Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged caleb orecchio, Fantagraphics, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, los bros, Love and Rockets

Caleb Orecchio

Posted on November 26, 2018November 26, 2018

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10/03/2016

Juan FernándezOctober 3, 2016NewsJuan here with a Comics Workbook October overview; Drawing as Language at Lucerne; Ben Katchor reading NYC; Michael DeForge drawings up for auction; and a unique collaboration between Frank Santoro and Airi Maeno. ————————————————————————————————— the October Happenings: CXC + LICAF October is here and that means that Comics Workbook is forming up like Voltron and coming at you full force, in person. All of you in the UK, may we have your attention!! Comics Workbook is coming to The Lakes International Comic Art Festival! October 14-16th 2016! Join Frank Santoro, Aidan Koch, and Connor Willumsen for some cool workshops and visit table 67 in the Comics Clocktower to meet Oliver East and Jack Brougham among others! We will be hosting 3 special workshops, “Visual Poetry” with Aidan Koch, “The Hammer Party” with Connor Willumsen and “Composition Competition” with Frank Santoro. Tickets for the main events at this year’s Lakes International Comic Art Festival are on sale now. Check out the show or Visit our event page for more information! If you’re stateside, you should know that Comics Workbook is coming to Cartoon Crossroads Columbus! October 13-16th 2016. We will be hosting workshops and tabling. Join Comics Workbook, along with cartoonists, Alyssa Berg and Kurt Ankeny, for an immersive weekend of comics creation. We will examine art and the grid, bringing the strong artistic practices of Berg and Ankeny together with the discipline and rhythm of the grid, as laid out by Comics Workbook founder Frank Santoro. Four hours across two days will be filled with the exploration of a variety of techniques and methods which will inspire the beginner, and challenge the established cartoonist. Comics as jazz; comics as architecture; how a simple index card can transform your sequencing and storytelling process – come join us for an hour or four and take your comics making to a new level. More information on our CXC exploits to come soon – the full festival schedule is here! ————————————————————————————————— Drawing as Language In conjunction with the Fumetto comics festival, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and arts has a glorious video series in which recent guest to the Fumetto festival were all interviewed. Drawing as language. Higher education comics pedagogy. It’s all there. Personal highlights for me we’re hearing Ulli Lust, Gabrielle Bell and Ben Katchor. It’s a nice format for interviewing such a wide cross section of comics makers from all over. Watch them all here! ————————————————————————————————— Ben Katchor in conversation with Luc Sante Mr. Katchor will be at 192 Books on Thursday, October 6th, 7:00PM. Katchor is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Cheap Novelties: The Pleasures of Urban Decay so there’s sure to be plenty of talk about regarding his life in cartooning and comics making. Do stop by! ————————————————————————————————— We have a new action to share with you! The great Michael DeForge generously donated three drawings to benefit the school – each drawing is on A4 size construction paper in crayon. They are from 2014. Each drawing will be available separately. More details about the auction are HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Check out the Pompeii Medallion! “I commissioned thee great Airi Maeno to make silver medallions based off of my drawings. This drawing was from the book Pompeii. It’s something I could imagine someone would wear two thousand years ago. A simple medallion of a loved one. A portrait. Something permanent to challenge disappearance.” You can purchase one HERE. ————————————————————————————————— More info on how to get a copy of Connor’s books Portraits and Swinespritzen HERE – all proceeds go toward Connor’s trip to the UK to attend The Lakes International Comic Art Festival in a few weeks! Share this page: [...]

10/26/2018

Sally IngrahamOctober 26, 2018NewsSally here with some comics curiosities to fill your Friday lunch break! ————————————————————————————————— Abraham Riesman has a conversation with Julie Doucet on Vulture – he concludes by reminding us not to ever believe that we “know” her. Interesting and thoughtful read – HERE. Abraham Riesman also interviews Fiona Staples for Vulture, talking Saga (of course) – check it out HERE. The Comics Journal features a new interview with Ariell Johnson, owner of Philly’s Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse, which is now over 2 years old and still going strong – chart the progress HERE. Catch up on the Dear Pepper advice column by Liana Finck that comes out every other Thursday on The New Yorker – HERE. Here’s a recent interview with Liana Finck on The Comics Beat, where she talks about her new book, Passing For Human. I found an article about female cartoonists in Turkey, including Ramize Erer, whose work is pictured above. Read about her HERE. Check out the Publishers Weekly review of Mickey Z‘s Space Academy 123. Gil Roth talked to Nora Krug on his Virtual Memories Show recently – she is the creator of the newly released memoir Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, which is on the top of my TBR pile at the moment. Listen HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 10-26-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

