Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Antoine Lefebvre, ARTZINES, brigitte findakly, Gary Panter, juan fernandez, Kurt Ankeny, Lewis Trondheim, New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium

Aaron Cockle

Posted on October 10, 2017October 10, 2017

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05/11/2016

Juan FernándezMay 11, 2016NewsTatá Timbó; Carolina Rey on Joung Yumi; Cuadernos del Cómic; Angeli spotlight; Aidan Koch interview; Hernandez Brothers appreciation; new books at Spit and a Half distro; Abhay Khosla on Copra; Cole Closser and the Leroy Lettering System; New Statesman open call. ————————————————————————————————— Shop Spotlight: Tatá Timbó Located in the heart of the San Telmo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Tatá Timbó is a studio space and book store that specializes in the visual arts. It’s a literary arts space that focuses on youth development through the visual arts founded by Mercedes Fox, Verónica Kaplansky, and Guido Amante. By combining the idea of a studio and a book store they seamlessly blend arts with reading and writing for all ages. Visual literacy and verbal literacy. Children get the opportunity to work freely and wildly while also benefitting from arts mentorships that help them hone their craft. This all allows youth to find artistic mediums and processes they enjoy. El Sol de San Telmo offers a good look at Tatá Timbó’s mission and genesis. This past weekend they put together a small zine fair to bring together the publishing energies of their community. It’s cool stuff. Really exciting to see this kind of thing in Buenos Aires. Among the participants for this zine fair: Nicolás Mealla, Jorge Quien, Musaraña Editora, Marcela Oliva, Juan Vegetal, Pedro Mancini, Delius, Pablo Picyk, PowerPaola, Pablo Besse, Fuga Serigrafía, Luz Marchio, Diego Perrotta, Are you a cop or what?, Alfonso Piantini, Daniela Ruggeri, Miscelánea Total, Fuga Serigrafía, Lino Divas, and Hotel de las Ideas. ————————————————————————————————— Joung Yumi Carolina Rey, creative director of Rey+Naranjo Editores appreciates the work of Korean artist, Joung Yumi during Korea day at la Feria Internacional de Libros in Buenos Aires 2016. ————————————————————————————————— CuCo – Cuadernos del cómic Cuadernos del Cómic is a free digital magazine dedicated to the study and critique of comics edited by Octavio Beares and Gerardo Vilches. It is published twice a year in Madrid, Spain. It’s in the vein of old-school academic journals, but in Spanish, with spanish comics coverage. You’ll want to sink your teeth into this one. ————————————————————————————————— Angeli Retrospective – 40 Years at Folha Folha de Sao Paolo has a feature on the cartooning career of Angeli, one of the forefathers of modern graphic humor in Sao Paolo. Whether you need to brush up on your portugese or you just have to smash that translate button, there’s lots of comics for you to feast your eyes on in this feature. ————————————————————————————————— Aidan Koch interview over at BOMB Magazine. CM You set up an exercise for yourself, in which you deconstructed classical paintings. Some of these are in The Elements of Painting. And there’s a recurring interest in deconstructing classical images or classical symbols in your work. AK For sure, and also life and space and other types of images, too. Seeing what’s important, or what you can make important by pulling things in or out. Like using myself for reference—by not drawing in the background, I’m only focusing on character, but if I started drawing other details, then suddenly there’s all this concrete information that’s competing. So being able to choose where the emphasis lies, all the time, panel by panel, seems really essential in learning about pacing and building. And when looking at paintings, it’s often hard to focus. Especially ultra-dynamic ones or ones that have many characters or little actions happening. Medieval paintings are insane because there’s so much going on all the time. I’ll draw in museums a lot because it makes me look at a painting much more than giving it ten seconds and moving on. Because then you miss all these teeny tiny nuanced emotions or gestures. In case you missed the news on Monday, we are currently featuring Aidan Koch’s The Elements of Painting here on the site. These strips were originally created for and featured on Comics Workbook in 2013. The full collection is now a 14pg, b/w offset on newsprint in an edition of 500. You can buy it directly from Aidan Koch on her site. ————————————————————————————————— Abhay Thinks He Can Write About COPRA Better Than You — Nowhere to Hide – Nowhere to Cry – I Sunk Your Battleship Edition: 666 Abhay Khosla with the comics criticism gold over on Savage Critics. Khosla writes like nothing else. Read it and weep. For the last few years, one of my favorite comics to read has been Michel Fiffe’s COPRA. It’s a comic that I really pretty unabashadely love– one of the few being put out right now where I would talk about it in those terms. But for the last few years, one of my least favorite comics to read people talk about has been Michel Fiffe’s COPRA. ————————————————————————————————— BOLD NEW COMICS at SPIT AND A HALF John Porcellino has got the good stuff over on the Spit And A Half distro site. Hanselmann, Ord, Doucet, KUŠ, Irene, Clotfelter, Van Sciver, de Dionyso, Booth, Picukane, Moisseinen, Franz. Won’t last for long. Get it while you can. ————————————————————————————————— Cole Closser and the Leroy Lettering System I’m an advocate for hand-lettering. I think some comics suffer when the text doesn’t come from the same hand as the line art. That inconsistency can be jarring—and usually ruins my immersion in a story. I letter everything in my books, from the dialogue to the page numbers and front matter. I generally use my own handwriting or imitate old alphabets (like in that first picture), but when I was workin’ on Bow White for my last book, Black Rat, I wanted the lettering to look like the story had been translated from another language. I wanted it more mechanical. I wanted Leroy lettering ————————————————————————————————— Love and Rockets appreciated on The Guardian People are waking up to the master work that is Love and Rockets. Nice.It’s a good time to be alive in comics. ————————————————————————————————— New Statesman has an open call for back page cartoonists. Make something witty & make some $$$. Shoot for the stars, hungry cartoonists and send some samples. ————————————————————————————————— See you next time, hasta la proxima 😉 -Juan Share this page: [...]

Bucket of Blood

MardouSeptember 8, 2016EssaysWomen self-censor. Think about all the non-pregnant women of childbearing age that you know. A quarter of them are probably menstruating right now. So what? Is that statistical fact even a big deal? Yeah. Kinda. I think so. You’re sat here reading these words on a screen because a woman once had a functioning menstrual cycle many years ago. The thing is, for something that’s so common and abundant and ordinary (PERIODS), we don’t see or hear much about it. Which is quite odd and antiquated if you think about it. I mean, how does society benefit to be so shielded* from our menses? Or for that fact, from our lactating breasts or our miscarriages or our ‘women’s troubles’, etc etc? (*I don’t mean literally. I don’t want anyone to have a tampon thrown at them, thanks.) This little essay is a personal response to the comics of Julie Doucet, which, since I first encountered them in my early twenties, served to rock my world. They forced me to question the kind of comics I wanted to make, my attitudes towards the female experience on and off the page, towards biology, sex and shame. All that stuff factored in my response to Julie Doucet’s comics. Plus they look and read great. They still hold this timeless, glorious power for me. I’m so freaking glad she made the comics she did! Let us take a look! I love these panels from Doucet’s Leve ta Jame, Mon Poisson Est Mort (pictured above). So serious and elegant, the details of the bathroom perfectly rendered, that toilet paper! (Julie draws the toilet quite a lot in her comics. Deal with it). Look at the little sweattels on her beatific forehead. This is about using imagination and humor to dealing with a familiar, tiresome fact of life (tampon overfull in the night). The ‘I succeed’ makes me chuckle, the gush of blood is not so terrifying, is it? It’s rendered in black ink after all. It’s cute even. Well it got me thinking, this comic does present an unusual sight, does it not? A relieved woman, legs akimbo bleeding it to the toilet bowl from her levitating hover. Where are all the other women getting their periods in comics, or on screen? Sure, there’s Stephen King’s Carrie. She once had her period. I also seem to remember Brook Adams rummaging for a Tampax in Gas, Food Lodgings in 1992. Well so what about literature? Uterine bleeding was never fully acknowledged by the literary establishment until 1957 when Anna Wulf famously forgot her tampons in the novel The Golden Notebook, which ultimately won Doris Lessing a Nobel Prize, so groundbreaking was this depiction. Doris described the smells, stained sheets, the nebulous grotty feeling, the worry of accidentally bleeding through her dress in front of her male colleagues. The Golden Notebook unleashed a free-for-all spurting of literary menstrual blood from Sylvia Plath all the way to Philip Roth (hey, Roth, want to really shock? Lovingly whip a tampon out of your female protagonist. She probably won’t mind). Those creators recognized some latent dark power when they needed it. It’s a useful taboo, creatively. It speaks to those dark fears and misunderstood feminine powers right? And then there’s Julie, baring all with a shrug and a grin. God, how I love comics…. When I was in high school a girl from another grade bled through her skirt and obliviously walked through the teenage crowd. A female teacher came up behind her with her sweater outstretched, tied it around the unsuspecting girl’s waist and hustled her away. There it was the biggest fear in all my years of high school in plain sight. I saw it! It happened to that girl I saw, it can happen to you too, teenage female! Never relax, never let down your guard! And…OH JULIE, you can’t do that! You can’t grow to King Kong proportions and drown the streets in your inky period blood whilst on the rampage for a box of Tampax. You just can’t do that! This page (above) is the equivalent of a teenage air punch and I wished I owned the original. I would put it on the wall in my dining room in a heartbeat. The comic strip ends on sweet note. I don’t feel like the menstruating women of the world ask for all that much. Tax-free sanitary products and a little understanding would be a start though. In Jedi terms our menstrual cycles can be understood to have two aspects, the waxing of the full moon, the ‘light’ and wonderful powers of the fertile period and the dank, smelly and scary shadow world of the menses. The ‘Dark’ side. This is known to us, albeit unconsciously. “Researchers at the University of Mexico…concluded that the financial reward for being a topless-lap dancer are far greater during the fertile part of the menstrual cycle with dancers earning nearly twice as much a peak ovulation time.”1 The same pattern played out with waitresses at truck-stop café diners, researchers discovered. Waitresses found their tips peaked during ovulation (the pleasant part) and waned as the cycle moved towards menstruation (ew gross!). In other words, according to Earth Feminist writer, Uma Dinsmore-Tuli: “Our culture has a clear message to us: that we are rewarded for ovulating and devalued for menstruating…that menstruation is worthless to men and thus should be disregarded and rendered invisible.”2 Julie Doucet’s comics don’t ‘render invisible’ this aspect of her biology but nor is she just letting it all hang out. She renders the female existence (and female-as-artist) experience in a relatable, funny, transformative way. Sex, masturbation, miscarriage, dreams of pregnancy are not held as taboos. Taboos can harm us, repress us, and shame us. And for what? To be stiffed on tips when you get your period (read: men know anyway). Why are we hiding all this bleeding?) This page (above) from Julie is a dream comic from her 2007 book 365 Days. It’s personal to her so I’m not going to attempt to interpret it – but I do want to point out that it’s full of imagery familiar to many women. Here she dreams of a liquefied baby in a yogurt cup called ‘Liberte’, a line of women with their successfully acquired babies, and getting your period yet again. These are familiar symbols for any woman who’s given thought to pregnancy, either wanting or not wanting it. Or both. It’s perfectly simple, complex, elegant, dashed off – it’s the absolute mastery Doucet has with pen and paper that makes difficult things look easy. And she writes with a clarity and honesty about themes with are common to many women, specifically perhaps, to women who want to create things and not just babies. Here’s a fetus and a fashion model! I mean, woah! She takes bullshit women’s magazines and turns them into something transcendentally awesome. And this (above). It’s so funny, pretty, ironic. And smart. We the ladies, are the expansive force of the universe, are we not? Women’s lives contain many interconnected cycles. And we overlap – put us in a house together and our menstruation will become synchronous. We’ll bleed together, more or less. And things have changed, generationally. I’m personally having more periods than my grandmother who birthed and nursed six babies ever did. All this bleeding is the new normal, at least in the Western world, for now. All this latent creative female energy and we’re so embarrassed about it? We should own our cyclic power. That’s what I get from Julie Doucet’s comics. She connects to her inner forces, laughing and with a self-assured shrug, over many, many accomplished pages. 1 Hallinan, Joseph T, 2009 Errornomics: Why We Make Mistakes and How We Can Avoid Them, p.47 2 Dinsmore-Tulli, Uma, 2014 Yoni Shakti: A Woman’s Guide to Power and Freedom Through Yoga and Tantra, p.259 ————————————————————————————————— Sacha Mardou is a Brit making comics in St Louis, Missouri. Sky in Stereo is her most recent comic. Share this page: [...]

06/30/2017

Sally IngrahamJune 30, 2017NewsSally here with news and comics from November Garcia, Heidi MacDonald, Sophie Yanow and Iona Fox, Anna Haifisch, Sara Lautman, and more! ————————————————————————————————— Rob Clough reviews some mini comics he picked up at CAKE recently, including work by November Garcia. “Malarkey #2, by November Garcia. Garcia is my favorite new autobio cartoonist, especially given the way she’s able to navigate humor and poignant moments with equal aplomb. Malarkey is her catch-all comic where she collects her four-panel gag strips that center around her family, her husband, comics, and life in general in the Philippines.” “Being in the Philippines, Garcia naturally feels quite distant from the North American comics scene, so seeing her do strips about listening to podcasts where her comic is mentioned or fantasizing (positively and negatively) about what going to CAKE would be like have that element present in all of Garcia’s comics: an element of pure joy & excitement about life balanced with anxiety and in particular regret for things she hasn’t actually done yet. That element adds a certain tension to these strips but doesn’t dominate it, as her enthusiasm for life is still the dominant element in her work, and it’s the engine for her sense of humor.“ Read the rest of Rob’s review HERE, as well as his thoughts on Bug Boys #14 by Laura Knetzger, and Dreaming Of Johnny by Sophie McMahan. November Garcia is a recent graduate of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers – check out her course comic HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Heidi MacDonald rounds up the list of comics coming out this Fall for Publishers Weekly. Her Top 10 has some great comics/makers on it, including Going into Town: A Love Letter to New York by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury USA, Oct. 3); Sex Fantasy by Sophia Foster-Dimino (Koyama Press, Sept. 12); Tenements, Towers & Trash: An Unconventional Illustrated History of New York City by Julia Wertz (Black Dog & Leventhal, Oct. 3); House of Women by Sophie Goldstein (Fantagraphics, Oct. 3); and others. View the complete list HERE. ————————————————————————————————— On The Comics Beat Philippe Leblanc reviews What is a Glacier? by Sophie Yanow, Undocumented, The Architecture of Migrant Detention by Tings Chak (part of N.B: Undocumented, an Indiegogo project from Ottawa-based publisher Ad Astra Comix), and Almanac 2017 by Iona Fox. “Reading these three comics gave me some hope that people understand the magnitude of the issues affecting us. Climate change in particular, but also other more complex issues such as migration detention, the burden of individuals toward reducing waste, food security and sustainability, border crossing and others. It was a reminder that knowledge helps to educate to explain complex issues in a relatable way.“ Read the full review HERE. ————————————————————————————————— It’s Nice That has a feature about Anna Haifisch‘s Drifter (Perfectly Acceptable Press, 2017). Needing a break from The Artist and wanting to try a different style, Anna was inspired by publisher Matt Davis’s desire to make a large book, “Floppy and oversized – a shelf nightmare!” and returned to her printmaking origins with this work. “Poetry became a structure in which to develop the narrative. “I came up with this poem like text about a drifting person. Drifting seems to be a thing in the 21st century. Making decisions isn’t my generations strongest point. I am a bit of a drifter myself.” The process in drawing Drifter took “longer than I thought,” quite apt for a publication about meandering. “I was used to drawing up to four pages a day for comic books, with Drifter I barely got one colour layer done per day. I spent a lot of time watching the ink dry.”“ You can see more excerpts from the book and read more about Anna’s process HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Reminder: Printed Matter, Inc. is presenting “Something Unusual is Happening: Experimental Comics and the Art of Visual Narrative”, a group exhibition featuring the work of Lale Westvind, Lala Albert, Brie Moreno, CF, Patrick Kyle, and others. The show opens TONIGHT, amid the fanfare of a Guntit performance (Lale Westvind‘s band with Laura Perez Harris and Tom Toye) – 6-8pm. It will be on view through July 31st. More info can be found HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Here on the site Kurt Ankeny wraps up his spring comics show season with a few words on PIX, CAKE, and MECAF. “So, for those of us in the indie comics circuit, the summer lull is upon us. Summer usually has very few indie-centered shows going on, even though the mainstream comicons are going full blast. The consensus is that generally, indie comics are more dependent on the college and art school crowd, and when they all go home for the summer, it’s hard to gather enough interested folks to hold a show. It seems awfully stupid to join an industry whose main customer base is one of the poorest and busiest groups of people in society, but here we are, at it again, hoping to make a buck.“ Read the rest HERE. ————————————————————————————————— In Other Words It’s time to apply for a spot at Comic Arts Brooklyn (CAB) – or just put the show on your calendar – November 5th (with other related events occurring Nov. 3rd-6th). For a limited time only, get a copy of Sara Lautman‘s new mini Ghost Sex when you order any of her other titles from Birdcage Bottom Books – offer HERE. Also Sara Lautman – this amusing comic in the New Yorker about What Wonder Woman Wonders. Jillian Tamaki talks Boundless on Hyperallergic – “Short Stories Are More Liberating“. Sloane Leong writes a tribute to Meredith Gran‘s Octopus Pie for The Comics Journal. Keiler Roberts‘ Sunburning makes Mental Floss’s list of The 10 Most Interesting Comics of June. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 6-30-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-30-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Comics Workbook @ SPX 2016: the Cartoon Workshops

Sally IngrahamSeptember 29, 2016Festivals and ShowsHere are just a “few” pictures from the cartoon workshops that Comics Workbook hosted at the Small Press Expo 2016! Check out the video of the full Cameron Weston Nicholson workshop HERE – more videos to come soon – stay tuned! ————————————————————————————————— Photographs by Juan Fernandez, Audra Stang, and Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]

03/30/2018

Sally IngrahamMarch 29, 2018NewsSally Ingraham here with work and wisdom from Kriota Willberg, Nicole Hollander, Deb Lucke, and many more! ————————————————————————————————— Kriota Willberg calls Draw Stronger (coming out in April 2018) the comic she was “born to make”. She addresses a chronic problem she has witnessed among cartoonists and artists and creatives of all sorts – living with pain. Publishers Weekly had a great chat with her recently, and she began by saying: “In the US we have a number of familiar clichés: “No pain, no gain.” “You must suffer for your art.” “If it doesn’t hurt, it’s not working.” There’s a stereotype: artists suffer in literature and film—it’s sexy! Who wants to watch a movie about a genius artist who gets enough rest, meets their deadlines, never yells at their spouse or kids, makes incredible pain free art, and dies after a fulfilling happy career? Wrist braces, calluses, poisoning from media (ink/paint), and lack of sleep are interpreted by many to mean that we are suffering in order to make great comics. That’s how it’s done! This is true for acting, dancing, sports, banking, science, everything. Our culture tells us that you love your discipline more (regardless of talent) if you prove through suffering that you are working harder than anyone else. Obviously, deadlines, day jobs, and life get in the way of healthy work/rest schedules. However, the comics community is beginning to be supportive of injured artists and more aware of healthy drawing practices. Protecting a lifetime of drawing is becoming more important than the next deadline.“ Kriota Willberg is the champion we need right now, determined to get this point across to legions of struggling (and not in the glamorous way) artists. Read the rest of the interview at Publishers Weekly HERE. Over on The Comics Beat Kriota was a guest columnist recently, and shared a lengthy interview with Nate Piekos. The topic is Nate’s life-changing injury to hand/shoulder/neck which was caused by his work as a professional letterer for numerous comics publishers. Kriota calls his experience “nightmarish but hopeful”. Read about it HERE. Be smart! Pick up Kriota’s book when it comes out, or catch one of her excellent workshops at a comics expo near you. (Pittsburgh cartoonists, Kriota will be here in June offering her workshop – keep an eye out for more details soon!) ————————————————————————————————— Nicole Hollander talks about her new book in the video above – it is called We Ate Wonder Bread, and is a memoir of her childhood in Chicago. Nicole Hollander is the creator of the comic strip Sylvia, which has been in syndication since 1981 (you can read archival strips and an occasional new one HERE). Using Sylvia to speak her mind over the years, Nicole Hollander is an important voice and an interesting cartoonist. There’s a short but powerful interview with her on Publishers Weekly where she talks about the difference between creating a political daily comic strip, and a memoir. She also talks about what it meant to be a feminist cartoonist in the 1970’s. “I didn’t even know my career was impossible. We had features editors who were women but it meant nothing. The approval came from men sitting in an office saying thumbs up or thumbs down. There were what, three or four slots? Early women cartoonists like Brenda Starr were very feminine. Lynda Barry had a strong following, but only in alternative papers. With Sylvia, readers were always writing in complaining, saying they were “disgusted their daughter would have to read about disgusting things like having your period.” But I got away with a lot. There was so much independence in what I did.“ Read the rest of the interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The chance to check out Edward Gorey’s Art Collection, as depicted by cartoonist Deb Lucke, was pretty much everything I could have asked for today. See the whole thing at The New Yorker – HERE. Deb Lucke is known for her series for kids, The Lunch Witch – but I really like the more incidental comics that she makes. Here’s another one about a museum visit, this time to the MOMA, from February of 2018 – check it out on The Rumpus. ————————————————————————————————— Weekend Snacks Just in time for Passover, Liana Finck shares her take on the story of Moses and The Burning Bush, in The Tough Customer – on Tablet. The New York Times Book Review has added two comics and graphic novel columnists – the excellent Hillary Chute and Ed Park. The Book Review will start running their column in April. Read more about it HERE. Kelly Kincaid draws a hilarious webcomic called Jetlagged Comic, which is about her life as a flight attendant. Huffpost shares 25 of her best comics, and the story behind how she started making them. Whit Taylor presents Leslie Stein’s Present this week on Illustrated PEN – check it out HERE. SyFy Wire chats with Wendy Pini and her husband Richard on the past and future of Elfquest, which recently came to a close after 40 years. Read the article HERE. Hillary Brown tackles Eleanor Davis‘ Why Art? over on Paste Magazine, and offers a new interview with her – HERE. Lauren Purje met Neil Gaiman recently and made a comic about it – on Hyperallergic. Tessa Strain reviews Sloane Leong‘s new Image series, Prism Stalker – on The Comics Journal. ————————————————————————————————— Announcing the Spring Semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers 8 weeks! $500 bux! 10 spots available! Rolling start date because of spring break – start as early as March 30th 2018. Deadline to apply is April 12th. Read all about the course HERE and email santoroschool@gmail.com for more details or to apply. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-30-2018 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-30-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/10/2017

Posted on October 10, 2017October 10, 2017 by Aaron Cockle

Aaron here today with ARTZINES; Kurt Ankeny; Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim; Gary Panter; Juan Fernández

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Antoine Lefebvre, from ARTZINES #6: Show and Tell

ARTZINES is a transmedia research project run by artist publisher antoine lefebvre editions. This research project aims to produce a reference book on the subject of contemporary art zines. As an artist researcher, it is important for lefebvre to imagine new creative ways of doing research. Therefore, ARTZINES.INFO will allow the public to access the unedited data of this research project as it is collected. This online database and the zines produced by ARTZINES during this research process will show the progress made toward the publication of the book.

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Kurt Ankeny: Mining the Mind’s Eye
Kurt Ankeny talks about the reasoning and philosophy behind why he finds drawing from imagination and memory such a strong approach to cartooning, and how this creates deeper truths via non-photographic image making.

The 195th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public.

Kurt Ankeny, from In Pieces: Someplace Which I Call Home

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Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim, from Poppies of Iraq

‘This humorous episode takes on additional absurdity when the subject shifts to a military coup on the next page.’
Mark Peters at Salon.com has some nice things to say about the new book by Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim, Poppies of Iraq:

Like any great comic, even one about the real world, “Poppies of Iraq” creates its own reality for readers to get lost in — a world told via plain, blunt language and non-realistic, cartoony figures that interweave the personal and political. One of the most subtly brutal sequences in the book involves a marriage. In a tense two pages, Trondheim presents three short conversations consisting of the words “So?” and “Completely.”

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Gary Panter: HIPPIE TRIP, Oct 12 — Nov 11, Marlborough Contemporary Viewing Room, 545 West 25th Street, NYC.
Via Dan Nadel.

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Expanding the Festival Toolkit
If you haven’t already, please take a look at Juan Fernández’s post about future possibilities and approaches to comics festivals:

Centralize Sales

Our current system is embarrassingly inefficient. It is an ineffective use of getting tens of dozens of skilled comics makers and storytellers in one city for a week or weekend. No more exhibitors expected to stand behind tables hawking wares. Nowadays with everyone behind tables, people are barely interacting. There’s a vital cross-pollination that just doesn’t happen.

What does it look like when a show does away with the flea market model? One thought is that you establish a festival shop.

You get an experienced comics retailer to run the shop. You have them hire a trusted staff. You pay that staff. The shop gets a cut. 30/70. In a model like this, it costs you no money to have your work available.

Under this new kind of model, if you are a guest you sign up to be involved in citywide comics programming. Signings, gallery exhibitions, lectures, workshops. This is the kind of thing that you get Arts and Cultural councils involved in. You sign up because you want to be part of the programming.

With a model like this, you free up the artists and suddenly new horizons open up. Among those horizons are sources for financing. Imagine collaborating with a city’s municipal parks: guided bike tours where throughout the tour you make stops, learn about the city while doing landscape drawings and comics strips of the experience… A series of readings at a bookstore. Gallery exhibitions. Movie screenings at an arthouse theater. There are so many venues that would be amenable to programming: libraries, universities, community centers, theaters, bookstores, parks… Most of these venues have programming budgets that could fund materials and labor for artists.

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Suzy and Cecil – 10-10-2017 – by Sally Ingraham

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Joanie and Jordie – 10-10-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Antoine Lefebvre, ARTZINES, brigitte findakly, Gary Panter, juan fernandez, Kurt Ankeny, Lewis Trondheim, New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium

Aaron Cockle

Posted on October 10, 2017October 10, 2017

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11/06/17

Caleb OrecchioNovember 6, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on Alyssa Berg’s risograph comics. PLUS! some insight into Alyssa’s process from the author herself!—and other news. ————————————————————————————————— I think Alyssa Berg’s current work is a step in the right direction for a modern day cartoonist—being an exploration in printing, risograph specifically, and how that process can present her comics in the best way a riso machine can. Alyssa makes painted comics that live online as photographs of the actual paintings, then “adapts” the paintings into risograph printed comics—the latter being slightly different than the former naturally due to how a painting transfers to this particular printing process. As a cartoonist, I can literally see her “thinking” when comparing the “actual” versions with the riso versions. Looking at her two versions of Alpenglow (winner of the 2015 Comics Workbook Composition Competition) I’m fascinated at the choices Alyssa made when “adapting” the paintings to print. At CXC 2016 I bought her first printing of Alpenglow, which was digitally printed. At SPX 2017, I bought the second printing, which is adapted to riso. Look at the differences below. The differences are interesting because both versions are good, obviously, but I find the riso version to be particularly intimate. Her paintings are beautiful, and I miss seeing the brush strokes and nuance of color the digital version provides, but the way the riso strips everything down really sings for me. For one, riso just flat out looks better than digital. Anything looks better than digital really. Second, the choices Alyssa makes are in service to the clarity of the image while also retaining the spirit of the painting (which we’ll get to in a second in Alyssa’s own words). This pruning of the work through the filter of riso really circumnavigates any distractions (though they are enjoyable) the paintings provide, and allow the reader a wholly immersive comics reading experience. I should be clear, I don’t necessarily think the painted version is better than the riso version, or vice versa; but it’s the fact that these very excellent comics exist in different ways is what is exciting to me. I asked Alyssa to give some brief insight into her process of adapting paintings to riso prints, and this is how she responded: “I started printing my painted comics last winter at the SVA RisoLab. I had this short-lived fantasy that I would be able to use a simple CMYK color separation in Photoshop to make faux-CMYK prints on the Riso. I realized quickly that while certain prints looked okay using this method, most of them came out with too much visual information/noise because of the texture & subtlety of the color mixing in the paint combined with the imperfect registration of the Riso. Also, registering the text with this method is not ideal. “Over the summer and currently during my residency at the RisoLab, I’ve been experimenting with ways to keep the integrity of the painting in the reproduction. I use a mix of “CMYK” in certain areas, spot colors with texture layers on top in other areas, and other spot colors without any mixing. This method reduces the noise and keeps the print painterly. The text is almost always one color so it’s crisp and clear. All of my color separation is done in Photoshop. I’m not much of a technology-person so there has been a big learning curve. By now doing color separation has become pretty intuitive, but still, I’m not always sure what the outcome will be. I like that little surprise. I rarely look at Riso color mixing charts/percentages. I rely on my knowledge of color mixing and grayscale from my painting background. I tried once to design a specific zine for the risograph & it came out kind of boring. It required too much thought while I was painting the pages and I prefer to not think in this phase! For now, I’m happier painting freely then putting in the hours on Photoshop.” Thanks Alyssa! If you want to pick up her comics, Alyssa will be at Comics Arts Brooklyn this weekend at Table K6. As a cartoonist, there’s a lot to learn from watching Alyssa transform her work for print. I highly, highly recommend seeking her books out, and compare the books to the paintings; she has most of them up on her site. I leave you with some pages from my favorite Alyssa Berg comic, Open Letter to Sleep. -CO ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Ron Wimberly and Beehive Books launched a Kickstarter for a newspaper magazine, LAAB Magazine. Two IDW imprints, The Library of American Comics and Euro Comics, have a podcast together. Tessa Strain reviews Garth Ennis and Goran Parlov’s follow up to their very popular and well-recieved Nick Fury comic. This time, it’s the Punisher. Not a link, but word around the campfire is Robin McConnell will be interviewing Chris Ware on occasion of his epic Monograph book for an upcoming episode of Inkstuds. So stay tuned. In other news, the latest Inkstuds episode features an interview with Cecil Castellucci and Marley Zarcone, the driving force behind a mainstream comic I like, Shade the Changing Girl. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 11-6-2017 – by Gabrielle Tito ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 11-6-2017 – by Juan Fernandez ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 11-6-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

06/12/2018

Aaron CockleJune 12, 2018NewsMoore/Mendes; Drnaso & Kupperman; Regé, Jr. ————————————————————————————————— Understanding Detroit: The Nonfiction Work of Anne Elizabeth Moore & Melissa Mendes Sally linked to this last Friday, Alex Dueben’s interview with Anne Elizabeth Moore and Melissa Mendes, about their collaborative non-fiction comics: What do you two think comics can do that an essay or report couldn’t? Moore: This is a question I get a lot, since I’ve done both text-only reporting and comics journalism. There’s a particular story in Threadbare I did with Julia Gfrörer called “Let’s Go Shopping,” about fast fashion retail work. I went into a local H&M—it was years ago, now, so that worker’s not there anymore—and started chatting with one of the retail workers. Now, like factory workers, and many many other workers along the entire garment production and display assembly line, retail workers for most fast fashion outlets sign non-disclosure agreements stating that they agree that they have the right to be fired if they share information about their benefits or wages. This is a nutso clause in any contract designed to keep people from sharing information and organizing to improve their lives, and it’s basically a knife wound to the project of basic democracy, since it means that even though a LOT of people work in the garment industry, few people talk about what it’s like and so, for example, reporters usually struggle to write about it because no one will go on record. But no one knows, or cares, what comics journalism is, so I walked into this H&M and was like, “Yeah we draw this thing and it works like this and I do need a photo for reference but we can hide your identity to protect you and if you want we can draw you in your favorite outfit even if you aren’t wearing it right now, I just need to ask you a few questions that are in complete violation of your NDA are you OK with that?” And she answered everything I asked. Because with comics we were able to protect her, but also depict her in an interesting way, and she was invested in contributing to something she would be excited about. (That Julia drew it was super helpful. She is very very popular with models and fast fashion workers.) That’s an actual example of information that wouldn’t have been accessible without the form of comics. In “Scenes from the Foreclosure Crisis,” Melissa and I were able to do a very similar thing, depict a nonbinary figure, who still has a very clear personality, history, and set of concerns, in a way that wouldn’t bring them undue attention or frustration. Or violence, to be frank. (Detroit is very conservative, actually, so that’s a concern.) In text-based journalism, you’d have to give some kind of identifying distinction, and almost anything I could think of in this case would put my source in danger. Also audience, of course: comics journalism is read by a far less newsy crowd. More young people. I hear from a lot of students that this was sort of their gateway drug to text-based journalism. But it takes a long time, so you have to plan it all carefully. Mendes: Whenever I get this question I always think of Joe Sacco. There’s no way his work (Palestine, The Fixer, etc.) could ever be anything other than a comic. He’s going into these terrifying places, these war zones, and instead of just taking photos, which can be sort of voyeuristic, he’s drawing. There’s no question that it’s through his lens, that it’s his own point of view– he’s making those marks on the paper. There’s no way it could be taken as objective, while it’s possible to write or photograph or record in such a way that you forget there’s a person behind the camera or the keyboard. (I’m sure there are smarter words for what I’m trying to say but I haven’t written a college paper in like fourteen years so…) Does that make sense? Sacco is reporting, but it’s personal, and you feel that as a reader. You can’t escape it, it’s more raw somehow. The handmade aspect of cartooning makes it more human, and we are still able to protect identities, like Anne was saying. ————————————————————————————————— Can You Illustrate Emotional Absence? Ed Park looks at recent work by Nick Drnaso and Michael Kupperman: RE Drnaso: With his fluid framing — fitting anywhere from two to 24 panels to a page — he dictates information delivery, allowing the mind to breathe. His drawing style is at once poetically attuned to details of neighborhoods and interiors (the lit canopy of a gas station at night, the banquette at an antiseptic diner) and deceptively plain when it comes to the people who inhabit them. RE Kupperman: For an artist known for his off-kilter tableaus, this book has a static look, especially in its rendering of boldfaced names from the past. More problematic are the gaps: mysteries unsolved, re-creations that collapse under the weight of a disclaimer. Of a 1943 meeting between Joel and Henry Ford (once a vocal anti-Semite), Kupperman wonders, “What did they think of each other? There’s no way of knowing.” ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-12-18 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

