Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged adam griffiths, art comic 3, caleb orecchio, gabriella tito, keith knight, Matthew Thurber, sam ombiri, shannon wright

Sally Ingraham

Posted on July 13, 2017

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The Plan – “Columbo” tells all

Comics WorkbookOctober 29, 2015School UpdatesAnd now here’s something we hope you’ll really like: Frank Santoro doing his best Columbo imitation to tell you all about the plan to build the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency in Pittsburgh,PA (read to yourself in your best Columbo voice) Howzitgoin? Good, good. Me? Good, thanks. I gotta tell ya though I’m sorry to bother you again, but y’see somethin’s been troubling me and I can’t stop thinking about it. Kept me up all night. and the dog too cuz he thought I was getting up to take him to Cincinnati. What’s that? Oh. Sorry. Cincinnati is what I call the park. Cuz if I say “park” or “walk” then he gets crazy. So we say Cincinnati around here. Yeah. So. Where was I? Oh yeah. This thing has been bothering me and it’s this thing about commodity form as community form. What’s that? Oh. “Commodity form as community form.” Yeah, it’s a mouthful. And sort of puzzle. What does it mean? I don’t know. Or I think I know. Either way, I keep thinking about it. People ask me, “Frank, what’s this I hear you are buying the house next door and turning it into your schoolhouse?” I say, yeah, it’s true. The old man who owned the property passed away. Well, no one’s been living there for twenty years. He was this old guy who lived in Florida most of the year and had a bunch of properties all over the neighborhood. I’ve wanted to buy it forever but the old man wouldn’t budge so we thought maybe someday. Anyways, the day arrived and the nephew who cut the grass, y’know, to keep the place nice over the years—well, the nephew stopped by and asked me if i wanted to buy the place. That they weren’t gonna put it on the market. Was I interested, he says? Was I interested? Of course, I’m interested. I said yes, I’ll buy it. Trouble is, you see, I don’t have the money. Yeah, I know. Foolish of me, wasn’t it? I had to say yes, though. Otherwise it’s on the market and bang it’s gone. This way I have a chance at least. So I’m scraping together the money as fast as possible. Boy, I’ll tell ya though, it’s humbling. Passing the hat is a humbling experience. Why should I help this fool is what most of them are thinking, I know. It’s ok, I understand. I am foolish. But foolish choices have gotten me this far—so I gotta ride out the lucky streak. If it’s a complete disaster and I can’t get the house, well, at least I took a shot. A shot not taken is a shot missed, they say. But, it’s gotta be a good shot. You gotta take a good shot to score. Anyhow, can I get you a coffee or a tea? Sorry, I got alot on my mind and I gotta just talk it out, if you don’t mind. Can’t sleep. Cream and sugar? No, ok. Here ya go. You’re welcome. Let me get one, myself. Hold on. There we are. Ok. So, about the house. We’re gonna do an IndieGoGo campaign. Yeah, “crowdfunding”. Yeah, I know. It’s an interesting idea which we think we have to try. I mean, we gotta take the shot, right? Take it to the hoop. What’s that? Oh. Sorry, when I say “we” I mean we, like, the school. I’m gonna make it a school next door. I like having the correspondence course for comics but I think it’s time to try to do more. I’ve been trying to figure out for years how I can expand my school—start having my students teach in some way—but I can never figure it out because the correspondence part of it is so personal. Teaching in a classroom is different. But how do you get a classroom? Do I have to join my school to another school to get their classroom? But most comics are done alone by the person making them in a room. Classrooms are good for teaching some artforms but not so great for teaching others, y’know what I mean? Like how do you teach writing in a classroom? Go around peering over the shoulders to read what they are doing? No, it’s gotta be something different. Like a residency. Like the student can live in the classroom. Work in the classroom of course, but also, sleep in the classroom and eat there too. Most cartoonists I know work out of their homes. So maybe if I can have a house that is a residency where the student can have classes everyday and then do the hard work in private in the same space—that might just work. Especially if the teacher lives on the same street and his mother makes really awesome spaghetti sauce and the student doesn’t have to worry about what to make for dinner. An airbnb with comic book lessons. Something like that. The students I have already are pretty psyched about it. Many of them live in far flung backwater comics towns and here in Pittsburgh, well, we are a prime time comics town. Always have been, but things are really hoppin’ here now. So I dunno. I think it could work, cuz the students I already have would be the first wave of residents. We already know each other even if we never met in person. And then they can come here and we can work with the game plan we already know and come up with new strategies for making forward thinking comics. Does that sound hokey? I’m sorry, forgive me, I get carried away. See, I just think that for the artform to grow there need to be different types of interdisciplinary learning institutions that are outside of the traditional academy. Like there needs to be a big ecosystem. People say, why do we need a comics school? There aren’t many jobs in comics so why churn out these kids with no job prospects? Well, I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in churning out ninjas. I don’t see many jobs out there for ninjas. It’s understood that if you want to be a ninja you are doing it for the love of ninjadom–not for personal glory or gold. I mean, what professional ninja goes around telling people they are a ninja? I’ve never seen a “ninja needed” advertisement anywhere. This is why I’m intrigued by this “commodity form as community form” thing. What’s that? Oh, did I make that up? No, no, Bill Boichel came