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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in ResourcesTagged Al Capp, facial expressions, Harry Haenigsen, Milton Caniff, Rube Goldberg

Juan Fernández

Posted on January 1, 2016May 21, 2019

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Aaron CockleAugust 28, 2017NewsAaron Cockle here today with Mitochondrial Comics (sort of); Andrea Tsurumi; Programming Schedules for Small Press Expo + Brooklyn Book Festival + NY Art Book Fair; Jack Kirby in NYC; Anders Nilsen, also in NYC ————————————————————————————————— “We can create a layer of abstraction where you don’t need to know about RNA folding to design a circuit out of RNA” This may be a stretch, as far as comics news goes, but with this new method of data storage, we may one day be able to carry around comics (and a lot of other things) within our bodies: To get a movie into E. coli’s DNA, Shipman and his colleagues had to disguise it. They converted the movie’s pixels into DNA’s four-letter code—molecules represented by the letters A,T,G and C—and synthesized that DNA. But instead of generating one long strand of code, they arranged it, along with other genetic elements, into short segments that looked like fragments of viral DNA. E. coli is naturally programmed by its own DNA to grab errant pieces of viral DNA and store them in its own genome—a way of keeping a chronological record of invaders. So when the researchers introduced the pieces of movie-turned-synthetic DNA—disguised as viral DNA—E. coli’s molecular machinery grabbed them and filed them away. The movie they stored was a 36-by-26-pixel GIF of one of the first moving images ever recorded: a galloping mare named Annie G., by Eadweard Muybridge in 1887. The team was able to retrieve it, along with a separate image, with about 90 percent accuracy by sequencing the bacterium’s genome. ————————————————————————————————— New Work by Andrea Tsurumi Tsurumi has been busy, providing illustrations for Reshma Saujani’s book, Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World, along with work at the Nib, Trumpcare is Bad News for Freelancers, and she also has a launch party for her new book, Accident!, on Thursday, October 5 at Books of Wonder in NYC. Keep up the good work, Andrea! ————————————————————————————————— Programming Schedules for Upcoming Shows Small Press Exposition Brooklyn Book Festival New York Art Book Fair ————————————————————————————————— Life and Legacy of Jack Kirby – August 27-30, 2017 As a follow-up to Caleb’s post from yesterday: On view until Wednesday, August 30 at One Art Space, 23 Warren Street, Street Level Gallery 1, NYC. ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 8-29-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 8-29-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

