Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

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Juan Fernández

Posted on September 19, 2018September 19, 2018

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07/24/2017

Caleb OrecchioJuly 23, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with The Power of Kirby and other news. ———————————————————————————————— all images herein are from the collection of comics given to me by my dad and uncle from when they were kids, circa 1976 to 1978. All images are drawn by Jack Kirby. The Power of Kirby Jack King Kirby, the powerhouse conundrum who unwittingly created the foundation of modern day popcorn flicks, is undoubtedly thee heavyweight champion of the comic book. Often, I think, it is hard to convince the layperson of the prowess of Jack. The boys who grew to men who are now my dad’s age (just turned the big five oh) have a less fond memory of him. At the point my dad would have seen Kirby’s work, Jack was drawing at his most “square” – that is to say, to my mind, his most “Kirby.” This was between 1976 and 1978, at the time my dad was 9, 10, and 11 and evidently a connoisseur of comic book quality. This was also arguably one of the lowest points in comics history as far as the amount of good comics on the stands and the amount of money pumping through the industry. At this point in time Kirby was working on such Marvel titles as Devil Dinosaur, Machine Man, Captain America and Falcon, Black Panther, 2001: A Space Oddysey, Captain America Bicentennial Battles, some Thor covers, etc. Basically, titles that have become very revered by today’s cartoonists. My dear ol’ dad would have none of it though. This is how I know… My dad had ZERO Kirby comics in his collection as a child. I know this because I inherited these comics when I was seven – my first comics! My dad really liked The Hulk, Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Champions, The X-Men, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two in One – stuff like that. It wasn’t until I convinced my uncle (my dad’s younger brother by a year or two) to give me his collection from the same era that I was exposed to Kirby. HE seemed to like Kirby whether he knew it or not. He had a few of the reprints Marvel put out like Marvel Super Action (reprinting Captain America runs) and Marvel’s Greatest Comics (reprinting Lee/Kirby era FF). I have a feeling the covers caught his eye. He even had The Mighty Thor #252 that had a Kirby cover. My dad would have never got a comic with a Kirby cover. How do I know he’d never knowingly buy a comic with a Kirby cover? Well one day I was meeting him for coffee. I live in Dayton, OH and he was driving from Cincinnati to Columbus for a conference. If you don’t know, Dayton is more or less in between so it’s what inspired my dad to ask me to meet for coffee. Anyway, I thought I’d get to the coffee shop way before him and so I brought along one of those 80’s reprints of New Gods to read while I waited. You know the ones? They had new covers by Kirby and mostly dumb essays by Mark Evanier in the back. Recolored and all that. Basically, my dad would have not been aware of these. He got there and saw the comic and pointed to it, “That’s an oldie but a goodie.” You have to understand he was referencing his familiarity with Kirby’s drawing style rather than his affinity for the work or his familiarity with the particular book sitting on the table. “What?” I said, “You didn’t have any of this guy’s comics in your collection. How do you know him?” He replied with a sour face, “I never liked him. He drew too square. Too blocky.” “But you know this is him?! This comic came out in the 80’s! You read comics in the seventies!” “Yeah. His style is distinct.” This, true believers is one of the many facets to Kirby’s genius. He carves his lines right into the lining of your brain. Whether you like him or not, you cannot forget Kirby. Now, if I had, say, Conan the Barbarian #99 at that table that day I met with my dad, he still would have said that’s an oldie but a goodie but he would have meant it. And he would remember having that comic and reading it and that he liked it probably, but he wouldn’t have known it was by John Buscema or written by Roy Thomas or anything particular like that. He may have just said, “It was cool and I liked the art.” Do you see what I’m trying to say? Do not underestimate the King. Kirby IS comics. He can draw his way into your dreams and nightmares. He can brand his vision into your eyes forever. So much so that after 40 years have passed, whether you like him or not, you can spot a Kirby drawing wherever it may be – namely at your son’s table at the coffee shop in Dayton, OH. ———————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know I think it’s interesting when the mainstream media tries to be hip to comics. They almost always drop the ball. The real cartoonists tend to get the shaft. Like this LA Times article that spends more time on Wayne Brady than it does on the fact that the Hernandez Brothers made it into the Eisner Hall of Fame. Kudos to Rob Clough for fighting the good fight and getting some good nominations out there this year. There’s going to be a lot of post San Diego Comic Con news this week. Here is one about comics for kids, particularly girls. The proliferation of Wonder Woman fandom is pretty interesting. I think a lot of it stems from the new movie obviously, but also from the book by Jill Lepore. And I’d be remiss not to mention Ron Regé Jr. So when I saw this trailer, I was both surprised and not surprised. There is a roundtable discussion over at TCJ.com concerning Gary Panter’s latest book. Also if you didn’t know, Panter is on Instagram now:) ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-24-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 7-24-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