01/26/2017

Sally IngrahamJanuary 25, 2017NewsSam and Sally bring us a whole crew of Pittsburgh cartoonists, thoughts on Problem Solverz, and our Thursday crop of comic strips! ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: I’ve been reaaaallly sloooooooowly reading Tao Lin’s Taipei and so far so good – it’s been great. Maybe it’s because Juan Fernandez referred me to this (“the peace tape” – a Paper Rad film) but I’ve been thinking about Problem Solverz a lot, and how great it was to see it when I did. It seems to have the exact same effect now as when I first saw it, so it summons an emotion that’s already in people, I think, or I could just be making it up. I was thinking of how I sometimes sense a sentiment in it that is similar to what excited me about watching some webtoons, and of course reading certain comics I have read, which I see as processing somethin’. I see it as proof that Problem Solverz summoned, or showcased, or manifested in the best way something that is a little inexpressible. In dreams when you try to render this thing fully it disappears, but Problem Solverz is very well expressed, and remains exceedingly potent even as time passes. There is a lot of space and then the conflict of what to utilize it for – so then are you surrendering to one purpose with which to define yourself? Maybe? Maybe not. Ben Jones did refer to Problem Solverz as a coming of age story. Anyway, I was in middle school when it was airing – me and my one buddy were excited about it. My friend told me how he got excited at the episode with the Awesome Banditz from Pittsburgh. It was my favorite show as it was airing, so as a fanboy I also remember being frustrated with these people on YouTube who were in their late twenties or early twenties (at least that’s how I perceived them at the time). I was really annoyed. I was like, “Why are these people trying to get rid of this show that was certainly made more so for people my age?” (was it? I don’t have a clue) and then I would get lambasted by 90’s kids who couldn’t stop talking about how much better their childhood was. I’m sure it was great and the shows they loved were great, but c’mon. (I wonder if that’s what Brian Chippendale meant in that Puke Force strip when he was thanking the YouTube commenters on Problem Solverz for being “great dialogue fuel”. No, probably not. How could it be? It just meant what it meant.) – Sam Ombiri Check out Dan Nadel’s thoughts on Problem Solverz – publishing on The Comics Journal the day the first episode aired – HERE. 1-26-2017 – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— Sally Ingraham here: The Glassblock sat down with Marcel Walker recently for a lengthy conversation about his work and Pittsburgh-based comics projects. While sifting through sketches and concept drawings they talked about his process and discussed “the long gestation of Hero Corp., how our favorite superheroes work for corporate America, and the importance of education and history in the Chutz-Pow! series“. Marcel is a well-known figure in the Pittsburgh comics scene. He’s an educator and activist whose work often directly gives back to the community – like the Chutz-Pow! series, which was made in partnership between the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh and The ToonSeum. As Marcel says: “… comics can also teach you broader things. They can teach you about other segments of our society and culture. There’s a story that ran in EC Comics back in the ’50s. The story was called “Judgment Day.” It’s a science fiction story with a wonderful twist at the end. It’s a story with a social moral, , that’s obvious—so obvious that the Comics Code Authority almost didn’t allow that story to be published. Fortunately, the publishers resisted that, they make a stink, and eventually the story was published. That’s an example of just doing your thing; tell that story because you know the moral is right.“ Read the whole interview HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Nathaniel Broadus is another member of the Pittsburgh comics community – and he too is an activist and youth advocate. He has been writing a story called Police State (or, the comic he never wanted to write): “To be honest, when I initially sat down to write, my story wasn’t at all about social justice in any real sense. I wanted to write about hip hop, and I wanted to write about super heroes. I crafted a story in my head about a young rapper with gobs of desire, but not much ability, who is unwillingly corralled into an intergalactic battle of the bands. As I sat down to craft the universe of my fun loving, aloof hero, Ferguson burned.“ After returning home from enlistment Nathaniel was having trouble transitioning back into civilian life. He found inspiration and new purpose within his community in Pittsburgh, and wound up on a new front-line – that of “the war to improve this world for every single person“. Writing Police State is part of that mission. Check out the first 5 pages of Police State HERE – with artwork by JC Grande and John Becaro. You can get copies of Police State #0-#2 HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Yona Harvey (another Pittsburgher) is going to keep writing comics! Last year she wrote a story for the series World Of Wakanda,and now she will be applying her poet’s pen to a new series. She and Ta-Nehisi Coates announced a new Black Panther spin-off titled Black Panther & The Crew – coming soon. The series will revive the world of Christopher Priest’s mini-series The Crew and introduce the Black Panther to Harlem. From the interview/announcement on Time, Ta-Nehisi Coates speaking: “There’s this concept in comic books of street characters—characters who mostly deal with street-level stories—those are your Daredevils, your Luke Cages, things that are considered lower-tier. And then you have your more cosmic level heroes, like The X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Avengers, that sort of thing. What we have in this book is a group of characters that operate on both levels. What does it mean to protect the street and protect the world? How are those things connected? What happens when T’Challa is walking down the street without his uniform and people don’t recognize him, he’s just a black person? Same with Storm.“ Yona Harvey was asked how her poetry has played into writing for comics. Her reply: “For the first project (World of Wakanda) I kept resisting. I thought being a poet was a negative somehow. But then I had to embrace what poets do, examine tiny details and draw out a larger story. And it helps with the language and the voice of the characters. I have this little trick where I imagine the poetic voice of the character, whether it’s very terse or romantic or sensitive.“ Read the rest of the interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Shannon Wright and Sarah Mirk had a comic on The Nib recently – Eight Ways to Resisit Donald Trump – check out the whole thing HERE. (Shannon Wright is an alum of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers – the comic she made for the course can be seen HERE!) ————————————————————————————————— Since Pittsburgh is so heavily on my mind today, check out Frank’s Blast Furnace Funnies over on the school store. Originally made for the Biennial at the Carnegie Museum in 2011, this is the 16-page tabloid newspaper comic that was stacked in the corner of the gallery space. The original pages hung on the wall. As Bill Boichel puts it in his review for Copacetic Comics: “In a signature Santoro move, Blast Furnace Funnies is a work of “High” (i.e., museum quality) art executed in the lowest of the “Low” art forms (a disposable newspaper); employing ephemerality to evoke eternity, he has here worked (in a form that often ends up) in the gutter to reach for the stars.“ Get a copy HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-26-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-26-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— 1-26-2017 – by Juan Fernández Share this page: [...]

