Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Creativity, Daily News, Music, Vegetables

Harrison

Posted on March 31, 2016April 27, 2016

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11/14/2016

Juan FernándezNovember 14, 2016NewsJuan here with the good stuff: Juan Fernandez on CAB 2016; Heidi Macdonald’s CAB recap; Ben Jones interviewed; Angela Stempel at the NY Comics and Picture-Story Symposium; Four takes on Noah Van Sciver’s Blammo #9; Eleri Mai Harris on the American election; CBLDF on Rayma Suprani. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️I went to CAB with Jenn Lisa last Saturday. I had a ball and I wrote about my time here on the site. Seeing everyone come together in a gymnasium like that lit a flame that very few things are going to be able to stamp out in the coming months. I’m ready to face the coming winter. Gabe Fowler’s got the market place down to a science. So, naturally, I’m interested to see the ways in which CAB continues to evolve. Will it stabilize into being an amped up zine fest and wild style art book fair that focuses exclusively on the marketplace? Will someone step in to lend a hand to the team to develop some track of programming during the weekend or the week before? To return to it’s BCGF format. Does that matter? Who’s ready to step up to the plate? On the floor I heard some people discuss this being the last CAB. And damn, that’s a little pessimistic. For what it’s worth, CAB can’t be beat for a lot of reasons. Easy access via transportation. Trains, plains, buses, cars all make their way easily to NYC. For the most part either you know someone in the City or there’s an affordable place to stay for a night or two. The crowds are great. People are squeezing CAB into their busy Saturday. It’s just one of many things they’re doing so they bring an incredible energy into the space. Most people likely just heard that there was something cool with comics going on in that one church in Brooklyn. That’s a good place to be. Gabe’s curation can’t be beat. You wan’t to find the coolest books published in a year? You can’t do any better in the US than coming to CAB. Oh and people come ready to spend money. Real money. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Heid MacDonald shared her CAB Coverage over on Publisher’s Weekly. Her big take away was similar to mine: Though scaled down in Size, robust sales. Because the show was planned a bit later than usual, there were fewer debut books. Indie mainstays Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly were represented by artists like Drew Friedman and Adrian Tomine, but did not have booths. Nevertheless the books that did make it sold out quickly, including several very limited editions from even smaller publishers, such as the third volume of Connor Willumsen’s Treasure Island, an experimental comic from Breakdown Press; and Charles Burns’ Free Shit from French art publisher Le Dernier Cri. Although the event served to spotlight the number of talented cartoonists who still call New York home, many of the same artists cited the difficulty of maintaining a small press comics scene amid the rising costs and rents of New York City. “It’s harder to have a scene when everyone is broke and stressed out about money,” Skelly observed. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️ Ben Jones did a killer interview over on HyperAllergic with Nicole Rudick focusing on his recent exhibition at The Hole NYC. Very inspiring, very enlightening. It cuts across all artistic disciplines and argues for drawing as a fundamental practice in the 21st century. My words, not his 😉 Nicole Rudick: Are these paintings of new comics? Ben Jones: I want to give you the two narratives. There’s the concept of the show, which is hopefully how the audience perceives it and how I approached it creatively — to make a zine first and then to have a meta-art show where I’ve hung the “originals” from the zine. Typically, you’d show the originals in this way at a comic-con or a coffee shop or something like that. I intentionally wanted to present the show in that conceptual context, as a novelty. I took that to the furthest extent by adding the fake red dot you’d see at a coffee-shop art show, to indicate that the work had been bought. As a painter, I’m constantly chasing that magical, ethereal line or stroke or gesture that is half muscle memory or trance action. You get a lot of that with