Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

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Harrison

Posted on July 21, 2016July 21, 2016

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Juan FernándezOctober 24, 2016NewsJuan here with Comics Workbook’s ongoing CXC and LICAF coverage; my own thoughts on strip cartooning; HTML Flowers’ No Visitors – Issue One; Anya Davidson interviewed by Paste Magazine; a shout out to Good Comics by Kim; The Economist takes a look at the power of comics journalism; a Pepe oriented call to action from Matt Furie; Robyn Chapman soliciting stories about challenges or financial woes tabling at North American comics shows; Comics Assistant Professor Job opening at CCAD. One week out and we’re still thinking about CXC on our end! It was a hell of a weekend. Reports and thoughts seeded by CXC have been coming in left and right. I’ve wrangled them all for your convenience. Check them out and if you like what you read, consider making CXC part of your comics adventures in 2017. Here’s what we’ve got for you: The collective blow by blow take on the CXC experience, think of it as a Master post, if you will! Sacha Mardou’s personal CXC adventures Juan Fernandez’s (me ;)) CXC-inspired thoughts on expanding the “comics festival toolkit”. Kurt Ankeny’s post-CXC thoughts Alyssa Berg shares her first convention experience Caleb Orecchio’s detailed and hilarious tale of his CXC experience CXC 2016: 3 Questions for the Crew ⚡Frank and Niall Breen have taken some time to reflect on their experiences in Kendal during the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. You can check those out here to find out why if you’re anywhere near the UK, you’re going to want to add LICAF to your comics appreciation schedule next year. The Lakes International Comic Art Festival 2016 report by Frank Santoro Niall Breen on LICAF 2016 ⚡ On my end, I’ve been thinking about 4 panel comics. A lot. Reading them, drawing them, teaching them… Through all those thoughts,one that I keep coming back to is that of openness of narrative. In today’s cultural landscape of fractured narrative and more broadly the idea of narrative collapse, I’m finding I’m interested in constellations of narrative. Non-linear experiences through a narrative world. Just as how comics creates fertile liminal spaces between panels, it’s my belief that comic strips have the potential to foster inviting spaces between individual strips. No large structures, just small moments. Some link together. Many don’t. Think Cul de Sac, Moomin, Macanudos. All that said, I’m excited to announce that come Mid-November I’ll have a weekday comic strip going live online. I tried the experiment of Daily Comics from 2013-2014. But I fell off that horse. That was at the Center for Cartoon Studies. After I graduated from the Center for Cartoon Studies I had to transition back into a more regular pattern of life. Life’s commitments made it very hard to find that time. I’ve used these past two years to work on different forms and to experiment with technique. I realized that when it comes to comics, I’m here for the bliss of creation. The strip is where I feel that bliss most strongly. I’m ready and I hope you are too! ⚡ It’s exciting to see that The Economist is running a piece on the power and vitality of comics journalism in the current news media environment. It’s great to see the ascendancy of work like Sacco’s and Glidden’s happen real time. Comics journalism is nothing new. It has been around for decades, kept alive by such talented artists as Joe Sacco, who has used the medium to depict everything from a war-torn town in the Gaza Strip to the Eastern Bosnian war. But it has only been in the last few years that it has really started to find its place in the mainstream media. The Nib, founded in September 2013, consists entirely of comics, many of which contain journalism and non-fiction. It has published more than 2,000 works on its website and released a popular 300-page book of its best offerings. The Cartoon Picayune has been around even longer—since April 2011—and showcases a variety of comics journalism online as well as in its yearly publication, which it offers to readers for $4. Even some of the more established