Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in Interviews, The Diaz ArchiveTagged 2010, Alternative Press Expo, APE, Dan Nadel, daniel clowes, The Death Ray

Juan Fernández

Posted on March 21, 2016April 29, 2016

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01/16/2017

Juan FernándezJanuary 16, 2017NewsJuan and Sally here to start your week off with George Herriman strips, Richard Diebenkorn sketchbooks, Illustrated PEN’s State of Emergency, the GOUFFRE anthology, and other comics and news bites. ————————————————————————————————— Here on the site, Comics Workbook student and cartoonist Jesse Rimler shares a report on the Richard Diebenkorn Sketchbook show that hung at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University last summer. “This exhibit made me think about the general use of a sketchbook. Diebenkorn called his sketchbook his “portable studio,” and it’s clear he took drawing in these beatup spiralbounds as seriously as he did etching on a copper plate or painting on a canvas. I think some comics makers, myself included, tend to treat their sketchbooks as something completely different from their final art. The idea of closing the gap between the two is appealing to me, and Diebenkorn’s example is inspiring.“ Read the rest of this “Art Trip” HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Illustrated PEN published an online graphic narrative series called State of Emergency, which is intended to help “amplify the voices and stories of the communities most at risk in this new and hostile reality“. Edited by Meg Lemke, Rob Kirby, and MariNaomi, it features pieces by Iasmin Omar Ata, Dylan Edwards, Thi Bui, Rachel Masilamani, Robert Kirby, Whit Taylor, Tyler Cohen, and Cristy C. Road. Check out the whole series HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Juan Fernandez here. Ain’t got too much to say today, just wanted to share some strips I made with you a while back. I’ve been going through the new IDW 1934 Krazy Kat Dailies book every day this year. It’s been a wonderful experience. I’ve been clamoring for an economically formatted collection of Herriman’s dailies for some years now since Fantagraphics started doing their reprints of the Sunday pages. Those are exquisite. This IDW collection features the complete run of Krazy Kat dailies from 1934, reproduced full size on high quality newsprint, in a chunky, horizontally formatted hardcover volume from IDW’s Library of American Comics Essentials series. Woo boy. That thing is amazing. In light of this, I’ve been thinking about a couple of strips I made at the Center for Cartoon Studies in 2012. The following strips were made for the second assignment in Jason Lutes’ Cartooning Studio. Aping as the building of discipline. Style as functional raincoat. The objective was to recreate faithfully the visual and narrative style of an American strip artist and to tell 3 autobiographical stories using the strip as the vehicle. The assigned artists ranged far and wide, from Walt Kelly to Scott Adams. You know, a very CCS “traditional” cartooning exercise. I was lucky enough to get George Herriman’s Krazy Kat. Thanks Jason. It was a really satisfying exercise. I won’t lie, the strips turned out nice but they don’t really work. I had never done comic strips that weren’t just Dada-ist doodle non-sequitors, so this exercise proved to be a challenge. Not because I didn’t want them to make sense, but rather because I wanted so badly for them to make sense. I wanted to express so much in a single strip and it came out garbled. Clean, but garbled. I understand structure, but traditional narrative? Man, that’s hard to do and not ham up! To make these studies I read a great deal of Herriman’s