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Posted in Essays, ResourcesTagged finishing comics, jillian fleck, opinion

Jillian Fleck

Posted on March 30, 2016May 21, 2019

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The Drawing Power Report (2013)

Juan FernándezMay 15, 2016Festivals and ShowsThis article was co-written with Simon Reinhardt. It originally appeared at Dog City Press. This past weekend a couple of us from Dog City trekked down from Vermont to Pittsburgh, PA for the Drawing Power conference at the Carnegie Museum of Art. The museum setting established a wonderful tone for the conference. It was a breath of fresh air to go to an intimate event with such a clear focus on discussing comics. A big thanks is due to Jude Vachon, zine librarian at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Vachon was the core organizer of this event and responsible for steering it toward such a success. The days events ran from 10 AM until 5 PM. Each panel was a jam packed 45 minutes. The first panel of the day was moderated by Bill Boichel, owner of the Copacetic Comics Company. It focused on the idiosyncrasies of the local Pittsburgh comics scene. The panel consisted of Lizzee Solomon, Andy Scott, Paulette Poullet and Nate Mcdonough. The panelists spoke about their experiences self-publishing and the role that the Pittsburgh community played in their work practices. Scott spoke about his anthology, Andromeda and the restructuring of the publication in late 2012 from a monthly to a quarterly format. Solomon spoke about cartooning being at the core of her multi-disciplinary work practices while Nate McDonough retold the beginnings of hisGrixly publication. McDonough, Solomon and Scott spoke of their times drawing together during the early issues of Andromeda and the competitive one-upmanship that their drawing parties would foster. The panel explored the inroads that the four cartoonists had made into self-publishing and the external factors in their lives that had driven them to continue to self-publish in Pittsburgh. Following the Pittsburgh cartoonists panel, French cartoonist, Boulet (Gilles Roussel) , author of the 24-hour comic Darkness took the stage to give a lecture on the evolution of his cartooning practices. He spoke about streamlining his creative process and the increased emphasis on improvisation that he had developed in his work. He spoke about working with Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim on the series, Dungeon along with the exquisite corpse comic, Chicou Chicou, that he developed with several French cartoonists. The aim of Chicou Chicou was to create a fictional “auto-bio” group comics blog. The cartoonists would pass strips back and forth over the internet adding pages until they were complete. Each of the cartoonists involved created a persona and crafted a drawing style that suited their character. Boulet played a small, geeky girl named Ella. Besides discussing the subtleties of drawing stories from the perspective of a female character, Boulet talked about the harassment he received online when writing under a female pen-name. He reported receiving unsolicited love letters and invitations on dates and noted that when he got into disputes people would ask “are you on your period or something?” At the end of his talk, Boulet spoke succinctly of his influences and of his current project, a 200 page improvised story in which he is neither pencilling nor scripting. He showed several of the 60 pages that he’d completed and the audience was in awe. Freelance writer, illustrator and graphic designer, Joan Reilly then took the stage and talked about her work editing the forthcoming feminist anthology, The Big Feminist But. Joan presented the book’s contents and the genesis of the project. The Big Feminist But arose from Reilly and O’Leary’s attempts to learn why so many of us, women and men, couch discussions around feminism with the phrase “I’m not a feminist, but…” or “I am a feminist, but…”. They decided to embark on the journey of making a comics anthology as the first step in starting a conversation about the issue. The result is a promising book that features “graphic musings on life, love, lust and liberation,” by talents such as Jeffrey Brown, Gabrielle Bell, and Lauren Weinstein. The book’s list of contributors is especially notable for including a number of couples working together, as well as single men and women. Reilly mentioned that a number of Kickstarter backers expressed their gratitude that men were involved with the book as well– an observation that highlights The Big Feminist But’s drive to create an expansive and inclusive conversation about feminism. Subsequently, John Porcellino, took the stage to talk about the story of his life of zine-making and distribution. He talked about the story of King Cat, and the Spit and a Half zine and comix distribution service. Porcellino touched on his artistic development and the early years of King Cat (focusing on the first 50 issues, collected in King Cat Classix). Porcellino has created books, comics, and publications since he was 7 or 8, and was creating zines for years before he discovered Factsheet 5 and learned that other people were doing it too. He read some highlights from early King Cat issues and talked about his work processes and goals in creating that work. One revelation from this portion of the talk was the influence of Marvel’s monster comics from the 50s and early 60s. While the relationship between these fantastic stories and Porcellino’s chronicles of everyday life might not be immediately apparent, Porcellino emphasized the drab, repetitive nature of the monster stories as well as the alienation of their typical mad scientist protagonists. “As an artist I’m very interested in repetition and boredom,” he said. Porcellino also talked about the sales and distribution history of King Cat, which was instructive for the many self-publishers in the audience. Gesturing to the cover of the first issue of King Cat to be sold in stores, Porcellino