Clowes and Nadel in Conversation (2010)

Juan FernándezMarch 21, 2016Interviews / The Diaz ArchiveChris Anthony Diaz has passed along this video he shot, for us to share with you: the Daniel Clowes spotlight panel from 2010’s Alternative Press Expo(APE), with Dan Nadel. Of interest since it dovetails Clowes’ 2016 tour for the release of Patience. This video gives a lot of insight indirectly to Patience. Comic book match ups, Burne Hogarth yelling, EC Horror comics, the disappointment in comics history, public vs. private characters, and life in the letters columns, it’s all here. Many thanks to Chris Anthony Diaz for documenting this conversation. Stay up to date with Diaz’s work here: folkloreshed.tumblr.com/ Share this page: [...]

01/23/2018

Aaron CockleJanuary 22, 2018NewsAaron today with Breaking the Sequence; Orbiting; Structures; Birdcage Bottom Books; Outsider Art Fair ————————————————————————————————— “experimental” “comics” Shea Fitzpatrick’s Case Study: Breaking the Sequence, from October 2017. Juan may have posted about this already? In a lecture, the writer and webcomics artist Daniel Merlin Goodbrey provides a helpful outline of characteristics that are distinct to comics as a visual medium. Defining the norm gave me a framework for understanding the works that deviate from it. Goodbrey’s characteristics were a useful jumping off point for articulating what the works I was collecting were doing, and why they struck me so powerfully. They are: Juxtaposition of images Spatial networks Space as Time Temporal Maps Closure between Images Word & Image Blending Reader Control of Pacing Experimental comics, then, are works that acknowledge the traditional framework of comics but, rather than adhere to it, tend to tilt, twist, and warp it into other things. This case study offers a survey of comics that abandon one or more of these characteristics, honoring innovations by artists, video game designers, poets, and educators alike. It should go without saying that these categories are by no means mutually exclusive. There are comics that exist outside of and in between these make-shift categories. As you may expect, there are very few rules. ————————————————————————————————— Orbiting At Broken Frontier, Robin Enrico looks at some recent work from Penina Gal. The means of storytelling in Orbiting then goes in a direction rarely tread by comics with the use of a single word, the word “you.” The second person, already a rarity in prose fiction is a technique almost entirely untouched upon in comics. The form lends it self so well to the third person in fiction and the first person in autobiography that even when characters do break the fourth wall and speak directly to the audience it takes on the form of a soliloquy rather than an outward address. Gal’s consistent use of the second person moves the reader to an undefined space. Who is the “you” the narrator is speaking to here? Even assuming the narrator is Gal, who is the recipient of this message: a friend, the reader, Gal themselves? ————————————————————————————————— STRUCTURES 1-45 At Your Chicken Enemy, Philippe LeBlanc looks at work from Uncivilized Books. Structures is a series that has been exploring interesting topics throughout its short publication history. From the creation of modern society, to how we destroy nature for our own purpose, to how we construct myths and how our mind behaves, Structures show that comics can achieve thoughtful explorations of philosophical topics and existential questions even in small formats. The medium is made better by work like these, each piece builds onto the previous one to create something bigger than the sum of its part. Uncivilized Books can be very proud to publish such a strong and experimental comic series. ————————————————————————————————— Birdcage Bottom Books 2018 Comics Publications There’s a nice range of work in this, including comics from Eva Müller, Jordan Jeffries, D. Bradford Gambles, Larkin Ford, Stephanie Mannheim, J.T. Yost, and CW fave Sara Lautman. Kickstarting until Feb 20. ————————————————————————————————— A couple photos from this past weekend’s Outsider Art Fair. ————————————————————————————————— Collected from the thousands of pages of material that Frank has left scattered all over the digital landscape, these 4 PDF collections contain Frank’s best writing on comics and comics making from the past decade. Theory and process, reviews and discoveries, journeys both physical and spiritual. Check out the “Best of Frank Santoro” PDF collections, available HERE! ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

11/26/2018

Posted on November 26, 2018November 26, 2018 by Caleb Orecchio

Caleb Orecchio here with the newest Love and Rockets release.

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Los Bros’ latest issue of Love and Rockets is here. Volume 4, No. 6 (or, as the front-page editorial notes, no. 84 overall). Each new release of L&R is an event in my house. Every issue to my estimation is worth its own weight in gold. Usually a satisfying 35 to 45 minute read. Pure joy.

I don’t have much to say about the issue that wouldn’t reiterate what I’ve wrote about Gilbert and Jaime before. I simply see each issue as required reading. Although, I have to say, I am hit with the reality that, with the more cartoonists I meet, not everyone is reading the series religiously (!).

Actually, I certainly understand why many don’t read it. For one, the long history and continuity of the title can be extremely daunting. For two, well, I will not show my hand but rather assume that everyone has their reasons. Regardless, this comic is the cornerstone of the alt-comics movement. Without L&R, there is no Fantaraphics as we know it today. Period.

Something else I have noticed is that, due to the lack of cartoonists reading L&R, particularly the books from this millennium, cartoonists kind of “pretend” to read it. “Yes yes of course Love and Rockets is important. Yes I love Hopey. And uh Glory. Right? Jaime was really nice to me when I met him.” This is just a theory, but I think cartoonists love to say they read L&R like they love to say they never read Building Stories. There is pride in both. As if reading long, difficult works is something they are above.

These are just some thoughts I had while reading the new issue of Love and Rockets. Cheers!

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Cement Mixer – 11-26-18 – by Caleb Orecchio

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One thought on “11/26/2018”

Derik says:

November 26, 2018 at 9:32 am

Thanks! Didn’t know the new one was out.

Reply

Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged caleb orecchio, Fantagraphics, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, los bros, Love and Rockets