publications, such as the New York Times, are making use of the format. In May, it published Patrick Chappatte’s moving five-part piece that takes an in-depth look at the lives of four death row inmates. It is surprising, in the age of tight newspaper budgets and the 24-hour news cycle, that comics journalism is thriving. Ms Glidden says it’s because “it can make people stop and take notice.” Everyone is constantly bombarded by so many images and text that they can simply grow numb to all of the information being thrown their way. It helps that comics journalism is still novel to many people; its format encourages people to take an extra minute to fully consider the information being presented. ⚡ I wanted to share a short and sweet letter from Matt Furie: Dear friends, I need your help making positive pepe the frog memes to battle against evil trolls: Please make a kid-friendly pepe in your style and send it to me at: hashtagsavepepe@gmail.com I’m creating a positive pepe artist database, so include your name. also, please share nice pepe’s with the hashtag: #savepepe thanks! -matt ⚡ Don’t miss this juicy interview with Anya Davidson over on Paste that goes into her work on Band for Life! Paste: I think that love for your characters really shows in the work. A lot of these characters—and it was what really struck me about School Spirit, which was the first work of yours that I encountered—already feel distinct and fully formed when you first meet them. I’d be curious to know more about your process, especially for something serialized like this. How much do you plan, how much just comes from working with them for a few strips, etc.? Davidson: I had a story arc for Band for Life, but I wrote the strips week to week. It kept the project fresh and spontaneous. Sometimes I’d write a few weeks ahead when I knew there was a thread I wanted to draw out. I had a lot of fun working that way. Lovers in the Garden, the book I just finished for Retrofit Comics, was scripted start to finish before I put pen to paper. And my next book is going to be fully scripted, too. For a graphic novel, in my case, just so I can keep everything straight, and so I can hone dialogue, I really prefer scripting. But the strip form uniquely gave me the freedom to improvise. Every cartoonist has their preferred methods—there’s no right way. As far as character development, all my characters are me. I went to see George Saunders speak and a woman asked him how he was able to write the adolescent girl so well in his short story “Victory Lap,” and he said, “Because she’s me.” I also think about people I know: their mannerisms and speech patterns and personal histories. So all of my characters have elements of friends, acquaintances and myself put in a blender. And I like to drop people into stories as they’re happening. I want people to feel like they’ve been dropped in a world that is fully formed—like the story started before they got there. I think that’s most engaging, most surprising. ⚡ If you’re a comics educator that is looking for a new opportunity, check out this job opening at CCAD – Assistant Professor – Comics & Narrative Practice, Illustration ⚡ I want to give the great Robyn Chapman of Paper Rocket Comics a signal boost for her “poll”. She is looking for your thoughts about challenges or financial woes tabling at North American comics shows. She does a great job at compiling small press and minicomics trends in her zine, The Tiny Report. Hey, micro-publishers. I’m looking for a quote or two about the challenges of tabling at conventions. I’d be happy to hear numbers or about financial woes. You can remain anonymous. Please PM me in the next few days if you’re interested. robertaraechapman@gmail.com ⚡ I want to give a shout out to Good Comics by Kim Joo Ha. <3 Kim’s always turning me onto the good stuff via their posts. Kim makes it easier to find art comics and wild zines in this crazy fractured hyperactive internet mediated comics landscape. What a godsend… If you don’t follow their twitter or the Good Comics by Kim blog, I’d check that out. I don’t know how they stay on top of everything, but that doesn’t keep me from appreciating their eye on comics or their writing… Don’t sleep on Kim! Until next time! Juan Share this page: [...]

