New comic by Emil Friis Ernst; Kris Mukai with handy process/printing tips; Santoro and Moynihan conversation from the archives; Abhay Khosla with real talk; and a look at COMIC TRAGICS in Perth, Australia.
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New Comics – All In A Day’s Work
I’m happy to announce that we are featuring All In A Day’s Work, a new short story by Emil Friis Ernst, exclusive to Comics Workbook. Emil is a young cartoonist and illustrator currently studying graphic storytelling at The Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark. All In A Day’s Work is a hand drawn doozy of color and tension. A 10 page comic that deftly uses the 6 panel grid to great effect.
Go on and give it a read! You’ll feel it in your gut, I swear.
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Publish or Perish
Kris Mukai has what you dorks lusting after dipping your feet into risograph printing. She’s put together a tight printing resource zine that’s sure to have all the nitty gritty you need to get started making books of all kinds. Whether it’s web risograph resources, how to start thinking in color or simply basic comics materials you might want to use, she covers it all. Good, fun casual stuff that may save your life one day…
Earlier this year I was asked to teach a risograph class at the SVA Risolab. The course I developed focused on writing/drawing comics, zine production, and risograph printing. Because I moved in the middle of the semester, I ended up co-teaching the class with Patrick Crotty of PEOW! fame.
These are a few of the hand-out materials that I wrote for the class. The information is sort of… half there, it’s not set in stone and the hand-outs are meant to be accompanied with in-class explanation/workshops. One of the joys of risograph printing is that there’s always exceptions to the rules..
Check out Mukai’s awesome printing resource zine here.
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From The Archives
Here’s a good one from the Comics Workbook Archives that we’ve unearthed for you: Frank Santoro in coversation with Jesse Moynihan. Lots of juicy process talk, along with discussions of personal creative space.
Frank Santoro: You mentioned to me once—unless I’m misremembering–that you had an offer to do a Forming animated cartoon and turned it down to keep it for yourself – you talked about that Forming was your “space” and no one else’s – and maybe that you may do an animated version yourself – I forget.
Jesse Moynihan: If I remember, I was just saying that initially Frederator had asked if I wanted to do an adaptation of Forming for their channel. I told them something like, “Only if I have all the rights to it,” and of course they said “no”. I didn’t expect them to say “yes”! No production company would. That’s sort of my impossible ‘deal’ with Forming. If someone wanted to adapt it into another medium – my only way of agreeing to it is if I retained exclusive rights and control over all the content. Forming is my baby, man. It’s a place where I don’t have to answer to anyone. It’s a totally pure, streamlined place. I make up an idea within this world and I draw it. Then I put it on the internet. It’s so easy and simple. So regardless of how the rest of my career goes, I’ll always have that in my pocket, unless I give it up like a bozo!
Santoro: Have you been approaching the website or the way the the comic is seen online serially any different since book one came out? Like I mean, has having the book made you think AT ALL differently about the webcomic version. Nothing major – I just wonder how it feels seeing it as a book instead of a stack of originals and dots on a screen.
Moynihan: Yeah as I was serializing the first volume I had no solid intention to print, so every page was self contained. A lot of the gags and thematic ideas would resolve on the last panel. Once I held a copy of the first book in my hand, I think my consciousness shifted slightly and I started spacing my action and jokes out a bit more. I would let ideas spill out over a few pages and land wherever felt natural. I started to feel less pressure to sell a single page as a self contained thing. I think the second book breathes better because of that; maybe to the detriment of how it reads online. I’m definitely now in the mind mode of, “This will eventually be printed.” so I’m putting in two page spreads and stuff like that. It’s not a super radical change, but I can tell the difference.
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Comics Tire Fires
Abhay Khosla does some aerial maneuvers up and around the continually burning wreckage that were last week’s/every week’s comics industry sexual harassment discussions surrounding.
If you treat like it’s about one evil villain who needs to be held to account,who gives a fucking shit? That’s a sucker’s game. It’s never about one guy. One guy can’t do all that much bad all by themselves – it really takes a shitty village, a shitty shitty village. It’s about a culture. Comics has a culture. Here it is. Trying to find heroes in that culture is a sucker’s game. It’s a culture about constantly telling stories about anonymous savior figures emerging out of the shadows to save people… because you can’t imagine people standing up and saving themselves and saving each other – where you count on that not to happen in order to maintain status quos that should not be permitted.
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COMIC TRAGICS in Perth
COMIC TRAGICS is a great exhibition that just recently opened to the publicat THE ART GALLERY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA in Perth, Australia. I’m really excited to see how this comics focused exhibition earnestly and intelligently presents the work. The show includes work by 9 artists: Gabrielle Bell (US), Stephen Collins (UK), Aisha Franz (Germany), Anders Nilsen (US), Tommi Parrish (AUS), John Porcellino (US), Ron Regé Jr (US), Dash Shaw (US) & Emma Talbot (UK).
I want to take note that I think this kind of exhibition is really ground breaking for the comics art form: contemporary comics presented in the historical context and continuity of the comics medium and on their own terms. Curator Robert Cook and company have really done a great job, here.
Don’t just take my word for it, here’s some of what Ron Regé Jr. who had some work in the show has written on his blog:
The show is huge, and amazing! I have an entire room dedicated to my work! Artists Emma Talbot, Tommi Parrish & I were brought to the center of Perth for a week. We gave several public talks, attended opening parties, and were interviewed by TV, radio & print. It was so much fun!
Curator Robert Cook put together a large and unprecedented sort of comics exhibition. It’s a specifically curated exhibit of contemporary art – that just happens to be full of comics. The Art Gallery is the central art museum in the city. It is open free & daily. There are no stores in Perth that sell the sort of graphic novels that are represented in the exhibit.