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