Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in The Diaz ArchiveTagged Michael DeForge

Chris Anthony Diaz

Posted on April 6, 2017April 6, 2017

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02/23/2018

Aaron CockleFebruary 23, 2018NewsAaron filling in today with Christina Ramberg; More from that Austin English TCJ Essay; Post-Text Futures (According to the NY Times); Desert Island’s 10-Year Anniversary ————————————————————————————————— Dan Nadel on the Art of Christina Ramberg At ARTFORUM Curator Jenelle Porter nicely summarizes the breadth of Ramberg’s interests: “To browse the over 1,000 slides Ramberg left behind is to gain a foothold on how she looked at the world. Slides of Buddhist hand mudras echo the elongated fingers in Hand. Patterned asphalt shingles, hand-painted signs, wig shop displays, the homes of outsider artists, a twisted and frayed awning—one can begin to decipher how Ramberg translated quotidian visual experiences into highly ordered paintings.” Ramberg and Hanson also created a scrapbook of comic-book clippings with examples of explosions, word graphics, and dreams, among other categories. The scrapbook, Ramberg noted, was “valuable as a sourcebook of comic conventions or shorthand methods of depicting various themes and objects.” She did not, however, employ collage and comic-book imagery in her paintings, as some of the artists Ramberg admired—Öyvind Fahlström, the Swedish master of reconfiguring comic-book elements; San Francisco’s symbolist painter and collage-master Jess; and Yoshida—did in their own. For Ramberg, these fragments revealed modes of rendering and moments of accidental strangeness, such as when a speech balloon hovers above a house to indicate an interior conversation. Taken out of sequential context, as in Ramberg’s scrapbook, the house appears to “speak,” as if in a Magritte painting. ————————————————————————————————— Where I’m Coming From (Part 2) Juan posted about this yesterday, but here’s another look at the 2nd part of Austin English’s personal exploration into zines and mini-comics. There’s a lot of ground covered here. Bessijelle made this zine on a home printer, and stapled it at the edges—everything about the assemblage of this comic is worked out by the author on a system of their own. A heartfelt pride in its making comes through, which is augmented immeasurably by the purposefully labored over work within. The author made the art according to their own principles and found the images to be powerful, thus making reproduction and dissemination of the work essential. But how to go about that? Like some of the most uniquely beautiful zines, the printing is as personal as the drawing within, and if the reader brings themselves to it, a total work of art can be seen. Unlike self conscious art zines that stress their expensive production values, this work’s quiet features make it priceless. … Annie Murphy’s I Never Promised You A Rose Garden is an extremely important project. Murphy is a hard-to-do-her-artistry-justice cartoonist who isn’t extremely prolific, so each new work is worth studying. More then that though, Rose Garden is a historical work that is more vital then that description usually suggests in zine culture. Instead of a ‘historical’ zine that is concerned with the changing storefronts of main street, Murphy’s subject is no less than the history of mood, the underground itself, sordid half-truths, and tragedies involving all of the above within her home of Portland, Oregon. Murphy is a cartoonist like no other, more emotionally precise than most artists who work in comics. Murphy’s feelings are clear to her but unique in spirit: she communicates them to the reader without noise and we are left with new heartbeats. ————————————————————————————————— ‘The thing you’re doing now, reading prose on a screen, is going out of fashion.’ At The New York Times, Farhad Manjoo contemplates a ‘Post-Text Future’. The internet was born in text because text was once the only format computers understood. Then we started giving machines eyes and ears — that is, smartphones were invented — and now we’ve provided them brains to decipher and manipulate multimedia. Suddenly the script flipped: Now it’s often easier to communicate with machines through images and sounds than through text. ————————————————————————————————— Hey Desert Island, Happy 10-Year Anniversary! ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 2-23-2018 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 2-23-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

08/02/2016

Aaron CockleAugust 1, 2016NewsAaron Cockle here today with Mickey Z circa 2012-2013; Bill Sienkiewicz revisits old work; syndicated comic strip pulled for some reason or another; The Routledge Companion to Comics costs $240???; Dabaie/Hart Comics; Rowhouse Auction continues ————————————————————————————————— Mickey Z‘s 2012-2013 output for CW is this week’s Featured Comic. ————————————————————————————————— X-Men: Post-Apocalypse At the big comic convention recently held in San Diego that promotes all of the big super-hero movies, artist Bill Sienkiewicz spotted some work he’d made for a super-hero comic 30 years ago being used to promote the release of a super-hero movie. As an artist with a grievance, Sienkiewicz went to the only place these days where one’s frustrations can be vented, and stated: This practice is hardly unusual standard operating procedure for corporations. Even so, it still rankles. I’m one guy. I’ve been doing this comic-book thing for years. I’m aware most everything is Work-Made-for-Hire. Still, I received no prior notification (a common courtesy), no thank you ( ditto), no written credit in any form whatsoever either on the piece or in connection with the premium, absolutely no compensation and no comp copies of the album. Aside from the discussion of why these corporate, hegemonic, known-to-be-exploitative structures are still propped up by consumers (and creators), there’s a conversation to be had about making a living through your art-making. Is the short answer ‘We deserve better’? Or do we get the comics, art, culture, politicians, etc we deserve? ————————————————————————————————— Grammar Confusion or Terrorist Plot? Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis had a comic strip pulled from syndication on July 27, possibly due to an implied reference to the Islamic State, the Salafi jihadist militant group that follows a fundamentalist, Wahhabi doctrine of Sunni Islam. Facebook has blacked out the strip on Pastis’s page, but it’s been posted numerous times in the comments section. Apologies for linking to Facebook so much today. Betsy Gomez at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund had this to say about the matter: As private entities, newspaper editorial staff are certainly within their rights to make decisions about the content they run in their papers. However, the removal of the strip raises concerns over self-censorship. Further, removal of a cartoon as relatively inoffensive at Pastis’s buys into the fear that terrorists like those who attacked Charlie Hebdo and other cartoonists around the world are trying to instill in the populace. The answer to such fear isn’t to remove a cartoon, but to support the free expression of those who would question the terrorists’ actions and the authorities that overreact to terrorist attacks by stepping on fundamental freedoms. ————————————————————————————————— I Can’t Believe This Book Costs $240 The Routledge Companion to Comics, edited by Frank Bramlett, Roy T. Cook, Aaron Meskin, 456 pages, $240. I understand that this is a textbook of some kind, or as the book’s description says: This cutting-edge handbook brings together an international roster of scholars to examine many facets of comics and graphic novels. Contributor essays provide authoritative, up-to-date overviews of the major topics and questions within comic studies, offering readers a truly global approach to understanding the field. Maybe the whole thing was Risographed, and that’s why it costs so much? There don’t appear to be any samples or excerpts available, but if anyone at Routledge/Taylor & Francis would like to send CW a review copy, we’d be happy to take a look at it and let you know what we think. ————————————————————————————————— Ali’s House The strip, made by Marguerite Dabaie and Tom Hart for King Features Syndicate back in 2008, has found a home at Go Comics. ————————————————————————————————— Rowhouse Auction Items: July 31-August 6 New items available for this week. 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. Share this page: [...]

