Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged anya davidson, Caitlin McGurk, daria tessler, jackie ormes, jenny zervakis, julia gfrorer, kelly sue deconnick, mimi pond, sally ingraham

Sally Ingraham

Posted on August 10, 2017

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06/27/2017

Aaron CockleJune 27, 2017NewsAaron Cockle here today with New Chinese Comics; Zadie Smith on Lynette Yiadom-Boakye; Clowes @ Cracked; Philip Guston; Something Unusual is Happening at Printed Matter; Matthew Thurber’s Cartoonist Run-down ————————————————————————————————— If you can’t make it but would still like to buy a book, they will be available at Desert Island after the 29th and through our website: paradise-systems.com ————————————————————————————————— Under-Song For A Cipher Zadie Smith looks at the Lynette Yiadom-Boakye exhibition currently on view at the New Museum. In many of Yiadom-Boakye’s interviews, she is asked about the source of her images, and she tends to answer as a novelist would, citing a potent mix of found images, memory, sheer imagination, and spontaneous painterly improvisation (most of her canvases are, famously, completed in a single day). From a novelist’s point of view, both the speed and the clarity are humbling. Subtleties of human personality it might take thousands of words to establish are here articulated by way of a few confident brushstrokes. But the deeper beguilement is how she manages to create the effect of wholly realized figures while simultaneously confounding so many of our assumptions about the figurative. The type of questions prompted by, say, Holbein (What kind of a man was Sir Thomas More?) or Gainsborough (What was the social status of Mr. and Mrs. Andrews?), or when considering a Lucian Freud (What is the relation between painter and model?), are all short-circuited here, replaced by an existential query not much heard in contemporary art: Who is this? The answer is both literal and liberating: No one. Nor will the titles of these paintings identify them. ————————————————————————————————— ‘MAD Magazine in the 80’s seemed staid and a former ghost of itself, but Cracked seemed exciting and filled with new blood (and old) that spoke to my budding anarchic mind.’ At the Last of the Spinner Rack Junkies blog, Isaac Chance has uploaded a bunch of comics Daniel Clowes did at Cracked Magazine in the 1980’s. Clowes would produce work for Cracked from 1985 through 1989. During this period he was also writing and drawing his own comic book Lloyd Llewellyn for Fantagraphics. After six issues, Llewellyn ended with a Special in 1988 and Clowes began Eightball in 1989. ————————————————————————————————— Philip Guston and the Poets At Hyperallergic, Cara Ober looks at Guston’s work and the role that poetry played in its making, on exhibit at the Gallerie dell’Accademia (Campo della Carita, 1050, Venice) through September 3. The exhibit is loosely curated around the five poets who are said to have had the most significant impact on his work — Wallace Stevens, Eugenio Montale, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and D.H. Lawrence — and this structure provides unusual opportunities for thematic, rather than historical or formal, groupings. But at the core of the exhibit is an idea that’s both cohesive and revolutionary. The show argues that Guston’s staying power — grounded in fresh oddness, compelling authenticity, and dodgy compositions — was a direct consequence of his relationship with poetic language and form, as well as the ideas of the poets who wrote them. Rather than a romantic inevitability, Poets offers a pragmatic and collaborative handle to Guston’s career as a prolific artist and maker; it attests to the power of verbal and metaphorical language in nourishing his visual oeuvre. The exhibit also argues that silence is necessary for a visual artist’s development; it suggests that Guston’s leaving New York, the epicenter of the art world, was not only helpful, but essential to his work. ————————————————————————————————— ‘Why were there no comics in the Whitney Biennial, again?’ Matthew Thurber discusses work by 10 Cartoonists Every Art Lover Needs to Know Including Austin English:. Comics-as-poetry is an established thing: See the work of Juliacks, Sarah Ferrick, and publishers like Sonatina and 2dcloud. English’s work was influential on this branch of comics-making. Unlike commercial comics—which traditionally convey emotion with simplified facial expression—the muddy, creased faces of English’s characters are opaque. I see a lot of George Grosz, Francis Bacon, and Willem de Kooning when I look at his drawings, which tend to be small and heavily worked with watercolor and colored pencil. Lale Westvind: The cartoonist’s background in traditional oil painting, video art, and animation led to her creating self-published comics at a heroic pace. In HAX, Amazonian warriors battle airplanes under Lichtensteinian Ben-Day dot skies. Her early animation Organism Test (2009) is a key to later work. Thousands of hand-drawn frames depict blob-creatures writhing in the desert, while hybrid motorcycle creatures race towards each other to collide at incredible speed: a copulatory act that generates new life. If Jack Kirby adapted J.G. Ballard’s Crash into a Captain Pronin cartoon, it might begin to resemble Westvind’s filmic oeuvre. Recent animations for the band Lightning Bolt and Morpha! Utila!, for the online TV channel Super Deluxe, are psychedelic masterpieces. And Keren Katz: Katz’s work, like that of Matthew Barney or Mika Rottenberg, has its own logic. Her storytelling voice seems to link the divine nonsense of authors like Daniel Pinkwater, William Steig, or Edward Gorey with surrealist writers like Leonora Carrington. Her comics are Truly Weird, the highest compliment I can give. With drawings executed in confident colored pencil, her figures stretch, bend, and topple in a manner reminiscent of contemporary choreography. (Indeed, Katz studied dance and has mentioned Pina Bausch as an influence.) ————————————————————————————————— The publications included in Something Unusual is Happening share a common interest in non-conventional storytelling, with each artist crafting a distinctive form of visual language that departs from the familiar narratives and formats of traditional comic art. The works explore a range of interests and fixations; allegories of personal transformation and enlightenment, cautionary tales of advanced technology, voyeurism and computer surveillance, as well as meditations on the act of comic-drawing itself. At Printed Matter, June 30-July 31, 2017. ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 6-27-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 6-27-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-27-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

