Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Al Jarnow, Begoña Garcia-Alen, Daryl Seitchik, Dr Fausto Fanzine, Edward Muñoz, Fumetto, Fumetto 2016, Missy, Tim Hensley

Juan Fernández

Posted on April 27, 2016April 27, 2016

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03/07/2017

Aaron CockleMarch 6, 2017NewsAaron here today with CHOICES; Squid Maps; Stuck in the Middle; Terms & Conditions; Shaw Screening at SVA. ————————————————————————————————— Over at try harder, Carrie Jones takes another look at the 1990 anthology, CHOICES: A Pro-Choice Benefit Comic: White supremacism, economic injustice, incest, suicide, and religious persecution all make appearances in CHOICES. Re-reading this book has been an unpleasantly surreal experience. 27 years have gone by since its publication and women are still fighting to be seen as human beings. It’s frightening to see how fragile the gains made are. As a personal touchstone, the book reminds me of the special power of comics to convey complicated stories in an accessible way. As an artifact, CHOICES is a stark reminder to take nothing for granted. ————————————————————————————————— Serio-Comic War Map For The Year 1877 Donna Seger at streetsofsalem posted a few years back about octopus propaganda maps from the 19th-20th centuries: 1870 marks a turning point in European and world history with the unification of Germany (as well as Italy): Europe was now “filled out” and further territorial ambitions could only be satisfied by global imperialism and/or war. The maps from this time forward reflect this jingoism and fear, but anthropomorphic satire dulls the edge. One of the first major octopus maps, Fred Rose’s “Serio-Comic War Map For The Year 1877” shows Russia as the octopus-aggressor rather than Germany, even though the Crimean War had revealed the severe weaknesses of the Russian Empire (this is reflected on the map below by a wound on one of the octopus’ tentacles–that which is located in the proximity of the Crimea). From the British perspective that this map represents, it’s a bit early to portray Germany as the aggressor, and so Russia becomes either the ferocious bear or the reaching octopus. ————————————————————————————————— CBLDF Interviews Ariel Schrag Betsy Gomez at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund spoke with Ariel Schrag about the anthology she edited, Stuck in the Middle, being challenged for removal from a school library in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.A. : What would you say to parents who consider some of the subject matter of Stuck in the Middle inappropriate for their middle school-aged kids to read? Ariel Schrag: Every parent has the right to monitor his or her child’s reading (or TV watching, or movie watching, etc.), and if you don’t want your child reading Stuck in the Middle, I completely respect that choice. However, there’s a big difference between making that choice for your child and making it for every child, which is what banning the book does. My intent in editing this book was to help children who might be experiencing some of the things the characters in the book experience — bullying, rejection, acne, depression, etc. — feel less alone. These ‘messages’ are expressed through art and humor to make them more accessible and fun. In terms of foul language, sexual content, and teen smoking in the book, all the authors strove to present the teens and pre-teens in a realistic light. We may not like all of the decisions teenagers make, but if we sanitize their speech and behavior in our stories, our characters won’t be authentic. Real teens and pre-teens sometimes use these words and say and do these things. A book like this can present a good opportunity for dialogue between children and parents. Banning the book isn’t going to change children’s behavior or somehow save them from the hard truths of teenage life — I find it very hard to believe that a child would hear a swear word for the very first time in the book or that he or she would be made aware that teenagers sometimes have sexual relationships or smoke cigarettes. The only thing that can make an impact in the way children act is communication, and this book provides a platform for that. What would you say to students in Mid-Del School District who want to read your book? Thankfully, it is available in public libraries and for purchase at stores or online. ————————————————————————————————— Terms and Conditions: the bloviating cruft of the iTunes EULA combined with extraordinary comic book mashups Cory Doctorow reviews R.Sikoryak’s iTunes Terms & Conditions collection: In his end-notes, Sikoryak notes that he didn’t try to match the language to the action in the panels, drawing his pages first then shuffling them and flowing the text into them. What’s interesting (and revealing) is how often there is some weird confluence between the text and the pictures, and this says something important about the Terms and Conditions Sikoryak is lampooning. ————————————————————————————————— “My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea” Screening with Director Dash Shaw Thursday, March 16, 7-10pm SVA Amphitheater, 209 East 23rd Street, 3rd floor, NYC Free and open to the public. Dash Shaw will introduce the film and Cartooning Coordinator Jason Little will interview him following the screening. ————————————————————————————————— The Spring Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers starts today! There is a rolling start date for this semester of the course, so we will continue taking applications beyond this date. There are a few spots left – just apply! The course is 8 weeks long – 500 bux – payment plans are available. More details can be found HERE – or email santoroschoolATgmail to apply. ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 3-7-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-7-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-7-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 3-7-2017 – by Juan Fernandez Share this page: [...]