Jackie Kirby – Rowhouse Residency Report

Comics WorkbookJuly 3, 2017Residency Reports / School UpdatesMy name is Jackie Kirby. I am a poet and comics author. I am twenty-two years old, and live in New York City. Recently, I graduated from The New School with a BA in Cultural Studies. I have been making comics and writing poetry seriously for three years now. As my poetic and comics practices evolved, they became more and more intertwined. Now, the differences between what I publish as “poetry” versus “comics” has more to do with marketing and publishing than it does with genre or form—but then genre is the formal violence of marketing and publishing. But, “whatever.” I spent a week in Pittsburgh at the Rowhouse Residency this June 2017. As recent graduate without the privilege of a future in plastics, I was anxious on how to proceed. If I was to call myself a “poet” and a “comics author,” what should I do to validate or realize those claims? Additionally, I had a bit of a foothold in the world of poetry, through school and time spent in and around the New York poetry cliques. I didn’t, however, have anything of the sort in the world of comics. Poets can often be easily impressed by the integration of visual arts into poetry, and don’t know anything of comics. I was excited, albeit nervous, to see how I could enter into the world of comics, and if my work was intelligible or interesting to comics readers in contrast to poetry readers. With the time and space provided by the residency, I was able to develop a routine and work ethic that works for my particular habits and skills. Through my conversations with Frank Santoro, I was able to visualize a path going forward with my work, begin to feel grounded in the world of comics, affirm my beliefs in the value of my own aesthetic project, and gain valuable tools and modes of thought towards the furthering of my craft. Frank’s approach to composition in comic books clicked with me as a way of connecting poetry and comics. Without sounding too prescriptive, I think poetics should seek to emancipate possibility and meaning from language, or at least restructure it. Frank and I spoke a lot about meter and geometry, but I think the integration of comics into poetry and vice versa has a greater political value. In comics, “language” as we know it is subverted through its integration with non-alphabetic symbols. The job of a poet is to keep language alive, and if poetry is to be relevant it must be written in the contemporary idiom. The integration of words and images in everyday life is increasing, and pictoral languages are becoming more common. The integration of comics and poetics is only logical considering. Before coming to the residency I had spent the last year working on a set of works called Finding Eurydice. The first is a poetry chapbook subtitled “Transmissions from Orpheus,” and the second is a comic “translation” of the chapbook subtitled “A Border Comic.” In these works, I used the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a way of expressing the experience of transfeminity, and experimented formally as a way of enacting that experience. At risk of being too pretentious, I’ll quote the introduction from my reflection on A Border Comic: Finding Eurydice is a comic. Finding Eurydice is a poem, or book of poems. It’s both, but it’s not quite one or the other. Words are often only images. Images are abstracted into words. Its “graphic narrative” is mostly formal, and moves associatively. Much of its “text” is illegible. It doesn’t fit right. Finding Eurydice is a hybrid work. It is a comic-poem which transgresses forms and signs. This formal transgression produces a new vocabulary for the enactment of transgender subjectivities and experiences historically made impossible to verbalize. Entering the project, I asked: If an artistic production is a body, or an extension of the body, and the body is always already gendered, how can the formal restructuring of and deployment of “trans-” trajectories of movement into a literary or artistic mode of production aide in the revelation of new possibilities of gender embodiments and transgender subjectivities? In Finding Eurydice, the comic, the poem, and Orpheus are all made trans, opening up new space for transness to exist in language. Both works can be read online: Finding Eurydice: Transmissions from Orpheus Finding Eurydice: A Border Comic My conversations with Frank were thoughtful, engaging, and exciting. Among the most interesting aspects of our discussions was comparing analogies of music and poetry to comics. I know very little when it comes to music. Half-kidding – it’s one of the few popular art forms I’m not a snob about, and I’ve tried to keep it like that. Frank, on the other hand, is a total music nerd. I came into his house for espresso one afternoon and he presented me with a piece of scrap paper on which he had written “2/3 3/4 rectangle riff seen from a poet’s pov in relation to ‘meter’ / and relation to ‘the Breath’ or Dylan’s ‘long line of spit.’ ” Frank and I chatted for hours regarding this. He would riff for fifteen minutes or so about music and I would respond with a riff on poetics. Forty five minutes could go by without comics being explicitly mentioned once, but the composition and formal techniques of comics practice underlaid every moment. When I brought this up, Frank brushed it off, saying “Of course we could talk about how Robert Crumb is this or that but we both know that.” What’s interesting is what we can learn from each other. In conclusion, I will list a few highlights of my time at the residency: – Frank took a class with Kathy Acker and said “She was so mean! In the best way.” This is exactly what I want to hear about Kathy Acker. – Kathy Acker chose her pen name from her husband’s last name (Acker) and a nickname extracted from her birth-name (Karen) and not because the titular character from the comic-strip Cathy says “Ack!” as her catchphrase, and is therefore a Cathy “Ack!”-er. This is exactly what I don’t want to hear about Kathy Acker. – I fell down all the stairs at the residency. In all fairness, however, wearing slippery socks, a maxi-skirt that’s hanging too low, and carrying forty things in your arms while descending a steep wooden staircase is the set-up to a punchline involving falling down all the stairs, and Frank provided excellent first-aid. – When Sally picked me up from the train station, we went to a bar for dinner where Anthony Bourdain had recently shot an episode of some show he does where he pretends he’s in a scene in Coffee & Cigarettes and I find Anthony Bourdain conceptually hilarious (I believe Hayes Davenport called him “the misanthrope of food television”) but realized I don’t have any solid jokes to make and ended up asking a lot of questions about the ins and outs of Anthony Bourdain’s TV production. ————————————————————————————————————— Check out more work by Jackie on her website, and follow her on Instagram. For more information about the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency visit this page or email santoroschoolATgmail Share this page: [...]