up with that one. Back in the 80s. His whole thing was that he had this comic book store in an economically depressed steel town back in the 80s. And it was the only place in the neighborhood kids could hangout without an adult. Like you see in store windows “only two kids allowed at a time” or “children must be accompanied by an adult” and all that stuff? Yeah, Bill’s store was never like that. Christ, he had couches. Kids would sit there and read. A kid who was flunking English class probably would be READING at the comic book store without a care in the world. And so, you know, Bill is a thoughtful guy and he’d start putting all this relevant material into these kids’ hands. Like he’d give a kid a Black Panther comic and tell him his theory that that “the Black Panther party” was named soon after the comic came out back in the 60s. Like he didn’t just take their quarters for beat up back issues of comics, he actually fucking cared about these kids. And that really did something to me, cuz I was one of those kids too. There was NO WAY OUT of my post-idustrial wasteland existence, really. Except there was—thru comics. Bill preached the gospel of comics and I signed up for the choir. He taught me about “commodity form as community form”. Meaning that what we buy and sell creates a community. And how do you engage your community in which you are buying and selling? And what are you buying? And what are you selling? Bill would make his own comics in the basement of the store and then print them on the xerox machine down there and then go upstairs and put it on the rack for sale. He rearranged my thinking of how a maker of art can get their work into the world. Bill was publishing comics made by the kids who hung out at the store. He had us selling our comics at our high schools. He “published” our work for us and taught us how to make money from our art. They weren’t teaching me that in high school art class. He taught us how to fish essentially. The guy changed my life. So I want to do the same thing in my own way. I know how hard it is to gain an education in comics. How to learn the craft and how to survive in this godforsaken industry and on the circuit of church basement shows? I can help you. Really. We can help you. I have over 150 students now and I want to bring each student, if they are willing, thru the residency schoolhouse and help them level up so that they can go back into their community and pass on what Bill passed on to me. What Bill passed on to me is really something I can’t even explain except that it is part of the necessary oral tradition of art. Especially comics. Comics is such an insanely difficult thing to study because so much of the art is obscured by the marketplace. How do you balance the two when the form itself is, as they say, the bastard child of art and commerce? I know: you provide a space where the student can LIVE AND WORK. Where there is no separation between art and life or between your school’s awesome classroom and your hovel on the otherside of town. A place where the student can have a total immersion in the private process of making comics while still being tethered to a strong community. What’s in it for you, you ask? Well, that’s a good question. Maybe if you are, simply, a comics fan— then someday in the future you can read the work by some of the school’s students and you’ll enjoy it. That’s probably all that is in it for you. But if you are a comics snob who is also interested in seeing the form grow then maybe you will consider supporting the school because you know that I am one passionate motherfeyer about comics and I really, really want to push the form itself to grow and to absorb new voices and disciplines to create a Jeet Kune Do-type comics style. A style, an approach to comics making that is firmly rooted in the 21st century. What does it mean it be a comics maker in the 21st century? How does a comics maker navigate the marketplace or navigate a marketplace that doesn’t exist for them? Making comics on the xerox machine and selling them by hand is still the business model. So something has got to give. Help me help my students figure this out so that the next generation won’t have such a hard time of it. That’s what you’ll get out of supporting the school: knowing that you made a difference, potentially, in the direction of the form itself. More coffee? So, yeah. I’m selling my collection through a private auction and now this: we’re going to do an IndieGoGo crowdfund to raise money to buy the house and start working on it. The house needs alot of work to get it up to code for inspections. But first we gotta raise the money for the down payment. If you feel like helping out you can buy something or donate here. If you want to check out the private auction then send me an email: santoroschoolATgmail. Everyone is asking why I’m doing a private auction. It’s because some of the famous artists giving me artwork to sell don’t really want to be part of a crowdfund and all that. Plus it is a way of avoiding eBay fees and that kind of thing. It is also a way of keeping the books and art in my collection IN the community because in theory the people buying stuff are comics snobs (haha, that’s a term of respect). So, for me, this plays into the “community form as commodity form thing”. Like I’m selling the collection I amassed for years—a collection that was made thru purchases made within the community—to buy a house to teach comics. So hopefully if you, the comics fan, buy something from the auction then I am selling my commodities to buy a meeting place for the community. See, how pretty that is? It’s like a circle. The end is in the beginning. I want some kid to sit on the couch at our school and read comics and maaaaybe take a workshop and get interested in comics as A WAY OUT in a spiritual sense and possibly in a financial sense. Like it’s a trade. A 21st century skillset. How to arrange words and images. Visual literacy. I mean, that’s the internet, right? Commodity form as community form. Community form as commodity form. Take awhile, think about it. I’ll be here if you wanna stop by later. Share this page: [...]