11/10/2017

Sally IngrahamNovember 9, 2017NewsSally here with Cricket magazine, work by Madeleine Witt and Audra Stang, your CAB reminder, and tons more comics and news! ————————————————————————————————— There is an article about the “secret history of Cricket magazine” on Electric Literature. Written by A. J. O’Connell, it details the creation and life of the beloved children’s magazine, with insights from founder Marianne Carus, quotes from long time art director Trina Schart Hyman (my FAVORITE illustrator as a child), and lots of love from authors and illustrators who read the magazine when they were kids. I myself found Cricket in my local library and enjoyed every new issue I read – and was lucky in that the library had an archive of many of the old issues. It was the very best sort of magazine, full of stories and glorious illustrations by the greatest working creators of the time – and it never really felt like it was “for kids” – which was Marianne Carus’ goal, after all. She felt like kids could handle stories that were darker, that might make you cry, just as well as funny, lighthearted stuff. Like many others, I was inspired by Cricket to make my own “magazine” and published some of the stories I wrote along with illustrations for my family. Read all about Cricket HERE. Trina Schart Hyman was a Caldecott Medal winner for her work on St. George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges, and earned a couple of Caldecott Honors as well. I adored her fairy tale illustrations and wrote her a long letter when I was 11 or 12 (and received a lovely response and an autographed book in return). I think I didn’t know that she was the art editor for Cricket magazine until later – I just knew that her illustrations showed up in the magazine frequently. I also didn’t really understand that the SAME Trina Schart Hyman drew the Cricket and Ladybug comic in the magazine. Each issue had a four-panel strip, and additionally the characters Cricket, Old Cricket, Ladybug, and Sluggo would scamper and scurry throughout the magazine, popping up to comment on the stories or merely harass each other for a moment. ” “ just had such a wonderful way of drawing them,” said Leonard. “They served as explanation of difficult words so if there was a vocabulary word that might stop a kid reader the crickets would explain what that word meant. They also had their own little life in the four-block cartoon.” “ They were great, and a big part of what made the magazine beloved to me and so many others. Again, read all about it HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Madeleine Witt has been making a comic a day this month. She and a number of others I know are doing the “30 Days of Comics” challenge that was begun by Derik Badman in 2009 or 2011 (depending on how you count it). Madeleine’s take on the challenge offers a good insight into why things like this can be good for creators: “I’ll be drawing 1 comic a day for the month of November. I admire & bless all those who draw a comic a day EVERY day, but especially for people who can be paralyzed by internal expectation (me) / aren’t sure of their voices (also me, particularly circa 2014), Novembers have been a fruitful time to experiment and grow. If you’re a young cartoonist or an old cartoonist or a not-yet-cartoonist looking to explore an artistic practice, I think November is a very good time to pick some constraints and try doing 1 thing a day for a little while. Big general caveat: This sort of thing is not healthy for everyone—you know yourself & your needs and please don’t do this if it isn’t be healthy for you! Everyone please care for yourselves! Thank you! Goodbye!“ I like that Madeleine has expanded the context of the challenge beyond just “draw a comic everyday” to include formal restraints. She suggests picking colors, medium, panel setup, or subject matter and then sticking to those choices for the whole month. From my own experience over the past year of drawing a Suzy & Cecil comic every other day, I can vouch for the freedom and creative rush that (perhaps surprisingly) comes from forced structure, discipline, and regularity. I like the work that Madeleine has been making – you can see all of it HERE. The hashtag #30dayscomics will lead you to more work, both on Instagram and Twitter, and you can follow the 30 Days of Comics Tumblr to keep up with many of this year’s participants. Audra Stang is another cartoonist who is releasing her latest comic in this fashion (hot on the heels of the comic she made during the month of October – not necessarily for “Inktober”…!) Her comics all exist within the world and lengthy timeline of “Star Valley”, and this current story catches up with her character Owen (who appeared in last month’s Little Minnow, as a significantly younger version of himself – read that story HERE) and the irrepressible Adelaide, last seen, briefly, a year ago in Secret Knowledge and in April 2008 (in April 2016). Read the new story so far HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Katie Ball a.k.a. Katbus has a new endeavor – My Lucky Sticker Book is a monthly newsletter that showcases sticker artists from around the world. You can check out issue #4 – Halloween edition! – HERE, and subscribe to the newsletter HERE. Katie is putting together an extra large issue for release in late November, and has sent out the message that if YOU include sticker-making in your bag of tricks, and would like some hype leading into the holiday season, let her know! She will finish compiling her list around the 25th, so send her your website and details about your stickers if you want to be listed. Write to Katie at katie.brawl@gmail.com ————————————————————————————————— Katie Fricas has a “cartoon scrapbook” detailing the first year of Trump’s presidency on The Guardian – read the whole thing HERE. ————————————————————————————————— If you’re in NYC go check out Comic Arts Brooklyn tomorrow. Here’s a write-up on the new location of the show – via Hyperallergic. Comics Workbook will be there, and I will be too with a few copies of Suzy & Cecil. See you Saturday! ————————————————————————————————— Post Script Mardou‘s Some Day My Witch Will Come is reviewed by Rob Clough on High-Low – check it out HERE. Rob also reviews recent Santoro Correspondence Course alum Drew Lerman’s course-made comic Boucher’s House, (and his comic Milk Debt) in the same post. Paste Magazine‘s Hillary Brown talks to Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim about their comic Poppies of Iraq – interview HERE. Check out Liana Finck on The Awl – loads of comics and comical commentary. Sara Lautman illustrates the 280-character “microficitions” that were created for Electric Literature‘s Twitter-inspired contest – HERE. Sara Lautman is the comics editor for Electric Lit‘s Okey-Panky. Here is a recent comic on that site by Shing Yin Khor, called A Tiny Ritual to Talk to Your Past Self. Sequential State (Alex Hoffman) reviews Tillie Walden‘s Spinning – HERE. Part 2 of an interview with Katherine Collins is up on The Comics Journal – read it HERE. Also on The Comics Journal, Carta Monir reviews Higu Rose‘s Titychop Boobslash. MariNaomi has a new book coming out from Lerner Publishing – Losing the Girl (May 2018). HERE is a cover reveal and giveaway on The Book Smugglers. Lauren Purje on Hyperallergic – Is Any Artist Truly Satisfied? Julia Wertz‘s Drinking At the Movies was featured on Fumetto Logica, for the Italian speakers out there. Meanwhile the A. V. Club offers their take on Julia Wertz‘s Tenements, Towers and Trash – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 11-10-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 11-10-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 11-10-2017 – by Juan Fernandez Share this page: [...]

