Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in News

Juan Fernández

Posted on June 29, 2016July 2, 2016

Explore

06/29/2018

Sally IngrahamJune 28, 2018NewsSally here with comics and news from Rina Ayuyang, Heidi MacDonald, Carole Maurel and Mariko Tamaki, and more! ————————————————————————————————— Coming this November from Drawn & Quarterly is Rina Ayuyang‘s Blame This on the Boogie. It’s the story of her childhood as a Filipina-American in Pittsburgh, PA, and how music and pop culture got her through the tough high school years, and continues to keep her sane as she navigates her present-day life as an artist and mother in Oakland, CA. Publishers Weekly has a brief review of the comic HERE. HERE is a preview of the book! ————————————————————————————————— Heidi MacDonald attended the American Library Association annual conference in New Orleans recently, and published a complete report of her experience at The Comics Beat. As a former librarian myself, and a kid who considered my local library a second home and counted my librarians among my best friends…I am always interested in how librarians have been saving the world lately. Heidi concludes her detailed account of an uplifting and informative experience with these thoughts: “And that’s really the bottom line about the ALA. Librarians love comics not because it’s a secret hobby they try to fob off on other people – graphic novels are highly circulated books in libraries. There is an avid readership and a growing need for more information about all of it. I think a lot of first time ALA attendees” “thought that their job would be trying to persuade librarians to give comics a try, but the reality is that curators are way ahead of that – they’re always looking for MORE information about the publishers and authors their patrons are interested in, and more information to justify their purchasing budgets. They are hungry for more books that people can read and enjoy. Far from the roil of the DM, graphic novels were clearly on the upswing “Graphic novels are big and they’re just going to get bigger,” someone at the Disney booth, of all places, told me. Creator Frank Cammuso had an even more blunt assessment. “I think libraries saved comics,” he told me. Looking back at how comics emerged from the wreck of the post speculation market into the manga-fueled era of bookstore comics, and the recovery following Borders going under, library sales have risen steadily, an invisible but integral part of the business for publishers smart enough to get in on it. The numbers don’t lie: There are an estimated 119,487 libraries in the US, including 16,000 public libraries and nearly 100,000 school libraries. A hit in this market dwarfs the direct sales market, and doesn’t even show up on Bookscan.“ Read the rest of the report HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Paste Magazine has an excerpt from French cartoonist Carole Maurel’s Luisa: Now and Then, newly adapted into English by Mariko Tamaki and available this week from Humanoids’ Life Drawn imprint. “A disillusioned photographer has a chance encounter with her lost teenage self who has miraculously traveled into the future. Together, both women ultimately discover who they really are, finding the courage to live life by being true to themselves. Luisa’s sexuality is revealed to be a defining element of her identity, one which both of her selves must come to terms with. A time-traveling love story that turns coming-of-age conventions upside down, Luisa is a universal queer romance for the modern age.“ See the preview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— A few extras PRI has a brief story on the new artist behind the comic strip Nancy – HERE. A 13-year old cartoonist named Sasha Matthews responds to Trump’s family separation policy – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 6-29-2018 – by Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]

01/19/2017

Sally IngrahamJanuary 18, 2017NewsWe’re here today with news from Ronald Wimberly and Rep. John Lewis, work by Phil Dokes, thoughts on Michael DeForge from Sam Ombiri, and our Thursday collection of daily strips by Comics Workbook students and alums! ————————————————————————————————— Ronald Wimberly is on an international tour! He was at Gosh! Comics in London yesterday speaking to a packed house about his work and process and his series Black History In It’s Own Words, which will be released by Image Comics in early February 2017 to help commemorate Black History Month – check it out HERE. Here’s a nice little video about Ron which was made for the Attack on Titan Anthology: ————————————————————————————————— I love the pieces that Phil Dokes has been posting on Instagram lately (follow him @phildokes67). He’s an OH cartoonist and comics historian, and a regular attendee of our comic salons here in Pittsburgh, PA. ————————————————————————————————— Representative John Lewis won’t be attending the inauguration ceremony on Friday, much to Trump’s dismay. As sales of the March trilogy rocketed to No. 1 on Amazon, amid this dustup, The Washington Post published a nice piece that focuses on what Rep. Lewis believes his story will continue to fuel. “I’m hopeful…that young people can see another generation that acted in a peaceful, nonviolent fashion and never gave up.“ Read the whole piece HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: A couple of weeks ago I saw an Ant Colony book. I didn’t think much beyond “Oh wow it’s Ant Colony.” Then later I thought about the digital one that I had read – wait that was Michael Deforge back then! Of course I knew that, but it didn’t fully render in my mind that it was the same Michael that made all the other work I think of when I think of him. His work is still the same but at the same time, (as obvious as this is to say) it’s different. Like in my mind I think of that Michael and the Michael doing comics now as different (obviously this can be attributed to passage of time, but I’m kind of ignoring this aspect to say what I’m saying here). The way he changes his work so often, it creates this weird effect that I find in anonymity. It feels like Michael cloned himself and multiple Michaels make different work, but we can’t tell who the “original Michael” is. It feels like a less convoluted and less contrived way of working under different pseudonyms (not that I begrudge anyone for having a pseudonym whatsoever, but what I mean is that it’s tough to pull off in a way where the new person created through the pseudonym interacts with the work being made.) I also don’t know if I buy into what I’m saying. – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— Always available on our school store – Thee Santoro School Handbook for Making Better Comics (one page of the book is pictrued above) by Frank Santoro and Kurt Ankeny. Printed offset on cardstock by the professionals at The Prolific Group, Winnipeg, Canada. This is not some cheap color xerox or risograph. Looks great, feels great, and even smells great. This 16 page handbook is a quick guide to the tenets of our school. A smash hit – get a copy HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Dungeon Lollers – 1-19-2017 – by Tyler Landry ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-19-2017 – by Kate Harmon ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-19-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— 1-19-2017 – by Juan Fernández Share this page: [...]