03/19/2018

Caleb OrecchioMarch 19, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on a temporary comic book artist, Jeff Purves, and other news. ————————————————————————————————— I really liked Sally’s report last week on Paty Greer/Cockrum. I had a similar experience with a comic book artist’s name I did not recognize. For me it was the name “Jeff Purves” in a copy of The Incredible Hulk #349–I found that Purves, after some digging, had a 19-issue run on The Hulk in late 80’s with Peter David. He’s taking over after the McFarlane run, which is self-evident in the contrived effort of maintaining a McFarlane-y looking Hulk. That’s not a knock on Purves, just something I noticed. This is work-for-hire comics after all. When I initially read the issue, the layouts and action were interesting to me because the clarity and simplicity of the images wreaked of professionalism (as opposed to fanboy-gone-pro, though I’m not ruling that possibility out), which to me meant he had to be some sort of successful illustrator trying his hand at comics. I was more or less right. According to Lambiek and IMDb, he’s an animator. I mean, look at that Spider-Man above, the guy is clearly an educated drawer. I found Purves’ style to be bit stiff at first, but I think it had more to do with the inking of Terry Austin of issue 349; I eventually warmed up to the drawing and am now rather impressed by Purves’ professional, hired-gun vibe. I have a feeling Purves was pretty dependable schedule-wise due the successive amount of issues he contributed to. The work has both a sense of urgency and careful calculation like he knows how to bust out the good stuff that kids love, but ultimately understands that the issue must get out on time. Just thought this was interesting. I’m interested in these weird here-today-gone-tomorrow comic book artists (though nearly 2 years is not an amount of time to sneeze at), because it adds to the wacky history of comics. This guy probably wanted to draw comics as a kid but needed something more financially stable as an adult, so he quits comics and goes to work in animation on such titles as The Simpsons and Mulan. ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Dash Shaw on How to Read Nancy at The New York Review of Books. David Barnett offers up the possibility of Kirby finally getting the praise he deserves from the public at large due to the upcoming New Gods movie. Due to the popularity of his characters in the current line-up of Marvel movies, Jim Starlin allegedly has his own museum exhibit, according to Todd Allen at The Beat. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-19-2018 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

04/20/2018

Sally IngrahamApril 19, 2018NewsSally Ingraham here with work and news from Anya Davidson, Ramona Fradon, Gabriella Tito, and many more! ————————————————————————————————— Leah Mandel speaks to Anya Davidson about her work and the comic she made for The FADER – part of a comics feature in the spring issue where six cartoonists were asked to imagine a “future earth”. “Anya’s piece is like trading cards for the 2045 election, and she’s envisioned a race between a sea creature, the general of the Human’s Resistance Army, a cryogenics CEO, his kill-bot underling, a rat-human hybrid, and a Bernie Sanders-like Professor Roland Fredericks, Leader of the Democratic Republic of New Hampshire. Beauregard Trask, CEO of Traskorp Cryogenics, is the Republican nominee. His tagline? “Life begins after death.” All in all, not too far off.“ Anya is asked why she made a one-pager comic that isn’t necessarily narrative driven. Her answer: “I feel like some people are marathon runners, some are sprinters, and some are in between. As a cartoonist, I’m a marathonist. My normal format when I’m working on books, left to my own devices, is making longform works. When I’m asked to do shorter form work, for me the idea of putting a narrative on a single page is like, How would I even…? I love writing long dialogue. I’m kind of a maximalist, so the idea of trying to fit any kind of a narrative in that small of a space — I know it’s possible and there are people who do it beautifully — but how would I fit a story on a single page?“ Anya is working on a new book for Breakdown Press and doing her weekly podcast – Mindkiller – plus playing out more often with her band Lilac. She’s busy! Read more about what she’s up to and her thoughts about the future HERE. ————————————————————————————————— James Romberger has a con report for Big Apple Con at The Comics Beat – he snapped a pic of Ramon Fradon and scribbled this info about her: “Fradon deserves a lot of appreciation for the quality of her work and as perhaps the only female artist to rise to prominence at DC Comics in the Golden Age up through the Silver Age and beyond. She has always drawn with great fluidity and dynamism. Her beloved works include a long run on Aquaman and her co-creation, the incredibly bizarre Metamorpho and later in the seventies on Plastic Man, Super Friends and a series of moody, exceptionally expressive stories for DC horror titles. So she surely saw it all in her career, and yet she persevered in comics, eventually taking over the Brenda Starr daily/Sunday strip from 1980 to 1995.“ James Romberger’s other big discovery at the con was of particular interest to me, and it is unrelated to women in comics – HOWEVER, Sy Barry (pictured above) was a guest at the con, and he turns out to be the mysterious uncredited artist behind the famous Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story comic (which I wrote about recently)…! “Now, the truth is at last revealed. Barry says that he was given the job by the Capp Studio, which was run by Li’l Abner cartoonist Al Capp’s brother, Elliot Caplin. Barry stated that his name had been on the cover of the very first edition of the MLK comic, but for later printings his signature was replaced by a text box.“ Read more about this and the rest of the Big Apple Con HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Gabriella Tito has a new comic out called Heartsick. You can get a copy by emailing her – the info is above! Here’s a look inside. Gabriella Tito is a Floridian cartoonist and an alumni of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers. She has completed two residencies in Pittsburgh at the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency, and has been co-creating the Suzy & Cecil comic strip with me (Sally Ingraham) for over a year. Keep up with her HERE and be sure to grab a copy of this rad new comic! ————————————————————————————————— While We’re on the Subject Françoise Mouly writes about Eleanor Davis‘ Why Art? for The New Yorker – read the review HERE. Keren Katz was a recent guest on the Process Party podcast – listen HERE. The Doug Wright Award nominations have been announced – among the nominees for Best Book are GG, for I’m Not There (Koyama Press), and Connor Willumsen, for Anti-Gone (Koyama Press). More details HERE. Check out Jessica Campbell’s new gallery show, Who Dis?, which features her “carpet paintings” – plus a radio interview on Chicago’s WDCB 90.9 FM – HERE. The Comics Journal has a feature piece on German cartoonist Olivia Vieweg. Her comic Endzeit was recently released in Germany, and is being serialized in English HERE on the web. Read about her comics and film projects HERE at tcj.com. Heidi MacDonald shares thoughts on her participation on a recent comics project – The 100 Pages that Shaped Comics list that Abraham Riesman initiated for Vulture. If you haven’t seen the list yet, it’s some good weekend reading – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 4-20-2018 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