06/21/2016

Aaron CockleJune 20, 2016NewsAaron Cockle with GG Comics; Aidan Koch Exhibiting; ELCAF Capsule Reviews; Susan Te Kahurangi King; Jason Shiga; Ink Brick 5; Hopper Process ————————————————————————————————— Unattainable by GG CW’s featured comic for this week, from 2015. All of GG’s comics can be read for free on her website (completed stories) and on her tumblr (in progress stories). ————————————————————————————————— The person you are trying to reach is not available Work by Aidan Koch & Ieva Kraule, at Hester Gallery in NYC, continues through July 3, 2016. ————————————————————————————————— Some quick reviews of comics purchased at the recent East London Comic Arts Festival Healy’s storytelling is superb. The book begins with a double page from each story, context free, before we travel back to the beginning of each. Gradually, connections emerge and the beautiful colouring does nothing to stem the slowly dawning horror as the conditions worsen. As the members of the 1921 expedition find themselves stuck on a deserted island, with crossing hundreds of miles of sea ice the only hope of escape, the discovery of bear skulls and the threat of scurvy reveal just how indifferent the friendly arctic is to humans. There are numerous brilliantly understated details throughout, and the fact that we know Blackjack has a sick child at home makes her plight all the more awful. This is a book with a strongly compelling narrative – the expertly timed switches between the three stories encourage you to keep going – and I found myself reading the book in a single evening. The artwork is terrific, with really effective use of colour, and although the influence of Chris Ware can be seen in the characters it’s certainly not to the extent where it becomes derivative. Healy is a very talented storyteller and artist, and this is a strong release. — via Pete Redrup ————————————————————————————————— THERE IS NO CENTER: Dan Nadel on Susan Te Kahurangi King at Edlin Gallery At first glance King’s drawings are unlikely candidates for the amount of press they’ve received, let alone a full-blown museum exhibition—we’re talking about small, cartoon-based pictures, all made using the same pencil-and-crayon techniques and often in scrappy condition. But compositionally, King’s pictures permit various points of entry, providing the viewer a license to interpret freely. We may recognize cartoon characters and humanoids, but the odd secret of icons like Woody Woodpecker, Bugs Bunny, and Daffy Duck is that, embedded as they are in our cultural memory, they read however we want them to—invested with historical meaning or as hollow masks, purely formal agglomerations of shapes. — via Dan Nadel ————————————————————————————————— Jason Shiga Interviewed at TCJ Why did you choose Risograph printing for this series? What is your process like? I bought a Risograph printer because I wanted to do a two-color comic and it’s the cheapest option. I do also like the way it looks. It has that really warm, organic feel to it. And when the registration is just a little off, it looks really sweet. I do my penciling with ballpoint pens. If I make a small mistake I’ll just write an “x” through the line and draw another one. There’s no need to erase it since it doesn’t show up in the finished art anyways. I draw my pencils on letter size paper, I blow them up to ledger size on a photocopier, and then I lightbox those and ink them with a brush and a pen. That’s pretty much it. For lettering I print out the letters in Photoshop so I can adjust all the kerning and get that right, and then I just trace over that with a Micron. Then, I do my coloring in Photoshop and call it a day. Something that’s always attracted me about comics is that you can buy all the raw materials you need to get started for five bucks. There’s no reason you cannot be a cartoonist! — Interview with Jason Shiga conducted by Jeanette Roan ————————————————————————————————— Ink Brick Issue 5 INK BRICK is a journal dedicated to comics poetry. This issue features work by 29 creators using the visual language of comics to make poetry. There’s also a special section featuring an excerpt from a forthcoming collection of Jenny Zervakis’s mini comics work, to be published by Spit and a Half and the Sequential Artists Workshop. Featuring original work by: Louise Aleksiejew, Kurt Ankeny, Nicky Arscott, Colleen Louise Barry, Aaron Cockle, Letisia Cruz, Allie Doersch, Shawn Eisenach, Winnie T. Frick, Mike Getsiv, Dina Hardy, CB Hart, Jason Hart, Aurélien Leif, Courtney Loberg, Maxine Marie, Antoine Medes, Laurence Musgrove, Myra Musgrove, A. Noreña, Thilini Perera, Ellis Rosen, Sam Ross, Alexander Rothman, Samplerman, Alexey Sokolin, Deshan Tennekoon, Paul K. Tunis, Jenny Zervakis. Front and back cover illustrations by Samplerman. Submissions for INK BRICK no. 6 are due Sunday, September 4, 2016. ————————————————————————————————— How Edward Hopper Storyboarded ‘Nighthawks’ These drawings are among 19 studies for Nighthawks, brought together for the first time, in a revelatory show now at the Whitney. “Hopper Drawing” deploys 200 Hopper drawings—part of a trove of 2,500 bequeathed by the artist’s widow, Josephine—to showcase the role of drawing throughout his career, from his life drawing classes at the New York School of Art in the early 1900s, to his travels in Europe and Paris from 1906 to 1910, to the studies he made at the Whitney Studio Club and beyond. (After closing at the Whitney on October 6, the show will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center.) — via Robin Cembalest at Art News ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