Rachel Masilamani – Foundational Works (2000-2013)

Juan FernándezJanuary 12, 2017EssaysThere’s things you can’t do with words and there’s things you can’t do with pictures, that’s what’s so exciting about the form. It’s constantly pressing against your limitations. – Rachel Masilamani 2013 A veteran self-publisher, Rachel Masilamani has been making comics since 1997. Her first comics collection, RPM Comics #1, received a grant from the Xeric Foundation and was named “Best Comic Book” by the Baltimore City Paper. Since then, her comics have appeared in Meathaus, Street Runoff, Graphics Classics, The Indiana Review, Dog City, MUTHA Magazine and in other anthologies and in her own publications. This is a look at her body of work as a whole through 2013. An accomplished story teller, Masilamani is hard pressed to categorize her work. Endlessly fascinated with people, Masilamani draws inspiration from her own life and the behaviors of those around her to create stories that burrow themselves deep into the minds of her readers. Her stories elegantly blend naturalistic storytelling with expressionistic visual representation. In much of her work, Masilamani explores notions of local and universal truth by blurring the line between fact and fiction. In so doing, she makes her inner life palpable. She walks this tightrope in ways similar to the memoir work of Carol Tyler, Mardou and Gabrielle Bell. Although Masilamani grew up reading newspaper comics, she didn’t start making her own comics until she was a student at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD in the late nineties. Her first formal forays into the medium were under the guidance of Baltimore based cartoonist and instructor, Tom Chalkley. One of the stories made under Chalkley’s guidance, Pen Bandit, appears in Masilamani’s first collection of comics, RPM #1. Originally planned to be a short film that she wanted to propose to John Hopkin’s film club, Masilamani decided to make Pen Bandit a comic on her own to avoid the inevitable frustrations she foresaw of having to compromise her vision. Classic comics maker. After she graduated from John Hopkins University in 1999 with a degree in Anthropology and a minor in Art History, she didn’t go looking for a job or head off to graduate school, rather she attempted to make cartooning a full time job. She knew it would be hard but she stuck to her guns. For months she dedicated herself to improving her cartooning and honing her ability to translate her observations to paper. It was a bold move as a young cartoonist. Her efforts paid off when she received the Xeric Foundation Grant. The grant provided her with $5000 to print and distribute her first collection of comics, RPM #1 in 2000. With the help of the grant, she hit the ground running. The first issue of RPM featured uniquely original, personal stories, carefully rendered in pencil and pen & ink. Though the work might not have been fully developed, it was a promising collection of stories that offered a fresh perspective. After continuing freelance work and putting out the occasional minicomic, Masilamani published RPM #2 in Baltimore. RPM #2 retained the same ingenious sense of observation and personality that made RPM #1 stand out, but revealed the hand of an artist who had tighter storytelling mechanics and a greater confidence in draftsmanship. Comprised of memoir, folk tales, and urban fantasies, the variety of genres in RPM #2 placed Masilamani’s narrative chops center stage. After publishing RPM #2, life caught up with Masilamani. Though she’d given the life of a free-lance cartoonist and illustrator a go, it wasn’t meant to be. Masilamani returned to school to study Library Science and began a series of relocations that wound up taking her to Pittsburgh, PA. During this time, Masilamani slowed down her release of comics. While it would seem that Masilamani had taken a hiatus from her cartooning, the truth was that she continued to work and re-work new comics privately. This new period of cartooning saw Masilamani put out two self-contained mini-comics, Singing Contest and Las Cuerpas. While both stories take place in the same physical landscape, the Mexican-American border, Singing Contest and Las Cuerpas explore radically different emotional landscapes. Singing Contest tells the story of a young woman who leaves her home to participate in a televised singing contest. The comic is a playful experiment that cleverly uses the iconographic power of the comics medium. In Singing Contest, Masilamani allows the animals that aid the protagonist on her journey to speak in words, while all of Masilamani’s human characters speak in icons. As a result of this formal decision, Masilamani creates a smooth, but idiosyncratic reading experience that lends the story an air of heartfelt whimsy. Las Cuerpas, which Masilamani published in 2010, is much heavier. It deals head on with the femicides of Ciudad Juarez Mexico. A wordless comic inked expressively in pen and ink, Las Cuerpas swiftly moves across the city of Juarez and builds to a feverish crescendo. Las Cuerpas is the result of Masilamani living in New Mexico and experiencing first hand the constant news about women and girls being murdered in Ciudad Juarez with no discernible follow up. Though at the time she felt powerless to do anything about the murders, Masilamani couldn’t stop imagining that something could make the femicides unignorable. Las Cuerpas is her attempt at making the horrors impossible to ignore. Since Las Cuerpas, Masilamani has self-published two more collections of stories, Odds Are in 2012 and No Words in 2013. The two collections document a graceful evolution in the poetics of Masilamani’s story telling. Odds Are contains 9 stories, each of which, in their own way, experiment with the semiotic relationship between words and pictures. Comprised of explorations of sensory experience, feminine identity and gender politics, Odds Are shows Masilamani handle extremely nuanced material. No Words consists of 3 longer stories, which focus on semiotics and trust, race and ethnicity, and urban disenfranchisement. In these stories Masilamani allows herself more time to slowly create dense, inhabitable yet challenging narrative spaces. These stories, though rooted in traditional narratives, make one think of the comics poetry of Tom Neely and John Hankiewicz, mainly because of Masilamani’s mature poetic, highly symbolic, dense and at times abstract, language that takes readers out of their comfort zones. Attentively tuned to the mechanics involved in the co-mixing of abstract languages, Masilamani achieves a certain alchemy with these comics. It’s thrilling to read. In 2013 I published a collection of short stories by Masilamani in Dog City #2, the box anthology I co-edited with Simon Reinhardt and Luke Healy. It was called Selfies. It was an honor to work with her in this capacity and to bring her work to the anthology’s audience. Here’s what Rob Clough had to say about it on The Comics Journal: “See What I’m Saying” is one of my favorite stories of 2013, as she reflects back on a childhood dare to shut up for five minutes, how she found herself as a child with the constant urge to tell stories, and how she is facing the concept of mortality. The heavy narrative bent of the text nonetheless lightly plays around its images, commenting on them in oblique ways while never directly addressing the fear of breast cancer. “Selfies” is a series of amusing, marvelous drawings of women taking photos of themselves with their cameras. “Move It” is all about a series of interactions between a zaftig teenager and the new boy in her building. Her verisimilitude and restraint regarding the way teens act is remarkable, and she quickly manages to create a youth-dominated world in the way that the Hernandez Brothers might. There’s a sense of getting all the details right, which gives the reader trust before the story’s final, painful payoff. Since these works, Masilamani has been working with MUTHA Magazine on an incredible series of comics, her NONPARTUM series. You can read her work there here. As a fan of her work, I’m constantly inspired by her doggedness as a creator, balancing fulltime work as a librarian and family life to create insistent and timeless comics. It is a joy to see her continue to revel in the liminal spaces of comics in her latest work over at MUTHA. You can purchase Rachel Masilamani’s work online from her site, RPM Comics. You can read some of her comics online for free on her zco.mx page. Share this page: [...]