handwriting and with quick sketching. I’ve fabricated ladders and furniture and video installations that take months of concepting the installation and executing the animation. This is something entirely different — it’s a one-to-one connection with an idea or a drawing or a mark. There’s a narrative to a lot of these pieces and a linear way to think about them, but then we also get to think about comics and about the formal aspects of comics, because comics aren’t just linear storytelling and gags. There is a nuanced, visual-language fuckery that I think is important. Think of Saul Steinberg changing the way people draw in the 1950s or Robert Crumb in the sixties — there are one or two people who have really changed the way we think and draw and understand line drawing. So this is also me firing a shot across the bow. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️ Have you seen Bill Kartalopoulos’s Instagram? He’s posting a lot of protest art from the last 50 yrs or so. Find something that moves you and research it. There’s extremely fertile ground in these images. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Eleri Mai Harris is coming back to America. Thank god. In this political climate, comics stateside need her more than ever. She’s got a new comic on identity, politics and patriotism over on the NIB. Don’t sleep on this Australian-American journalist and cartoonist. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️ CBLDF on Rayma Suprani, Venezuelan Cartoonist’s Political Exile Rayma Suprani has long been one of the best-known and most fearless political cartoonists in Venezuela, but for almost a year she and her work have only been “in” the country virtually, through social media. After El Universal, the newspaper where she had worked for more than 20 years, was bought by anonymous supporters of President Nicolas Maduro in 2014, Suprani was fired in short order and eventually forced to flee to Miami where “I can be more useful because my creativity can flow without worrying.” Suprani had often skewered Maduro’s now-deceased predecessor Hugo Chavez and stood up to the oppression of his populist movement known as Chavismo, but journalist Cesar Miguel Rondon tells PRI’s The World that Maduro’s government is even worse: They behaved like punks on a street corner. You don’t have the rule of law here. Every single day it’s more openly the exercise of a dictatorship instead of a democracy. So, ‘we don’t like Rayma. Rayma, you should go.’ It’s as simple as that. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Angela Stempel on Picturing Worlds: abstraction, rhythm and “reality” in animated spaces. This Tuesday at the NY Comics and Picture-Story Symposium! In this presentation, Angela Stempel will present her works of experimental animation that explore abstract shapes, the dissolution of the physical form and of photographic certainty in narrative and non-narrative pieces. She will discuss her influences, contemporary work and how she deals with the representation of time and energy. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️ Four Shots get fired at BLAMMO #9: Alex Mansfield, Daniel Elkin, Justin Giampaoli, Keith Silva blast through Noah Van Sciver’s latest release. Enter the dude zone, haha. It’s good to see a single issue of comics get unpacked to this degree. More of this, please! For the past decade, cartoonist Noah Van Sciver has been publishing his one-man anthology series, BLAMMO. Kilgore Books has recently released the latest in the series and we here at Comics Bulletin were so impressed with it that we knew we had to devote some time and energy into unpacking our reactions. Each of the following writers were tasked with choosing a single page or panel from Blammo #9 and use it as a platform for talking about the book as a whole. None of the writers read what the other was working on during this process (Ed. Note: Except for Elkin — he sees everything). As testament to the thematic unity of Blammo #9, the writers all ended up talking about the same ideas of spirituality, artistic integrity, and the human desire to connect. ————————————————————————————————— In case you missed it, our indefatigable Sally Ingraham started an eBay store to help out the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency and also her own comics-making projects. Check it out HERE! ————————————————————————————————— until next time! Juan Share this page: [...]