11/21/2016

Juan FernándezNovember 21, 2016NewsJuan here with: Recent work by Juan; the Pittsburgh Comics Salon; Moomins across media; CAKE application deadline; Mike Diana’s arrest warrant cleared; QuickDraw; Secret Acres CAB 2016 report; Tillie Walden and Anna Selheim; March and the National Book Award; Santoro School’s Correspondence Course applications. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️What have I been working on? Lots of event planning and strip thumbnailing. I’m getting a little too precious in that process as I build a backlog of ideas to work from before going live so I’ve worked out a way to make fast, loose and spirited comics to be shared through instagram. First take drawing. Doodles while reflecting on a couple of ideas. Through widely available tech, I’m arranging comics on the go. No panels, lots of space, text and image in a free floating tension. I’m using the instagram layout app and then editing the images to have. These are digital ephemera. They are jpegs. I’m making art and I don’t care about the publishability of this in print. It’s more relevant to make the work and distribute it digitally. Follow me over on instagram @juan.jose.fernandez to keep up with whatever comes out of this process. It’s a digital process where only the editing and composing happens digitally. All the drawing is done with pen on paper. Usually Pentel Rolling Writers or Papermate Flair tip pens. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Just had a session with the Pittsburgh Comics Salon on Saturday at Biddle’s Escape. Warm space, good people. It was good to be together for Pittsburgh’s first snow. I’ve been exhausted these past couple weeks and these gatherings get me through it all. Thanks to the core crew that always comes hungry for comics making I had everyone study, copy and remix some comic books. Jenn Lisa knocked her Multiple Warheads studies out of the ballpark… Top secret exercises. Come to Pittsburgh to find out what’s up. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️My great friend, Jena Tegeler sent me a link to this funny page, Little Gems, that documents all the stop motion animation Moomin television shows via screen caps. The site, Little Gems is brought together by Steve Wright. Lots of different tv shows captured to keep them from fading into memory. I want to focus on The Moomins. 16 episodes have been captured and summarized by screenshots and text. It’s a beautiful thing to see these miniature puppet worlds bring the Moomins to life. Take a look at the one for “The Winter Bonfire”. The Moomins was a stop motion animated children’s television series based on the Tove Jansson’s Moomin series of books. produced by Se-ma-for and Jupiter Film between 1977 and 1982 for Polish, Austrian and German television. Above all, though, it’s funny to me because of how they mirror Tove and Lars Jansson’s strips – distilled through the web from TV episodes based on novella’s. 3 panels tell the story – Comics all the way through… ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Alright comics peddlers, don’t forget: the exhibitor application for #CAKEChicago2017 is open until November 28th. People make good money out in the Midwest at this show, so try applying! Apply here. NOTE:If you live way out on the East or West coast and haven’t tabled at too many shows in your life as a comics maker, I would discourage you on applying to go so far to Chicago for CAKE. Look more locally and regionally. You’ll reap better rewards from the energies you spend. These things can get stressful and I want to spare you that.Print some comics and share them in your tristate area first ;)————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Good news in the history of free speech in America – the Kickstarter for Mike Diana film raises enough to clear arrest warrant. Does Freedom of Speech mean anything when authorities see only obscenity? Does an artist’s vision matter when community standards conspire to suppress it? In a small town in Florida back in 1994, Mike Diana learned that the answer was a resounding no. Freedom of Speech doesn’t mean anything when your art is declared obscene. And one man’s art could be another man’s obscenity. Diana’s crime? Publishing a hand-made comic zine called Boiled Angel full of graphic, outrageous, often hilarious confrontational art, full of sex and violence, meant to shock and disturb. But it was a zine only sold to adults by mail. With a print run of only 300 copies, Diana’s zine was NEVER available in comic racks or in stores. And only one copy – count ‘em, one! – was ever sold to a customer in Diana’s hometown. And that one customer was an undercover cop! You can get the details on the completed campaign here. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/ This Google Computer is a baby right now but with the right teaching, it’ll know how to decipher your poorly drawn bicycle! I live in Pittsburgh, home of Carnegie Mellon where they run computers round the clock just to build these kinds of neural networks. Go on and try your hand at QuickDraw. It’s fun. I’m always fearful of everything AI related, so this kind of thing scares me, obviously. Nevertheless, this can definitely expand the ways that humans interact in digital environments. Instead of communicating to a database via language abstracted through letters, humans can begin to communicate queries with language abstracted through images. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️the Secret Acres crew reflects on Comic Arts Brooklyn (CAB) 2016. Sean Ford takes the lead in the recap with Leon and Barry. They write about the feeling that I got this year, that because of the circumstances in the lead up to CAB, there was dominance of many exciting, yet relatively unknown cartoonists. I reckon reviewers and buyers will be unpacking much of the work that was on display over this winter… Perhaps due to the late announcement of CAB this year, (and like eighteen competing comic shows happening across the globe that same day), the show missed a few stalwarts like D+Q, Koyama, AdHouse, Fantagraphics and a spiked punch bowl full of eggnog. Who needs the carbs, anyway? Instead, artist tables dominated for once, interspersed with royalty like Charles Burns, Richard McGuire, and Dame Darcy. This left more time and space to find less obvious gems than one might otherwise. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️ Over on the Washington Post, Michael Cavna writes on the breakthrough success of Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell, and Congressman John Lewis’s March. “March: Book Three” is the first graphic novel to win a National Book Award. What a time to be alive. This is a huge achievement for the March team. Michael Cavna writes: “March: Book Three,” the third installment in Rep. John Lewis’s powerful civil rights memoir, received the National Book Award on Wednesday evening in Manhattan. Five times before, a graphic novel had been named a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature — beginning with Gene Luen Yang‘s “American Born Chinese” a decade ago. Yang, now the Library of Congress’s national ambassador for Young People’s Literature (and a 2016 MacArthur grant recipient), repeated that feat three years ago with “Boxers & Saints.” David Small’s “Stitches” and Noelle Stevenson’s “Nimona” also have been finalists. Yet this year, the building achievement that is “March” could not be denied the ultimate prize. ⚡️ And over at the Guardian, they’ve spoken with Congressman Lewis on his thoughts on the win. It’s especially interesting in the context of the emboldening that racists and misogynists have gotten through the recent election. Congressman Lewis speaks of hope: “I never lost faith, because for every racist idea there was an anti-racist idea,” said the author. “For every killer of the mind there was a lifesaver of the mind. And in the midst of the human ugliness of racism there is the human beauty in the resistance to racism. That is why I have faith. And I’ll never lose my faith that you and I can create an anti-racist America … where black lives matter.” ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️“Novel Graphics” Over on NPR Glen Weldon talks to himself about the usefulness of the term “graphic novel”. Wanting to strike a faux-populist contrarian note about the whole the graphic novel, comics, sequential art taxonomy it comes off as a dizzying bore. As you’ll likely be talking about this great achievement of the March team with grandma and auntie over your turkey when avoiding discussing politics, someone’s going to bring up their confusion over what constititues a comic vs. a graphic novel. Maybe this article will help? Fundamentally, though, only new forms of comics will be able to continue to express the continuum of what comics are and aren’t. The question isnt anymore “how” to make comics or what to call them but what to do with them. For what it’s worth as a bookseller, terms like comic book, trade paperback and graphic novel are all very useful to help understand what people are looking for. And in this world, that money is key. It’s how commodity art forms survive. For what it’s worth, here’s a little throwback from The Comics Journal for flavor. “GROTH: Let me ask you something that was nagging at me. It’s A Good Life is subtitled a “A Picture Novella.” Which seemed like a very self-conscious effort to put a tag on it. SETH: Yeah, it is a pretty self-conscious effort. I very consciously tried to come up with an antiquated-sounding term. I went through a couple of the normal varieties of labels. “A picture story,” or I could have just put “a comic book,” which crossed my mind. It goes without saying that I didn’t want to use the term graphic novel. I just don’t like that term.” – Gary Groth, “Seth,” The Comics Journal 193 (1997) ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️You might remember this comic about Tillie Walden and Anna Selheim‘s experiences at Planned Parenthood. I shared it with you all a while back, when they made it. They are now selling physical copies of this comic for $6, and all proceeds will go to Planned Parenthood. If you want it or if you’re just willing to spread the word, I’m sure they’d appreciate it. You can paypal $6 to Anna Selheim at bighappyjet@gmail.com. You can read the whole thing here: http://tinyurl.com/hwbozlw . ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️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! Email santoroschoolATgmail for more details. 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 ————————————————————————————————— until next time 😉 juan Share this page: [...]