08/17/2016

Juan FernándezAugust 16, 2016NewsJuan here with your Wednesday morning updates! the LAST DAY of the Daniel Clowes Benefit Auction, Jack Davis, John Baldessari, mixing colors, and more! ——————————————————————————————————————— Daniel Clowes Auction Items Up Through TODAY, August 17, 1pm EST All proceeds benefit the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency. Check it aht! ——————————————————————————————————————— Drew Friedman on Jack Davis’ career as a TV Guide cover illustrator “TV Guide’s art director’s had a long track record of using some of the top caricaturists of the day for their covers and for interior work, including many assignments by Al Hirschfeld and more recently Ronald Searle: Jack Davis would eventually create nearly two dozen covers for TV Guide over the next dozen years, plus many interior drawings.” – Drew Friedman Read more about it HERE. (via The Comics Reporter) ——————————————————————————————————————— Wonderfully Offbeat Assignments That Artist John Baldessari Gave to His Art Students (1970) “In 1970, when conceptual artist John Baldessari was teaching studio art at the experimental CalArts campus near Valencia, CA, the assignments he handed out to his class were art in themselves. Humorous, confounding, sometimes very specific but often like zen koans, the assignments must have come as a shock, especially to those students with a more traditional sense of what constitutes art. They probably didn’t know that Baldessari was questioning art itself and in the middle of a crisis. That year he had taken all his previous painted work from 1953 – 1966 and cremated it at a San Diego mortuary. He turned from painting to photography. And he expected his students to rethink everything they thought they knew.” via Open Culture Read the rest of the article HERE. ——————————————————————————————————————— 271 Years Before Pantone, an Artist Mixed and Described Every Color Imaginable in an 800-Page Book “In 1692 an artist known only as “A. Boogert” sat down to write a book in Dutch about mixing watercolors. Not only would he begin the book with a bit about the use of color in painting, but would go on to explain how to create certain hues and change the tone by adding one, two, or three parts of water. The premise sounds simple enough, but the final product is almost unfathomable in its detail and scope. Spanning nearly 800 completely handwritten (and painted) pages, Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau, was probably the most comprehensive guide to paint and color of its time. According to Medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel who translated part of the introduction, the color book was intended as an educational guide. The irony being there was only a single copy that was probably seen by very few eyes.” – via This Is Colossal More HERE. ——————————————————————————————————————— Listen to over an hour of background music from the 1967 Spider-Man Animated Series “The music from the 1967 Spider-Man animated series is jazzy and catchy. Unfortunately the music has never been released in a format that would allow us to enjoy it completely. I often wondered what it would be like to capture the music from a series that never did a soundtrack, but I don’t have to wonder any longer. YouTube user, 11db11, went through the entire run of the series and attempted to capture the audio in its complete form, removing voice and sound effect when possible. This labor of love, which I imagine took a good amount of time, is over and hour-long and an addicting listen.” – via The Retroist Further thoughts HERE. Dig even deeper with this old article from the radio station WMFU! ——————————————————————————————————————— Data Mining Reveals the Six Basic Emotional Arcs of Storytelling “These guys have used sentiment analysis to map the emotional arcs of over 1,700 stories and then used data-mining techniques to reveal the most common arcs. “We find a set of six core trajectories which form the building blocks of complex narratives,” they say. Their method is straightforward. The idea behind sentiment analysis is that words have a positive or negative emotional impact. So words can be a measure of the emotional valence of the text and how it changes from moment to moment. So measuring the shape of the story arc is simply a question of assessing the emotional polarity of a story at each instant and how it changes.” – via MIT Technology Review Find out more HERE. ——————————————————————————————————————— until next time! JF Share this page: [...]