12/20/2016

Aaron CockleDecember 19, 2016NewsAaron here today with an Upside-Down World; Internet Comics & Free Speech; Broken Frontier Awards; Héctor Germán Oesterheld; Paul Karasik on Gary Groth (and Frank Frazetta); Security of Culture and Culture of Security; Some Olivier Schrauwen for the Holidays; a Riso Lab Missive ————————————————————————————————— Gustave Verbeek, October 4, 1903 ————————————————————————————————— How Web Comics Revolutionized Free Speech Caitlin McCabe at the CBLDF talks about the internet and the ways in which comics can exist there: The internet hasn’t just become a vehicle for free speech in the English-speaking world. Cartoonists around the world — especially in countries where expressing oneself freely can have legal or physical repercussions — are finding their voice on the internet. Sudanese cartoonist Khalid Albaih has built a following online publishing comics that address serious global issues. Chinese cartoonist Badiucao may have left his home country, but uses Twitter and the independent web newssource China Digital Times to reach his audience and sidestep censors. Kanika Mishra, a female cartoonist out of India who has been threatened for her work, describes how social media has enabled her to not only find new audiences, but empower her to continue to spread her cartoons which discuss social injustices in her home country. ————————————————————————————————— Broken Frontier Awards 2016 The comics blog has announced nominees for its annual awards. It includes work from CW favorites Tillie Walden, Simon Moreton, Eleanor Davis, Kelly Kwang and Richie Pope, Anna Haifisch, and Daniel Clowes; as well as publishers: Koyama, Press, Avery Hill Publishing, Breakdown Press, Fantagraphics, and Retrofit/Big Planet. Please consider voting, if you are so inclined. ————————————————————————————————— El Eternauta Dominic Umile profiles the comics writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld, his work with Francisco Solano López, and the fate of Oesterheld and his family members at the hands of the Argentine dictatorship in 1977. “Oesterheld played an important role in the development of the Argentine comic between the 1950s and the 1970s,” University of Iowa professor Ana Merino wrote in the International Journal of Comic Art in 2001. “He unknowingly opened up a bridge between fantastic and comic literature, showing that comics could be as intense as literature, and in turn, can offer alternative aesthetic possibilities.” ————————————————————————————————— ‘Meet Gary’ Via Paul Karasik, excerpted from the recent Fantagraphics history/hagiography, We Told You So: Comics as Art, edited by Tom Spurgeon and Michael Dean. ————————————————————————————————— Security Culture is Good Kade Crockford at The New Inquiry has some information about navigating and negotiating in these current and soon-to-be current times: Take these precautions to protect yourself and your loved ones from the state. When the FBI interviews someone, they send two agents: one person asks questions, and the other takes notes. The stenographer then goes back to the office and types up the notes into an official document known as Form 302. This is the government’s official record of the interview, and it can and likely will be used against the interview subject. If an FBI official writes on the 302 that you said you were at a basketball game Sunday morning at 11, and then you later tell a grand jury that you were at the basketball game at 10, you can be charged with lying to a federal agent. A conviction for lying to a federal agent will land you in federal prison for years. This is how the FBI puts people in a vice, and gets them to inform. The truth doesn’t matter; the only thing that matters is what’s written on that Form 302. ————————————————————————————————— Je peux rentrer chez moi maintenant? A grab-bag (or hodge-podge) of writing about Olivier Schrauwen‘s comics work to date, in French, just waiting to be translated into your language of choice. For example: Entre-temps, les extraterrestres lui font assister en miniature et en immersion au spectacle de l’histoire humaine, de plus en plus douloureuse au fur et à mesure que les événements se rapprochent de sa propre vie, déclenchant un stupéfiant moment d’hystérie infantile dans les rues de New-York, le jour du 11 septembre 2001. Toutes ces pages sont les plus belles et les plus fortes de l’album, Schrauwen s’y représentant comme un géant surplombant la destinée des hommes, mais se comportant en réalité comme un gamin détaché du passé et insoucieux du futur (sommet d’ironie : le narrateur, qui vient d’assister à la fin du monde, dit simplement « Je peux rentrer chez moi maintenant ? »). In the meantime, the extraterrestrials make him assist in miniature and immersion in the spectacle of human history, more and more painful as events come closer to his own life, triggering a stunning moment of infantile hysteria On the streets of New York on September 11, 2001. All these pages are the most beautiful and the strongest of the album, Schrauwen representing himself as a giant overlooking the destiny of men, but behaving in reality Like a kid detached from the past and careless of the future (summit of irony: the narrator, who has just witnessed the end of the world, simply says “I can go home now?”). ————————————————————————————————— Dispatch from the Riso Lab Getting ready for tonight’s (or yesterday’s, considering I am posting this news update on Monday afternoon, to be read on a Tuesday, by you, or whenever, it’s not like time has any sort of relevancy any more, here on the internet, or out in the real world, for that matter, if it ever did) Print Slam 4 event, I had booked some time in the Riso Lab at SVA, and was able to print and assemble a mini, Math Comics 2. Print Slam 4 promo poster by Panayiotis Terzis. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 12-20-2016 – by Sally Ingraham Share this page: [...]