03/24/2016

HarrisonMarch 24, 2016News Comics news and Zyrtec packs for pollen season. Jillian Tamaki, Jeremy Sorese, K.L. Ricks, and Jen Lee creating work for Hazlitt magazine and The Comics Journal. Short abstract animation films from Japan by way of the U.S., and remembering the 5 footer. ————————————————————————————————— Hazlitt Magazine has become a prominent home for comic creators to publish various works online. Cartoonists/Illustrators Jeremy Sorese, Jillian Tamaki, and K.L. Ricks have been the past three updates in the comic sections. Check out the rest of the artists here, and if your an artist pitch to Hazlitt editors here. ————————————————————————————————— Thunder Paw creator Jen Lee has been a part of the Cartoonist’s Diary section on TCJ.com for the past few weeks. The inner question sections of these comics feel familiar, but the most striking part is how the negative space between the panels creates such a smooth reading experience. An extra block of space makes scrolling down feel natural instead of tedious. It’s also fun to see her characters drawn on top of photos and clever animaiton in some panels . One or two simple choices making comics on the web more fun to read. ————————————————————————————————— “I attended GEORAMA in tokyo this year, 2016, as a guest. I created a quick installation over the course of the festival. By using twelve separate canvases as individual frames of a sequence, i was able to create a loop of painted animation.” Caleb Wood is an independent animation filmmaker from Minnesota. Check out his other animation experiments with his film PLUMB below too. ————————————————————————————————— “Aiyyo Bo knows this (what?) and Bo knows that (what?) But Bo don’t know jack, cause Bo can’t rap Well whaddya know, the Di-Dawg, is first up to bat No batteries included, and no strings attached No holds barred, no time for move fakin Gots to get the loot so I can bring home the bacon” “Coming with more hits than the Braves and the Yankees Living mad phat like an over sized Bam-bi The wackest crews try to dis, it makes me laugh When my track record’s longer than a DC-20 aircraft So, next time that you think you want something here Make something deffer, take that garbage to St. Elsewhere” R.I.P. to a great artist. Read this and this. Share this page: [...]

