Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Comics Workbook

Posted on September 29, 2015May 20, 2018

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12/01/2017

Sally IngrahamDecember 1, 2017NewsSally here with comics by November Garcia, Lina Ghaibeh, Emil Friis Ernst, and much more! ————————————————————————————————— Emil Friis Ernst spent last autumn here in Pittsburgh with us at the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency and abroad on his own in the city. He was on loan from The Animation Workshop in Denmark, and he got to spend nearly 3 months making comics and exploring our strange American culture. He recently published the comic he made during that time – Disconnector – which you can view in full on his website, HERE. The comic is about a lonely inventor and his robot (drawn and painted on this lovely grey paper that I remember well from when Emil was here!) Take some time to check it out, as well as some of his other comics which you can also find on his website. ————————————————————————————————— Ryan C. reviews November Garcia‘s Malarkey, the series of auto-bio comics made by this terrific Filipino cartoonist, over on Four Color Apocalypse. I’m with Ryan when he says that November is bound to break through in the near future, and having met her in person at SPX this year I couldn’t be more delighted to have this talented and funny comics maker in the scene. About Malarkey, Ryan writes: “Simply put, Garcia’s varied-length strips are every bit as familiar to somebody who “speaks comics” fluently as they are to someone who’s “comics illiterate.” Her figure drawing is efficient, practical, and betrays more than a hint of warmth and, dare I say it, innocence, while her stories tend to revolve around daily-life complexities that, in the hands of a less-attuned artist, would be depicted in a matter ten times more grim : neuroses (insecurity being first and foremost on the list), family dysfunction, doomed relationships, and alcoholism. There’s no way this stuff should be fun, but in Malarkey, God help me, it is.“ Read the rest of the review HERE and get copies of issues 1 and 2 over at Spit and a Half Distro. ————————————————————————————————— Lina Ghaibeh shares a comic about growing up in Syria during the Assad regime on The Nib, titled An Education in Fear. Read the whole thing HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Also, also There’s a new comic by Glynnis Fawkes up on Mutha Magazine titled Can You Play Now – see it HERE. Hilary Brown interviews Leslie Stein and talks about her new book Present and what it means to her to live in the present – HERE. Sarah Glidden is the guest on Episode 59 of Process Party – they talk travel, journalism, and how cartooning fits into both. Check it out. On The Comics Beat Alex Lu interviews Alisa Kwitney about the female friendships at the heart of her series Mystic U (from DC Comics). Read the interview HERE. Sophie Goldstein talks to Alex Dueben of Smash Pages about House of Women and more – HERE. RiLY features Nicole Georges – and her dog – on Episode 243 – listen HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The Winter Semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers starts January 18th 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. Makes a great holiday gift for yourself – or for a loved one who is interested in comics. Apply by midnight (EST) on Dec. 25th and get $100 off the course price. Full details and how to apply can be found HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 12-1-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 12-1-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

07/23/2018

Caleb OrecchioJuly 23, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here as always for the Monday edition of The Daily News! ————————————————————————————————— Okay so I was at Frank’s house and he had to answer some important emails or something so I sat in a comfy chair and started flipping through a bunch of Yokoyama books he had laying around. I started reading World Map Room when Frank turned on some music by Daily Life; you know, the band CF is in. The smooth symphonic melodies created this really nice atmosphere in the house that synchronized with my reading. The characters in the book started marching to the pace of the music. It was as if I was standing on some inter-dimensional harmonic crosshair. I was hypnotized by the coupling. I forgot Frank was a few feet away from me and I became one of Yokoyama’s characters moving through space, taking note of my bizarre surroundings. I felt myself sink further into the chair as if I was becoming more susceptible to gravity. The feeling was akin to dipping into a hot tub in winter. I finished World Map Room and began Garden. The record had repeated once or twice by this point and the familiarity with it’s pattern and with Yokoyama’s pacing intensified the hypnotic effect. Eventually, the mood changed. The music was turned down and the books set aside for conversation. I was back on Earth. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

