Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged hannah k. lee, koyama press, sally ingraham, sheree domingo, women who draw

Sally Ingraham

Posted on September 7, 2017

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Sunday is a Good Day to Visit a Museum: Part Three

Alyssa BergMay 12, 2016Art Trip / EssaysThis is the final part of a series of process meditations inspired by a trip to The Rubin Museum of Art in NYC. Catch up with Part One: Ritual in Preparing the Space/It’s the Simple Things, and Part Two: Meditation on the Grid/Free Your Mind ————————————————————————————————— Part 3: Pass the Mic/Other People’s Processes For the final installment of the series reflecting on my visit to The Rubin Museum of Art, I posed a question to MariNaomi, Simon Hanselmann, Sophie Yanow and Vanesa R. Del Rey: Will you share any ritual, meditation, or devotion in your artistic process? ————————————————————————————————— MariNaomi‘s most recent memoir comic is Turning Japanese (2dcloud, 2016). She is the creator and curator of the Cartoonists of Color Database and the Queer Cartoonists Database. I’m not sure that I have any kind of ritual/meditation per se, but I am very habitual in my work days. Basically I start the day with an early-morning jog (at 6:30), then breakfast. Then I take care of things that might otherwise distract me: dishes, bills, emails. I don’t really get creative until after lunchtime. I’m generally in the zone from the afternoon until evening when my husband gets home at 7 or 8. If I’m on deadline (or super inspired), I’ll eat dinner with him, then get back to work until bedtime at 10:30 pm. I used to beat myself up about not working in the mornings, but I’ve finally accepted that it’s my routine. Oh, and my talisman is drinking lots and lots of tea. ————————————————————————————————— Simon Hanselmann‘s most recent collection is Megg & Mogg in Amsterdam (And Other Stories) (Fantagraphics, 2016). Megg, Mogg & Owl is updated Wednesdays at VICE. my main ritual is trying to clear my mind so i can focus and be fully absorbed by the project at hand. i usually try to clear my inbox in the morning before i start working otherwise i’ll feel guilty and flustered all day. cigarettes are a huge part of the ritual. also red bull, sadly. i really need to change up my rituals to something a bit more healthy… fuck it though, as long as the work is getting done and i’m hitting my deadlines. i will most likely be dead in a few years… UPDATE: I’m on day 10 of no red bull. I am a recovering energy drink addict. <|:-) ————————————————————————————————— Sophie Yanow was the 2014-15 fellow at The Center for Cartoon Studies. Her most recent book is War of Streets and Houses (Uncivilized Books, 2014). The one thing that I do that has kind of become a “ritual,” is when I do journal comics, I do them on graph paper, and I draw 6 square panels out on the graph paper before I start drawing or writing. I generally draw/write directly in the squares. The journal comics are always in a 6 panel grid, so I’ve considered printing out paper that has the 6 panel grid already on it, but I think that drawing the grid out gets me into the proper state of “I’m going to draw/write a journal comic now.” It’s like a trigger. So drawing the panels first is the ritual/meditation that starts the journal comic. ————————————————————————————————— Vanesa R. Del Rey is an artist and illustrator for Hit comics (Boom! Studios). Her artwork has also been in Marvel, DC and Dark Horse comics. My artistic process – Discipline. I work 6 days a week for about 10 hours a day, this is a constant but my schedule is kind of organic, it changes every once in a while. I usually do chores and have breakfast/check emails before I sit down to draw. Sometimes I work out before sitting down too. My ritual to get the juices flowing involves smoking ganja and doing a warm up sketch. This warm up sketch can be anything. It’s just a thing to unclog my mind and loosen up my joints. I just spill something out… I give myself about an hour or so. This happens usually when I’ve just started working on a book. After a couple of weeks I skip on the warm ups and dive straight into my pages when I sit down. I get faster as I progress, the shapes become familiar therefore I don’t have to spend as much time searching for them. Once in a while I also do cool down sketches after a day’s work. They are usually just ideas I have floating around that I use to not get bored. For example if I’m working on the computer for a long period of time I like to switch it up and start a painting or do a sketch in my sketchbook. I guess the constant factor to begin for me is the ganja, I’m a big smoker. I would call it a ritual/meditation. My creative energy is unpredictable, it drives me and not the other way around, but my ritual is the method I have found to channel that energy, to make good use of it. It’s an incredible help for the stress of deadlines too! I’m always on a tight deadline. Devotion is a given to me…doing my work is my life. I wouldn’t do anything else. ————————————————————————————————— Alyssa Berg makes comics in Brooklyn, NY. You can find her work HERE. Share this page: [...]