07/20/2018

Sally IngrahamJuly 19, 2018NewsSally Ingraham here with a look at Lale Westvind’s Grip Vol. 1! ————————————————————————————————— I am usually swept along by Lale Westvind‘s work, but her latest comic – Grip Vol. 1 – swept me away. It “grips” you immediately, as your eye catches sight of the bright screen-printed cover and the lovely risograph interiors. The rise of riso printing has brought a wealth of pretty books, but a pretty book does not always equal a great comic. Lale’s voracious drawing style and the way she bends the comics medium to her will is in this case thrillingly complimented by the work of Chicago-based Perfectly Acceptable Press. Lale’s storytelling is particularly good in this comic. It begins with a transformative encounter with a force that sets the hands of the protagonist in motion. Her hands remain the focus of the story throughout, visually and thematically. She moves from one adventure to another, from one job to the next, meeting people and traveling, and her hands manipulate and influence what happens around her both at her will and perhaps against it. Without words and using only a few written sound effects, Lale Westvind crafts a moving tribute to working women, a wild celebration of female power and skill. Whether sorting mail, serving tables, piloting aircraft, traversing mountain heights, or sharing long significant eye-contact, the women in Lale’s comic are moving, building, holding the world together while tearing it apart. Although there is no regular rhythm in the structure of the panels, there are a lot of interesting design choices from spread to spread. There are visual rhymes and mirroring that I find satisfying, and a color scheme that balances and harmonizes with the lines. Grip Vol. 1 mixes reality with fantasy in a way that feels familiar to me. It’s like Lale got inside my head – and likely the heads of many women – and illustrated how the work of the moment, the task at hand, is transformed by the inner fantasies and landscapes of the heart, the joyous and violent riot of thought that leads to action or survival. Whether physically or metaphorically, often getting a grip and keeping it becomes the only motion that really matters. Recommended. Get a copy of the comic HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-20-2018 – by Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]

Bill Boichel on Captain America

Bill BoichelJuly 16, 2016EssaysShare this page: [...]

Rochester, NY Scene Report

Juan FernándezMarch 10, 2016Scene ReportsThis week’s Scene Report is brought to you by Steven Arenius of Panoptic Press. Rochester is located in Western New York along Lake Ontario, right across from Toronto. Much of the town as we know it today is thanks to Kodak founder George Eastman, an old-school tycoon who hunted elephants with Teddy Roosevelt and left one of the most concise suicide notes of all time: “My work is done, why wait?” Rochester is also home to Xerox, whose tower is the tallest building in our skyline. Rochester is bisected by the Genesee River, which lends its name to the local brewery and like the Nile runs south-to-north. It has been home Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. We have an abandoned subway, brutally frigid and gray winters, and a signature dish called the Garbage Plate that is best left undiscussed. Rochester’s newsprint art and comics anthology of choice is Hope Mountain News, curated by Mike Turzanski and Pete Lazarski, which has circulated locally since 2011 and has since been archived in full on their website. Their fifth and latest issue, The Million Dollar Canoe, takes a leap in format and style and is (in their words) “64 pages of weird comics, drippy monsters, and two color mysteries.” Pete also has an expansive collection of comic strips full of ghouls and wizards on his website, Imaginary Monsters. Local musician Dave Chisholm is an accomplished comic artist and author of the graphic novels Instrumental and Let’s Go To Utah as well as Tyranny of the Muse, an ongoing webcomic with Eddie Wright. Clayton Cowles is an illustrator and letterer currently working on a number of Image and Marvel titles. Ant Hill is an original ongoing comic series created by Nigel Carrington. The Rochester Teen Set Outsider (now National Teen Set Outsider) is the longest running zine in town and perhaps at the forefront of the medium’s resurgence here. Local poet, publisher, and H_NGM_N Nate Pritts is a wealth of comics knowledge, insight and enthusiasm. We first met him at the Visual Studies Workshop‘s Pub Fair, a great show that specializes in small press and handmade print. Given its size, Rochester is fortunate to have a number of great comic shops. We share a building with Comics Etc., which spotlights local artists and creators with a small exhibition on Free Comic Book Day. The back issues at Wonderland run the deepest and they host a biannual comic show. Dan from Comic Book Heaven has been very supportive in getting our first book on his shelves. All Heroes is home to a holy grail of 50-cent comics running over 20 longboxes deep, where a great deal of time has gone unaccounted for indeed. NeedleDrop Records carries zines and local print as well. The scene is alive and well elsewhere in Western New York as well. Over in Buffalo, the Itinerant Printer Chris Fritton runs the Buffalo Small Press Book Fair with help from the Western New York Book Arts Center. We met Stephen Floyd from One Percent Press there, who along with JP Coovert has been releasing comics for over ten years. Hex Records is a Syracuse-based hardcore label whose Translate zine features comics in addition to reviews, tour diaries, and interviews. The oldest annual convention in the country takes place in nearby Ithaca and is run by their Comic Book Club. We were guests at Ithacon 40 along with Camilo Nascimento and Hunter Schindo of Arhanta Comics, whose atmospheric comics are layered with sound and immersively framed by responsive web design. Queen City Comics and Comics For Collectors are the shops to check out in Buffalo and Ithaca, respectively. Share this page: [...]