dailies, across collections, but I found that the most useful was a big green copy of Fantagraphics Books’ The Kat Who Walked in Beauty. The “Panoramic” Dailies from 1920. If you’re only familiar with Herriman’s broadsheets, you really ought to take a look at his dailies. While the broadsheets are beautiful and hyperbolic, the daily strips are immaculately fine tuned little nuggets. It’s staggering to know that he churned out these little finely crafted gems on a daily basis for 31 years. In my opinion, it’s there that you’ll find his genius. Day in and day out. At least, that’s the work that I most want to read. Speaking to what I said about structure, I want to share some of the process of thinking about Herriman’s pacing. Diagrams of panel organization schemes that appeared throughout the strips from 1920. You have the pacing of his language in balloons but, more importantly you have the pacing across his panels. Horizons dip up and down. Panels tuck themselves behind others. Panel sequences exist as objects, embedded in the desert landscape. CW Students: I recommend blocking out the essential shapes and forms of any comics that you enjoy. It’s a good warm up for thinking about structure. Roughly block out panels and black regions. Squint your eyes. Take off your glasses if you wear them. Block out a lot of pages and spreads. This can really help internalize the structures of the works that you love. And that can help you synthesize those things into work of your own that you will love. ————————————————————————————————— The new anthology GOUFFRE from Lagon Revue is now available online from revuelagon.com. Edited and conceived by editors Alexis Beauclair, Bettina Henni, Séverine Bascouert, Sammy Stein & Jean-Philippe Bretin, GOUFFRE combines multiple printing techniques: Silk-screen, Riso printing, and offset printing. A spectacle of daring comics and all out production. Grab yourself a copy and be on the cutting edge of comics. It’s 45€. GOUFFRE stands for polymorphic, plastic comics. The magazine celebrates new perspectives and unique approaches of the medium: Minimal, maximal, without characters, made of sensations, or of emptiness, mute, aesthetic, close to abstraction. You will discover toxic undergrowth, extinguished suburbs, melancholic sci-fi stories, fake magazine covers, modern love relationships and visions of the near future. ————————————————————————————————— Tea and Crumpets Maurice, Son of Noah Pt. 4 by Roman Muradov is up on Hazlett – HERE. You can catch the rest of the story as well – and check out the previous comic series’ published by Hazlett, including the story by Annie Mok and Natalie Andrewson – Straight Expectations. The Will Eisner Hall of Fame 2017 Nominees have been announced. It’s the 100th year since Eisner’s death so the list is a little longer than usual, with four judge-appointed Hall of Fame inductees instead of the usual two, and seventeen names up for the public vote – including the Hernandez Brothers. Check out Tom Spurgeon’s comments on the list HERE. Michael DeForge now has a designated Instagram for his comic series Leaving Richard’s Valley – follow along @richardsvalley. There is an interview with Erik Nebel in Fluide Glacial, the famous French comics magazine. Erik translated an excerpt and shared it HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Check out Zona #2, a unique look into Frank Santoro’s process. Full color, 24 pages. Magazine sized. Cardstock covers. Edition of 100. Signed and numbered. Get a copy HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-16-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-16-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— 1-16-2017 – by Juan Fernández Share this page: [...]