Juan FernándezFebruary 29, 2016NewsAvast, a new Kramer’s Ergot is right around the corner! Editor, Sammy Harkham has shown off a peak at the glorious comics interiors of this anthology. It’s going to be bursting at the seams with color, clocking in at 298 pages, 12 spot colors with CMYK. Fantagraphics is doing the heavy financial lifting on this one. They’ll be selling and distributing it a little later in May. More details on that to come. Have a look for yourself at the preview Sammy has put together. Don’t want to spoil it for you over here. This thing’s going to be a beast. Laura Knetzger has been making comics every month about games she plays. A week ago ZEAL published her 4th game reflection, Laura K plays 4: Threads of Fate/Anger and today she’s written a little more about Threads of Fate over on her blog. I encourage you to check out the comic and then read more of Laura’s thoughts. Laura reflects on video games in a really satisfying way… Replaying the story really knocked me on my ass too. I remembered the basics of what happened, but I was really moved by how quietly emotional it is. A lot of characters are living dolls created by sorcerers, and since the sorcerers have long since died, they’re struggling to find meaning in their lives. The emotional aspect of the story comes out when you play as the boy, and the humor comes out when you play as the girl. I guess I like that instead of being a demure healing-magic type of RPG girl, she’s a super snotty spoiled princess who solves a lot of her problems by kicking people in the face. This past weekend the Society of Illustrators hosted the second of the Stories Matters talks. This time around, Richie Pope hosted a roundtable with illustrators and comics makers Odera Igbokwe, Cathy G Johnson, John Lee, Ronald Wimberly, Shannon Wright, Yao Xiao, Alexandra Zsigmond. They discussed mentoring through interactions, the creation of safe spaces in schools, Angouleme, and the many played out diversity narratives, among other things. The audio is not online yet, but it will be posted soon. For the moment, you can look at the Mixlr chat history to look at the questions, comments and shout outs that were being sent in live during the panel. If you haven’t yet listened to the panel SoI hosted in the fall on the cultural significance of the popular image, you can do so over at SoI’s soundcloud. Let Bill Kartolopolous show you around the ground-breaking catalogues of 5 contemporary comics publishers from around the world: nos:books, la Editorial Común, Éditions Matière, kuš! komiksi, Boomkniga Press. If you’re looking to get your nose into some new books with totally new perspectives on the world on the comics form. Look no further. Kartolopolous gives you the perfect jumping off point over on World Literature Today to do further research. Money, money, money: Everybody needs it!! I want to point you in the way of some fine folks who have work for you, should you choose to be a patron of the arts. Today is the LAST DAY to get Cathy Johnson‘s February print from her 2016 print subscription. This year Johnson has been pushing her screen printing work by making 12 prints in 12 months. Patreon subscribers will get a brand new screen print every month in the mail. This subscription is on a rolling basis! Subscribe early to get the complete 2016 collection!! You’ll also get first look at my behind-the-scenes diary while I draw my upcoming graphic novel, No Dogs Allowed. I’ve cut a monthly deal with the amazing Dirt Palace, a 15+ year old feminist art space here in Providence: http://www.dirtpalace.org. I’ll be screen printing at this amazing place all year! A big goal for this Patreon is to help afford renting print space at the Dirt Palace. Let’s talk Vanesa Del Rey. She is taking commissions for the days leading up to C2E2 on March 18-20. Del Rey’s got what you need if you’re looking for lush, sensual original art that drips with drama. Don’t sleep on her commissions. OG Ron Rege Jr. is taking custom commisions and offering you the possibility being a recurring patron through paypal. Should you choose this noble path, you can be on the inside curve of the machinations of this modern master. What else could you want? Check it out. I’m going to be making a bunch of small minicomics in the coming months. For a $10 monthly donation, I’ll make sure that you get all of them, and some other fan-club style goodies as well. I’ll also make you an original drawing in time for the holidays this year. My true dream & idea for all of this is to get 100 people to sign up for $10 a month. That way, I could do an unadvertised subscription. Members would get sent secret comics that I never mention online. That would be cool, right? hm…. Help me continue to make as much new work as I can. I’ve been at it for 25 years, and am really starting to feel my stride. The drawings seem to just make themselves. I have endless ideas. That part is all really easy. It feels almost dumb for me to be doing anything else at this point. I try to draw all day every day & not worry about it, but I need to eat like anyone. I quit my day job in ’03. There’s always ups & downs, but I live pretty strictly hand to mouth. No assets / No savings / No credit. $$$, spread it if you got it. ’til next time jf Share this page: [...]

Juan FernándezAugust 1, 2018los Cómics / NewsNo news for today. I’m home with a sick cat on my lap. On the local front, The Pittsburgh Comics Salon meets tonight at Kaibur Coffee in Polish Hill. Audra Stang and I will be leading Pittsburghers in some comics calisthenics exercises. It’s always a good time – coffee, shop talk, solidarity. Commodity form as community form. If you’re around, come on out. More info here. On the personal front, my sweet baby boy cat Boris, who is only 6, has been sick for the past month and a half. We’ve gotten some medical attention for the little guy, but after all the time in ER, no diagnosis. He is eating a little more, is a little more active, but is still not back to his normal self. You can imagine how frustrating that can be. I’d never had a cat until Boris and this kind of thing is devastating. I’ve been thinking about KING-CAT #75, the issue that John Porcellino dedicated to the life story of his beloved cat Maisie Kukoc, who lived with him for 15 years. In a lot of ways it prepared me for this kind of love and pain. For today, just a photo of the guy. -Juan Share this page: [...]

