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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in EssaysTagged captain america, Jack Kirby

Bill Boichel

Posted on July 16, 2016May 15, 2019

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Sally IngrahamSeptember 27, 2017NewsSam Ombiri takes a look at the anthology Warmer, and Sally brings a CXC events update and other comics and news. ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: When I was at SPX I bought a copy of Warmer from Madeleine Witt and Andrew White. A Lot of the time whenever I pick up an anthology, the anthology seems to be having an identity crisis. It is really trying to convince me that it’s something it’s not, as if the anthology is insecure about the area it occupies. If not insecure, then it’s probably going to be insular. This insecurity I project onto the anthologies I pick up comes from the extreme fear of mediocrity that most anthologies suffer from. Whenever someone is really desperate to surpass this mediocrity, they don’t have to go too far to do so. This desperation and insecurity really turns me off as the reader, and I’d rather just read the comics without considering them in an anthology altogether. My first and lasting impression of Warmer was that it didn’t suffer from any of that! “Complacency” is the last word I’d use to describe the anthology – especially with the subject matter being tackled (climate change). It doesn’t feel like it’s “tackling an issue” as much as remaining in this space where we’re humans who are experiencing this deterioration in ourselves. Meanwhile, so is the planet, and this can be seen in things we do that are altogether unrelated to what we might do to perpetuate the pollution of the environment. There’s no complacency in the book, just people trying to fight against that urge to be complacent both in their art and in their lives. Whenever something is contrived, which is rare in the book, it doesn’t work against the anthology because the following strip will have a good response to it. This shows the strength in numbers that can come out of an anthology, beyond having an easy way to access a variety of work – the strip before and after can strengthen the work. Some of these comics I wouldn’t read or engage with properly, if I wasn’t reading them in Warmer. For example, the first two strips are immensely enticing. They’re followed by this strip that seems out of place. The author of this strip (William Cardini) isn’t in any rush to make a connection between the style being utilized and the words being utilized. I just found myself, as a reader, really wanting that connection. The strip also confused me tonally because of this whole vibe I had been set up for from the first and second strip (which are by Caitlin Skaalrud and Tor Brant respectively). The second strip had a more familiar looking 4 panel structure that suggested a punchline would be waiting for me at the fourth panel, but instead it beautifully invoke a longing for things to set right. Much like the first strip. Then on the third strip I get this goofy looking face, seemingly drawn by someone who I mistakenly imagine to be a gag cartoonist. I mistakenly read the tongue sticking out of the character drawn as a character mocking me for having this other expectation. Then I read more and discovered that while doing poetry comics, one can feel the inclination to jump into expression sooner than warranted, but it’s not the case at all with this book. The third strip was actually fantastic and it speaks to both the contributors of this anthology and the curation of Madeleine and Andrew. In this whole book, the images and words further each other really well, and it’s wonderfully curated to accommodate the reader in the best way from beginning to the end. – Sam Ombiri Keep an eye out for this anthology in the next few weeks – Andrew and Madeleine are fulfilling the Kickstarter and sold out of the copies they brought to SPX a few weeks ago! However, Andrew says Warmer will be for sale online asap – so stay tuned. ————————————————————————————————— Sally here! Comics Workbook and Connor Willumsen are coming to Cartoon Crossroads Columbus this weekend (Sept. 28-Oct. 1st)! Workshops with Connor will be almost every hour on Saturday and Sunday. “The educational workshops hosted by Pittsburgh’s Comics Workbook focus on visual theory applied in practical fashion to any kind of comics making a cartoonist can imagine and can benefit any way a student of the form might wish to improve. This year’s special host is the remarkable visual talent Connor Willumsen, with guest-star teachers dropping in and out throughout the weekend. Walk-ins welcome.” Full schedule can be found HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Just had to share the above drawing, made by Connor Willumsen during his weeklong stay in Pittsburgh between SPX and touring for Koyama Press, and his upcoming stint at CXC. For the baseball fans out there. Check out Connor’s new book from Koyama Press – the incredible Anti-Gone, which you can get a copy of HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Jacob Khepler, “the publisher of Mothers News“, has started a new blog. So far he’s written about the zine shown above by Edie Fake, Family Circus, and books by Pushkin and Rimboud – something for everyone! Check out 100% Publishing HERE and be sure to bookmark it so you can keep up with one of the finest writers around. ————————————————————————————————— The fall semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers starts October 1st 2017. 8 weeks of comics instruction that will bang your practice into shape – 500 bux. Full details about the course and how to apply can be found HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Frank Santoro made a comic book about his parents and now he needs help making a handbound copy of the book for each of them. It’s a good story. Check out the Indiegogo campaign HERE – or if you want to contribute via PayPal, look at the campaign HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 9-28-2017 – by Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]