The Rowhouse Report: May-June 2016

Sally IngrahamJune 18, 2016School UpdatesThe Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency is a GO! The Rowhouse is a busy place these days! The end of May brought the first official residents to the doors of the school, with Matthew Conway and Mahmoud Hashemi‘s visit. They came on a mission to work on the back-story of a game they are designing. They enjoyed the adventure of being the school’s first residents, and brought a unique energy that set a tone for the summer and the school. Mahmoud wrote an extensive report on Matt and his experience of the school, which I am quoting from below: “Compared to my expectations of independent comics artists, Frank is well-adjusted and well-equipped, with good taste in more than just comics. This expectation is likely skewed by my reading of so many “journal comics” artists. I feel like I learned about creating and collecting in general, not just about comics. Frank never stops relating things to comics, education, and community-building. Passion is fleeting compared to this. His motivation is closer to second nature. This nature was my original hopeful realization with Frank, before I met him. I feel a deep kinship with him, as I think about creating code the same way he thinks about creating comics. Independent, expressive, and individually valuable. Corporate partnerships are inevitable and, while they can be good, ultimately these looming entities don’t care about the potential of comics/code, they just use creators opportunistically. I see Frank doing for independent print comics what E-40 does in hip hop. He seems to know everyone past and present. E-40 and Frank both act upon this knowledge, combining it with the deeply ingrained understanding that respect is the real currency of the business. Money is an inescapable reality, but it’s possible and laudable to address the group as a community first and an industry second. Economies have a tendency to be treated as zero-sum. But respect is not zero-sum. Through his music, E-40 pulls everyone together, adding to their respect, and his own. And above all he respects himself, setting a good example. So it is with Frank. Suffice it to say, we need more creator-mentor-educators like Frank (as well as Sally, who I think recognizes all this and more, and actively assists Frank in the mission). In my ideal world I would be able to spend one week per year with a creator of his caliber, but I feel lucky to even have this one trip.” – Mahmoud Hashemi You can read the whole report HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Lale Westvind came through Pittsburgh on her motorcycle in June and spent some time at the Rowhouse. Maybe there’s something in the air here, or maybe it’s just Lale’s own incredible drive – either way she managed to knock out half a comic over the course of the evenings she spent at the Rowhouse. She simultaneously explored Frank’s comics collection, and matched him story for story. Her visits coincided with an interview that Comics Workbook conducted with her, which you can read HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Sammy Harkham and Kevin Huizenga buzzed through Pittsburgh in June and Copacetic Comics hosted an evening of conversation with these comics geniuses. Afterwards they came back to the Rowhouse for the night and of course they couldn’t just sit around chatting. Drawings were made, comics were discussed, and the Rowhouse got to soak up their combined creative energy. The place is already approaching Kryptonite levels…! ————————————————————————————————— In addition to hosting residents and other roaming cartoonists, the Rowhouse serves as the headquarters for the Comics Workbook team. Local team members like Juan Fernandez and Sally Ingraham pop round most days to work on planning things like The Pittsburgh Comics Salon and to help with packing up orders that come through Frank’s ongoing auction. This “work” often morphs into drawing sessions or a visit to the basement to check out the incredible comics vault that Frank has been building for years. ————————————————————————————————— Yes indeed, the Rowhouse is humming and July promises to be just as exciting, with residents Audra Stang and Caleb Orecchio coming to visit. Stay tuned for more residency reports and other news soon! Share this page: [...]

02/05/2018

Caleb OrecchioFebruary 4, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thought’s on the eloquent minimalism of Gilbert Hernandez and Charles Schulz, and other news. ————————————————————————————————— Beto’s art has really loosened up and minimized visual information in the last 10 years or so, to the point that only essential information remains. His lines these days are thinner and crisper, more straight-forward and lack the luscious thick-thin contours of his earlier work (in a good way). This, to me, has given his work an enhanced readability and lends his pictures to nearly instant comprehension. To illustrate my point, I will paraphrase (from memory) Gilbert from his Q&A at SPX 2017 where he paraphrases Wally Wood about Nancy by Ernie Bushmiller: As soon as you see a Nancy strip, you’ve already read it before you decide if you like it or not. Schulz, of course, may be the greatest example of minimalism in comics with instantly recognizable characters made up of a handful of squiggly lines. Beautifully articulate face expressions made with a few swipes of his nib. The information in Peanuts is often communicated through dialogue between characters strolling through space, and it’s his simple visuals that invite us in to casually follow along with little to no effort. Beto, in my opinion, has seemed to cracked this same minimalist code of gorgeously-simple visual stimulation that eases the senses giving way to willful submission to the story one holds in one’s hand. A lot of what I admire about this kind of minimalism both Beto and Schulz embody is in their backgrounds. Consider this spread by Gilbert in Love and Rockets #4 (vol. 4): More specifically, consider what information the backgrounds illustrate. The page above (pg. 12) starts with two panels with two respective characters giving their sides of the story. Panel 3 is a sunrise over a town or city, panel 4 is a woman walking into an office, and panel 5 has two people chatting in public within earshot of others. Then, see page 13, we see these same characters talking in what seems to be a secluded area surrounded by more a more rural backdrop, nobody is in sight and the conversation is more serious with less smiling and pleasantries. The above are aspects I rarely notice outright, but seem to unconsciously understand as I read the issue. It’s a seamless process for me as a reader, very enjoyable with very few unnecessary distractions. The tone is clear as a bell despite the subtleties that I’m only aware of in careful study. Schulz’s work functions similarly: consider the strip above. A simple sequence of a brother and sister’s walk to school down their porch stairs, along the road and into a desk. The subject of the dialogue is “school,” while the simple route they take gives the “impression” of a morning walk to school, and the desk solidifies it. Yet, we never consciously think, “they are walking to school,” we just follow them to Sally’s desk just as naturally and unconsciously as one would travel from the kitchen sink to the refrigerator. Am I clear as mud? I suppose I find it interesting that Beto tends to be moving more towards the likes of Schulz and less like earlier influences of Kirby or Ditko or even Crumb in terms of picture-making. Simple, minimal, clearly articulated sequential-images that sweep your eyes along with little to no hinderance. These are beautiful comics that I think help define the essence of cartooning at its purest. ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know At PEN American, Whit Taylor guest edits and hosts an excerpt of Kurt Ankeny’s comic, In Pieces: Some Place Which I Call Home. Chris Ware talks to Dmitry Samarov at the Chicago Reader. Sally linked to this article last week, but I felt it was worth linking to a second time, Serious Sex Battle: The Myth of the Wonder Woman by Sarah Nicole Prickett at Artforum. TCJ.com is rerunning an interview with Mort Walker, who recently passed away, from 2009 conducted by R.C. Harvey. Will John Porcellino be coming to your town this year? Find out! I always enjoy Arlen Schumer’s presentations on Kirby, and and especially how vehemently he waves the Kirby flag in this particular instance. Last but not least, please enjoy this two part video of some program of the second annual Mighty Marvel Comic Art Convention in 1976. Includes classic Stan Lee feeling like a celebrity, but the best parts are: 1.) the Q&A with then-new editor-in-chief Archie Goodwin and 2.) John Buscema drawing Conan live which ends with a standing ovation. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 2-5-2018 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

