1973 lead to the creation of the direct market as we know it today? Seemed so, but when Gearino went investigating, he found that the arrest, for ‘distribution of obscene material’, was nowhere near as simple as he thought. While fellow early comics distributors and champions of comics such as Jim Hanley sincerely believed that Seuling’s aggravation with censors was the spark for his history-making wholesale business venture, Seuling’s former business partner Jonnie Luvas could vouch for Seuling’s motivations more clearly. The tricky part here was that Luvas, less a comics fan and more a business ingenue, had moved on from comics. To find this person who could truly vouch for Seuling’s acumen in business, Gearino had to ‘go outside of existing source records,’ and penetrate several outlying personal networks of non-comics lovers. Luvas (yes, Johnny Thunder is named for her) was a key figure in Seuling’s business life who understood that Seuling was actually seeking to escape his passionless teaching gigs. The importance and meaning of this investigation has to do with progressive incarnations of the comics business. Before the direct market, Gearino explains, comics were sold indiscriminately as mass market objects; this was how comics ended up as a part of mainstream culture. You could find them anywhere – on newsstands, in grocery stores, dime shops. By the late sixties, however, this business model was crumbling, and store owners were clearing gluts of low-cost, low-selling comics from their retail spaces. Seuling’s creation of the direct market paved the way for the comics specialty shops of the 1970’s and 80’s. These specialty shops saved comics as we know them, as they could not only sell new comics being made, but also the comics of yesteryear. Comics hoarding found its reward in this new market. Back issues and loyal accumulations of forgotten works could be pulled out of obscurity. ————————————————————————————————— Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Highlights Tales from the Vault: 40 Years / 40 Stories, curated by Jenny Robb and Caitlin McGurk Comics history is both creativity and industry, here illustrated by selections of original works and artifacts. “Creepy” was the first word that came to mind when regarding this bathing suit from 1950, scribbled on by cartoonists such as Ernie Bushmiller, Milton Caniff, Alfred Androla, Otto Soglow, Ham Fisher and others. The museum has six of these bathing suits, and they were drawn on by these superstar artists at a promotional party for a waterproof ink pen. Life magazine photographed the party and later, deciding the images were not family-oriented enough, declined to publish them. Roe v. Wade Comics Comics has a documented history in its deployment for use in the political arena. Here, we see two causes with inverse agendas using comics as propaganda. You can read either of these comics in full at http://www.ep.tc/junior/ Who Killed Junior? 1973 This comic, published by the organization Right to Life (the largest pro-life organization in the country, now called The National Right to Life), illustrates the abortion procedure from the viewpoint of a destroyed fetus. Abortion Eve, 1973 By “Chin Lyvley” (Lyn Chevli) and “Joyce Sutton” (Joyce Farmer) The hazards of promoting abortion in America in any way are evident here in the authors’ use of psuedonyms. The women both worked as birth control counselors at The Free Clinic in Laguna Beach, California. Under the heading of their company, Nanny Goat Productions, they published this comic which provides arguments for the legality of abortion, and also personal accounts from a diverse array of women about their abortion experiences. I Know! Let’s Drop Taxes Completely and Let Our Kids Worry About ‘Em! 1985 Jim Kammerud for Norfolk Daily Press / Times Herald ————————————————————————————————— Handwritten Notes from Talk and Teach Presentation: Kevin Huizenga on Depicting Time in Comics Form (Thursday, Sept. 28th 2017, at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum) ————————————————————————————————— SÕL-CON LUNCH BREAK AND TALK-BACK Kat Fajardo, Vicko Alvarez, Lisa Sheperd, Jiba Molei Anderson (Friday, Sept. 29th 2017, in Hal Hall, on the OSU campus) (Editor: Sol-Con is another comics festival that happens on the OSU campus simultaneously, allowing folks to move seamlessly from CXC events to Sol-Con events, as Adam did here and there. On Sat./Sun. the Sol-Con guests and exhibitors joined the CXC expo at the library.) “What is your favorite thing about comics?” was one of the questions asked by the large group of children attending SÕL-CON this year, which, in my year of absence had transformed into an intensive of workshops and instructionals on drawing and storytelling for youth. “My favorite thing,” said moderator Frederick Aldama, “is seeing the younger generations take up making comics.” A real standout during this talk was Chicago-based Tejana Vicko Alvarez, who couldn’t stress enough that the kids present recognize that their taking part in SÕL-CON probably meant that each and every kid there was interested in a life pursuit doing what they loved. “I tried to find a career