noted the 35 cent cover price and remarked “in true zine fashion, I probably charged 35 cents because it cost me 36 cents to print.” He also talked about his history of working bizarre or menial jobs to support his comics, and pinpointed King Cat issue 42, which he wrote, drew, and edited entirely on company time, as “the point I became a professional cartoonist, because I was being paid to draw comics.” Porcellino spoke about his interest in the idea of real life and the ineffable experience of being alive. One thing he mentioned—and we think this is a big part of what makes King Cat so special—is that he tried not just to describe the event of his experience, but to communicate the feeling of that experience. Porcellino characterized the subject matter of his comics as “this weird feeling I had… the underlying mystery in every moment,” a description we think King Cat readers will agree is quite fitting. Caitlin McGurk, librarian at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum moderated the following panel on self-publishing. Porcellino remained on stage to join Ramsey Beyer, Rachel Masilamani and Bill Boichel to chat about their experiences self-publishing in the United States. Similar to the first panel of the day, the panelists spoke of how they’d found their way to comics and more generally towards self-publishing. Masilamani recounted first encountering zines through Christina Kelly’s zine of the month column in Sassy magazine. She spoke about the experience of receiving the Xeric grant and the consequences that it brought along with it. It allowed for her to get her first comics into the world and to hit the ground running with her first collection of RPM, but from the get go she was on her own. The panelists thoughts on the pricing of mini comics were particularly interesting. Not surprisingly, Boichel as a vendor and Porcellino as a distributor had a lot to bring to the discussion of the relationship between self-expression and the commodification of desire. Boichel mentioned that artists sometimes come to him with $20 minicomics, reporting that they sold a lot of copies in New York, but he knows they won’t sell at that price point in Pittsburgh. Beyer emphasized the importance she placed on the ethics of the production process and mentioned having worked with 1984 Press in Oakland California. Boichel, suggested that aspiring cartoonists always pick someone to write to; a friend, an acquaintance, a stranger, someone. By thinking of their audience’s interests and their budget, they could be more likely to create works that would move through the world more freely. Dash Shaw followed the self-publishing panel. He began his talk by showing some recent animation work. One of the most striking animations that he played was the music video,Seraph, which he had made in collaboration with Frank Santoro and other artists for Sigur Ros’ valtari film experiment. Shaw took the audience through a brief survey of his cartooning work, starting with his three current publications– the minicomic New Jobs, published by Uncivilized Books, the pamphlet3 New Stories, and the graphic novel New School, both published by Fantagraphics– and working his way backward to the mammoth graphic novel Bottomless Belly Button. One through-line of Shaw’s talk was his thoughts regarding line and color. “I could talk about color forever,” he said, and it’s hard not to get excited by his original and distinctive ideas. Many of the pages Shaw showed from New School use color in ways that are entirely divorced from traditional comic book coloring. Shaw rarely uses colors to simply fill out the drawing, preferring instead to use the collision between the color and the line-art to create meaning and emotion, often in oblique and subtle ways. This unwillingness to spell things out directly for the reader was evident in Shaw’s discussion of line and drawing as well. He spoke of being inspired by David Mazzucchelli’s idea of the “dumb line,” (which he describes in more detail here) and by trying to push back against the conventions of “good” illustration. “So much illustration is about telling people what something is and how to feel about it,” Shaw said, adding that he wanted to make drawings that don’t tell their reader how to feel. He also spoke about his fascination with the house styles found, among other places, in manga and Archie comics, speculating about an ideal, impossible Archie style. In Shaw’s conception, even the best Archie artists fall short of this Platonic style, and their own personal style would be the accumulation of their failings at achieving a true Archie drawing. All in all, it was a dense, stimulating talk, and we can’t wait to dive into New School and read it with the attention Shaw’s work demands. The final panel of the day, “A Career in Comics” was moderated by Caitlin McGurk and featured Jim Rugg, Ed Piskor, Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw. The fluidity of the discussion was really satisfying. Without much effort it hopped from discussions of style (and avoiding “style”) to explorations of narrative collapse. Of course, a highlight of the panel was the discussion of the differences between making money around comics and making money in comics. Career development and survival were recurring topics, and every member of the panel had a different way of approaching making a living as a cartoonist. The common thread was work ethic and hustle. Santoro half-jokingly described himself as “basically a used book dealer at this point.” Rugg spoke about doing design work and also discussed the Flight School fellowship , a professional development program for Pittsburgh artists he recently participated in. To see the comics medium getting the attention of an established institution like the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and for it to occur at the Carnegie Museum was inspiring. Here’s hoping for more small events around the country with this level of intimacy and intensity of dialogue. all in all, you could say… Share this page: [...]