05/10/2017

Juan FernándezMay 10, 2017los Cómics / NewsEmpezamos el día con los vanguardistas; Vanesa R. Del Rey; La Polola; Ana Tijoux; Alexis Ziritt; Elizabeth Casillas; Carla Berrocal; Fabian Rangel Jr.; y los tebeos de Comics Workbook. ————————————————————————————————— AvanGard – Y Que? Gerardo Vilches escribe sobre la vangardia contemporanea y internacional de los cómics. Su evolucion, su role y su crítica. Hoy existe una generación de autores que no responden al clásico perfil de fan que sueña con trabajar con sus personajes favoritos y replicar aquello que cautivó su imaginación de niño. Por el contrario, muchos de los artistas de vanguardia provienen de otros campos de expresión, han estudiado Bellas Artes, puede que no hayan leído cómic hasta que una novela gráfica cayó en sus manos de jóvenes adultos y no se sienten en absoluto obligados a respetar ningún canon. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey La gran Vanesa R. Del Rey le ha dado permiso a Comics Workbook para publicar unas selecciónes de sus cuadernos de bocetos. Hemos diseñado esta publicación para que parezca uno de esos libros de de artistas los años 80. El texto es una transcripción de la entrevista que hicimos con Vanesa cuando visito la Residencia Rowhouse en 2016. Vanesa es un artista impresionante y inigualable, quien estudió con George Pratt y quien a dibujado con Grant Morrison. Estamos ofreciendo compras adelantadas a un precio reducido. Sigan a Vanesa por Instagram – @vrdelrey – y http://vrdelrey.com/ Le pedimos a nuestro director, Frank Santoro que nos contara un poquito sobre la fuerza feroz y imparable que es Vanesa R. Del Rey. FS: “Vanesa, I’m quite taken aback by your sheer technical ability which seems to be married to a poetic sensibility. There’s a lightness there. Sometimes illustrators with that ability get heavy-handed. Yet you manage the push-pull between these two sides of yourself–because you’re like a samurai. The humble samurai.” VRDR: “It’s about trying to remember that. I can get all this praise, I can get all these amazing responses from strangers, but at the end of the day—I’m still a student. I’m still learning. The crown doesn’t fit. The crown should never fit.” Este intercambio viene de una entrevista que Frank hizo con Vanesa R. Del Rey, que occurio en la Residencia de Comics Workbook en Pittsburgh, PA USA. 2016. FS: Me encontré por primera vez con VRDR en un festival de cómics en Toronto (TCAF) en 2014. Había empezado a hacer comics profesionalmente después de un período como un animadora. Fui Sorprendido por su la capacidad de ser como un camaleón de cambiar de estilos, y por su puesto le pedí ver más de sus obras. Desenterró pilas de cuadernos de dibujos de sus días en Cuba, cuando estudiaba el realismo soviético y de trabajaba con George Pratt, maestro de cómics pintados. La educación de Vanesa como artista hace el balance suavemente entre los niveles alto y bajo del arte, así como los valores estéticos del este y el oeste. Es una base asombrosa. Ella es, a la vez, consciente de la historia del arte, la historia de los cómics y la historia de la animación de una manera NUEVA que casi parecía imposible hace quince o veinte años. Debo admitir como un estudiante y fan de cómics que se enfocan en la mezcla de “alto y bajo” y en ” los cómics pintados” — Nunca he visto tal mezcla de habilidades al nivel de VRDR. Feroz. Imparable. Un competidor feroz. Michael Jordan-esque? ¿Es eso posible en la fabricación de cómic? Siempre he dicho que habría un “invasor vertical” en los cómics que podría emplear el “naturalismo” de la escuela de Noel Sickles / Alex Toth pero que podría pintar como una Alice Neel o una Jenny Saville. Creo que “el invasor” ha llegado en forma de Vanesa R. Del Rey. Puedes comprar tu copia AQUI¡ ————————————————————————————————— Cómics y noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo tienen una nueva edicion de La Polola Podcast! En este capítulo las chicas conversan con Ana Tijoux acerca de sus inicios en el rap, su forma de hacer canciones, su vida como inmigrante, la diversidad y mucho más. . Alexis Ziritt os ofrece una serigrafia bien chula del forro de Space Riders #3. Blanco y Negro. Liempo. Poderoso. En la nueva ediction de Revista Cactus, Elizabeth Casillas os trae lo más transgresor e innovador del cómic actual. Pura vanguardia. Ya hace tiempo, las editoriales en Colombia le apuestan a las novelas gráficas, fanzines y libros ilustrados. Conozca cuáles son. The Fine Art Collective ES entrevisto a Carla Berrocal. Fabian Rangel Jr.‘s new comics series “Helena Crash” gets a micro-review. It’s pulse pounding, caffeine fueled, sword swinging, machine-gun firing, car crashing sci-fi adventure comic. You know the type. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 5-10-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 5-10-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-10-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Austin, TX Scene Report