On Philippe Druillet – by RM Rhodes

Comics WorkbookJuly 30, 2017EssaysRM Rhodes presents commentary on the work of Philippe Druillet ————————————————————————————————— I feel like when someone like me asks a young artist “Have you ever heard of…?” the young artist is expecting to know why the person in question is important. Or, even more simply, why they should care. Having said that, Philippe Druillet is important because he’s one of the founding members of Les Humanoïdes Associés, the group that created Metal Hurlant (which later became Heavy Metal in America). If you’re guessing all of that French indicates Druillet’s national origin, you’d be correct. Of even more relevance, Druillet is an amazing visual artist whose work deserves to be looked at by anyone who has any affinity for color and the use of color in art. His work is clearly influenced by Jack Kirby, but it also harkens back to European engravings that have been colored from the mid-17th Century. His early work is black and white, but when he got his first airbrush, his entire style changed. As far as I’m concerned, Druillet levelled up when he started working color into his compositions. He clearly spent a long time working on the underlying pen illustrations, but it’s his use of color as a major element of the composition that’s worthy of note. Speaking of composition, Druillet’s works like Lone Sloane, Salammbô, and Gail gave him ample opportunities to create some really challenging page layouts. These layouts are so distinctive that Benoit Peeters’ Four Conceptions of a Page uses Druillet as the exemplar of Decorative pages. In the interests of show vs tell, I’m going to stop talking about how awesome Druillet is and just show you a whole bunch of his artwork. It will either resonate with you or it won’t, but I have a feeling that if it does resonate, it will resonate strongly. ————————————————————————————————— RM Rhodes is the curator of the Heavy Metal Magazine tumblr. He lives and works in Washington, D.C. His current project is a weekly online anthology called The Rumor published on the Comics Workbook tumblr – see issues of it HERE. Check out more of his comics at Louis Deux. Share this page: [...]

Conversation with images: ERIK NEBEL AND THE SPIRITUALITY OF COLOR

Gloria RiveraApril 6, 2017EssaysErik Nebel is a contemporary comics maker, whose body of work is predominantly published digitally. The comics world is founded on a history of printed matter, and it often unintentionally disenfranchises work that is strictly made for the web. Web comics typically have their own forum apart from comics made for print, which is self-categorizing. Erik Nebel’s comics dominate their platform, in terms of simplicity for means of visual distribution, as well as accepting and employing the screen to their advantage in regard to color and motion. Erik Nebel, from a formal standpoint, uses the elements of color, scale, pattern (repetition) to create a connection with their audience without means of establishing “character” descriptions. We look to Erik’s images of fluid, moving, form-ambiguous figures across the page, with the only rigidity in their work in the sequencing across the template of three rectangular panels. It is a primitive instinct to read groups of figures as multiple persons when placed in the same space, so the setup of the comics are a defining line, implying a narrative. It’s a simple mechanism (the three panel grid) but without it, it would be a different kind of comic. If anything, the stationary structure of the grid enhances Erik’s graceful forms, and stark choices in color/contrast. Comics made for print usually see a loss in translation to the digital screen, but this is where Erik does their best to exploit the gap between the two. Nearly every strip they create vibrates between lines, flat against flat. In 1963 Josef Albers published a book known as Interaction of Color, and described various principles, one being the Bezold Effect. This effect describes a color illusion called “optical mixture” where two or more colors perceived simultaneously are seen combined. From the impressionistic painters we have learned that they never presented, let us say, green by itself. Instead of using green paint mixed mechanically from yellow and blue, they applied the two unmixed in small dots, allowing perception of the green – as an impression. (Incidentally this is the same principle used in 4 color process printing). Nebel’s colors are joyous and spontaneous, working to retain your attention as the eye reads the figure. The colors appear to have no code, which is important to the narrative of the non-binary; the stories are of figures in ecstasy, emotion. When we look at the way the images relate to figures in art history, we can see Matisse. Bold color and iconography only suggesting “Humanity”, to tell stories of spirituality. When we talk about the Eastern perceptions of gender in imagery, they see male as an Earth figure, carnal and woman pertaining to the spiritual. The figures we see in these stories are both and neither. They are charged and meditative. I do not assume any comics maker is looking to be regarded through a lens outside their intentions, but the language of images is made for these sort of relationships. Looking outside of a formal breakdown of Nebel’s comics, we see a space for loud, silent moments. For figures which best express themselves by means other than speech. We are challenged by Erik’s images, in such a way that while the digital screen generally promotes the shortening of the attention-span for images, this timing is thrown off by the interactive quality of Erik’s work. Timing is one of the variables in comics that is controlled through the panel (largely through multiple panels), and Erik manages to alter this further through means of color, in very limited space. This questions what other ways of interacting with our readers we cartoonists may be overlooking. Erik Nebel is not only a deft cartoonist demonstrating new boundaries, but with these comics is forcefully pushing a space for social change. ————————————————————————————————— Erik Nebel has been published in print in Best American Comics 2015, and listed under Notable Comics in Best American Comics 2016. They have a 96 page compilation through Yeti Press of their online work. Erik Nebel participates with The4PanelProject (exploration of the four panel comics format) and you can see more of their work on their tumblr, where they post a new comic everyday. Share this page: [...]