8/24/2016

Juan FernándezAugust 24, 2016NewsJuan here with your weekly Spanish language comics news round up! CW Spotlight on Laura Pérez Vernetti; Laura Andrea Garzón Garavito on a new wave of Colombian comics; Sol Undurraga en La Polola Podcast;Julieta Arroquoy OFELIA y Lía “La Cope” Copello en Tipos de minas; los Españoles, invitados a SPX; Reseña de VIRUS TROPICAL de Power Paola; una conversacion con Jorge Carrion; Alexis Ziritt’s HQ; Entreviñetas busca voluntarios. ————————————————————————————————— Spotlight on Laura Pérez Vernetti I’ve written a short spotlight here on the site that you might want to check out on the Spanish cartoonist and illustrator LAURA. She’s got a really wide range and has adapted a ton of canonical literature to comics in very elegant ways. Unknown to most anglophones (and even many Spaniards), Laura Pérez Vernetti is a spanish illustrator from Barcelona that contributed regularly to the underground Spanish comics magazine, el Víbora, from 1981 until 1991. Her work is distanced from standard aesthetics and conventional narratives, focusing primarily on comics that deal head on with themes of erotica, experimental forms, and socio-politcal commentary (the Spanish Civil War in particular). In addition to that work, she has adapted the works of Maupassant, De Quicey, Jung and Kafka to comics. A heavy hitter. ————————————————————————————————— New Waves in Comics: Colombia This week’s guest post here on CW about Latin American comics comes to us from Laura Andrea Garzón Garavito in Colombia. Laura gives us the ground level lowdown on what forces are shaking and moving Colombian comics and cartooning in new directions. She offers an exciting illumination on what the future holds for the world Colombian comics. Don’t sleep on Colombia! Gary Groth, editor of Fantagraphics, publisher and critic, said in a conference held in Bogotá last year, he felt Colombia’s panorama looked pretty similar to the one he had seen in the United States in the 80’s, which was a time for alternate exploration of both markets and formats. That means thinking comics through various lenses, thinking audiences can be broader than imagined, not only kids or old-time series followers, but a whole spectrum of different ages, backgrounds, genders, and so on. In this scenario, underground comix hadn’t even seen Maus yet! Just like it happened here! ————————————————————————————————— [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/278735489″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] Escucha @lapololapodcast, un podcast del cómic femenino con Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo! It’s always a fun, relaxing and enlightening listen. If you haven’t tuned in to La Polola just yet, Póngale Play 😉 En este capítulo conversamos acerca de los viajes y las crisis, de la búsqueda de nuevas experiencias y nuevos caminos. Atreverse a cambiar de rumbo no es fácil, implica una renuncia y un saber perder para viajar lejos. Conversamos con Sol Undurraga acerca de su experiencia, su historia de vida, sus viajes y sus descubrimientos creativos. ————————————————————————————————— las Humoristas Gráficas: EN VIVO! Dalia Gutmann conversando con la ilustradora Julieta Arroquy para luego sumar a Lía “La Cope” Copello, ilustradora y comediante. Ellas comparten sus historias, el nacimiento de sus alter egos (Ofelia y La Cope), la experiencia de editar sus libros, la relación con el público, y nos cuentan cómo se les ocurren sus viñetas. Todo esto acompañado por las bonitas canciones de Agustina Leoni. No te pierdas “Tipos de Minas”. ————————————————————————————————— Spanish Fever 2016 SPX 2016 Announces Spanish guests Santiago García, Ana Galvañ, David Rubín, Javier Olivares and José Domingo for SPX 2016. From SPX: With funding and assistance from SPAIN arts & culture, Small Press Expo is proud to announce Santiago García, Ana Galvañ, David Rubín, Javier Olivares and José Domingo as special international guests at SPX 2016. These gifted artists are featured in Spanish Fever-Stories By The New Spanish Cartoonists, an anthology of 28 contemporary comics by 30 authors from Spain showcasing the best of the new wave of art comics hailing from a country with one of the strongest cartoon traditions in Europe. Spanish Fever is published by Fantagraphics and will be debuting at SPX 2016. Guinista Gerardo Vilches habla sobre los invitados y su importancia: Al margen de la calidad fuera de toda duda de los invitados españoles, componen una delegación bastante representativa del cómic que se hace aquí y ahora: Olivares y el propio García, autores de Las meninas, son máximos exponentes de la novela gráfica; Olivares es, además, un artista que comenzó su carrera en los años ochenta, lo que le confiere una experiencia y una perspectiva privilegiadas. Galvañ es una de las representantes más potentes del cómic vanguardista, es impulsora de Tik Tok Comics y su trabajo conecta sin problemas con las corrientes más novedosas del cómic americano. De Domingo podría decirse esto mismo, pero, además su experiencia en el mercado europeo y su trabajo para el público infantil y juvenil le da un matiz con respecto a sus compañeros. Rubín, finalmente, por su trabajo para el mercado del comic book será el más conocido del grupo por el público estadounidense, y además representa un tipo de cómic diferente, que demuestra que el cómic de autor también tiene cabida para la acción, la fantasía y la aventura. ————————————————————————————————— Space Riders + Tarantula HQ – Alexis Ziritt’s Comics “Dream Machine” ————————————————————————————————— Reseña de Virus Tropical Sean Rogers at The Globe and Mail has some nice coverage of Power Paola’s memoir, Virus Tropical. Virus Tropical is available via preorder through 2dcloud in the United States. Rogers: Powerpaola’s detailed, deadpan memoir depicts her upbringing in 1990s Ecuador and Colombia, where she comes of age and finds her calling as an artist amid a feverish combination of religion (her father’s a former priest), fortune-telling (her mother’s clairvoyant), drugs (the cartels are warring) and wiser older sisters. ————————————————————————————————— Entreviñetas busca voluntarios! ENTREVIÑETAS, plataforma cultural colombiana, invita a todas las personas en Colombia con interés en donar su tiempo para ayudar en la navegación del #FESTIVALENTREVIÑETAS2016 como voluntarios de la *red viñetera*. El voluntariado supone a menudo un desafío, pero significa también adquirir nuevos conocimientos y realizar actividades gratificantes. En el voluntariado no se recibe un pago y se entiende como una donación de tiempo y conocimiento para comprender y atender a los detalles que permitirán llevar el festival a buen puerto en sus sedes de este año: ————————————————————————————————— Los Bros Hernandez Benefit Auction Items From Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. All Proceeds go towards funding the Rowhouse Residency in Pittsburgh, PA. hasta la proxima, JF Share this page: [...]