Frank SantoroDecember 25, 2011Riff Raff / Scene ReportsThis post originally appeared on The Comics Journal – 12/25/2011 Frank here. This week’s scene report is brought to you by William Cardini. Mr. Cardini just finished my comic book correspondence course. Hopefully, you will someday see the comic that he produced during the course – it’s pretty sharp. In the meantime, please enjoy his report on the Austin comics scene. ————- Austin Scene Report by William Cardini. Despite having been (and in some cases continuing to be) home to various comics legends, such as Chris Ware, Mack White, Cayetano Garza Jr, Shannon Wheeler, and the Armadillo World Headquarters crew, Austin doesn’t seem to have the same reputation among cartoonists as similar cities such as Portland or Minneapolis, but I think it could. Austin has two comprehensive comic book stores, Austin Books & Comics and Dragon’s Lair, that stock everything from local minicomics to Fantagraphics to manga. And if you’re more interested in zines, there’s Monkeywrench, an all-volunteer collective-run radical bookstore. Austin Books shows local artists on their back wall. This is a long distance photo I took from my show there with my wife Glade. You can see their deep back issue racks. The center of my Austin comics scene is Domy Books. An independent bookstore and gallery, Domy started in 2006 in Houston’s hip Montrose neighborhood. In 2008, Domy co-founder Russell Etchen opened an Austin branch of the store, and it’s been a boon. A towering, super friendly red-haired dude, Russell is always eager to make a recommendation or talk about obscure comics, artists, zinesters, and graffiti artists. He makes sure that Domy features a prominent zine section, screenprints, and a slew of art comics. He also curates the gallery section, featuring cartoonists such as Ron Regé Jr and Esther Pearl Watson. Russell also puts together the annual Monster Show, where he asks cartoonists from all over to do a 9×12″ drawing. Photo of this year’s Monster Show opening by Carling Hale. If you squint you can see Jonny Negron. Speaking of Mr. Negron, Austin has a pretty full local creator roster. Here’s a small sample: Jonny Negron – His drawings are charged with raw sexual energy. Ben Snakepit – Ben’s been drawing three-panel punk rock diary comics every day since 2001 Aaron Whitaker and Melinda Tracy Boyce – This comics power couple just moved here from Portland. They do diary and literary comics collaboratively and singly. Zach Taylor – Zach does totally out-there adventures comics and runs the Austin Sketch Group, who meet up every Sunday to draw comics (and they’re not the only draw club in town). You can see most of these folks once a year at STAPLE!, a local indy media/comics festival that’s been getting bigger and better every one of the seven years its run. In general, Austin has a community that’s really supportive of DIY efforts and art. The music, literary, and art scenes ooze over and intermingle with the comics scene. There are a lot of creative people doing a lot of things here. If only it weren’t so damn hot. Share this page: [...]

04/27/2016

Posted on April 27, 2016April 27, 2016 by Juan Fernández

Fumetto 2016; Begoña García-Alén’s El Espectador; Dr Fausto Fanzine 10; Daryl Seitchik’s Missy for sale; a first look at Tim Hensley’s Sir Alfred No. 3 ; Al Jarnow & Edwin Rostron.

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13043220_1158915994133030_1554425521970041222_n — Lorenzo Mattoti presenting Oltremai – Photo by Monica Tarocco

FUMETTO 2016

Fumetto, one of Europe’s leading international comics festivals wrapped up this past weekend in Luzern, Switzerland. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the festivities lasted from April 16-24. Among the many guests this year were Lorenzo Mattoti, Joost Swarte, Gabrielle Bell, Caroline Sury, Fremok, Max and Ben Katchor. Fumetto has captured glimpses of all the lectures, workshops, pop-up studios, gallery exhibitions, market places, and parties in a recently posted archive of photos. (If you want to get lost into the nitty gritty of the social media coverage of Fumetto, explore Fumetto’s social media wall here.)

Screen shot 2016-04-27 at 2.27.51 AM — Franz Suess

Among all of the goings on this year was Fumetto’s annual competition exhibition. The theme this year was “Temptation”. View the winning entries from the 2016 competition here. For those of you really hungry for more of Fumetto’s competitions, you can read all of the winning entries from 2014 and 2015.

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(the spectator)
The fourth installment of Begoña Garcia-Alen‘s El Espectador (the spectator) is now up over on TikTok cómics. Her spectator series is a nice collection of work that explores the idea of observation and reflection. It’s done in a playful, formalist Koch/CF hybrid.
Check it out here.

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Llegó nuestra Décima Edición. 10 Autores de Colombia, Argentina y Chile.
Toda la info en: https://t.co/0OsmwQUpyN pic.twitter.com/Qhq901Nfmf

— Dr Fausto Fanzine (@DrFaustoFanzine) April 25, 2016

Dr Fausto
The 10th edition of the Colombian publication, the Dr Fausto Fanzine is here! This edition comes out thanks to the support of Editorial Universidad de Caldas. Ya llegó! It’s now available in cities throughout Colombia, starting in Bogotá. This is issue features 10 cartoonists from Colombia, Argentina and Chile:

Edward Muñoz (Editor) http://eddmunoz.tumblr.com/
Un reptil http://relampagarto.tumblr.com/
Truchafrita http://www.truchafrita.net/
Wil Zapata http://wilcomix.blogspot.com.co/
Lutocorps http://lutocorps.blogspot.com.co/
Pablo Bofelli (https://www.facebook.com/PUNCH-590883774340172/?fref=ts)http://felipunch.com.ar/
Toto Duarte https://www.flickr.com/photos/sergalletas/
Javier Fabregas http://www.javierfabregas.co/
Pablo Pérez http://periodistailustrado.tumblr.com/
Jko Sánchez http://jkosanchez.net/
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Screen shot 2016-04-27 at 3.43.33 AM — Missy by Daryl Seitchik

Digital Missy
Daryl Seitchik has collected and made all of her issues of her comic Missy available digitally over on gumroad. Check it out. The first one’s free 😉

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJZjfcMR2fc

Comics Movie Tie-in
Fantagraphics has just shared a detailed look at Tim Hensley’s latest book, Sir Alfred No. 3. It’s beautiful stuff, full o hyucks.