11/04/2016

Sally IngrahamNovember 4, 2016NewsSally here, ready to shout about some cool comics and the women who make them. I’ve got notes on Lynda Barry, Julia Gfrörer, the She Changed Comics project, Lyn Chevli, Shade the Changing Girl #1, the CW Roller Derby “of the mind” League – plus an interview with Kevin Czap and Comics Workbook at CAB. ————————————————————————————————— Comics Workbook will be at Comic Arts Brooklyn this Saturday, Nov. 5th – find us upstairs at table 27! Frank Santoro, Juan Fernandez, Jenn Lisa, and John Kelly will be there, with other Comics Workbook students and friends stopping by throughout the day. Thee incredible Ronald Wimberly will be signing at our table at 2 pm! Just when I thought it was safe to pack up the purel! I’m guesting at @comicsworkbook table at @comicartsbklyn this Saturday at 2pm. I’ll have Prince of Cats, Attack on Titan, and Something Wicked this Way Comes (The original to this is still available $300. Hit me in my DMs) #comicartsbrooklyn #comicbookworkbook #RonaldWimberly #FrankSantoro #GratNin #PrinceofCats #Hanzōbō A photo posted by Ronald Wimberly (@ronaldwimberly) on Nov 3, 2016 at 3:32pm PDT Also catch Whit Taylor and Alyssa Berg and Aaron Cockle tabling downstairs! ————————————————————————————————— I finally had a minute to pick up Shade the Changing Girl #1 while working at Copacetic Comics this week. Steve Ditko’s original Shade the Changing Man series (1970s), and Peter Milligan’s wild reworking of the Shade stories (1990s) seemed to be lurking around, wondering what these GIRLS were going to do with the material. I was curious too (I spent a fair amount of time this past summer just staring in awe at some of those Brendan McCarthy covers of Milligan’s Shade). Shade the Changing Girl comes from creative team Cecil Castellucci (writer), Marley Zarcone (pencils), and Kelly Fitzpatrick (color), and at a glance, it certainly has the right look. The story ties easily into earlier Shade while quickly forging it’s own plot line: university dropout Loma (a big fan of lunatic poet Roc Shade) steals the “madness coat” from a museum on the planet Meta, and zips to Earth where she takes up residence in the body of a dying teenage girl. It doesn’t take Loma long to realize that dealing with high school, the uncontrollable madness, and the folks on Meta who want the coat back will make life a lot more difficult than she anticipated. Cecil Castellucci (whom I know from her work on The Plain Janes – which Jim Rugg did the artwork for) so far seems to be rocking this, and I’m pretty excited to see where the story goes. Here’s an interview with Castellucci from July that details her own excitement about the project. Issue #2 came out this week – I’ll be aiming to get my hands on it asap. ————————————————————————————————— The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund started the She Changed Comics project last year – it was a series they ran on their Tumblr during Women’s History Month. They successfully Kickstarted a book in the spring of 2016, and it has just been released. The book was another one that I managed to check out this week during my time at Copacetic Comics. Meant to be much more than just an overview of (the dreaded phrase) “women in comics”, the book claims to be “the definitive history of the women who changed free expression in comics, with profiles of more than 60 groundbreaking female professionals and interviews with the women who are changing today’s medium“. While a book that clocks in at 170 pages can hardly be called comprehensive, it did feel like a great who’s who of important names, drawing from the breadth of comics history and the mainstream, syndicated, and alt-comics scenes. Cartoonists, publishers, and editors all got a shout out – Edwina Dumm to Jackie Ormes to Marie Severine to Diane Noomin to Kate Beaton to Roz Chast to Fiona Staples to Francoise Mouly to Karen Berger. With two pages devoted to each person, the book is definitely a good resource and a nice thing to have on hand when some idiot wants to claim that women don’t make or read comics. Almost entirely written by women as well. My only complaint is that there weren’t enough pictures! Get a copy of the book HERE. ————————————————————————————————— One of the women who gets a mention in the book above is Lyn Chevli, the co-founder of Tits & Clits – the first comic book written, drawn, and published solely by women (beating the first Wimmen’s Comix to the newsstands by just a few weeks in July of 1972). Lyn recently died, at the age of 84, and Joyce Farmer (her Tits & Clits publishing partner) provided a remembrance of her on The Comics Journal – read it HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Lynda Barry of course also makes the CBLDF’s list of women who changed comics, thoroughly, constantly, and wonderfully. She is featured in The Guardian this week, riffing on “comics, creativity, and Matt Groening”. Her career has zigzagged through the comics industry, beginning in the syndicated world with the strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek (which ran for 30 years), bumping into a novel or two along the way, and now exploding in both the classroom at the University of Wisconsin (where she was recently named as the UW-Madison’s first recipient of the Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art) and a lively lecture circuit, where she preaches the gospel of creativity. Read the article HERE. ————————————————————————————————— You can see some pages from Julia Gfrörer‘s new book Laid Waste (Fantagraphics, November 2016) over on Flood Magazine, part of an interview with Julia that digs into her interest in the Middle Ages and the origins of this particular dark story. Check it out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Kevin Czap was awarded the CXC 2016 Emerging Talent Award a few weeks ago during Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. In the words of Tom Spurgeon, who presented the award to an astonished Kevin, “…this goes to a cartoonist whom we feel has plenty of promise as a cartoonist and has shown themselves to be a solid and giving community member as well… We love everything we’ve ever learned about you, in terms of your comics community heart.” Alyssa Berg caught up with Kevin a week later and continued the conversation about CXC, comics, and community – and the type of energy a person consciously puts into their work. Their conversation is featured here on the site today. Catch Kevin and Czap Books at Comic Arts Brooklyn this weekend! ————————————————————————————————— The Comics Workbook Roller Derby League has shared the results of a recent “roller derby bout”. The group is constantly expanding, while dialing in a deeper team practice and refining the goals and projects that we’re about. Much more to come – meanwhile, check out some comics we’ve made recently. See the rest of this “derby bout” HERE. ————————————————————————————————— #sallyingraham #comics A video posted by Sally Ingraham (@sally_ingraham) on Nov 2, 2016 at 9:57pm PDT Have a fantastic weekend folks, and get up to some mischief. Don’t let November get to you yet – and don’t forget to turn your clocks back an hour on Sunday! – Sally (Rogue) 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: [...]