10/10/2017

Aaron CockleOctober 10, 2017NewsAaron here today with ARTZINES; Kurt Ankeny; Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim; Gary Panter; Juan Fernández ————————————————————————————————— ARTZINES is a transmedia research project run by artist publisher antoine lefebvre editions. This research project aims to produce a reference book on the subject of contemporary art zines. As an artist researcher, it is important for lefebvre to imagine new creative ways of doing research. Therefore, ARTZINES.INFO will allow the public to access the unedited data of this research project as it is collected. This online database and the zines produced by ARTZINES during this research process will show the progress made toward the publication of the book. ————————————————————————————————— Kurt Ankeny: Mining the Mind’s Eye Kurt Ankeny talks about the reasoning and philosophy behind why he finds drawing from imagination and memory such a strong approach to cartooning, and how this creates deeper truths via non-photographic image making. The 195th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2017 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. ————————————————————————————————— ‘This humorous episode takes on additional absurdity when the subject shifts to a military coup on the next page.’ Mark Peters at Salon.com has some nice things to say about the new book by Brigitte Findakly and Lewis Trondheim, Poppies of Iraq: Like any great comic, even one about the real world, “Poppies of Iraq” creates its own reality for readers to get lost in — a world told via plain, blunt language and non-realistic, cartoony figures that interweave the personal and political. One of the most subtly brutal sequences in the book involves a marriage. In a tense two pages, Trondheim presents three short conversations consisting of the words “So?” and “Completely.” ————————————————————————————————— Gary Panter: HIPPIE TRIP, Oct 12 — Nov 11, Marlborough Contemporary Viewing Room, 545 West 25th Street, NYC. Via Dan Nadel. ————————————————————————————————— Expanding the Festival Toolkit If you haven’t already, please take a look at Juan Fernández’s post about future possibilities and approaches to comics festivals: Centralize Sales Our current system is embarrassingly inefficient. It is an ineffective use of getting tens of dozens of skilled comics makers and storytellers in one city for a week or weekend. No more exhibitors expected to stand behind tables hawking wares. Nowadays with everyone behind tables, people are barely interacting. There’s a vital cross-pollination that just doesn’t happen. What does it look like when a show does away with the flea market model? One thought is that you establish a festival shop. You get an experienced comics retailer to run the shop. You have them hire a trusted staff. You pay that staff. The shop gets a cut. 30/70. In a model like this, it costs you no money to have your work available. Under this new kind of model, if you are a guest you sign up to be involved in citywide comics programming. Signings, gallery exhibitions, lectures, workshops. This is the kind of thing that you get Arts and Cultural councils involved in. You sign up because you want to be part of the programming. With a model like this, you free up the artists and suddenly new horizons open up. Among those horizons are sources for financing. Imagine collaborating with a city’s municipal parks: guided bike tours where throughout the tour you make stops, learn about the city while doing landscape drawings and comics strips of the experience… A series of readings at a bookstore. Gallery exhibitions. Movie screenings at an arthouse theater. There are so many venues that would be amenable to programming: libraries, universities, community centers, theaters, bookstores, parks… Most of these venues have programming budgets that could fund materials and labor for artists. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-10-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 10-10-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

Connor Willumsen’s LICAF 2016 Workshops

Comics WorkbookOctober 30, 2016ClassesConnor Willumsen teaching a Comics Workbook-hosted workshop at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival, 2016 Share this page: [...]

10/18/2016

Aaron CockleOctober 17, 2016NewsAaron here today with Mould Map 6; Leela Corman; Comics from Spain; Colette Gaiter on the work of Emory Douglas; More Pepe (Sorry, Pepe); Cecily Brown; (Notes For/Towards) Some Capsule Reviews ————————————————————————————————— Mould Map 6: TERRAFORMERS Group Exhibition & Events Series Bonington Gallery, Nottingham 17th September to 21st October 2016 In a break with the publication format of earlier editions, Mould Map 6 will take place as an exhibition / walk-in magazine running over 5 weeks and including talks, screenings, performances and open workshops. Set against the background hum of sci-fi imaginaries common to all Mould Map projects, TERRAFORMERS brings together over 50 practitioners whose work encompasses various approaches to world making, alongside historical visualisations of possible futures and their role in shaping the present. ————————————————————————————————— Life is an ambush. My two birth stories. A Leela Corman comic. ————————————————————————————————— Spanish Fever Panel Discussion from SPX now on Youtube Cómics, tebeos, and novelas gráficas have been making waves on the European comics scene for decades. SPX, in partnership with the Spanish Cultural Center, proudly presents some of the most exciting Spanish talent in the comics scene! Bienvenido a David Rubín, Javier Olivares, Ana Galvañ, José Domingo, and Santiago García. Moderated by cartoonist and teacher Matt Madden. ————————————————————————————————— The 164th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Colette Gaiter on “Emory Douglas: 50 years of Revolutionary Art” Colette Gaiter will talk about former Black Panther Party Minister of Culture, artist, designer and illustrator Emory Douglas’s work on The Black Panther newspaper in the 1960s and 70s. His subversive and proactive political cartoons, collages and drawings visualized the Black Power movement and galvanized activism that persists into the twenty-first century. He currently travels globally to give talks about his previous work and collaborates with indigenous activists in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico—any place where people use art for liberation from injustice and oppression. ————————————————————————————————— Pepe Pepe Pepe Heer/Pepe The great Jeet Heer has a piece about Pepe the Frog at the New Republic: When the alt-right kidnapped Pepe the Frog, they weren’t just seizing control of Matt Furie’s character, but also defiling an entire artistic tradition of using animal allegories to comment on racism. They were returning cartoon animals to the crudity of blackface creations like Flip the Frog and denying the artistic depth found in works ranging from Krazy Kat to the Muppets to Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus (where the cats are Nazis and the mice Jews). Pepe the Frog, as perverted by its captors, is a kind of inverted Kermit: a frog drained of any humanity. Furie/Pepe Matt Furie: political cartoonist? ————————————————————————————————— Cecily Brown at the Drawing Center through December 18 Via the NY Times: For years, Ms. Brown has taken the images that stay with her and drawn them, not just once but again and again. Sometimes these images are the overwhelming examples of her predecessors, like the masterly 18th-century debauchery of William Hogarth’s painting “Strolling Actresses Dressing in a Barn” or the postmedieval, religiously-tinged excess of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Fight Between Carnival and Lent.” But she also plucks shimmering fragments out of the contaminated tide of sexual imagery that is a fact of modern life — and whether it’s the ecstatically endless variation of the unchanging act itself or the compulsive repetition of pornography, sex seems especially apropos. ————————————————————————————————— Brief, Ephemeral Capsule Reviews Open Country #1, Michael DeForge, 2011, self-published According to Wikipedia: DeForge self-published Open Country #1 in May 2011 and issue #2 in fall 2011. Originally planned as a five-part series, DeForge abandoned it “midway through, destroyed all the artwork for and then threw away all the unsold copies”. We take great comforts in these assured and abandoned works. Late Era Clash #24 & #27, Mike Taylor, 2011 & 2015, Pegacorn Press Fin de siècle Bushwick etc apt-dwelling and loneliness, questionable behavior, the lure of the internet & a workbook about death, respectively. Les nouvelles béguines, Julie Delporte, 2015, self-published Paint and colored pencil and some tape collage. Placement of tape is extremely important. Use of tape in one’s art practice in general. Use of white space on paper – Negative Space etc etc. Hands: An Anti-story, Kimball Anderson, 2015, InkBrick Anderson as a body artist, transcription of hand gestures, process of talking to oneself, balance of pages panels and worded space rubbed out and smudged, first issue in a series. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden Part 1: My Own Private Portland & Part 2: Ken Death is Death, Annie Murphy, 2015 & 2016, self-published Murphy writing about ghosts. River Phoenix, balance of / cohesion of ruled notebook paper and space for image, lab books and writing out text, pacing it out. Portland as a haunted space. Gus van Sant/My Own Private Idaho/River Phoenix. Where it exists in Murphy’s memories. Part 2 and white supremacy in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. + Portland history 20 years on. A note on the printing aesthetic: photocopied inkwash. A note on printing aesthetic in general — OC: printed-out greyscale or Riso, maybe? LEC: Riso, screenprinted cover; LNB: Laser-printed?; H: good photocopier probably; INPYARG: see above. Also: wondering about the size of these print runs? Share this page: [...]

03/31/2016

Posted on March 31, 2016April 27, 2016 by Harrison

Cameron Weston Nicholson and Harrison G. Prince here with news and musings on work music, vegetables, blocks, and other things.

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Cameron Weston Nicholson is an exciting and talented artist out of Richmond, VA who’s work can be found on Comics Workbook. Here he is on music, mindset, and poetry.

Sometimes you just can’t find that right side of the pillow right? One side is too cold, the other too hot, and the middle ground is where you end up sleeping with no pillow at all. While working I try to find music that powers my mind (depending on the project). Lately, poems have been my main priority. So how do you find that middle ground between music that doesn’t take your thoughts away from words you’re trying to conjure? I’ve got a couple remedies that work for me, but could possibly help you aswell.

With news updates comes busy times. Here are some choices of music that mellow out and empower my mind simultaneously.

“Breakfast with Ringgo” is a series of YouTube videos that have been keeping me going day and night. Listening to recordings of beat makers is soothing for a couple reasons. You have music (mainly beats) which automatically puts your mind in a trance, but you also have the subtle commentary of those in the room. This series makes you feel like you’re listening to a podcast. Hearing a “voice” is comforting when it’s miscellaneous and choppy.