Sally IngrahamMarch 18, 2016NewsIt was a week for brilliant interviews, with Annie Mok talking to Michael DeForge, and the Inkstuds radio show with Gilbert Hernandez. Exciting new books came out this week, and we came across an important list of female Brazilian cartoonists that you’re going to want to investigate. Here we go! ————————————————————————————————— Let’s dive right into the interview with Michael, which came to us via The Comics Journal. Annie Mok and Michael DeForge begin by talking a bit about his new book, Big Kids, which came out February 23rd 2016 from Drawn + Quarterly. “DEFORGE: I’d sort of been circling adolescence for awhile in my stories, and I guess this is the one where I’m writing about it most directly, and the allegory is like very clear… It’s a time when people are most aware of the edges of the world. Not maybe able to see them yet, but aware they’re there. For me, things stop seeming limitless—which is maybe not how—I know you’re supposed to feel invincible and boundless as a teenager, but for me, that’s when I was aware of limits everywhere. But not really sure what all of them looked like, or the shape of all of it, or how to best escape them. That to me was what Big Kids was about, seeing a little bit more of the edges of things. And sometimes what seems like a radical shift in perception ends up not being very in the end.” From there, Annie leads the conversation to touch on memory, the artistic community a cartoonist builds for themselves or stumble into, and the cliché (but necessity) of comics as therapy. They also mention the musical puppet show that Michael is working on slowly but surely, and Annie’s reaction perfectly sums up my feelings about that – “Oh my god! Aaah, so happy!” Read the whole spectacular interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Oliver East just published a new book – Take Me Back to Manchester. It’s the story of an epic walk that took place in 1872, when an elephant and his trainer trekked the 220 miles between Edinburgh and Manchester. Why? You’ll have to check out the comic. As much as it sounds delightful, the story of how it came about is equally lovely. Oliver East is the “walking cartoonist”. Before creating Take Me Back to Manchester, he followed the route of his heroes on foot across Scotland and England, walking over 20 miles a day for 10 days. In this short documentary (below) made by Simon Sylvester and Dom Bush, Oliver walks through some wonderful parts of the world, and talks about his struggles with dyslexia, how he didn’t even start drawing until he was 26, and what it was like to compose a comic in motion with the ghost of an elephant at his side. Check it out. ————————————————————————————————— The new mini kuš! #38-41 are out, which means spring is pretty much here. “The creators of the newest minis are Ingrīda Pičukāne, Tara Booth, Hanneriina Moisseinen and Aisha Franz. The comics vary from an incredibly sad war story to a super fun and wild adventure of a young woman, a broad range of stories both fictional and non-fiction and drawn in different styles both digital and hand-drawn! A great bunch of comics for new discoveries!” More details HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The latest Inkstuds interview is particularly riveting. How could it be otherwise, with the likes of Gilbert Hernandez behind the microphone?! You’re not going to want to miss this. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/249959700″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] Robin McConnell always does his research, which makes for detailed conversations that really illuminate the life and work of the people he interviews. Gilbert Hernandez can tell a story out loud just as well as he can on paper, and between the stories are loads of interesting tidbits and comments on the comics scene he helped craft from the bottom up. Great stuff. (I especially liked when he compared superheroes to screwdrivers…!) Set aside some time to listen to the whole thing, because this guy is one of the reasons we’re all making comics today. ————————————————————————————————— I have a special guest today, here with a brief bit of Brazilian comics news for you. Anna Mancini (pictured above in her studio) recently shared with me a list of some of her favorite Brazilian cartoonists – folks like Julia Balthazar and Amanda Paschoal (see pic below) – and soon she will be providing a detailed scene report for Comics Workbook. For the moment though, she’s got something else to share. Anna here, reporting: “Aline Lemos has put together a collaborative list of *all* Brazilian women comics artists – from young students to established pros. Here’s the link if you’d like to check it out – https://goo.gl/AYyde5 Aline Lemos created it aiming to bring more visibility to female cartoonists in our country, since there’s a widespread dismissal of our presence and relevance to the scene. As I have noticed from following American blogs and artists, this situation is not exclusive to our experience in Brazil – I have that recent piece by Kim O’Connor in mind, having the situations she described ring a little too familiar with the attitude of many Brazilian male cartoonists.” Thanks Anna! Check out the list she mentions, and discover the legion of women in comics in Brazil! ————————————————————————————————— That’s my Friday news for you. Have a terrific weekend and meet us back here on Monday for the latest and greatest in comics news! – Sally Share this page: [...]

Aaron CockleOctober 2, 2018NewsThurber + Tomine; Hairy Who; Drawing Center; Adversarial Elephant Networks ————————————————————————————————— ADRIAN TOMINE: Comics Work (2004-2014) October 4 – November 11, 2018 ADAM BAUMGOLD FINE ART 104 E. 81st Street, NYC ————————————————————————————————— Hairy Who? 1966-1969 The Art Institute of Chicago Through January 6, 2019 Although the Hairy Who chose to exhibit together, they were six individuals with their own personal, chiefly figurative vocabularies. They each radically manipulated source material collected from everyday life—including advertisements, comics, posters, and sales catalogs—with technical virtuosity. Their sense of humor embraced idiosyncrasy and spontaneity with wordplay, puns, and inside jokes that often belied the transgressiveness of their subject matter. Ambiguous, provocative, but also strategic, their work transmitted progressive ideas that challenged prevailing notions of gender and sexuality, social mores and standards of beauty, and nostalgia and obsolescence. ————————————————————————————————— Opening Reception: Thursday, October 11, 6–8pm The Drawing Center | 35 Wooster Street For Opacity: Elijah Burgher, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Nathaniel Mary Quinn; Jennifer Wynne Reeves: All Right for Now; a… is alter(ed): Open Sessions 12 a… is alter(ed): Open Sessions 12 explores the imaginative determination of “drawing” and “line” by relating it to a development process, social artifacts, psychological trace, and prosthetic memory—journals, maps, technology, and calendars. The poetics of flow between known and unknown is a feedback murmur that leads to clarity when engaging the object. a..is alter(ed) features Joeun Aatchim, Kenseth Armstead, Ludovica Carbotta, Billy and Steven Dufala, LaMont Hamilton, and Ester Partegàs. Organized Rosario Güiraldes and and Lisa Sigal, Open Sessions Curators, together with participating artists. ————————————————————————————————— Detecting an elephant in a room. Via Amir Rosenfeld, Richard Zemel, and John K. Tsotsos We showcase a family of common failures of state-of-the art object detectors. These are obtained by replacing image sub-regions by another sub-image that contains a trained object. We call this “object transplanting”. Modifying an image in this manner is shown to have a non-local impact on object detection. Slight changes in object position can affect its identity according to an object detector as well as that of other objects in the image. We provide some analysis and suggest possible reasons for the reported phenomena. 10-02-2018 – by Niall Breen Share this page: [...]