01/03/2017

Aaron CockleJanuary 3, 2017NewsAaron here today with some NYC shows of note; Leanne Shapton looks back at 2016; New Sikoryak; Connor Willumsen; Joanie and Jordie & Suzie and Cecil ————————————————————————————————— Agnes Martin at the Guggenheim Museum through January 11 Hilton Als wrote about Martin in the New York Review last July: Martin contradicted all that nihilism. She used the grid as a forum for belief—a space where the viewer as well as the artist could contemplate the hand making the thing being observed. In her well-considered 1971 appreciation of the artist, Kasha Linville wrote: Once you are caught in one of her paintings, it is an almost painful effort to pull back from the private experience she triggers to examine the way the picture is made. The desire to simply let yourself flow through it, or let it flow through you, is much stronger…. Her paintings exert themselves differently, depending on their line, their pattern, and the quality of the ground color on the canvas. Some are less lyrical, evincing aggression or tension…. Others suggest spaciousness or vast space, again without using illusionistic devices or the egotistical implication of infinitely extendible surface. One pauses at the extraordinary line “the egotistical implication of infinitely extendible surface.” Unlike her male predecessors, not to mention contemporaries, Martin didn’t use the grid as a means of describing the infinite—the infinite “I” of being an artist. Instead, her work ends at the canvases’ edge.One begins and then one finishes; the grace is in the doing. Her touch was her personality; looking at canvases such as Friendship, of 1963 (made of incised gold leaf), or the ghostly Grass of 1967, one sees various lines that begin with verve, grow faint and then run out, slowly and calmly, like a swimmer beginning strong and then using wide, unhurried strokes once they see the shore. “Line is where she speaks most personally,” Linville said. “It is her vocabulary as the grids are her syntax.” Kerry James Marshall: Mastry at the Met Breuer through January 29 Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction at the Museum of Modern Art through March 19 ————————————————————————————————— The Top Pinks and Purples of 2016 Via Leanne Shapton at the New Yorker. 9. Willy Wonka’s frock coat, as worn by Gene Wilder in the 1971 movie; 10. Sky at dusk over Greenport, Long Island; 11. Cotton candy at the Four Seasons Restaurant; 12. Supermoon; 13. Hillary Clinton’s lapels; 14. Walls of Cecily Brown’s show at the Drawing Center ————————————————————————————————— The Unquotable Trump R.Sikoryak with a new mash-up for 2017. ————————————————————————————————— Connor Willumsen’s Portraits continues to enthrall. This magazine sized 16-page beautifully printed booklet (by WestCan – who also printed thee Santoro School Handbook) is available HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-3-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-3-2017 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency – Fundraising Video