Caleb Orecchio

Posted on November 26, 2018November 26, 2018

Explore

07/17/2018

Aaron CockleJuly 17, 2018NewsDavid Wojnarowicz; Comics & Medicine; Connie Sun; Hartley Lin; Ellen Lindner; Brutalist Web Design ————————————————————————————————— David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night July 13-September 30, 2018, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC. Via Jerry Saltz at Vulture.com: Today, David Wojnarowicz is known mostly as a martyr to the culture wars of the 1980s, another artist diagnosed with AIDS who fought along with so many to get the government to act, for a long time in vain, and who then, like so many others, died of the disease, a terrible tear in the fabric of art that was savagely exacted on gay men of that generation. Wojnarowicz came out of the same deeply downtown bohemianism of the early 1980s that fueled Jean-Michel Basquiat’s equally short, culture-altering arc through the art world: small cadres of like-minded underground characters and self-defined artists, desperate to act on the culture but denied the usual access to artistic power structures for reasons financial, psychological, racial, sexual. Wojnarowicz rose amid a gritty East Village aesthetic of graffiti, Expressionistic gestures, roughly assembled surfaces, funky found objects, one-night shows at clubs, and midnight guerrilla actions on the finer art. But in a way, Wojnarowicz’s tremendous, almost Rimbaud-like reputation suits, since he was an even better, more lucid freedom fighter than he was an artist. Via Holland Carter at the NY Times: True, Wojnarowicz’s formal means — stenciling, spray painting, collaging — are anti-academic. But his fact-and-fantasy images of existential violence and degradation, past and present, are in an old allegorical mode. With its allover collage of rifle targets, national flags and United States currency, the 1986 painting that gives the show its title could easily be re-dated to 2018. So could the quartet of 1987 paintings named for the four elements: Earth, Water, Wind and Fire. Each depicts an ecological Armageddon, though there are other things going on too. ————————————————————————————————— Comics and Medicine Conference: The Ways We Work August 16-18, 2018, White River Junction, VT. Featuring Keynote Speakers: David Macaulay, Susan Merrill Squier, and Whit Taylor Graphic Medicine explores the interaction between the medium of comics and the discourse of healthcare. We are a community of academics, health carers, authors, artists, and fans of comics and medicine. For more information about Graphic Medicine, and to see recent conference programming, visit: graphicmedicine.org Last year’s Seattle-based conference focused on “accessibility” as an aspect linking comics and health; two areas where improvements in reaching diverse audiences and creating platforms for marginalized voices are continuous and important topics of discussion. ————————————————————————————————— Meals You Can Eat on the New York City Subway Connie Sun in the NY-er. ————————————————————————————————— Pope Hats Tour 2018 ————————————————————————————————— Mantle, Baby Ellen Lindner Baseball Comics ————————————————————————————————— Guidelines for Brutalist Web Design Via David Copeland. A website is not a book or a magazine. Because it’s viewed in a browser, users can scroll the browser’s viewport to read content that can’t fit on one screen. This mechanism works beautifully and allows visitors to read content uninterrupted by clicking and page-reloading. While long-form content may require navigation and multiple pages, there’s rarely need to artificially paginate articles, blog posts, or other medium-length content simply to satisfy advertisers or inflate engagement numbers. Scrolling also allows the visitor to consume content at their pace using a method they prefer. Like the back button, this can only be broken by intentional design and careless implementation. ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 7-17-18 – by Kurt Ankeny Share this page: [...]