Aaron CockleMarch 28, 2017NewsAaron here today with Samplerman; Alice Neel; Raymond Pettibon (in Conversation); MOCCAFEST 2017 Looms ————————————————————————————————— I have always chosen the DIY way to make my fanzines and minicomics: it is affordable and it mostly requires commitment and time. Frank Young interviews Yves ‘Samplerman’ Guillo over on The Comics Journal: I would imagine you use Adobe Photoshop, or a similar computer program, to assemble your images. Does your creative process occur within those programs? Or do you make sketches or do other pre-planning before each image is assembled? Some “Samplerman” images seem extremely composed, while others have a feeling of spontaneity. The blending of these two opposites is a compelling factor in your work. The creative moment occurs mostly when I face the computer screen. I only make sketches when the computer is not on—when I take a walk with a paper and pen in my pocket, or when I have an idea related to structure or geometry for potential compositions. I am always thinking about some elementary geometrical manipulations, combined and applied to the samples. Squares, triangles and circles are everywhere. And I fear this is where my work could start being boring and repetitive—I could apply this to anything. I try to keep a sense of movement in my work. Sometimes I feel the urge to break my composition, to destabilize the eye-scan and push it toward the next panel. I tend to use symmetry a lot when I start putting together a background and the elements. It’s somewhat satisfying but at the same time it paralyzes any feeling of movement. I usually end up distorting the symmetry I rely on. I try to give it a shake and extend the life of these unearthed objects in any way, like a mad scientist. ————————————————————————————————— Alice Neel, Uptown Hilton Als has curated an exhibit of work by Alice Neel, at David Zwirner through 22 April: …the first comprehensive look at Neel’s portraits of people of color, is an attempt to honor not only what Neel saw, but the generosity behind her seeing. ————————————————————————————————— Raymond Pettibon in Conversation with Massimiliano Gioni Thursday, March 30, 7pm at the New Museum Join us for a special conversation between artist Raymond Pettibon and Massimiliano Gioni, Edlis Neeson Artistic Director of the New Museum, on the occasion of the survey “Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work.” Gioni and Pettibon will discuss the artist’s storied trajectory over the last four decades, during which Pettibon has gained a reputation as one of the most influential and visionary living American artists. The conversation will take its cues from “Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work,” which occupies the three main floors of the Museum and includes more than eight hundred drawings from the 1960s to the present, as well as a number of his early self-produced zines and artist’s books and several videos made in collaboration with fellow artists and his musician friends. Although Pettibon has been an unquestionably pivotal figure of American art since the 1990s, he has never before had a major museum survey exhibition in New York. ————————————————————————————————— MoCCA 2017 The Society of Illustrators-sponsored, Museum of Cartooning and Comic Arts (MoCCA) Festival will be taking place this weekend, April 1-2, at Metropolitan West, 639 West 46th Street, NYC. As with previous years, there will be some great panel discussions, organized by CW favorite Bill Kartalopoulos as well as satellite programming of events and activities. Here are a few highlights from the Sunday programming schedule: 12:30PM / Helvetica Room Teaching Comics Internationally For much of their history, comics have been a self-taught discipline. Now students are learning how to make comics in a variety of academic environments, from dedicated schools to majors to minors to electives. This panel will bring together a group of international comics educators to discuss the programs they teach in and the different ways in which they approach teaching comics. Bill Kartalopoulos will lead a conversation with Jessica Abel (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, US), Guillaume Dégé (Haute école des arts du Rhin, France), Ben Katchor (Parsons The New School for Design, US), and Merav Solomon (Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel). 2:00PM / Garamond Room Rutu Modan and David Polonsky in Conversation Israeli artists Rutu Modan and David Polonsky are both known for the excellence of their artwork and for their provocative approach to blending historical and current events into their imaginative works. Modan is best known in North America for her graphic novels Exit Wounds and The Property and for her short story collection Jamilti. Polonsky is best known in North America as the art director for the animated film Waltz With Bashir, directed by Ari Folman. He is also the illustrator of the graphic novel based upon the film. Modan and Polonsky will discuss their work with comics scholar and writer Tahneer Oksman (How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?). 2:00PM / Helvetica Room RESIST! In the weeks between the 2016 Presidential election and the 2017 inauguration, Françoise Mouly and Nadja Spiegelman edited RESIST!, a newsprint anthology of comics and cartoons, mostly by women. 58,000 copies of the newspaper were distributed for free by a grassroots network of volunteers during the Women’s Marches in Washington and across the country. RESIST! used online networks to solicit contributions and in the process became a new kind of hybrid platform: both an ongoing online forum for urgent expression by diverse voices and a print publication that has its roots in the Sixties underground press. In this special session, Mouly and Spiegelman will discuss the development — and the future — of RESIST! 3:30PM / Garamond Room Anthologies as Art: Kramers Ergot and Lagon The great anthologies of comics history — Zap, Weirdo, RAW, and others — have both made an assertion of comics’ aesthetic ambition at a certain time and place while functioning as a personal expression by each series’ editors. Sammy Harkham is the editor of Kramers Ergot, the anthology which, since 2003, has generated excitement with each volume as a strong statement about contemporary art comics in North America. Alexis Beauclair is the co-editor of Lagon, which debuted in 2014 as a risographed encapsulation of French avant-garde comics, and has metamorphosed with each volume leading to the latest, Gouffre. They will discuss their work as artists and editors with Bill Kartalopoulos. There will (presumably) be comics for sale at this show, along with the requisite prints, stickers and tote bags. Maybe there will be some more t-shirts for sale this year as well? Come on out to the far west side this weekend and take a look! ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 3-28-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-28-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-28-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Talking Trash With Derf