07/13/2017

Posted on July 13, 2017 by Sally Ingraham

Today we have Sam Ombiri on Matthew Thurber’s Art Comic 3, NPR’s comics reader poll, The Permanent Night from Adam Griffiths, and more.

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Sam Ombiri here: I was recently reading Art Comic 3 by Matthew Thurber (a story of art world hijinx where the recurring character of Cupcake has gotten a new job at Dachshund Pond’s gallery). I really like the relationship between the characters Dachshund and Zenobia – the way Zenobia refers to Dachshund and the way Dachshund has an idea of what Zenobia thinks about him, (yet she mis-remembers him enough to recommend Cupcake to get a job with him.) There are these subtle moments that hint at Dachshund’s attitude and him dealing with his surfacing demise, or at least that “Demise” that he greatly fears. This fear isn’t shown blatantly or in a straightforward way. It begins being shown as Cupcake walks in to the Party Portal after Cupcake’s nose has “worked its magic”, and Dachshund’s archivist has left (in the panel where she says, “I’m not coming back. I got hired at Starbucks…a job with a future!”)

Dachshund’s face has a look of horror, but then by the next panel Daschund undramatically drops his coffee cup, pretending, “Yeah, yeah, whatever, I know I’m a failure“. This isn’t what he says in the panel, but as the reader you hear it, because you combine the way Dachshund has dropped his coffee cup with him saying “Well OK! Guess I’m looking for a new archivist now, too.” He’s smiling, when not that much time has passed – we can still see one of the old archivist’s legs as she is leaving the Party Portal. The one looking at her is Cupcake. Thurber made the extra effort to register to the reader that Cupcake has turned Dachshund’s head, but Dachshund’s bigger and more significant turn isn’t registered, which is great because his turn is more muted – along with him tossing his cup being muted, you as the reader feel it more. The way Cupcake is looking at the old Archivist leaving also tells you this is something to look at, and who is Dachshund kidding by not looking at her, and smiling so nonchalantly?

In that panel, Thurber doesn’t bother to spell it out for the reader or emphasize it. The drawing of the cup is tilted to look like it’s falling, and as the reader of course you register it like he tossed it, but then the cup also feels like it’s floating – again Thurber doesn’t bother to spell it out for the reader.

Dachshund’s success is in a place where he could take it or leave it, or his desire for success is just success in general, I don’t know. My guess is that he’s not satisfied with his current role, since he said, “I was gonna be the next Jean-Luc Godard, but I didn’t have the talent, just the sunglasses. Five years ago, I finally realized what my role is… And took off my sunglasses. For Good.” The silence that comes after he says “I finally realized what my role is…” seems sad, and then after that it feels even more melancholy with Dushchand saying “And I took of my sunglasses. For good.” The sentences feel like forced uncompromising resolutions that surfaced after having no resources for what his goal is – to not look back at the sunglasses that he took off. Those sentences have more gravity than the more weightless words he was somewhat mumbling before, as if he wouldn’t be at all unsatisfied with them being unheard even by himself. – Sam Ombiri

Get a copy of Art Comic 3 by Matthew Thurber HERE.

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Here’s a video of Keith Knight talking about his police brutality cartoons, made by the media students at Sierra Nevada College.

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NPR released the results of their summer comics poll, whittling down 7,000 entries to 100 comics with the help of an all-star team of creators and critics (including C. Spike Trotman, G. Willow Wilson, and Maggie Thompson). The list is a good place for non-comics readers to start, and will tick off the major works in a couple of genres that “everyone should read”. NPR doesn’t make any lofty pretenses however:

“This isn’t meant as a comprehensive list of the “best” or “most important” or “most influential” comics, of course. It’s a lot more personal and idiosyncratic than that, because we asked folks to name the comics they loved. That means you’ll find enormously popular mainstays like Maus and Fun Home jostling for space alongside newer work that’s awaiting a wider audience (Check Please, anyone?).“

See the whole list HERE.