Posted on September 29, 2015May 20, 2018 by Comics Workbook

Campaign video credits:

Video by Michael Pisano | michaelpisano.com
Soundtrack by DJ Thermos | facebook.com/DjThermos

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in School Updates

Comics Workbook

Posted on September 29, 2015May 20, 2018

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CXC 2016: 3 Questions for the Crew

Sally IngrahamOctober 23, 2016Festivals and ShowsCartoon Crossroads Columbus was an incredibly rich experience, and it left the attending Comics Workbook crew dizzy from new ideas, wonderful experiences, and filled with a renewed sense of belonging to a radically supportive and constantly evolving community. In an effort to process all of this, we asked ourselves a few questions – below are the first set of answers, supplied by Sacha Mardou, Caleb Orecchio, Juan Fernandez, and Phil Dokes. SACHA MARDOU 1) What is your biggest takeaway as a maker from the CXC experience? This was a a bench mark show for me in a lot of ways. CAKE 2016 was the first time I’ve been to a show and had a sense of people knowing my work in advance. This is still a new experience for me – I come from the St. Louis comics scene where until lately Dan Z, Kevin H and Ted May were the heavy hitters and I was there too, kinda. This show was a personal branch out for me and just as Sky in Stereo represents me finding my authors voice, CXC represents, on a personal level, me getting recognition and acceptance from my peers. It also had another level of me being there with Comics Workbook and cementing friendships and projects that have been fermenting for awhile. Without sounding sappy, it really was profound in terms of being there, part of a group of people that I admire and respect, who’ve been giving me feedback and a platform to find a wide audience. It was overwhelmingly positive, great and I’m so grateful for the opportunity. 2) What was something that you found and got excited about? (a book, artist, idea?) I saw an original Ronald Searle drawing at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and it seemed to sum up why we’re all here and why we’re all doing this. It was an existential moment. I wanted so much to roll it up and stick it up my sleeve, but honesty and dignity won out. 3) Favorite moment? I had a lot of moments with very special people, too many to write about. Honestly, Alyssa Berg and I had a meeting of minds on Sunday and – I hope it god it was mutual- but yeah. I gotta new penpal out of CXC. That makes me so happy! Girl Power, etc. CALEB ORECCHIO 1) What is your biggest takeaway as a maker from the CXC experience? The biggest takeaway for me was the community. Being around cartoonists was very special to me. My typically introverted guise is abandoned around “my people.” Be it cartoonists in the same “generation” or pros and veterans, it’s nice to be around these people. And with having so much programming and two whole days available to network and mingle outside of exhibiting, it made CXC extremely hard to leave. I’m nostalgic already. 2) What was something that you found and got excited about? (a book, artist, idea?) Seeing Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo presentation by John Canemaker was a big deal for me. The genius of McCay is vast, and Canemaker displayed that well. It really energized me and colored my attitude through for the rest of the festival. ALSO, the State of the Industry panel moderated by Tom Spurgeon. It was a breath of fresh air to hear cartoonists and gatekeepers (a controversial term) talk about the nuts and bolts of making a living in the comics industry. I was particularly excited about King Features Syndicate general manager Brendan Burford’s point of view. He seems to see the big picture and is furiously optimistic about comics and cartoonists. AND AND I took a tour through The Billy Ireland’s archives, guided by Caitlin McGurk. That was a blast. 3) Favorite moment? Okay, since you asked, I have to admit this. I almost had a moment in front of Seth, Ben Katchor, and the rest of the tour party when Caitlin McGurk took us into part of the archives and, just sitting to my right was an original Krazy Kat sunday page. It was the most beautiful piece of art I’ve ever seen. Seeing it so big, and just sitting out in the open. I think it was floating? You could feel the cosmic energy surrounding it. It was like Herriman’s ghost put it there just for me to see (other people saw it too, I’m just being dramatic obviously). The beautiful lines, the design, the scratched out ink at the top of the tree to give it depth and texture, and Krazy just sitting peacefully under it. I’m not one to get emotional in public, but I thought I was going to cry like baby in front of these people. I can feel tears welling up as I type