Talking Trash With Derf

J KellyMarch 17, 2016InterviewsDerf’s The City was one of the most popular alt weekly newspaper comic strips of all time, appearing in 140 papers at its height, and his international best seller My Friend Dahmer won the Angoulême Prize and named by Time magazine as one of the “top five non-fiction books of the year” in 2012. His new graphic novel, Trashed, is a great break-down of the garbage industry inspired in part by the time Derf himself worked as a garbageman. You can meet Derf on April 2nd here in Pittsburgh at PIX, where he’ll sign books and talk during the evening’s programming. We asked him to fill us in on a few things: John Kelly: You spent years as one of the most visible alt-weekly cartoonists. Other than the medium being pretty much dead or at least diminished what do you see as the biggest changes in that world? Is it even an option for cartoonists today? And what, besides Craigslist, killed it off? Derf: Sadly, that is a genre that no longer exists. Neither do daily strips for that matter, not as a viable career anyways. The weekly guys who are still at it have all transitioned to a paid web model. Seems to be working for them. I chose to go in a different direction. I was bored with it. Turns out, judging from the reception my books have received, I was toiling in the wrong genre all along! Oh well. Twenty years down the crapper! The internet wiped out the weeklies, for sure. Not only by absconding with its main sources of revenue personals and classifieds but by taking its content. The weekly press was the internet before the internet. The weeklies were also plagued by lousy management and stupid decisions. Look no further than getting rid of comic strips for evidence of that! I pin this on the bizarre corporate takeover of the alternative press. The first generation of activist, local owners all cashed out by the end of the 90s and sold their papers to corporate media companies. It was pretty much all over at that point. Everything has its time, and the era of the vibrant weekly press, and of weekly cartoons, is long over. Its too bad, because it was great fun and we did important work. Kelly: Did you always hope to expand your work into these longer pieces like Dahmer and Trashed? Both started out as smaller projects. Did you envision longer pieces with them from the start? Derf: My Friend Dahmer, absolutely. I always envisioned it as a long book. The early, short versions were little more than samples that I hoped would interest a larger publisher in the project, which didn’t happen. And also was me working out how to tell and draw a longform story. There was a bigger learning curve there, especially with the art, than I expected. Trashed started as a 50-page floppy in 2002. I had no expectations there of a larger work. But when it was so well received and got me my first Eisner nomination, I decided it would be an ongoing project. I came back to it in 2010 and 2012 as a webcomic. It only took that long because of cancer and my decision to make Punk Rock & Trailer Parks first. I was planning to keep adding to the Trashed webcomic until it eventually became a book. I considered it a side project. It was my editor at Abrams, Charlie Kochman, who prodded me to make it a book now, which was a great call, it turns out. So the new graphic novel is basically the entire web series I had mapped out. Kelly: Rate your own garbage disposal/recycling habits. It all seems pretty hopeless. Is it? Derf: I do as well as I can. Im not an eco-fanatic. I recycle absolutely everything, but, like all Americans, Im faced with over-packaging and commercial waste at every turn. Until we cut down on that, at the production end, our garbage will continue to be a huge problem. As I explain in the book, the biggest part of our waste, almost a third, is packaging. So the largest part of our crap is the crap our crap comes in! That’s America. I am, however, really obsessive about how my garbage is put out. Nothing is too heavy, everything is neat and tidy and lined up for the garbagemen. No piles of trash, no boobytraps. My wife laughs at me because I spend so much time arranging the trash. Kelly: Its clear that both Dahmer and Trashed were extremely researched. How did your background at newspapers and as a journalism student help with this process? Can you pick out anything you found during the research process for either (or both books) that stands out as something that surprised you to learn? Also, as someone who who was there for the Dahmer story, were there things that the media just got wrong in their reporting? Derf: The media got just about EVERYthing wrong about Dahmer’s young life. That was really aggravating, since I was still working in the press at that time. It was thoroughly depressing watching the 24-hour news cycle in action, right on my doorstep, actually. The biggest surprise for me regarding Jeff, was how close to that first murder my friends and I were. Mere feet away from the body, at some points. When he carved up his first victim, the rest of us were just a few houses away at a friends party! I had quite a few sleepless nights over these revelations. But its all ancient history now. I have to keep reminding myself Jeff was real. Hes become a character in a comic book to me now, 23 years after his death. Thats a psychological defense mechanism, I imagine. Kelly: Can you talk about any other graphic novels that you feel really stand out? Derf: I dont read many comics anymore, to be completely honest. I stopped reading comics when I started making comics. Its just something I needed to do for my own creative development. Im aware of whats out there and whats good, but I dont feel I can offer any opinions. I will say this, its a golden age of graphic novels right now. Every month sees a dozen incredible books, and thats not even counting the avalanche of material coming from micro-publishers. Its a fabulous time to be a comics fan. Kelly: Any advice for people trying to break into the field? Derf: Do good work. I firmly believe that good work finds a way to be seen. It’s as simple as that, but, of course, thats not an easy accomplishment. That’s the thing. Kelly: What are you working on next/now? Derf: Right now Im dabbling with another webcomic, The Baron of Prospect Ave. Its a sequel to my first book, punk Rock & Trailer Parks. Another fun side project. Except I actually got a big arts grant to do it! In Ohio we have these Cultural Workforce grants and they gave three of them to comics creators this year, which is pretty damn cool. You can read it on my website www.derfcity.com. Its another side project, just for fun, but it too will be a book eventually. My French publisher nags me about it incessantly, in fact. But hell just have to wait. I’ll also have more volumes of True Stories coming out later this year, from the fine folks at Alternative Comics. These collect my stories from my comic strip, The City. I have three more volumes planned. Its a nice way to wrap up that part of my career and have an archive of all those True Stories. And then this spring and summer I’ll decide what my next new book will be and start working on that. I have more ideas than I have time. I wish I was faster. Work until you die! That’s my motto. Share this page: [...]