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Adam Griffiths sent us a few copies of his new mini comic The Permanent Night (partially drawn during his January 2017 Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency). An urban fantasy set in Washington, D.C., it’s small “floppy” size is quite appealing. Digital color balances well with Adam’s intricate pencil drawings, and the wildly inventive lettering doesn’t hinder the reading at all – the added visual element instead pulls the reader deeper into the story. I’m eagerly anticipating more work from Adam in the future (his social media hints at something BIG on the horizon!) Meanwhile, get yourself a copy of this debut mini comic HERE and be sure to check out Adam’s ongoing webcomic American Cryo – HERE.

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Suzy and Cecil – 7-13-2017 – by Gabriella Tito

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Joanie and Jordie – 7-13-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged adam griffiths, art comic 3, caleb orecchio, gabriella tito, keith knight, Matthew Thurber, sam ombiri, shannon wright

Sally Ingraham

Posted on July 13, 2017

Explore

A Studio Visit with Jim Rugg | Part I: NINJATECH

Juan FernándezApril 18, 2016ClassesJim Rugg, creator of “Street Angel” and “Aphrodisiac” [ jimrugg.com ], shows Comics Workbook TV how he takes a story from script to final. Part I focuses on “NINJATECH”, a story from Street Angel. Video by Michael Pisano | michaelpisano.com More images of NINJATECH here: jimrugg.com/post/130097479739/copcomco-street-angel-ninjatech-to-those-who Soundtrack | Johann Sebastian Bach // Gott fähret auf mit Jauchzen, BWV 43 – 7. Aria: Er ists, der ganz allein // performed by Michel Rondeau Share this page: [...]

Little Seen Los Bros Hernandez Covers From The Late 1980s

Chris Anthony DiazJune 3, 2016The Diaz ArchivePeople wonder why i can’t pare down my comics collection in one fell swoop… it’s because i have to cherry pick it for gems like this to keep first before selling the ones that i have outgrown! Share this page: [...]