06/19/2018

Aaron CockleJune 19, 2018NewsParadise Systems; NYer at SOI; Desert Island; Dank Meme Machine ————————————————————————————————— Paradise Systems on publishing and distributing underground Chinese comics Fei Liu spoke with R. Orion Martin about comics in China: says the biggest challenge with indie comics in China is the lack of a network of independent bookstores. To overcome that, many artists distribute their stories in the form of tiaoman 条漫(web based strip comics — which can sometimes be like fan works, not unlike doujinshi of Japanese manga that have amassed huge cult followings) — of which many comics Paradise Systems prints are reformatted in. Tiaoman comics are popular on social media sites like Douban, a media site for youth culture that’s “a little like Tumblr but with Rotten Tomato’s review function” which allows for cult-like analysis and adoration. The comic artists Paradise Systems publishes are already Douban celebrities and now also have WeChat pages, which is China’s more mainstream social media network — though, finding indie comics on WeChat is often harder because you have to find and friend people already invested in the culture to see the content. ————————————————————————————————— Funny Ladies at The New Yorker: Cartoonists Then and Now July 24-October 13, 2018, The Society of Illustrators in NYC, curated by Liza Donnelly. In art, when the standards for what is considered “good“ are broadened to include more approaches, it leads to more diversity of thought and more creativity. That’s what happened under Lee Lorenz and Harold Ross’ editorship. In addition, the increase of women cartoonists under their editorships happened during times of positive cultural change in attitudes towards women. This is happening now. As the result of an effort led by senior editor David Remnick and newly hired cartoon editor, Emma Allen, The New Yorker now has a greater percentage of women cartoonists than ever. This exhibition is a commemoration of some of the women who drew cartoons for The New Yorker past and present. It’s a celebration of their creativity and fortitude as they pushed past cultural stereotypes to create humor and offer the world laughter from all points of view. ————————————————————————————————— Neighborhood Joint: The ‘Punk Rock’ Comic Book Shop Beyond the meritocratic inventory system, Desert Island proselytizes offbeat creativity through its annual fall festival, Comic Arts Brooklyn, together with the Pratt Institute. It also publishes an all-illustration newspaper, which comes out a few times a year called “Smoke Signal,” now in its 29th issue. Copies of the publication, whose pages have carried works by Mad magazine legends alongside up-and-comers like Abby Jame, are free to customers. ————————————————————————————————— Dank Learning: Generating Memes Using Deep Neural Networks Via Abel L Peirson V and E Meltem Tolunay We introduce a novel meme generation system, which given any image can produce a humorous and relevant caption. Furthermore, the system can be conditioned on not only an image but also a user-defined label relating to the meme template, giving a handle to the user on meme content. The system uses a pretrained Inception-v3 network to return an image embedding which is passed to an attention-based deep-layer LSTM model producing the caption – inspired by the widely recognised Show and Tell Model. We implement a modified beam search to encourage diversity in the captions. We evaluate the quality of our model using perplexity and human assessment on both the quality of memes generated and whether they can be differentiated from real ones. Our model produces original memes that cannot on the whole be differentiated from real ones. ————————————————————————————————— Thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers Summer Session starts NOW! Floating start date! Apply anytime between now and July 12th 2018 to join the summer course. Email santoroschoolATgmail for more details. Ask about the Fall Course if now is too busy for you! The course is 8 weeks – 500 bux for 8 weeks plus access to Frank’s coaching for as long as you need. Payment plans are available. Put your summer to good use! ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 6-19-2018 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-19-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Fumetto 2016!