Ch 4: The Head in Detail (FACC)

Posted on January 1, 2016May 21, 2019 by Juan Jose Fernandez

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Posted in ResourcesTagged Al Capp, facial expressions, Harry Haenigsen, Milton Caniff, Rube Goldberg

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The Plan – “Columbo” tells all

Ch 5: The Figure in Detail (FACC)

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in ResourcesTagged Al Capp, facial expressions, Harry Haenigsen, Milton Caniff, Rube Goldberg

Juan Fernández

Posted on January 1, 2016May 21, 2019

Search for:

Explore

Juan FernándezJanuary 2, 2017NewsJuan here. New year. New comics. Hope you’re harnessing some positive energy around you to accomplish what’s important to you. I’m doing my best here in Pittsburgh, PA! ————————————————————————————————— Pittsburgh Comics Salon meets this week on Wednesday at Lili Cafe under Copacetic Comics. Can’t wait. If you’re in Pittsburgh, I hope to see you there, ready to for some comics making drills and exercises. ————————————————————————————————— Here are some comics and news that I think you should pay attention to: The last issue of Kevin Huizenga’s Ganges – arguably the most mechanically inventive and robust 2 color offset comic of the early 21st century – is coming out this March via Fantagraphics. Australians have put together a Minicomic Club you can subscribe to this year. $52 AUD for international shipping. $1/week for Australian comics. Think Oily Comics but 1 chunky comic instead 5 slim ones. The Unofficial Cuckoo’s Nest Study Companion by Luke Healy is now online. Brilliant mix of narrative modes. If you liked Synechdoche, NY or anything in the Charlie Kaufmann vein. You’ll love this. Simon Reinhardt: What if Saul Steinberg and Jules Feiffer occupied the place of R. Crumb and Will Eisner in american comics history? Juicy TwitterCrit thoughts on mainstream, yet non-dominant alternative strains of american cartooning. ————————————————————————————————— Forge Art Magazine‘s put out a nice little interview with Brie Moreno. Sit down, grab a marker or pen and doodle while you get to know Brie if you have a free moment. If you’re already hep to Brie’s work, pass the signal along so more people can appreciate what she’s up to. I met Brie (AKA Booger Brie) and Matthew James-Wilson, editor of Forge Art Magazine at CAB this year. They were really kind and had the goods. Good people. This is important. I had questions about what they’ve been doing, and they were actually interested in my interest. No upturned noses. Thank you. Brie’s got an exciting world of comics and zines that you can dive into. Honest and wonky ideas that flow and cross back and forth across her zines. Chunky lines that ooze and distort familiar forms. Chunky hyucks. ————————————————————————————————— Something a little different for you, from the Comics Workbook school store: Gary Panter generously donated these two seminal books – Cola Madnes, the long lost graphic novel that was to be published in Japan in the early 80’s, and 100 Drawings, where Gary documents many of his best commissions. This set is available HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-2-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-2-2017 – by Sally Ingraham We collected the Suzy and Cecil strips that Sally Ingraham and Gabriella Tito drew in 2016 (not all of which were published in the Daily News) and shared them HERE. The series updates daily on Instagram – follow along HERE. 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: [...]