08/23/2016

Aaron CockleAugust 22, 2016NewsAaron here today with Gabriella Tito comics; Julie Doucet interviewed; Marra/Bayer; Laura Knetzger; Bauhaus on the internet; Clough reviews Delporte and Oliveros; some propaganda comics; CW Benefit Auction continues ————————————————————————————————— Homesick by Gabriella Tito This week’s Featured Comic is Gabriella Tito’s re-working of her Homesick comic from earlier this year. Initially made in black and white for Zona #1, Tito incorporated color into the updated piece during her recent Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency. ————————————————————————————————— Julie Doucet Interviewed at/by 2d cloud i did start my own “label” because the book projects i’m working on are getting less and less lucrative, in the sense that you won’t sell as many poetry books as a comic book. you work 6 months on a book that will have a 250 copies printrun you get 10% of the sales…that means you’re paid at best $300. for 6 months work. it is just not worth it. also i had a few such small projects that publishers agreed to publish…someday…i got tired to wait. and since i can print and all, it really doesn’t cost me much to produce the book. ————————————————————————————————— Benjamin Marra in conversation with Josh Bayer, Tuesday, August 30, 2016 at 7pm The 157th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, August 30, 2016 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. A conversation with Benjamin Marra and Josh Bayer. Join Ben and Josh for a lively discussion about process, influences and what it means to be cartoonists who are much indebted to comics history as they are committed to making their permanent mark on comics’ future. Via Ben Katchor, who has been organizing these events since 2012. The Fall 2016 Schedule has been posted as well, so please do try and attend if you’re in the NYC area. ————————————————————————————————— Laura Knetzger was recently podcasted over at We Should Be Friends ————————————————————————————————— Staatliches Bauhaus Via Open Culture, the Harvard Art Museums have made an astonishing amount of Bauhaus-era work available online. Harvard’s web site represents its physical collection, but it does not duplicate it. Many of the small images in its online archive do not expand to larger versions and cannot be downloaded. However, if you follow the guided tour by clicking “Continue Reading” under the site’s introduction, you’ll be able to click on the several dozen examples in each section and see them up close. You’ll also get a thorough survey of the Bauhaus school’s brief history and mission. The best way to access the collection is to click here, then scroll down to the box where it says “Search the Bauhaus special collection by keyword, title, artist, or object number, and by using the filters below.” ————————————————————————————————— Delporte and Oliveros Reviewed Over at the High Low Comics blog, critic Rob Clough takes a look at Julie Delporte’s Everywhere Antennas and The Envelope Manufacturer by Chris Oliveros. On Delporte: While the end has no real solutions in sight for her affliction, she at least is in control of her own fate and own decisions. Delporte’s use of colors is disorienting in a way that’s meant to reflect her own increasing sense of alienation in her own environment. That alienation is something she has to cope with, understanding that the very forces she tried to cling to early in the book were literally killing her and driving her insane. On Oliveros: The book works as a metaphor for any kind of personal endeavor that’s endangered by the whims of the market, and it’s not too much of a leap to transfer the sheer absurdity of a three-person envelope manufacturing concern to an equally small art-comics publishing company. Yet one can see Oliveros in D&Q’s darkest days, betting on the next book to keep the company going. That said, what marks the characters in this book are their unrelentingly obsessive personalities, an obsession that borders on narcissism and self-delusion. ————————————————————————————————— Religion & Comics, Comics & Religion From the Pink News site: The American Family Association, which is strongly opposed to LGBT rights, has partnered with Revival Fires International to give away 65,000 copies of the ‘Truth for Youth’ Bible across the US, encouraging evangelical teens to “commit to give the Bibles to their unsaved friends in school”. The excerpted comics posted in the article are pretty offensive, from a subject-matter standpoint as well as an aesthetic one. The published work is supposedly based on the teachings of the Bible, which, depending on your belief system, may either be a science fiction anthology of dubious authorship or the divine text of the Christian religion. The article is here. Anyway, 65,000 is a lot of funny books. ————————————————————————————————— Los Bros Hernandez Benefit Auction Items From Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez (but nothing from Mario???). Proceeds go towards funding the Rowhouse Residency. Share this page: [...]