09/27/2017

Juan FernándezSeptember 27, 2017los Cómics / NewsEmpezamos el día con Andrea Galazina; El Publicadero en Manizales; Maria Luque y los tebeos de Cómics Workbook! ————————————————————————————————— Juan here: I’ve been blasting through this fall and am running on empty – OOF- the usual SPX circus, organizing the Pittsburgh Zine Fair, scheming for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) + organizing press conferences, handling catering and other administrative craziness at the day job at the Arts Council have me running ragged. I know, I know, no complaining, no complaining. It’s all good stuff and the haul will be over come October 12th. Just wanted to let you know how I’m doing . Anyway here’s the usual comics gold I bring you every week from Latin America and Spain. A little lighter a haul than usual, but just as shiny. *Turn on your translation devices* ————————————————————————————————— Andrea Galacina acaba de publicar “¡PUEDO DECIR LO QUE QUIERA! ¡PUEDO HACER LO QUE QUIERA! UNA GENEALOGÍA INCOMPLETA DEL FANZINE HECHO POR CHICAS“, una autoedición sobre el contexto del fanzine feminista en España. La fundadora de BOMBAS PARA DESAYUNAR también da algunos detalles del próximoPICHI FEST y habla sobre el DEPARTAMENTO DE FANZINES de la biblioteca de Mujeres. Ana Flecha les ofrece todos los detalles en esta entrevista en Madriz.com Léanlo todo AQUI. ————————————————————————————————— ¿Ya están listos para el Publicadero en Manizales, Colombia? Acá la programación. Todas las actividades son gratuitas: https://goo.gl/kUdxsQ ————————————————————————————————— Las estampas de color de María Luque – Entrevista “Usa el color como Matisse y los espacios de sus dibujos parecen salidos de algún sueño naíf. Le gusta viajar, los gatos y perseguir a extraños en los museos para luego consignarlos en su libreta de dibujo.” – Andrea Uribe Yepes En la casa de familia Luque en Rosario, Argentina, hay un daguerrotipo de su abuelo Teodosio Luque. Es un cuadro de un señor solemne de barba larga y cara de serio que asustaba a todos. María recuerda que de pequeña el cuadro rodaba por la casa: lo escondían en el baño, debajo de las camas. Cree que ese daguerrotipo lo hizo Cándido López, uno de sus artistas favoritos y de los únicos que manejaban la técnica por la zona. Esto es importante porque cuando empezó la Guerra de la Triple Alianza, su abuelo Teodosio fue enviado como médico y Cándido como soldado. Esa proximidad fue la que generó curiosidad en María y la historia de la cual partió su primera novela gráfica: La mano del pintor (2016). Léanlo todo AQUI. ————————————————————————————————— Frank Santoro made a comic book about his parents and now he needs help making a handbound copy of the book for each of them. It’s a good story. Check out the Indiegogo campaign HERE – or if you want to contribute via PayPal, look at the campaign HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The fall semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers starts October 1st 2017. 8 weeks of comics instruction that will bang your practice into shape – 500 bux. Full details about the course and how to apply can be found HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 9-27-2017 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

01/05/2018

Sally IngrahamJanuary 4, 2018NewsSally here with notes on Nicole Claveloux’s new NYRC book, work from Ulli Lust, Archana Streenivasan, and Trina Robbins, and much more! ————————————————————————————————— Michael Dooley wrote about The Green Hand and Other Stories by Nicole Claveloux for Print Magazine, calling it “2017’s best book in celebration of a European comics artist“. Why? “Because thanks to this handsome hardcover compilation, we can finally come to appreciate and admire this master of French comics; her extraordinary career from the late 1960s to early ’80s has been unjustly overlooked for way, way too long. Because her radiantly colorful renderings of illuminated late afternoon landscapes and elongated shadows conclusively prove that she’s the Salvador Dali of Pop Art cartooning. Because her interiors are beautifully, bleakly haunting. Because her figures might take on a Victor Moscoso-like amorphous organicism … just because they can.“ Read the rest of Dooley’s thoughts and take a look at an excerpt from the book HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Ulli Lust completes her engagement with the ExBerliner magazine with the comic pictured above. She has published 15 comics with the magazine, all of them riffing on “a simple stroll” in some part of the world. You can read them all HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Archana Sreenivasan, an Indian cartoonist and illustrator, has a new comic up on Ulli Lust’s Electrocomics, called Otherly Urges, about being an Indian woman who is NOT interested in having kids. You can download the comic HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Back in 1985 Trina Robbins made an adaptation of Tanith Lee’s novel The Silver Metal Lover. Now IDW and Drew Ford have Kickstarted a reissue of the comic, with a new forward by Gail Simone and an afterward by Colleen Doran. Drew Ford wrote about the comic: “This cult classic science fiction romance is an important early example of ‘the graphic novel’ as a storytelling vehicle, telling an intimate story of a young girl’s first love…who just happens to be a robot! We are very honored to shine a light on the brilliant work of the late Tanith Lee.” The Kickstarter has already reached it’s initial goal, but you can get in on some fun reward brackets if you want, through Jan. 5th 2018. Check it out HERE. (Thanks to The Comics Beat for the lowdown on this news item.) ————————————————————————————————— Just a reminder to read the website Women Write About Comics regularly. Recent articles that were great include Rosie Knight on the work of Melina Chavarria and Jean Marie Pilario (pictured above) and creating positive Latinx representation in comics, and Tia Kalla on Sleepless #1 by Sarah Vaughn and Leila del Duca. The Interview section is the best, so dive in there and then explore. ————————————————————————————————— In Addition Robert Kirby presents an excerpt from GG‘s I’m Not Here on PEN America’s Illustrated PEN – check out his comments and the comic HERE. Anya Davidson has started a weekly podcast called Mindkiller, which is dedicated to creative struggle – the first episode, featuring musician Jill Flanagan, can be heard HERE. Julia Wertz‘s Conversations with Ma are amusing and can be seen HERE on The New Yorker. Image Comics is releasing Sloane Leong‘s Prism Stalker – coming March 2018. ————————————————————————————————— 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. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-5-2018 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-5-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