10/30/2018

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

06/29/2016

Posted on June 29, 2016July 2, 2016 by Juan Fernández

Juan Fernanadez here with your Wednesday Spanish language comics news: Selo Piqui’s TOPOGRAFIAS; Valencia Línea Clara; Comics workshop with LUTO; Ana Galvañ comics making video series; Isabel Cortés Navarro entrevista a Max; taking a look at Portugal’s Chili com Carne; fotos de los cicloreaders y Sindy Elefante.

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Now available: Topografias

Topographias is Selo Piqui‘s latest collection of stories, whose common thread is the way, the route: through the frames, unlikely places are discovered, all with a strangely familiar narrative. It features two color work by Barbára Malagoli, Julia Balthazar, Lovelove6, Mariana Paraizo,Puiupo e Taís Koshino. Very cool comics poetics in service of these 6 women’s stories. If you’re curious about this exciting anthology, check out their online preview.

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VLC. Valencia Línea Clara

El Institut Valencià d’Art Modern presenta la exposición “VLC. Valencia Línea Clara”, que podrá verse hasta el 2 de octubre de 2016 en las salas de la instituciónn. Esta exhibicion es un recopilatorio de alrededor de 200 cómics originales del grupo erróneamente conocido como la Nueva Escuela Valenciana de los años 80, uno de los proyectos expositivos estrella de la programación del IVAM para el 2016. Entre los artistas participantes destacan Sento Llobell, Mariscal o Micharmut. Una colección que se contextualiza con otros cómics de los años 70 como Tritón de Daniel Torres, Macao de Mique Beltrán o Futurama de Micharmut, también presentes en la exposición.

Durante los años 60 y 70, Valencia vivió un espectacular momento creativo. Las vanguardias creativas explotaban con grupos como el Equipo Crónica y Realidad, que influían decisivamente en los jóvenes que por aquel momento comenzaban a cursar estudios artísticos. Unos jóvenes que, además, se habían formado en la cultura del tebeo, que tuvo en Valencia un centro neurálgico durante los años 40 y 50, y que sirvió para que estos nuevos artistas generaran un bagaje visual que se amalgamó durante su etapa formativa con las nuevas tendencias artísticas que inundaban la ciudad.

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Aprende a dibujar cómics con Ana Galvañ

Ana Galvañ, dibujante de cómics e ilustradora a creado una serie exhaustiva de videos y actividades en Domestika. En esta serie, Galvañ te enseñará a crear tu propio cómic con el programa de ilustración Clip Studio Paint (anteriormente conocido como Manga Studio). Aprenderás a plasmar y estructurar tus ideas de cara a la creación de una historia y llevarla a cabo de forma fácil e intuitiva. Es un guia extremadamente útil para vosotros que quieren utilizar Clip Studio Paint pero que prefieren no dibujar en un estilo de manga tradicional. Te lo recomiendo!

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Isabel Cortés Navarro entrevista a Max

Isabel: ¿Qué valor tiene para alguien que ha promovido el reconocimiento artístico de la historieta ser editado por el Museo del Prado?

Max: A nivel personal es una satisfacción y creo que es bueno para el cómic en general. También debo advertir —sé que hay por ahí mucha gente que me va a dar la brasa con eso— que hacer esto no significa en absoluto venderse al sistema. Para mí no es nada contradictorio, ni con mi pasado underground ni con mi presente. Igual que hago esto hoy para el Museo del Prado, mañana hago un tebeo grapado y autoeditado. No tengo problemas ni nada de eso, eso que quede claro.

Isabel: Además de compartir obsesiones, entre tu obra y el Bosco se pueden encontrar muchos otros paralelismos. Simbolismo, iconografía propia, surrealismo, arte secuencial…

Max: Sí, eso es mérito de Jose Manuel [Matilla], que pensó que yo era el adecuado para el Bosco. Por lo demás, la influencia de este pintor la he tenido siempre. Igual no evidente, pero creo que se nota que andamos por caminos parecidos.

Soy muy consciente de la tradición simbólica de ciertos personajes y objetos, y la he usado mucho siempre. Funciona como un extra narrativo en mis tebeos, para quien lo pilla. Bueno, algunos elementos simbólicos son ya tan antiguos que todo el mundo los pilla, aunque sea a nivel subconsciente, pero otros no. Por ejemplo, lo de los mochuelos es curioso. En todos los libros sobre el Bosco se citan mucho como ave de Atenea y por tanto de la sabiduría, o bien como infernal porque es el ave asociada a las brujas, y no salen de ahí. Pero me di cuenta, a raíz de esa época en que dibujaba mochuelos en las esquinas, que no tenían ninguna función especial, de que el mochuelo es el autorretrato del autor. Es el pájaro que ve en la oscuridad, por tanto es el testigo de lo que estás contando, y es el autor el que ha sido testigo de algo y lo puede enseñar a los demás. En el Bosco funciona así, en casi todos sus cuadros hay un mochuelo.