01/16/2017

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

02/05/2018

Caleb OrecchioFebruary 4, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thought’s on the eloquent minimalism of Gilbert Hernandez and Charles Schulz, and other news. ————————————————————————————————— Beto’s art has really loosened up and minimized visual information in the last 10 years or so, to the point that only essential information remains. His lines these days are thinner and crisper, more straight-forward and lack the luscious thick-thin contours of his earlier work (in a good way). This, to me, has given his work an enhanced readability and lends his pictures to nearly instant comprehension. To illustrate my point, I will paraphrase (from memory) Gilbert from his Q&A at SPX 2017 where he paraphrases Wally Wood about Nancy by Ernie Bushmiller: As soon as you see a Nancy strip, you’ve already read it before you decide if you like it or not. Schulz, of course, may be the greatest example of minimalism in comics with instantly recognizable characters made up of a handful of squiggly lines. Beautifully articulate face expressions made with a few swipes of his nib. The information in Peanuts is often communicated through dialogue between characters strolling through space, and it’s his simple visuals that invite us in to casually follow along with little to no effort. Beto, in my opinion, has seemed to cracked this same minimalist code of gorgeously-simple visual stimulation that eases the senses giving way to willful submission to the story one holds in one’s hand. A lot of what I admire about this kind of minimalism both Beto and Schulz embody is in their backgrounds. Consider this spread by Gilbert in Love and Rockets #4 (vol. 4): More specifically, consider what information the backgrounds illustrate. The page above (pg. 12) starts with two panels with two respective characters giving their sides of the story. Panel 3 is a sunrise over a town or city, panel 4 is a woman walking into an office, and panel 5 has two people chatting in public within earshot of others. Then, see page 13, we see these same characters talking in what seems to be a secluded area surrounded by more a more rural backdrop, nobody is in sight and the conversation is more serious with less smiling and pleasantries. The above are aspects I rarely notice outright, but seem to unconsciously understand as I read the issue. It’s a seamless process for me as a reader, very enjoyable with very few unnecessary distractions. The tone is clear as a bell despite the subtleties that I’m only aware of in careful study. Schulz’s work functions similarly: consider the strip above. A simple sequence of a brother and sister’s walk to school down their porch stairs, along the road and into a desk. The subject of the dialogue is “school,” while the simple route they take gives the “impression” of a morning walk to school, and the desk solidifies it. Yet, we never consciously think, “they are walking to school,” we just follow them to Sally’s desk just as naturally and unconsciously as one would travel from the kitchen sink to the refrigerator. Am I clear as mud? I suppose I find it interesting that Beto tends to be moving more towards the likes of Schulz and less like earlier influences of Kirby or Ditko or even Crumb in terms of picture-making. Simple, minimal, clearly articulated sequential-images that sweep your eyes along with little to no hinderance. These are beautiful comics that I think help define the essence of cartooning at its purest. ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know At PEN American, Whit Taylor guest edits and hosts an excerpt of Kurt Ankeny’s comic, In Pieces: Some Place Which I Call Home. Chris Ware talks to Dmitry Samarov at the Chicago Reader. Sally linked to this article last week, but I felt it was worth linking to a second time, Serious Sex Battle: The Myth of the Wonder Woman by Sarah Nicole Prickett at Artforum. TCJ.com is rerunning an interview with Mort Walker, who recently passed away, from 2009 conducted by R.C. Harvey. Will John Porcellino be coming to your town this year? Find out! I always enjoy Arlen Schumer’s presentations on Kirby, and and especially how vehemently he waves the Kirby flag in this particular instance. Last but not least, please enjoy this two part video of some program of the second annual Mighty Marvel Comic Art Convention in 1976. Includes classic Stan Lee feeling like a celebrity, but the best parts are: 1.) the Q&A with then-new editor-in-chief Archie Goodwin and 2.) John Buscema drawing Conan live which ends with a standing ovation. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 2-5-2018 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