Sally IngrahamApril 27, 2016Festivals and ShowsComics Workbook special correspondent Raúl Burgos Paredes brings us this exciting report from his trip to Fumetto on Saturday, April 23rd ————————————————————————————————— I had the pleasure of attending the Fumetto festival in Luzerne last Saturday. Although I would have liked to attend more days and for longer periods of time, personal constraints did not make it possible – nevertheless the experience I had was very rewarding. Knowing beforehand that my time in Luzerne would be limited, I planned ahead what I wanted to explore and left open the possibility for randomness. My main motivations were the “Small Press Heaven” and the exhibitions of Frémok and Lorenzo Mattotti. When I arrived at the festival’s main meeting point I headed directly to explore the Small Press Heaven. My first interaction was with the Latvian publiser kuš!. They publish a great deal of their books in small format, A6, which I find especially appealing. I treated myself to several of their mini kuš!, which are individual artists’ comics, and also to some of their regular numbers where they publish a large amount of artists in the same issue. Then I talked with the people of Stripburger (Slovenia), Kutikuti (Finland) and Centrala (Poland). They were all really friendly, and enthusiastic to discuss their publications and aims. All I can say is that the books I bought are all great discoveries because even if I had seen some of what they publish on the net, it can never be the same as having them in your hands in a neatly printed form. They’re all sometimes fun, at times odd, and overall very unique and highly recommendable. Afterwards I found out that there would be a panel discussion with Frémok’s artists Yvan Alagbé and Olivier Deprez. I impatiently headed there and listened to their talk, where they discussed the history of Frémok as a collective. They also gave details about their editorial concept, which is non hierarchical. They seek to incorporate the use of mixed techniques to have, as a result, works that depart from the classical comics style. Frémok’s works are highly poetic and experimental as well. For example, they talked about Match-Catch, which is a book that was made by some of Frémok’s people in collaboration with handicapped artists. Something I found quite interesting was their visible commitment to producing books that have a different kind of vision, a vision that clearly reflects artistic freedom. The moderator of the panel discussion inquired about how comfortable they were in financial terms, taking into account that the works of Frémok are not maybe bestsellers because of their style. Both Olivier and Yvan were emphatic in being both keen and confident to maintain their artistic freedom, not thinking too much about financial matters. For Yvan, it’s a chosen lifestyle, he prefers to be joyfully producing the work he does than maybe being more financially comfortable, but producing works that he would not feel like doing. This response was very much inspiring! Then I headed to the Fremok’s exhibition and reception. By the way, I did not know there would be one so I was quite happy to know that I would be able to interact more with the artists while having a glass of wine. This was a really fantastic exhibition where the works were smartly ordered to create a world of its own. I was delighted to see in original some of the works I appreciate the most. During the reception I could talk more in detail with Mr Alagbé about Match-Catch. He explained to me that they regarded handicapped people as independent artists of their own and that they were not imposing limits on them. He said that Frémok’s artists had to adapt to them and not the other way around. The result is a formidable book in which narrative is not linear and therefore, very dynamic. Personally, I’m not very much into narrative styles in general, I’ve always preferred to read a poetry book than a novel, and Frémok’s books are poetical imagery linked with sometimes poetic writing. I highly recommend école de la misère by Yvan Alagbé, coloforme by Etienne Beck, and plus si entente by Dominique Goblet and Kai Pffeifer. During the exhibition I also talked a little bit with Kai Pffeifer and I told him I was surprised to realize that the original works did not differ that much from their form in a the published book. He explained to me that first of all the editorial committee was formed by the artists themselves and that they placed high importance first, to the scanner, and second, to the printing process. He explained with great detail the complex printing process, but I can not tell you more about it because I forgot and it encompassed things I did not know. Then I headed to see Lorenzo Mattotti’s exhibition named Oltremai. Oltremai is another world of its own, all in black and white, populated by dark and ever moving characters. As you enter the exhibition room you sense you’re entering something special by starting to notice the soft and eerie music that accompanies the works. The imagery contained in it is fantastic, sometimes mythological, and an aspect that astonished me is the flow that can be felt in each individual work. The whole works do not follow a narrative and the pieces are nameless. The book of Oltremai, big and heavy, does good justice to the original works of the exhibition. Finally I headed to the train station to catch my train back home (Neuchâtel). To make my travel more enjoyable I started drawing some of my impressions of the festival. One of those drawings is my interpretation of Yvan Alagbé. To conclude, I would like to say that it was overall a very gratifying experience and I was very much pleased to interact with publishers and artists alike. Surely something to repeat in 2017! ————————————————————————————————— Raúl Burgos Paredes is a Mexican tripolar social scientist who has been living in Switzerland for the last 7 years. He finds time, in the midst of writing his dissertation, to explore his drawing abilities and enjoy all the comics he can find. You can see more of his work HERE. Share this page: [...]