CREEP HIGHWAY & the CANDY BOYZ

Chris Anthony DiazMay 23, 2016The Diaz Archiveat the NAMING GALLERY & ElI’S MILE HIGH CLUB oakland, monday, october 6, 2014 shot & edited by chris anthony diaz featuring musical performances by michael deforge, patrick kyle, alvin buenaventura, simon hanselmann, marc arsenault and dylan dockstader Share this page: [...]

01/02/2018

Aaron CockleJanuary 1, 2018NewsAaron here today with the New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium Schedule; Käthe Kollwitz and Sue Coe; Whit Taylor; Imagined Communities, Nationalism & Violence ————————————————————————————————— The 2018 schedule of the Ben Katchor-organized New York Comics & Picture-Story Symposium has been posted. This line-up looks great, including presentations by Joe McCullough (on Steve Ditko), Julia Gfrörer, Eleanor Davis, Keren Katz, and Matthew Thurber. ————————————————————————————————— ALL GOOD ART IS POLITICAL: Käthe Kollwitz and Sue Coe At Galerie St. Etienne until February until February 10, 2018. ALL GOOD ART IS POLITICAL: Käthe Kollwitz and Sue Coe will present more than 30 drawings and prints by Kollwitz (1867-1945) and more than 30 paintings, drawings, and prints by Coe (b. 1951). The exhibition borrows its title from writer Toni Morrison, who once noted, “All good art is political! The ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.’” The exhibition coincides with the publication of a book of woodcuts by Sue Coe entitled The Animals’ Vegan Manifesto (OR Books, New York and London). Despite their differences in background – Kollwitz was born in East Prussia in the 19th century and lived in Berlin, Germany; Coe is an American born in the U.K. and living in upstate New York – both artists share a career-defining attraction to social issues, undergirded by the belief that art can inspire constructive change. Each is considered among the most important political artists of her time, unmatched in her fearless approach to profoundly difficult subject matter, unerring humanity and eloquence, and an uncanny ability to disturb the viewer’s complacency. ————————————————————————————————— Alternative to Avocado Toast for 2017 Whit Taylor at the NY-er. ————————————————————————————————— Imagined Communities, Nationalism & Violence At Rubber Factory until January 31, 2018. Benedict Anderson’s seminal text “Imagined Communities” investigates the origins of Nationalism as a modern condition and serves as the starting point for our group exhibition. From the influence of rationalist secularism to the conception of homogenous, empty time, Anderson outlines the convergence of factors which led to nationhood as a vehicle for the creation of meaning and ultimately self-sacrifice. As Nationalism is revitalized through increasingly extreme rhetoric whether it is nativism or protectionism, the exhibition explores this new wave of anxiety around nation-hood and ways nation-ness is constructed. Whether it is through the oblique nature of our informational channels which function as echo chambers reminiscent of the earliest ways Nationalism spread through print media or the conflation of meaning with sacrifice, it is clear that there are precedents for how Nationalism as a construct has led to and sustained cycles of violence. ————————————————————————————————— The Winter Semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers starts January 16th 2018! 8 weeks – 500 bux – coaching for as long as you need. The course is hard, but Frank will push your comics making practice to a new level, getting you to think about timing and color in new ways. His experience and ideas have influenced the likes of Connor Willumsen, Michael DeForge, and Simon Hanselmann (quote “I consider Frank Santoro to be my L. Ron Hubbard”) among many others. Dig into something new in the new year! Full details and how to apply can be found HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 1-2-2017 – by Cameron Arthur Share this page: [...]