White River Junction Scene Report

Frank SantoroOctober 16, 2011Riff Raff / Scene ReportsUp with local comics scene. Down with Marvel. Down with DC. Boycott Disney. Boycott Time Warner. Kill Super Heroes. Do I sound like a broken record? I don’t fuckin’ care! I’m so tired of sifting through “coverage” of the Big Two on comics blogs. You guys are just workin’ for The Man. Knock it off! I should have a “greater concern”? Bullshit. Stop promoting corporate culture in comics. This week’s local comics scene report brought to you by the great Jen Vaughn. Jen lives in White River Junction, Vermont – home of The Center for Cartoon Studies. She is awesome, does awesome stuff and also writes awesomely for the Schulz Library Blog. Don’t forget! My CARTOONING CORRESPONDENCE COURSE starts at the end the end of October! Hurry up and apply – you can do it! I will make you a comics expert in eight weeks! —— Also! Michael DeForge ups the ante again with his story in Thickness number two. I call it a knife fight. He will cut you! The rest of the issue is equally astonishing – lots of different looks – a well edited anthology if there ever was one. It’s also beautifully printed – Ryan Sands crushed this one out of the park, folks. Don’t delay – buy your copy today. INTERMISSION FUNNIES with MICHAEL DEFORGE ———- White River Junction scene report by Jen Vaughn Here in the thicket of White River Junction, a town of small proportions (~2500 people), a lot of cartoonist students dream big. Montreal, Boston and New York are at most five hours away but in this sleepy place often referred to as WRJ or my favorite, the Junc, everything closes around 5pm and good luck on Sundays. My house is behind that green tree on the right The local coffee shop, the Tuckerbox, hangs cartoonist work on the walls year round and is the morning or late afternoon studio space for some. LtoR: Cartoonists Pat Barrett, Josh Kramer, Max de Radigues, Kevin Uehlein and Ben Horak However, there is no shortage of fun and events. Like anywhere, a toonie amidst all all these other toonies and townies must concentrate to keep their butt firmly in their drawing table seat. Thanks to the Center for Cartoon Studies, we have visiting artists every week that come to speak to the school and a lot that just visit! HOLY SHIT, IT’S LYNDA BARRY Cartoonists: Katherine Roy, me and Jon Fine) Dartmouth College is near by with great plays, events and often employs cartoonists. Laura Terry, Katherine Roy and I have made one large mural and have a current exhibit of collegiate fun paintings on display in their student union cafe. —– This is the first place I’ve lived where I draw anywhere I go and people ask ‘Are you a cartoonist?’ instead of ‘artist.’ The villagers know what’s shakin’. Although, if you asked me to describe our activities in three words I’d say “costumes, games and animals.” I’ve pet more goats, pigs and more pigs in my time here than my combined 13 years in Texas. Moving a pig coral at a co-op —– A lot of us like, scratch that, LOVE board games. Night of playing resource management games like Agricola, Carcassone, or Dominion are planned out usually with wine and dinner to boot. Although, it is constantly an odd bag being one of the few female cartoonists in the area with a boyfriend at events with couples. Luckily, we’re all friends so I don’t care about whether I should talk craft with ‘the guys’ or any other subject with ‘the ladies.’ Sometimes its nice to step away from the work. CCS professor Jason Lutes is kind enough let us beta-test his own creation, “Thrilling Tales of Adventure” and hosts a weekly board game night (meanwhile Steve Bissette hosts an often horrifying weekly movie night) LtoR: Cartoonists David Yoder, Joe Lambert, Bill Bedard and Rio Aubrey Taylor play Merchants and Marauders —— In my free time not spent at my day jobs at the Schulz Graphic Novel Library and at the Main Street Museum OR drawing, I spent wrapped up in a butterfly/caterpillar costume as part of the local puppeteer’s gang at Fantasy Technicians. Becoming something else for a bit, whether a butterfly or a pair of shoes, is amazing and I’m totally working on my own articulating costume. And preparing for my week long job in New Orleans next Mardi Gras. Jennerfly. —– Parties usually have a theme, a costumed theme. Like the going away party, Lady Gaga Gone. Featuring toonies Penina Gal, Carol Thompson, Betsey Swardlick, Beth Hetland and me. —– And in any other city you might buy comics at a comic book store but our Border’s closed down AND the local comic shop is more of a game shop (although not a problem for those of us hoping to score the Cthulhu Gloom expansion). The Schulz Graphic Novel Library gets a lot of comic books sent to it by publishers, writers, artists and people who just want to send their favorite to such a grand library. The school also buys a lot of new graphic novels and is open to the public on First Fridays Unfortunately, due to the flood waters of Hurricane Irene, we had to move our library to a temporary storage space but hope to move soon. We save a lot of our buying bucks for conventions, where comics are like currency! —– Here’s my boyfriend, Ryan Anderson and cartoonist, Molly Howard, enjoying comics in our old space —– And here’s a photo of my comics class! —– In the town of White River Junction, friends are around every corner and they like to have a good time. Which is great because I love to pose under silly signs. My town may be small but its heart is huge. at Tunbridge World’s Fair with Linda Walker and cartoonist Rachel Foss Share this page: [...]

01/11/2017

Juan FernándezJanuary 11, 2017NewsJuan con un poquito sobre las Tetastristes; Reconciendo Amanda Baeza y su gran obra Nubes de Talco; la estética de la distorsion;Laura Barrachina entrevista a Conxita Herrero, Joaquín Guirao y Antonio Hitos; Un Faulduo en el foco; Tarantula Preview; The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey; y tiras de Gabriella Tito,Caleb Orecchio, y Juan Fernandez. Cómics y noticias que me han llamado la atencion: “Las Tetastristes se toman el puerto” – La colectiva de ilustradoras y autoeditoras feministas Tetastristes Cómics estará por primera vez en Valparaiso, en una intima variete de actividades en la casa de Me lo dijo unx TRUEK ubicada en Cerro Concepción, Valparaiso el 1/14. Va haber un montón de actividades, como exposición y venta de material de las Tetastristes Cómics y de lesbilais, además de otras artistas visuales porteñas feministas y revoltosas. Para más información: David Romera de FNAC reseña Nubes de Talco de Amanda Baeza. Esta obra, originalmente publicada por la editorial Fulgencio Pimentel, ya llegara al mundo anglohablante: kuš!komiks is set to translate Amanda Baeza’s Brume (Nubes de Talco) into English this February! Now the global english speaking community can experience Baeza’s tour de force in poetic, abstracted yet cartoony, work of emotional autobiography. Bañate en la estética de la distorsion con Pablo Turnes en la Revista Kamandi. En la ultima edicion de La Hora del Bocadillo en RTVE Laura Barrachina entrevista a Conxita Herrero, Joaquín Guirao y Antonio Hitos. Una hora de jovenes promesas… Sebastián Martínez ha compartido con Comics Workbook un gran tesoro postmoderno escondido: Un Faulduo. Joder, que genial. Dale un momento y ponte a explorar su website. Tienen de todo! Formalmente, Un Faulduo es un colectivo de investigación y experimentación alrededor del campo de la historieta, conformado por Nicolás Daniluk, Ezequiel García, Nicolás Moguilevsky y Nicolás Zukerfeld. Sus colaboraciones hacen un recorrido interdisciplinario que abarca las artes visuales, el cine, la música, las artes escénicas y la literatura. Un Faulduo es el nombre de la revista editada por el grupo. Lleva 10 números realizados desde 2005 y mantiene, desde su aparición y hasta la actualidad, un sistema de rotación de directores (cada número es dirigido por un miembro diferente del staff, lo que obliga a cambios de formato, contenido, técnica). / Un Faulduo is the name of a magazine published by the group. Ten issues have been released since 2005, and each one is led by a different member of the staff, forcing changes in format, content and technique. Han publicado un libro a la vez tradicional y de vanguardia, La Historieta En El (Faulduo) Mundo Moderno. Pop-Collage-Noise-Fanzine-Deconstructivistas. Al fin del cabo, el libroe, es un ensayo visual, que viene desde la tradición de la escritura visual de John Berger. Libremente inspirado en el mítico ensayo “La historieta en el mundo moderno” (Oscar Masotta, 1970), este libro realizado por Un Faulduo (colectivo de investigación y experimentación alrededor del campo de la historieta, formado por Nicolás Daniluk, Ezequiel García, Nicolás Moguilevsky y Nicolás Zukerfeld) se propone pensar la relación entre el lenguaje de la historieta y la forma del ensayo, tomando los propios materiales de la historieta como materia prima para su producción y como una forma que permite analizarse y pensarse a sí misma. Han oido las buenas noticias? Ya pueden pedir Tarantula a todo color! AdHouse esta publicando este primer volumen de la novela policíaca, psicodelica y a la vez satanica del equipo Alexis Ziritt y Fabian Rangel Jr. y Evelyn Rangel. Si no has leido Tarantula te daremos un antojo: aquí tienes tu preview. Hoy les presentamos una nueva publicacion de Comics Workbook: The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey. La gran Vanesa R. Del Rey le ha dado permiso a Comics Workbook para publicar unas selecciónes de sus cuadernos de bocetos. Hemos diseñado esta publicación para que parezca uno de esos libros de de artistas los años 80. Arte y Entrevista. El texto es una transcripción de la entrevista que hicimos con Vanesa cuando visito la Residencia Rowhouse en 2016. Vanesa es un artista impresionante y inigualable. Puedes comprar tu copia AQUI.Order a copy of The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey HERE. Frank Santoro, el director de Comics Workbook, nos cuenta un poquito sobre sus experiencias con Vanesa: Me encontré por primera vez con VRDR en un festival de cómics en Toronto (TCAF) en 2014. Había empezado a hacer comics profesionalmente después de un período como un animadora. Fui Sorprendido por su la capacidad de ser como un camaleón de cambiar de estilos, y por su puesto le pedí ver más de sus obras. Desenterró pilas de cuadernos de dibujos de sus días en Cuba, cuando estudiaba el realismo soviético y de trabajaba con George Pratt, maestro de cómics pintados. La educación de Vanesa como artista hace el balance suavemente entre los niveles alto y bajo del arte, así como los valores estéticos del este y el oeste. Es una base asombrosa. Ella es, a la vez, consciente de la historia del arte, la historia de los cómics y la historia de la animación de una manera NUEVA que casi parecía imposible hace quince o veinte años. Debo admitir como un estudiante y fan de cómics que se enfocan en la mezcla de “alto y bajo” y en ” los cómics pintados” — Nunca he visto tal mezcla de habilidades al nivel de VRDR. Feroz. Imparable. Un competidor feroz. Michael Jordan-esque? ¿Es eso posible en la fabricación de cómic? Siempre he dicho que habría un “invasor vertical” en los cómics que podría emplear el “naturalismo” de la escuela de Noel Sickles / Alex Toth pero que podría pintar como una Alice Neel o una Jenny Saville. Creo que “el invasor” ha llegado en forma de Vanesa R. Del Rey. Puedes comprar tu copia AQUI. Sigan a Vanesa por Instagram – @vrdelrey – y http://vrdelrey.com/ Suzy and Cecil – 1-11-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-11-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— 1-11-2017 – by Juan Fernández Share this page: [...]

“Goodnight and Good Luck”: On Finishing Your Comic

Posted on March 30, 2016May 21, 2019 by Jillian Fleck

Try finishing your comic.

I get it, thereʼs that little voice running through comics culture that says: real comics donʼt end. It would not be difficult to connect this to the latest DC or Marvel reboot. Alternatively, look at any popular webcomic artist; their comics donʼt end either. There is just something about comics, unlike any other medium, in which seriality (or infinity) are somehow inherent. The individuals and corporations behind these serial publications have an economic interest in the story never ending. If it does, theyʼre out of business. Iʼm assuming though, your situation, friend, is a little different. Iʼm assuming your interest in not ending your comic is entirely self motivated. Iʼm also assuming you suspect you might not be cut out for this, though most likely youʼd never admit it.

Take a step back from this culture of the infinity narrative, and realize the Sisyphean mission you are volunteering for. How long do you think you could write the same story? Five years? Ten years? How strong does your passion need to be to sustain such extended output? How good are you at gritting your teeth? What do you hope to achieve by it? Iʼm not saying that there is nothing to achieve, Iʼm simply encouraging you to question this. You have the choice to finish your comic, and I would encourage you to do so.

tumblr_npdn62Y6J21r8v54co1_1280 — Harvey Ball, inventor of the Smiley Face…

The sweetest, most refreshing thing about finishing your comic is that it is finally over. Not on hiatus, not to be continued, no spin-off, and no redo. Over, the end, goodnight and good luck.

Now that youʼre finished, letʼs go to the beach. Your studio honestly smells like garbage water, and the skin around your mouth is stained from too much coffee. Letʼs sketch the seagulls fighting over garbage, and eavesdrop on those around us. We could read about German Expressionist film, or write songs, I donʼt know how you creatively refill: letʼs hear some of your ideas. You are finished with your comic after all, you have time to do stupid, silly things like this. Iʼm not saying quit, Iʼm saying remember why you wanted to do comics in the first place.

This is why I encourage you to finish your comic, so you can get up tomorrow and begin your next one. It can be about whatever you want, and can be drawn however you choose. Itʼs entirely new and up to you. Just think, if you finish it in one day, tomorrow you wonʼt have to suffer under the decisions of the past. If you finish your comic in one go, you could put it up on the wall and look at it, think about why you did what you did. Then the day after, maybe you can build on that. Or do something different. You can set challenges for yourself. Can you tell a complete story in a single page? Inside a triangle? On a roll of toilet paper?

Yeah, of course itʼs stupid, and childish, and isnʼt going anywhere, and isnʼt for anyone, and isnʼt worth anything. Think about those values for a moment, those which say what you do needs to be serious, purposeful, intentional, worthwhile, and lucrative. Those are values that you have put on your own work. Some of them might be helpful to you, but remember the kind of comics culture those values are ultimately upholding. Think about the comics that would fall into these worthwhile categories, you know the ones. Big fat volumes, or slender albums, beautifully bound, with thick introductions that quote Thierry Groensteen – “Yes, yes – oh god yes!! Gimme that sweet legitimacy daddy!!!”

Get real, come on, snap out of it. Think about what you value in comics, not what these other clowns are pushing, and do that. Do it a bunch of different times, in a bunch of different ways. Suss it out, take your time, play, and relax. Try setting up a structure that is forgiving, something you could leave tomorrow if you had to, or pick up in fifteen years time if you wanted. It would be very good if you could be kind to yourself, and not treat your mind and body as if it were a machine. If you read this and think “No, thereʼs no way I can play with comics, if I do Iʼll never be Osamu Tezuka!”, then I have bad news for you friend: youʼre already not Osamu Tezuka. You are you, and the comics you make and the way you make them, do not need to be defined by the values that came before.

Take what you need, not what you can carry – itʼs a stranger journey than you can imagine. Finish your comic, itʼs time to move on.

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Jillian Fleck is a comic artist from Calgary, Alberta, currently studying comics at the University of Dundee. Check out her work HERE.

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3 thoughts on ““Goodnight and Good Luck”: On Finishing Your Comic”

Caleb Orecchio says:

March 30, 2016 at 5:30 pm

This is really great. Articulating a lot of what I’ve been thinking about.

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David Robertson says:

March 30, 2016 at 8:58 pm

Very good advice here!

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Tyler says:

April 3, 2016 at 1:52 pm

Well put, especially regarding value.

Reply

Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in Essays, ResourcesTagged finishing comics, jillian fleck, opinion

Jillian Fleck

Posted on March 30, 2016May 21, 2019

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11/27/2017

Caleb OrecchioNovember 27, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with thoughts on Peanuts, Ron Wimberly’s LAAB, and other news. ————————————————————————————————— Charles “Sparky” Schulz’s birthday was yesterday, he would have been 95. As we all know, Schulz created possibly the most iconic American comic strip, Peanuts. Ever think about how every single newspaper still carries Peanuts? Remember when Snoopy sold us life insurance and would appear at the corner of your screen while watching college football? Has the Charlie Brown balloon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ever popped? How many psychiatrists have used Lucy’s football place-holding shenanigans as a metaphor? In fact, how many of those people have a framed image of Lucy’s psychiatrist stand in their office? Who hasn’t seen Linus recite The Nativity Story? My grandmother has a Peanuts recipe book. I saw a woman the other day with a Woodstock tattoo on her calf. How many of you knew who the Red Baron was before Snoopy?—be honest. My friend took his daughter to a theme park where kids could ride in Snoopy’s doghouse. Happiness is a warm cookie®. I could go on and on. Go ahead, think of all the places you’ve seen Good ‘Ole Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the gang. You can come up with a lot if you really think about it. They are everywhere. Comics are symbols, and Schulz mastered and exploited that fact to the max. Now his creations are everywhere, on everything, and still stand virtually untainted despite their overuse. They interact and inform our culture—what more could a cartoonist ask for? ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know LAAB (pronounced “Lab”), “The debut issue of Ron Wimberly’s collective newspaper dismantles lethal stereotypes of black representation in sci-fi & pop culture,” is nearing the end of its Kickstarter campaign with 4 days to go and nearly $10,000 left to raise. Wimberly is very smart and an important voice in 21st Century comics, and it would be a shame to not see this project hit its goal. Do what you can to support whether that means spreading the word, or through cold hard cash. Austin English debuts a new column at TCJ.com. Take a look at Winsor McCay editorial cartoons by way of Warren Bernard’s personal collection. Heidi MacDonald’s update on Pixar’s founder over at The Beat—the title says it all. Jason Thompson & Jumana Al Hashal are the latest guests on Process Party. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 11-27-2017 – by Sally Ingraham —————————————————————————————————Joanie and Jordie – 11-27-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

BARBARA LUNA Storyboards And Visual Notes By Sacha Mardou

Chris Anthony DiazJuly 26, 2016The Diaz ArchiveMardou’s preparation work for writing the narration of my upcoming short film BARBARA LUNA and also her storyboards for her rewrite and reedit of the new cut. Share this page: [...]

2/17/2016

Juan FernándezFebruary 17, 2016NewsWottaday… Sarah Bowie, Disa Wallander and L. Nichols all have some new comics for you to dig your teeth into! For some messy, honest, social realism, you can take a poke into Wallander’s world through her hourly comics that swallow up any and all documentary images for the sake of comics. Bowie’s got a new short, Saucepan. Image and narration dance together nicely in this nice slice of microfiction for you. And for the more observational stroll through the woods, join L. Nichols up Hunter Mountain in the latest of Nichol’s hiking comics. There’s a cool new video of Steve Oliff reflecting on his coloring work with Katsuhiro Otomo on Akira. In 1989, Oliff, a veteran colorist, was personally selected by Katsuhiro Otomo to color his seminal manga, AKIRA. This video documents their working relationship, including Otomo’s trip to Point Arena, CA to collaborate with Steve on developing the color scheme. Steve hand-painted every page of AKIRA, using some combination of airbrush, gouache, water marker, colored pencil, Pantone film; these original color guides are now available exclusively from Felix Comic Art. John Kelly’s got a killer piece over at the Comics Journal that delves deep into the history of the East Village Eye, an important alt-newspaper back in the day. It’s really an excellent investigation. Take some time and sit with the article. It’ll have you hopping back and forth across the web, over turning loads of stones to learn more about the publication. “The East Village Eye did a lot of the most significant early hip-hop and aerosol ‘graffiti’ art coverage,” said James Romberger, whose strip and events at his art gallery–both called Ground Zero and both done with his partner and collaborator Marguerite Van Cook–appeared in the Eye. “It highlighted that the East Village of the early and mid-80s as a whole was very multicultural and inclusive. The art that people were doing was aggressive and accessible; and the art scene crossed-over at the time with the music, film and club scenes.” And that was the point of the Eye. “My point of view with the Eye was to blur the lines–and try to obliterate the lines–between the kind of popular culture that people took seriously–that the artists took seriously and the media took seriously,” said Eye founder and editor Leonard Abrams. “And I think that we succeeded. We definitely helped push that point of view.” Bill Boichel riffs on Michale Pisano’s camera about the new Michael DeForge’s issue of Frontier. Watch the review. Matt Davis over at Perfecty Acceptable press just announced the Spring/Summer publishing line up. It looks like a really strong line up of deft cartoonists who know how to use color to great effect. New books by: Daria Tessler @animalsleepstories Jim Pluk @jimpluk Talya Modlin @talyamodlin & Inés Estrada @inechi Share this page: [...]