this. I will never speak of this again. JUAN FERNANDEZ 1) What is your biggest takeaway as a maker from the CXC experience? I was reminded of the joy of print. Sometimes these events are so draining that I forget how much I love these little books. The halls of the Billy and the floor of the Metropolitan filled my spirits and allowed me to run workshops, sell books AND soak up all the comics on the floor. I’ve been in a lull of production – financial reasons + I’ve been stretched too thin between my own comics making, community organizing and paying the bills that I haven’t brought any books into the world. The vast array of work on display at the Billy and at the Metropolitan Library has me raring to produce some quality comics for print. 2) What was something that you found and got excited about? (a book, artist, idea?) The careful and holistic planning to programming, scheduling and laying out of the festival had me thinking deeply about the future of comics festivals. It was like someone opened a window and let in the most delicious breeze. I was so inspired that I wrote a little about those thoughts! 3) Favorite moment? Honestly, visiting the Billy Ireland blew my mind. Among the stacks in the archives and the art on exhibit, seeing Richard Thompson’s strip in the “Good Grief!” exhibition blew my mind and had my in tears. Seeing Mr. Thompson’s work in the flesh reignited a flame that I’ve been tending in my personal comics making ever since here in Pittsburgh. PHIL DOKES 1) What is your biggest takeaway as a maker from the CXC experience? That the only limits in making comics are the ones you put upon yourself. Sally and Juan really do make it very easy to just let the no’s that normally pop up in my process, pretty quickly vanish and not trip up my progress. And before I know it, they’ve made me make a page. 2) What was something that you found and got excited about? (a book, artist, idea?) Scott Roberts’ Happy Trails. Beautiful risograph narrative flipbook. Whit Taylor’s Wallpaper. Worried about how strong it would hold together with no figures depicted – no worries needed. Sacha Mardou’s Long Form Fiction Planning talk – Came in figuring it would be good because of the natural flow of her work, but was blown way-away by the depth of her research & thoughtfulness in regards of her characters/story. Wowzers! 3) Favorite moment? Gonna give you two: One – Walking into the reading room with all the original art laid out for about the 3rd time that day. See some big older guy handling some art without the white gloves. I look around at the staff in disbelief. “This guy’s got a lot of &%&&^ nerve… let me go around this table and get a good look at thi-OHMYGADITSSERGIOFREAKINGARAGONES! Two – Right after Sacha’s Friday talk, me, Sally, Juan, Kurt were having some chit chat between events and, quite naturally, out came everyone’s index cards/sketchbooks and the pens were scratching away. Just felt so right. For the rest of our complete CXC coverage check out the special “round up” report HERE. Share this page: [...]

04/10/2018

Aaron CockleApril 9, 2018NewsAaron here today with Goblet/Alagbé & Haifisch; Warren Craghead; a Funhouse Recap; Pen America World Voices Festival ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— ‘The 45th president should be an easy target for political cartoonists, but they’ve struggled to come up with an image that sticks.’ Sarah Boxer profiles a bunch of political cartoonists, including CW favorites Philip Guston and Warren Craghead. Not long after Trump was elected, I went to the Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York, to an exhibition of Philip Guston’s drawings of Richard M. Nixon, all from the early 1970s. I’d seen them before, but this time the work—featuring Nixon as a walking nose, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses, and Vice President Spiro Agnew as a triangle studded with nails—had new resonance. ————————————————————————————————— Robyn Chapman has a photo-recap of the recent Funhouse festival at The Drawing Center. ————————————————————————————————— Comics Carousel at the Pen World Voices Festival It’s a little bit of theater and a whole lot of art as comics artists Pénélope Bagieu (Brazen), Mariko Tamaki (Lumberjanes), Iasmin Omar Ata (Mi(s)hadra) and Tony Medina (I Am Alfonso Jones) join in a comics carousel led by Bob Sikoryak to showcase their visual talents and unique perspectives—and perform parts from their books! Original and subversive, they share their singular stories from the frontlines of comics that resist clichéd narratives and reimagine our futures. Q&A with the authors to follow. Check out the rest of the festival line-up, there’s some great stuff. ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-10-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