Juan FernándezSeptember 26, 2016NewsMorning! Juan here with your daily comics fix. Here’s what we’ve got for you today: Glimpses of SPX 2016; Pittsburgh’s burden of identity; Remembering Annie Pootoogook; the Cartoonists of Color Database; Connor Willumsen travel fund; other monday tidbits. ————————————————————————————————— SPX – Glimpses of Comics Workbook Workshops on Instagram Frank Santoro‘s cooked up some instagram stories while working on documentation of Comics Workbook’s many workshops during SPX 2016. If you weren’t able to make it to one of our workshops at SPX, rest assured we have some polished highlights in the pipeline. Lots of golden nuggets of cartooning wisdom in there… We can’t wait to share them with you here! ————————————————————————————————— The Burden of Identity: Pittsburgh Today Matthew Newton of the Carnegie Museum of Art has got a great piece on life in Pittsburgh and the truth and fiction that it grapples with collectively regarding its identity as an american city in Appalachia. Highly recommended. Today, Pittsburgh is very much a city trapped between two worlds: the black-skies legacy of the past, when steel-mill smokestacks turned day into night, and the brighter (albeit pretentious) present-day reality as the “Portland of the East.” The latter notion represents a dramatic shift in identity, of course, and one that is still in the early stages of germination. But as word spreads that Pittsburgh—once dubbed the “Paris of Appalachia” by writer Brian O’Neill—is stocked with affordable housing, good schools, and kind people, curious outsiders from cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland will continue arriving to stake out their claims. Yet outside the city, remnants of the past are everywhere you look. Pittsburgh’s surrounding mill towns, places that once epitomized the blue-collar pedigree of American labor, now languish in near-obsolescence from the forty years since steel manufacturing slowed to a trickle in Western Pennsylvania. In the Monongahela River Valley, where tightly packed mill houses cling to steep hillsides, the muddy banks of The Mon are still dotted with reminders of the steel industry—rusted blast furnaces gone cold, hot metal bridges that lead to nowhere, brownfields poisoned by PCBs and sulfate. It’s not at all surprising then that Scott Cooper was attracted to the tragic beauty of Braddock as the setting for Out of the Furnace or that John Hillcoat imagined Western Pennsylvania’s postindustrial valley as the postapocalyptic wasteland of The Road. What is surprising, however, is that for the people in these towns who have struggled for so long—not only with poverty and joblessness, but also against violence and addiction—the social and economic reality has remained virtually unchanged for decades. And for the mill towns that exist at a remove from Pittsburgh’s current renaissance, the future doesn’t look much different. ————————————————————————————————— Remembering the world of Annie Pootoogook On a tragic note, the great Annie Pootoogook passed away last week. The National Post reports in full. Over at the Globe and Mail there’s a great collection of chalk-and-ink drawings depicting facets of Inuit life by Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook, winner of the Sobey Award in 2006. Take a glimpse and celebrate her life in images. For some extensive writing on the life and work of Pootoogook, hop on over to Barnard College’s “gender on ice” online gallery. ————————————————————————————————— Comics Workbook – the October Happenings: CXC + LICAF All of you in the UK, may we have your attention!! Comics Workbook is coming to The Lakes International Comic Art Festival! October 14-16th 2016! Join Frank Santoro, Aidan Koch, and Connor Willumsen for some cool workshops and visit table 67 in the Comics Clocktower to meet Oliver East and Jack Brougham among others! We will be hosting 3 special workshops, “Visual Poetry” with Aidan Koch, “The Hammer Party” with Connor Willumsen and “Composition Competition” with Frank Santoro. Tickets for the main events at this year’s Lakes International Comic Art Festival are on sale now. Check out the show or Visit our event page for more information! If you’re stateside, you should know that Comics Workbook is coming to Cartoon Crossroads Columbus! October 13-16th 2016. We will be hosting workshops and tabling – more details coming soon. Join all of us here at Comics Workbook, along with cartoonists, Alyssa Berg and Kurt Ankeny, for an immersive weekend of comics creation. We will examine art and the grid, bringing the strong artistic practices of Berg and Ankeny together with the discipline and rhythm of the grid, as laid out by Comics Workbook founder Frank Santoro. Four hours across two days will be filled with the exploration of a variety of techniques and methods which will inspire the beginner, and challenge the established cartoonist. Comics as jazz; comics as architecture; how a simple index card can transform your sequencing and storytelling process – come join us for an hour or four and take your comics making to a new level. More information on our CXC exploits to come soon! Check out the show! /// Visit our event page! ————————————————————————————————— Cartoonists of Color Database We’ve linked to it before, but if you haven’t yet explored it, here’s a good overview of it, as an interview of MariNaomi by Mike Steyel’s over on VICE’s Creators Project! If you want to help to nurture the continued change of comics making culture in the states and abroad, this database is an indispensible resource. Is there a general lack of access for these artists? That’s a complicated question! It depends, but I’d have to say that overall, the answer is yes. Marginalized people have a long history of being told their voices are irrelevant, of being encouraged to tell stories from a more white-washed perspective. It’s exciting to see that changing, and I hope the change isn’t temporary. I personally am curious to read as many perspectives as possible, to broaden my horizons as a reader and as a human. So you hear the question, “What people of color cartoonists?” a lot? I’ve heard this so much over the years that’s it’s just rote. “There aren’t any black people in comics.” “You have to write for men, because women don’t read comics.” The people who say that shit aren’t doing their homework. Apparently we’re doing their homework for them. ————————————————————————————————— Help send Connor Willumsen to the UK for The Lakes International Comic Arts Festival in October! He will be teaching workshops with Frank Santoro and Aidan Koch while there – if you’re in the area check it out. To help him get to the show, Comics Workbook is offering two new Connor publications. Portraits and Swinespritzen – both limited editions, both incredible. Details about both and where to order them can be found HERE. ————————————————————————————————— until next time, friends. Juan Share this page: [...]

Aaron CockleAugust 1, 2016NewsAaron Cockle here today with Mickey Z circa 2012-2013; Bill Sienkiewicz revisits old work; syndicated comic strip pulled for some reason or another; The Routledge Companion to Comics costs $240???; Dabaie/Hart Comics; Rowhouse Auction continues ————————————————————————————————— Mickey Z‘s 2012-2013 output for CW is this week’s Featured Comic. ————————————————————————————————— X-Men: Post-Apocalypse At the big comic convention recently held in San Diego that promotes all of the big super-hero movies, artist Bill Sienkiewicz spotted some work he’d made for a super-hero comic 30 years ago being used to promote the release of a super-hero movie. As an artist with a grievance, Sienkiewicz went to the only place these days where one’s frustrations can be vented, and stated: This practice is hardly unusual standard operating procedure for corporations. Even so, it still rankles. I’m one guy. I’ve been doing this comic-book thing for years. I’m aware most everything is Work-Made-for-Hire. Still, I received no prior notification (a common courtesy), no thank you ( ditto), no written credit in any form whatsoever either on the piece or in connection with the premium, absolutely no compensation and no comp copies of the album. Aside from the discussion of why these corporate, hegemonic, known-to-be-exploitative structures are still propped up by consumers (and creators), there’s a conversation to be had about making a living through your art-making. Is the short answer ‘We deserve better’? Or do we get the comics, art, culture, politicians, etc we deserve? ————————————————————————————————— Grammar Confusion or Terrorist Plot? Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis had a comic strip pulled from syndication on July 27, possibly due to an implied reference to the Islamic State, the Salafi jihadist militant group that follows a fundamentalist, Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. Facebook has blacked out the strip on Pastis’s page, but it’s been posted numerous times in the comments section. Apologies for linking to Facebook so much today. Betsy Gomez at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund had this to say about the matter: As private entities, newspaper editorial staff are certainly within their rights to make decisions about the content they run in their papers. However, the removal of the strip raises concerns over self-censorship. Further, removal of a cartoon as relatively inoffensive at Pastis’s buys into the fear that terrorists like those who attacked Charlie Hebdo and other cartoonists around the world are trying to instill in the populace. The answer to such fear isn’t to remove a cartoon, but to support the free expression of those who would question the terrorists’ actions and the authorities that overreact to terrorist attacks by stepping on fundamental freedoms. ————————————————————————————————— I Can’t Believe This Book Costs $240 The Routledge Companion to Comics, edited by Frank Bramlett, Roy T. Cook, Aaron Meskin, 456 pages, $240. I understand that this is a textbook of some kind, or as the book’s description says: This cutting-edge handbook brings together an international roster of scholars to examine many facets of comics and graphic novels. Contributor essays provide authoritative, up-to-date overviews of the major topics and questions within comic studies, offering readers a truly global approach to understanding the field. Maybe the whole thing was Risographed, and that’s why it costs so much? There don’t appear to be any samples or excerpts available, but if anyone at Routledge/Taylor & Francis would like to send CW a review copy, we’d be happy to take a look at it and let you know what we think. ————————————————————————————————— Ali’s House The strip, made by Marguerite Dabaie and Tom Hart for King Features Syndicate back in 2008, has found a home at Go Comics. ————————————————————————————————— Rowhouse Auction Items: July 31-August 6 New items available for this week. Email Frank Santoro at santoroschoolATgmail for a password if you don’t already have one. If you already have a password, it is the same from last week. All funds go to helping keep the lights on and further developing the school. Share this page: [...]