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Gerardo Vilches le da un vistazo a la editorial portugues, Chili com Carne:

Una de las cosas más interesantes de la última edición de GRAF en Barcelona fue la presencia de dos editoriales independientes extranjeras. Una fue la letona Kus!, y la otra la portuguesa Chili com Carne. De esta última, gracias a la amabilidad de Marcos Farrajota, responsable de la editorial, me traje a casa un puñado de cómics que he podido ir leyendo poco a poco, y que me han resultando muy estimulantes. Chili com carne lleva años publicando cómics en su país, e incluso han publicado obras de Olivier Schrauwen o Tommi Musturi. Resulta muy significativo lo poco que conocemos del cómic que se hace en Portugal, un país que tenemos literalmente a un paso. Tiene que ver con muchas cosas, cuestiones históricas y políticas que ahora mismo no vienen al caso, pero espero aportar mi grano de arena para dar a conocer una escena independiente muy interesante, y accesible para el lector español: muchos títulos incluyen traducción al inglés, y, en realidad, no es complicado leer en portugués con un poco de voluntad por nuestra parte.

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Taller de comics con LUTO – Comics Workshop with LUTO (Luis Tobon) in Colombia

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Documentado: El 1er tour de los Cicloreaders

Estuvimos dibujando y pedaleando por la sabana con @SindyElefante ¡Gracias a todos los que participaron! pic.twitter.com/Bi5we75x6D

— Cicloreaders (@cicloreaders) June 26, 2016

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hasta la proxima!

Juan

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in News

Juan Fernández

Posted on June 29, 2016July 2, 2016

Explore

04/17/2017

Sally IngrahamApril 16, 2017NewsDigging into a new week with news and comics from Dash Shaw, Frank Santoro, Eleanor Davis, Sam Alden, Jen Sorensen, and M. S. Harkness. ————————————————————————————————— Dash Shaw writes about curating the pop-up shop at the Metrograph theater in New York City, where his film My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea opened on April 14th 2017 – on The Comics Journal. The shop carries: “…rare DVDs, film-related books, and issues of Cahiers du Cinéma. They asked me to pick books and DVDs that felt related to my movie, or that a cinema-going audience would be interested in.” Included in the selection is Frank Santoro’s Incanto (above). Dash Shaw writes that Frank: “…painted the key exterior background paintings in High School Sinking. This particular zine by Santoro is lovely and poetic, and also, to me, utterly hilarious, because a section of it comes from a Speed Racer episode. Santoro told me that this was drawn after working as Francesco Clemente’s assistant. Clemente would often interpret preexisting old drawings, so that inspired Santoro to adapt a two-second Speed Racer moment. It’s perfect – like seeing something you’ve seen before for the first time. He captures the stillness of those Speed Racer cartoons with their minimal background paintings.” Incanto is out of print and a rare find, so if you don’t stop by the Metrograph pop-up shop in April to get a copy, you might still be able to find it at Copacetic Comics – HERE. Read about the rest of Dash’s picks for the shop and be sure to catch My Entire Highschool Sinking Into the Sea in a city near you soon! Here are some recent reviews of the film/interviews with Dash: “Drawn to Disaster” – Filmmaker Magazine interview “The Strife’s Aquatic” – NPR movie review Q&A from Denver Alamo Drafthouse screening, with artist Andrew Lorenzi “Alt Comix Artists Revives Classic Animation Tech” – Inverse feature “Resplendent Teenage Turmoil” – Fandor Keyframe interview Dash Shaw will be coming to Pittsburgh for a screening of his movie on April 25th 2017 at the Rowhouse Cinema! Full event details are HERE. Creator and director Dash Shaw along with cartoonist Frank Santoro will kick off the Pittsburgh Premiere of “My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea” with a live interview followed by a sneak preview showing of the film. VIP tickets include everything above plus a private Meet & Greet in the Bierport taproom (limit 30 people)! Tuesday, April 25th 7:15pm $12 Regular Ticket: Live Interview & Screening $20 VIP Ticket: Live Interview & Screening AND private Meet & Greet post screening. If you are in the region be sure to come out for this event! For a list of other screenings around the country visit this page. ————————————————————————————————— You can find an excerpt from the upcoming You & A Bike & A Road by Eleanor Davis (Koyama Press, May 2017) on Illustrated PEN, presented by guest editor MariNaomi. She writes: “Eleanor Davis puts out consistently great work, so much that it amazes me when I’m surprised (each and every time) by how wonderful her work is. This book is no exception, filled with moments that are full of joy, pain, beauty, and trouble. Using minimal lines and words, Eleanor conveys so much about the spectrum of emotions involved with being human.“ See the excerpt HERE. ————————————————————————————————— M. S. Harkness has offered a preview of her upcoming comic Tinderella – see it HERE. Marina is coming to Pittsburgh this summer for a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency, and she will be working on Tinderella and other comics while she is here in July. Unperturbed by a tentative post-graduation financial state, Marina has been creating the ways and means to get to Pittsburgh – she’s determined to cause some havoc around here, come hell or high water – but you can help her get here with a little more comfort and ease by contributing to her Generosity campaign. She – and the Comics Workbook team – thank you in advance! ————————————————————————————————— Sam Alden published part 2 of 4 of his comic Sledgehammer on Hazlitt….in February – I somehow missed it, so possibly you did as well. Check it out HERE. New on Hazlitt is Rory Frances‘ Look Outside – view part 1 HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Jen Sorensen is interviewed on The Comics Beat. She talks about making political cartoons, being the comics editor at Fusion, and what it means to be a cartoonist in the present world. “Dueben: You won the Herblock Award a few years ago and you said that your job is “worrying about how humanity is destroying itself.” Which is a good line, but do you think that is the role of the cartoonist in some way? Sorensen: I’m doing a lot of worrying about humanity destroying itself these days. I think it is an important role of a political cartoonist. I think sometimes it’s probably more acute than others. It’s something that’s hard to deal with sometimes. Right now I find that these aren’t really funny times. There are ludicrous characters and you can make fun of Trump and these ridiculous nominees, but at the same time I don’t want to normalize him. I find myself not even wanting to draw him. I mean, I do and I will, but I don’t want to treat him like any other President. I’ve been struggling with that. How to be humorous at a time when things are just very serious. I guess what I wind up doing is somewhat darker humor, darker cartoons, and more informative cartoons that say, this is what’s happening, can you believe it? With the Bush administration things were terrible and there were definitely some dark times, but I felt like you could make fun of Bush for being a buffoon and the implications just weren’t quite as grave. It’s a different time now.“ Read the rest HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 4-17-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 4-17-2017 – by Christian Southgate Christian is a member of the Charlottetown Comics Club (Prince Edward Island, Canada) which is headed by Comics Workbook alum Tyler Landry – more about Christian Southgate and the CCC HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-17-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