and got bored of it real quick,” she says, and then admits, “the one thing I enjoyed I was told not to do. It was smartest decision I ever made to come back to art.” She continued, it helps that “I had a really pushy friend,” who encouraged her to follow her calling in comics. “How many of y’all have heard that art is gonna make you money?” Vicko asked the audience. All of the kids raised their hands. “How many of you like art?” All hands raised. At this point, Jiba Molei Anderson, who was watching the talk, joined the panelists onstage. “If I ignore something I love, my mental focus is gonna go out of whack, right?” Alvarez declared. The children agreed with her. “We are all here for the love,” Anderson says. “Even when we’re frustrated we’re not gonna quit. Creative people, to survive we really need to create…that hamster wheel never shuts down.” “But tethering that to real life is always a challenge to me,” said Lisa Sheperd. Lisa Sheperd talked about how doing this expo was moving her back towards comics. “Seeing that spark in you guys’ eyes reminded me of the spark I once had . That’s a great thing that doesn’t happen everyday! I’m putting my work out again because SÕL-CON encouraged me… Don’t let it slide by and let life get in the way.” More Quotes from SÕL-CON Panel “What don’t you like about comics?” was a question from a boy who remained behind with his mother after the other children left for workshops. – “I don’t like posers in art trying to tell me how to create,” said Jiba. -“I don’t like what I see when people not from my community try to tell my story,” Vicko Alvarez said.“What do you see when you see Latinas in the media?” she asked the audience. “Sexy hot mammas!” A woman called out. “Most Latina women look like my mom,” Alvarez continued, and “if you don’t tell your story, somebody else will, and they’ll base it off of stereotype.” -“Mainstream comics look to what we’re doing right here, right now. The problem is, there are not enough people of color working at DC at Marvel,” Jiba Andersen says. “the people here in this room today? Creators of color? We make our own. We do it this way because you have a community that has felt so maligned for so long… They see what we’ve been doing, we’re here and we’ve been here. The problem is that the push-back can’t be handled. They know that we can talk to people who cannot listen through our art.” -Vicko: ” …people put out tragedy porn and that’s not changing a thing.” ————————————————————————————————— Spotlight on Chris Ware (Friday, Sept. 29th 2017, at the Wexner Center, on the OSU campus) A near religious silence had fallen over everyone walking out of the Chris Ware dialogue at the Wexner Center. A masterful storyteller and illustrator, Ware’s talents have been visibly leading the illustration world, in the name of comics, for some time now. His discussion with Caitlin McGurk signaled that he remains unrelenting. As I was listening I realized that Chris Ware’s humorous import is indeed a formula, but that he definitely showed up at this discussion, and probably shows up at every discussion, trying to give away that formula, which is great. Any artist worth her/his salt is always acting within a spirit of generosity. Perhaps Ware is so incurably sad because of how bad he himself believes he is at communicating; a suitable contradiction for a person who has donated their life to creating works of art. The Chris Ware formula (or, American humor in a nutshell) 1) Declarative sentence. 2) Rebuttal of declaration (typically more complex and cruel than it needs to be, so, funny.) 3) Agreement with his own previous rebuttal finally, because self-rejection is an un-frightening, redundant horror that should make you smile warmly. So then what Ware does is he puts the formula to work. The guise here begins with Ware saying: 1) “Comics are an art of memory.” 2) But then, because everyone in the room including Ware is, y’know, kind of old, we then have to have a discussion about how terrible we all are at remembering things. Of course we have to bring this up, because in order to remember what we were just (just!) speaking about, we have to introduce dissonance tension to our brains through aural communication with other humans. We are becoming ridiculously complex here in the service of Ware’s humor: “When you become a cartoonist, you begin to lose track of your language.” We as an audience, are becoming redundant in order to allow Ware to mirror the brain’s experience of memory for us. Where did Ware get the concept of “comics as an art of memory?” Why in fact, Ware states, rather meekly, he got it from a paper that his stagemate, Caitlin McGurk wrote! The room warms to Ware as the surprised McGurk, suddenly joyful, becomes flustered and confused, flushed and slightly embarrassed. Ware has delivered his sweet, sweet punchline. It’s almost too saccharine, nearly syrupy! 3) The agreement that Ware has set us up for here is that we’ve been having a discussion about McGurk, not Ware, since we began, and that we will now remember, “Comics are an art of memory,” in all its redundant, charitable, pitiable human glory. Too clean! ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— CXC Award ceremony (Friday, Sept. 29th 2017, at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum) (Editor: Kyle Baker was awarded the CXC Master Cartoonist Award, and Howard Cruse won the CXC Transformative Work award.) Revelations from the award ceremony: Tom Spurgeon praises Kyle Baker as a “Leticious learner.” After thanking Howard Cruse for his “Masterful work,” Tom Spurgeon asks Cruse to think about getting Stuck Rubber Baby back into print. ‘Oh my goodness, it is a shit-ton of work to re-release a treasured, nearly forgotten book,’ I scribbled. Then it dawned on me: Stuck Rubber Baby isn’t merely a political story about the Civil Rights Movement. It’s a teen mood sugar fiction that affects a whole country.” ————————————————————————————————— The Other Mainstream: Indy Creators on Non-Indy Books Jeff Smith, Peter Bagge, Kyle Baker, and Connor Willumsen (Saturday, Sept. 30th 2017, at the Columbus Metropolitan Library) In this dialogue, we are revisiting Kyle Baker again. What’s unfortunate in this particular discussion is that there is no visible female contribution. However, what ended up happening was that Kyle Baker – long known for his trademark crankiness – opened up to the audience in a way that is (apologies, meme) unexpected. Peter Bagge: “Spiderman (Bagge’s creation → Spider-Man, Startling Stories: The Megalomaniacal Spider-Man – a reinterpretation of the SP origin story) was the best-selling comic I had ever made and the worst-selling Spiderman Comic ever.” Kyle Baker laughs at Peter Bagge’s comment, then goes on to say: Robert Morales, when developing the script for the series “Captain America: Truth,” has used the term ‘drugs’ throughout the entire story. The story details a fictional declassified experiment in which African Americans are the precursor experiment to the secret project that creates Captain America. “We gave the manuscript and art to the publishers and they loved it, but they wanted to replace the term ‘drugs’ with ‘serum,’ so essentially the term “drugs” in Morales’ story came to stand less for something like the Tuskegee experiment and more for the alleged HIV conspiracy.” Baker then described how he revisited some of these themes from this book in Leticia Lerner, Superman’s Babysitter, a short comic he completed in 1999 for the DC Elseworlds 80-Page Giant #1. I’m going to revisit Kyle Baker’s work again at length here, to describe, I guess, what sort of happens with modern commercial illustrators in regards to their relationship with their employers. Baker is willingly immersed in comics mythology – it has replaced any previous myths imbued in him in concern to civilization – everything from religion to gender. Somehow, this deep engagement has made him an indispensable employee within a mainstream corporate media outlet. It may seem that Baker retains a sort of power through publishing these stories that are really important to him and to his progression as a drawer. However, the full picture we don’t get from Baker when he is telling us about these industrial anomalies – these stories he most cares about – is that he’s also completing an insane amount of commissioned work as he gets the access to publish these stories that mean the most to him. To end here, I want to include some quotes by Connor Willumsen, a fresh cartoonist whose work I think represents the next wave of comics, which is COMICS LITERATURE. “You can never predict what people are gonna respect or not.” “With Witchlands, I tried to do it like uh, how these comics are invented?” “I always found out about these rules the hard way.” What was so calming about when Connor spoke of his experience in mainstream comics contemporaneously was that the industry-men sitting next to him quivered at hearing of Connor’s creative travails. Connor’s a young man, no children to take care of, no family to support; his focus remains on the mythology and drawing practice, not on salary. What luxury had those seasoned professionals grown to actually? Who cares? It was nice to see those older industry men loosen up – they all asked Connor if they could take a look at his books later. I don’t know who planned this discussion, or if anyone could foresee that this type of generational showdown might occur, but we were there to witness it. ————————————————————————————————— Howard Cruse, Emil Ferris, Mimi Pond, Derf Backderf: Quotes from Comic Memoir Discussion (Saturday, Sept. 30th 2017, at the Columbus Metropolitan Library) Below are a few quotes from this discussion, in which Emil Ferris, creator of My Favorite Things is Monsters, comes to the realization that these comics people are in fact, her people. “You can’t be afraid to make yourself look like an asshole” -Derf Backderf “That guy who wrote Stuck Rubber Baby is a different guy than who I am today. The guy who wrote that book exists within the soft glow of goodwill.” -Howard Cruse “I could see the danger of getting stuck in a place like that.” – Mimi Pond, on writing about being a waitress in Over Easy and The Customer is Always Wrong. “Fine art was a pile of bricks accompanied by a long explanation… I finally came to the fact that this story was going to be a graphic novel.” – Mimi Pond “When I first encountered Lynda Barry,’s work, I recognized an artist who goes to a place in her head that I’ve seen before in my own head.” – Emil Ferris A question that came up was: ‘Is the persistence of memoir comics a novelty of identity politics these days?’ “All those labels are out the window. If it’s good comics, we want it.” -Derf Backderf ————————————————————————————————— Quotes from SÕL-CON Panel Three: Creators of Color & Industry Moderated by Crystal Gonzalez, J.M Hunter, Carlos Perez, Albert Morales, Andres Vera, and Verzelle James (Sunday, Oct. 1st 2017, at the Columbus Metropolitan Library) “You have to be proactive about finding your market.” “They ask for diversity, and then they say,’uh, it’s a little too diverse.” – Carlos Perez “Respect is key. If you write a story without research, it’s all that you don’t know that gets left out.” -Michael Bendis, cited. When I saw Verzelle James’ comics earlier in the week at SOL-CON, I knew I had to have them. They were/are the best of what comics has to offer – symbology applied, in varied textures of ink, to the surface of a perfectly managed black and white newsprint surface. Seeing his work and getting to speak with him was like diving into a longbox, finding a floppy comic you like, and as you flip through it, the author sidles up and says, “Want me to sign that?” Only eight pages of comics here from 1991. James only had about four comics to sell, some reprints of pin-ups, and all of them were over a decade old. These were his passion projects. During this panel, James discussed how much commercial illustration work he had done. I realized, looking over his books, that whatever had happened to spur these floppies into being was something that he wished to revisit. How had he gotten this work into this conference? How do works of such creative fervor flame up again and manage to find their way into the eye-range of another creator? After the panel, James asked me how I felt about the discussion. “Insight from people in the industry is priceless,” I said. He didn’t seem to have a problem with that answer. Reasonably though, what does success really look like for people of color in the comics industry? I could bring up a few artists, one or two writers, sure! But progress, in and of itself, can masquerade too. I think that if Cartoon Crossroad Columbus is to continue upping the stakes for gender, age, and race inclusivity in comics, then something must be done about the SÕL-CON/CXC partnership. This year, the connection between the events became ever more evident, with Caitlin McGurk and Jenny Robb doing as much equal time as they could between both conferences, and SÕL-CON participants being flagrantly present at CXC events. The best innovation is how exhibitors from both cons are mixed in together during the expo and lectures that take place at the library during the weekend. This year, SÕL-CON took the step of educating youth about drawing, and CXC took the step of giving Kat Fajardo the emerging talent award. The first year of this conference, I remember running from one side of campus to another in order to get the most out of both cons. This year, I definitely did not have to do as much running, but I’m wondering if the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum couldn’t stand to create some dedicated programming to incubate talent outside of the OSU student body that will engage at a community and studio capacity with their collection and resources. ————————————————————————————————— Emil Ferris Spotlight (Sunday, Oct. 1st 2017, at the Columbus Metropolitan Library) First, if you don’t know about Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Things is Monsters, read this article so I don’t have to re-explain the miracle that this book is. Second, I have never read My Favorite Thing is Monsters. It was a book that came out to much acclaim this year, and it wasn’t until I saw Ferris herself, and most significantly, heard her speak that I now feel the impulse to go and get the book. It took Emil Ferris six years to write My Favorite Thing is Monsters. What sold me about the book is what Ferris means by Chicago. “The west is nothing like everywhere else in the world. Everywhere else, the wealth you have is in the older people in your life,” she says. Ferris means ‘old’ Chicago. In her own words, Ferris states that ‘there were all of these older actors and actresses from the silent film era, Georgette Leblanc types who were living alongside survivors of the Holocaust. It was a deeply haunted population…I realized I had access to all of these stories.” “As I was drawing forth my smaller self , love kept being the thing that kept me going…I realized that I wanted my kid to see me kick some ass, and we have to give our daughters badassery.” “The line creates secret unknown things to people from the heart of the creator.” “I began to see that each page I did had a taste. One page had a taste of rosemary and mint. Another tasted of syphillis, though I have never had syphillis…that’s what synthesia does.” ————————————————————————————————— Going to close on Kyle Baker’s work. The best reason to visit a conference like Cartoon Crossroads Columbus is that you get encounters with current and historical works about modern life that aren’t going to be seen elsewhere, all in one room. There is a cornucopia of independent comics creators from all walks of life here and let’s face it: The fine art world doesn’t accommodate unknown milestone creations from the world of comics, and the mainstream world of comics doesn’t accommodate emergent comics that might be unquantifiable within the canon of superbabes, superheroes, blood, guts, and uberships. It’s an in-between world where the sentiment of western middle-class expression is never treated condescendingly as ankle-browed nostalgia or visual brik-a-brak – a place where a commercial illustrator like Baker can let loose creatively, outside of his industrial obligations and have an audience, where an unconventional illustrator like Mimi Pond can fictionalize her own biography as a waitress without interpretational friction – a place where an established editorial cartoonist like Signe Wilkenson can introduce a new audience to her work within the appropriate context of its historical footnotes. It’s intellectual even when it’s pretending to be dumb. It’s philosophical even when it’s aping the pleasures of brain-vacancy. It’s irreverent without portending the inherent complacency of ‘fine.’ It’s comics, and it is the most central American art. ————————————————————————————————— Adam Griffiths is a comics artist from Takoma Park, MD. Catch his ongoing comic – American CRYO – HERE. 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06/13/2017

Aaron CockleJune 12, 2017NewsAaron Cockle here today with The ClairFree System; Pope Hats; Blind Spot and Black Paper; The Republic of Samsung; Printer Steganography ————————————————————————————————— ‘Here, she explains the inspiration behind her images and what she hopes readers to take from her work.’ Sally linked to this piece this past Friday, Claire Landsbaum asked Jillian Tamaki to dissect some of the panels from her story ‘The ClairFree System’, which is included in Tamaki’s new book, Boundless. Tamaki talks about incorporating found objects into the art-making process: This is another sculpture from the Art Gallery of Ontario, but the original artwork was just the child — I created the rest. A lot of this story is about reframing context: taking a classical sculpture or a photograph, which is a specific instant in time, and stripping it of its information to make it universal, which is what I did here. The image itself is about someone’s hopes and dreams for their child — about everyone’s idea of a great parent, which is that they can give their kid everything they want. I’ve heard people say that a new child is a pure, unsullied human being who hasn’t ever made a bad decision — that they’re without sin. I find that extremely hopeful. I don’t have children, but I would imagine the desire to prolong that state is an emotion every parent feels. ————————————————————————————————— ‘I keep returning to this notion: that the best feeling in the world is working really hard at creating something with no guarantee of a positive outcome.’ Ethan Rilly talks about his process for making Pope Hats #5, over at the AdHouse Books blog: Enough people have asked me whether I’m a lawyer that it might be useful to answer here: No, and I never was. Never stepped foot in a law firm. This story might be autobiographical in all the regular faintly embarrassing ways but the lawyer stuff is a good distance outside of me. I did research and interviews. ————————————————————————————————— ‘I pray to Tarkovsky, Marker, and Hitchcock.’ Teju Cole will be exhibiting work June 15-August 11 at Stephen Kasher Gallery in NYC, photos and text from his new book, Blind Spot, as well as an installation piece, Black Paper. The exhibition features over 30 color photographs from the series Blind Spot, each accompanied by Cole’s lyrical and evocative prose. Viewed together, these works form a multimedia diary of years of near-constant travel. In these photographs, we see what Cole has seen, from a park in Berlin to a mountain range in Switzerland, a church exterior in Lagos to a parking lot in Brooklyn; and we are drawn into the texts—which function as voiceovers—with which Cole complicates his already enigmatic images. At stake here is the question of vision, an exploration Cole began following a temporary spell of blindness in 2011, and which he presents here in a photographic sequence of novelistic intensity. The exhibition also presents Black Paper, a visceral photographic response to Cole’s experiences following the election of November 2016. This continuously evolving, large-scale work explores buried feelings, haunted space, and all that can be seen through darkness. ————————————————————————————————— “ABOUT MY WORK AND MYSELF AND ALL THE REST I USED TO SAY:/,” “I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY AND I’M SAYING IT:.” As a continuation of its online Net Art Anthology exhibition, Rhizome features and discusses Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries’s piece, Samsung. The