11/26/2018

Caleb OrecchioNovember 26, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with the newest Love and Rockets release. ————————————————————————————————— Los Bros’ latest issue of Love and Rockets is here. Volume 4, No. 6 (or, as the front-page editorial notes, no. 84 overall). Each new release of L&R is an event in my house. Every issue to my estimation is worth its own weight in gold. Usually a satisfying 35 to 45 minute read. Pure joy. I don’t have much to say about the issue that wouldn’t reiterate what I’ve wrote about Gilbert and Jaime before. I simply see each issue as required reading. Although, I have to say, I am hit with the reality that, with the more cartoonists I meet, not everyone is reading the series religiously (!). Actually, I certainly understand why many don’t read it. For one, the long history and continuity of the title can be extremely daunting. For two, well, I will not show my hand but rather assume that everyone has their reasons. Regardless, this comic is the cornerstone of the alt-comics movement. Without L&R, there is no Fantaraphics as we know it today. Period. Something else I have noticed is that, due to the lack of cartoonists reading L&R, particularly the books from this millennium, cartoonists kind of “pretend” to read it. “Yes yes of course Love and Rockets is important. Yes I love Hopey. And uh Glory. Right? Jaime was really nice to me when I met him.” This is just a theory, but I think cartoonists love to say they read L&R like they love to say they never read Building Stories. There is pride in both. As if reading long, difficult works is something they are above. These are just some thoughts I had while reading the new issue of Love and Rockets. Cheers! ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 11-26-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