10/24/2018

Juan FernándezOctober 24, 2018NewsJuan and Andrew with an invitation to participate in 2018’s #30dayscomics Juan here! November is right around the corner which means that not only will I finally let myself turn on the heat at my apartment in Pittsburgh, but #30dayscomics will soon be upon us! As the weather chills and most of us become indoor creatures in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s good to come together by working on and sharing comics making challenges, connected by the internet. For those who don’t know, 30 Days of Comics is a month-long challenge. The parameters are pretty simple: Make 1 comic a day for the month of November. They can be anything you like, any format, any style, though most people do 1 page or 1 strip. Just do it everyday. This November, I’m excited to be able to allocate some time (likely at work) to working on my esperanza00 series and to see where these neurotrash digital collages of drawings, jpegs, clippings from articles, poems and facebook posts take me. The idea will be to create a 4 panel comic composed of 3-6 colors in this fashion daily: Needless to say, I’m excited. Here at Comics Workbook we’d like to invite you to participate in this year’s comics making journey. With me today is Andrew White to tell you more about a little this year’s #30dayscomics. Take it away Andrew. Starting on November 1st, I’m going to draw and post one comic per day for a month. I’ve done this almost every year since 2012, with varying success in terms of getting to the end of the month and in terms of the work itself. The cartoonist Derik Badman first took on this challenge, which he called 30 Days of Comics, in 2009 and invited others to join him in 2011. Derik describes the month as, “a time for experimentation, exploring short forms, and a great way to produce work.” That sounds about right to me. Often participants work with some kind of constraint, using the month to experiment with different approaches or new materials. See for example Kevin Czap’s A Lesson in Survival (2012), which appropriates text from Joni Mitchell and is visually very different from Kevin’s other work; or Simon Moreton’s set of printed zines produced near-daily; or Alyssa Berg’s Open Letter to Sleep (2016), an extended meditation on a single topic. Making one comic per day is of course a constraint itself. Personally, I’ve found the month most fruitful when I’ve gotten at a topic that I’ve been turning over in my mind for a while, which hopefully means that it will benefit from a rapid outpouring of work. The 30 Days of Comics Tumblr archive is another place to see how others have approached the month in the past. On that note, the community aspect of 30 Days has been essential for me. We encourage each other to keep going, and I’m still happy with the year when I riffed on the work of other participants. I’ve first met some dear friends thanks to 30 Days. Finally, implicit in the call to make comics daily for a month is the idea that making comics daily might not be possible through the rest of the year. We all benefit from a different balance between thinking about comics and making comics – and sometimes that balance is imposed externally by a day job or other life circumstance. We’re all affected, often negatively, by the idea that productivity is essential to our success as an artist, but we might wish we were more productive as well. For me, 30 Days helps with the difficult project of maintaining that balance. One comic per day isn’t too much work, but 30 comics in total is also significant. It’s okay if you miss a day. It’s okay if you aren’t happy with some of your work. This year I’ll be making four panel comics, inspired by people like Juan Fernandez and Madeleine Witt. My strips will be loosely based on this paper in the academic journal Science. I hope you’ll join us, and that you’ll use the hashtag #30dayscomics so that we can all find each other’s work! 10-24-2018 – Fifi Martinez 10-24-2018 – Niall Breen Share this page: [...]

07/21/2016

Posted on July 21, 2016July 21, 2016 by Harrison

Daily News with Harrison returns with drones, thoughts about war, dark animation, and ends with a question.

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Ride or Die

“Jasper. We’re picking up a lot of drone noise. I think there’s a watch coming.”

Sam Alden‘s Test of Loyalty at Hazlitt.

Here

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Shadow and Form

Jonathan Djob Nkondo’s Dark Day is a conflation of everything I want from contemporary animation; moody, inventive, stark, humorous, surreal, frightening, and impeccably illustrated.

Pts. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

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Before

” “NOddIN” is a collective launched by filmmakers and artists in the wake of the 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake and related Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. With the cooperation of a large number of Japanese animation artists, we spearheaded this self-production with the aim to animate the words of the book round-robin style, and our collaborative project was begun. After over a year of production including the conception period, we completed our short film.” – The NOddIN team,
October 2, 2015

More about the film project here.

More about the collective NOddIN here.

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Visions of Heroes

Friend of Comics Workbook Chris Visions has a collection of fun drawing videos shot by Richmond photographer/videographer Tyler Q. Tucker on his site.

Here.

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Why?

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in News

Harrison

Posted on July 21, 2016July 21, 2016

Explore

10/02/2018

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

BOY by Hellen Jo

Chris Anthony DiazJune 21, 2016The Diaz ArchiveHellen Jo’s watercolored portrayal of Tetsuo Abe as Toshio Omura and Tsuyoshi Kinoshita as Peewee in Nagisa Oshima’s BOY (1969, Japan) for my ILLUSTRATED MOMENTS IN CINEMA/TELEVISION collection. The illustration was completed around Spring 2009 in ink and watercolor, and Hellen’s photo was taken at Comic Arts Los Angeles, Sunday, December 6, 2015. And Graham Willcox did the color on Hellen’s portrait Share this page: [...]

06/28/2016

Aaron CockleJune 27, 2016NewsAaron Cockle with Warren Craghead Comics; Pioneers of the Comic-Strip; Comix 4 Orlando; Hilda on Netflix; Flag Press!; Schulz/Ford; Rowhouse Auction Continues ————————————————————————————————— Colonialism by Warren Craghead CW’s Featured Comics continues this week with work by Warren Craghead III from 2013. ————————————————————————————————— Pioneers of the Comic Strip: A different Avant-Garde June 23–September 18, 2016 Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt Spectacular, large and colorful – this is how comic strips captured their audience. Around 1897, the middle classes, working classes and the army of immigrants were equally fascinated by the unfamiliar visual experience they encountered in US newspapers. The comic strip was the first illustrated mass medium in history, reproduced millionfold. In a society without television and the Internet that was quite a radical development. With an extensive exhibition, SCHIRN presents the pioneers of the comic strip, who set the artistic and substantive standards of early comic strips in an experimental and progressive way. This also highlights the relationship of comic strips and colorful newspaper supplements with the developments in visual arts at the time. The SCHIRN presents the cultural history of the comic strip in an outstanding series of selected works, primarily by American illustrators: Winsor McCay, Lyonel Feininger, Charles Forbell, George Herriman, Cliff Sterrett and Frank King. Unforgettable is Herriman’s absurd humor in Krazy Kat (from 1913), the expressionist, cubist and surrealist imagery by McCay and Sterrett, Feininger’s comic series for the Chicago Tribune (from 1906/07), or Gasoline Alley by King (from 1921), told in real time over a period of three decades. With Forbell’s Gesamtkunstwerk Naughty Pete (1913), a today rather unknown draftsman can be rediscovered in this exhibition. He was among those many artists who, albeit only for a short yet extremely progressive time, devoted themselves to comic strips, but quickly vanished due to lack of success. — Via e-flux ————————————————————————————————— COMIX 4 ORLANDO Benefit Come enjoy a night of fantastic comix presented by queer artists! These include: Yao Xiao, Max Wittert, Hazel Reed Newlevant, Bishakh Som, Chris Russo, Kat Fajardo, +more TBA. They will be raising funds to support those affected by the Pulse attack in Orlando. Your donations can get you raffle tickets to win a fabulous prize bundle of work made by our featured artists. $10 SUGGESTED donation. No one will be turned away. (Every $5 will get you one raffle ticket!) PLEASE COME AND SUPPORT! Tuesday, June 28, 8-10PM at Over the Eight, 594 Union Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 ————————————————————————————————— Hilda is coming to Netflix As revealed in a recent New Yorker profile, Luke Pearson‘s Hilda will be coming to Netflix in 2018. ————————————————————————————————— E’ nata Flag Press! Translated from the Italian via Google Translate: Perhaps not everyone knows that along with Ratigher I founded a small publishing house, the Flag Press, who intends to publish comics in a single format, horizontal poster 70 × 100 with two facing pages… I already thought of cubes, boxes or phones but actually no, it was poster, as he revealed to me a few months later inviting me to become his shoulder in the enterprise (by the way do not try to trick me the idea of Phone Books, Comics in the form of phone). Since then we have seen fit to what we wanted to do with Flag Press, and, beyond the choice of authors, our vision has focused on the concept of “history.” To both like trials, comic absurd and sometimes even seemingly meaningless, but what we want to accomplish here is to tell on a poster, make an object that narrative has always been mainly figurative, also making it possible for authors indulge graphically on the largest publishing format possible. And I believe that theory, practical and even Ratigher theory is really the “manifesto” of this our idea, with a story full of characters, the dialogues pressing, small cartoons and the aircraft giant is cut in two by the white space between the boards. Ah, on the back of the poster are in black and white the English translation of the story. In the future, if the cartoonist would write in English, on the back you will find the translation in Italian. Look for work from Ruppert & Mulot, Manuele Fior and Dash Shaw. Image above by Ratigher, Flag Press #1: “Teoria, pratica e ancora teoria”. ————————————————————————————————— Gabby Schulz Interviewed by Sean Ford SICK is the story of the author being laid down by an illness in his cramped Brooklyn apartment. The story begins as a Kafka-esque exploration of the trials and tribulations of trying to attain treatment without having the insurance or money to do so, but soon morphs into a brutally frank self-assessment of not only the narrator’s personal failures, but also the failures of predominantly white Western culture and the systems and structures we’re all beholden to and a part of. ————————————————————————————————— Private Rowhouse Auction Continues We have a new private auction up at auction.comicsworkbook.com. email Frank Santoro at santoroschoolATgmail for a password, if you don’t already have one. If you already have a password, it is the same from last week. All funds go to helping keep the lights on and further developing the school. Note: Connor Willumsen is offering commission sketches. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