08/15/2018

Juan FernándezAugust 15, 2018NewsThinking out loud here today on publishing and patronage. The market will never, effectively, support what the world needs creatively. Patronage is essential for that. Naturally, publishers can function as patrons, but I see it happen less than I’d like to. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, since I heard that Annie Koyama was going to close the doors on her book publishing and transition to more focused arts patronage. I’m excited for that. The reason being that comics’ commodity form feels broken. When publishers big or small say, “buy our books or we won’t be able to exist”, there’s a problem. It’s not on them, but it leads me to believe that our paradigm for publishing is broken. A short reflection on Eric Reynolds’ conversation with Timothy Hodler on Amazon’s disruptive print-on-demand practices makes this clear. The form is flourishing en masse, the distribution method is failing us collectively. This intersects with failures of capitalism and culture, of course – in other spheres you can separate them a good bit, but comics, being born as a commodity form wind up inextricably connected to the market. To be clear, I see a huge issue, when the responsibility of the “success” of works implicitly falls on the shoulders of the consumer. Crowdfunding is a hybrid of these ideas, so there’s an evolution there towards the future. Some extremely smart and creative people like Spike Trotman and others have figured out how to use this system to make their comics flourish in the market. Though they succeed in existing in a market, what often times happens is, the campaigns fail to integrate the work into existing ecosystems of libraries, stores and schools in a way that traditional publishers are able to engage with. In this way reader and consumer end up being one and the same. For it’s own needs, the comics market, inside and outside of crowdfunding conflates consumer and reader. If you’re not around to buy it, you’ll likely never experience the work. To be clear, this isn’t a dig on crowdfunding, though I wish more crowdfunded publications were able to bridge that gap in how the campaigns were designed. It’s not easy! I know! I’m just thinking out loud here about the larger issue of how comics wind up “locked up” in their own cultural space. When comics can be reproduced and shared, like music, by being saved to hard drives, by being clipped onto the fridge, by being shared with friends by loaning our copy of a book or pointing a friend to the library, we harness comics’ ability to “float” as cultural experiences. To connect us to each other, and to new knowledge. When this happens, comics occupy a role that becomes personal, independent of our relations to what’s going on in the comics market, a space that will likely never be hospitable to new ideas. Though I own plenty of comics, I read most comics through the library. My students read comics online, webcomics via sites and through social media. These experiences allow stories, jokes, images and abstractions to flow through our minds without forcing our hand in financial transactions. In these experiences, comics, especially strips become viral, they become important, they become part of our stories. It’s in this spirit that we here at Comics Workbook shout the mantra: commodity form as community form. If you or someone you know is interested in private patronage for forward thinking and passionate comics making, please send me a message. I’d love to talk to you. I’m working on a project through Comics Workbook that aims to create an equitable work environment for comics-makers, particularly oriented around comic strips. This is important work as comics are a vital, contemporary art form that has an extremely flimsy infrastructure. This all comes from things that I’ve learned thanks to the Kelly Strayhorn Theater‘s Future Makers program, my work at the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, conversations with Johanna Lasner and The Copacetic Comics Company‘s Bill Boichel and my time here with Comics Workbook. Share this page: [...]