Frank’s Soapbox plus Philly Scene Report

Frank SantoroOctober 9, 2011Riff Raff / Scene ReportsOhhh, I gotta preach up in here! I can’t take it anymore, Lord, help me find the strength to control myself! They make me so angry – I wanna get all Old Testament on them. Fire. Brimstone. Who? You! Every week you come here and read this column – but what do you do? You just take, take, take. What’s happening in your comics scene? Do you have a comics scene? Well, why not? Is the Wednesday comics scene all you’ve got? Then you gotta do more. I live out in the middle of nowhere and I bend over backwards to bring you CONTENT week after week. And you just link to me on your blog or tumblr. Tweet about this post. Oh, wow, thanks, champ. You do so much. Where would we be without you? Go write a review of some corporate comic book brand like it matters. I love all comics. But I want a divorce. No more superhero comics. Ever. As historical documents – fine. Kirby? Yes, all day. But don’t talk to me about what DC or Marvel is doing today. I don’t give a shit. Playtime is over. Crisis on Infinite Fanzines Blogs. So, within the hallowed walls of this venerable institution – The Comics Journal – I am devoting more space towards local scene reports. Up with local comics scenes. Down with Marvel. Down with DC. Boycott Disney. Boycott Time Warner. Up with writing about small press comic books. No more writing about Marvel and DC comic books. At all. Ever. A pox on the houses of the Big Two. TOO BAD, SO SAD, BYE BYE. ————————- INTERMISSION FUNNIES with MICHAEL DEFORGE ———————— Philly Scene Report By Ian Harker At the center of the Philly underground comics scene is the Philly Comix Jam. The jam started as an informal drinking and drawing session in the fall of 2007. While jam comics are still drawn at the meetups, the monthly gathering now serves primarily as a networking and brainstorming session for local cartoonists. Before the jam, there was very little infrastructure in Philly for anything that could be described as an alternative comics scene. From Comix Jam has sprung various projects such as the free tabloid Secret Prison, the Philly Alternative Comic Con, and upstart publisher Retrofit Comics, which have all helped Philly’s developing cartoonists find a broader context for their work. Jam regulars include veteran cartoonists such as Art Baxter and Terry LaBan, young cartoonists in full stride such as Box Brown and Pat Aulisio, and newcomers like the girls of the Dirty Diamonds mag. Institutions vital to the Philly scene include the comic shops Brave New Worlds and Locust Moon Comics. Brave New Worlds is a mainstream-centric comic shop in the gallery section of Old City. BNW has a great gallery space featuring local comic art in the front of the shop that regularly draws hundreds of visitors during First Friday festivities. Locust Moon Comics, by contrast, is a smaller DIY operation in University City that is always happy to stage events for local artists looking for an excuse to drink cheap beer. Other important spaces include the world renowned SPACE 1026, which often features great art comics work from around the world; Pterodactyl Philly, a great gallery space that moonlights as the small run digital press Fireball Printing; and Cha Cha-razzi, a studio space that has recently hosted various comics-meet-music events. Important figures in the scene include the aforementioned Art Baxter, who organized the Comix Jam for close to 3 years and is a source of unlimited wisdom in the craft of comic making; double Ignatz winner Box Brown, by far the most productive cartoonist of the bunch, whose Retrofit Comics venture looks to revive the alternative floppy; and Pat Aulisio, up-and-coming artist and organizer of Philly Alternative Comic Con, who lends the scene its “Yeah Dude” street cred. Orbiting on the perimeter of all of this, of course, is comics legend Charles Burns, whose appearance at any local event serves as the ultimate blessing from the Alt-Comic olympians. Oh yeah, and Robert Crumb was from Philly, so take that New York! ——————- Frank here again…Don’t forget! I’m starting a cartooning correspondence course. An 8-week workshop. Application deadline is October 28th, 2011. Check out the details here. ——————- Share this page: [...]