Sally IngrahamJuly 5, 2018NewsSally Ingraham here with news and comics from Ulli Lust, Hannah Berry, Joana Mosi, and more! ————————————————————————————————— Ulli Lust has an exhibition at Cartoonmuseum Basel, June 30-Oct. 28th 2018. She composed a photo report about the show HERE, for those of us likely to miss it. There is also an article about the retrospective on Aargauer Zeitung, which is a passionate testimony to the effect Ulli Lust and her work has on people. It begins (excuse the rocky translation out of German by Google translate…!): “None draws as furiously as the Viennese Ulli Lust – and no one shows them as affectionately as the Cartoonmuseum Basel. The greeting in the Cartoonmuseum is clear: The painted face of Ulli Lust on the glass pane at the entrance to the exhibition, hair wild, look adventurous. Behind this glass front, so much is now clear, hides an artist who prefers to fall mercilessly, than cautiously gropes. Rather than miss a pretty label. Behind this glass front is Ulli Lust and she does not mean for no reason.“ Decipher the rest HERE – or if you speak German, I hope you enjoy this article. ———————————————————————————————— There is an interesting and quite funny interview with Hannah Berry on Comics Grid about how her comics relate to her interest in law, and vice versa. She is a British cartoonist and the creator of Detectives Britten and Brülightly, among other works. Berry’s work is dark, and serious, and very British (they talk about this in the interview) but as you might expect, she mixes in the right balance of humor. “Thomas Giddens: Just thinking a bit more about the kind of ways you engage with particular issues. Is humour important? It seems like there’s some moments of your work that are quite amusing. In Britten and Brülightly for instance, it’s very dour, it’s very sombre, it’s very serious, and then there’s a talking teabag. Hannah Berry: Yes, yes, I do try to sneak the odd little joke in here and there, because I think you can reach people; there’s something about humour that really connects people. I think it’s a way of really getting onto a person’s wavelength. I mean, maybe some of my humour falls flat—as much as I’d love to be, I’m not looking over everyone’s shoulder as they read my books. Someday, hopefully, with the internet, but who knows. But I do think there’s something with humour that really helps you connect with the reader. It’s a similar thing to horror, I suppose. There’s sort of a build-up and you’re trying to get a very distinct reaction from a person, and I think I can do that. I do a weekly cartoon strip for the New Statesman which is again not really political. I tweet them every week or thereabouts, and the ones I think are the absolute successes, the ones that will probably win me some kind of future prize, they’re the ones that do alright, you know? They’re okay. But the ones that I sort of do in a hurry and I think are less good, they’re the ones that do really well. So maybe my sense of humour is not what everybody else’s is, or maybe I just can’t understand Twitter, I don’t know; maybe I’m doing something a little bit awry, perhaps. But I do think it’s an important factor, yes, and also because, you know, it’s nice to read a funny book every now and then.“ Read the whole interview HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Check out work by Joana Mosi, a Portugese cartoonist and teacher based in Lisbon. Above is part of a short comic that I enjoyed – see the rest HERE. Her most recent book is Spineless Cactus (Nem Todos os Cactos têm Picos) which you can see more of HERE – and read a review about HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Weekend Snacks Nicole Hollander is the guest on Episode 279 of RiYL – check it out HERE. Publishers Weekly talks to Lisa Hanawalt about her upcoming comic Coyote Doggirl (Drawn & Quarterly, Aug. 2018) and all her “weird little horses” – HERE. The Comics Alternative podcast digs into the entire spring catalog from Koyama Press – including new comics by Jessica Campbell and Fiona Smyth. Listen to Episode 285 HERE. The Portland Mercury has a review of Geneviève Castrée‘s last book – A Bubble – published two years after her death, and made for Castrée’s daughter. Frank Young reviews Cathy Malkasian‘s Eartha for The Comics Journal – HERE. Paste Magazine sits down with Alisa Kwitney, the writer behind Mystik U. Read the interview HERE. Mariko Tamaki is the latest guest on Inkstuds – listen HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-6-2018 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

HarrisonJuly 21, 2016NewsDaily News with Harrison returns with drones, thoughts about war, dark animation, and ends with a question. ————————————————————————————————— Ride or Die “Jasper. We’re picking up a lot of drone noise. I think there’s a watch coming.” Sam Alden‘s Test of Loyalty at Hazlitt. Here ————————————————————————————————— Shadow and Form Jonathan Djob Nkondo’s Dark Day is a conflation of everything I want from contemporary animation; moody, inventive, stark, humorous, surreal, frightening, and impeccably illustrated. Pts. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. ————————————————————————————————— Before ” “NOddIN” is a collective launched by filmmakers and artists in the wake of the 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake and related Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. With the cooperation of a large number of Japanese animation artists, we spearheaded this self-production with the aim to animate the words of the book round-robin style, and our collaborative project was begun. After over a year of production including the conception period, we completed our short film.” – The NOddIN team, October 2, 2015 More about the film project here. More about the collective NOddIN here. ————————————————————————————————— Visions of Heroes Friend of Comics Workbook Chris Visions has a collection of fun drawing videos shot by Richmond photographer/videographer Tyler Q. Tucker on his site. Here. ————————————————————————————————— Why? Share this page: [...]