05/08/2017

Caleb OrecchioMay 7, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers, great finds from Comic Book Day (Morphos the Shapechanger, Ms Mystic, Oriental Heroes #7), plus other comic news! ————————————————————————————————— Announcing the Summer Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers! 8 weeks! 500 bux! Payment plans are available! Summer Course starts June 1st 2017! Applications are due by May 25th. Visit THIS page for more details and email santoroschool@gmail.com with applications and questions! Caleb here: I took the above-mentioned course back in 2014 and it literally changed my life. No, I’m not paid to say that! Once you take the Course, there will be things you can’t un-see in art, geometry, and life. It’s like “The Secret” for cartoonists. But don’t take my word for it, the great Graeme Shorten Adams recently completed his comic for the Course. Check it out on his Tumblr, then message him and say something nice, then go sign up for the Course. ————————————————————————————————— This past Saturday was Free Comic Book Day 2017. As usual, Fantagraphics offered the best deal. Where most publishers put out a preview of upcoming comics (which is fine, afterall they are printing books that will be FREE), Fanta put out all new or unused material by their cartoonists in this year’s FCBD contribution. Plenty of great stuff, most notably Matt Furie’s closure with his famous publicly-abused character, Pepe. RIP. Other contributors included Anya Davidson, Emil Ferris, Dash Shaw, Joshua Cotter, Jason, Graham Chaffee, Richard Sala, Ron Rege, Jr., Eric Haven, Ed Luce, Noah Van Sciver, Tommy Musturi, Ed Piskor, Simon Hanselmann, and Cathy Malkasian. ————————————————————————————————— BUT, as we all know, the absolute best part of FCBD are the deals! Here are three highlights from my dive into the quarter bin at my preferred (depends on what I’m hunting for) local store here in Dayton, OH, Mavericks. I had recently glanced over an article from Off The Beaten Panel about Burne Hogarthe’s last comic, Morphos the Shapechanger so I was delighted to find it for 25¢ and in great condition at Maverick’s. It leans more in the direction of, as R. Fiore said about Kirby’s work in the mid-70s, (I’m paraphrasing from memory) “interesting work” as oppose to “good comics,” but nonetheless a comic worth seeking out. Complete with an introduction by Gary Groth and a prose “epilogue” by Burne’s collaborator on Morphos, Harry Hurwitz. The epilogue serves as an end and describes what would have happened in the next three of four issues if Hogarth had lived to see it through. Pacific Comics, along with Vortex and Eclipse, remains one of my favorite defunct or bought-out comic-book publishers of the 80s. I know PC mostly for their Kirby comics: i.e. Captain Victory and Silver Star; but I was very happy to find a copy of the “Origin Issue” of the great Neal Adams’ Ms. Mystic. It’s fun—great action comic. I had heard of the Hong Kong publisher, Jademan Comics from either a Brandon Graham or Frank Santoro epsiode of Inkstuds, but I can’t remember. Oriental Heroes #7 (yes, that’s the title) looks like a fusion between Ben Marra and Jim Rugg brought together by an eastern influence. Tony Wong’s (publisher of Jademan Comics and artist of this book) layouts and colors are crazy. A more traditional, rigid grid for scenes of talking and browbeating, and unhinged grids that overlap and slash into each other for intense, devastating action and violence. Some panels are rendered in a more Corben-esque way (more “realistic”) to further intensify the action. Wholly gratifying for those of you looking for that sort of thing. I laughed out loud when I saw that Mike Baron of Nexus-fame had “script” credit. It’s funny to me for some reason. ————————————————————————————————— If you don’t know, now you know Jay Disbrow, a golden-age cartoonist and victim of the The Comic Book Code of 1954, has passed away. If you don’t know, Disbrow had a comic published by Fantagraphics in 1979 called The Flames of Gyro. This was technically Fanta’s first published comic (unless you count Don Rosa’s Tagdenah which was serialized in The Comics Journal—or other strips Groth published in his fanzines during his teens), predating Love and Rockets by three years. He made a sequal called Aroc of Zenith which he serialized weekly on the web! Joe McCulloch talks a bit about these works on Comic Books Are Burning in Hell but I can’t seem to find which epsiode it was. Michael Tisserand, author of Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White sits down with one of my favorite interviewers, Elvis Mitchell, to talk about his new Herriman biography. I personally have just started reading the book and already the first chapter blew me away. The amount of in-depth investigation Tisserand did on this legendary cartoonist is nothing short of remarkable. Of course you know TCAF is this weekend and our own CW superstar, Tyler Landry will be running a workshop on making comics. His workshop titled, Comics Workbook: Composing a Spread will take place at 12:30 pm on Sunday May 14th, in the Writer’s Room on the 3rd story of the Toronto Reference Library. Check out the rest of the programming and exhibiting cartoonists as well. Also worth noting, Koyama Press is celebrating their 10th anniversary at TCAF. Aaaaaaand new from Matthew Thurber! Need I say more? ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 5-8-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 5-8-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-8-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