08/11/2017

Posted on August 10, 2017 by Sally Ingraham

Sally here with Jenny Zervakis and Jackie Ormes, plus other comics and news from the wide world of #VisibleWomen!

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This comic turned up in the latest box we received at Copacetic Comics from Spit and a Half Distro and I couldn’t have been happier. I loved the Strange Growths collection that John Porcellino put out for Jenny Zervakis earlier this year, which covered the comics she made from 1991 to 1997 (issues 1-13 – get a copy of the book HERE!)

Strange Growths #14 (1998) carries on with 7 short stories and a lengthy letter from the brother who showed up in more than a few of her earlier comics. The collection showcases the poetic way that Jenny captures the weirdness of life, with overheard conversations, dream sequences, housing woes and tragic animal deaths, and the shortness and sweetness of it all.

I particularly enjoyed the story Like a Butterfly With One Wing. Simple drawings, no text, and the mysteries of nature and humans.

Get a copy of Strange Growths #14 from Spit and a Half, and pick up issues #15 and #16 as well.

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I read Nancy Goldstein’s biography of Jackie Ormes a few years ago (Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist), and ever since then I’ve been meaning to visit the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh to take a look at Jackie’s comics in The Pittsburgh Courier. I finally made it last week, and was thrilled to discover the debut of her very first published strip – Torchy Brown in “Dixie to Harlem” – in the May 1st, 1937 copy of the paper. Jackie had been a proofreader and reporter for the Courier right out of high school, but with the debut of her comic strip she became the first Black woman to become a professional newspaper cartoonist.

The Courier ran Torchy Brown for a year. It’s the story of an adventurous girl from Mississippi who decides to venture north with the aim of becoming a star at the Cotton Club. Here is the first month’s worth of strips:

I’m blown away by how good Jackie was at cartooning right off the bat. She’s a terrific artist, great at characterizations, and the strip is quite funny. Action and adventure, physical humor, glamour – it’s all there in the first 5 strips.

Jackie moved with her husband to Chicago shortly afterward, and published a few shorter running strips in The Chicago Defender (most notably Candy, about a wise-cracking domestic worker, which ran for 4 months). By September 1945 she was back in the Courier however, with Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger, which ran for 11 years and featured the snappy political commentary of little sister Patty-Jo, and the silent foil of gorgeous big sister Ginger. I’ll be heading back to the library to catch up with those ladies! Torchy Brown made a second appearance later in Jackie’s career, in Torchy in Heartbeats (1950 – ran for 4 years).

I highly recommend Nancy Goldstein’s bio if you’re at all curious about Jackie Ormes – it’s thorough, and full of pictures.

For further reading at the moment, check out this article from the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum on Jackie.

“No matter the strip, Ormes was presenting African American women in a way that no other cartoonist in the papers had done previously. Her characters were demure and dynamic, involved in and commenting on current events, sporting the latest fashions. They were upper class women.” – Caitlin McGurk

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In Other Words

Mimi Pond‘s latest comic – The Customer is Always Wrong – just came out from Drawn and Quarterly. Mimi chats with Jezebel, covering the service industry, cocaine, and writing for The Simpsons.
The Comics Journal has a review of The Customer is Always Wrong – HERE.
Kelly Sue DeConnick started the Twitter sensation #VisibleWomen, a hashtag that serves as a database for women working in comics. She talks about the project HERE on Player.One.
Over on HuffPost they’re also talking about #VisibleWomen, and proclaim that “The Comic Book Industry Officially Has No Excuse Not To Hire Women“.
Julia Gfrörer is in the pet issue of The Portland Mercury talking about why cats attack (and why they attack HER) – HERE.
Here’s an interview with Anya Davidson on Cool Yeah Right from earlier this year. And one with Daria Tessler from this week!
Renae De Liz offers a tutorial on how to “De-Objectify” women in comics – HERE on Heroic Girls.

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Suzy and Cecil – 8-11-2017 – by Sally Ingraham

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged anya davidson, Caitlin McGurk, daria tessler, jackie ormes, jenny zervakis, julia gfrorer, kelly sue deconnick, mimi pond, sally ingraham