True Body is a local band based in Virginia Beach, Va that has caught my attention. Experimental with beautiful synths and a great voice on top of it.

These are just two things that can get your fingers warmed up for any intense/good day of working.

Give them a try, relax, and remember to drink some water!

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Mexican/Texan artist Ines Estrada made a funny update to her Pachecomics series a few days ago. Don’t open this one around kids, prudes, or the humorless. Also, make sure to check out the Gatosaurio collective from San Antonio for more comics and art too.

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Continuing off of what Jillian was talking about yesterday about finishing work, the video above from filmmaker Ze Frank shares some interesting thoughts about idea generation and getting unstuck. This particular passage (8:08) about rhythm and recognition resonated with me….
“Almost everything you do has a rhythm, and the rhythm gets established without you knowing it. For example, if you listen to yourself talk, you record yourself or something like that, you’ll notice that you have very specific rhythms, and often people when they speak in public get into a pattern of speaking in the same, exact, way. I think there is a pattern of expectation and release that in and of itself kind of starts to wash out because we tend to stop listening to patterns once we’ve identified them. So the challenge is to identify as many rhythms as possible, in all facets of the media that you’re making, and then break them.”

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Along with Cam’s choices, here’s my old school pick for the week. Listen with your good headphones. Until next week.

-Harrison

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in NewsTagged Creativity, Daily News, Music, Vegetables

Harrison

Posted on March 31, 2016April 27, 2016

Explore

08/06/2018

Caleb OrecchioAugust 6, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with early morning thoughts and other news. ————————————————————————————————— “Sometimes I think that I know too much.” Talking to a friend recently while he was visiting Pittsburgh, we discussed this feeling of knowing “too much” about comics. The thought seems silly in retrospect. Obviously you can’t know too much about comics, but the breadth of history and accessibility of the medium can be overwhelming. We asked ourselves: Should I try to draw like Jaime Hernandez? Should I try to write like Alan Moore? Should I learn to paint? Will I ever be as good as my heroes? Who is better, Ditko or Kirby? Ware or Mazzucchelli? Bushmiller or Schulz? Fisher or Herriman? Crane or Caniff? Does it matter? Will there ever be another publisher like PictureBox? Was Moebius actually a good cartoonist? Do these pants make my ass look fat? Have you been eating your vegetables? Do you watch gladiator movies? We are frustrated to find that our work does not live up to our knowledge. “It’s a slow process,” we have to remind ourselves. “But Mazzucchelli was working at Marvel while still in college! And Trevor Von Eeden started working for DC on his own character when he was 17! And don’t get me started on Xaime!” Hahahaha! We had a big laugh at the expense of our lack of confidence. What else can we do? Quit? We put the success of our heroes aside, and went back to our drawing boards. ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Matt Seneca wrote about the BWS classic Weapon X over on TCJ.com. Speaking of The Comics Journal, you might know by now that it is coming back as a printed object (separate from TCJ.com). AND Nemo is coming back too! Rob Clough reviews the new King-Cat on High-Low. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

07/24/2018

Aaron CockleJuly 24, 2018NewsNatural Process; Bell/Porcellino/Duchamp; More ‘R. Mutt’; More Grip ————————————————————————————————— “Will you come see the ‘real’ webpage painting at the museum? Or will you see it ‘virtual’ through the web?” Via Rhizome.org’s Net Art Anthology: Natural Process is an installation that translates the iconic circa-2003 Google search engine home page to the form of a large-scale painting, and then back to digital media via webcam. This double remediation, enacted by Japanese net art duo exonemo (Kensuke Sembo and Yae Akaiwa) was exhibited at the Mori Art Museum in 2004, at a moment when artists were increasingly interested in the slippage between art’s circulation online and in the gallery. The painting was purchased by Google, and has not been exhibited publicly until now; it is on view through March 10, 2019 at ICC Tokyo and as part of Net Art Anthology. ————————————————————————————————— A Trip to the Museum With Cartoonist John Porcellino Always nice to see cartoonists visiting museums. ————————————————————————————————— Speaking of Marcel Duchamp… The iconic Fountain (1917) is not created by Marcel Duchamp In 1982 a letter written by Duchamp came to light. Dated 11 April 1917, it was written just a few days after that fateful exhibit. It contains one sentence that should have sent shockwaves through the world of modern art: it reveals the true creator behind Fountain – but it was not Duchamp. Instead he wrote that a female friend using a male alias had sent it in for the New York exhibition. Suddenly a few other things began to make sense. Over time Duchamp had told two different stories of how he had created Fountain, but both turned out to be untrue. An art historian who knew Duchamp admitted that he had never asked him about Fountain, he had published a standard-work on Fountain nevertheless. The place from where Fountain was sent raised more questions. That place was Philadelphia, but Duchamp had been living in New York. … Who was living in Philadelphia? Who was this ‘female friend’ that had sent the urinal using a pseudonym that Duchamp mentions? That woman was, as Duchamp wrote, the future. Art history knows her as Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. She was a brilliant pioneering New York dada artist, and Duchamp knew her well. This glaring truth has been known for some time in the art world, but each time it has to be acknowledged, it is met with indifference and silence. Via Theo Paijmans. ————————————————————————————————— Grip Vol. 1 If you didn’t get the chance this past Friday or over the weekend, please take some time to read Sally Ingraham’s review of Lale Westvind’s excellent new book, Grip, out now from Perfectly Acceptable Press. ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 7-24-18 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 7-24-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