05/02/2016

Juan FernándezMay 2, 2016NewsMaggie Sutrov’s plein air comics, Dan Nadel chronicles Paper Radio; Clean Sweep; Creators For Creators; Koyama Press in the news; Rokudenashiko; Jason Moran; Remembering Harold Cohen. ————————————————————————————————— New Comics – Maggie Sutrov Comics Workbook is featuring a collection of comics drawn and painted by teacher and artist, Maggie Sutrov this week. Made on site and in the moment, these comics represent an under-examined mode of comics making. Join Maggie for a walk on the page. Here’s hoping her work gets you inspired to make observational comics of your own. Check it out here! ————————————————————————————————— Inside front cover of Christopher Forgues’s Low Tide #5, November 2001. Punk and Hippie Dan Nadel has put together a killer reflection on the collaborative work Ben Jones and Christopher Forgues(CF) did as Paper Radio over on Art in America. It’s something else. A Comics Comics boomerang that smacks you hard across the face. Nadel explores the roots of their comics, growing up in Massachusetts, subversive fan fiction, and the monumental impact of their short lived collaboration in the early 2000s. So many great details in this piece: Jones and Forgues found their own ways into making comics, but neither made a hierarchical distinction between mediums.Everything was fair game, except perhaps the remote-seeming New York art world. As Forgues recalls, “The idea of being an artist seemed absurd.” The venues, audiences, and markets for gallery art appeared totally foreign. “I’m going to do an installation? Where? I’m gonna paint on canvas? How? Where am I gonna show? At a coffee shop? Art seemed like the past, and a zine was the present and tangible . . . a way to proceed.” And this one: Both Jones and Forgues drew, as they still do, in pencil, which was unheard of at the time in professional circles but appropriate for Paper Radio’s primary printing technique: photocopying. Without the need for the photostat process by which older comics were created, there’s no need for ink. They produced flat and open figures through their airy, calligraphic approach. Paper Radio never attempted illusionistic realism; instead, the drawings invite projection from readers, which the artists saw as a way of initiating an intimate exchange with their audience. As Forgues puts it, “I was thinking about how to make this work with the least amount of stuff possible. That sounds easy or lazy, but it’s actually incredibly hard. The whole mission of cartooning is, with a few lines, to bring something across that’s real in the mind. The whole magic of what it is to represent something on a surface. The space is there, and you fill it with your brain.” By foregrounding, and deepening, the interaction that happens in all kinds of reading, Forgues and Jones understood Paper Radio as connected to performance, which was integral to so much of the culture pouring out of Fort Thunder. Read it all here on Art in America. ————————————————————————————————— Clean Sweep CF has released 3 new works that you don’t want to sleep on: THERMAL PRINTED RECEIPT MAGAZINES PRINTED ON 25ft LONG BPA FREE PAPER Dumb, beautiful and soon to be out of stock. CF takes on the scroll. Minds are sure to melt. See what it’s all about over on the Free-CF site. ————————————————————————————————— A Neo-Xeric Grant Image Comics and Iron Circus Comics have teamed up to create the Creators For Creators grant. Seems like good stuff for makers who feel they have the chops to get a big break from two independent publishing powerhouses. The goal of the Creators for Creators grant is to help pave the way for the next generation of comics creators by supporting their work financially and through mentorship, as well as providing opportunities for their creations to reach a wide audience. We plan to give $30,000 to a single cartoonist or writer/artist duo in order to support the creation of a new and original work of a length between sixty-four and one hundred pages over the course of a single year. The recipient will be selected by committee according to rigorous criteria. Submissions opened yesterday. Learn more here. ————————————————————————————————— Koyama Corner Koyama Press has been featured in the culture section of FADER, the music magazine. It’s great to see Koyama Press, and Annie in particular, getting profiled for audiences outside of comics circles. Zainab Akhtar puts together a nice profile of the publisher for folks outside of the very comics publishing bubble that Koyama press has spent it’s existence trying to bust. From the article, here’s Michael Deforge on Annie Koyama: “She was a comics reader, but Koyama Press didn’t start out primarily as a comics publisher, so she didn’t have that weird, insular point of view that some people who’ve spent too long in comics can develop,” says DeForge. “She didn’t have preconceived notions about what a ‘proper’ comic looked like, what a sellable one looked like, or the formats they should be printed in.” Check it all out here. MANKO MANKO MANKO Robert Kirby takes a good look at Koyama Press’ What is Obscenity by Rokudenashiko over on The Comics Journal. It’s great to see this book make it through people’s hands and gain momentum as a vessel for Rokudenshiko’s thoughts and experiences as a Japanese woman. Ultimately, Rokudenashiko’s greatest weapon is her refusal to capitulate to the attempts at belittling and dismissing her: when she claims “Rokudenashiko”/”Good for Nothing”, as as her own, she ties herself to a long and noble activist tradition of reappropriation (for example, feminists reclaiming “bitch,” to express strength and independence, and the LGBT community’s use of “Queer” to connote solidarity among its different factions and to state opposition to sexual binaries). Also, she tells us, “I’ve always liked to fight.” The fact that the authorities prove utterly clueless about crowdfunding, among many other things, only strengthens her resolve and defiance. Read it all on The Comics Journal. ————————————————————————————————— STAGED in NYC The work of musician/composer/artist Jason Moran is being exhibited in Bushwick gallery, Luhring Augustine through July 30th. Moran’s work links music and visual art in a way that deeply explores racial entanglements in American cultural production. This exhibition is an especially notable one for how it explores the flow of music through space and time via architecture and the performance of remembered music. It’s jaw dropping stuff. STAGED will include a range of objects and works on paper, including two large-scale sculptures featuring audio from Moran’s STAGED series that were recently exhibited in the 56th Biennale di Venezia. Based on two historic New York City jazz venues that no longer exist (the Savoy Ballroom and the Three Deuces), the sculptures are hybrids of reconstructions and imaginings. Works on paper and smaller objects will be in dialogue with the stage sculptures on many levels: citing performance and process, employing sound, and exploiting the visual history of jazz in America. It’s interesting to see how the history of Jazz is treated in the world of fine Art, when it’s not just seen as an ancillary development to the narrative of arts movements. It’s really striking when Jason speaks in the above video about the role and Jason Moran’s body of work speaks to how the music transforms from healing to hurt. Makes you think. ————————————————————————————————— Harold Cohen Has Passed Away Last week, on the 27th of April, code artist, Harold Cohen, passed away at age 88. Cohen, a computer scientist and artist, developed AARON, code which could generate unique visual compositions autonomously in 1973, starting with abstract and later with more representational subjects. Interestingly in the 1990s, Cohen’s compositions were translated to the physical realm, drawn and painted by plotters onto canvas. The blog, Prosthetic Knowledge, has a good look at his AI and its evolution for those interested in his legacy. ————————————————————————————————— That’s all for today. Until next time. Stay dry. Share this page: [...]