Sally Ingraham

Posted on August 10, 2017

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01/16/2017

Juan FernándezJanuary 16, 2017NewsJuan and Sally here to start your week off with George Herriman strips, Richard Diebenkorn sketchbooks, Illustrated PEN’s State of Emergency, the GOUFFRE anthology, and other comics and news bites. ————————————————————————————————— Here on the site, Comics Workbook student and cartoonist Jesse Rimler shares a report on the Richard Diebenkorn Sketchbook show that hung at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University last summer. “This exhibit made me think about the general use of a sketchbook. Diebenkorn called his sketchbook his “portable studio,” and it’s clear he took drawing in these beatup spiralbounds as seriously as he did etching on a copper plate or painting on a canvas. I think some comics makers, myself included, tend to treat their sketchbooks as something completely different from their final art. The idea of closing the gap between the two is appealing to me, and Diebenkorn’s example is inspiring.“ Read the rest of this “Art Trip” HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Illustrated PEN published an online graphic narrative series called State of Emergency, which is intended to help “amplify the voices and stories of the communities most at risk in this new and hostile reality“. Edited by Meg Lemke, Rob Kirby, and MariNaomi, it features pieces by Iasmin Omar Ata, Dylan Edwards, Thi Bui, Rachel Masilamani, Robert Kirby, Whit Taylor, Tyler Cohen, and Cristy C. Road. Check out the whole series HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Juan Fernandez here. Ain’t got too much to say today, just wanted to share some strips I made with you a while back. I’ve been going through the new IDW 1934 Krazy Kat Dailies book every day this year. It’s been a wonderful experience. I’ve been clamoring for an economically formatted collection of Herriman’s dailies for some years now since Fantagraphics started doing their reprints of the Sunday pages. Those are exquisite. This IDW collection features the complete run of Krazy Kat dailies from 1934, reproduced full size on high quality newsprint, in a chunky, horizontally formatted hardcover volume from IDW’s Library of American Comics Essentials series. Woo boy. That thing is amazing. In light of this, I’ve been thinking about a couple of strips I made at the Center for Cartoon Studies in 2012. The following strips were made for the second assignment in Jason Lutes’ Cartooning Studio. Aping as the building of discipline. Style as functional raincoat. The objective was to recreate faithfully the visual and narrative style of an American strip artist and to tell 3 autobiographical stories using the strip as the vehicle. The assigned artists ranged far and wide, from Walt Kelly to Scott Adams. You know, a very CCS “traditional” cartooning exercise. I was lucky enough to get George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. Thanks Jason. It was a really satisfying exercise. I won’t lie, the strips turned out nice but they don’t really work. I had never done comic strips that weren’t just Dada-ist doodle non-sequitors, so this exercise proved to be a challenge. Not because I didn’t want them to make sense, but rather because I wanted so badly for them to make sense. I wanted to express so much in a single strip and it came out garbled. Clean, but garbled. I understand structure, but traditional narrative? Man, that’s hard to do and not ham up! To make these studies I read a great deal of Herriman’s dailies, across collections, but I found that the most useful was a big green copy of Fantagraphics Books’ The Kat Who Walked in Beauty. The “Panoramic” Dailies from 1920. If you’re only familiar with Herriman’s broadsheets, you really ought to take a look at his dailies. While the broadsheets are beautiful and hyperbolic, the daily strips are immaculately fine tuned little nuggets. It’s staggering to know that he churned out these little finely crafted gems on a daily basis for 31 years. In my opinion, it’s there that you’ll find his genius. Day in and day out. At least, that’s the work that I most want to read. Speaking to what I said about structure, I want to share some of the process of thinking about Herriman’s pacing. Diagrams of panel organization schemes that appeared throughout the strips from 1920. You have the pacing of his language in balloons but, more importantly you have the pacing across his panels. Horizons dip up and down. Panels tuck themselves behind others. Panel sequences exist as objects, embedded in the desert landscape. CW Students: I recommend blocking out the essential shapes and forms of any comics that you enjoy. It’s a good warm up for thinking about structure. Roughly block out panels and black regions. Squint your eyes. Take off your glasses if you wear them. Block out a lot of pages and spreads. This can really help internalize the structures of the works that you love. And that can help you synthesize those things into work of your own that you will love. ————————————————————————————————— The new anthology GOUFFRE from Lagon Revue is now available online from revuelagon.com. Edited and conceived by editors Alexis Beauclair, Bettina Henni, Séverine Bascouert, Sammy Stein & Jean-Philippe Bretin, GOUFFRE combines multiple printing techniques: Silk-screen, Riso printing, and offset printing. A spectacle of daring comics and all out production. Grab yourself a copy and be on the cutting edge of comics. It’s 45€. GOUFFRE stands for polymorphic, plastic comics. The magazine celebrates new perspectives and unique approaches of the medium: Minimal, maximal, without characters, made of sensations, or of emptiness, mute, aesthetic, close to abstraction. You will discover toxic undergrowth, extinguished suburbs, melancholic sci-fi stories, fake magazine covers, modern love relationships and visions of the near future. ————————————————————————————————— Tea and Crumpets Maurice, Son of Noah Pt. 4 by Roman Muradov is up on Hazlett – HERE. You can catch the rest of the story as well – and check out the previous comic series’ published by Hazlett, including the story by Annie Mok and Natalie Andrewson – Straight Expectations. The Will Eisner Hall of Fame 2017 Nominees have been announced. It’s the 100th year since Eisner’s death so the list is a little longer than usual, with four judge-appointed Hall of Fame inductees instead of the usual two, and seventeen names up for the public vote – including the Hernandez Brothers. Check out Tom Spurgeon’s comments on the list HERE. Michael DeForge now has a designated Instagram for his comic series Leaving Richard’s Valley – follow along @richardsvalley. There is an interview with Erik Nebel in Fluide Glacial, the famous French comics magazine. Erik translated an excerpt and shared it HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Check out Zona #2, a unique look into Frank Santoro’s process. Full color, 24 pages. Magazine sized. Cardstock covers. Edition of 100. Signed and numbered. Get a copy HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-16-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-16-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— 1-16-2017 – by Juan Fernández Share this page: [...]

10/02/2018

Aaron CockleOctober 2, 2018NewsThurber + Tomine; Hairy Who; Drawing Center; Adversarial Elephant Networks ————————————————————————————————— ADRIAN TOMINE: Comics Work (2004-2014) October 4 – November 11, 2018 ADAM BAUMGOLD FINE ART 104 E. 81st Street, NYC ————————————————————————————————— Hairy Who? 1966-1969 The Art Institute of Chicago Through January 6, 2019 Although the Hairy Who chose to exhibit together, they were six individuals with their own personal, chiefly figurative vocabularies. They each radically manipulated source material collected from everyday life—including advertisements, comics, posters, and sales catalogs—with technical virtuosity. Their sense of humor embraced idiosyncrasy and spontaneity with wordplay, puns, and inside jokes that often belied the transgressiveness of their subject matter. Ambiguous, provocative, but also strategic, their work transmitted progressive ideas that challenged prevailing notions of gender and sexuality, social mores and standards of beauty, and nostalgia and obsolescence. ————————————————————————————————— Opening Reception: Thursday, October 11, 6–8pm The Drawing Center | 35 Wooster Street For Opacity: Elijah Burgher, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Nathaniel Mary Quinn; Jennifer Wynne Reeves: All Right for Now; a… is alter(ed): Open Sessions 12 a… is alter(ed): Open Sessions 12 explores the imaginative determination of “drawing” and “line” by relating it to a development process, social artifacts, psychological trace, and prosthetic memory—journals, maps, technology, and calendars. The poetics of flow between known and unknown is a feedback murmur that leads to clarity when engaging the object. a..is alter(ed) features Joeun Aatchim, Kenseth Armstead, Ludovica Carbotta, Billy and Steven Dufala, LaMont Hamilton, and Ester Partegàs. Organized Rosario Güiraldes and and Lisa Sigal, Open Sessions Curators, together with participating artists. ————————————————————————————————— Detecting an elephant in a room. Via Amir Rosenfeld, Richard Zemel, and John K. Tsotsos We showcase a family of common failures of state-of-the art object detectors. These are obtained by replacing image sub-regions by another sub-image that contains a trained object. We call this “object transplanting”. Modifying an image in this manner is shown to have a non-local impact on object detection. Slight changes in object position can affect its identity according to an object detector as well as that of other objects in the image. We provide some analysis and suggest possible reasons for the reported phenomena. 10-02-2018 – by Niall Breen Share this page: [...]