ZONA 01

Juan FernándezJanuary 27, 2016NewsIT’S HERE Zona 01 – January 2016 Frank Santoro Harry Moyer Gabriella Tito Jack Brougham 44 pages of comics – 60 pages total – black and white with color silkscreen covers by Frank Santoro – Edition of 100 – signed and numbered on the covers by FS ===================================== AP Versions available in the School Store ===================================== Zona 01 – twenty bux postaid in the States Zona 01 – forty three bux postpaid outside of the States (sorry – its over 20 bux no matter where it goes outside of US so 43 seems fair) inside cover is silkscreened also – Harry Moyer’s work above Gabriella Tito above Jack Brougham above Frank Santoro above Zona 01 – twenty bux postaid in the States Zona 01 – forty three bux postpaid outside of the States (sorry – its over 20 bux no matter where it goes outside of US so 43 seems fair) ////////////////////////// AP Versions available in the School Store Share this page: [...]

05/24/2016

Aaron CockleMay 23, 2016NewsBerliac Week Continues at CW; Venn Diagram Panel; Kirby Gridz; Safari Festival 2016; Dueling Book Release Parties; Henry Darger at the American Folk Art Museum; Juan Fernández Comics ————————————————————————————————— Featured this week: Gwai-Lo of the Heart by Berliac. Made for Comics Workbook in 2015. ————————————————————————————————— Venn Diagram Panel from MoCCA Festival 2016 Painter and cartoonist Keith Mayerson once called his 1996 graphic novel Horror Hospital Unplugged “too arty for comics” and “too comics for art.” The boundary between those two fields, however structural and arbitrary, may be weakening, but is it happening quickly enough to accommodate the rapidly growing number of artists who are now so productively working in this seam? Moderator Bill Kartalopoulos will investigate these questions and more with three leading lights of contemporary artcomics: Austin English (Gulag Casual), Aidan Koch (After Nothing Comes), and Blaise Larmee (3 Books). ————————————————————————————————— Via Micheal Oeming’s Facebook page. ————————————————————————————————— Safari Festival: New waves in contemporary comics and art. 11am to 6pm, 27 August 2016 Protein, 31 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EY safarifestival.tumblr.com | @safarifestival | info@safari-festival.com Safari Festival is a celebration of the new wave of alternative and art comics from the UK and beyond. Taking place over one Saturday at the end of August, the festival is an opportunity for a curated group of cartoonists and publishers to exhibit and sell their artwork, prints and, primarily, comics, and for attendees to experience the best of UK comics’ avant-garde. The artists exhibiting have been selected for their innovative, fearless, diverse approaches to making comics; approaches to cartooning that Safari intends to champion. The festival will be free to attend, and will take place at Studio 2, the Shoreditch gallery space of London-based creative agency, Protein. ————————————————————————————————— Thursday, May 26, 7-pm in Providence and/or NYC ————————————————————————————————— Henry Darger at the Folk Art Museum ————————————————————————————————— I Can See the Birds by Juan Fernández 5.5″x8.5″, Color & Risograph, $6 postpaid (International Shipping). This one is my Yo La Tengo comic on the shoulders of the poetry giant, Mary Oliver. The words are excerpted from her poem, Wild Geese. All drawings are first takes on location here in Pittsburgh. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