09/19/2018

Juan FernándezSeptember 19, 2018NewsJuan here checking in with a mini SPX Report. First off, a huge thank you goes out to team at SPX, especially Warren Bernard, Lynda Bernard, Rob Clough, Danethin Mejia and Eden Miller for helping us with making these workshops happen! WE had a great time! Also thank you to all of our workshop instructors – you made it happen <3 SPX was solid this year for me. I had some great experiences teaching, caught up with fellow CCS graduates, connected with Santoro School alums, and reconnected with tumblr and instagram comics makers new and old. Nothing ground breaking, just a good continuation of the story from previous years. As is our Comics Workbook tradition, we held down the fort in the Glen Echo Room offering back-to-back workshops with world class cartoonists and comics makers. Attendee’s ages ranged wildly, which was exciting. For the most part, all attendees were aspiring makers or folks who wanted to dip their toes into comics making. It’s nice to be able to offer a space for these people. Sally Ingraham masterfully coordinated all of our workshops and the Workbook crew assisted in shifts. It all went gloriously smoothly. This year, I wrangled up the core group of the Pittsburgh Comics Salon to form the heart of this year’s crew. Above all, my priority this year was being of service to the Pittsburgh Comics Salon’s crew that was in attendance. Lane Graff, Graciela Sarabia, Audra Stang, Syd Blackwell, Sam Ombiri, Ann Lewis, Caleb Orecchio and Sally Ingraham. SPX, if you’re coming from outside of the D.C./Maryland area can be overwhelming, and at times especially strange. There’s no explicit program for after hours mingling other than the Ignatz Awards and the newly developed “Prom”, for better or for worse. If you stay in the hotel, you can sometimes feel trapped. While, yes it’s, folks can just figure out how to take care of themselves – look up food on their phones, find hotels, etc. it is difficult to properly optimize your experience of this weekend without having been there. I wanted to bridge that gap for my fellow comics makers in Pittsburgh. Going to SPX is like entering a bubble. It’s an interesting, satisfying comics bubble, but it is one that takes getting used to. If you don’t go into that bubble prepared to take breaks, with a plan for food, with snacks and water on hand, or with a comics budget, SPX can really wreck you! It’s a monster of a show that way. In light of this I wanted to make sure that everyone had access to what they needed. I attended SPX for the first time in 2010 on Bill Boichel’s urging. I’m thankful he was there that year so that I could check in with him every now and again as he sailed across the room meeting makers and buying work to sell at Copacetic Comics. Without that anchor during my first year, would have been quite different and far more overwhelming. To be able to attend with this group in tow was a really satisfying experience. I’m thankful I could coordinate this trip from Pittsburgh and be their support in Bethesda. As I’ve said before my priority has been to cultivate this local community of makers. I love comics making, but people come before them, always. Workshop Report Sally Ingraham, will have a full report on Friday. Our workshops were more full than ever. Lots of networking between students and instructors happened after each workshop. Comics Reviews You can expect some reflections on books that we received or purchased at SPX to trickle out as the month progresses. It takes time to read comics, to experience them and enjoy them so you won’t see any rushed reviews or reflections from us here at Comics Workbook. Stay tuned for more insights. Thank you! juan 09-29-2018 – by Niall Breen Share this page: [...]