08/25/2016

Sally IngrahamAugust 25, 2016NewsSally here, bringing you a look at some of Pittsburgh’s born or borrowed cartoonists (Ed Piskor, Yona Harvey, Ben Sears) as well as another read through that Trevor Von Eeden interview. ————————————————————————————————— Yona Harvey is a Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh – and Marvel’s first black female writer. She is working on a 10-page story for the upcoming Black Panther spin-off series, World of Wakanda. “Harvey says, as a poet, she’s always considered herself a visual thinker, and explained how poets, like comic writers, have to condense life into as few words as possible. “I think it’s more in the thinking, like when you’re a poet you do sort of shrink moments,” she said. “A lot can happen across the day, from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed. There’s something about when you’re a poet, you’re able to sort of zero in on very specific moments, maybe the most tense or terse moments of the day, and I like putting that way of thinking to use for a comic. Because you do have to be super precise.” Though the writing shares some craft elements, the audience crossover between poetry and comics isn’t one-to-one, according to Harvey. “I’ve had friends who have said, ‘Man, it’s been years since I’ve read a comic book,’ or ‘I’ve never read a comic book and this’ll be the first time that I’m reading a comic,’ and that’s really exciting to think about poets who are reading comics for the first time,” she said.“ Read the rest of the article HERE and keep an eye out for this series soon (the bulk of which has been written Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay, with artwork by Alitha Martinez and Afua Richardson.) ————————————————————————————————— Ed Piskor‘s Hip Hop Family Tree Vol. 4 was featured on NPR recently – Etelka Lehoczky wrote about the “bubbles” in the work, “phenomena that inexorably head skyward, pop suddenly and create a roiling surface“, or the numerous artists who kept the stew at the boil throughout ’84 and ’85. She revels in Piskor’s use of color, always part of the wonder of these books. Check out the whole thing HERE. Another Piskor-related thing that’s been on my mind is this picture that showed up on his Instagram a few weeks ago. What gives?! Giant HHFT cover burner on the wall at the Smithsonian in DC. A photo posted by Ed Piskor (@ed_piskor) on Aug 1, 2016 at 12:08pm PDT I know where I’ll be headed in the summer of 2018…! Ed Piskor has always been an unstoppable force, quietly conquering the world, and now with the announcement last week that Hip Hop Family Tree will soon be an animated TV series (yes you heard me right! – check it out HERE) – it seems like the world has noticed and won’t soon be forgetting. ————————————————————————————————— Ben Sears is in Pittsburgh this week for a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency – which of course includes field trips to Copacetic Comics to look for treasures with Frank. Check out Ben’s book Night Air (Koyama Press, May 2016) and stay tuned for more of his Rowhouse adventures! ————————————————————————————————— Last week we mentioned the incredible interview with Trevor Von Eeden, and if you haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet, here’s your reminder. There was one detail from the interview that’s worth another look. There’s a yet unpublished – “…Black Lightning/Superman comic book called Sources commissioned by DC Comics, written by new Batman writer Tom King especially for Von Eeden to draw when he was both undergoing and recovering from cancer surgery.” – Rich Johnson via Bleeding Cool Find more of Von Eeden’s artwork (below) for this future project HERE. Also be sure to give Trevor Von Eeden’s Kickstarer campaign for the series The Hard Code (with Ramon Gil) a look! ————————————————————————————————— This is Sally signing off – Harrison will be back with your Thursday music choices next week! Share this page: [...]

06/07/2016

Aaron CockleJune 6, 2016NewsAaron Cockle with Oliver East Comics; C.A.K.E. 2016; Moholy-Nagy; Exercises in Style; 5,000 km per second; Peter Kuper; Vintage Vintage Contemporaries; AI DMCA ————————————————————————————————— CW’s Featured Comics continues this week with Oliver East’s Cottonopolis, from 2014-2015. ————————————————————————————————— Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE) Saturday-Sunday, June 11-12, 2016, 11am–6pm Center on Halsted, 3656 N Halsted, Chicago IL USA FREE and open to the public! Panels & Workshops ————————————————————————————————— László Moholy-Nagy at the Guggenheim ————————————————————————————————— Matt Madden on Exercises in Style ————————————————————————————————— Lauren Weinstein and Mike Dawson on Manuele Fior’s 5,000 km per second ————————————————————————————————— Peter Kuper Deconstructing Comics ————————————————————————————————— Vintage Vintage Contemporaries For book art nerds, a look at the line of Vintage Contemporaries softcovers from the 1980’s-1990’s, cover designer Lorraine Louie, lots of books, author quotes, lots of process, over at the Talking Covers blog. ————————————————————————————————— Do Androids Dream of Androids Dreaming of Electric Sheep? Last week, Warner Bros. issued a DMCA takedown notice to the video streaming website Vimeo. The notice concerned a pretty standard list of illegally uploaded files from media properties Warner owns the copyright to — including episodes of Friends and Pretty Little Liars, as well as two uploads featuring footage from the Ridley Scott movie Blade Runner. Just a routine example of copyright infringement, right? Not exactly. Warner Bros. had just made a fascinating mistake. Some of the Blade Runner footage — which Warner has since reinstated — wasn’t actually Blade Runner footage. Or, rather, it was, but not in any form the world had ever seen. Instead, it was part of a unique machine-learned encoding project, one that had attempted to reconstruct the classic Philip K. Dick android fable from a pile of disassembled data. -via Aja Romano at Vox ————————————————————————————————— 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: [...]

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