3/17/16

HarrisonMarch 17, 2016News In relevant comic and art related news, 6 South Asian Webcomics you should check out, points about criticism, and learning to look. Thinking about Kim’s piece from the other day and our relationship to criticism in general made me think of artist Zak Smith who gave 68 tips to art critics a few years back. Highlights for me include… “1. Assume any young artist you _don’t_ write about will die of starvation tomorrow. (They won’t, but their art might.)” “7. Go to art fairs. MOVE FAST. Talk to no-one. When you find good art, demand to be alone with it for an hour.” “8. Interview artists. Ask questions _about the art_ not about where they grew up or what they named their dog.” “33. Don’t pretend your opinion is fact. Instead: if you want authority, state your prejudices upfront. Like so. ” “55. Remember the art isn’t just competing with other art, it’s competing with everything else you could do that day. It must win anyway.” Swapna Krishna shares six webcomics from South Asian artists that should be on your radar. Check that post here. https://vimeo.com/154236446 Still thinking about criticism. Filmmaker and critic Kevin B. Lee has been doing annual analysis of the major Oscar nominees for the past few years on Fandor (a website for independent films from around the world), and something he said at the end of this video essay for the Best Picture nominees seemed to resonate with me. He says “This movie (THE BIG SHORT/Adam McKay 2015) reminds me of why I make these Oscar videos in the first place. People ask me why I bother making them, since the Oscars go to whoever has the biggest ad campaign or has the most hype. And sure we can be cynical about it, but at the end of the day, we want to care about something. For me, the Oscars are a way to care about the movies the way I want to care about them. Specifically, how to look at moves to see what’s really good about them, because how do we know how good a movie is, how do we know how good anything is, if we don’t actually look at it?” Time Floats Share this page: [...]

09/19/2018

Posted on September 19, 2018September 19, 2018 by Juan Fernández

Juan here checking in with a mini SPX Report.

First off, a huge thank you goes out to team at SPX, especially Warren Bernard, Lynda Bernard, Rob Clough, Danethin Mejia and Eden Miller for helping us with making these workshops happen! WE had a great time! Also thank you to all of our workshop instructors – you made it happen <3

SPX was solid this year for me. I had some great experiences teaching, caught up with fellow CCS graduates, connected with Santoro School alums, and reconnected with tumblr and instagram comics makers new and old. Nothing ground breaking, just a good continuation of the story from previous years.

As is our Comics Workbook tradition, we held down the fort in the Glen Echo Room offering back-to-back workshops with world class cartoonists and comics makers. Attendee’s ages ranged wildly, which was exciting. For the most part, all attendees were aspiring makers or folks who wanted to dip their toes into comics making. It’s nice to be able to offer a space for these people. Sally Ingraham masterfully coordinated all of our workshops and the Workbook crew assisted in shifts. It all went gloriously smoothly.

This year, I wrangled up the core group of the Pittsburgh Comics Salon to form the heart of this year’s crew. Above all, my priority this year was being of service to the Pittsburgh Comics Salon’s crew that was in attendance. Lane Graff, Graciela Sarabia, Audra Stang, Syd Blackwell, Sam Ombiri, Ann Lewis, Caleb Orecchio and Sally Ingraham.

SPX, if you’re coming from outside of the D.C./Maryland area can be overwhelming, and at times especially strange. There’s no explicit program for after hours mingling other than the Ignatz Awards and the newly developed “Prom”, for better or for worse.

If you stay in the hotel, you can sometimes feel trapped. While, yes it’s, folks can just figure out how to take care of themselves – look up food on their phones, find hotels, etc. it is difficult to properly optimize your experience of this weekend without having been there. I wanted to bridge that gap for my fellow comics makers in Pittsburgh.

Going to SPX is like entering a bubble. It’s an interesting, satisfying comics bubble, but it is one that takes getting used to. If you don’t go into that bubble prepared to take breaks, with a plan for food, with snacks and water on hand, or with a comics budget, SPX can really wreck you! It’s a monster of a show that way.

In light of this I wanted to make sure that everyone had access to what they needed.

I attended SPX for the first time in 2010 on Bill Boichel’s urging. I’m thankful he was there that year so that I could check in with him every now and again as he sailed across the room meeting makers and buying work to sell at Copacetic Comics. Without that anchor during my first year, would have been quite different and far more overwhelming.

To be able to attend with this group in tow was a really satisfying experience. I’m thankful I could coordinate this trip from Pittsburgh and be their support in Bethesda.