Sunday is a Good Day to Visit a Museum: Part Three

Alyssa BergMay 12, 2016Art Trip / EssaysThis is the final part of a series of process meditations inspired by a trip to The Rubin Museum of Art in NYC. Catch up with Part One: Ritual in Preparing the Space/It’s the Simple Things, and Part Two: Meditation on the Grid/Free Your Mind ————————————————————————————————— Part 3: Pass the Mic/Other People’s Processes For the final installment of the series reflecting on my visit to The Rubin Museum of Art, I posed a question to MariNaomi, Simon Hanselmann, Sophie Yanow and Vanesa R. Del Rey: Will you share any ritual, meditation, or devotion in your artistic process? ————————————————————————————————— MariNaomi‘s most recent memoir comic is Turning Japanese (2dcloud, 2016). She is the creator and curator of the Cartoonists of Color Database and the Queer Cartoonists Database. I’m not sure that I have any kind of ritual/meditation per se, but I am very habitual in my work days. Basically I start the day with an early-morning jog (at 6:30), then breakfast. Then I take care of things that might otherwise distract me: dishes, bills, emails. I don’t really get creative until after lunchtime. I’m generally in the zone from the afternoon until evening when my husband gets home at 7 or 8. If I’m on deadline (or super inspired), I’ll eat dinner with him, then get back to work until bedtime at 10:30 pm. I used to beat myself up about not working in the mornings, but I’ve finally accepted that it’s my routine. Oh, and my talisman is drinking lots and lots of tea. ————————————————————————————————— Simon Hanselmann‘s most recent collection is Megg & Mogg in Amsterdam (And Other Stories) (Fantagraphics, 2016). Megg, Mogg & Owl is updated Wednesdays at VICE. my main ritual is trying to clear my mind so i can focus and be fully absorbed by the project at hand. i usually try to clear my inbox in the morning before i start working otherwise i’ll feel guilty and flustered all day. cigarettes are a huge part of the ritual. also red bull, sadly. i really need to change up my rituals to something a bit more healthy… fuck it though, as long as the work is getting done and i’m hitting my deadlines. i will most likely be dead in a few years… UPDATE: I’m on day 10 of no red bull. I am a recovering energy drink addict. <|:-) ————————————————————————————————— Sophie Yanow was the 2014-15 fellow at The Center for Cartoon Studies. Her most recent book is War of Streets and Houses (Uncivilized Books, 2014). The one thing that I do that has kind of become a “ritual,” is when I do journal comics, I do them on graph paper, and I draw 6 square panels out on the graph paper before I start drawing or writing. I generally draw/write directly in the squares. The journal comics are always in a 6 panel grid, so I’ve considered printing out paper that has the 6 panel grid already on it, but I think that drawing the grid out gets me into the proper state of “I’m going to draw/write a journal comic now.” It’s like a trigger. So drawing the panels first is the ritual/meditation that starts the journal comic. ————————————————————————————————— Vanesa R. Del Rey is an artist and illustrator for Hit comics (Boom! Studios). Her artwork has also been in Marvel, DC and Dark Horse comics. My artistic process – Discipline. I work 6 days a week for about 10 hours a day, this is a constant but my schedule is kind of organic, it changes every once in a while. I usually do chores and have breakfast/check emails before I sit down to draw. Sometimes I work out before sitting down too. My ritual to get the juices flowing involves smoking ganja and doing a warm up sketch. This warm up sketch can be anything. It’s just a thing to unclog my mind and loosen up my joints. I just spill something out… I give myself about an hour or so. This happens usually when I’ve just started working on a book. After a couple of weeks I skip on the warm ups and dive straight into my pages when I sit down. I get faster as I progress, the shapes become familiar therefore I don’t have to spend as much time searching for them. Once in a while I also do cool down sketches after a day’s work. They are usually just ideas I have floating around that I use to not get bored. For example if I’m working on the computer for a long period of time I like to switch it up and start a painting or do a sketch in my sketchbook. I guess the constant factor to begin for me is the ganja, I’m a big smoker. I would call it a ritual/meditation. My creative energy is unpredictable, it drives me and not the other way around, but my ritual is the method I have found to channel that energy, to make good use of it. It’s an incredible help for the stress of deadlines too! I’m always on a tight deadline. Devotion is a given to me…doing my work is my life. I wouldn’t do anything else. ————————————————————————————————— Alyssa Berg makes comics in Brooklyn, NY. You can find her work HERE. Share this page: [...]