12/09/2016

Sally IngrahamDecember 9, 2016NewsSally here with Vanesa R. Del Rey’s new book, work by Sylvie Fontaine, Fiona Smyth, and Gabriella Tito, and notes on the All Time Comics project. ————————————————————————————————— “Frank Santoro: Vanesa, I’m quite taken aback by your sheer technical ability which seems to be married to a poetic sensibility. There’s a lightness there. Sometimes illustrators with that ability get heavy-handed. Yet you manage the push-pull between the two sides of yourself – because you’re like a samurai. The humble samurai. Vanesa R. Del Rey: It’s about trying to remember that. I can get all this praise, I can get all these amazing responses from strangers, but at the end of the day – I’m still a student. I’m still learning. The crown doesn’t fit. The crown should never fit.” In May 2016 Vanesa R. Del Rey came to Pittsburgh, PA, to visit the Rowhouse and share her sketchbooks and her passion for comics with Frank and the rest of us. Their conversations about her work and experiences have been transformed into the book The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey, which is full of gorgeous images as well. You can get a peak into the book at the pre-order site HERE – the book will be released later this month! Vanesa is known for her work on Marvel’s Black Widow, and the Boom Studios stories Hit and The Empty Man. She is the “vertical invader” in comics that Frank has always talked about – the artist who “could employ the naturalism of the Noel Sickles/Alex Toth school but who could paint like an Alice Neel or a Jenny Saville.“ Vanesa is an inspiration to me on a lot of levels, and getting to hear more of her stories and thoughts via this new book – getting to hang out with this samurai! – is a great privilege. To hear another woman voice out loud something like “I want to be a strong female – I want to be powerful” and then to watch her truly kick ass IS incredibly powerful. Check out more of Vanesa’s work HERE. Pre-order a copy of The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Big news broke yesterday – EW revealed that Fantagraphics is going to release a line of superhero comes starting in March 2017. Wait…whut?! “Headed by writer Josh Bayer, the All Time Comics line launches in March 2017 with All Time Comics: Crime Destroyer #1. The supersized issue will introduce the four main characters of this shared superhero universe: Atlas, Bullwhip, Crime Destroyer, and Blind Justice, each of whom will be getting their own individual series. As proof of the line’s blending of eras, this first issue will feature the final published comics work of the late Herb Trimpe, a Marvel veteran of the Lee/Kirby era who helped co-create Wolverine. All Time Comics will also feature work from the likes of Al Milgrom (who co-created DC’s Firestorm), as well as younger artists like Noah Van Sciver and Ben Marra. Each issue, Bayer promises, will feature a new unique mash-up of different cartoonists.” – via EW It’s true – here’s the pre-order page on Fantagraphics’ website. And I do think this is exciting news. I totally want to read a superhero comic that Noah Van Sciver has worked on. But Heidi MacDonald over on The Comics Beat has already voiced the thought that immediately occurred to me – the project is kind of “a throwback boys club that proves just how far comics have come….not. Tsk tsk, boys. Haven’t you heard the news? Girl cooties are allowed around comics now and even superheroes!” Heidi shouts for Katie Skelly to get in on the project, or else. I am going to start the clamor for Lale Westvind and Anya Davidson and Vanesa R. Del Rey for heavens sake, and I’m going to keep adding to the list! Overall I do think it’s a cool project (I look forward to collecting the issues!) and I like what Bayer has to say about it: “All Time Comics is celebration of independent comics and the best of pulpy superhero comics of the past,” Bayer tells EW. “We are making a circle complete. This is also a period when comics seem to be in danger of being eclipsed by movies and video games, and All Time Comics is here to remind people that comics, not movies, not action figures or toys, that started our cultural obsession with superheroes. All Time Comics is us, and we stand for comics. Comics are not fading. They will stand… for all time.” – via EW The EW press release is HERE. Heidi on The Comics Beat has the whole list of who exactly is working on what issues at the end of her post, HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I spend two days a week at one of the best alternative comics shops in the world – Copacetic Comics, in the Polish Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. A twice-weekly perusal of the shelves or a thorough dig through the many long boxes of small press and self-published work usually turns up a few treasures. Yesterday I poured over a little book by Sylvie Fontaine, called Miss Va-Nu-Pieds (2008). Sylvie Fontaine is a French comics maker who has been publishing work since the 90’s. Despite the fact that her book Le Poulet du Dimanche (2007) earned an introduction by Moebius himself, the internet did not reveal much more about her. I was quite content with Miss Va-Nu-Pieds though. The black and white panels reminded me of Frans Masereel woodcuts, with a little Mary Fleener mixed in. The wordless story follows a young woman through a swiftly changing wonderland. She moves forward constantly, encountering new landscapes and beings, falling into traps and narrowly avoiding accidents, planting , dancing, until she rides a giant hand to a point of rest and possibly fulfillment. I would say you can get a copy of this book at Copacetic, but I think I’m keeping it. So if you’re interested, you can order it through the publisher, Tanibis. ————————————————————————————————— Another work that I was reminded of while looking at Miss Va-Nu-Pieds was The Rendered (2016) by Fiona Smyth. Perhaps something about the harsh black and white made me long for hot pink – although there is a slight stylistic similarity. Speaking of Fiona Smyth, when I saw her this past summer she was bemoaning the fact that the building in Toronto where her studio has been located for years was being torn down, or was kicking all the artists out – something really depressing – and now I see on her site that she’s having a final studio sale. Boooooo. She’ll be selling drawings, paintings, zines, and prints on Dec. 10th and then Dec. 17/18th – here are the details. In other news – much more delightful news! – I just discovered Fiona’s CHEEZ archive. CHEEZ is a weekly strip that Fiona has been publishing on the web since…2009?! It was “originally a monthly comic/drawing published in Canada’s Exclaim Magazine over a ten year period from 1992 to 2002.“ Here is the first strip that appeared on the site in 2009: And the most recent one: Yes, you read that correctly – Fiona Smyth has drawn 489 CHEEZ strips. Check them all out HERE! ————————————————————————————————— There are 4 days left to get an early application in for the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers, and get that sweet $100 off discount on the Winter Semester. Apply by Dec. 13th! The course starts December 29th 2016, and you have until the 28th to submit an application – the course is 8 weeks long – Frank takes 10 students and you won’t find a better teacher out there. One-on-one feedback, techniques and ideas about comics that will transform your practice and push you to a whole new level. Winter is the time to hunker down and make some serious work – and have a bit of fun too. Check out the course – take the course: More details can be found HERE – or email santoroschoolATgmail. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 12-9-2016 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