04/05/2016

Aaron CockleApril 5, 2016NewsMoCCA Recapitulation; Sarah Horrocks; Edie Fake; Aidan Koch; Chester Brown; Julie Delporte; O RisoLAB, My RisoLAB!; Retrofit Comics ————————————————————————————————— MoCCA 2016 This past weekend, the Society of Illustrators hosted it’s annual Museum of Comic and Cartooning Art (‘MoCCA’) Arts Festival in some desolate, blasted-out, post-industrialized urban hinterland Manhattan’s far west side. Attendance seemed pretty good at the 2-day show. If anyone who tabled at/attended the show has anything to say about it (Was it a ‘good’ show? What does ‘good’ even mean? Like, did you make a lot of $$$ at the show, or enough to cover your table, or is that something people talk about these days? Did anyone get donuts at the car wash donut shop? How were the panels? What were the highlights of the show, comics-wise? IS this a snapshot of the current ‘industry’? Do we all wish it was 2005 again and that we were back in the Puck building? Does anybody miss that Armory space?, Where do we go from here, etc etc???)…please feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this newsblog. ————————————————————————————————— Horrocks on Horrocks; Edie Fake at Marlborough Chelsea; Aidan Koch’s After Nothing Comes; Chester Brown’s Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus; Delporte in Moominland ————————————————————————————————— Summer Risography 6-8 week artist residency in NYC. Application deadline is April 22. ————————————————————————————————— 3 Days Left Please consider supporting the Retrofit Comics Kickstarter. Image above by Alabaster Pizzo. Share this page: [...]

06/27/2018

Juan FernándezJune 27, 2018los Cómics / NewsToto Duarte y Camila Barrales, Rutu Modan entrevistada y Frank’s Cosmic Corner – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – La Polola #78 -Toto Duarte y Camila Barrales Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo tienen una nueva edicion de La Polola Podcast! Las chicas conversan los dibujantes Toto Duarte y Camila Barrales. Conversaron sobre formas de narrar, de mirar, de criticar y de cuestionar lo establecido a través de la gráfica, el fanzine y las auto publicaciones. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Entrevista con Rutu Modan: Jelena Arsić, Jotdown.es En tu cómic-blog del New York Times, Mixed Emotions, hablas simplemente de tu familia. ¿Son historias reales? Lo más que hago es cambiar los nombres, por lo general son historias reales. Toda ficción no deja de ser una mezcla de experiencias reales. Yo solo escondo un poco la realidad en una ficción. El origen es que me hicieron el encargo en el New York Times a modo de columna mensual. Trabajo muy despacio, vi que no me iba a dar tiempo y decidí tomar los guiones prestados de la realidad. Así iba a ser más fácil que se me ocurrieran ideas. Le fui dedicando una historia a cada miembro de mi familia. Como era en inglés, pensaba que nunca lo verían y me solté. Pero lo vieron. Por supuesto, lo encontró uno de mis primos y directamente se lo envió a toda la familia. Tengo un tío que todavía está enfadado conmigo porque le puse de «oveja negra». Cada vez que me ve me pregunta por qué. El resto, en cambio, están muy orgullosos de que cuente historias sobre ellos. Soy muy cercana a mi familia, a mis tíos y tías, y también a mi abuela, que ya está muerta, la protagonista de La propiedad. Cuando estaba escribiendo esa novela gráfica les preguntaba mucho por cosas, les pedía información, porque mi abuela ya había fallecido. Les hice como entrevistas a cada uno, porque sabían todas las anécdotas e historias que les había contado mi abuela. Cuando luego se vio que era un libro sobre Polonia y sobre la abuela, se quedaron muy decepcionados, porque pensaban que iba a ser sobre ellos. Se enfadaron, además, porque le cambié el nombre a la abuela. Un primo mío, que sale en la historia, ya se refiere siempre a la abuela por su nombre en La propiedad. Mi tío y su hija me decían que no les gustaba cómo la había representado, que ella no era así, que ni siquiera era su nombre. Pero es que no era la historia de mi abuela, era una historia construida a partir de la personalidad de mi abuela. Y ellos: «Ya, pero es que no es ella». – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Frank’s Cosmic Corner At Comics Workbook we are testing what it means to be a new kind of learning institution for comic book making. One of the many things we do at Comics Workbook is resell comics. Hop on over to @frankscosmiccorner on instagram and check out all the comics Frank Santoro has up for sale. You name it, we’ve got it! Lots of great mainstream and inside comics – lots of good-bad comics. All proceeds go to helping keep the lights on here at Comics Workbook, so your support is much appreciated! – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Suzy and Cecil – 06-27-2018 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