Clowes and Nadel in Conversation (2010)

Posted on March 21, 2016April 29, 2016 by Juan Fernández

Chris Anthony Diaz has passed along this video he shot, for us to share with you: the Daniel Clowes spotlight panel from 2010’s Alternative Press Expo(APE), with Dan Nadel. Of interest since it dovetails Clowes’ 2016 tour for the release of Patience. This video gives a lot of insight indirectly to Patience.

Comic book match ups, Burne Hogarth yelling, EC Horror comics, the disappointment in comics history, public vs. private characters, and life in the letters columns, it’s all here.

Many thanks to Chris Anthony Diaz for documenting this conversation.
Stay up to date with Diaz’s work here: folkloreshed.tumblr.com/

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in Interviews, The Diaz ArchiveTagged 2010, Alternative Press Expo, APE, Dan Nadel, daniel clowes, The Death Ray

Juan Fernández

Posted on March 21, 2016April 29, 2016

Explore

02/26/2018

Caleb OrecchioFebruary 26, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with more on Barry Windsor-Smith, and other news. ————————————————————————————————— It’s just another Saturday morning in the big city. June 9th, 1973. Eastbound 26th Street is blocked by two refrigerator trucks who stalled at the Lexington intersection. Horns resound in fury. Barry Smith looks up from the desk he’s working at to see the commotion. His mind starts to swirl. The window from the apartment looking over New York City becomes a vision of sublime psychedelia. Cosmic phenomena burst forth displaying a beautiful array of heavenly bodies, he can see lightyears away. Smith feels a nudge to his perceived center. This was the second time in 24-hours Smith had experienced this happening. He will have a much more intense revelation tomorrow. It’s springtime in London, 1966. Barry Smith and a friend are strolling across a field, a couple and their dog walk just ahead. The dog turns and barks. Everyone looks over their shoulder. Above the field hovers a UFO. Smith can just make out the details of the underside’s tubes and ducts, shadowed by the blinding light emitting from the cluster of lights that blazed from the center. The ship rises and eventually disappears to the west. Everyone left the scene without a word. Five years later in 1971, Smith’s aforementioned friend tells our hero about a dream he had recently. He describes the spaceship he and Smith saw in 1966. Our hero is unable to tell him that it wasn’t a dream. Back to 1973. It’s Sunday, or it was Sunday June 10th, 1973. Smith has had his third vision in as many days. In fact, the encounter lasted into the next morning. It’s now Monday, almost 4:00 am. His body is rendered completely and utterly exhausted. He can hardly stand. He stumbles from the studio, down the stairs and into the streets of New York in 1973 on the corner of 26th Street and Lexington Avenue. Two men are fighting just outside the door. A cop car wails past them, making them scarce. Smith heads for home just a couple blocks down. Every ounce of strength the experience left him with sustains his balance as he heaves one foot in front of the other. Just short of a football field from his destination, two men emerge from the shadows. One brandishes a knife. In an act of sheer survival, our hero emits a barbaric and violent scream—charging headlong towards his foe. The would-be assailants step aside, letting our hero pass in peace. In the summer of 1973, Smith was no longer the regular artist on the Marvel comic book series he had started with Roy Thomas, Conan the Barbarian; but he was working on an adaption of “Red Nails,” the last Conan story by Robert E. Howard, for the new Marvel magazine Savage Tales. On top of this, he was adapting, for the same mag, Howard’s poem, “Cimmeria.” Not to mention helping his friend and studio-mate with concepts for advertisements for big-name clients. Stories of June 1973 taken from Opus Volume 1 by Barry Windsor-Smith. UFO story from Streetwise, an anthology of autobio comics; Smith’s story is called “UFO POV.” ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Frank Santoro is blind-auctioning a copy of Fantastic Four #52, first appearance of Black Panther, on this very site. It’s for a good cause, follow the link for details. Bill Boichel, proprietor of Copacetic Comics here in Pittsburgh, is interviewed on local podcast, The Gross Street Podcast. Alex Dueben interviews David Collier at TCJ.com. I’ve been going back to this CBR.com preview of the first volume of Inside Moebius until I come up with the funds to hold it in my hands. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 2-26-2018 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

Michael Deforge’s Sticks Angelica: Folk Hero Release Tour

Chris Anthony DiazApril 6, 2017The Diaz ArchiveMichael Deforge signed his awesome new book from DRAWN & QUARTERLY at Comix Experience, Wednesday, April 5, 2017, San Francisco. All photos colored by Graham Willcox Share this page: [...]

08/09/2018

Caleb OrecchioAugust 9, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here briefly comparing my old comics with Trevor Von Eeden’s. ————————————————————————————————— I was flipping through my dad’s childhood copy of Black Lightning no. 10. Look at how professional Von Eeden’s work was at eighteen. It’s good, good enough to be published by DC. The work looks Golden Age-y at times due to the artist’s unwieldy ambition combined with solid, albeit still developing, drawing chops. I enjoyed this elephant charging scene. Hahahaha! I horse laugh when I consider the comics I was making at eighteen! Oh look, here’s one from my vault. This is from my high school newspaper. Probably late 2010 to early-2011. Don’t laugh. ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 8-9-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

04/06/2016

Juan FernándezApril 6, 2016NewsJuan here with your mid-week comics news fix. A pair of interesting comics events in the United States, MoCCA Awards of Excellence, Mari Naomi, Gabrielle Bell, Leslie Stein, Retrofit Comics Kickstarter in the final stretch, Rosarium Publishing launches its Indiegogo, the Picturebox Inc. bibliography. Let’s do this. ————————————————————————————————— Small Press events this weekend PMF 7 Building on six consecutive years of growing print celebrations, Baltimore’s Open Space gallery will present PMF VII, the Seventh Annual Publications & Multiples Fair, taking place April 9th and 10th, 2016, from 12 pm – 6 pm each day, at the Baltimore Design School, 1500 Barclay St. This annual exposition provides the opportunity to peruse, purchase, and discuss artist publications, prints, and objects produced in multiple. There’ll be over 130 local and national artists, and on-site programming all weekend. The fair is free and open to the public. There’s a killer line up of really raw work. Meghan Turbitt, Lala Albert, Lale Westving and Aidan Koch will be there among the throngs 😉 Learn more here. SPACE 2016 Now coming up on it’s 17th year, S.P.A.C.E. (Small Press & Alternative Comics Expo) is the midwest’s longest running exhibition of small press,creator owned and art comics. And Columbus’ longest locally owned and operated COMICS show of any kind. Long live the Rustbelt. Read more here. ————————————————————————————————— Gabrielle Bell Instagram In the age of fractured social media, it’s important to know who posts where or you’ll miss out on the beautiful writing or drawing they might do. Now you’ve got no excuse to be missing Bell’s off the cuff drawings. You can follow her here. ————————————————————————————————— Cheerleader by Mari Naomi Mari Naomi’s got a new one for you via Buzz Feed. Lot’s of eyes sure to get on this one. Smart use of the scroll and subtle visual punctuation makes this a satisfying look back on an unexpected friendship. Take a trip down memory lane and read it here! ————————————————————————————————— Retrofit Kickstarter – Last 2 Rounds Retrofit Comics is in its last TWO days of their Kickstarter campaign! They’re in the last rounds of their bout. You can help them win this fight. Support them to make it happen. The crop of books they’re currently publishing is really special. It includes titles by the likes of James Kochalka (Elf Cat in Love), the first Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont, Eleanor Davis with her an offering (Libby’s Dad), and Kaeleigh Forsyth and Alabaster Pizzo with a team up on Hellbound (here’s a process post from them about the “raw material” the book was sourced from). Also among the comics that may get loosed on the world, should the Kickstarter make it to the stretch goals, are works by Anya Davidson and Tyler Landry. Please support Retrofit Comics by pitching some funds their way, or helping to spread the word.Less than $2,000 left to go. Check out the Kickstarter and make it happen HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Time Clock Leslie Stein is back with the newest installment of The Eye of the Majestic Creature is back! Here’s a link to see some of the pages Stein has posted on tumblr, there’ll be more soon until Time Clock is out. You can snag a copy by preordering from Fantagraphics Books. The book will be out in June. ————————————————————————————————— Rosarium Publishing launches an Indiegogo As Retrofit wraps up it’s big push, ROSARIUM PUBLISHING begins to rev their engines. Rosarium Publishing is a publishing house founded by Bill Campbell that is a space of resistance to the erasure of diverse voices by a saturated public sphere of massive hegemonic media giants pushing the authors they want to the forefront of the market place.f …Rosarium Publishing was started with an idea; it was not, however, started with a lot of money. This has all been funded by the publisher’s day job. So, with the rapid growth we’ve been experiencing, it is now time for us to move away from print-on-demand, which, in the long run, is too expensive for any publisher to rely on, and have to move to offset printing. – Bill Campbell Read more about their campaign here. ————————————————————————————————— Awards of Excellence at MoCCA Fest Chosen by a jury of professional peers including Senior Editor at First Seond Books Calista Brill, artist Cliff Chiang, Editorial Director Charles Kochman, artist Mark Newgarden, and cartoonist, illustrator, and painter Lauren Weinstein. Awards of Excellence are given out to recognize the most outstanding work on view at the festival created by an independent artist. This Award of Excellence year’s winners include: Glynnis Fawkes, “Alle Ego” Pat Dorian, “Lon Chaney Talks Part 2” Shreyas R. Krishnan, “Becoming Rosie” Kate Lacour, “Vivisectionary II” R. Sikoryak, “iTunes Terms and Conditions” The SOI will host this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival Awards of Excellence winners in an exhibit featuring original art from their award-winning books. The exhibit will run from May 06-June 11th. More information here. For a full list of the works awarded recognition by the Society of Illustrators at MoCCA Fest 2016 hop on over to Comics Beat. ————————————————————————————————— The Classics The closing up of Picturebox Inc. isn’t news to anyone but it should never go forgotten. Nadel and company created an incredible publishing legacy and it is of vital importance that comics makers young and old understand the scope of what Picturebox accomplished with comics. Here’s a list of their bibliography so you can dig into the raw material yourself: Study up on the classics. If you can’t find what you want at Copacetic Comics, check your local library. You can thank Bill Boichel and your librarian in advance. Share this page: [...]

05/17/2018

Comics WorkbookMay 16, 2018NewsSam Ombiri on Gabrielle Bell’s “Cody”! ———————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: Sometimes I think about “Cody”– a story by Gabrielle Bell that appears in Kramers Ergot 8 – and about how much it does with so little. I guess I could question what does it matter that it does? After all, “doing so much with so little” can seem to be the mission of comics, if comics were to have a mission. Maybe I’m complimenting Gabrielle Bell’s success on that mission. The fact that Bell did so much with so little is not more important than what was actually done. I’m just really struck with this amazing story, and I’m trying to find ways to express how much I sensed the success of “Cody” in utilizing the comics form (not to rob the genuine intentions of comic and what it’s aiming to do). Well, that’s a lie. Truth be told, the very first time I read the comic, because it didn’t tell me how to feel and the drama wasn’t calling so much attention to itself, I kind of just skipped over all that was happening. I read through elements in the story, not really engaging with said elements. Like, for example, a friendship dissolving between Audrey’s dad and Cody, because nobody is paying any mind to it. Not even Cody, who is being so mistreated. While Audrey’s dad can be blamed for leaving Cody behind to be arrested, it isn’t for reasons that aren’t hard to guess, displayed by how Cody treats Audrey. At the same time, the way everything ended unfairly on his end, it’s easy to see why he doesn’t feel like he owes anyone anything. The way Gabrielle drew Cody being arrested conveys to me his realization that nobody truly cares about him. I wonder if Gabrielle gave him a dog to be less lonely? Anyway, Audrey’s dad is confronted with having to take responsibility for the man he used to be, not to mention the torment he has clearly been subjecting his wife to, and possibly at one point considers escaping it all, maybe with Cody?Would all this drama then be more effective if I was told what to feel? The way the comic is drawn feels so surreal, because it’s presented like nothing’s changed from the work that I’ve typically read from Gabrielle Bell. It’s hard to describe the feeling; it’s like if someone had told me that Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was directed by Douglas Sirk. It’s even crazier, because it’s Gabrielle Bell doing a comic that is so unlike her typical work – which is mostly autobiographical – but there’s no loud announcement that there’s a major shift. It’s so quietly done that it’s almost suspicious. I mean, for sure Gabrielle Bell’s regular work is not so unlike “Cody”, but the other purely fictional work I’ve read from her has been Cecil and Jordan in New York. This feels wholly unexpected for me. I mean in her autobio work she’s so good at portraying events or lack thereof in her life – it makes sense that her fiction would be this ridiculously good. The beginning is just as terrifying as the ending of the strip that comes before it in Kramers 8. I’m not talking about Leon Sadler’s thankfully comforting page, in between this unsettling horror, but the one before it in the story Kevin Huizenga had covered. There is something horrifying about Gabrielle Bell starting her story with a car crash, one whose only purpose is to remind our narrator of Cody, someone she once knew. It’s like, people have died and for no reason other than the minuscule purpose of making the main character briefly think about a guy named Cody. This isn’t a thing that I have to think long and hard about – I immediately feel it when I read the image and the words, but when I think about it some more it’s even more frightening. This is because the first panel is on the field in the past (most likely – nothing in the rest of the strip suggests otherwise) where the story takes place, so the setting is introduced already. Then a car crash “introduces” Cody, and one that’s not by any means loud – the way it’s drawn is especially ambivalent. The main character, Audrey, is looking at it, but her face is away from us. This oddly reminds me of Carlos Gonzalez’s comics. The way he draws his stories – while his stories and the way they’re drawn are incredibly grounded, whatever it may be that you’re being presented with, you’re not being told, at least by the drawings, what to be horrified with or what to find strange and what not. It’s like something Anders Nielsen said in an Inkstuds interview, that “sometimes in comics it’s best not to show things. So even a character’s expression – if a character is having an emotional response or little revelation or something, it’s almost always better to have their heads turned away from the camera. And I think of violence happening off-screen is sort of like the same thing. It’s more visceral, and it happens in the readers head instead.” It’s not a totally similar feeling that I get when I read “Cody”, but I just don’t know, I’m really troubled when I read the beginning. Just something about how the words that lead us to this incident are so casual – “Mostly I don’t think about it, but sometimes something will remind me of Cody.” It’s so casually and ambivalently spoken. I mean, on the list of horrifying images in comics this isn’t at the top of the list, and yet this is incredibly tragic and horrifying. I think it’s that such little care is given…it vaguely reminds me of the rhythm that Terrence Malick’s Badlands had – it speaks to the abrupt nature of life. Another comparison that came to mind was Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. I refer to how the drama is muted and every detail is there for a reason. The drama is there if you engage with it, and there are these points in the story where it viceraly hits. “Cody”, like all the comics in Kramers 8, really knew how to hit in this specific way that’s so flabbergasting and disorienting, and at times, as shown by Bell’s “Cody”, incredibly compelling. – Sam Ombiri Get a copy of Kramers Ergot 8 HERE and check out Gabrielle Bell’s “Cody”. ———————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-17-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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