02/10/2017

Sally IngrahamFebruary 9, 2017NewsSally here to finish the week with you – I’ve got work by Emil Ferris, Theora Kvitka, Valentine Gallardo, Iris Yan, and Lou Rogers to share, plus comics scholarship with Rebecca Wanzo and the debut of The Ladybroad Ledger – and much more! ————————————————————————————————— Emil Ferris‘s long-anticipated debut graphic novel is finally here. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters was a decade in the making, and then it quite literally got lost at sea last fall when “the entire 10,000-copy print run of the book was stuck on a cargo ship seized at the Panama Canal after the freight company, Hanjin, filed bankruptcy.” The A.V. Club reports: “The scope of Ferris’ story is huge as it juggles a murder mystery, family drama, psychological thriller, and love letter to classic pulp monsters while taking readers from Chicago to Nazi Germany, and the narrative is constantly surprising and hugely fulfilling.“ They have a 11-page preview of the book – check it out HERE. It will be officially released on February 15th (although Copacetic Comics already has copies!) I look forward to seeing this in person – the “intensely hatched linework” is not always my cup of tea, but the story sounds compelling and Emil Ferris is a very interesting person. In an exclusive for Chicago Magazine, Emil has shared more of her story. “Growing up in Uptown in the 1960s, Ferris was part of a diverse community of people who she says “operated outside the system.” Her neighbors included black migrants who traveled north during the Great Migration, white Appalachian miners living in abject poverty, and thousands of Native Americans who left their reservations in the wake of relocation programs. “There was an incredible beauty,” says Ferris. “These were people who suffered, but were strong. They were survivors.” “ Emil was a survivor as well – born with scoliosis she was immobile for much of her childhood. This led to a vision of herself as a wolf-girl and a fascination with monsters – both of which influenced the creation of her new book. The piece on Chicago Magazine includes a comic by Emil that details the “stranger-than-fiction saga” which led to My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. The first part is below – read the rest HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Meet Rebecca Wanzo, a comics scholar, associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and associate director of the Center for the Humanities. She is also a founding board member of the Comics Studies Society (CSS), “the first professional organization for comics researchers in the United States.” Wow. Total badass. The Source, a publication of the Washington University in St. Louis recently sat down with Rebecca to talk about comics and education and scholarship. Her current book project – The Content of Our Caricature – brings up an interesting discussion about how African-Americans fit into a medium that has a deep history of caricature and excess. “Think about Charlie Brown, the way he’s drawn. The body is a sign. Comics depend on this language of exaggeration and excess. But it’s really easy for representations of black people to slip into racist caricature. How do you get away from caricature in a medium built upon it? But what’s more interesting to me is when black comic artists intentionally use caricature, and to what ends. Sam Milai, the great Pittsburgh Courier editorial cartoonist, whose archives are in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum (where Wanzo is a board member) had a gorgeous, realist phenotype for black people he thought were doing good things, but sometimes used racist caricature for people he was criticizing. You see this consistently in black cartooning.“ They also get into the impetus behind forming the Comics Studies Society and what works Rebecca especially likes to teach. “I enjoy teaching excerpts from “Winmen’s Comix,” especially the early issues, which are really transgressive. Students assume representation gets more progressive over time, but that’s not necessarily true. For feminists, the 1970s were pretty radical!“ The rest of the interview is also interesting – check it out HERE. I’m very excited to see the debut issue of Inks, the CSS Journal coming out later this year, and will definitely be tracking down more of Rebecca Wanzo’s writing. ————————————————————————————————— In the tradition of Wimmen’s Comix and Strumpet and other collections of comics featuring women only comes The Ladybroad Ledger. It is a newsprint compilation that features 10 female-identifying artists and plenty of diverse subject matter. It is making it’s way into stores and libraries all across the state of Vermont. It was created by Stephanie Zuppo, a cartoonist based in Winooski, VT. There is a nice write-up about the first issue of The Ladybroad Ledger over on Seven Days. “These days, gender disparity in comics is declining, according to Zuppo… “It’s becoming more balanced, especially in alternative and indie comics,” she says. “Now, a lot of the major publishers are taking notice and hiring more women.” That doesn’t mean female cartoonists should kick back and declare victory any time soon, adds Zuppo. “I still think featuring women in comics is an important thing, and it should be done more often,” she asserts.“ Read the rest of the article HERE. Stephanie plans to release her publication twice a year. Check out more of her personal work HERE – and keep up with The Ladybroad Ledger HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Theora Kvitka is a Pittsburgh-based cartoonist who publishes the webcomic Urbanity Planet (above). It updates every Monday. Her work was featured in a roundup on The Guardian of comics throughout history that have looked at gentrification, from 1921 to 2016 – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The Comics Beat featured the work of Valentine Gallardo as part of their A Year of Free Comics feature. You can read about Valentine’s Spellwich HERE – and you can read the whole comic on Vice – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Check out the work of Iris Yan (above). She is a Brazilian-born Chinese cartoonist who has been publishing the webcomic Pigs in Maputo since 2010 – read more of it HERE. These comics appear almost daily – she also has longer form work which you can see HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I – Sally Ingraham – started a Patreon to help support my comics-related endeavors! I am focusing on developing a comics curriculum for girls, building a library of women’s comics, and researching and documenting women in the comics industry. The teaching part is especially rewarding and where I really am looking for help when it comes to the Patreon. I am working on putting more classes together and establishing a “comics tutoring” clientele, but as that grows I need some help making ends meet. Consider sending me $1 or $5 or $10 a month while I build this network and create a curriculum that has the potential to really change these young girls’ lives. I’m just trying to get more ladies to make and read comics – and once they’re on board for that, to makes spaces for their work to be seen and for them to be heard! It’s fun. It’s radical. It’s necessary. Join me on this journey – check out my Patreon HERE. Many thanks in advance! ————————————————————————————————— Pictured above are cartoons by suffragist cartoonist Lou Rogers in Judge Magazine in 1912 (left) and the original Wonder Woman artist H.G. Peters in 1943 (right). I’m in the middle of reading Jill Lepore’s terrific book The Secret History of Wonder Women, which I may write about later – but for now I just wanted to give a shoutout to Lou Rogers, who was a prolific editorial cartoonist in the early 20th century. She was very involved in the suffragist movement – and in a funny “role reversal” she eventually married her colorist, Howard Smith. The artist who designed Wonder Woman – H. G. Peters – worked at the same paper as Lou did for awhile. (Although I recommend reading The Secret History of Wonder Woman, if you can’t spare the time for 400+ pages you can get the “Cliff Notes” version via this Buzzfeed article: 8 Things You Won’t Believe About Wonder Woman’s Origins.) ————————————————————————————————— Biscuits and Gravy Sara Lautman has a comic on The Awl called The Smell – HERE. Liana Finck had a comic on The Awl a few weeks ago – For Love of the Unknown. Sacha Mardou looks at money in a new way with Murry Mint, for The Common Reader. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 2-10-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 2-10-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio ————————————————————————————————— Cozytown – 2-10-2017 – by Juan Fernandez Share this page: [...]

Michael Deforge’s Sticks Angelica: Folk Hero Release Tour

Posted on April 6, 2017April 6, 2017 by Chris Anthony Diaz

Michael Deforge signed his awesome new book from DRAWN & QUARTERLY at Comix Experience, Wednesday, April 5, 2017, San Francisco. All photos colored by Graham Willcox

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in The Diaz ArchiveTagged Michael DeForge