piece Samsung addresses the complex nature of the corporation—its existence not only as an economic entity but also as an emotional phantom, reaching its incorporeal fingers into relationships, daydreams, and fantasies. The text of Samsung, demonstrating many of the formal qualities of poetry, is interspersed with conversational breaks that establish intimacy with the viewer. The tone becomes conspiratorial as the narrator asks, “CAN/I CONFIDE/IN YOU?” There is no option to decline. The viewer is rendered complicit in the narrator’s confession of their adoration of Samsung. ————————————————————————————————— ‘The printouts contained invisible dot patterns added by the printer to identify the worker who sent the print job’ I posted about Video Steganography, the imbedding of hidden information within electronic files, a few weeks back. Recently, the Boingboing blog posted a piece about one of the ways the National Security Agency was able to determine the source of leaked information about potential hacking involving the Russians in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, by examining the hidden dot patterns that are used with color printers. There’s been much speculation on exactly how NSA leaker Reality Winner was exposed after giving The Intercept documents that showed the extent to which the security agency suspects Russian meddling (previously) in last year’s general election. On one hand, the filing against her talks of the “creases” seen in the scans The Intercept posted, tipping them off to it being a workplace printout from an insider–an insinuation of casual sloppiness on the reporters’ part. On the other hand, it seemed clear Winner did everything at a work computer anyway and was surely doomed once the story came out and internal investigations began. ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 6-13-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 6-13-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-13-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

07/10/2017

Sally IngrahamJuly 10, 2017NewsNews and comics! ———————————————————————————————— Comics News of Note Dan Nadel interviews Simon Hanselmann on The Comics Journal – they speak about Simon’s new book One More Year and a whole lot more. Ben Jones and Diane Martel made an animated video for a new Coldplay song (cowritten by Brian Eno) – more info and a clip from the video HERE. Marguerite Van Cook (The Late Child and Other Animals) and friends buried a time capsule in Manhattan in 1984 – it was uncovered recently and caused quite a stir. Gabrielle Bell is making her daily diary comics this month – keep up with them HERE. ————————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-10-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 7-10-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

08/01/2017

Aaron CockleJuly 31, 2017NewsAaron Cockle here today with Jackie Kirby; Printed Matter; Romance Comics; What the World Wants (And How to Pay For It) ————————————————————————————————— Meter, Geometry and Comic Form Featured on CW this week is Jackie Kirby’s work looking at verse and the grid: In an initial attempt at translating verse form to comic form let us equate syllables with panels, and spreads with lines. Each row of panels will represent a metrical foot. Stress is produced relationally, and in comics one can use size, color, density, and a myriad of other visual techniques to “stress” a panel. The actual size of each panel per “foot” or row is up to your own discretion but I prefer to use a more qualitative than quantitative approach to my “comics scansion.” ————————————————————————————————— Something Unusual is Happening Was Happening The experimental comics exhibit at Printed Matter recently ended. The show was co-curated by Leslie Lasiter and Cory Siegler. ————————————————————————————————— ‘Almost always there were tears—buckets and buckets of beautifully rendered tears.’ Kelly Faircloth at Jezebel on The Tear-Stained, Forgotten World of Comic Books for Teenage Girls. Today, the genre is probably most familiar through the work of famed pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. (Though one artist who drew them, Everett Raymond Kinstler, was dismissive to Hadju: “No comics publisher would have hired Lichtenstein—he wasn’t good enough. Romance comics dealt with a range of emotions, some of them quite subtle and sophisticated, and they called for real storytelling ability.”) When they’re remembered outside of the world of dedicated comics fandom, it’s largely as a curious, campy footnote to the story of the caped crusaders who are such a prominent feature of our blockbuster summers and Decembers. ————————————————————————————————— What the World Wants This infographic has been kicking around since at least the late 1990’s, but it looks like it’s been updated. Via Buckminster Fuller‘s World Game Institute and the Global Energy Network Institute. ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 8-1-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 8-1-2017 – Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]

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