10/16/2018

Aaron CockleOctober 15, 2018NewsMid-October Process Post ————————————————————————————————— I was out of town last week. As with my last trip, I wasn’t really able to work on comics, but I tried to keep busy with sketching when I had the chance. Mostly quick exercises with negative space, nothing too intense. I was drawing in sketchbooks I made out of a portable speaker user’s manual and some books made out of tea bag wrappers. Examples below. ————————————————————————————————— I picked up some books as well: Moron der Schwachsinnige, by L.G.X., 1995 Mad Love, by André Breton, translated from the French by Mary Ann Caws, 1988 (Coincidentally, Caws participated in a panel discussion at Printed Matter this past Friday to promote Ideas Have No Smell: Three Belgian Surrealist Booklets Ideas Have No Smell collects the first English-language translations of three works: Transfigured Publicity, visual texts by poet and photographer Paul Nougé (1895-1967); the whimsical, hand-drawn artist’s book, Abstractive Treatise on Obeuse by Paul Colinet (1898-1957); and For Balthazar, a collection of aphorisms and observations by the ever skeptical author, lawyer, and anarchist Louis Scutenaire (1905-1987). Star Warriors : A Penetrating Look into the Lives of the Young Scientists Behind Our Space Age Weaponry, by William Broad, 1985 ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 10-16-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

07/31/2018

Aaron CockleJuly 31, 2018NewsGeneviève Castrée and Anders Nilsen; Escher in Industry City; Evolving Floorplans ————————————————————————————————— Writing about A Bubble Anders Nilsen discusses his work on the posthumous book by Geneviève Castrée: It’s often the case that the right solution to a narrative or visual problem feels like it comes out of nowhere. These bubble don’t feel, to me, like “my style,” but they immediately felt right somehow. They aren’t her style either, they are simply what the book asked for, and finally accepted. I very much like that they are, in a way, not a drawing I’ve done on top of hers, but, because they are a literal digital negation of the toothy yellow paper on which she drew, the bubbles manage, in a funny way, to end up behind her work, as a support. At least I hope that’s how it feels to the reader. White is a color of blankness, is the color of an empty page, and of course, of death. ————————————————————————————————— THE MAURITS CORNELIS ESCHER EXPERIENCE In addition to the Escher works on display, the exhibition includes scientific experiments, play areas and educational resources that will help visitors of all ages to understand the impossible perspectives, disquieting images and seemingly irreconcilable universes which Escher combined to create a unique artistic dimension. Among these special installations will be immersive photo booths constructed to emulate Escher’s hypnotic environments. Visitors will be able to photograph themselves “inside” the worlds of M.C. Escher, including the Relativity Room, which turns normal size and scale on its head, and the “Infinity Room,” in which visitors can see their reflection repeated, seemingly, into infinity. ————————————————————————————————— ‘The results were biological in appearance, intriguing in character and wildly irrational in practice.’ Joel Simon (via Boing Boing) on ‘an experimental research project exploring speculative, optimized floor plan layouts.‘ Two simulations, graph-contraction and ant-colony pathing, are used as ‘growth processes’. Graph contraction is a family of algorithms that aim to create visually appealing layouts of a graphs. Ant-colony algorithms are probabilistic methods for finding optimal paths using a hive of emergent agents. Attribute genes encode meta-parameters that control various aspects of the simulations. This is analogous to developmental genes that establish patterns and guide development. Instead of encoding every path of all the hallways, a few attribute genes can optimize the entire layout. The floor plan genome is a weighted, connected and undirected graph. Every desired room is represented with a node gene that contains information such as the room’s size. Connection genes specify two node genes to span as well as a randomly initialized weight; they are added in a random manner until the graph is connected. Adjacency requirements create a subgraph with maximum edge weight. For example, the cafeteria must be adjacent to the kitchen. The genetic encoding is a generalization of NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT) that allows the artificial evolution of neural networks to graphs. This applies historical markers to allow crossover of graphs with varying topology. This allows floor plans to differ in the number of rooms they have. ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 7-31-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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