Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in Riff Raff, Scene ReportsTagged Providence RI, scene report

Frank Santoro

Posted on November 26, 2011June 20, 2016

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03/24/2016

HarrisonMarch 24, 2016News Comics news and Zyrtec packs for pollen season. Jillian Tamaki, Jeremy Sorese, K.L. Ricks, and Jen Lee creating work for Hazlitt magazine and The Comics Journal. Short abstract animation films from Japan by way of the U.S., and remembering the 5 footer. ————————————————————————————————— Hazlitt Magazine has become a prominent home for comic creators to publish various works online. Cartoonists/Illustrators Jeremy Sorese, Jillian Tamaki, and K.L. Ricks have been the past three updates in the comic sections. Check out the rest of the artists here, and if your an artist pitch to Hazlitt editors here. ————————————————————————————————— Thunder Paw creator Jen Lee has been a part of the Cartoonist’s Diary section on TCJ.com for the past few weeks. The inner question sections of these comics feel familiar, but the most striking part is how the negative space between the panels creates such a smooth reading experience. An extra block of space makes scrolling down feel natural instead of tedious. It’s also fun to see her characters drawn on top of photos and clever animaiton in some panels . One or two simple choices making comics on the web more fun to read. ————————————————————————————————— “I attended GEORAMA in tokyo this year, 2016, as a guest. I created a quick installation over the course of the festival. By using twelve separate canvases as individual frames of a sequence, i was able to create a loop of painted animation.” Caleb Wood is an independent animation filmmaker from Minnesota. Check out his other animation experiments with his film PLUMB below too. ————————————————————————————————— “Aiyyo Bo knows this (what?) and Bo knows that (what?) But Bo don’t know jack, cause Bo can’t rap Well whaddya know, the Di-Dawg, is first up to bat No batteries included, and no strings attached No holds barred, no time for move fakin Gots to get the loot so I can bring home the bacon” “Coming with more hits than the Braves and the Yankees Living mad phat like an over sized Bam-bi The wackest crews try to dis, it makes me laugh When my track record’s longer than a DC-20 aircraft So, next time that you think you want something here Make something deffer, take that garbage to St. Elsewhere” R.I.P. to a great artist. Read this and this. Share this page: [...]

10/03/2017

Aaron CockleOctober 3, 2017NewsAaron here today with the continuing Cartoon Crossroads Columbus recap. ————————————————————————————————— If you haven’t already, please take a look at Caleb Orecchio’s excellent write-up of the recent Cartoon Crossroads Columbus festival. Caleb pretty much covers the entire show, it’s definitely worth the read. ————————————————————————————————— I was in attendance at that show as well, but only managed to take a few photos. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 10-3-2017 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

05/02/2017

Aaron CockleMay 2, 2017NewsAaron here today with Risography!, Kickstarter(s) of Note; Anthologies of Europa; The Necrophilic Landscape; Fax Art; Jacob Khepler. ————————————————————————————————— A p-shop airbrush set to “dissolve” Frank Santoro continues to look at recent use and development of comics printed on Risograph machines. This time around he talks with John Pham: I’ve noticed risograph printers have “meet-ups,” little fairs and conventions. I imagine it is like any other subculture, however this one interests me because of the direct connection to book making. It reminds me of zine culture and comics fandom in a way. Can you speak to how risograph printers are different than other printers, beyond obvious differences in materials? I’ve got a lot respect for the other Riso printers out there, folks like Mickey Z, Colour Code, George Wietor and Sarah McNeil. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a really sloppy and brutal printer. Printing my books is one of the last steps in my process and at that point I’m usually pretty sleep deprived and grouchy. So I kinda just shove the books through the printer and try to troubleshoot as I go along. This sort of urgency probably creates its own aesthetic but I’m definitely not as knowledgeable or precise as a lot of the printers mentioned above. I think the differences between riso printers and other kinds of printers is pretty negligible, but they’re likely to be more inclined to focus on holistic book making than, say, just prints and covers. ————————————————————————————————— Tiny Report and Retrofit Comics 2 contemporary comics institutions are currently Kickstarting publishing endeavors: Robyn Chapman’s Paper Rocket Minicomics continues its increasingly vital small press efforts, with plans to publish the annual micro-press yearbook, The Tiny Report, as well as the second issue of Colin Lidston’s Age of Elves, for its Spring 2017 line-up. Retrofit Comics is gathering funds for another super-ambitious collection of comics: Combed Clap of Thunder by Zach Hazard Vaupen Steam Clean by Laura Ķeniņš How To Be Alive by Tara Booth Iceland by Yuichi Yokoyama Tales from the Hyperverse by Will Cardini TRUMPTRUMP vol. 1: nomination to inauguration by Warren Craghead III ————————————————————————————————— ‘In this context, the works are comics, sequential art, visual narrative, comics-adjacent storytelling, informatics and some other lumpy labels for stuff that tells a story with pictures.’ Elsewhere on the CW site, Matt Rhodes writes about European comics anthologies: Through the 1920s, there was a series of art journals and publications put out by various art groups in Europe: de Stilj, Dada, Cannibale, Le Couer, Cabaret Voltaire. Due to modern advances in printing technology, it is easier to self-publish zines with better production values. But it’s also interesting to note that the impulse to run an amateur publication of random stuff is perfectly normal. There’s a certain amount of debate regarding how and when the cartooning tradition in Western Europe became the comics tradition of Western Europe. Some point to the broadsheets of the 17 century that introduced the twin concepts of anthologies and episodic storytelling as a precursor to modern sequential art. But it’s more likely that comics as we know them grew up during the 19th Century. And anthologies were an important part of that maturation. ————————————————————————————————— “No one would expect that these two figures are in fact a single man: the fearless detective Lucas Barrette.” Greg Hunter reviews Tracy Auch’s excellent The Necrophilic Landscape over at TCJ: Despite being, unrelentingly, an art comic, The Necrophilic Landscape isn’t shy about utilizing genre conventions. Pulpy, ironic narration describes the detective’s quest, the sort that would not have been on a ’40s radio serial: “No one would expect that these two figures are in fact a single man: the fearless detective Lucas Barrette.” (The detective, for his part, bears a sideways resemblance to McGruff the Crime Dog.) The children’s means of infiltrating the adult world echoes the comedy trope of two kids walking one atop the other in a single large coat. And the story’s dystopian trappings provide a context for Barrette’s fantastical procedure. But the most compelling generic element is one the story shares with horror: the protagonist, Barrette, stands for order and orthodoxy, with the story’s antagonists, the children, deviating from that orthodoxy—and readers are likely to empathize with the antagonists to a degree that the protagonist does not. (By the end of the comic, Barrett hasn’t assumed the role of villain, but he doesn’t have much of a defense to offer on behalf of the prevailing order.) ————————————————————————————————— Fax Machines and Their Discontents For those interested in showing dissatisfaction with the recent talk about the National Endowment for the Arts de-funding, and who are also able to access a fax machine, and who also want to be artistic about it, Claire Voon at Hyperallergic has a piece about organizations contacting United States Congresspeople via fax: The process may sound archaic in 2017, but as Kathryn Schulz recently wrote for The New Yorker, faxes do reach congressional representatives. They get entered into a “constituent-management system” like any other message, and staffers will read each one. And as Schulz reported, personalized forms of material communication actually have more sway on a lawmaker’s opinion than a phone call. Faxing a message may take much more time — but that’s why services like Artifax are particularly handy for amplifying your concerns while adding a little creative flair to your political activism. ————————————————————————————————— Jacob Khepler‘s run at the Outline has ended, but he has preserved the column he wrote weekly from Dec. 2016-April 2017 HERE. Never one to lose momentum, he is currently working on editing a Mothers News collection book among other projects. ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 5-2-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 5-2-2017 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-2-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio 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: [...]

11/19/2018

Caleb OrecchioNovember 19, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with a wonky layout from a Gray Morrow page. ————————————————————————————————— Mindy Newell serves an incredibly personal PSA to readers in 1986. Within the pages of this two-issue mini-series, aggressive ace reporter Lois Lane investigates the epidemic of missing children sweeping Metropolis and the nation. Nothing will stop her in her pursuit, but is Lois taking on too much by herself? Will she except the help from her friends and estranged sister? The story, though heavy-handed at times, is sincere and written by an author with a purpose. I picked these issues up for the Gray Morrow art and Joe Orlando colors. I’m impressed by Morrow’s resistance, or the appearance of resistance, of relying on photo reference. As a result, there is little in the way of awkward, collage-y images that feel stiff and contrived; a common, yet not always unwelcome (by me), plague of Morrow’s comics. The pages herein are smoothly and professionally cartooned. More or less. Actually Morrow struggles as usual to make a format that even resembles a coherent structure. Below is an interesting example. A variation on the “shattered-glass” approach to comic page formatting. This way of making comics almost always looks clunky. The word balloons are unorganized, the space allowed for figures and backgrounds seems cramped, and the eye has a hell of a time knowing where to look. If you are following the dialogue, the page is divided into two tiers. The middle horizontal gutter dividing the top half from the bottom. I have shown the sequence of panels in accordance to the word balloons below: However, I think Morrow meant the page to read clockwise. Like this: Follow the sequence of the images as I see it. In the third panel, Lois slaps a newspaper with her backhand. In panel 5 the paper is still on the editor’s desk. She appears to pick the paper up in panel 6. They way the dialogue determines the sequence, Lois would have smacked the paper, picked it up, and put the paper back down again. Visually, it doesn’t make much sense. Still, the way I think Morrow intended the sequence to work makes for tricky reading due to the horizontal middle gutter because the reader would have to abandon the traditional rules of comic book reading. I think the editor, Robert Greenberger, made an executive decision and made the page read traditionally not only due to the middle gutter, but due to the fact that the clockwise reading presumably intended by Morrow ruins the flow of the spread by making the reader start in the top left of the spread, down to the bottom left corner and back up to the top left corner of the facing page. As oppose to the traditional pattern of top left to bottom right of the page, and top left to bottom right of the facing page. These are things that jump out at me and urk me. This is a flawed page and makes for confusing comics. I feel that cartoonists make these kind of pages in service to some strange sense of making personal art. Cartoonists must learn from these formatting mistakes and not fall victim to such practices. Keep it simple, stupid. ————————————————————————————————— Share this page: [...]

Providence, RI Scene Report

Posted on November 26, 2011June 20, 2016 by Frank Santoro

This article originally appeared on The Comics Journal 11/26/2011

This week’s scene report is brought to you by Jacob Berendes. A couple of years ago at SPX someone left a copy of Mothers News at my table – at the time it was a one sheet newspaper with comics and weird local flavor bits of gossip, funny drawings and funny puzzles. I thought it was great – figured out it was from Providence – but didn’t know who made it. I subscribed to it – yes an honest to goddess monthly publication – and it quickly became one of my favorite rags ever. Somewhere along the way I found out it was Jacob who was stoking the fire – so I asked him to write about the comic book goings on of Providence, Rhode Island. Please enjoy!

—————–
PROVIDENCE COMICS SCENE REPORT
by Jacob Berendes (by Frank’s request)

Providence RI was big for comics in the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s, especially for works in the “art comics” genre, which doesn’t exist. People ask all the time what the fabled comics scene is like now, and I should say, with some caveats, that it’s pretty sweet. There’s a few crazy fuckers going hard as hell, and that’s almost all you need.

Some institutions first: Ada Books is a good independent bookstore that sells zines and comics and hosts comic-related events (Anders Nilsson came last month, Porcellino Dec 5th). The RISD library has a great comics section that is a wonderful place to spend a rainy day (although they are maybe cracking down on
non-alumni, boo dat). AS220 is a nebulous non-profit show venue / bar / developer / print shop that has a nice offset press that you can take classes on, then use whenever to print 1000 of your shitty thing. Time Capsule Comics in nearby Cranston has a nice selection of back issues, this past summer they had a wild $1 everything sale, it was like get get get, everyone was stacking up. Armageddon Shop is a metal / hardcore / punk record store co-run by Ben from DROPDEAD, but they also stock local zines, comics, and noise tapes, and recently started stocking a ton of old LAST GASP comics, which is weird. Amigos is a small publisher that this year opened a retail location in Providence’s historic erotic dance district. There used to be other comics stores around but they dried up / got priced out. Since the Borders closed down there isn’t even a place to shoplift manga from! C’est la vie… C’est la guerre…

People: well, most of the Paper Rodeo / Fort Thunder alumni are gone to other (not necessarily greener)
pastures. List of ex-pats: Jim Drain “went real” in art terms, which in this context means “moved to Miami”. Mat Brinkman is in Colorado, and just released a board game called Cave Evil that is
appropriately mega-sick. Leif Goldberg and Erin Rosenthal moved to Vermont and have a totally cute child. Leif also has a new collaborative poster project called Exploded View. Melissa Mendes has a new book out of her Freddy stories, but I haven’t seen it yet, since her and Chuck Forsman moved out of Providence for some reason (I think it had to do with how Providence can be a complete nightmare hellzone). Chuck has a new comic out called “The End Of The Fucking World”.

Still here / new: Paul Lyons still lives in town and last year published the excellent anthology MONSTERSand drew AND screenprinted great goopy covers for it. Brian Chippendale still haunts the streets, goes to shows, puts out CDRs,sleeps in papier mache huts, and twitters turd jokes into the void. He has a newish record out on Load, under the name “Black Pus”, which is technically a one-person band but at the same time is like a multi-character band, if that makes any sense. CF has really been burning the night lately, he’s got a few new tapes coming out (as Mark Lord), the first one is out already on Mickey Z’s bizarre PRICE TAPES label. What’s really wild about the new tapes is that they are all recorded in the off moments when he’s not grinding away on the next POWR MASTRS book, which is going to be a face melter. I think he’s at like three 9 kill right now (that’s 99.9% kill), he’s on fire, let the motherfucker BURN. James McShane is allegedly working on a new book for BCGF, though it might just be a nice folio edition of his “City Sketchbook” column from Mothers News, which is still going to be super nice, as he is a master of nuance. He’ll be kicking at BCGF with me and Mickey Zacchilli, who is definitely NOT a master of nuance, but will have a new issue (#5) of her insane and mighty comic book RAV, and maybe some posters (ps- buy these shirts before they’re gone forever). Katrina (last name not necessary, like Jason, or Freddy) is not new on the scene but is maybe someone you haven’t heard of- they have an excellent zine called ROT that really is a zine, not an idiotic whiny SPXy autobio comic or a loosely bound pile of psychedelic farts. Also Katrina has a comic coming out in the next issue of MRR, a cool band called GROKE (Moomin ref), AND they’re allegedly related to Walt Kelly! I tell you an apple doesn’t fall far from a tree unless thrown, and even then, it remains an apple…

I would say that the number one most hotly anticipated book of the year (and last year) is the Providence Comics Consortium collection. PCC is a comics class for kids, that takes place in a variety of public libraries. One thing they do is put together a sort of Guide To The Marvel Universe book of characters the kids create, then the characters are given out to local cartoonists to script up and draw. Chippendale, CF, Mickey Zacchilli, Jackie H Curtiss, and plenty of other heavy hitters all drew up stories that they are just WAITING to see in printed form. I keep calling them like “where is the book? why aren’t you printing it right now?”. They stopped picking up the phone… Are you reading this, PCC instructors? Is there anything I can do to hasten the printing of this book? It’s driving me crazy!!!!!!!!

As for me, I publish a newspaper called Mothers News that is free and good. It is 12 pages long and has 2 pages of new comics from CF, Brian Chippendale, Mickey Zacchilli, Katrina, Mike Taylor, Chuck Forsman, Melissa Mendes, Charlotte DeSedouy, Kate Schapira, Jackie H Curtiss, Mike Deforge, James McShane, and kids from the Providence Comics Consortium. It is not a goofy newspaper in the Paper Rodeo model, it is a real newspaper with columns, writing, and information. Please see mothersnews.net for more about it, to order a subscription, to place an ad, or for any reason you might visit a website. Alsooooo in the “full disclosure” department, I run a distro for Providence and New England underground art, it’s called Chipsylvania. Uh, and for the record it’s not named after Chippendale, he doesn’t run the town. It’s named after Chip King, guitarist for the excellent doom band The Body. He runs the town.

In conclusion, I would like to say that Providence is a lot like the wikipedia entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Providence_(comics):

Providence, located in the South Pacific Ocean, southwest of Hawaii at 20°N 165°W, is an artificial island made of parts from Cable’s old space station Graymalkin. It first appeared in Cable & Deadpool #6. Providence was intended to be a place where the best minds on Earth could gather, live, and find new ways of doing everything in hopes of giving the world a peaceful future. Providence is open to all who wish to immigrate there, though all residents must undergo various psychological and skills tests.

——————
Except for location and first appearance, I’d say that’s about right! We are supportive of each other, we party and jam together, but the psychological tests part is very accurate- those tests are called “winter”, “bringing something to the table”, “unemployment”, and “probably no one paying attention to you for at least one year”.

Subscribe to the paper. SEE U IN THE PIT!

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in Riff Raff, Scene ReportsTagged Providence RI, scene report

Frank Santoro

Posted on November 26, 2011June 20, 2016

Explore

Jaime Hernandez Talk with Jordan Crane at The Last Bookstore

Chris Anthony DiazJanuary 31, 2018The Diaz ArchiveJaime Hernandez in conversation with Jordan Crane for Fantagraphics Studio Edition: Jaime Hernandez, published by Fantagraphics Books. The Last Bookstore, old downtown Los Angeles, Monday, December 11, 2017. (Click images for different external links related to Jaime Hernandez and Jordan Crane.) Share this page: [...]

11/27/2018

Aaron CockleNovember 27, 2018NewsVERY LATE EDITION: Roz Chast; Christoph Niemann; Katie Fricas; IN THE LABYRINTH ————————————————————————————————— SVA Honors Roz Chast With 30th Annual Masters Series Award and Exhibition November 17-December 15 SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street, NYC Artist’s Talk: Wednesday, November 28, 7-9pm Chast’s interest in drawing started when she was a young child growing up in Brooklyn, where she learned to use art as a way to make sense of an anxiety-inducing world. She once told an interviewer, “On every level I feel like anything horrible can happen at any moment.” Early on in her career, her nervousness even found expression in her chosen scale. “I used to work really tiny,” she says. “I thought if I worked small, nobody would mind me that much. If I take up as little space as possible, then everything will be okay, nobody will get mad at me.” ————————————————————————————————— CHRISTOPH NIEMANN: HOPES AND DREAMS November 13-December 21 ZieherSmith, 505-507 West 27th Street, Suite 5, NYC In November 2017, artist Christoph Niemann flew from Berlin to Los Angeles at the invitation of his Zurich publisher, Philipp Keel, under the auspices of meeting David Hockney. Anybody who knows the first thing about Christoph Niemann (from his many New Yorker covers, museum exhibitions, children’s books, “Abstract Sunday” his New York Times blog and Instagram account, TED Talk, apps or any of the many other ways he manifests as a contemporary visual voice) knows that under his scrutiny, even the most mundane task can turn into something altogether peculiar, altogether special, as if to say everything can be enlightening. ————————————————————————————————— A Graphic Tribute to Anne Sexton Katie Fricas at the NY Times. ————————————————————————————————— CELEBRATING ‘THE LABYRINTH’ BY SAUL STEINBERG On Tuesday, November 27, at 7pm, join us at Powerhouse Arena (28 Adams St, Brooklyn, NY) for a celebration of the reissue of Saul Steinberg’s remarkable graphic work The Labyrinth, available from NYR Comics. Liana Finck, Françoise Mouly, and Joel Smith will be in a conversation moderated by Bill Kartalopolous. ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 11-27-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

8/24/2016

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

02/25/2016

Juan FernándezFebruary 25, 2016Newsdamn, it’s cold and gray in Pittsburgh. Bummer. Gotta get toasty somehow… thankfully Tara Helfer‘s got a little 10-panel winter ditty for you. Great pantomime of a hungry young troll girl. Interesting, subtle designs that leave you excitedly filling the narrative blanks. It’s the kind of comic that leaves you smiling imagining the before and after of the sequence. Read her comic here. – Jillian Tamaki has a new comic out on Hazlitt entitled Boundless. She glides through the animal kingdom, giving the reader a taste of what life is like for several critters. The comic is a great empathetic exploration of the human in the natural. No panels, just images and words swimming together. Hop on over to Hazlitt.net to read Boundless. – Tyler Landry has uploaded the gory, grotesque glory that is Shit and Piss 3 over on Ello. It’s a glorious, carnal, fetid, sumptuously human 16 pages. Beautifully choreographed action, spliced with strong poetic imagery. Dive into the muck and give it a read. – If you haven’t yet heard through the grapevine, Sally Ingraham and Maggie Umber are hosting a drawing challenge over at the comicsworkbook.tumblr. It’s the Gato Gif Competition. Do you like to draw? Do you like cats? Do you want to win comics books from Comics Workbook and 2dcloud? Then you best get the inside scoop on the Gato Gif Challenge from Maggie and Sally! – Emma Rios and Hwei Lim Reflect on their collaboration for their work on Image’s new miniseries Mirror. It’s a standalone narrative where the duos been collaborating in new and leftfield ways, dipping into the experimental waters with gusto. Rios, known as the artist on Pretty Deadly, here writes for Lim. Sit down with the two of them over at Comics Alliance and learn more about their collaboration. CA: How have you found the collaborative process together? HL: Emma is incredibly open to all my crazy suggestions, and extremely forgiving of my countless silly questions and backtracking and forgetfulness! ER: Beyond the obvious beauty of her lines and colors, Hwei’s brilliant narrative, and her ability to make characters feel, have always stood out from anything I’ve ever seen. She turns everything into twice as nuanced with very little, a glance, a wink, a joke… in a way that looks almost effortless and natural. If you don´t draw it’s hard to imagine how difficult that is but, literally, it’s bringing life to the pages. Analyzing how she is building Mirror, and comparing the result with what I would have done myself is mind-blowing for me as an artist. If I were the one drawing the book, this story would have looked grittier and more disgusting, because I’m rather visceral and sometimes I just can’t restrain myself when drawing violence and similar stuff. But this light she brings … has transformed the story even since before I started writing a single line. It allows us to work on another level, with cuteness and humor, and is taking the tragedy to a whole new level of pain, haha… The eyes she draws are the saddest eyes, and if they belong to a caged animal, man… I don’t even know how I can even deal with it. Actually I’m always apologizing to her each time I send her stuff that is twisted with a, “Sorry, I’m a horrible person” but she seems to enjoy it. There’s a nice interview with Conor Stechschulte at Broken Frontier. They dig into lots of really interesting aspects of Conor’s comics making processes and the evolution of his creative interests from his years studying art at MICA with the Closed Captioned Comics crew to present day. Read all the nitty gritty here. [and you can pick up Generous Bosom 1 and 2 at the Breakdown Press online store here. ;)] With up to 25 panels per page, the pacing of your comics seems very carefully laid out. Do you plan it out carefully? When I get down to planning the pages, I do work a good deal on it. I think a lot about timing and focus, especially on where the page turns fall. I write out dialog, then thumbnail pages, then do a “Scratch” version of the full-size page, then lightbox the finished drawing from there, and I’m making changes at every stage. Share this page: [...]

02/28/2018

Juan FernándezFebruary 28, 2018los Cómics / NewsJuan empieza el dia con la Casa Transparente de María Luque, los recreantes de Delius y más! ————————————————————————————————— La Vida en una Casa Transparente – Maria Luque En Revista Cactus, Elizabeth Casillas presenta la nueva novela grafica de la argentina, María Luque: La Vida en una Casa Transparente. Se trata de la vida nómada, sobre apropiarse de los “no lugares” y utilizarlos como fuente de inspiración: María Luque (Rosario, Argentina, 1983) acaba de publicar su última novela gráfica, Casa transparente, un relato autobiográfico en el que cuenta cómo, desde hace unos años, compagina su trabajo de ilustradora y dibujante de tebeos con cuidar las casa de sus amigos cuando se van de viaje. «Pago sus impuestos, riego las plantas y paseo sus perros. Todo el tiempo soy una vecina nueva, en algunas casas no llego a averiguar cuál es la mejor verdulería del barrio y en otras me quedo varios meses y hasta aprendo el nombre de las calles», explica Luque. