Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Alexis Beauclair, Ariel Dorfman, Armand Mattelart, Bettina Henni, Disney, donald duck, french abstract comics, jean-philippe bretin, kim jooha, Sammy Stein, Yohann Koshy

Aaron Cockle

Posted on November 13, 2018

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10/12/2017

Sally IngrahamOctober 12, 2017NewsSally here with announcements and excitement from Adam Griffiths, Kyle Baker, Derick Jones, Ronald Wimberly, and more! ————————————————————————————————— East City Art featured an official shout-out regarding Adam Griffiths‘ forthcoming graphic novel Washington White: “Science fiction meets the aftermath of the 1960s civil rights movement in Adam Griffiths’ forthcoming self-published graphic novel, Washington White, a pseudo techno-thriller about corporate greed, gentrification, and corruption set inside the District of Columbia. Drawn in pencil with digital coloring, Griffiths has been working on the 600-page book for nine years; the first installment will be published as a 70-page newspaper tabloid. Written in the form of a spy thriller, the civil rights science-fiction plot and the mad-cap challenges that the story’s range of characters face make for a bombastic, silly, and disturbing experience.“ If you’re in the D.C. area keep an eye out for this newspaper and perhaps catch Adam at CAB this year with copies of the comic. Adam gave Frank and I a peek at the manuscript of this work when he was here in January for a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency, and I can tell you right now, it exists in a parallel dimension. I am eagerly anticipating this one! ————————————————————————————————— Like Derick Jones says, sometimes you gotta just use brute force to dig into a comics project, or page, or panel…! Above is part of a page from his new minicomic Rhythm Man, written by Storme Smith and recently published by Buno (which was founded in 2016 by Ulises Farinas and Storme Smith). You can see more pages and learn some of Derick’s thoughts behind them over on his Instagram – @skudsink – and get a copy of the comic HERE. ————————————————————————————————— An exciting announcement that came out of the New York Comic Con last week was that the Milestone imprint is coming back to DC Comics. A number of characters will return to or be born in the world of Earth M, including Static Shock (above) drawn by Kyle Baker and written by Denys Cowan and Reginald Hudlin. Cheers of delight met the announcement, made by Kyle Baker himself, as the character is a fan favorite. I’m just excited or anything and everything drawn by Kyle Baker, so we all must keep an eye out in 2018 for Static Shock #1…! Read the full report HERE on The Comics Beat. ————————————————————————————————— Ronald Wimberly is the featured artist at Superchief Gallery NY tonight (Oct. 12th 2017), so if you’re in the area you should go hang out with him from 7 PM – 12 AM. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-12-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 10-12-2017 – by Juan Fernandez ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 10-12-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

07/11/2016

Juan FernándezJuly 11, 2016NewsJuan Fernandez here with: Alyssa Berg’s ALPENGLOW; the passing of Geneviève Elverum; Katie Skelly on “women in comics”; Spurgeon and Boichel on the state of the industry; An Afternoon with Steven Gilbert; Jim Rugg on digesting How to Draw the Marvel; a new auction to benefit the Rowhouse Residency. ————————————————————————————————— Alpenglow – Alyssa Berg I’m happy to announce that we are featuring Alyssa Berg‘s Alpenglow on the site this week. Alpenglow was made in 2015 for the 2015 Comics Workbook Composition Competition. It came in 1st place in that year’s composition competition. ————————————————————————————————— Geneviève Elverum, RIP After being diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer last spring, Geneviève Elverum has passed away. She was 35 years old. (via exclaim.ca) On his GoFundMe page, Phil Elverum shared the following heartbreaking message: Geneviève died today at 1pm. She was truly driven to work and stay living right up to the last minute, insisting on getting up and going to work in her studio way beyond when many would have surrendered to rest. Last night and this morning she declined quickly and receded into her own eyes as her body vetoed her wishes, her lungs filling with fluid. She died at home with me and her parents holding her, hopefully having reached some last minute peace. It’s all very sad and surreal. So much is left unfinished for her. She was a firehose of brilliant ideas that never turned off. We loved her and everything is weird now. Thank you for all the money, all the support and love. Phil Remembering Geneviève: Geneviève Elverum interview by Tom Spurgeon (2012) Geneviève Elverum interview by Naomi Fry on TCJ (2013) A memory with Elverum via Gabrielle Bell’s diary last night The gofundme for the late Geneviéve Elverum to help her surviving family defray medical expenses. ————————————————————————————————— Katie Skelly talks Craft, the medium and Erotic Comics Kristen Korvette interviews Katie Skelly over on Slutist. How tired are you of talking about “women in comics?” Can the conversation move on to something more nuanced/complex or in your opinion is it still a necessity to highlight the gender disparity in your field? I’m so tired that I could be medically dead. It’s historically and culturally ignorant; like, if you don’t know who Marie Severin is and why she’s important, you don’t fucking know comics. Period. To act like women in comics are new and haven’t existed this entire time is bizarre. But I don’t know if comics is ready for a larger conversation because it’s been stalled in the same gear since the ‘60s. I want to see a woman be heralded as a “master of the medium” with the ease Daniel Clowes or Frank Miller are, which is a way that isn’t questioned. Men are masters; women are gifted, or agile in the medium, or whatever… like it’s always coded as a surprise. I think that takes giving more room to non-white guy comics critics, which I do see happening, but it’s very slow. ————————————————————————————————— More comic books than ever. However… Really interesting comments by Tom Spurgeon on the nature of what kinds of comics are being promoted and consumed most heavily over on Comics Reporter. Tom Spurgeon: One of the reasons I think no one trusts critical discourse in comics right now is because that specific point of view on things is so decidedly inarticulate. It was easy in the 1980s to point out how RAW was better than Marvel Two-In-One (yes, even the Project Pegasus run); it’s harder to make the distinctions we’re asked to make now. A solution you often see, where the critic dons the skin of Greg Cwiklik Buffalo Bill-style, sets an even higher bar and destroys the better-crafted work as just another piece of meretricious disposable fluff like it’s 1992 again, that may thrill the hardcore art crowd but wins few minds. In many hands that kind of rhetoric feels just as convenient as those end-of-the-year lists that have a book from every important publisher. It’s not that people need to adjust their standards, but discuss intelligently the ones they have. I get the sense that a lot of people with their end of year lists could swap out another dozen comics for the ones they selected and be perfectly happy writing either article. Don’t get me wrong: I’m public enemy number one here. I barely even write about comics anymore. I was curious as to what this all meant coming from Spurgeon, so I asked Bill Boichel over at Copacetic Comics what his thoughts on Spurgeon’s comments were. Bill Boichel: The books chosen in the lists that Tom references are simply indicative of the broadening and shifting of the variety, options and tastes now on offer in entertainment comics. These books are simply the Archie, Richie Rich, Dennis the Menace, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Superman, Batman, Tarzan, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Bugs Bunny, etc. of today: a variety of entertainment for different tastes and interests whose primary motive is being successful: generating sales and profits, revenue for the publishers and income for their creators but which nevertheless occasionally, through some particular confluence of personal and historical factors, produce works of lasting genius. They are in an entirely different category from comics produced under the aegis of personal motivation, that are consciously created with of artistic and literary ambition, and the goal of which is personal expression, education and illumination of readers, preserving historic and cultural perspectives that are under-represented and/or at risk of being lost, et al, and in which revenue and income are secondary concerns. This distinction of course cuts across all forms, and is certainly not limited to comics, which in fact has only relatively recently reached the point in its development as a form to avail itself of this distinction. ————————————————————————————————— An Afternoon with Steven Gilbert Gabriele Fazio provides an extensive career spanning interview with Steven Gilbert over on Just Indie Comics. Between Gardenback and The Cult of Gardenback you published the first issue of Colville, right? It should be from 1997… Yes, in the beginning it should have been much smaller, like 25 pages, and it had to be only about the confrontation in the schoolyard. It was loosely based on a true crime story, I clipped the newspaper article when it was happening because I remember reading it and thinking “It could be an interesting comic”. But those were just the bare bones, the story began to grow around the episode of the shooting in the schoolyard. I thought to do a 64-pages comic and I had the bones of the story and a lot of the imagery was in my head. I went up to Keswick, a small town 20 minutes up the highway from Newmarket where the facts actually occurred. My friend Jason Williams lived there, so he knew all the neighborhoods. We drove there one day and took photo references I used for the comic. Do you use a lot of photo references, right? Yes, these researches are part of my methodology, because I don’t write scripts… Never? I tried but I never successfully wrote one, when I finish and read a traditional script with panel descriptions, dialogues and so on, usually the ideas just seem stupid and I can’t use them. The only way I can make comics is to sit down and draw. My process of writing is the creation of the comic. ————————————————————————————————— Jim Rugg on digesting How to Draw the Marvel Way Recently, I found a copy of How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way at a local garage sale for a quarter. I had a copy of this book when I was a kid. I found it within a week of declaring my intent to be a comic book artist. In middle school, I lent it to someone who never returned it. My tastes and influences had changed so I never replaced it. Since then, I’ve referenced it in a ballpoint, notebook drawing (mashing it up with Rob Liefeld’s 90s Xtreme Studio style)… ————————————————————————————————— New Private Rowhouse Auction – 7.10-7.14 Last but not least, we have a new private auction up at auction.comicsworkbook.com! Lots of old and new comics for you to take home. email Frank Santoro at santoroschoolATgmail for a password, if you don’t already have one. If you already have a password, it is the same from last week. All funds go to helping keep the lights on and further developing the school. Connor Willumsen is offering commission sketches that you don’t want to miss out on, all at different tiers. Don’t sleep on your chance to get work by this contemporary heavy hitter. ————————————————————————————————— take care of yourselves <3 Juan Share this page: [...]

8/3/2016

Juan FernándezAugust 3, 2016NewsJuan here with your Spanish comics news: Manzanna covers 2° Encontro Lady’s Comics; a permanent home for The MexicanMuseum; Liniers y Power Paola hablan con Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo; El nou còmic underground español; Sin novedad en el frente; Reseña: Piano Oriental de Zeina Abirached . ————————————————————————————————— el 2° Encontro Lady’s Comics En el site, Manzanna nos cuenta sobre el 2° Encontro Lady’s Comics: With panels, workshops, a fair and an exhibition by Chicks on Comics, 2ELC gathered many of Brazil’s female cartoonists in one place, plus international guests Sole Otero, Clara Lagos, Mariela Acevedo (Argentina) and Katherine Supnem (Chile). Aware of the challenges women face in the comics community, the gathering provided a much needed space for the participants to express and identify with each other. Topics included the need to study and rewrite our history, shedding new light on pioneer women cartoonists; the first steps of publishing, selling and entering the market; the struggles of the creative process; plus talks on motherhood, science fiction and education, among other themes. ————————————————————————————————— New permanent home for The Mexican Museum in San Francisco The Largest Latino Art Collection in the US will debut in 2019 with a Frida Kahlo Exhibit, aimed at children. Exciting news from Yara Simón over at Remezcla: In 1975, Mexican-American artist Peter Rodriguez founded The Mexican Museum, San Francisco’s first museum dedicated to Latino art. Since then, it’s acquired more than 16,000 Mexican and Latino works of art – ranging from pre-Columbian to contemporary – which makes it the United States’ largest collection of Mexican and Latino art. Today, the museum celebrated its next phase: a permanent home. In the spring of 2019, will have a 60,000-square-foot space in downtown SF. The Mexican Museum’s life began in a Mission District storefront, and then moved to a small site in the Fort Mason area. Most of the work is currently in storage because there’s no room to display it. But when its new Yerba Buena Gardens home is completed, the pieces will have room to breathe throughout the site’s four floors. ————————————————————————————————— [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/275700036″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] Escucha @lapololapodcast, un podcast del cómic femenino con Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo! Este episodio esta lleno de risas, recuerdos del encuentro del comic de La Reina, una entrevista con Liniers y otro con Power Paola. Este episodio si que mola. ————————————————————————————————— ¡¡Los cuadernos de Power Paola!! ————————————————————————————————— la Colaboracion Creativa: Entrevista con Liniers Aprende sobre las colaboraciones entre con la musica de Kevin Johansen y el stand up de Alberto Montt. En una entrevista para la revista Ohlalá, dijo: “cuando me subí al escenario con Kevin llegué a pensar: acá le voy a cagar la carrera a otro tipo. ¿Cuánto tiempo tuvo esa sensación y qué siente hoy cuando sube al escenario? Medio hasta hoy. Siempre fue en el escenario ver qué pasa. Te genera mucha adrenalina y a mí me hace funcionar. Si no sé qué va a pasar, por ahí a la gente le resulto más interesante. Nunca me imaginé que iba a tocar en el Luna Park. En un momento Kevin me dio la guitarra y toqué en el Luna Park igual que Frank Sinatra. ————————————————————————————————— EL PAÍS lanza un nuevo espacio pensado para los amantes de las viñetas Da igual que sean en papel o en el intangible digital. Nos gustan cuadradas, rectangulares, redondas. En splash-page o en 3×3. Panorámicas y diminutas. Kaboom es el nuevo blog de EL PAÍS dedicado al tebeo en todas sus facetas y aristas. Lo que queremos contarte en Kaboom es qué es el cómic, de dónde viene y adónde va. ————————————————————————————————— El nou còmic underground español Barcelon’s got a a creative ecosystem that has been developing around the Fatbottom bookstore. More than a bookstore, it functions as a vital organ of a local scene. Conxita Herrero, Felipe Almendros,Irkus (M) Zeberio, Mirena Ossorno all chime in on what they see going on in and around Spain’s new underground comics publishing, particularly around Barcelona’s comics scene. Smash that translate button 😉 Més que una llibreria, Fatbottom és un ecosistema creatiu que alimenta l’efervescent escena del còmic d’avantguarda, en plena eclosió de noms i renovació de formes. A recer d’editorials com Apa Apa, Dehavilland o Fulgencio Pimentel i de festivals d’autoedició com el Gutter Fest i el Graf, el còmic underground està agafant embranzida. Conxita Herrero, Felipe Almendros, Irkus (M) Zeberio i Mirena Ossorno, tots amb obra nova publicada el 2016, són només quatre dels autors d’un panorama cada vegada més efervescent. ————————————————————————————————— shout out: Sin novedad en el frente ‘Sin novedad en el frente’ is collaborative project initiated by the Colectivo de Autoras de Cómic; it is an invitation to comics makers to create illustrated, exacting and feminist and satire, through which one can combat sexist stereotypes, to make fun of and overcome the heteropatriachal reality of the comics industry. At the helm of this endeavor is Ada Diez. Contribute something to be part of the conversation! ————————————————————————————————— Reseña el Piano Oriental: EN BUSCA DEL PIANO BILINGÜE Elizabeth Casillas nos cuenta del regreso de Zeina Abirached con El piano oriental. Su cómic se adentra en su historia familiar en Líbano. El foco de esta novela grafica son las relaciones culturales entre Oriente y Occidente utilizando la música como hilo conductor. Avalada por el éxito cosechado con El juego de las golondrinas, obra en la que contaba su infancia en el Líbano marcada por la guerra civil, y sus recuerdos casi poéticos de Me acuerdo. Beirut, la dibujante Zeina Abirached (Beirut, 1981) vuelve a recuperar el género autobiográfico en su última obra, El piano oriental (Salamandra Graphic, 2016), para poner al descubierto aquello que une a dos culturas: la de Oriente y la de Occidente, convertidas tradicionalmente en una mezcla de agua y aceite, en una dicotomía aparentemente difícil de entrelazar. Abirached se empeña en manifestar lo errático de dicha hipótesis que, sobre el terreno, considera muy diferente. ————————————————————————————————— hasta la proxima, Juan Share this page: [...]

10/16/2017

Caleb OrecchioOctober 15, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on practicing color, and other news. ———————————————————————————————— I’ve been thinking and working with color a lot. In this day and age, where color is an option for cartoonists looking to print their work (color was not always an option for ye olde comics makers, true believer), the quantity of choice of what the colors should be and how to apply them can be intimidating. Fear not. In my opinion, the best way to start in color is the classic CMYK–which is essentially, as you probably know, blue, red, yellow, and black. One reason this is a good choice is that most riso printers carry these four colors (riso being probably the best option in self-publishing in color if you can swing it) AND they are easily acquired in forms of marker or colored pencils, AND because these are the colors comics used in the past and traditions are important to me. The Classics Illustrated series is a great gateway into classic coloring. They all have a minimal, crude feel to the coloring. It does not seem that their printer offered a large pallet, or maybe they couldn’t afford it. Anyway, I read about the 152nd installment of the Classics Illustrated line, “Wild Animals I have Known”(adapted from the book by Ernest Thompson Seton; drawn by LB Cole) from Kevin Huizenga’s blog years ago and subsequently bought it. I’m going to run through an example of how I play and practice with this book. Here’s a good panel that demonstrates a nice, simple combination of CMYK. First, I isolate the colors by tracing over them with markers on tracing paper. I don’t worry about being exact because that isn’t the point. I’m not trying to recreate the image, I just want to see how colors interact. Then I put them together–then yellow, then red and so on. Please forgive how the lightbox makes the photos look. But the idea is to keep going. Okay so how would it look like if we took one color out? Or just used one color? I could go on and on. You just have to keep trying things. Try it if you want–and feel free to mix it up. Make a new blackline drawing and put it up against the color. Flip the color layers or stagger them. This is just something to think about while you work on your comic. Follow your bliss. ———————————————————————————————— if you don’t know now you know I meant to post about this a month ago when it came out. I sincerely love this youtube documentary about comic shop owner Glenn O’Leary and his store, Comic Book Palace. My taste literally never overlaps with his and I think he is wrong about almost every aspect of comics–accept the way he retails–but I can’t help but love it. Sticking with the retail theme; TCJ.com blog made me aware of this–Dan Gearino on Jim Hanley. LOL they are making the New Mutants movie a horror movie (or seemingly so)–nothing wrong with that I guess do what you gotta do whatever. Aaaaand a shoplifter jumped out of a Midtown Comics second story window–doesn’t he know comics are worthless? ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-16-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ———————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 10-16-2017 – by Juan Fernandez ———————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 10-16-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

TCAF 2016 – Lookaround

Frank SantoroJune 29, 2016Festivals and ShowsShare this page: [...]

11/13/2018

Posted on November 13, 2018 by Aaron Cockle

D.Duck; FAFC (FSC)

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via: https://fadingtheaesthetic.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/33788991-how-to-read-donald.pdf

If It Looks Like a Duck
Via Yohann Koshy at The Baffler:

Dorfman and Mattelart do not impute conspiratorial motives onto Walt Disney. How to Read Donald Duck is a work of ideological criticism: it tells you what his comics do not realize they are saying. The absence of fathers and mothers in the Disney universe—there are only uncles, aunts, nephews, and nieces—serves to naturalize forms of authority, because the nephew cannot challenge his uncle as the child can their parent. The pursuit of money determines many of Donald’s misadventures, but Dorfman and Mattelart observe that there are no working-class occupations in Duckburg, where Donald lives, so “wealth is made to appear as if society creates it by means of the spirit” rather than by the exploitation of labor. Channelling Adorno and Horkheimer on the culture industry, they argue that the problem with Disney’s fantasy world is that it falsely reconciles antagonisms between child and parent, capital and labor: “All the conflicts of the real word, the nerve centers of bourgeois society, are purified in the imagination in order to be absorbed and co-opted into the world of entertainment.”

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French Abstract Formalist Comics (French Structural Comics): An Artistic Movement
At TCJ, Kim Jooha updates an essay from 2016:

I call this new budding movement French Abstract Formalist Comics. They are “Abstract” Formalist comics not because they do not show representational images — they do, and this is a critical difference between them and Abstract Comics — but because they show abstract narrative and study abstract and formalist themes, concepts, and motives. They could also be called French Structural Comics, because they are similar to works of Structural Cinema such as Michael Snow’s Wavelength (1968).

They share a physical environment, geography, and period; artistic forms (style, aesthetics of comics); themes and motives; and formal as well as the structural features of comics, printed media, and visual art. They also share a community and platform. The prime example is the anthology Lagon, edited by Alexis Beauclair, Jean-Philippe Bretin, Bettina Henni, and Sammy Stein, all of whom are French Structural Comics artists, though not every work in Lagon is Structural Comics. (For example, Simon Hanselman was in it.) Editions Matiere, which has had the seminal influence on the development of the movement, publishes many FSC.

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Alexis Beauclair, Ariel Dorfman, Armand Mattelart, Bettina Henni, Disney, donald duck, french abstract comics, jean-philippe bretin, kim jooha, Sammy Stein, Yohann Koshy

Aaron Cockle

Posted on November 13, 2018

Explore

06/12/2017

Caleb OrecchioJune 12, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with some thoughts on Brighter Than You Think: Ten Short Works by Alan Moore—plus some links ————————————————————————————————— Though Alan Moore has not really drawn a comic since the late 70’s, he is so obviously the auteur of the comics he writes that I am tempted to consider him a “cartoonist.” I mean, not really, but I think a more articulate, alternate-dimension version of myself could make a strong case for that designation. Regardless of the artist, Moore’s comics have an undeniable feel and pace, even when drawn by a sub-par cartoonist—AND is never out-shined by a particularly excellent cartoonist. The latest installment of Uncivilized Books’ “Critical Cartoons” series, Brighter Than You Think: Ten Short Works by Alan Moore with essays by Marc Sobel, has been my in-between-other-readings book for about a month now. I like not reading it all the way through at once because 1.) it is a collection of short stories over almost 20 years so it makes sense to pace myself, and 2.) Moore’s work is just too damn dense to swallow in one sitting. If you add Marc Sobel’s essays that follow each comic, you’re looking at a very annotated and involved effort that requires time for thinking and reflection with each story. Something I find very interesting about Moore is his awareness of the artist. He seems to know how to “use” an artist better than any writer I know of, which, to me, aids him in diversifying the types of stories he can tell. He uses them like a solo cartoonist might pick a color to evoke mood, or use a certain brush to evoke a certain era of comics’ past. Using an artist like Mark Beyer can help to abstract a story and give it a heightened sense of reality and playfulness, whereas using an artist like Stephen Bissette can help ground a story to real-life and make a comic more like a documentary. If you’re writing a story for Peter Bagge, the writing is funny and whimsical (Moore’s ability to write comedy is WAY under appreciated in my opinion); and you write strange stories of flight and fantasy for Rick Veitch. I always found his collaboration with Melinda Gebbie, “This Is Information” (a “reaction” comic to 9/11), to be very interesting. Moore wisely keeps character at arm’s length and is communicating in symbols and metaphors; and Gebbie’s art is key because she can draw cartoony caricatures, she can draw realistic rendering of hands clasping in desperation, or she can precisely and patiently draw a falling house of cards (harder than you think). The breadth and nuance of her skills matches the breadth and nuance of emotions Alan Moore implements in this story about a devastating and monumental event. There’s so much I could say about Moore, and there’s so much people have already said. If I were a better writer I could better explain the value of such a great contributor to comics clearer. The best I can really do is point you to the work, and right now I’m pointing you to Brighter Than You Think. Go grab a copy at Uncivilized Books’ website. ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know There were several links I was hoping to share today, but came to find out Sally covered most of them here on Friday (I was involved with my sisters wedding all weekend so I’m a few days behind). Go back and check out Sally’s post if you haven’t already, featuring good stuff from Trina Robbins, Jillian Tamaki, Eleanor Davis, and more. Adam West, Batman star and icon to, I’m sure, more than a few comics fans, has died at age 88. Anita Gates has an obituary over at The New York Times. I thought Chris Mautner expressed the brilliance of Alan Moore’s Providence quite well in this article on The Smart Set. The way he briefly-yet-impressively articulates Jacen Burrows’ contribution to the work was overdue I think. The Panic Fables by Alejandro Jodorowski have finally been collected and translated to English. Get a copy from Copacetic Comics. The legendary Steve Ditko is still at it, and you can contribute to his latest Kickstarter (though the goal was met very rapidly with plenty of days still to go) to get a copy of the new Mr. A which marks the 50th anniversary of the character. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 6-12-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 6-12-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-12-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

03/20/2018

Aaron CockleMarch 19, 2018NewsAaron here today with FUNHOUSE; Comic Aht; Teju Cole/Lorna Simpson; Dash & Nancy; Bill Plympton ————————————————————————————————— An Interactive Book Fair This weekend at The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, NYC. On the weekend of March 24 – 25, Desert Island and The Drawing Center will present FUNHOUSE, a new, interactive book fair at which guests can make their own books in collaboration with resident cartoonists and illustration artists. FUNHOUSE Book Fair March 24–25, 2018 11am–5pm | Tickets $10 via Eventbrite here FUNHOUSE guests will interact with resident artists to create unique pages for one-of-a-kind books to be assembled at the fair. The resident artists will also have their own publications available for purchase at General Store within the FUNHOUSE fair, with games of chance, author signings, special activities, and giveaways of artists’ books. A SIDESHOW of talks, lectures, and presentations will be organized by FORGE. art magazine’s Matthew James-Wilson. Additional spectacles, like life-size interactive cut-outs and funhouse mirrors will provide wacky fun and photo-ops galore! FUNHOUSE artists include: Gabrielle Bell, Lilli Carré, Rob Corradetti, Joanna Fields, Laura Perez-Harris, Abby Jame, Jeff Ladouceur, Sarah Lammer, Gary Lieb, Richard McGuire, Walker Mettling, Ben Passmore, Oskars Pavlovskis, Monica Ramos, Jim Schuessler, R. Sikoryak, Whit Taylor, Matthew Thurber, Thu Tran, Mark Wang, Kelsey Wroten, Gina Wynbrandt, and JooHee Yoon. FUNHOUSE is organized by Gabe Fowler of Desert Island and Molly Gross of The Drawing Center. ————————————————————————————————— But is it…Comic Aht? #1, edited by Austin English with contributions from August Lipp Early issues of The Comics Journal offered quiet pages for artists to study, piecing together the practices and ideas of favorite artists in lengthy interviews. After a month of thinking about what a cartoonist said in a discussion, some debate of those ideas would appear in the next months letter column. The weight of a cartoonists words could be digested, embraced, rejected and most importantly THOUGHT about, rather then reacted to. ————————————————————————————————— On Photography Teju Cole on Lorna Simpson’s work: Like “Waterbearer,” many other works of Simpson’s from that period — including “Twenty Questions (A Sampler)” (1986), “Five Day Forecast” (1988) and “7 Mouths” (1993) — are both figurative and fragmentary. Evenly lit, crisply photographed, they look like pictures from an illustrated medical dictionary, indexical images of heads, torsos and mouths that are detached from context. Even in a work like “Figure” (1991), the figure in question, sheathed in a black dress and set in the black infinity of no particular place, feels like a fragment, as though she had been extracted from a group photo or a furnished room. The texts accompanying her, eight engraved plastic plaques, read like excerpts from a language primer: “figured the worst,” “he was disfigured,” “figured there would be no reaction” and so on. Here, not only has the story been winnowed down; it is in fact completely gone. There’s no story. We are left with only the tensions of concrete poetry. ————————————————————————————————— Grown Men Reading ‘Nancy’ Over at the New York Review, Dash Shaw looks at the new How to Read Nancy book, by Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik: Today, comics are studied in colleges and reviewed in prominent magazines, but they are often discussed either as vessels for urgent, personal stories or as objects filled with beautiful, unusual graphics. They are rarely discussed or reviewed for their “cartooning,” the particular panel-to-panel magic, the arrangement of elements that mysteriously combines reading and looking, and distinguishes why a comic like Nancy is masterful and others are not. Beautiful cartooning affects a comic the way a well-chosen word, arriving at the right time in a sentence, makes for good writing, or the way a room composed with the right combination of things in the exact right places is good interior design. ————————————————————————————————— The 212th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, Kellen Auditorium (Room N101, off the lobby), Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. 66 Fifth Avenue. Free and open to the public. Bill Plympton discusses his career and how to survive as an independent filmmaker. Plympton will screen Tiffany the Whale, Footprints, Cop Dog, Slide (preview (2 min.), Revengeance clips and Simpsons Couch gag The Artiste. ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 3-20-2018 – by Cameron Arthur Share this page: [...]

05/06/2016

Sally IngrahamMay 6, 2016NewsWolverine still walks the wilds of Canada via Michael Comeau’s pen – Alyssa Berg frees her mind through the mysteries of the grid – Erik Nebel reverses expectations in every direction – the laughs come from Fabio Tonetto – the tears (perhaps) come from Lisa Wilde – Free Comic Book Day is upon us – and Bruce Lee never dies. ————————————————————————————————— Philippe Leblanc converses with Michael Comeau at Barbed Comics, digging deep into the why and how of Comeau’s Hellberta (available through Colour Code Printing). Michael Comeau is a Canadian cartoonist living in Toronto. Extensive travel throughout the provinces informed the creation of Hellberta over an 8-year period, and the book is a filter through which Comeau examines Canada’s complex relationship with the oil industry, and the mysterious “Canadian Identity”. Or, as the recently released collected edition is described – “The gloom, the entitlement, the desecration of the tar sands hangs over a province, a nation. Dirty oil addiction. A popular myth set in the rocky mountains. A mutant named Logan. A poetic salve for sore eyes weeping for a metaphorical context. WWWD? What would Wolverine do?…” The interview between Comeau and Philippe Leblanc ranges far and wide, hitting upon the nature of narrative, learning how to make comics, road tripping adventures, the shifting political climate in Canada, and exactly how tangled up Wolverine is in it all. Interesting on a number of levels – read the whole thing HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Alyssa Berg delivers Part Two of her museum-visit-inspired process meditation series today, this time exploring the grid with us. “Sometimes my mind is unwell, or full of complicated messy things or unable to think of new ideas (‘creative block’, I guess?). When I am in this state, I let my wild, creative mind rest. One way to do this is by going into a gentle analytical and physical practice. I sit down at my desk and pre-draw pages of panels and grids. Similar to preparing my work space as mentioned in Part One, pre-drawing panels and grids is a simple concentration-meditation that doesn’t require much thought (common theme: freedom from the mind!).” Read all of Part Two HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Drew Miller interviewed Erik Nebel recently, and their conversation is full of important stuff – ‘Drew Miller – You use vibrating colors as indicators of form, specifically for referencing the human body. The colors are strong on the screen! The drawing relies much less on direct line-work, which is uncharacteristic for the medium of comics. It’s an interesting way to develop distinct forms and negative space. Can you talk about color at all? Erik Nebel – I think of color in a way that may be different from how other cartoonists think of color. Traditionally, in our popular narratives, dark colors are associated with sadness and badness and things that are primitive, and light colors are associated with goodness and happiness and things that are civilized. That’s completely racist. It’s part of binary thinking. It’s poison in our society. I’m trying to reverse those expectations with my comics.’ Read the rest HERE, and follow Erik Nebel’s daily comic posts on his tumblr. ————————————————————————————————— Giving a shout out to cartoonist Fabio Tonetto, whose work has been cracking me up lately. Check out the rest of the comic above on Vice. ————————————————————————————————— Lisa Wilde’s Lacunae: Elegy For My Mother just finished being serialized on Mutha Magazine. A recent press release about the series described it as – “…a webzine that pushes the boundaries between comics and art. Tracing an arc from childhood to adulthood, the piece gives form to the unconscious side of a life narrative through single-image pages and minimal text. Wilde’s visceral and powerful drawings reference children’s art, comics, Jungian archetypes, and artists as wide-ranging as Chagall, Munch, and Eva Hesse.” Start from the beginning HERE, and follow this link to a list of all 5 parts. ————————————————————————————————— Another reminder that tomorrow (Sat. May 7th!) is Free Comic Book Day. Find a participating store near you via the Store Locator, call them up to get the details, and plan to get there early! I’ll be running out myself to find a copy of this sweet looking Bruce Lee comic! ————————————————————————————————— While we’re on the topic, here are a couple of apparently “lost sketches” by Bruce Lee, and the brief story behind them. ————————————————————————————————— Thanks for hanging out in the Comics Workbook newsroom this week! Meet back here bright and early Monday. Cheers! – Sally Share this page: [...]

10/19/2017

Sally IngrahamOctober 18, 2017NewsSam Ombiri on Katie Skelly’s My Pretty Vampire, Sally with comics and news from Sheena Howard and Barbara Brandon-Croft, and more! ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: When I first saw My Pretty Vampire as a book I was surprised by how much bigger it was than what I had imagined it to be. Then I was even more surprised that Katie Skelly’s drawings were in color, and the color looked especially good at this size. At first I didn’t have much interest in buying it as a hardbound book – like something in the back of mind was more excited to read her work as mini comics. Nurse Nurse was exciting because of how low key it was as a mini comic and how amazing it was to read. At the back of my mind I thought I really preferred to read Skelly’s work as a mini comic, but My Pretty Vampire put those reservations away. The color not only looked fantastic, but also served as a new tool, which Skelly used to better convey certain feelings or sensations that the characters have. In the beginning of the book for example, the main character, Clover (a vampire), after a fantastic nightmarish dream sequence, is given blood to drink. She is so focused on the blood that her robe changes color, and the whole room changes color. This was maybe a design choice because the blood is black, and Clover’s robe was black, but if that’s the case than it serves the two functions. I’m sure Katie was aware of this, as the whole room turns black in the service of Clover’s dread. Then, as Clover drinks the blood, Katie employs an effect that conveys satisfaction, and then a clear interruption of satisfaction, as her feeling changes to disgust. It communicates that for Clover, drinking blood is almost rather aesthetically driven. She later says she’s starving, and what it is that she’s starving for we see in the chapters that follow. There’s also the suggestion that Marcel, Clover’s brother, has, at the very least, an incestuous lust for Clover, or something to that effect. It’s even conveyed with the accusatory, albeit ambiguous looks and apathetic, condescending, sarcastic voice of the housemaid. The housemaid is a great addition to the story, as she’s very sympathetic to Clover. This tells me as the reader that Clover is having a miserable time, without Skelly manipulating me as the reader with pure shock. As a result I sympathize with her more than I would’ve if she went the other route. Maybe Clover could bear to drink oxblood, which disgusts her, if there weren’t so many other unbearable things she had to deal with. These unbearable things are only implied, masterfully, by Skelly, using such a small amount of exposition – instead she conveys a feeling left up to interpretation. There’s a page where Clover is looking at her invisible mirror, as if to say “I can’t even see where I was bit.” We only get hints of her suffering. When Clover is crying, it’s not the crying that gets to me. What gets to me is how, when she refers to her torment, it’s rather unspecific both as to the quality, and circumstance. – Sam Ombiri Get a copy of My Pretty Vampire (Fantagraphics, 2017) HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Sally here – there’s an interview with Sheena Howard on Vice that is worth wading into. Sheena is the first black woman to win an Eisner Award for her book Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation. She is also the creator of the Encyclopedia of Black Comics, which came out this year. She sat down with Noel Ransom to discuss that book, comics academia, and black women in comics. “Going back to blackness in comics. One of the things that surprised me was how much shit I just don’t know, and how few resources there are out there in educating me. A lot of those things surprised me too. I mean, I knew that there were black women in the comic industry that weren’t getting any chances to write monthly comic book strips with publishers, and you can tell in my Encyclopedia that I made a concerted effort to include women, even if they just self published things, and that was important to me. Some people were even mad about that because for every spot that’s taken up in the book, that’s one spot where people didn’t get into this first volume. You’ll hear people say, “oh there aren’t many black women writers that can write monthly series for publishers.” What I’m trying to say is that simply isn’t true, and here there they are. A lot of them have their own social media followings, and have self published comic book content and are doing really well but just need a chance to get into a more consistent monthly series with a publisher. And I also thought it was really crazy that there hasn’t been a black female writer for Marvel until 2017. That is really, really crazy.“ Read the whole interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I wrote about Brumsic Brandon Jr. and his Luther strip a few weeks ago, but I neglected to mention his daughter, Barbara Brandon-Croft, who was a syndicated cartoonist in her own right and was in fact one of the first black female syndicated cartoonists – and part of one of the only instances of a father/daughter cartoonist relationship…! Here’s one of her strips, from Where I’m Coming From, which ran from 1991-2005 in numerous papers across the US (making her the first nationally syndicated black female cartoonist): Here’s a bit more about her from the CBLDF. ————————————————————————————————— Connor Willumsen says ‘Cartooning is a lot like magic’ in this video, directed by Fatine-Violette Sabiri. It offers a glimpse into his head space and a look at his new comic, Anti-Gone (Koyama Press, 2017). Brian Nicholson reviews Anti-Gone, calling it the “book of the year”. He also says: “Let’s begin with the title: Stating an opposite of “gone” implies presence. “Here” is already claimed by Richard McGuire. That book riffs on place while Anti-Gone is more about presence of mind, as held by its characters, who rove about a vast dreamscape of a world. Partially, it’s about the struggle to take in the world around you as the world around you, without say, immediately spitting up references to movies. It’s a struggle to see the world without mediating it through your memories of other mediated experiences. This struggle gets spoken of explicitly through dialogue. At a formal level, the book is all about commanding your attention, and holding it firmly, as you experience it without knowing where it’s going.“ Get a copy of Anti-Gone, along with two zines – a 20 page bootleg, and a special collage zine – as well as a unique Anti-Gone drawing, as part of the exclusive Connor Willumsen bundle from Comics Workbook – available HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-19-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 10-19-2017 – by Juan Fernandez Share this page: [...]

11/30/2017

Sally IngrahamNovember 30, 2017NewsSam Ombiri on Carlos Gonzalez’s Test Tube, Meg Lemke and Gene Luen Yang in conversation, and a bit more diversity in comics news. ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: I have been reading Test Tube by Carlos Gonzalez, and this comic feels like it’s mutating me and my reality. I wasn’t aware that a comic can wrap around my brain. It did this by using very familiar images, with unfamiliar modes of presentation that somehow mysteriously register. Carlos is bringing to attention how unfamiliar these familiar drawings are. He’s somehow simultaneously doing so much and so little to convey what objects, characters, and settings are, yet it all somehow renders so clearly. Which I guess is cartooning, but there seems to something in this system Carlos has introduced. He’s really mastered manipulating our mind at the bare minimum, but with the effort in design turned up to the maximum, to indicate at every turn of the story that something’s afoot. It also could just be satisfying at an aesthetic level. On my end it’s great to look at, but it simultaneously conveys the nature of the story. From what I’ve seen, it seems when Carlos is making comics he’s not always fully aware of where the story’s going to go. Of course there’s always an element of improvisation with most every art form. Whether it’s at the beginning or later down the road in the whole process, there’s always an element of improvisation. For Carlos it seems to be late in the whole process. Where it’s too late to make changes as a result of committing to a certain feeling. He seems to sacrifice control in order to stay true to the feeling he set out to express. For some makers this can cheapen their work, but it’s not the case for Carlos. I think it’s how welcoming and sensitive he is to surprises – these surprises that come along the way, that I’m guessing he ran with because of his commitment to satisfy that longing for a complete story. That’s what I get personally as a reader. It’s not just the way the story plays out – the jokes have this immediate, intuitive, and spontaneous punchiness to them that isn’t in anyway contrived. After wandering back and forth, back and forth through these characters lives, the story all leads to an event, unexpectedly. The way Carlos introduces us to all these elements that will eventually take shape is brilliant – he starts with when the event has already taken place, and then the one character whom we are familiar with is recounting. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be shocked, after seeing all the strange things that had happened to the characters before what happened towards the end. By the time I got towards the end of the book, I was convinced there wasn’t anything stranger that could happen. I was wrong. I had to know that something had to be building up. I did, but I didn’t expect it to be a smallish incident. Towards the end of the book the characters don’t feel like pawns in a big sci-fi epic as they did at the beginning. I imagined the book going that direction, that it’s in this claustrophobic, personal macro state, and it’ll expand and expand. However, the story to my surprise and to my delight stayed in the same scale, no matter what was going on. So even this scientist’s big experiment felt like a homemade experiment. “Low key” is the word for the event towards the end of the story, that’ll supposedly continue in our world. I was thinking about the ending to Videodrome – of course if you watch that movie in Pittsburgh, that movie’s going to have an even stranger effect on you. Basically Carlos made it seem like this character is somewhere out there, and she’s gotta do this thing to survive emotionally, so I sympathize with her, even though she’s going doom us all. Maybe I ought to be more optimistic about this higher form she’s going to turn us all into. Read this book if you can, you’ll be glad you did. There’s also a really cool intro by Noel Freibert at the beginning that’ll make you even more confused about this book than you thought you could be. Noel told me he included some stuff from knowing Carlos into the intro, so it might function more to introduce the reader to Carlos more than the book itself, which made it make more sense. – Sam Ombiri Get a copy of Test Tube by Carlos Gonzalas HERE. For another review of this comic, read Anya Davidson’s thoughts on The Comics Journal – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Sally here – Mege Lemke interviews Gene Luen Yang, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, over on Mutha Magazine. They talk about his project Reading Without Walls, and it’s mission to get kids and parents “exploring books about characters who look or live differently than you, topics you haven’t discovered, or formats that you haven’t tried.” They talk about how to get reluctant readers to read, how kids are now usually allowed to read comics in school, and the big issue of diversity in comics/publishing as a whole. “MUTHA: What’s your take on this: As I’m sure you’re aware, there’s a real focus in young adult publishing community right now on responding to the criticism from the Own Voices Movement, essentially the idea that there needs to be more space for people of color and people of different sexualities to write their own stories. Resulting in pushback against, say, white writers writing as another character of color, but also characters of color writing other characters of color. This has caused writers to become cautious about writing across cultures. GENE LUEN YANG: Here’s how I approach it. In my own writing life and in my work teaching writing, I believe that writing is an act of bravery. You have to get over so much fear just to put your story on the page. Facing that blank page is terrifying. When I sit down to write, I’ll want to do anything else. I’ll want to go wash dishes, I’ll want to go reorganize my label collection, anything, right? I am very reluctant, especially when I think about my students, of introducing more fear in their heads. So, I would never tell a writer that they cannot write outside of their experience. I almost think that it’s the defining job of a writer to be able to go outside of their own experience. But I would say: don’t let that fear that you feel allow you to stop writing the story you want to write. You should let that fear drive you to do homework. You should let that fear drive you to humility. Approaching experiences that aren’t your own with a certain humility. Including people who are insiders into your support group, either as editors or as beta readers. There is a greater responsibility. However, you’ll see like 80 percent of the stories told about minority demographics are told by outsiders. That is a problem. That is a problem.“ Yang goes on to say that ultimately it is on the publishers, the gatekeepers, to make sure they are publishing work by POC creators and not just asking their “stable” of white writers to toss some diversity into their work. Plenty of other interesting notes in the interview – read it HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Speaking of a white writer tossing some diversity into their work, The Comics Reporter has a breakdown of the recent shocker from Marvel’s new Editor-in-Chief, CB Cebulski – he once wrote comics under the pseudonym Akira Yoshida, and had a whole secret identity for this person. Understandable uproar has ensued. Tom Spurgeon writes: “Comics culture is not just a roll-your-eyes cattle prod these days, it’s as under fire as any individual publishing move. Rightfully so: comics culture dictates a lot in terms of how our industries operate. This latest looks like a series of actions possible only in the context of a broken professional culture. This is not just the case of a freelancer adopting a pseudonym to get more work. This was someone giving themselves work that could have gone to someone else, and creating a context for that work more attractive than the work would be by itself. By assuming a Japanese identity and writing stories soaked in orientalist stereotypes, Cebulski and Marvel slipped any blame that might be theirs for the content of such work, and avoided criticism for the general breakdown of creators being hired by the company. “ Read the rest of the story HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 11-30-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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