03/07/2018

Juan FernándezMarch 7, 2018los Cómics / NewsJuan with some thoughts on examining what it means to write when making comics! ————————————————————————————————— The other night, over dinner here in Pittsburgh, Jenn Lisa and I were talking about making autobio comics and she asked “Are comics mostly writing? Only?”. It made me stop in my tracks. That’s a good question. To me, comics are more writing than they are drawing. That writing process though, is one that far different from this common notion: And the drawing? In comics, the drawing is really just about the recording of images. To clarify, the writing – tt’s how those recorded images are arranged and presented. I just heard someone say that the dirty secret of comics is that it is mostly writing and if you haven’t done good writing all you made was a pretty picture. And everything in me wants to dispute that. It isn’t that cut and dry to me. – Jenn Lisa I agree and disagree. Yes, the dirty secret is that comics is mostly writing. That is true. I firmly believe that. But the only people that I ever hear touting that idea usually have a very narrow definition of writing. So how does that affect you as a comics maker? Well, indulge me in a tangent. This one is for all you folks that hate the planning and foresight that you see kill joy and beauty in many comics makers practices. It’s an idea you might already be familiar with, but I just want to sing the song more fully into the ether. We don’t hone in on meaning by having a creative process that follows a straight line, the reality is that most of us spiral in on that meaning, by diligent work. But what if you don’t know what you’re trying to say? That’s ok. You can still make comics without knowing what you’re trying to say, so long as you know that you’re trying to say something. Your comics will still have an impact, even if you’re not communicating exactly what you intend. How do you get to that meaning? There’s this thing that happens, in comics making, and art in general that I’d like to talk about. What is the nature of the back and forth between the work a reader does and the work a writer does? Writer here being the operative name for the person making the comic. Sam Ombiri and I have talked about it at length during the Pittsburgh Comics Salons monthly meet ups. If I take 14 random drawings from my pile of post it notes and arrange them across 4 pages, and I give it to you in a little booklet, your brain, the readers brain, stitches together a patter of cohesion. That pattern will vary connect disparate elements. Make order out of chaos. They try to figure out a pattern. Why are these images together? The reader does all this work without trying. They can’t help it. As a comics maker, that is a tool that we are using. A reader is naturally going to be interpreting what we assemble together. As a result, we can be playful, intuitive in what we draw and how we arrange what we draw. It will be stitched together by the reader. You don’t need to shove the connective tissue of narrative and symbolism down a reader’s throat. You don’t need to know everything you are trying to do. That’s all pretty explored territory conceptually among many comics makers. The part where my conversations with Sam get interesting is when we talk about signal processing a little more in depth. The signal interpreted by the listeners brain CAN be the same one that you are making. BUT, it can also not be that, while still being an interesting signal. The meaning you intend can be communicated, and you can work at figuring out how to effectively communicate that meaning so that they get what you intended them to get out of the written sequence. There’s a beautiful dance between signal and noise that we are working through when we create art for others to interpret. But no matter what, their brain is going to interpret a signal. The realization was a breakthrough. You can choose how intentional you are about the signal you are transmitting. With that knowledge, you can allow the process of drawing and writing and editing to flow more intuitively. Allowing yourself. You can choose to simply be a radio antenna with your drawings on the page, and how you arrange those drawings on the page in ways that feel intuitively, “right” or “good” to you – your comic will beam a signal to the brain of the other through the reading experience, whether you are aware of that signal or not. This is a model of aural communication, just swap out aural for visual 😉 Don’t be afraid to allow the process to be a Rorshach test of your subconscious. You can see what comes out in your drawing, your arranging. Allow for the accidents! Keep moving. Keep making marks, keep tracing, keep moving your index cards. You don’t have to know what you’re looking for, you just need to know that you’re looking. The paper trail you leave in your search for truth in your comics, that’s your writing. All that said, in a more grounded sense, the process of editing, that traditional refining that we do as cartoonists, that’s where writing is also happening. Every step of the way, where you change, add or subtract meaning, that’s writing. Color blocking is writing. How you scoot images, how you erase, what you add after initial drawings and after you let work sit for a little while, that’s all writing. The intentional arrangement of anything, to be parsed and understood a certain way, that’s writing. So yes, comics are mostly/only writing. But not in the way you think they are. * It’s funny to me that the “writing” in panels and across pages in comics found as lettering is fundamentally drawing. That’s a point Kevin Huizenga drives home to his students. More on that, another day. ————————————————————————————————— Los cómics y las noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: ~ en Español y in English ~ En el último #FanzineMagazine Paloma García Zúñiga habla de “Necrópolis del Este” y el gran MAX les cuenta su música para dibujar con Victor Coyote y Mireia Pérez. Escúchalo aquí. Having trouble with anxiety attacks? Well fret no more! Kat Fajardo offers up an illustrated guide on remedies and why it works. Check out this Pay-What-You-Wish publication and consider sending it to a loved one! Esteban Hernández charla en Cafe con Vistas sobre tebeos y su Moneda músical. Podrá ser miercoles, sí, pero también hay nuevo número de Revista Cactus. Lo puedes leer ya enterito y gratis, aquí: http://bit.ly/2Fbz6CW Inés Estrada gives you the low down on How to Avoid Boredom over on vice.com ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-7-2018 – by Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]

05/02/2016

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

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