05/24/2018

Sally IngrahamMay 24, 2018NewsSally here with a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency Report from Jason Robinson! ———————————————————————————————— Jason Robinson is a comics maker, illustrator, and graphic designer living in Asbury Park, NJ. He joined us in Pittsburgh early last summer for a weeklong Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency. When Jason arrived, he mentioned that he had brought along a few “housewarming gifts” – these turned out to be several boxes worth of kitchen gadgets, pots and pans, a tea kettle, and other goodies for the Rowhouse that future residents and the more long-term resident cartoonists have made delighted use of. This generous gift was just one among many ways that Jason showed his support for the Rowhouse Residency, and if Frank and the rest of the team was able to give him anything in return we are grateful! It’s a treat to revisit Jason’s time in Pittsburgh through his thoughtful and entertaining residency report – here’s an excerpt: “Day six was filled with daydreams and the jotting down of enough story ideas to last the next five years. In many ways, I feel like I was just getting revved up and here I am at the end, hoping I have the discipline to continue this trajectory or at least ride this wave for a long while. Because only now have the chaotic thoughts begun to settle on the floor of my brain. And I’m able to calmly wander through, picking up bits and pieces, and notice how some seem to connect—to join together like pieces of a puzzle. I joined Frank and Sally for dinner on that last night. And a bit drunk on wine, I tried to convey this feeling by paraphrasing a similar concept I’d read somewhere about a scientist explaining that “it may not look like I’m working when I’m staring off into space, but what I’m really doing is constructing a 3-dimensional puzzle in my head—piecing together bits and bytes of information, and that takes time and focus to carefully construct this puzzle in my mind’s sky so that it may stand on it’s own. So, please don’t interrupt me, or you risk the pieces of the puzzle caving in on each other, imploding into a cloud of ash.” …Fortunately, Frank has a better and much more succinct iteration in his back pocket – “When I’m working, you may not see it, but I’m welding here. I have a helmet on, and my mitt, it grips a fucking torch-of-fire. So stand back, or you’re in danger!” I’ll close with some unsolicited advise to future residents: You don’t have to chain yourself to the drawing table. Of course you may, and obviously there can be great benefits to doing so, I only argue that there are other equally constructive ways to make use of this time you’ve carved out for yourself. Paradoxically, doing “nothing” may be exactly what’s needed to do the next something.“ Read the rest of Jason Robinson’s Rowhouse Residency Report HERE! For more info on the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency please visit this page or email santoroschool@gmail.com ———————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-24-18 – by Audra Stang Share this page: [...]

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