As I’ve said before my priority has been to cultivate this local community of makers. I love comics making, but people come before them, always.

Workshop Report
Sally Ingraham, will have a full report on Friday. Our workshops were more full than ever. Lots of networking between students and instructors happened after each workshop.

Comics Reviews
You can expect some reflections on books that we received or purchased at SPX to trickle out as the month progresses. It takes time to read comics, to experience them and enjoy them so you won’t see any rushed reviews or reflections from us here at Comics Workbook.

Stay tuned for more insights.

Thank you!
juan

09-29-2018 – by Niall Breen

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in News

Juan Fernández

Posted on September 19, 2018September 19, 2018

Explore

07/01/2016

Aaron CockleJune 30, 2016NewsSally here – I’m in Honduras looking for Blue-crowned Motmots, Montezuma Oropendolas, and Lovely Cotingas (birds!)…as well as Honduran comics, so I’m handing the mic over to Aaron this week. Back with you next Friday! Take it away, Aaron. ————————————————————————————————— Thanks, Sally, looks like you’re having a nice trip! Today in the news we have Robert Kirby in conversation with MariNaomi; Smile Revisited; WE ALL WISH FOR DEADLY FORCE; Howard Cruse; mini-architecture; Austin English on the Risograph; PERSPECTIVE!; Secretimes; Drawing as Language Interviews; Mining the Moon ————————————————————————————————— “I Want Everything to Mean Something”: A Conversation with MariNaomi I’m always categorizing cartoonists: there’s this pure storytelling school that I would put you in, alongside John Porcellino, Kelly Froh, people like that. It’s this type of storytelling where the fat is boiled down to a lean, spare-looking narrative. What’s called “deceptively simple.” I feel like that describes my process, both with writing and drawing: I’m basically editing the whole time. But I don’t want to be spare just to be spare (or busy just to be busy). I want everything to mean something. To meet the emotion of the scene or the moment? Exactly. Once I was mentoring a student, who had this wonderful, personal story she wanted to tell about her family. It was a quiet piece, and that’s how she was approaching it. But some of her peers, her fellow students, were trying to convince her to draw all these very dramatic panels for it, which was causing her a lot of anxiety, because she didn’t think she could pull that off. And the thing is, what they were suggesting was completely wrong for this particular story! I think when you’re just starting out you might feel like “I need X, Y, & Z to tell a story,” but that’s not how it works! There’s no template. Every story has its specific needs. That’s what I learned from doing all those comics for The Rumpus, which became my book Dragon’s Breath. I learned as I went how to make each individual piece be what it wanted to be. —via Robert Kirby at TCJ ————————————————————————————————— Raina Telgemeier’s Smile signaled a sea change in comics still felt today At a glance, this feels like a pretty big deal for Telgemeier but not necessarily all that important to anyone else—just a personal success worth celebrating. But Smile has inarguably changed the way many people look at comics, and the way the industry itself approaches audiences. It’s not that there was no one else writing graphic novels for young women when Smile came onto the scene in 2010, but Telgemeier’s incredible success legitimizes comics as suitable for YA literature and YA literature as suitable for comics, at least to people who were paying attention to the number of copies sold. ————————————————————————————————— See trauma become art with hints of dark humor in ‘We All Wish for Deadly Force’ To say that Leela Corman puts much of herself into her art is an understatement. Most of her collected work here covers her own history, traumas, perspectives, feelings, and even humor. As she herself admits, her sense of humor is quite dark and she proudly wears her Jewish and Brooklyn heritage on her sleeve as inspiration for her work. Through her short stories, readers not only learn a lot about their creator, but also learn a lot about how trauma is experienced as well as genuine issues involving women in Egypt as well as those suffering from loss. Her style is simple yet effective, with plenty of detail in clothing, furniture, and backgrounds with plenty of realistic illustrations of people (especially herself). Her sense of color to establish mood is exceptional and evident in much of her work here. The entire graphic novel gives the reader many things to reflect upon afterward and sticks with one long after it has been put down. ————————————————————————————————— International Comic Arts Forum 2016 Artists Talk: Howard Cruse Artist Howard Cruse‘s presentation at the International Comic Arts Forum at University of South Carolina on April 15, 2016. Cruse is the Eisner and Harvey award-winning creator of Stuck Rubber Baby, a founding editor of Gay Comix, and creator of Barefootz and the Wendel comics series. ————————————————————————————————— Japan opens its first museum for miniature architecture models ————————————————————————————————— New risograph zine by Austin English ————————————————————————————————— 10 typical perspective errors —via electricalice ————————————————————————————————— Keith Jones’ Secretimes is a Pleasant, Joycean Class War Somehow, it’s not depressing, even with the rich murdering the poor for sport, probably because of the fun Jones seems to have drawing the thing. Nothing seems to mean much, but that keeps the stakes low, and the artist’s habit of filling every bit of space with some doodad or other is pleasant without becoming overcrowded. The result is like James Joyce’s riffs slowed down to a more manageable pace—a gifted brain unwinding for pleasure by extemporizing. ————————————————————————————————— Drawing as Language Video-Interviews with Cartoonists To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the international Comix-Festival, Fumetto, we will be showing interviews with cartoonists who coined our contemporary drawing culture. They speak of their drawing experiences and on topics such as «drawing as a language» and «visual narration». ————————————————————————————————— Matthew Thurber’s Mining the Moon Essential 4th of July reading/viewing/listening. The Comic The Musical ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

02/20/2018

Aaron CockleFebruary 20, 2018NewsAaron here today with Barbara T. Smith + Experiments in Electrostatics; A.T. Pratt; Uno Moralez; Old-Timey Cellphones ————————————————————————————————— Barbara T. Smith: Outside Chance Through Feb 28 at Andrew Kreps Gallery, 537/535 West 22nd St, NYC, USA Smith’s pioneering Xerox work is the earliest series in the exhibition dating from 1965 to 1967, and reflects a pivotal moment in the trajectory of her life and practice. Initially intending to make lithographic prints, Smith discovered the then-new technology of the Xerox copy machine, a mass-printing device that she perceived to be the future of printmaking. Smith leased a 914 Xerox Machine, at the time only in use by large corporations, and feverishly experimented with, among other things, images of her children taken by the artist-photographer Jerry McMillan. Simultaneously, Smith discovered her body as a performative tool by placing it upon the machine. Obsessively repeated and layered, the resulting works form a preemptive, and melancholic reflection on the loss of her family in her subsequent 1968 divorce. Following this, Smith fully devoted her life to art-making, with works that reflected a similar engagement with a burgeoning community of artists in Los Angeles, as well as an exploration of the new relationship between performance artworks and their audience. Experiments in Electrostatics At the Whitney Museum of American Art, through March 25, 2018 Experiments in Electrostatics: Photocopy Art from the Whitney’s Collection, 1966–1986 explores the use of the photocopier as a creative tool, from its public emergence in the 1960s to the dawn of the digital era in the 1980s. Despite the machine’s intended function to reproduce office documents, artists inventively utilized it as a camera and printing press to create original fine art prints. They placed objects on the flatbed, distorted imagery in the process of scanning, and manipulated the exposure, density, and saturation settings to achieve imaginative, often unexpected results. Far from “copies,” these still lifes, portraits, abstractions, and collages reflected the ingenuity of their makers. Focusing on three artists and one collective—Edward Meneeley, Lesley Schiff, Barbara T. Smith, and the International Society of Copier Artists—this exhibition investigates how artists found self-expression through a machine designed for replication. Experiments in Electrostatics is organized by Michelle Donnelly, curatorial fellow. ————————————————————————————————— “the great American Graphic Novel Masterpiece of our time” At Broken Frontier, Robin Enrico looks at A.T. Pratt’s Ink Toby In another way the true target of Pratt’s scorn may be Pratt himself. Ink Toby was drawn under the very constraints that Pratt is mocking. The constant grinding away at making comics in an attempt to move the needle on an artist’s social profile. Reducing art to grist for the content mill. Even if as Pratt admits, the work was not finished during Inktober, it still adheres to that push to rapidly produce pages. This doesn’t always play to Pratt’s advantage, as his pages can be overly dense with at times cramped panel layouts. There are also a few instances where dialogue does, as Toby’s father cautions against, dominate the page. In Ink Tommy’s own words, “You think everyone wants to read all that shit?” Making a joke of the works shortcomings does not completely alleviate them. ————————————————————————————————— ‘This is an internet comic, not a printed volume, after all…’ Matt Seneca on Blue Teeth by Uno Moralez But what Blue Teeth attests to even more than Moralez’s image making expertise is his power as a comics maker. In a way, this is work as formally simple as it gets: a screen that shows one single image at a time, each isolated and complete in itself, yet linked by subject to the others. What’s so impressive is how immersive Moralez makes his work without any page-layout tricks or advanced sequencing or even words, for crying out loud! He gives his trust to the effectiveness of comics at its most basic level, comics as a simple accretion of image after image. It’s like hearing music played along with the strict, ticking beat of a metronome, where none of the power is in the timing and all of it is in the harmonies, the way every new note bounces off the vibration of all the ones that came before to expand the size of the world being created. Anybody can format a comic the way Moralez does here; that’s not the point. It takes someone who really understands the form, who gets that it’s about the thoughts that flicker in the reader’s head between the images as much what’s as inside of them, to make it work this well. The routes Moralez takes through his story’s information are unusual and exciting – in my favorite transition, a sexy stolen glance between Marina and her man’s road dog is followed immediately by a shot of two butterflies hovering above a flaming rose. Moralez’s sensibility is more poetic than literal, always willing to forgo the direct approach to accommodate a moment of beauty or bizarrerie. ————————————————————————————————— Via Myko Clelland / BoingBoing ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 2-20-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— VISION BOX — 02/20/2018 — by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

07/06/2016

Juan FernándezJuly 6, 2016NewsJuan Fernandez here with your Spanish language comics news: Cuadernos de cómic número 6;los consejos de Inés Estrada; Novedades de Fulgencio Pimentel; la historia del cómic Chileno; una reseña del PLAYGROUND de Berliac. ————————————————————————————————— CuCo, Cuadernos de cómic número 6. Junio de 2016 La nueva edicion de la revista de estudio y crítica de la historieta, CuCo, hay sido publicada este fin de semana! Puedes descargar Revista 6 aqui – GRATIS. Entre sus ensayos, debates, y estudios esta edicion incluye entrevistas con Martin Lopez Lam, Mirion Malle, y Sergio Garcia. En CuCo, se toma lo del cómic en serio! ————————————————————————————————— Consejos de Inés Estrada Hot tips and encouragement from Inés Estrada on how to make comics and illustration work for you. Lots more over on her site. *Expensive tools aren’t mandatory I draw all my comics with just a mechanical pencil and I have a 10 year old wacom tablet. I only splurge on nice Fabriano paper. This is what I’ve found that works for me. Find whatever works best for YOU, it doesn’t have to be the same as what other people use! *Share your work anywhere you can If you can go to fests or shows, that’s great, but if you can’t, use the internet! I grew up in Mexico City where there is no “comics scene” but I was still able to make it because I’ve been consistently posting my work on the internet for years. Commit yourself to posting your work on Tumblr, Twitter or Instagram as often as you can. Try to have a separate account for your professional work that doesn’t feature a million photos of your beautiful cat and the delicious breakfast you made today. NEVER STOP DRAWING, NEVER STOP MAKING, DON’T LET ANYTHING DISCOURAGE YOU! STAY TRUE TO YOURSELF! ————————————————————————————————— La historia del cómic Chileno La Biblioteca Nacional de Chile le ofrece una vista cronológica del desarrollamiento del cómic chileno desde 1906 hasta el presente. Aunque no sea exhaustivo, es un buen punto de partida para quienes quieran aprender mas sobre el mundo del cómic Chileno. Edúcate! La historia del cómic en nuestro país se encuentra estrechamente relacionada con el desarrollo de la historieta y el humor gráfico, que iniciaron su recorrido entre el siglo XIX y la primera mitad del siglo XX. Este desarrollo, en sus inicios, estuvo centrado principalmente en la sátira política, y más tarde en publicaciones orientadas al entretenimiento infantil. El primer personaje de historietas nacional, Von Pilsener, fue creado en 1906 por Lustig (Pedro Subercaseaux), y sus aventuras fueron reeditadas en la década de 1990 por el poeta e investigador Jorge Montealegre. De estos años datan gran cantidad de publicaciones con historietas extranjeras y nacionales, entre las que destacaban algunas como El Pibe (1923), Don Fausto (1924), Pulgarcito (1938) y Pobre Diablo (1946), así como otras más conocidas por los lectores de hoy, como Topaze, dedicada al humor político, y El Peneca, dirigido desde la década de 1920 por Elvira Santa Cruz. Nació también antes de 1950 el más famoso de los personajes ilustrados de nuestro país: Condorito. ————————————————————————————————— Reseña de Playground por Berliac “ ‘Playground’ is a fundamental work to understand comics of today. It’s a complex, postmodern piece, about the medium and its limitations (…) Berliac breaks through these limits and starts from scratch (…) using, in short, all the posibilities of comics”. – Jesús Jádiva, Zona Negativa Y no se pierdan la reseña de Playground que Frank Santoro hizo pare TCJ en 2014. Te dara otra perspectiva en el valor de esta obra de Berliac. ————————————————————————————————— Novedades de Fulgencio Pimentel Editorial Fulgencio Pimentel a lanzado su nueva suscripción, y como mola: 1. Beverly de Nick Drnaso 2. Meeting Jari de José Ja Ja Ja 3. Melancolía de Simon Hanselmann 4. Talco de Amanda Baeza 5. La yaya Meti de Aapo Rapi 6. Mi pequeño (edición integral) de Olivier Schrauwen Suscríbete por 89.00€ hoy! Presentación DMLQL en Barcelona Y si estas en Barcelona, no te pierdas la presentacion de Gabriel Corbera este Sabado en Fatbottom! 9 de julio a las 12:00 horas. Fatbottom C/ Lluna, 10. Barcelona DÍAS MÁS LARGOS QUE LONGANIZAS de Gabriel Corbera es sencillamente uno de nuestros tebeos favoritos ever. Deudor del manga más cinemático tanto como de las novelas de Marcial Lafuente Estefanía, salpicado de referencias a videojuegos, envuelto en una atmósfera ominosa y risible a un tiempo, DMLQL es mayormente una lección acerca de cómo se ordenan los silencios y los blancos de un poema; o para el caso, de un tebeo. Para nosotros, desde la primera lectura, este tebeo es El Rock y El Verano, los dos en uno, y eso a pesar de que DMLQL es un cómic de tormenta. ————————————————————————————————— hasta la proxima! JF Share this page: [...]