Juan FernándezAugust 2, 2017los Cómics / NewsEmpezamos el día con Power Paola y autobiografía ficticia; Sarah Glidden y el Arte de la Guerra; La Polola; Juan Mediavilla; Caminos da HQ; Enrique’s Shadow; y los tebeos de Cómics Workbook! ————————————————————————————————— POWERPAOLA- Dibujos nómadas y autobiografía ficticia Abril Castillo Cabrera les ofrece sus reflecciones sobre la relación entre la ficción y la no-ficción que bailan juntas en el mundo de autobiografía: Powerpaola escribe autobiografías (“no-ficción”) y confiesa su dificultad para escribir historias que no sean las suyas (“ficción”). Con todo, ha tomado la decisión de hablar de su vida y ponerla en orden para narrarla en forma de novela gráfica. Ese ejercicio provee de un distanciamiento que parecería volverla ajena a ella misma. Pasa lo mismo cuando uno se acuesta en un diván por primera vez y ante el silencio del psicoanalista comienza a tejer un relato; se trata de poner en orden situaciones, personajes y sentimientos que vuelan como luciérnagas desamparadas que metemos en un frasco. Algunas brillan y otras no. Algunas mueren y otras sobreviven. Así son los recuerdos que tenemos, esa materia de la que nos hacemos y recreamos. Algunas partes de nuestra infancia llegan a nuestra vida adulta y otras son liberadas para siempre. Unas de pronto regresan y bien nos reconfortan o nos destruyen. Pero todas nos conforman: las personas con las que estuvimos y con las que estamos, las pérdidas y los nuevos encuentros, los lugares tangibles y los imaginarios, lo que leemos y lo que escribimos. Su trabajo inicialmente plantado desde la no-ficción pronto se vio zurcido con las imágenes de su madre antes de que ella naciera o al dibujar un escenario que Paola nunca habitó; todo eso es imaginación que construye una descripción objetiva de un recuerdo que no tiene. En su primer libro, Virus tropical, recreó la génesis de su propia vida y seleccionó a los personajes y los lugares. Quizá en el camino contestó varios porqués sobre sí misma, pero esta podría ser sólo una de las mil razones por las que en general un artista se vuelca a hacer algo. El resultado no es ninguna verdad, sino una atmósfera a la que podemos acceder, un relato con un principio y un cierre, una reelaboración de su vida y un puente que tiende con la vida de los demás que la leemos. Léanlo AQUI – Read it all HERE. ————————————————————————————————— El Arte de la Guerra Sarah Glidden tiene un nuevo comic este fin de semana en El País Semanal sobre arte y violencia. Nos ofrece reflexiónes sobre Goya, Picasso y el papel del arte en nuestra cultura. (ed. Brush up on your spanish if you need to because this is a GREAT read.) ————————————————————————————————— Los cómics y las noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo tienen una nueva edicion de La Polola Podcast! Las chicas conversan acerca de la sanacion, de ayudarse a si mismas, de poner atención a sus problemas y a solucionar sus dolencias de maneras diversas. También les presentan a su practicante Sol Bravo (@sunmorales)! Una joyita de El Víbora de Juan Mediavilla, que sólo se publicó en un número de El Víbora, sacado de en línea. Instituto Itaú Cultural de São Paulo published two videos recorded at its Caminos da HQ in 2016. One on female protagonism in comics, with statements by cartoonists Ana Recalde, Cris Eiko, Carol Rossetti and Germana Viana. Another on independent comics production in the Brazilian comic book market. Enrique’s Shadow is now online – comic about one of the 90,000+ people who have disappeared during the conflict in Colombia this is Enrique’s story told by his sister Jacinta. Commissioned by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Positive Negatives and drawn by Lindsay Pollock. ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 8-2-17 – by Gabriella Tito ———————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]