05/04/2016

Juan FernándezMay 4, 2016NewsRatatà 2016 Recap; Salón del Cómic de Barcelona; Anya Davidson; Caitlin Skaalrud; New exhibitions at Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum; Sequential State; Meaning in the brain. ————————————————————————————————— Ratatà 2016 Serena Di Virgilio brings you a nice recap of all the happenings from Macerata’s Ratatà Festival (April 12-17) over on Italian comics blog Just Indie Comics. It’s a European festival so there were activities scattered all around the city center. Workshops, gallery exhibitions, independent press marketplace, signings and coffee. The good stuff. Lots to look at here. Join Di Virgilio for a stroll through Macerata and soak it all in! ————————————————————————————————— Salón del Cómic de Barcelona – 34 This weekend in Barcelona. Este fin de semana, nenes! Salon/Saloon, what’s the difference? It’s on that old school San Diego Comic-Con wavelength, but Catalan, you feel me? Big show, lots of nooks and crannies, not completely flooded with licensed characters and merchandising. Vale la pena darle una visita si estas en Barcelona. ————————————————————————————————— Anya Davidson in conversation with Greg Hunter on TCJ “As far as trends in underground comics…I hate cute. I really do…and I’m kind of leery of…the mania for cuteness that has kind of infected underground comics. I really feel allergic to that. … I don’t know why I find it so repellent. I guess because I think that cuteness is used as a marketing tool? And it’s used to sell us things, like, we breed these puppies that can’t walk and can’t move, you know? I think cuteness, for me, equals subjugation, and I just really feel passionately that…cartooning for me is a way to break the chains of that, and so… It freaks me out.” –Anya Davidson Check it all out over on The Comics Journal. ————————————————————————————————— Caitlin Skaalrud interviewed Inkstuds “The thing that I find attractive about these occult things or symbols is not necessarily what they implicitly mean but what that those images have a structured meaning that people can sort of agree. There’s a certain amount of understanding from those classic tarot images, we can all sort of understand what those mean… It’s more along the symbolism and motifs that paintings would use to indicate certain things… for me it was a way to not cheat find shortcuts in how people would receive it on a visceral, emotional way.” -Caitlin Skaalrud ————————————————————————————————— Comics in Columbus, OH The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum have just announced their summer/fall exhibits. LITTLE NEMO: DREAM ANOTHER DREAM and GOOD GRIEF! CHILDREN AND COMICS –These two new exhibits will debut in June and run through October 2016. These exhibits are free and open to the public. Get all the details on these upcoming exhibitions here. Start planning your pilgrimmage now. ————————————————————————————————— Support Comics Criticism Alex Hoffman over at Sequential State is passing around the hat. Consider chipping in if you’ve previously enjoyed their reviews and interviews that they put together. Since day one, I’ve tried to make Sequential State a reader-friendly place, with no advertisements, strong writing, and a fun monthly podcast. I want to explore comics, and I want you to enjoy what I find. Keeping up the website and the podcast isn’t free though, and I’d love to expand Sequential State’s coverage. I want to pay other great authors to write criticism for Sequential State, support our podcast archives, and maybe even publish some new comics by great cartoonists. You can contribute here. ————————————————————————————————— Mental Map Neural networks and the form of our forms. Great study over at UC Berkley explores the nature of semantic connections in the brain developed in language via storytelling. Really beautiful stuff that points to the inherently synaestheic framework for how humans build natural language. It’d be interesting to see the way the brain is “lit” when exposed to image and word stimuli embedded in comics. To better understand how the brain processes language, researchers from the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and their colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map the brains of people listening to a storytelling podcast(ed. The Moth). Using the resulting maps, the team could accurately predict the study participant’s neural responses to hearing new stories. And these responses were surprisingly consistent across individuals, according to the team’s study, published today (April 27) in Nature. Check it all out over on The Scientist. ————————————————————————————————— See you later, nenes 😉 -Juan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvRkJzVQBP0 Share this page: [...]

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