04/13/2017

Sally IngrahamApril 13, 2017NewsSam Ombiri on Patrick Kyle’s Don’t Come in Here; Gloria Rivera on The Wandering Life of Sanmao; Ronald Wimberly at RISD. ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: The first time I read Don’t Come In Here by Patrick Kyle I was glued to it, ready to see whatever, no matter how mundane, happen. From the beginning it felt like it had a lot of potential, and it delivered on this potential. In the beginning of the book, Patrick Kyle is creating empty space, and along with that he brings on board a sense of potential for discovery of this space being explored that constantly warps and morphs but then returns to it’s original form. Each page has two panels with every so often one page with just one panel, so the constant morphing is rhythmic – it’s unexpected but feels very right, and when it doesn’t feel right it’s hilarious. It’s a really funny book, like when the ghosts that appear are being really comically sensitive,and caring way way too much. It’s a wholly unexpected turn to the established rhythm and grounded boredom that has been taking place. The computer is maybe my favorite character, because the computer presents the most surprises. For the most part, the computer just says mundane things, completes mundane tasks, like loading this, searching this, except every now and then it suddenly surprises us, the reader. To the main character it just seems like a normal thing. Patrick said of his books before Don’t Come In Here, “All my comics were just drawing based, they’re just about doing crazy drawings, and that was it, the bulk of my early career is like my juvenile where everything was just about the way things looked. So I feel all my comics like Black Mass, my first book, was all about the visual impact of the whole thing and not really about the writing at all.” The drawings are not only being concernedwith the visual impact in Don’t Come In Here. The drawings are not at the expense of the story, they are working together in harmony. I myself have not read his other mentioned work so I cannot speak to it, but Patrick seems to be criticizing his previous work for them not being so concerned with the writing. “Distance Mover started the same way. It was just all about creating a visual thing. I really never thought too much about writing and storytelling much to be honest until Michael (Deforge) and and I were doing these series, that we call blank comics. Every issue has a theme; like a cop comic basketball comic, Pixar’s Cars comic, Christmas comic and so on, and we did a bunch of them, and the first one I did was just shitty and I kept going, and I was just getting into these really stupid topics and building little stories about them. I felt that really helped my writing out.” He later says “The images are secondary now or maybe there’s a balance between the writing and the images.” So then judging from what Patrick said here, and reading the book, it feels like Patrick is exercising restraint by only drawing a certain way, and drawing certain things, and not just going insane with the drawings and abandoning the story that he has set in mind. It very much shows! At times the character walks and then while the character is walking Patrick does what I read as just a joke of the pace and maybe the mood the character is walking, but then again it could just be the character shape-shifting, or it could be both. Because of the presentation, when change occurs it is, not so much unsettling for us as the readers, but we can imagine for the character that it is. I am really into the extra dimension Patrick adds to doing the most boring tasks. He adds the sense of a bizarre perspective to things like your food expiring, or having the thought that you’ve almost cleaned up everything only for the mess to resurface. It is stuff like that which makes me enjoy really excited about engaging with this medium. Again, the first time I read Don’t Come In Here every event that had happened, and that was going to happen in it despite how mundane, was exciting. – Sam Ombiri Get a copy of Patrick Kyle’s Don’t Come In Here from Copacetic Comics – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Gloria Rivera writes about Zhang Leping’s manhua The Wandering Life of Sanmao (三毛流浪记) for Comics Workbook: “The drawing of the original black and white comic is superb, and though never published in the US is completely readable through images alone. Except for signage and a handful of panels, the bulk of the comic is pantomime. Even the dialogue expressed between characters is drawn and not written! Although the relationship between words and pictures in comics should never be debased (as it may be in the show-don’t-tell school of comics) the silence experienced in this comic is unbreakable, and this is a comic that keeps you within its timing, only refraining for pauses of humor, a softness. Leping’s work is noble, leaving his reader in awe of how a man who has experienced so much can describe innocence as he does. This particular collection of comics has been adapted into color comics, animation, film and even live theater productions over the span of 80 years.“ Read more HERE and see a lengthy excerpt from the comic. ————————————————————————————————— Ronald Wimberly spoke at RISD awhile back but they finally posted the video of the talk online – check it out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 4-13-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 4-13-2017 – by Tyler Landry ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-13-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