Chris Anthony Diaz

Posted on April 6, 2017April 6, 2017

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08/21/2017

Caleb OrecchioAugust 20, 2017NewsCaleb Orecchio here with your Monday edition of the Daily News with some thoughts on drawing sparked by Eleanor Davis and the reputable discipline of Leslie Stein and Gary Panter–and remember not to go blind looking at the eclipse ———————————————————————————————— Recently, a friend of mine lent me Eleanor Davis’ recent Koyama Press release, You & A Bike & A Road. I read it on Tumblr when she was serializing it live (I think) as she embarked on her cross-country bike adventure which the book illustrates; but I never really took the time to notice how immediate the drawing is. From what I understand, these pages were drawn first take as she was making her way through her journey, like a diary, which is really impressive. The drawings are sparse and noodley, yet feel perfectly complete–and they teem with a pertinent energy. Last time I was in Pittsburgh, Frank Santoro talked a lot about Gary Panter and how he draws constantly. Even while you’re having a conversation, he’s just drawing away, “He’s just someone who draws all the time no matter what.” On the most recent episode of Greg Hunter’s “Comics Decalogue,” Katie Skelly talks about going to a bar with Leslie Stein and Gary Panter and, basically confirming Frank’s story, that both Stein and Panter drew while conversing the entire time they were hanging out. I think this idea of being a “drawer” is often lost on most cartoonists. I mean, we all draw, right? But how many of us REALLY draw all the time–and how many of us can draw in any other way than our “style?” Now, I’m not throwing shade to style, but I think it’s worth thinking about. When I was going to school for graphic design, the designer Timothy Goodman came to talk to us and one of his big statements I took away from his lecture was, “Don’t have a style.” His reasoning mostly pertained to the idea that having a style will basically hinder your creativity. Now, most cartoonists are not being asked to create an ad in 3 hours for Time Magazine like a highly in-demand designer like Goodman, BUT can anyone really argue that style often does limit the kind of stories a cartoonist can make? In fact, most styles can even limit a cartoonist to a demographic–speaking strictly, and generally, in marketing terms. What am I getting at? I’m not trying to preach or sound like I have THE answers, but what I like about Davis’ recent book is the fact that it is drawn. It’s not inked with a brush with every stroke carefully crafted and feathered. It’s just drawn. Ever seen a Brian Chippendale comic? He just draws them (mostly). Crumb? Moebius? (Conflict of interest warning:) Frank Santoro? Just drawn. I like “professionally” inked comics and comics where traditional craft is essential, but there is an immediacy that is stripped at every step of the process. It’s like going acoustic, once you add a drum kit, you have to turn up the volume on everything else and the intimacy gradually is drowned out. I’m working out these thoughts as I go–thanks for reading. Next week–Kirby’s 100th birthday:) ———————————————————————————————— yikes! I’ve been so pumped about drawing and Kirby’s 100th that I almost forgot other comics existed in the world. Here are some links I found after I came back to our reality. Don’t miss that eclipse. Here, everyone is going to be talking about this so get your info about the eclipse. If you want more info, try a google search. Yo, today is Marie Severin’s birthday. You know who Marie Severin is right? Get acquainted. Heroes punching Nazis has becoming a particularly pertinent topic lately. Speaking of Kirby, I’m suspicious of the new highly hyped-up Mister Miracle comic, but maybe it’s good–who knows. ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 8-21-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ———————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 8-21-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

05/25/2018

Sally IngrahamMay 25, 2018NewsSally here today with a report from Sara Sarmiento on Kriota Willberg’s “Draw Stronger”, plus comics and other news! ———————————————————————————— Today on the site Sara Sarmiento shares her experience with drawing-related injury, and her appreciation for Kriota Willberg‘s new comic about how to avoid such things! Sara writes: “I’ve been in a slow recovery for years from a shoulder injury sustained during a couple hard falls on ice and hit the point not long ago where I had to admit to myself that I didn’t have the tools to heal any more on my own. In conjunction with that, following the completion of my submission for the 2017 Comics Workbook Composition Competition, my wrist and hand pain associated with drawing I’d experienced for years had shifted from a mild annoyance to pain shooting up my forearm. It was curtailing both my ability to draw, and the swing dance habit I’d developed in the last year. A few months into the forearm pain, my thumb started twitching. While it’s a good party trick to get people to hold my hand, the twitch needed to go. Starting physical therapy in January was an immensely good decision for me, physically and mentally. I’d been left disheartened after completing my CWCC comic. How am I supposed to start shifting creative pursuits into my primary gig when I can’t finish a personal project without spending months in recovery? One of my big goals coming into therapy was to set me on the path towards being able to draw for extended periods of time. Physical therapy got me going on that path, but from past experiences in PT, I know that you’re not fixed and done the moment you are discharged. I was nervous about nearing the end of my PT sessions, so the release of Kriota Willberg’s new book Draw Stronger couldn’t have been better timed.” Read the rest of Sara’s thoughts on Kriota Willberg’s book HERE! Here’s the opening spread from Sara Sarmiento’s CWCC 2017 comic, titled Deep Clean. Read the whole comic HERE! ———————————————————————————— Comics Alternatives interviewed Kriota Willberg recently, which provides a nice follow-up to Sara Sarmiento’s piece. Listen HERE. ———————————————————————————— The New York Times has a feature on Aline Kominsky-Crumb, calling her the Yoko Ono of comics – read the article HERE ———————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 05-25-2018 – Sally Ingraham ———————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 05-25-2018 – by Audra Stang Share this page: [...]

10/12/2018

Sally IngrahamOctober 11, 2018NewsSally Ingraham here with a look at Rina Ayuyang’s “Blame This on the Boogie”- plus other news of note! ————————————————————————————————— In Rina Ayuyang‘s new memoir – Blame This on the Boogie (Drawn + Quarterly Nov. 2018) – bright colors and glamorous dance moves leap off of the page. They’re a sort of dazzle camouflage, nearly disguising a difficult childhood and a bumpy transition into motherhood – and that’s the point. That’s what “the Boogie” did for Rina. Her love for music in its many forms helped her cope with the realities of growing up in Pittsburgh, PA, in the 80’s – as the youngest member of a Filipino American family. Silver screen musical numbers saved her, and continued to bring her balance and comfort as she grew into an adult and became a mother. The story is a series of memories, pinned to the musical clothesline that ties everything together. Ordinary moments in life take on beautiful new proportions when they become mixed up with movie sequences. Is Rina dancing with a sibling or her husband or Fred Astaire? There’s something about the chaos and colors of the pages that compels you along, and I found myself exploring spreads in every direction. It is more of an experience that you dive into than a book you read – and you might feel your toes start tapping and get the urge to leap up and boogie along. The loose line work is joyful, even when Rina is describing postpartum depression or being ridiculed by classmates. And it is fascinating to me that while music has provided Rina with a means to escape or survive the rockiness of life, it is through comics that she processes those experiences. Hollywood musicals and TV shows like Dancing With the Stars can provide a “therapeutic distraction”, as the D+Q blurb puts it. In the end though it is comics that get Rina to the core of the matter. The rush and purge of these stories – the actual book in your hands – is her big theatrical number. Dive into this song and dance in November when the book officially debuts – or pick up an advance copy through Copacetic Comics HERE. Rina Ayuyang will be appearing at Short Run Comix and Arts Festival in Seattle on Nov. 3rd, along with Mimi Pond and Anna Haifisch. She will be releasing the comic in her hometown of Berkeley, CA, on Nov. 8th at Pegasus Books. ————————————————————————————————— Other News of Note The 3rd ComiqueCon is taking place this weekend in Detroit at the Arab American National Museum. The Detroit Free Press has a feature on it – check it out! Tegan O’Neil reviews Liana Finck‘s new comic Passing For Human – on The Comics Journal. The Comics Beat chats with the creative team behind Devil’s Dye, the latest 4-issue mini series in the Black Mask Studios’ Black AF world – read the interview HERE. The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum has announced an upcoming 2019 show featuring the work of Barbara Shermund. Read more about the show, titled “Tell Me A Story Where the Bad Girl Wins”, HERE. Share this page: [...]

06/15/2016

Juan FernándezJune 15, 2016NewsJuan Fernandez here with: los Cómics españoles en Bologna;lo nuevo de TIK TOK; las novedades del Club de Dibujo; Juan Diaz Canales’ COMO VIAJA EL AGUA; Santiago García y el arte del guion. ————————————————————————————————— Off the site: Report: Spanish Art Comics Day in Bologne Serena Di Virgilio over at Italian comics criticism hub, Just Indie Comics, has a great report on the Spanish Independent Publishing panels and exhibitions from this May in Bologne. Lots of inspiring photos and a great primer on some of the most exciting contemporary makers of Spanish speaking comics from around the world making comics in Spain. Thursday, May 26 BilBOlbul Spring / Summer 2016 , preview of Bologna balloon festival, a meeting dedicated to Olaf Ladousse, Klari Moreno, Roberto Massó and Martín López Lam, and an exhibition of the latest works of the latter. The four authors, mostly unknown in Italy, living in Spain and selfpublishing their creations. Apart from that, it is a rather heterogeneous group that presents a stimulating variety of imaginary and experiences. ————————————————————————————————— Novedades/New over on TIK TOK Cómics: ¡Click through to read/Dale click para continuar a los comics! ————————————————————————————————— Club de Dibujo – Weekly Drawings from Around Latin America Club de Dibujo es la publicación serial de un grupo de artistas latinoamericanos que envían cada semana un nuevo dibujo. La curadora es Adriana Lozano. Check them out and stay atop the refreshing and raw wave of Latin American illustration and comics! ————————————————————————————————— Rafael Villa con Martín Cáceres: El Sueño de la Máquina Here’s a neat interview of Martín Cáceres in the latest edition of Chilean arts periodical La Panera. The interview starts on page pg. 32 of the PDF, surrounded by lots of interesting contemporary arts and culture from Chile 😉 ————————————————————————————————— Juan Díaz Canales y Como Viaja el Agua Juan Díaz Canales, best known in the states for his work on the Blacksad series with Juanjo Guarnido, sits down and talks with Bilbao 24 horas about his ventures into his first solo graphic novel, Como Viaja el Agua. P.: “Como viaja el agua” es tu primer trabajo como autor completo. ¿Cómo afrontas el reto? R.: Como una experiencia más. Así es como me voy planteando el resto de cosas en la vida. Como apasionado de los tebeos es algo que quería hacer desde hace tiempo. También es cierto que, al no tener un pasado fanzinero tenía algo de miedo. Sin tener ese bagaje, me he enfrentado a un libro de 90 páginas. El riesgo era alto pero ha llegado un momento de madurez profesional y eso me ha dado algo de seguridad para afrontarlo. ————————————————————————————————— Diego Cuevas y Iván Galiano interview guionista Santiago García Over on Jot Down, EL PAIS’ contemporary culture magazine, there’s a solid interview with Spanish comics writing all star, Santiago García. If you’re not familiar with García, take note! He’s one of the most popular writers of comics in Spain. An auteur comics writer if you will. Smash that google translate button if you need to for all the juicy details of García’s creative formation, the nature of his collaborative process with artists and his hopes for the future. P: Estudiaste Periodismo e Historia del Arte. ¿Las hiciste pensando en trabajar en algo relacionado con los cómics? R: No. No sabía lo que iba a hacer. Empecé Filología Inglesa y en mitad de ella me fui a la mili. Cuando volví en vez de retomarla me fui a Periodismo en la Complutense. Fue la carrera que hice con veinte años. Años después, con treinta y cinco, hice Historia del Arte. A mí me gustaban mucho los tebeos. En realidad lo que me ha gustado siempre es el papel impreso, la prensa, los periódicos, las revistas y los libros. Yo lo que quería hacer era papel impreso. Probablemente en orden de preferencia los cómics eran lo primero, pero yo me veía de periodista. Aparte, Peter Parker era periodista, Clark Kent era periodista, era la profesión que lo aunaba todo . ————————————————————————————————— hasta la proxima! (Share the love you have. Nunca sabes que pasara…) JF Share this page: [...]

04/18/2017

Aaron CockleApril 18, 2017NewsAaron here today with the Submission Deadline Reminder for RESIST! 2!; Video Steganography; Doig/Walcott; Met Slides at MFTA; Some X-men Stuff ————————————————————————————————— RESIST! Volume 2 “Women’s Voices Will be Heard!” is and remains our central slogan. So many of our values are being challenged, every recent news headline can be a starting point for resistance. Here are topics to spark your creativity: My Body, My Choice / If you think I’m a nasty woman, wait till I raise my daughter / Gay and Trans Rights / Build the Wall / Black Lives Matter / Russia / It’s the Economy, Stupid / Lock him up! / The War on Science / Education and Democracy / Climate Change / Everyone is Welcome Here RESIST! Volume 2 will still be short-run web on newsprint, but that issue will be digest/comic book size, 7.25″ x 10.5″. Anyone can submit comics or illustrated graphics to RESIST! though women and minorities are especially encouraged. Images should be uploaded through the form to the left. They must be under 10mb, JPEG preferred (please no PDFs). We will contact you if we need a high-res. We cannot accept images sent via email. If you have any questions, you can reach us at resistsubmission@gmail.com. We will not be able to respond individually to submissions. We thank you for your patience as we put Vol. 2 together. ————————————————————————————————— Keywords: Video steganography, Information hiding, Spatial domain, Transform domain, Adaptive steganography Mennatallah M. Sadek, Amal S. Khalifa, and Mostafa G. M. Mostafa posted this PDF about communication concealment. Here is the abstract: Steganography is the art and science of secret communication, concealing the very existence of a communication. Modern cover types can take many forms such as text documents, audio tracks, digital images, and video streams. Extensive research has been done on image steganography in the previous decade due to their popularity on the internet. Nowadays, video files are drawing much more attention. They are transmitted more and more frequent on internet websites such as Facebook and YouTube imposing a larger practical significance on video steganography. Information hiding in video has a variety of techniques, each of which has its strengths and weaknesses. This paper intends to provide an up-to-date comprehensive review on the various video steganographic methods found in the literature in the last 5 years. Furthermore, since security and robustness are very important issues in designing a good steganographic algorithm, some relevant attacks and steganalysis techniques are also surveyed. The paper concludes with recommendations and good practices drawn from the reviewed techniques. ————————————————————————————————— Two crafts converge in Morning, Paramin At the New York Review of Books blog, Julian Lucas looks at the recent collaboration between painter Peter Doig and the poet Derek Walcott: The stunning result is less a dialogue than a shared dream, Doig’s paintings a pilgrimage along which Walcott lights votive candles for all that he has loved. The unreal atmosphere resembles Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Marco Polo narrating the oneiric empire of Kublai Khan. Walcott drifts between ekphrasis and personal reflection, often working in near sonnets that, like those of Midsummer (1984), demarcate a season in his life. It is old age, palpable in a disencumbered style (“My disenchantment with all adjectives/is deepening, a certain sign of age”), and discovering its footprints across a landscape where two lives, and two Caribbeans, blend. The poems are suffused with twilight, but the dominant register is celebration, delight in the fresh eyes of a painter whom Walcott addresses much as Shakespeare does the young man of the sonnets: with an injunction to preserve beauty in the world, to produce and reproduce, perhaps even to inherit. ————————————————————————————————— Reduce, Reuse, Recycle James Barron at the NY Times covers the recent donation by the Metropolitan Museum of Art of its slide library to Materials for the Arts, and what MFTA was able to do with the slides: Materials also commissioned five artists for an exhibition, and, unexpectedly, the two curators assigned to the project bridged the digital divide. One was Omar Olivera, 37, who remembers submitting a Kodak Carousel tray filled with slides of his work to get into Brooklyn College. The other, Hallie Bahn, 25, said she never had to use slides. By the time she arrived at Kenyon College in Ohio in 2009, slides were obsolete. “These to me are archaic remnants of predigital life,” she said, sounding almost as if she were talking about remnants of prehistoric life. The Paleolithic types in France had their caves. Mid-20th-century photographers had their slides — and their Kodak Carousel projectors, to show them. (The exhibition will be on display at Materials for the Arts, on the third floor of 33-00 Northern Boulevard in Long Island City, Queens, until June 2.) ————————————————————————————————— Why Marvel Fired an Artist for Inserting Religious and Political Messages into an X-Men Comic Over at the Hyperallergic blog, R. Orion Martin gives a rundown of the recent controversy involving the Indonesian artist Ardian Syaf and some coded religious references he put in an X-men super-hero comic: The references themselves are so subtle that editors and audiences in the US failed to notice them. For instance, in a scene where the X-Men are playing baseball (perhaps the most wholesome category of standby X-Men scenes), the character Colossus is wearing a T-shirt that reads “QS 5:51.” Later in the comic, Kitty Pryde partially obscures a street sign that says “Jewelry” (in the comics, Pryde is Jewish), while a nearby sign reads “212.” QS 5:51 refers to Surah 5, verse 51, a controversial passage of the Quran that, like certain Bible passages such as Leviticus 18:22, has special weight in a contemporary political context. The passage is interpreted in some contemporary translations to mean: “Take not the Jews and the Christians as leaders/advisors.” The verse’s meaning is a particularly sensitive issue in Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world. ————————————————————————————————— Dash Shaw wrote a piece for the Metrograph theater program book about watching Speed Racer on magic mushrooms. See what he has to say abut Speed Racer HERE! The Metropraph theaters are playing Dash’s new movie My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea across the country this week and for the next few weeks – go here for a complete list of showings and go see the movie! ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 4-18-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 4-18-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-18-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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