09/13/2018

Caleb OrecchioSeptember 13, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on Trench Dogs by Ian Densford ——————————————————————————————— What a monstrous dream Ian Densford has conceived. His new graphic novel, Trench Dogs (which originally ran on on the Comics Workbook Tumblr in a different incarnation), left me sitting and blinking and thinking about what I’d read in quiet contemplation. The book is a series of alternating accounts of World War I told as a continuum in a 3-panel-per-page meter. With an omniscient eye and no regard for the faint of heart, we are swept through the perils of The Great War and witness the utter destruction of sixteen million people. Densford does however depict these people as “funny” animals which keeps the visual horror at arms length and digestible; but despite the “Maus-ian” approach, and like Maus, the pain of the events depicted retain their power. Trench Dogs is obviously influenced by Art Spiegelman’s Maus. This is an easy observation due to the “Roll Call” page preceding the story in which each nationality therein is labeled and depicted as their respective animal avatar, but I see a handful of other and possibly more vital influences or comparable works. The first and most important to me is Suiho Tagawa. Most savvy American readers will remember his war comic Norakuro from Kramers 6. When I first saw that Trench Dogs was 3-panels per page I could not stop thinking of Norakuro. Plus, unlike Maus, both Trench Dogs and Norakuro allow for whimsy. Trench Dogs is mostly not very funny, but there are moments of “cartoony” bliss that fall through the bleak cracks and relieve the senses of the total desolation burdening the bulk of the book. Similarly, Hayao Miyazaki’s manga Tiger Im Schlamm blends war (specifically tank battles in WWII) with the cartoony anthropomorphized soldier. And like Tiger Im Schlamm, Trench Dogs is rendered in watercolor. Though not quite done justice by the book’s glossy paper, (I am generally underwhelmed by the production choices of Dead Reckoning – the publisher) the paints give vibrance to the story and, again, cast a little light on the dark subject of WWI. And I would be remiss to not mention Joe Sacco’s panorama huge foldout illustration, The Great War, as an influence. I would lay money down right now that The Great War was a major influence for Densford. The real key to Trench Dogs is the steady and uninterrupted 3-panel grid (Yes yes – this is Comics Workbook and we love grids). Densford keeps perfect timing with the grid. Every panel carries the same weight so the pace is consistent throughout the entire comic. He makes good use of the middle of the page and, as I read, I noticed I would let myself wander around the spread. Sometimes I read the first tier on the left page to the tier on the right without reading the other two panels on the left, and to my pleasant surprise it did not affect the reading. Sometimes I would look at the middle panel first, and then “spiral” out. It all still made sense. This is high praise. Being a student of Frank Santoro’s, I can’t help but assume that Densford’s way of using layouts was conscious and not a fluke. The fact that Trench Dogs is essentially wordless aids in this amorphous way of reading. The reader is not locked onto a stream of dialogue that guides the action around the spread. We are free to see what we see without the confines of conversation or narration. The story itself is incredibly poignant and quite vicious. It is a war story or a story of a war. It does not pretend to do anything other than depict war and war’s violent consequences. Page after page, the reader is bombarded with terrifying realities of actual events. The rhythm of the constant chaos and depravity, 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3, starts to mess with you. After a while, you forget you are looking at drawings of animals and eventually you accept these images as the actual events they depict. There is little catharsis in reading Trench Dogs. I was quite shocked at the end when (no spoilers) after the war is over and medals are awarded, the violence continues back on our own soil completely separate and tangential from the war “over there.” Still, there is wisdom in this book in its depiction of human suffering, selfishness, selflessness and survival. Ian Densford steps back and triangulates the brutality of a war that laid waste to an entire continent and more as we stare in horror and amazement hoping we never share their fate, and yet it is difficult not to sympathize and even admire the victims whoever they might be. Death is the great equalizer and, when people encounter it, we can learn a lot from that. Ian Densford has masterfully managed to encapsulate that fact into a comic book. ——————————————————————————————— You can buy Trench Dogs directly from the publisher here. OR if you want to buy Trench Dogs directly from Ian, you can attend these shows on the following dates: – New York Comic Con, October 4-7 – UMBC Comic Con, October 27 – CAB, November 11 ——————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 9-13-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