Bill Boichel on Captain America

Posted on July 16, 2016May 15, 2019 by Bill Boichel

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Posted in EssaysTagged captain america, Jack Kirby

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in EssaysTagged captain america, Jack Kirby

Bill Boichel

Posted on July 16, 2016May 15, 2019

Search for:

Explore

Juan FernándezFebruary 22, 2016NewsLet’s start off right with a look at Ron Wimberley’s latest offerings! He’s published his 12 powerful illustrations of black luminaries. He did 12 last year in February. He did 12 this year. You can see the full set in detail over here. For snippets of the inking process, hop on over to Ron’s Instagram. He’s also got the whole behind the scenes action over at his Patreon. Very much worth checking out if you’ve been looking to step up your inking game. I dropped three a week. Here are most of them. Original inks and zip are for sale, $350 a piece. DM me with inquiries (All but Zadie Smith are available as of this posting) – Ron Ever been to Prague? Yeah, me neither! But with Sophia Foster-Dimino‘s most recent travel diary I now know a good deal of what I should check out should I ever have the good fortune to go. Art, history and day drinking with KJ Martinet. She’s shared her pages via twitter as she completed them and it seems some were made while abroad and others upon returning. I love Sophia’s way of plugging in completed comics sequences, illustrations and doodles and filling the text around them. Really refreshing and inspiring assemblage process. One for the utility belt, kids. For now, take a peek on her travels! I’m in Prague for a week with @kjmartinet, gonna try to document it as much as possible, travel tips appreciated ✨ pic.twitter.com/MRXJR5AvFn — Sophia Foster-Dimino (@hellophia) February 10, 2016 Thursday part one! pic.twitter.com/icN0wYZdxl — Sophia Foster-Dimino (@hellophia) February 12, 2016 Thursday part two ✌ pic.twitter.com/0iXycZ00TW — Sophia Foster-Dimino (@hellophia) February 13, 2016 Saturday part two and Sunday part one ? pic.twitter.com/wDjSSbqcri — Sophia Foster-Dimino (@hellophia) February 16, 2016 aaand Tuesday part two and then we went home and now I’m home. ? pic.twitter.com/Ue5eD63lFh — Sophia Foster-Dimino (@hellophia) February 21, 2016 Isabel Ryan‘s got some floaty, dreamy, goofy cartooning going on over at Rookie Mag in her comic Magic 8 Ball. Should you go over and read Isabel’s latest *shake shake shake* Definitely . Zainab Akhtar‘s been thinking about Jane Mai‘s See You Next Tuesday. It’s time you did too. She’s got a really interesting review of this whirlwind of comics by Mai. Really puts Mai’s work in context for greater appreciation. Big ups to Koyama Press for making this showcase of Mai’s skills possible. While the relative ‘democracy’ of the internet has allowed people to bypass instituionalised gatekeeping to some degree, the transition of culture from ‘in real life’ to online remains the same (if not worse in that it facilitates rampant, unchecked abuse). Mai is one of many contemporary artists who have built followings after publishing work online, a feat that often requires a specific level of engagement and giving of oneself in order for it to be successful. The nature of that interaction can feel more direct and personal to the audience, fostering (with regard to female creatives, especially) entitlement and attempted ownership. There’s a sense of people playing a part in your persona, a ‘we made you’ mentality; a collective Frankenstein-ing. – Zainab Blaise Larmee joined Robin over at Inkstuds to talk about some of the new work he has been involved with from 2d Cloud. Most recently, Blaise edited the Mirror Mirror anthology which is part of 2d Cloud’s current Kickstarter efforts. Most awkward inkstuds ever. Highly recommended. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/248252491″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] Print wizards Justine and Jordan Hurder over at Chance Press have announced a gorgeous new Kim Deitch print for ya. Really cool story behing this one: There’s another unique thing about this print: it’s not based on original artwork. Usually with fine art printing, the goal is to reproduce an original piece of work as faithfully as possible. Here, the original black and white artwork was sold long ago, the color was done in Photoshop, and the only scan was on a disc that didn’t work anymore. In fact, the only surviving record of the artwork was a yellowing page from an early-90s issue of the LA Weekly. After an extensive color correction process, I was able to restore it and include it in the 2014 publication of ‘A Deitch Miscellany.’ For this print, I tweaked some more color, made the blacks a little deeper and more consistent, pulled out some of the oversaturation, and came up with something I’m really happy with. It definitely doesn’t look like a normal print made from a modern high-res scan, but that’s part of the charm. Preorder a copy now over at Chance Press. Last but not least, Paper Jam 5 took place this past weekend. Seemed like it was a buzzing hive of color and camraderie in NYC. A party for sharing that deep, deep zine love. Photos are trickling in from attendees and exhibitors. You’re going to want to follow the paperjam tumblr to stay abreast with photos, interviews and the like that happened during the happening. More news to come! Juan Fernandez, over and out. Share this page: [...]

Sally IngrahamApril 10, 2017NewsA report from PIX! plus a few other comics happenings to start your week. ————————————————————————————————— Sally here, still riding the wave of the Pittsburgh Indy Comix Expo – I’m writing this after midnight at the Comics Workbook Rowhouse, where Connor Willumsen is holding court with some of the CW crew, and Anya Davidson and Lale Westvind are on their way over to close out the night. The comics community in Pittsburgh just keeps on getting stronger. This year PIX took place right in the triangle of downtown. The expo at the August Wilson Center was well attended, the ToonSeum was packed out the night before for the opening of Ed Piskor’s “Hermetically Sealed” art show and then throughout the day on Sunday as programs and panels took place there. Comics Workbook students and instructors led workshops around the corner at the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council building for local kids and adults alike, and hosted a talk by Carol Tyler, and a conversation with Connor Willumsen and Lale Westvind. It was warm and sunny where the three rivers of Pittsburgh meet, and the comics energy managed to lure away, or at least detour, some of the anime characters attending a nearby convention, as well as a few baseball fans from the Pirates game! Shown above from left to right, top to bottom…Connor Willumsen sewing a new comic together at his table; the “Do-be-do” workshop for kids led by Juan Fernandez; a Pittsburgh Comics Salon workshop; in front of the August Wilson Center; Lale Westvind in conversation; Bill Boichel purchasing an original art page from Anya Davidson’s Lovers In the Garden, with Lane Milburn and Lale Westvind looking on; Carol Tyler talking comics-making; Connor Willumsen doing the same; Carol Tyler’s workshop. Just a small sampling of what was going on and a tiny glimpse of who was there – more to come! ————————————————————————————————— Elsewhere New in the Diaz Archive – photos from Michael DeForge‘s Sticks Angelica tour, thanks to Chris Anthony Diaz! 11 O’Clock Comics has a great interview with Jim Rugg – check it out HERE. Street Angel: After School Kung Fu Special will be released April 26th 2017! Sequential State reviews Lale Westvind‘s Yazar & Arkadaş – HERE. Seth has a new show at the Richmond Art Gallery – April 9, 2017 – June 25, 2017 – which combines his comics with the music of Mark Haney. Details HERE. Pictures of Seth and the show can be found HERE. The Comics Beat has notes on a conversation between Frank Miller and Klaus Janson (remembering Will Eisner) which took place last week at the SVA Theater. There is a lengthy interview with Vanessa Davis over on The Comics Journal – check it out. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 4-10-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 4-9-2017 & 4-10-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-10-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Aaron CockleJuly 4, 2017NewsAaron Cockle here today with Jackie Kirby at the Rowhouse Residency; Leonara Carrington; Babel Unbound; some dispatches from the CBLDF; Florine Stettheimer; William Blake ————————————————————————————————— Jackie Kirby writes about their Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency this past June here on the site. A poet and a comics maker, they really dug deep into their practice while they were here and had a lot to share and teach Frank and Sally and the Pittsburgh comics community in their turn. “My conversations with Frank were thoughtful, engaging, and exciting. Among the most interesting aspects of our discussions was comparing analogies of music and poetry to comics. I know very little when it comes to music. Half-kidding – it’s one of the few popular art forms I’m not a snob about, and I’ve tried to keep it like that. Frank, on the other hand, is a total music nerd. I came into his house for espresso one afternoon and he presented me with a piece of scrap paper on which he had written “2/3 ¾ rectangle riff seen from a poet’s pov in relation to ‘meter’ / and relation to ‘the Breath’ or Dylan’s ‘long line of spit.’ ” Frank and I chatted for hours regarding this. He would riff for fifteen minutes or so about music and I would respond with a riff on poetics. Forty five minutes could go by without comics being explicitly mentioned once, but the composition and formal techniques of comics practice underlined every moment. When I brought this up, Frank brushed it off, saying “Of course we could talk about how Robert Crumb is this or that but we both know that.” What’s interesting is what we can learn from each other.” Read more of Jackie’s thoughts HERE. You can read more Rowhouse Residency Reports HERE – and learn more about the Residency program HERE or email santoroschoolATgmail for more info. ————————————————————————————————— ‘Even though you won’t believe me / my story is beautiful’ At Hyperallergic, Elisa Wouk Almino looks at some books by Leonara Carrington: In her memoir and fiction — and, in retrospect, her visual art as well — Carrington strives to understand people’s “systems;” to peer into them and visualize all their beautiful or ugly selves, often through animal incarnations, as in fables. Evil characters have hair “like black vipers” or “a little bird’s laugh,” and good ones have skin that glints like stars. In Pamela Robertson-Pearce’s 2000 film about women Surrealist artists, Gifted Beauty, Carrington advises, “We have to listen to the soul … and to know when it’s a soul. … Each soul has a daemon.” It seems to me that both her writing and visual art takes up this very exercise — a kind of study of the human soul. ————————————————————————————————— Babel Unbound Closing July 8 at the CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery in Cork, Ireland, Babel Unbound, by Leslie Mutchler and Jason Urban. Referencing a series of historical works intertwined with the function and performance of the library, such as Aby Warburg’s Atlas Mnemosyne, Borges’ The Library of Babel, and Walter Benjamin’s Unpacking my Library, the artists contemplate the library of today- one filtered through reproducibility, access to information and an ever-evolving understanding of curation, aesthetics and the archive. The library is a fertile place for exploration, a place that most often prioritizes use over display whereas the gallery is a site that prioritizes display over functionality. Babel Unbound attempts to do both; and while doing so slowly becomes aware of itself, as illegible, complicated, incomplete… ————————————————————————————————— At the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund A couple of recent posts of note from Maren Williams at the CBLDF: Cartoonists Under Threat Worldwide Two years after the attack on Charlie Hebdo staff, the world’s free expression focus has largely shifted away from cartoonists. That certainly does not mean the danger has disappeared, however, as a recent 30-page report from the French nonprofit Cartooning for Peace/Dessins Pour la Paix shows. The report brings together profiles of cartoonists under threat and background information on the free speech situation in the countries where they work — or from which they’ve been forced to flee. New TSA Rules May Require Books to be Scanned Separately Air travel in the U.S. may be about to get a bit worse for the literate, as the Transportation Security Administration is reportedly testing a new requirement for passengers to remove books and other paper items from their carry-on luggage during security screening. While the TSA says the proposed new policy arises only from scanning machines’ limitations in discerning explosives from other contents of packed bags, there is no doubt that privacy concerns can and will arise.Testing of the new procedures quietly began last month at a handful of small airports including Colorado Springs, Boise, and Lubbock. Since that time, according to the Wall Street Journal, passengers at larger airports have also encountered new rules on paper goods but those rules may “change line by line, airport by airport.” ————————————————————————————————— ‘You might say she took the red, yellow and blue that Mondrian was just discovering and added purple, orange, pink and black.’ Roberta Smith at the New York Times reviews the Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry show: The first Stettheimer cult was the one she painted. After a disappointing — and premature — solo show at Knoedler in 1916, she exhibited most frequently at her private salons. The women in her scenes were almost always her mother and sisters. The men were for the most part movers and shakers of the small New York art world, dandies, if not gay, who frequented the salon and admired Stettheimer. ————————————————————————————————— William Blake and the Age of Aquarius September 23, 2017 – March 11, 2018 Block Museum of Art Northwestern University William Blake and the Age of Aquarius will consider parallels between Blake’s time and mid-twentieth-century America, touching on such issues as political repression, social transformation, and struggles for civil rights. Blake’s protests against the conventions of his day were inspirational for many young Americans disillusioned by perceived cultural tendencies of social uniformity, materialism and consumerism, racial and gender discrimination, and environmental degradation. This generation sought in Blake a model of independence, imagination, and resistance to authority. The exhibition will feature American artists for whom Blake was an important inspiration and will include more than 130 paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, films, and posters, as well as original Blake prints and illuminated books from collections throughout the United States. ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 7-4-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-4-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 7-4-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Sally IngrahamMay 4, 2017NewsSam Ombiri shares thoughts on Sammy Harkham’s Crickets #6 – plus other comics-related news! ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: What a fantastic issue of Sammy Harkham’s Crickets we got (#6)! I have to begin with how we got wonderful drawings from Harkham. Of course there are many comics drawn this way and many not, and I really don’t think about these differences so much, unless I’ve heard the author specifically bringing up the motivations for drawing the way they do. With Harkham’s drawings feeling somewhat rigid, it then becomes hard to penetrate the abstractions being offered – more so because they seem unlikely with this type of drawing. Actually it is really great that they aren’t so obvious to discern, even after “being discovered”, which is a testament to their strength. Harkham says (in Comic Book Decalogue Episode #5, 2015), “The kind of storytelling I’m interested in is making things really stacked and dense so that one thing is going on with dialogue, one thing’s going on visually, and one thing’s going on in the background.” He adds, laughing, “Just to push the anxiety level.” Abstractions are being offered to you. I think this is what is referred to by Harkham as dematerialization of drama; which I believe was first said by William Oldham in conjunction to Harkham’s work. Harkham says, regarding Somersaulting (which appears in his collected stories Everything Together, PictureBox 2012), “Any sort of plops is sort of the creative counterweight for the more quiet, calmer, open, sort of more contemplative sequences to still make it a comic.” – Comic Book Decalogue Episode #5 I think Harkham is still applying that principle to Blood of the Virgin (Crickets #6), but in a different way, thankfully. He’s advancing this new trick he found. What I really like is that Harkham didn’t just want to deal with another medium by making comics. He looks at comics like it’s the best medium, and the things that excite him about other mediums only furthers his enthusiasm for the comics medium. If I may make a contrived comparison, and this comparison isn’t completely parallel to Harkham, Leos Carax is a director who maybe wants to be a musician, so as a result his movies have scenes like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80xOJ2I2oVc Leos Carax says his first movie was called Boy Meets Girl, but all his of movies can be called “boy meets girl” and it’s often the same movie, featuring one guy in love with two women, with the exception of Holy Motors. Likewise, Sammy says his stories are all about denial (a similar denial is exemplified by Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer!) Harkham said in the past that he doesn’t want things to be expressive and moments to hold value over others. I think Harkham must see something similar in Brian Chippendale’s Ninja, where every panel has the same intensity. Or it’s like how Robert Bresson says he wants his actors to be like a virtuoso in portraying their afflictions. Of course other directors do this too – I only bring up Bresson because for me he has exhibited the most success with this mode of approaching expressiveness – in the way that I think Harkham is talking about. Harkham once said that he has a distaste for when sadness is conveyed just by showing a character crying. Harkham’s connection between comics and film has more to do with Emir Kusturica, but I’m going to speak more about intention and methods. Recently, someone brought up the duck motif – they told me they’re excited to see what Harkham will do with it. Personally I think we already saw. It has happened, it’s already an active force in the story. The ambient quality of the duck is what we’ll get. I hesitate to call it a symbol. I feel personally that if I attempt to say what it is, I’ll sully it. I was thinking a lot about how Andrei Tarkovsky said, “Bresson attempts in his films not to be symbolic; he tries to create a form as inexhaustible as nature, life itself. Of course this doesn’t always work. In fact, there are episodes in his films that are extremely symbolic and, therefore, limited – symbolic and not poetic.” (from an interview with Tarkovsky on A Bittersweet Life.) Tarkovsky then continues to say, “An obvious but banal example of this is the rabbit hunt in Mouchette.” I feel like if I rewatch Mouchette, Tarkovsky has officially ruined the scene for me, but you know, I’m only saying that as a joke, as Tarkovsky and Bresson kind of have this whole detached philosophy to the perception of their work. Harkham’s primary concern seems to be to entertain – it’s just the way that symbol works that’s similar. When the duck motif was brought to my attention it felt somewhat ruined. Now, with what Tarkovsky said in relation to Bresson’s rabbit scene, Bresson’s intentions were rather different for this scene – but there’s still something of a consensus. Tarkovsky refers to this as a moral influence between artists, without which art cannot exist. Harkham said, regarding Somersaulting and I’d imagine his work even now, “I realize that when you are directly influenced by someone, it’s not that you want to see something and copy it, it’s that you see someone, it’s a shortcut for a place you wanna go, so I knew the tone for that story and seeing Hopper’s work, in the flesh, just got me that much closer as a way to get there. Realizing that composition and a certain kind of composed quality, really measured quality, could go a long way towards that. So I think the story if I had never seen that show, the story would’ve probably resembled that in a lot of ways, but I probably would’ve taken more of a windy path to get there.“ Tarkovsky also said this one thing which is very similar to what Harkham said: “Just like everybody else who strives for simplicity and depth, I can’t help but identify with what he has achieved in this field. But on the other hand, even if Bresson would never have existed, we would have eventually come across this notion of a lapidary style, simplicity and depth.” It’s a very similar idea in my mind, that these artists with different goals, who operate on different principles, can end up at the same place with the same goals. Or it can even be like Krzysztof Kieslowski says – “People in different places and for different reasons think of the same thing I tried to talk about – things that connect people. I think this feeling, this music, all these notes already exist, scattered somewhere, waiting for the person who’ll put them in order. The fact that two different people at different times, in different places, from different social strata, can put these notes together in the same way seems to be a sign of what connects people.” (from Cinema Lesson in Blue) In The Blood of the Virgin, the story’s progression isn’t hindered by this other unnamed will to cause Seymour more afflictions slowly revealing itself. Seymour’s running out of places to go. We know he’ll end up face down just like it shows in the cover – the way it all turns out is worse than what I imagined. Especially for how believable it is. Harkham says, “I don’t really strive for realism, but more for specificity.” The order of the tragedy isn’t what’s being relied on really, and it’s not the order that makes it compelling, but it does leave everything grounded. Harkham says that the way he sees it is, “Plot is just a coat hanger to hang ideas and jokes and emotions on to.” The moment where Joy just up and says movies are cheesy – in this moment when Seymour is trying really hard to reach the destination of this major quest he’s been on – has to join the ranks of that which he greatly reveres as important. As a reader at that point, I hadn’t really realized how much of his vision is being denied to him – it had already started. All I could think was “Uh-oh”. It’s these small micro losses that tell you clearly that everything’s coming apart. For some reason I thought that Seymour’s life would maybe get better, despite his struggles. Harkham says, “I realized that what he (Edward Hopper) was doing with his paintings was something that I was really interested in – with a lot of the architectural drawings, and the interior a certain tone that you get out of the everyday objects and everyday spaces, trying to find the divine or the ambiguous – and he kind of does that so well, so it’s a visual touch point for that story I was working on, and I saw the show and there are a couple of exact echoes of the paintings in that story.“ Leos Carax compares cinema unfavorably to dreams, as in dreams you need to invent the way the way people move. Harkham says, “Cartooning is knowing how to use the sickeningly stupid blunt emotion of each panel and build something emotionally complex of it.“ Like designing someone’s car to signify what kind of person it is that drives it, or how Harkham says he likes how in The Swimmer, “It makes sense that the whole time the main character is in his swimsuit.” That the imagery is in complete conjunction with what’s going on with the story, and for one reason or another that’s what he’s aiming for. That the work dictates what’s gonna be in it. “What I liked about comics as a teenager is the same thing I liked about punk rock and what I liked about gory horror movies: It just felt completely trashy and disgusting and stupid. You’d be embarrassed to read a comic on the bus – you still would. But I like that. It’s embracing that surface quality, not trying to make your work look smart at all, and then surprising the reader that this is a little bit richer, more layered, that there’s a lot more going on.” I think what Harkham is saying is similar to how Funny Games lingers on people’s radar as just some fun horror movie to watch – but there’s really a ton of things to unpack there, so then he likes that spot. I’m not so fond of this idea of creating this spectacle of finding a dense story in an underestimated medium. I’m glad that Harkham doesn’t count on this spectacle, as it feels like a cheap trick. I feel similarly about something that Austin English said about how The Disgusting Room was made – he has in his mind come up with this idea that people who’ll read The Disgusting Room will think it’s a newspaper or something, but then be surprised with this imaginative comic (which it is). After hearing that, however, whatever enjoyment I got out of The Disgusting Room went up in flames, because what about the rest of us, where we already know how great comics can be? Or even to an extent I hear Patrick Kyle say he wants to make comics that can only be made as a comic – does that enhance the work being made though? There’s a great essay by Connor Willumsen at the end of this issue of Crickets that talks about these things better than I can, about how what the soundtrack of a movie would be, or the sound design, or a prop, is something you think differently, but not too differently from comics. What the soundtrack is, is similar to the way an author can linger on, let’s say, the gestures of a character, and really slowing things down, to the most minuscule degree. It’s more acceptable, as a medium, to do that, so in turn that might be what a recurring element in a movie might otherwise do. I’m thinking of how it may all be about lingering elements within a work. In Holy Motors a segment of this song plays before the character Mr. Oscar assumes a new identity. In some movies the soundtrack is something else entirely though. The best version of this coming to fruition that I can think of is in Blue from the Three Colors Trilogy – both movies kind of end with a musical number, though I have to insist that the song at the end of Blue is more appropriate than Holy Motors‘ within the story. Connor doesn’t hone in on a cut and paste principle – that’s just easily applied – but the way I remember it, if memory serves (it often doesn’t serve me well), he just says that this is a principle that a maker or a reader can think of in conjunction with what the author might be doing that might otherwise remain obscure. – Sam Ombiri (Additional quotes by Sammy Harkham sourced from the article Sammy Harkham: Naturalism and Specificity, and a Los Angeles Times article – Sammy Harkham, a City’s Comics Crusader.) 5-4-2017 – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— Sally here – check out this incredible compilation of stock footage from Marvel and DC studios in the 1970’s – you can watch it below. There are lots of wow-inducing moments, but I especially enjoyed a brief glimpse into the beginning of Trevor Von Eeden‘s career – see him at 17 years of age showing some newly drawn pages to an editor at DC Comics – watch for him at minute 8:44! (via The Comics Journal) ————————————————————————————————— Keep an eye out for The Encyclopedia of Black Comics, coming this September from Fulcrum Publishing and Professor Sheena C. Howard (Eisner-award winning author of Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation). According to her call for writers (which went out last August) she expects the book to include entries on at least “150 Black people in the comics industry who have published significant work in the United States or done notable work in the comics field, being included in the volume (including editors, publishers, illustrators, artists, creators, etc).” You can pre-order the book on Amazon. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 5-4-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-4-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Aaron CockleMay 22, 2017NewsAaron Cockle here today with Roz Chast (and Françoise Mouly); Pan Terzis; Graphic Medicine; Florine Stettheimer; Maggie Umber; Dieter Lumpen ————————————————————————————————— ‘I like taking on complicated, detailed projects, especially if I’m not a hundred-per-cent sure how they’re going to turn out.’ Françoise Mouly looks at the wonderful embroidered piece Roz Chast made for the May 15, 2017 issue of the New Yorker, including an animation of the process that went into making the cover. ————————————————————————————————— ‘Each issue has a secret formula that I have to discover. ‘ Frank Santoro continues his survey of recent developments in Art Comics Risography – this week he talks with Pan Terzis: People want to show up. They want to look at your thing in person, hold it in their hands. They want to talk to others in person about it and look at it at their own pace, without the publisher or distributor knowing how long they spent lingering on a page or whether they got to the end of the book in the same time as 76.3% of other consumers. All of this activity is still happening in the context of capitalist systems of production, supply and demand and distribution, but I think that people who work with this kind of cultural ephemera must know on some level that the real art is what happens in between the object and the viewer, and the consumer of that piece of art and the person they describe it to. It’s inherently a social act, and this can manifest through all stages of the process. People-power is what drives this activity, and just like a blade of grass can slowly destroy a piece of concrete given enough time to push to the surface, I think DIY culture might be the key to breaking out of the mechanistic, algorithm driven nightmare that our tech overlords are driving us towards. ————————————————————————————————— SAVE THE DATE: 2017 Comics & Medicine Conference: Access Points June 15-17, 2017, Seattle Public Library Central Branch ————————————————————————————————— Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry The artist Florine Stettheimer (1871–1944) is an icon of Jazz Age New York. Born to a wealthy Jewish family in Rochester, she studied at the Art Students League in New York City and then in Europe, where she encountered two profound influences: the Symbolist painters and poets and, on the eve of the Great War, the Ballets Russes. Returning to Manhattan, she hosted an elite salon together with her sisters Carrie and Ettie and their mother, Rosetta, attracting many of the leading lights of the artistic vanguard. Her circle included Alfred Stieglitz, Carl Van Vechten, Georgia O’Keeffe, Elie Nadelman, Gaston Lachaise, and many others. Among her intimate friends was Marcel Duchamp. Through over 50 paintings and drawings, a selection of costume and theater designs, photographs and ephemera, as well as critically acclaimed poems, the Jewish Museum will offer a timely reconsideration of this important American artist, revealing Stettheimer’s singular and often satiric vision and significant role in American modern art. The exhibition highlights the artist’s distinctly personal style of painting, Stettheimer’s position amidst New York’s artistic elite and avant-gardes, and her continued influence on artistic practice today. May 5-September 24 at the Jewish Museum, 1109 5th Ave at 92nd St, NYC. ————————————————————————————————— 2dcloud in Toronto Maggie Umber has a nice photo-recap of the TCAF show: Some of my favorite 2dcloud convention moments – talking with Carta’s wife Emily about our shared adoration of Junji Ito and Emily Carroll. @cartamonir letting me read Ghost Call on her phone since my Tumblr app never let me read the end last Halloween. Meeting @tommipg and watching them embroider a beautiful panel, meeting @goodcomicsbykim and being astonished by her energy and exhaustion, her humor and her seriousness. Blaise rearranging the 2dcloud table into a better format that sold more books. Juliacks casual yet persistent (and very successful) sales style and her gorgeous book trailer. I was also very excited to meet @artbl0g Xia Gordon when we did a panel together. 2dcloud is publishing a mini-comic with her soon!!!!!! ————————————————————————————————— ‘To be sure, these are the adventures of a white European wandering through the wreckage of a post-war world.’ Lastly, RM Rhodes looks at The Adventures of Dieter Lumpen, by Jorge Zentner and Ruben Pellejero: Pellejero uses color and a confident line to build on top of a very solid foundation. The real appeal of the series are the settings. The premise is that shortly after the war, a German named Dieter Lumpen gets a job as a chauffeur and the first page of the first story finds him being chased through an Istanbul market by a man with a gun. From there, he travels to the Agean, Haifa, India, Sri Lanka, Paris, Manaus, Tunisia and the Caribbean. The appeal of these destinations is Pellejero’s ability to render them almost like a documentary film maker, matter of fact about amazing sights, which adds verisimilitude. The amount of detail on each page means that every time you return to a page, you notice something new. And the stories are very rereadable. ————————————————————————————————— 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! ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 5-23-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 5-23-2017 – by Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]