09/14/2018

Sally IngrahamSeptember 14, 2018NewsSally here – in Bethesda, MD, for Small Press Expo 2018, that is! Once again Comics Workbook is running a series of free comics workshops for the show – see the details HERE and come check them out if you’re at SPX on Saturday or Sunday this weekend! Follow our Instagram – @comicsworkbook – for updates and news from SPX, and maybe a sneak peak of some of the comics holdings at the Library of Congress. I’ll be back with the regular comics news next week! Share this page: [...]

08/21/2017

Caleb OrecchioAugust 20, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with your Monday edition of the Daily News with some thoughts on drawing sparked by Eleanor Davis and the reputable discipline of Leslie Stein and Gary Panter–and remember not to go blind looking at the eclipse ———————————————————————————————— Recently, a friend of mine lent me Eleanor Davis’ recent Koyama Press release, You & A Bike & A Road. I read it on Tumblr when she was serializing it live (I think) as she embarked on her cross-country bike adventure which the book illustrates; but I never really took the time to notice how immediate the drawing is. From what I understand, these pages were drawn first take as she was making her way through her journey, like a diary, which is really impressive. The drawings are sparse and noodley, yet feel perfectly complete–and they teem with a pertinent energy. Last time I was in Pittsburgh, Frank Santoro talked a lot about Gary Panter and how he draws constantly. Even while you’re having a conversation, he’s just drawing away, “He’s just someone who draws all the time no matter what.” On the most recent episode of Greg Hunter’s “Comics Decalogue,” Katie Skelly talks about going to a bar with Leslie Stein and Gary Panter and, basically confirming Frank’s story, that both Stein and Panter drew while conversing the entire time they were hanging out. I think this idea of being a “drawer” is often lost on most cartoonists. I mean, we all draw, right? But how many of us REALLY draw all the time–and how many of us can draw in any other way than our “style?” Now, I’m not throwing shade to style, but I think it’s worth thinking about. When I was going to school for graphic design, the designer Timothy Goodman came to talk to us and one of his big statements I took away from his lecture was, “Don’t have a style.” His reasoning mostly pertained to the idea that having a style will basically hinder your creativity. Now, most cartoonists are not being asked to create an ad in 3 hours for Time Magazine like a highly in-demand designer like Goodman, BUT can anyone really argue that style often does limit the kind of stories a cartoonist can make? In fact, most styles can even limit a cartoonist to a demographic–speaking strictly, and generally, in marketing terms. What am I getting at? I’m not trying to preach or sound like I have THE answers, but what I like about Davis’ recent book is the fact that it is drawn. It’s not inked with a brush with every stroke carefully crafted and feathered. It’s just drawn. Ever seen a Brian Chippendale comic? He just draws them (mostly). Crumb? Moebius? (Conflict of interest warning:) Frank Santoro? Just drawn. I like “professionally” inked comics and comics where traditional craft is essential, but there is an immediacy that is stripped at every step of the process. It’s like going acoustic, once you add a drum kit, you have to turn up the volume on everything else and the intimacy gradually is drowned out. I’m working out these thoughts as I go–thanks for reading. Next week–Kirby’s 100th birthday:) ———————————————————————————————— yikes! I’ve been so pumped about drawing and Kirby’s 100th that I almost forgot other comics existed in the world. Here are some links I found after I came back to our reality. Don’t miss that eclipse. Here, everyone is going to be talking about this so get your info about the eclipse. If you want more info, try a google search. Yo, today is Marie Severin’s birthday. You know who Marie Severin is right? Get acquainted. Heroes punching Nazis has becoming a particularly pertinent topic lately. Speaking of Kirby, I’m suspicious of the new highly hyped-up Mister Miracle comic, but maybe it’s good–who knows. ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 8-21-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ———————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 8-21-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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