12/13/2016

Aaron CockleDecember 13, 2016NewsAaron here today with Rosalie Lightning; Ubu Roi; Trish Trash; Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky; Dronewatch 2017; George Herriman’s Biographer, Michael Tisserand; What Dan Nadel is Reading ————————————————————————————————— Background/Middleground/Foreground Tom Hart’s Rosalie Lightning, a strong contender for book of the year, is excerpted at the PEN America blog. ————————————————————————————————— ‘I think you have to let teens come to their own satire’ The Lunar Observer’s Jacob Khepler observes the anniversary of Alfred Jarry’s play, Ubu Roi: Ubu Roi will never get the high school treatment — it was a big, big noise in its time, forging a path for Dadaism, Surrealism, and the Theater of the Absurd, but the very first word is SHIT, if not in all caps then in an all-caps feeling, and there’s no avoiding or defending that. ————————————————————————————————— Rollergirls (on Mars) Michael C. Lorah interviews Jessica Abel at the Comic Book Resources blog: Many authors have books later published in another language. Was it strange in any way to see this one first appear in another tongue? It was interesting because it definitely gave me a lot of insight into how the French comics industry works. That was very interesting information, because producing a book doesn’t happen the same way it does in the American system. And there are good sides and bad sides to the French system as well. It’s a complex question. It’s nice to bring back into English. Of course, it was written in English, so it’s sort of being “untranslated” more than anything else. But I was able to work closely with the translator for the French version. I speak French, so I was able to refine it and make it reflect the spirit of the book. I’m proud of how it came out there. ————————————————————————————————— Here, Kevin Huizenga finds the baron composing aphorisms at a house known as Mad Bean Cottage. Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky Comics ————————————————————————————————— 21st Century Birdwatching ————————————————————————————————— The 173rd meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2016 at 7pm at Parsons The New School for Design, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Michael Tisserand on Birth of the Krazy: The Early Days of George Herriman and Krazy Kat. George Herriman’s biographer Michael Tisserand revisits the years when boxing, funny animals, and the one cartoonist’s genius produced comics’ most enigmatic character. Michael Tisserand‘s biography of George Herriman, Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White will be published by HarperCollins in December, 2016. His previous books include The Kingdom of Zydeco and the Hurricane Katrina memoir Sugarcane Academy. He lives in New Orleans. ————————————————————————————————— Nadel’s Reading List Including Lauren Weinstein’s Normel Person Comics: Normal here opens up to move away from the old “white straight guy” meaning and into a whole mindset of viewing the world and asking simple, structural questions and funny, moving observations. Halloween costumes, babies, food. The basics of our particular little kind of life. All done in Lauren’s detailed line work and lush watercolors. A master at work. And Jessica Campbell’s Hot or Not: 20th Century Male Artists: l love this little book that does exactly as the title suggests: breaks down male artists into the ol’ “hot or not” categories usually reserved for women, even, or even especially in the art world. Campbell nails the silly “objective” tone of it all, digs deep in her choices, and is very, very funny. Also, her unfussy, to-the-point cartooning removes any sense of artifice. The book moves along easily and you barely stop to realize how funny, weird, and uncomfortably natural it all feels. Share this page: [...]