Sir Alfred No. 3 is an oblique biography of the world’s most famous film director, Alfred Hitchcock. In fact, despite being numbered “No. 3,” no other issues exist. The comic book is composed of multiple gag strips based on anecdotes found in tomes of film lore in the public library and used book shops. As Hensley’s previous work Wally Gropius referenced the ’60s teenager genre, Sir Alfred pays homage to ’50s personality comics and movie tie-ins. It ends up being something of a cross between Marge Buell’s Tubby, who bears an unforeseen resemblance to the famous director, and Miss Beverly Hills of Hollywood.

Have a closer look at the book over on Fantagraphics’ site.

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Asymmetric Navigations
Take a walk and join Al Jarnow in conversation with Edwin Rostron over on Edge of Frame as they reflect on his life of creation that has move seamlessly across artistic mediums. Paintings, animations sculptures, software, exhibits – his ideas have taken every form you can imagine. Tune into his frequency for a little energy and inspiration.

EoF: In the documentary Asymmetric Cycles you describe your process onCelestial Navigation as “setting up an experimental environment in which I could more or less improv and riff off of different ideas to do with time, the passage of time and the passage of light.” Was this typical of how you worked with your animations? Did this kind of experimental process relate to how you worked as a painter? Was there a lot of material generated through this kind of process that didn’t make the cut?

AJ: Yes, always! In painting as in film, the process has always been a dialogue. What happens with the first stroke is a determining factor in what happens with the next. An experiment is an act in which you don’t know the outcome. It’s a learning process. You might have expectations and anticipate your results, but those can color your results. In film, a lot of snippets ended up on my cutting room floor (or at least in cans still stored in my attic). In painting, pieces ended up in re-cycling, painted over, cut in half, and again stored in my attic studio.

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Have a good one and see you soon. Here’s one some reverie for the road.

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Al Jarnow, Begoña Garcia-Alen, Daryl Seitchik, Dr Fausto Fanzine, Edward Muñoz, Fumetto, Fumetto 2016, Missy, Tim Hensley

Juan Fernández

Posted on April 27, 2016April 27, 2016

Explore

07/03/2018

Aaron CockleJuly 3, 2018NewsChitra Ganesh & Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze; English on ‘Simplification’; Some Outsider Art; Military Internet(s) ————————————————————————————————— Open Sessions at The Drawing Center Chitra Ganesh in conversation with Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze: CG: “I am so glad that the Drawing Center has offered alternative axes, alignments, and contexts to situate your own work, thinking and growth––I would say that its mere presence, focus and decades long commitment to that focus, has sustained me in similar ways.” . ROA: “Drawing transcends all dividing factors, it is the most human form of expression. The DC has given me the freedom of simply being a human artist. It has been priceless to be in dialogue with other artists, who have their own relationship with the medium.” ————————————————————————————————— Simplify, Stupid Austin English continues with his wide-ranging look at comics from the past 70 years or so. There may be something to that. Simply, (1) drawing competently is an out of the ordinary achievement people instantly recognize. The ability to (2) tell a story with drawing? Even rarer. The most elusive seems to be (3) having something unique to say with a picture story. Most of comics seems to be content with varying combinations of (1) and (2). Artists like Feuchtenberger give us (3) every time they draw something. Why work like hers is considered an aquired taste still seems odd to me, and involves a condescending attitude to readers in general. Who doesn’t (if we limit ourselves to those who care about narrative in even the most limited way) want to be engaged by a picture story that is genuinely felt and mindfully arranged? When we consider a masterpiece like Dominique Goblet’s Pretending is Lying, which is firmly in the (1) + (2) + (3) camp, we know this is a work that readers will refer to in their lives over and over again. Goblet might simplify faces in service of telling her story within the medium of comics, but to simplify her ideas would be anathema to the artist. The richness of what she has to say is, itself, the point. Her statement, a composition of relationships that fade in an out if view, isn’t grafted on to her storytelling ability, it isn’t in service of a need to finish pages to fufill a pre-existing belief that her style requires an important statement to validate it. When Goblet’s father character sways and monlogues to promote himself, his personality impresses itself upon the reader with a shrieking force, because Goblet has something specific to say (3) about a man like this. Also, take a scroll through the comments: ————————————————————————————————— In Their Own Worlds Sanford Schwarz looks at some recent exhibitions of ‘outsider art’. Cartoons and comic strips—or a sense of these forms—underlie, finally, the work of the most impressive figures in the exhibition, Darger and Adolf Wölfli. For viewers concerned with outsider art they are among the territory’s old masters. Both have been the subjects of books and have been seen, like Martín Ramírez, who is their equal, in defining and revelatory retrospectives over the last fifteen years at the Folk Art Museum. This doesn’t mean that Wölfli, who died in 1930 at sixty-six, is exactly an embraceable figure. There is a degree of flowing inventiveness and industry in his pictures, which can resemble fantasy versions of carpets, game boards, or aerial views of places, suggesting that the man was on a different wavelength from the rest of us. ————————————————————————————————— ARPANETS Zachary Loeb reviews Yasha Levine’s Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet Levine highlights NBC reporting from 1975 on the CIA and NSA spying on Americans by utilizing ARPANET, and on the efforts of Senators to rein in these projects. Though Levine is not presenting, nor is he claiming to present, a comprehensive history of pushback and resistance, his account makes it clear that liberatory claims regarding technology were often met with skepticism. And much of that skepticism proved to be highly prescient. ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 7-3-2018 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 7-3-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