09/27/2016

Aaron CockleSeptember 27, 2016NewsAaron here today with Discipline; Dykes in Print/Boiled Angel/CBLDF; Maintenance Art; Nadel/Dunham; Remembering Kim Thompson; Ford/Walden; French Comics in the USA; Portraits & Swinespritzen ————————————————————————————————— Dash Shaw is posting Diary Comics this week at TCJ, where he discusses the process of his work-in-progress, Discipline: This book is a long comic book, but it does not have any speech balloons or panel borders. The illustrations and the hand-written cursive text float on the page. This activates the negative space of the page, which lends the book a spacious stillness, or a quiet, “Quakerly” tone. This spacing relates to Civil War-era illustration, where elements hover inside of articles. Also, this allows me to write and draw all of the elements separately, so the book is easier for me to edit. With the conventional comic approach, usually the insertion of a panel throws off all of the other panels in the book. Because of the collage-like structure of my book, I can easily insert illustrative moments and pieces of text and research/write while still making new drawings. ————————————————————————————————— Censorship: Don’t Do it! In celebration (?) of Banned Books week, Pen.org has a piece by Jennifer Camper, Dykes in Print: And the Guardian revisits the Mike Diana Boiled Angel trial and the origins of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund: Set up in 1986, the CBLDF exists to fight censorship of comic books, protect the First Amendment right to free speech and, more pragmatically, to provide legal representation for comics creators facing prosecution. Founder Denis Kitchen was running Kitchen Sink Press, a publisher of underground comics, when he heard about a police raid on Friendly Frank’s comic shop in Chicago. Six officers had seized seven titles, including erotic comic Omaha the Cat Dancer, Robert Crumb’s anthology Weirdo and SF-smut comic Heavy Metal, and arrested manager Michael Correa. Friendly Frank’s was shut down for five days, but not before one of the arresting officers told newspapers there was a “satanic influence” in the comics seized. Kitchen was appalled. “I realised immediately that if police officers with built-in Satan detectors could get away with making arrests and seizing objectionable comic books, much more than the comics industry was at stake,” he says. He swiftly raised $20,000 for a fighting fund, helped by comics heavyweights like Crumb and Frank Miller. “It was gratifying to see that sudden unity among the comics community,” Kitchen says. “I was more used to people squabbling.” ————————————————————————————————— Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art at Queens Museum This first survey of Ukeles’ work is organized by the Queens Museum’s Larissa Harris and guest co-curator Patricia C. Phillips, who initiated the project in 2012. The show will span five decades, from her work as a pioneer of feminist performance to a practitioner of public art, in which Ukeles invites us to reconsider indispensable urban systems and the workers who maintain them. Ukeles is undoubtedly best-known for her 36+ year role as the official, unsalaried Artist-in-Residence at New York’s Department of Sanitation. Unprecedented when it began in 1978, this residency has now become a model for municipalities engaging with artists as creative agents. ————————————————————————————————— Dan Nadel on Carroll Dunham’s drawing at Hyperallergic: Dunham and his peers had emerged from a conceptual and process-oriented New York milieu in which a number of artists were exhibiting and redefining drawing as a primary medium, including Barry Le Va, Dorothea Rockburne (who Dunham and Kendrick assisted), Mel Bochner, and Sol Lewitt. Connecting these and other artists was the removal of both the image and the artist’s sensuous touch, replaced with rigorous conceptual procedures. In contrast, Terry Winters notes that he and Dunham “saw drawing and making things by hand as a way out of or into art. We were reconnecting with gesture and touch, and their capacities to register other kinds of information not available through logic.” They were also finding kinship with artists that were not highly considered at the time, such as the mid-20th century German painter and photographer Wols and the American post-war painter William Baziotes, both of whose work defied categorization and remained outside of the contemporary dialogue. ————————————————————————————————— At the ever-enduring Comics Reporter blog, Tom Spurgeon remembers Fantagraphics publisher Kim Thompson, and looks at the aging of the ‘alt-comics’ crowd: The thing that stuck in my head, though, throughout today, was how many people texted and e-mailed that they thought Kim was older than 60 when he passed away. I think that’s because Kim and Gary Groth and their roughly same-age peers were either the first generation of alt-comics publishers or the first generation since the first generation to enter mainstream comics in a significant way. So you have a lot of people 55-65 with trackable careers two, three, four decades long in an established arts industry, which is rare outside of a few precocious creative talents. ————————————————————————————————— Sean Ford recently conducted an interview with Tillie Walden, posted on Inkstuds. ————————————————————————————————— French Comics Framed Festival NYC, 27 September-5 November Sept 27 – Nov. 5: French Comics Framed – Exhibition The Cooper Union, Foundation Building, 7 East 7th Street, NY 10003 Oct. 4: Panel by Asaf & Tomer Hanuka The Society of illustrators, 128 East 63rd Street, NY, NY 10065 Oct 6-9: Meet our artists on booth #1558 at New York Comic Con and on the Artist Alley Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 655 W. 34th St., NY, NY 10001 Oct. 6, 7pm: French Comics On Screen: Film Adaptations of Franco-Belgian Graphic Narratives The School of Visual Arts, 209 E 23rd St, 3rd floor Oct. 7, 6:30pm : How to Draw a Life: The Rise of Graphic Biography in France Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, NY 10029 Oct. 8, 1:30-2:30pm: Drawing From the World: Franco-Belgian Comics in Global Context New York Comic Con (room 1B03), Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 655 W. 34th St., NY, NY 10001 Oct. 8, 7pm: Reconstructing Comix: The “Architecture” of Franco-Belgian Graphic Narratives, from Tintin to Today The Great Hall of Cooper Union, Foundation Building, 7 East 7th Street, NY, NY 10003 Nov. 1, 7pm: Panel discussion: Drawing the unspeakable Columbia University 116th St & Broadway, NY, NY 10027 ————————————————————————————————— 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. Share this page: [...]

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