09/20/2016

Aaron CockleSeptember 20, 2016NewsAaron here today with the post-SPX malaise/norovirus update; Some upcoming shows of note; ‘We are Pepe/Pepe is us’; T. Edward Bak; Storyboarding for the movies; Seymour Chwast; ‘This amusing textile’ The Small Press Exposition was held this past weekend in scenic and sprawling Bethesda, MD. This is a big show, and each year it provides an overview of some of the best comics being made in North America, in Europe, and other parts of the world. There really is something for everyone at this show, some works seen this weekend of specific interest to readers of this news-blog include: Powdered Milk vol. 15, Keiler Roberts Roberts was handing out freebies in promotion of her Ignatz nomination for Outstanding Series, which she ended up winning on Saturday night. Congrats, Keiler! The Black Hood: An Anthology of Depression and Anxiety, edited/published by Josh Bayer, co-edited/designed by Mike Freiheit Including work by CW favorites E.A. Bethea, John Porcellino, Katie Fricas, Mike Taylor, Bayer, and a very remarkable list of fellow contributors. BLAMMO #9, Noah Van Sciver The time jumps in the White River Junction story were used really well, and reminded me of how Chester Brown’s Louis Riel jumped around in random places. Van Sciver is consistently doing high level comics, and this issue is a really nice chronicle of work. The Shirley Jackson Project, edited by Robert Kirby Another terrific lineup of contributors here: Colleen Frakes, Robert Triptow, Jennifer Camper, Eric Orner, Josh Simmons,Annie Murphy, Pinc Roq, Dan Mazur, Gabrielle Gamboa, Ivan Velez Jr.,Hannah Blumenreich, Maggie Umber, Asher & Lillie Craw, Jon Macy, W. Woods, Rob Kirby. Rob Clough was in attendance this weekend. He gave CW a quick peek of his heavily annotated map of who he wanted to see at which table, but we were unable to get a picture of it for the record. One of these years. Rhode Island Independent Publishing Expo Saturday-Sunday, September 24-25, Providence, RI Paper Jam Small Press Festival 6 Saturday, October 1, Bushwick, NY Indigenous Comic Con Friday-Sunday, November 18-20, Albuquerque, NM Furie on Pepe Abraham Riesman talks with Matt Furie about the Pepe meme phenomenon: Furie says people email him Pepes “retty much everyday.” “Someone just sent one that was based on a quote I said at a comic convention panel,” he adds. “Something about a new frog in town and it had ‘Dat Boi’” (referring, of course, to the year’s best meme so far). That said, he doesn’t seek Pepes out. “I don’t sit there and trip out on Pepe all day like you seem to think,” he says. “I’m just a normal guy trying to connect with people and have a good time.” He doesn’t seem that interested in discussing the other characters and comics, either. “They are what they are: just weird comics about a bunch of weird fraggles hanging out in mysterious nothingness,” he says. I ask him if he sees any sadness in the quartet’s gross lives and his reply is blunt: “No, they are just dumb cartoons.” T. Edward Bak has an essay comic about family history at High Country News In a dream that follows my grandfather’s death, everyone is familiar but I recognize no one. Passengers drift on and off the train as it wends through the prairie. The dream unfolds as a temporally distorted vignette, like a comic strip. My grandfather’s death seems a strange plotline, half-remembered. Storyboarding Blood Simple …photographer Grant Delin created a video that compares scenes from the film to their original storyboards. Featuring commentary by the Coens, Sonnenfeld, and actor Frances McDormand, this fascinating glimpse at their creative process highlights the careful planning that went into the film’s construction. The 160th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016 at 7pm at Parsons The New School for Design, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Seymour Chwast on GOD WAR SEX P.W. Herman at Brooklyn Museum This amusing textile was clearly manufactured as a commercial tie-in for Paul Reubens’ enormously successful TV show Pee-Wee’s Playhouse that aired from 1986-1990. The show was designed by Wayne White, Gary Panter, Craig Bartlett, and others, and this brightly printed textile faithfully depicts the characters and props of this wildly inventive program. Manufactured commercial product tie-ins to motion pictures and television programs are almost as old as the media. The acquisition of this textile helps to explain the myriad impetuses for the production of textiles and to elucidate the taste and preoccupations of a specific historical moment. The actual printer of this textile is not known, but the company was formulated specifically to manufacture promotional souvenirs. Posted by Barry R. Harwood, Lark Morgenstern, and Caitlin Crews. Share this page: [...]

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