New Waves in Latin American Comics: Colombia

Juan FernándezAugust 24, 2016los Cómics / Scene ReportsThis guest post comes to us from Laura Andrea Garzón Garavito in Colombia Every time I walk into a bookstore I try to check for the comics and graphic novel section. It might not be surprising given that in countries with a comic strip tradition, like the United States or France, there are bookstores entirely devoted to selling such products. In Latin America, places like Mexico and Argentina have given comics an important space among other literature, having both been large scale national creators and international translators of comics. Nevertheless, in many other Latin American countries comics and graphic novels are only just starting to be of common interest for publishers. Take Colombia, for example. Until not long ago, you could only find translations from mainstream comics, such as superhero ones by Marvel or DC, magazines brought from the above mentioned Mexico or Argentina, and sections in the newspaper devoted to translations of comics such as Calvin and Hobbes or Mafalda (an argentinian political cartoon icon). But there was not much regarding local production in Colombia. Until now. These days, in 2016, as I find so many new books, I feel glad this medium has started to find increased interest among readers. And since we have been building our very own national comics tradition, we have been looking to be eclectic in our selections. I find it interesting that the bookstores that have invested in bringing comics closer to the audience in Colombia, which is my case, have chosen authors with alternative works, who do not necessarily respond to the mainstream view of what comics “are”. That might be because this audience is still forming a definition of what comics can be and their readers enter this universe new eyes. In each comic book club I have been in, I have heard the speakers trying to broaden the perspectives of what such a medium can offer, and the relation that it has with other arts, like film, literature, poetry, painting, etc… An important part of expanding the national understanding of the many forms that comics take to have Maus in a shop window, side by side with El Eternauta, but is not enough. You might laugh at that, since Maus has been circulating for so long it seems impossible not have bumped into it. But I often think we are, in our very own parallel reality, in a point, similar to the one Spiegelman found himself when winning the pulitzer prize in 1992: where should we place this type of creations? where do we sell these works? Gary Groth, editor of Fantagraphics, publisher and critic, said in a conference held in Bogotá last year, he felt Colombia’s panorama looked pretty similar to the one he had seen in the United States in the 80’s, which was a time for alternate exploration of both markets and formats. That means thinking comics through various lenses, thinking audiences can be broader than imagined, not only kids or old-time series followers, but a whole spectrum of different ages, backgrounds, genders, and so on. In this scenario, underground comix hadn’t even seen Maus yet! Just like it happened here! For a long time creators, fans and editors had to research their sources for comics elsewhere, either traveling or ordering books, or maybe being able to find some online version of them. That network has enabled relationships between latin american authors in different regions. Communication through the internet has been a way of supplying for the gatherings: it has built a new kindof dialogue around the comics world. It has also made it possible to think of self-publishing in a different way. Circulation for your work has not been limited solely to printed fanzines but also from web-comics. What we have been seeing in Colombia has been a period of transition in which the alternatives avenues for creativity intertwine, giving artists chances of mixing them and creating hybrid works. However, the fact that the definition of what comics are and what they can do is a definition in construction means that the medium is till fight for legitimization. A fight to make comics be seem as a viable medium, not classified as secondary, as less than other types of narrative forms, or framed as for only some type of audiences (by editorials or entities in charge of financing new authors and their projects). It also means that there is a fight to find assure that there are market willings to support the production of comic books in Latin America. The very idea of trusting that this kind of publishing can be supported on a national level may be difficult from country to country. What might be easy for Brazil can be difficult in Peru or Colombia. Now, relations between Latin American countries can help to understand there is indeed viable market for comic books, but, according to Colombian comics critic, script writer and comics editor, Pablo Guerra, Latin America has always been an island in editorial terms. That’s to say Latin American countries have found it difficult to establish connections (even when it comes to traditional forms of literature) between themselves to develop strategies for mutual support, so they do not continue to be regarded as an appendix of Spain, as is done in other international contexts. On the bright side of such situation Daniel Jiménez (editor, cultural manager and director of the colombian comics festival Entreviñetas) notes that there is a healthy situation in the panaroma of Colombian comics: a new generation of cartoonists under 35 years of age. They are a group of hungry creators with a network of interesting cultural and artistic production in the comics medium. They understand that they need to be in dialogue with other cultural traditions, perspectives and tendencies happening in other places around both Latin America and the world. They are critical, they question their reality, they aim to create a dialogue through their work. Latin American artists work in and from the interstitial space between center and periphery, and that is reflected in their production. The fact that there is a young generation also makes it possible for relations around this new forms of making comics to be fresh and non-hierarchical. The idea is that among this demagraphic, it doesn’t matter where you come from but rather what you do and how you do it in comics, along with how you participate of the new channels of distribution. Here is a list of recommendations and highlights of the contemporary Latin American comics situation (Special thanks to Kelly Moctezuma, a young artist, editor and comics curator, for helping me out with this last section so you, dear reader, can enjoy the best of what we’ve got to offer): Hands up for the editorials publishing comic books and graphic novels. Graphic novels might be a difficult format for new readers, as a broad part of Latin American audience can be, as well as an expensive one, but editorials have found their way around this problem: Rey Naranjo and the recently launched Cohete Comics, part of Laguna Libros, and La Silueta in Colombia, Contracultura and Pictorama in Perú, Catalonia in Chile, La Ñatita in Bolivia, MINO in Brazil. Some kick-ass girls worth watching for that still struggle to make a living out of this like PowerPaola, Delius, Sole Otero, Isol, Inechi, Maco, Marcela Trujillo, No Sofía, María Luque, CatalinaBu, Juana Medina. Now some boys worth checking out (I mean, their work) like Luis Echavarría, Fabio Zimbres, Rodrigo de la Hoz, Camilo Aguirre, Henry Díaz, Alejandro Henao, Antolín Olguiatti, Jim Pluk, Joni b, Truchafrita, Pedro Mancini, Jesús Cossio, Marco Tóxico, Eduardo Yaguas. Publications that have (or had) underlined comics in Latin America are alive and growing: Revista Larva, Carboncito, Entreviñetas (which is a section in the national colombian newspaper El Espectador), Dr. Fausto, Graffiti 76% quadrinhos, Gringo Muerto. – Laura Andrea Garzón Garavito Share this page: [...]

04/15/2016

Sally IngrahamApril 15, 2016NewsSally here with sweet morsels to start the weekend off right – Simon Hanselmann and Eleanor Davis dazzle in interviews this week, while Alabaster Pizzo and Jim Rugg offer up comics overflowing with life-hacks, and Chris Ware via Comics Workbook provides us with the perfect way to spend that plump tax return we’re already dreaming of… —————————————————————————— What a day, what a day. Friday, April 15th, and in a stroke of great good fortune, it is NOT tax day…! Thanks to some obscure holiday celebrated only in Washington, D.C., the penny savers of the world can hold on to their riches for a few more days. If you still feel an urge to count coins, however, check out this comic by Chris Ware, which ran in the New York Times a few tax seasons ago. I say some obscure holiday… *sigh* —————————————————————————— Anyway, once you get those taxes filed, hopefully there will be a sweet refund landing in your coffers – and in anticipation of that, you could certainly at least take a gander at the INCREDIBLE AUCTION of original Chris Ware artwork that is being held to benefit the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency. Check it out: The auction is live HERE, and will continue through next week. —————————————————————————— We can’t get enough of Jim Rugg this week – after blowing his mind with the Chris Ware package, Comics Workbook followed up by paying his studio a visit and getting into the details of Jim’s process. Check out part 1 of 3 below: Part 2 HERE. Part 3 HERE. Jim is cranking out some new high octane Street Angel comics too – Fist Fight Funnies features our kick ass hero enduring the horrors of middle school…the story so far. Can she survive MATH CLASS…?? —————————————————————————— Keeping things somewhat connected here, in a new interview with The Guardian, Simon Hanselmann mentions his confusion over how to read comics by Chris Ware. “I believe in the grid,” he says. This of course is the least interesting aspect of the article, which begins with Simon and HTMLflowers watching the sun rise at the top of a 12-storey crane in the middle of a construction site. ‘When not putting himself in mortal danger, Simon Hanselmann is responsible for the cult comic series Megg, Mogg and Owl. “If I don’t do stupid things every now and then, I will run out of stupid things for Megg and Mogg to do,” he says. “If I stop being a fuck-up, then Megg and Mogg will soon just be about managing European translations and Skyping with network executives.”’ Oh Simon, never change. Read the full article HERE. —————————————————————————— Annie Mok dives in deep with Eleanor Davis over on The Comics Journal. The conversation is lively, and the interview features a full banquet platter of Davis‘ styles – she’s a creative beast! There’s going to be something in there for everyone, and for me it was her thoughts about drawing as a form of play – holding on to the “kids drawing”, versus a more polished style. DAVIS: I feel like there’s a lot of different stages, and when you get to a certain level of maturity you realize that people are looking at your drawings, and that your drawing can be judged as good or bad. And then you clench up like crazy, and that’s when your drawing starts getting bad. Usually. Like, objectively. And then you have to learn and do “How to Draw the Marvel Way” or whatever, and learn to be good. But before that, you’re drawing as a way of play. It makes the drawings a lot more linear. Not aesthetically linear, but the way that the drawing is built is more linear, ‘cause each line is—it’s not preplanned, so each line is responding to the previous line rather than trying to build an overarching image. I think that that lends kids’ drawings a sense of integrity that maybe gets lost when you’re trying to do something that’s pre-planned… Read, and be staggered by, the whole interview HERE. —————————————————————————— Alabaster Pizzo has a new comic up on Vice, and it’s all about urban farming – a trickier and more treacherous endeavor than you might think. —————————————————————————— Czap Books just released a new collection – Inaction Comics 1: Productivity This book is a challenge to action. An attempt to break free of it, and to come to terms with it. So much of life is inaction, is just breathing or waiting. Is joys and shames, all so quiet you deny them or forget them a moment later. This book is made up of a group of very different artists with very different perspectives, but pulled together into an exploration of a single idea. A single story, in a way. Contributors include: Kimball Anderson – MJ Robinson – Paul K. Tunis – L. Nichols – LB Lee – Laurel Lynn Leake – Kelsea Rain – Alyssa Berg – Andrew White – Susie Oh – Klára Grancicova – Cathy G. Johnson Get it HERE. —————————————————————————— Alrighty folks, make the most of your weekend – go on wild adventures (channel Simon Hanselmann perhaps) and if you don’t make it back by Monday, who can blame you? If you do make it back though, we’ll be here with more comics news! – Sally Share this page: [...]

