Sally IngrahamAugust 5, 2016NewsFriday, and what a week! Sally here to sift through it with you: I’ve got Audra Stang’s new comic, a bit more time spent with Caitlin McGurk (and Lucy Caswell for good measure!), interviews and words of wisdom from Marjane Satrapi, Emma Watson, Mari Naomi, Yumi Sakugawa, Andrea Tsurumi, and me (in a more official capacity than my usual Friday ramblings…) 1…2…3…GO!
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Audra Stang spent a very productive 3 days at the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency in Pittsburgh, PA, in July, and now she is serializing the comic she made during that time (first page pictured above). See what she has shared so far HERE and look for updates every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in August!
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I (Sally Ingraham) got interrupted the other day while I was working at the Rowhouse, by Frank Santoro and a camera crew, and ended up talking about teaching comics, researching comics, and my ideas about “comics roller derby”. Part One is above – watch Part Two HERE.
Expect MUCH MORE from the Comics Workbook Roller Derby league soon…!
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Columbus Alive profiled Caitlin McGurk yesterday, and although CW correspondent Harrison Prince mentioned it in our Thursday news post, I wanted to spend a little more time with her. I think McGurk is an incredibly rad lady, and she’s following the sort of path through comics and library science that I aspire to. As the piece states:
“Caitlin McGurk was destined to work in the comics industry. There were telltale signs during her childhood on Long Island. She remembers obsessively collecting and organizing comic book cards and admiring the pictures in the “Stations of the Cross” while waiting in the communion line at her Catholic church.
“That was probably my first experience with sequential art because there these beautiful stained glass or carved images with a little bit of text,” McGurk said. “I’d study the image and read the text a thousand times.”
Following high school, McGurk put out her own mini comics and zines and interned at an auction house where she catalogued – and fell in love with – underground comix (small press or self-published comic books). She interviewed famous cartoonists like Chester Brown for her senior college thesis on memory and consciousness in the graphic novel, and went on to obtain a master’s degree in library and information science from Long Island University.” Erica Thompson via Columbus Alive
Caitlin McGurk is now an associate curator at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in Columbus, OH. There she is able to stay on target regarding one of her life goals – that is, making her own “…contribution to the world of comic scholarship…about celebrating the unsung history of women in comics.”
One of McGurk’s recent pieces of comics scholarship was an in-depth look at the work of Etta Hulme (1923-2014), who was the chief editorial cartoonist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for 36 years. Caitlin McGurk writes:
“During her long and industrious career, Etta provided a consistent voice in cartooning. Her path wasn’t always easy; she was one of the only women to be hired as a full-time newspaper cartoonist, and was frequently carped for her boldly liberal views in a conservative Texan town. Etta laughed off criticism and even threats; her endless wit and terrific determination are best illustrated by her daily cartoons.” – Caitlin McGurk via the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Blog
You can see pictures of some of the Etta Hulme collection that the BICLM hosts HERE, and read more of what McGurk wrote about her!
It’s no coincidence that the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum employs incredible women like Caitlin McGurk – after all it was founded by the tremendous Lucy Shelton Caswell (pictured below during a recent interview – we’ll be keeping our ears peeled for it!)
Here’s our fearless founder Lucy Shelton Caswell being interviewed today by WOSU about the life of Frank Higgs – Milton Caniff’s dear friend and inspiration for the Terry And The Pirates character “Dude Hennick”
A photo posted by Billy Ireland Cartoon Library (@cartoonlibrary) on Aug 3, 2016 at 1:51pm PDT
As Tom Spurgeon wrote in a 2014 interview with Caswell:
“Caswell is an accomplished author about comics, and has done significant work in bringing cartoon art to bear in the teaching of history. My favorite comics-related moment of 2013 was the long, deserved moment of applause Caswell received during the Billy Ireland opening ceremony. The comics community owes her more than it can ever repay. She is a role-model for every non-creative to work in proximity to this great art form, and for everyone else besides.” – Tom Spurgeon via The Comics Reporter
Spurgeon and Caswell dig deep into history and comics and the history of comics in the rest of the interview – check it out HERE. And keep Lucy Caswell on your radar – her work is nowhere near finished.
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There is an interesting interview over on Rookie with Yumi Sakugawa – Madeline Keyes-Levine asked her a series of questions and Yumi Sakugawa answered with “…magical, illustrated responses, featuring some cat friends, the pros of self-publishing (pictured above), and an exercise you can do to start meditating literally whenever you want.”
Check out the whole thing HERE.
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Daniel Barron conducted an interview with Mari Naomi recently for Yay!LA Art and Culture Magazine, and things got intense.
“Sometimes you need to cross the line to know where it is. That’s something I think about as I am seated for coffee with illustrator Mari Naomi. After an hour discussing her history and work I feel like I’ve said too much about myself, anxious to tiptoe back wherever the line is. Call it a testament to the honesty of her work, whose loose, confessional nature makes one desire to meet it in the middle.” – Daniel Barron
Get to know them both, I guess, HERE.
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It really was a big week for women cartoonists, with at least two more items that we found for you.
Andrea Tsurumi appeared on the Virtual Memories Show podcast with Gil Roth –
“Rising comics star — don’t blame me, that’s what Publishers Weekly just called her — Andrea Tsurumi joins the show to talk about her new collection, Why Would You Do That? (Hic & Hoc Publications). We get into her off-kilter sense of humor and why I love it, why she chose that title, the most sadistic children’s book ever written and why she adapted it, the comics industry’s saving grace (it’s too small to fail), staged photos during the Civil War, the challenge of teaching comics, her attempt at a work/art/life balance, the comics, cartoons and picture books that influenced/warped her, why she left New York, the truth about cakes vs. pies, and more!” – Gil Roth
Give it a listen HERE!
Then of course there is the Emma Watson/Marjane Satrapi interview for Vogue that is making Harry Potter fans, at the very least, learn a thing or two about comics. And feminism. And Iran. It’s really quite good.
“…I think it’s extremely important that we try to change our lives around ourselves. When I was 30 years old, I said, “I’m going to change this world,” and after 10 years, the world was changing me. I became a cynical person who did not believe in anything anymore. And so I said, “I am losing even myself,” and then decided “Okay, from now on I’m going to change myself, and if I change myself, I have changed a little bit of this world. I will try to be a better person.” I don’t always succeed in that because the nasty side of me is big, but I try . . . I try.” – Marjane Satrapi
Read the rest HERE.
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Let’s keep up this pace, ladies! And the rest of you too of course. Don’t let the doldrums of summer get you. More comics news coming your way Monday – till then, cheers. – Sally
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