09/08/2017

Posted on September 7, 2017 by Sally Ingraham

Sally here with new work from Hannah K. Lee, and Sheree Domingo, plus other comics and news!

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I was excited to perused the advanced review PDF of Hannah K. Lee‘s book debut, coming out from Koyama Press next week. Language Barrier collects several of Hannah’s zines and comics, as well as a new piece. The design of the book looks beautiful, from the end papers, to the full color comics and the scans of zines (I really like the aesthetic of scans of existing books, for some reason!) The new comic is great (no spoilers allowed yet) and it’s nice to revisit some of the riso printed zines that Hannah made in 2012/2014 which are long out of print. I love her Shoes Over Bills zine, which is contained in this collection, and is a striking visual game of balance between wants and needs…

Hannah’s work as a commercial illustrator and letterer comes into play nicely in this collection. I like when the text in a comic or zine is as much an artistic and visually stimulating part of the work as the drawings are, and Hannah definitely plays with her words in these pieces.

Check out more of Hannah K. Lee’s work HERE, and keep an eye out for her book in shops around Sept. 12th 2017, or at the Koyama Press table at SPX next week!

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Electrocomics (Ulli Lust’s online comics publishing platform) just released a comic by Sheree Domingo called Omegawolf (above). You can download the comic HERE.

I like Sheree’s use of watercolors, with a 3 color palette and no blackline. The story is about a brief connection between a boy and a wild “omegawolf”.

You can find more of Sheree’s work HERE.

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Women Who Draw organized an international art project last month, which Topic recently compiled and published.

“On August 13, 2017, at precisely 12:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, 88 artists all over the world stopped what they were doing, looked up, and drew the sky. What each artist saw was unique to the time, the weather, and the place. The locations ranged from Tel Aviv to Brooklyn, Buenos Aires to rural Georgia. Some saw different hues of blue. Some saw black, pink, or gray. Some saw stars or clouds or fog or rain. Here it was summer. There it was night. In one place a fire left a heavy brown haze. Whatever sky the artist saw, they captured it on paper in their own unique style. They were, at that exact moment, separate skies. But when we view these drawings together, they become one far-stretching, simultaneous world view. They become a portrait of one shared sky.” —Wendy MacNaughton and Julia Rothman, co-founders of Women Who Draw

See the entire One Sky project HERE.

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Boundless by Jillian Tamaki is reviewed on the LA Review of Books – HERE.
Paste Magazine‘s “Required Reading: Comics” roundup for the week reminded me that I want to read Bombshells United #1, which is written by Marguerite Bennett and drawn by Marguerite Sauvage, and just came out. The A.V. Club took a look at a preview copy recently, which you can check out HERE.
Arianna Margulis‘ Instagram comic But Like Maybe is something of a phenomenon, earning her a nod from The New Yorker this week.
There’s a review of Anna Haifisch‘s new book Drifter in the German Art Magazine – read it here.
Ulli Lust is having a book release party in Berlin this month – here are details for the party on Sept. 10th 2017 – and here’s a look at Ulli’s new book courtesy of Lauren Weinstein!
Liana Finck explores “who does a story belong to?” when it comes to loved ones, and making comics about them – on Topic, HERE.