Bucket of Blood

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

02/06/2018

Aaron CockleFebruary 6, 2018NewsAaron here today with FUNHOUSE; 3 Comics from E.A. Bethea; Jog on Ditko; Necromancers of the Public Domain; Austin English; Fukushima Devil Fish ————————————————————————————————— FUNHOUSE An Interactive Book Fair by Desert Island at The Drawing Center 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, Ben Passmore, Oskars Pavlovskis, Monica Ramos, Jim Schuessler, R. Sikoryak, Whit Taylor, Matthew Thurber, Thu Tran, Mark Wang, Kriota Wilberg, Kelsey Wroten, Gina Wynbrandt, and JooHee Yoon. FUNHOUSE is organized by Gabe Fowler of Desert Island and Molly Gross of The Drawing Center. SIDESHOW Talk Series Saturday, March 24 and Sunday, March 25 at 11:30am, 1:30pm, and 3:30pm Programing TBD. Sideshow will be programmed by Matthew James-Wilson of FORGE. art magazine kuš! Magazine Comic Zine Workshops Saturday, March 24 and Sunday, March 25, 12:30–4:30pm Tickets $40 via Eventbrite here. kuš! comic zine workshop, lead by artist Oskars Pavlovskis from Riga, Latvia, will be a collaborative comic drawing experience suited for participants of any age and skill level. The workshop will focus on the creation of short experimental comic stories based around the FUNHOUSE theme. Together the participants will take part in creating a unique self-published comic zine, which will be printed and assembled during the workshop and each participant will receive a copy. ————————————————————————————————— The Olcott Hotel/Jamaica Bay/Tonight We Try Every Position At Bomb Magazine, Three Comics from E.A. Bethea ————————————————————————————————— The 206th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Joe McCulloch on Total Language: Steve Ditko at 90 Ask a person today who created Spider-Man, and they’ll probably tell you Marvel Comics, that inescapable entertainment brand. Some of them might say Stan Lee, the man whose profile is highest in mass media. Others, perhaps fewer, will know about Steve Ditko (b. 1927), a cartoonist of an unusual trajectory: his vision and craft gave concrete form to commercial characters still adored across the globe, half a century later, but his passion would soon pour into deeply personal, experimental, and furiously divisive works, comics emboldened by the freedoms of artist ownership, yet antagonistic toward the compromised values of society. Few agreed with the ideology espoused by these comics, but Ditko kept working, undeterred – through the rise and fall of the underground era, through the transition from newsstand racks to comic book stores, through the graphic novel boom and the advent of crowdfunding. He is still working now, here in New York City. Since 2007, Steve Ditko has published more than 800 pages of new comic book art, and they are among his most fascinating: comics where text and image work in a simultaneity of intent, a total language that invests the tautness of line and the hatching of shadow with thematic roles in the story, where the function of the black and white page is a statement of the artist’s worldview, by which there is only good and evil, and where the individual must ascertain the objective nature of the world, lest they reject their own lives. Come and see for yourself. Joe McCulloch has been writing and speaking about comics for 14 years, sometimes to audiences other than his bathroom mirror. ————————————————————————————————— Necromancers of the Public Domain “There are certain beings who bear the stamp of the divine seal and are preordained to receive the higest favours within the gift of glory; they are fated to pass through life like those brilliant meteors which are seen to flash across the heavens and disappear in the same instant. Bastien-Lepage was one of those meteors.” Each month, we pluck a long forgotten volume from the shelves of the New York Society Library and resurrect it as a low budget variety show. This month Masterpieces in Colour: Bastien Lepage by Fr. Crastre February 8, 2017, 8pm, at The Tank, NYC Featuring: Nick Balaban (Pianist extraordinaire) Raquel Cion ( Me & Mr. Jones: My Intimate Relationship with David Bowie) Katie Fricas (The Guardian / Fashionique) Greg Kotis (“Urinetown: The Musical”) Susan Hwang (The Bushwick Book Club / Lusterlit) Charlie Nieland (Lusterlit) Reverend Jen Miller (Reverend Jen’s Anti-Slam) Jason Wachtelhausen (Monologist extraordinaire) Hosted by Ayun Halliday (No Touch Monkey! / Queen of the Apes) Bring a blank shirt, pillowcase, or bag for LIVE STENCIL FUN. Make your own free Necromancers souvenir! Read Masterpieces in Colour: Bastien-Lepage for free online Thursday, February 8, 8pm / 312 West 36th Street / First Floor / New York, NY 10018 ————————————————————————————————— Where I’m Coming From (Part 1) At The Comics Journal, Austin English continues a strong run of posts. Mini-comics, even the “classic” ones, often disappear. Some of the most beautiful ones are never reprinted. Many artists choose not to have their earliest work collected, seeing the flaws ever so clearly, while the reader from the past holds the work close to the heart, aware of all the undeniable beautiful moments it also so obviously contains. Those private moments have shaped so many readers who went on to make mini-comics (or regular comics) of their own. The works disappear, remaining only in the hearts and minds of a happy few, but their essence (whether aesthetic, political, formal, etc.) live on as new shapes in new works of art. ————————————————————————————————— Fukushima Devil Fish Launch Event: The Art of Gekiga with Ryan Holmberg ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 2-6-2018 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 2-6-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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