11/24/2016

Sam OmbiriNovember 24, 2016NewsToday we have thoughts from Tyler Landry on the recent work-in-progress of Cameron Weston Nicholson, and Sam Ombiri’s response to this with further exploration of the act of sketching and process work – plus other news items from the week. ————————————————————————————————— Tyler Landry here. I’ve been following some of Cameron Weston Nicholson’s semi-secret endeavors over the last week or two, and the man is ON FIRE! Several simultaneous streams of intense character development are taking place here – some involving characters you might recognize from a certain book/film about a peculiar little girl who’s looking for her place in the world, while some are brand new, straight from Cam’s brain-swamp. The latter are the first manifestations of a new comic he’s got in the works. Sssshhhhhh… There is a sincere (and successful) attempt here to accentuate each character’s unique physicality which, for me, helps to telegraph their personalities directly into their appearance. Think of it like exaggerated facial expressions – for the whole body. This next set of character poses is as much about movement as it is about base structure. In this case, what they do outwardly speaks volumes about what’s going on inside. Combined, the physical form and the gestures amount to much of what’s required for these characters to communicate who they are. What Cameron’s been doing here is the beginning of world-building for a story. Be it in comics, film/tv, a novel, or a video game, steps like these towards developing characters and, by extension, the world they inhabit, are essential. Cam’s really feeling these guys out, trying to understand what makes ‘em tick, how they dress, how they act, how they go about their business in the world he’s going to place them in. Just like any exercise in copying the masters, there’s a wealth of information to be gleaned from retracing the steps of your predecessors on the way to (or alongside) taking your own. – Tyler Landry Follow Cameron Weston Nicholson‘s Instagram to keep up with more of his process work – @prof_weston Watch the video of Cameron’s Comics Workbook-hosted workshop at SPX 2016 HERE. We have presented this Feature in full, but you can also read it HERE on the site, and check out more links to Cameron and Tyler Landry’s work. What follows is Sam Ombiri’s response to the above piece about Cameron’s work. ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here. Gary Panter said something like sketchbooks are your friend – sometimes you hide an idea in there and you find it later when you need it (I think that’s what he said). CF said he likes to think of a sketchbook or blank page as an experimental plane. Mieko Kawakami said that for her, sketching (she actually said poetry – but it’s in a different cultural context, which unless you avidly read contemporary Japanese literature in Japanese, and keep up to date with the trends in relation to the history of Western influence on Japanese poetry, mixing with the more traditional Japanese poetry, then going back to a mix of traditional and Western influence and just what’s hot in the scene right now…you’d get it – not that I know anything about all that, I just heard it somewhere). Anyway for Mieko Kawakami “sketching” is like delusion and the “final draft” (she actually said prose) is like imagination. I kinda partly disagree with this illustration. I don’t think – with my ignorance of what’s going on with Japanese poetry right now – work of that kind is pure delusion, but it is emotion tapered with structure at least for the time being (though there’s still structure at play, as shown in Cameron Weston Nicholson’s work – see above – but there’s room for expression created here. Or maybe it’s just one’s personal fears and reservations.) CF said something like the best way to draw is to turn your back on everyone you know and your ideals – at least I think that’s what he said. Japanese poetry is really preoccupied with rhythm, so even with the “delusion” it’s still grounded in something. Mieko Kawakami said the delusion she was referring to was like how she could have a family live in a house made out of pancakes – but ironically when she’s referring to her imagination she feels she can’t do that. It makes me wonder – why make novels that limit yourself if they are a “higher calling”? From my understanding, for awhile the attitude readers had for novels in Japan were: the more difficult the better. I’m not sure whether it was The Tale of Genji or Don Quixote that was the first novel, but I think it’s safe to say the novelists most likely have a strong sense of tradition strictly built on the foundation that The Tale of Genji set up (I’m only assuming). So then, maybe that strong sense of tradition is what drives Kawakami to limit herself. That doesn’t really make any sense though, because a lot of the more popular contemporary Japanese authors, at least popular outside of Japan, have been influenced by novels outside the Japanese tradition. I think she cited Virginia Woolf as a big influence. Someone said that the current movement is a fusion of the old difficult traditional Japanese literature and the new fun Japanese literature. Maybe in delusion/sketching/experimentation there’s a lack of tampering (which isn’t always the case). The only tampering to be found in imagination or in the work is in one’s limitations (sometimes). Ambiguity is subtracted so there’s a more possible chance of connection, but connection can happen either way. Sketches/process work is the most honest/real documentation. It doesn’t always show up in apparent ways in all works but sometimes it shows up in the final work, which usually rocks. I like to be reminded when I’m looking at a drawing that it’s a drawing made by a person who isn’t always graceful. – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— A few other news items for the day: Ben Passmore has a comic up on The Nib this week about getting arrested for protesting the KKK – check it out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The New Yorker ran a piece last week about the “Hidden Black Female Figures of Western Art” that is well worth a read. An excerpt: “What began as a small experiment expanded into the history of art in the entire Western world. The museums were invisible graveyards. They were just sitting there: broken, defaced, unseen. A catalogue of bodies. It was an invisible archaeology—an archaeology that crisscrossed time and space. Everywhere I went, I found them, just off, just to the edge, just beneath: pieces of black female bodies buried in plain sight. A small black female carved into the handle of a tool. Miniature black women who could fit into your palm. A three-inch-long black female carved into a knife handle, so you could hold on to her body tightly whenever you sliced your daily bread. A palm-sized black woman in your hand when you brushed your hair at night, looking absently into the mirror. A spoon handle, a drum, a hammer, a flute—black bodies sculpted into the wooden frame surrounding a heroic painting of a white male on top of a white horse, riding triumphantly into war. Black female bodies ornamenting the tripods, the base of a table, sleeping inside the frame, selling, offering, tending in the background of innumerable paintings. Bending, standing, waiting. Our whole artistic history crawling with the decorative bodies of black women.” – Robin Coste Lewis for The New Yorker Read the rest of the article HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Robin McConnell has a massive Cartoon Crossroads Columbus report up on the Inkstuds site – check it out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Matthew Thurber‘s comics have been adapted into the play 1-800-MICE, being put on by the Baltimore Annex Theater – info and tickets HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Comics Workbook has announced the Winter Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers – course starts Dec. 29th 2016! 8 week course – 500 bux – 10 spots available – apply by Dec. 13th 2016 and get $100 off course fee! More details can be found HERE – or email santoroschoolATgmail. Santoro School Application guidelines: -3 figure drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards -3 landscape drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards -3 still life drawings done on blank 3 x 5 cards -draw in a contour line style – Think Matisse – no under-drawing – draw directly in ink -just send small jpgs of images – dont post to your blog pls -specific url links to any comics work you have done. Send applications to: santoroschoolATgmail Share this page: [...]

04/21/2017

Sally IngrahamApril 20, 2017NewsSally here with the PEN World Voices Festival lineup, a look at female cartoonists in mainstream publications, new work from Cecil Castellucci and Leela Corman, and more. ————————————————————————————————— The PEN World Voices Festival is coming up! Meg Lemke (editor in chief of Mutha Magazine, chair of the Comics and Graphic Novel Committee for the Brooklyn Book Festival, and guest editor of PEN America’s Illustrated PEN series) is making sure that comics are well represented throughout the festival (see poster above!), and female creators especially are being given plenty of space to make some noise. From Rokudenashiko, to Roz Chaste, to Julia Gfrorer, to Gabrielle Bell, female cartoonists from all corners of the comics community are getting together to talk shop and share their work and their opinions. Please make an effort to get to these events and support all of the cartoonists and artists who will be lifting their voices during the festival. ————————————————————————————————— Hazel Cills wrote a detailed report for MTV News on the current place of female cartoonists in mainstream publications. It’s a good moment to take notes, as it was announced recently that Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor for The New Yorker, would be stepping down after 20 years in the role. Emma Allen will be picking up the reins in a few weeks (while maintaining her role as an editor for the magazine’s Daily Shouts section) and it goes without saying that she’s interested in hiring more female cartoonists. The New Yorker, along with other mainstream publications (especially in their print form), is a “notoriously hard place to submit cartoons” at the best of times, and despite the efforts of editors and staff here and there, comparatively few women succeed in getting their work published with any regularity. “Female illustrators make less money than their male counterparts on average and still have a long way to go when it comes to winning awards. The first Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning that was given to a woman went to Jen Sorensen in 2014, but just last year the prestigious comic artist award Angoulême Grand Prix nominated 30 men and zero women (which caused many male cartoonists, including Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware, to ask to be removed from the list). So while publications are seeking to diversify the bylines of writers and artists, when it comes to the artwork and cartoons published alongside them, the conversation is just getting started.“ The article serves as both a look at the current state of things, and a brief crash-course in the history of female cartoonists (and the wall of white males that they’ve been beating against for a century and more). It brings up an interesting note too about the “self-censoring” that women and POC creators apply to their work, knowing that white male characters are more likely to grab the attention of white male editors. ” “As women we tend to self-censor a lot more,” illustrator and Maryland Institute College of Art professor Shreyas R Krishnan says. “Whether it’s OK to put something in the work or not purely because it doesn’t conform to the default that’s been established.” Krishnan describes working, as an Indian woman, on a commissioned illustration of a female musician of color for white, male art directors. “I tend to abstract skin color, using blue or purple, so that’s what I did,” she says. “But then the art director was like, ‘No, we need her to look like what she looks like,’ and I was like , ‘Sure, I can do that, I just wasn’t sure if you guys would want it that way.’ I was assuming they might not because they were white men.” “ There are many more interesting viewpoints and thoughts in the article – read the whole thing HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Although she is still working on Shade, the Changing Girl, Cecil Castellucci has another comics writing project coming from Dark Horse very soon. Soupy Leaves Home is “a Depression-era hobo odyssey about a young girl fleeing her stifling home to live life free on the rails under the mentorship of an elder vagabond who sees the world a little bit differently than most.” It’s a story that Cecil has been thinking about and working on since 2008. Paste Magazine sat down with her recently to talk about the comic. “Paste: Pearl’s dad isn’t her only obstacle—even other women in her life try to force her into the role of a dutiful daughter. Was it important to you to address gender inequality of the era in addition to Pearl’s specific familial situation? And did your research lead you to any real-world tales of women hoboes living undercover as men? Castellucci: Absolutely it was important. Her family was, as were many others, still reeling from the Great Depression. That definitely plays a part in the dynamic that is going on there, which you can see on page one. Pinched times affect people and how and what they try to hold on to. I think for Soupy’s family, gender dynamics and the idea of being proper and what is proper is what they cling to. You have to remember in 1932 a bobbed haircut was considered scandalous. Pants on women were still kind of weird. women had only gotten the vote a decade earlier. Bennington College, while not the first women’s college, opened its doors that year. Soupy saw herself as a different kind of woman than what her family saw. She thinks of herself as becoming a modern woman, and while the idea about what that meant was emerging, it was still a very difficult road for a girl. Frankly, it still is. And while there was no particular girl or woman hobo that I can point to in my research, every book and documentary and fictional film about hoboes includes girls and women who rode the rails. They oftentimes traveled as boys, not only for safety reasons but for the freedom and ease it granted them.“ Read the rest of the interview HERE – look for the comic on shelves soon. ————————————————————————————————— There is an excerpt from Leela Corman‘s graphic novel-in-progress – Victory Parade – on Tablet Magazine. The story is about a Jewish American soldier named Sam Arensberg who helps “liberate a concentration camp – but the horrors he witnesses haunt his dreams“. See the excerpt HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Shoots and Leaves Sarah Glidden’s Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria and Iraq has won the 2017 Lynd Ward Prize for Graphic Novel of the Year. Read more about it on The Comics Beat. Annie Mok speaks to Gabrielle Bell about Everything is Flammable – on The Comics Journal. AIGA Eye on Design has a review of Eleanor Davis‘ upcoming comic You & A Bike & A Road – read it HERE. Illustrated PEN has an excerpt from Mira Jacob‘s Questions From My Mixed-Race Son – guest editor Meg Lemke introduces it HERE. The Chicago Tribune has a review of Kristen Radtke‘s debut graphic memoir Imagine Wanting Only This. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 4-21-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 4-21-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-21-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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