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Suzy and Cecil – 9-8-2017 – by Sally Ingraham

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged hannah k. lee, koyama press, sally ingraham, sheree domingo, women who draw

Sally Ingraham

Posted on September 7, 2017

Explore

09/21/2018

Sally IngrahamSeptember 21, 2018NewsSally Ingraham here with my Small Press Expo 2018 memories and pictures! (See Juan Fernandez’s SPX report HERE, and read Caleb Orecchio’s thoughts HERE.) ————————————————————————————————— I headed to Bethesda a day early and on Friday I was fortunate enough to tag along on SPX Director Warren Bernard’s annual field trip to the Library of Congress with some of the Expo’s special guests. At the Library of Congress we got to see some of the comics holdings that are kept in the Prints and Photographs collection. Here’s a few that I took note of: After looking at the comics holding for a bit, Emma Ríos, Rina Ayuyang, Liv Strömquist and her son and their travel companion, Kate Harmon, and myself, made the long dangerous trek underground through the maze of the Library of Congress (there were tunnels involved!) to find the Jefferson Building and the Drawn To Purpose show. There was a nice timeline of work made by female cartoonists and illustrators, including the Little Lulu strip I shared at the top of this post, and this Brenda Starr, Reporter piece by Dale Messick: We found our way back to the Madison Building in time to catch Carol Tyler‘s big presentation on her life and comics. Having formed a bond over the morning, Emma Ríos, Rina Ayuyang, Kate Harmon and I continued to hang out for the rest of the day. And as we were leaving the Library of Congress in search of lunch, who should we bump into but Congressman John Lewis…?! (Check out the March trilogy that Congressman John Lewis wrote with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell HERE.) It was a real treat to explore Washington D.C. with my dear friend Kate Harmon, guided by our pal Adam Griffiths, and get to know Emma Ríos and Rina Ayuyang along the way. I knew Spanish cartoonist Emma Ríos‘ work from the Image titles Pretty Deadly, with Kelly Sue DeConnick, and Mirror, with Hwei Lim. In 2016 she put out a comic that she drew as well as wrote (the first comic she has written in English), called I.D., which I’ve been meaning to read (and I was so delighted later in the weekend when she gave me her last copy!) Here’s an interview with Emma from last year that details more of her comics adventures. Rina Ayuyang is originally from Pittsburgh, PA, so we hit it off right away! I’m super excited to read her new book, just out from Drawn & Quarterly – Blame This on the Boogie (get a copy of it HERE). Getting to meet cartoonists like Emma and Rina is why I come to SPX every year. I’m interested in the quick friendships that form because of the common interest that pulls us together. You’ve never met before, and may come from different career/publishing backgrounds, but especially in groups of women I have found that there is a powerful connection and a desire to support and celebrate all the varied comics-making paths that we’ve traversed. I felt that strongly with Emma and Rina, and although our encounter was more incidental, with Liv Strömquist as well. (Check out Liv’s powerful new book The Fruit of Knowledge HERE.) By the end of day on Friday Kate Harmon and I were having dinner with Fiona Smyth, due to a quick invitation in the hotel elevator (another key part of the success of SPX – everyone is in the same hotel!) I am such a big fan of Fiona’s work, and was lucky enough to meet her during her visit to Pittsburgh, PA, a few years ago. It was terrific to catch up and congratulate her in person on her new book, just out from Koyama Press – Somnambulance. Saturday and Sunday at SPX I was completely engrossed in running the Comics Workbook-hosted workshops. These workshops provided a veritable crash-course in comics making, beginning with Juan Fernandez‘s highly energetic intro to image-making as language. This was followed by Dash Shaw‘s in-depth exploration of comics writing, and Molly Ostertag‘s (standing room only!) session on digging a fresh story out of yourself. There were numerous other offerings (we ran 8 workshops this year!) including a clay sculpture workshop with Liz Reed and a Kickstarter intro course with Camilla Zhang. (Big shoutout to Caleb Orecchio for being doorman on Saturday and wrangling the enthusiastic and lengthy lines of folks who attended – and for his own great workshop on Sunday! And to Kate Harmon for helping with supply runs and the door on Sunday!) Saturday night is always bonkers – for me it’s a balance of hanging out with the Comics Workbook and Pittsburgh Comics Salon crew, and finding my more far-flung comics friends to catch up with (Andrew White, M. S. Harkness, Iona Fox!) But despite great conversations and late hours kept, I somehow got up on Sunday morning and drove 30 minutes to Great Falls Park, VA, to pursue the topic of all my own comics lately – BIRDS! Sunday at SPX went by in a flash, and before I knew it we were packing up the workshop room, and I was making a last round of the Expo floor to find cartoonists I’d missed before they in turn packed up and took off. Dinner with Kate Harmon and Emma Ríos and Fiona Smyth, followed by late-night chats with Iona Fox, and then the show was officially over for me. I crawled into bed to sleep for a bit before racing back to Pittsburgh, PA, on Monday morning in time to work at 10 AM… Phew! Thanks to Warren Bernard, Lynda Bernard, Rob Clough, Danethin Mejia, and Eden Miller for the organization behind the show, and especially their help in making the workshops happen. Thanks to Juan Fernandez, Liz Reed, Dash Shaw, Molly Ostertag, Jason Rodriguez and the Latin American Youth Council, Mosi, Camilla Zhang, and Caleb Orecchio for delivering such stellar workshops! And many, many thanks to all the folks who turned up to learn about comics with us over the weekend. See you next year for SPX 2019! ————————————————————————————————— 09-21-2018 – by Niall Breen Share this page: [...]

07/31/2017

Caleb OrecchioJuly 31, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here and I can’t stop thinking about Jack Kirby ———————————————————————————————— Kirby Complex Not a day goes by that I don’t flip through a Kirby comic. Lately I’ve taken keen interest in the “Tales of Asgard” stories that were the back up feature for Thor. Love those 4-panel grids. And I don’t care what anyone says, Colletta was NOT Kirby’s worst inker—in fact I’d argue (at least in the case of the Tales of Asgard) that Colletta was one of Kirby’s BEST inkers. Chic Stone is the most underwhelming Kirby inker in my humble opinion—but that is neither here nor there. I’m just thinking out loud. Hmmm…I’m stalling because I’m having a hard time collecting my thoughts at the moment. More and more each day I am convinced that Jack Kirby was a prophet. And I know I’m not the only who thinks this. Just one google search led me to this. I’ve heard others talk about Kirby amazing ability to either affect future culture or basically predict future events. Ever heard the story of how Kirby drew a mushroom cloud before the public was even aware what that was? He got a visit from the FBI. I’m having a hard time remembering where I read/heard this so you get a “No-Prize” if you leave a link in the comments to it. Whenever I talk about Kirby to a layperson, I like to point out Mother Box. Basically, Kirby’s prediction of the smartphone and tablet. See below how Orion of the New Gods uses Mother Box to hide his real face like a Instagram or Snapchat filter—he’s practically taking a selfie. Or this one where Orion (as O’Ryan) mentions Mother Box’s GPS capabilities. And when I see this page, I can’t help but think of how we now have the technology to control drones with our devices. These were just the examples that came to me off the top of my head. If the spirit moves you, dear reader, feel free to leave any other examples that struck you while reading Kirby’s work that gives evidence of Kirby’s prophetic gift. I’m sure there are those of you who have given this much thought. Anyway, have a good Monday ———————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know I found this talk on Kirby by Arlene Schumer to be really really fantastic. I particularly like how he gave context to Kirby’s roll in culture through the years. I have very much been enjoying Gabrielle Bell’s Annual July Dairies this year. I’m a sucker for comics with dogs. If you wanted to apply for CAB this year and haven’t yet–you’re too late, but here is Chris Ware art you can snag if you do go. I spent my lunches this past week watching this esoteric comic store documentary series on youtube. For those of you with taste, much of the content will probably infuriate you as it did me. Almost all of the people involved in this comic store HATE everything I love. That being said, I absolutely love this series for its non-judgemental take on an aspect of comics culture. ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-31-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ———————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 7-31-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

04/12/2016

Aaron CockleApril 11, 2016NewsINK BRICK; Tsurumi/Chapman/Lidston; ‘O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?’; Virtual Reality & its Discontents; Grids & Gestures & Nick Sousanis; Drawing Center Run-down; Nancy in the 1980s ————————————————————————————————— Poetry Comics INK BRICK, the premier micro-press for poetry comics, has extended the submissions deadline for its 5th issue to Sunday, April 17. Please consider submitting and/or supporting this organization. ————————————————————————————————— Upcoming Book Release Events at Desert Island Thursday, April 14, 7-9pm: Andrea ‘Why Would You Do That?’ Tsurumi Thursday, April 22, 7-9pm: Robyn ‘Twin Bed’ Chapman and Colin ‘Age of Elves’ Lidston ————————————————————————————————— Romeo ————————————————————————————————— New Media Same Old Problems The Storyteller’s Guide to the Virtual Reality Audience ————————————————————————————————— Grids & Gestures Cartoonist and educator Nick Sousanis has Kickstarted jump-started an online collective comics-making activity based on his teaching that will most likely be of interest to anyone who frequents this newsblog. From his website: ‘Over the last few years, I’ve found it to be a great way to get people with no prior drawing experience to very quickly start thinking about the spatial considerations comics makers attend to and at the same time, gets them to realize how much they know about drawing that they didn’t know they knew. ‘ ————————————————————————————————— Comics & Zines in NYC The Drawing Center recently posted a shortlist of the best places to find comics, zines, and artist books in NYC. ————————————————————————————————— Revisiting ‘How to Read Nancy’ by Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik From 1988, always worth another look. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

04/24/2018

Aaron CockleApril 23, 2018NewsAaron here today with Global Art Comics; Frank in Italia; Print Slam #8; Paradise Systems; Cy Twombly; Remote Mind Control ————————————————————————————————— Save the date! April 27th: SPRING GROUP SHOW | GLOBAL ALT COMICS! Featuring work by Trina Robbins, Mary Fleener, Lauren Weinstein, Powerpaola, Gina Wynbrandt, Conxita Herrero, Tommi Parrish, Gabrielle Bell. ————————————————————————————————— Do you have any peculiar habits or routines before starting to draw? I try to do drawing warmups. I like to copy Archie comics. It lets my brain draw without thinking, without inventing. And Archie comics have a type of cartoony realism which I think is perfect to copy. Ideally, I warm up for 30 minutes or so before beginning to work on my own comics. Although as my comic nears completion, I warm up less because I feel confident about my direction. Also, I obsessively make coffee on the stovetop with my Bialetti caffettiera. I have to drive far away to find Lavazza coffee at the Italian grocery in a different neighborhood. American coffee is crap. Frank Santoro is interviewed at Fumettologica, in support of the publication of Pompeii in Italy, and Frank’s trip this week to Naples Comicon. An excerpt from the Italian edition has been posted as well. ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— Paradise Systems: Woshibai, Lisk Feng and Jun Cen in conversation April 27, 2018, 6-8 PM Shanghai-based cartoonist Woshibai reads from his new book Migraine, newly released by Paradise Systems. Woshibai will be joined by New York-based cartoonists Jun Cen and Lisk Feng in conversation about Chinese comics and the illustration community. Jun Cen will also have copies of his book Negative Space availanble, which was recently published in China. ————————————————————————————————— Cy Twombly: In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008 Through April 25, 2018, 522 West 21st Street, NY Cy Twombly: Coronation of Sesostris Through April 28, 2018, 980 Madison Avenue, NYC ————————————————————————————————— ‘EM stands for electromagnetic.’ Curtis Waltman at Muckrock found some good graphics in a recent Freedom of Information Act request: As part of my ongoing project looking at fusion centers’ investigations into Antifa and various white supremacist groups, I filed a request with the WSFC. I got back many standard documents in response, including emails, intelligence briefings and bulletins, reposts from other fusion centers – and then there was one file titled “EM effects on human body.zip.” ————————————————————————————————— Vison Box – 4-24- 2018 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-24- 2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

09/03/18

Caleb OrecchioSeptember 3, 2018NewsGone fishing ———————————————————————————— We will be back tomorrow at our normal programming schedule. Have a good one! ———————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

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