05/17/2016

Aaron CockleMay 16, 2016NewsAntonioni Comics Continued; Sophia Foster-Dimino; Genesis Breyer P-Orridge; SPREAD Zinefest; Adam Baumgold Gallery; NYRB Comics Release Party; Boom Box Profile; James Ensor Temptations ————————————————————————————————— CW continues it’s feature of Laila Milevski’s Drawing Antonioni. Please take some time to read/re-read/re-re-read this comic, it’s one of the most creative uses of the Frank Santoro Grid Technique System I’ve seen to date. ————————————————————————————————— New Sophia Foster-Dimino Comic ————————————————————————————————— Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Try to Altar Everything Exhibition March 11-August at the Rubin Museum, NYC For nearly half a century Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has been questioning the meaning and substance of identity through artistic endeavors, willful reincarnation, and physical shapeshifting. Try to Altar Everything, a selection of paintings, sculptures, and installations, will explore the ways that Hindu mythology and Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley have influenced the artist and h/er work. ————————————————————————————————— SPREAD ZINEFEST I hear Groningen is lovely in June. ————————————————————————————————— Comic Inspirations at Adam Baumgold Gallery ————————————————————————————————— New York Review Comics Release Party Friday, May 27 at 7pm at BookCourt in Brooklyn ————————————————————————————————— On Boom Box The success of “The Lumberjanes” started with grass-roots efforts. Ms. Watters and her fellow creators — Brooke Allen, Grace Ellis and Noelle Stevenson — made copies of the first eight pages, included an order form, and gave them out free. “It was supposed to be eight issues, and then it became something much more, kind of growing ever since beyond our wildest dreams,” Ms. Watters said. ————————————————————————————————— Temptation: The Demons of James Ensor at Art Institute Chicago The exhibition was 2014/2015 but there is still an elaborately designed interactive aspect available to those with an internet connection. ‘Before the compositions I feel anxious and exalted,’ wrote Ensor in 1887, commenting on his work as he began to develop The Temptation. More than a century later, as we explore his monumental achievement, we share something of those emotions. To study the work is at times disturbing but—as we hope you will agree—it is, above all, exhilarating. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

08/14/2017

Caleb OrecchioAugust 13, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on comics by Matt Seneca, and other news. ———————————————————————————————— Flipping through my some of my magazine-sized comics, I ran into my copies of Matt Seneca’s Trap; The Magazine About Drugs. Seneca is someone who I feel like doesn’t get talked about enough. Below are some thoughts: Matt Seneca‘s comics are painfully brutal and at times seem gratuitously so. His work reads like the cartoonist has been to hell and back. The work never flinches, never covering up the grotesquely violent or sexually perverse. It has been a while since I have read a cartoonist’s work that is so consistently visceral. You can read his debut work online, here. You can buy his other in-print comics here. I think a lot of people know Seneca from the podcast Comic Books Are Burning in Hell and his comics criticism. I was a bit suspicious when I heard he was also a cartoonist AND a critic, but the latter he is no longer unless you count the podcast. I was pleasantly surprised by his comics. Though at first glance they seem a bit rugged, his storytelling is what won me over at first. Seneca’s religious horror epic 200 Deaf Boys is a very conscious and complete story, a quality that seems to be lost on most self-published cartoonists (or really most comics makers in general); and though many would argue that Seneca’s drawing is a bit lack luster, I would argue that it gets exponentially better with each comic he makes–particularly when he uses color. In his latest and greatest work so far, Trap: The Magazine About Drugs vol. 2 no. 3: Frankie Teardrop, Seneca reaches new personal bests. He continues, as he’s always done, to not draw panel borders. This technique really comes to life in this particular strip where he will often alternate colors within a panel, rendering the use of borders unnecessary. He also expands on his use of not automatically using black lines as outlines. The color and use of black are one and the same for Seneca which makes for really nice and bright images that feel loose and alive. Not a lot, that I can find, has been written about Seneca’s comics. The links on his tumblr to reviews have been moved, removed or deleted. Like I said before, his work is riddled with the brutally violent and sexually explicit. Their is a lot of pain and anger in his work–but it is all completely and utterly earnest with little irony which gives his stories a sense of reality that the most autobiographic of cartoonists struggle to render. Seneca has an upcoming comic called The Infinite Prison. It looks great and the pencils already suggest that it will be awesome. Excited to see how it turns out. ———————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Never Comes Tomorrow – Frank Santoro, our illustrious founder/editor-in-chief, is raising some money for a book-making project, and is offering a good deal of historical comics documents in support of this. Please consider helping out. Check out the latest episodes of Study Group’s Process Party. The latest guest being Darryl Ayo and Gina Wynbrandt. There was a fair amount of hubbub around Rich Tommaso’s recent lamentations on the poor amount of comic shops ordering his latest book. Seems like he took a breath and talked a bit about it with Aaron McPherson on TCJ.com. Not sure how I feel about this League of Regrettable Heroes stuff, but Heidi Macdonald’s interview with the author at least has me intrigued. SPX is almost upon us. This will be my first year attending and look forward to the experience. Check out their site and read up on what’s happening with the show this year. I like hearing when libraries intensify their focuses on comics. The people in Salt Lake City have spoken! ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 8-14-2017 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

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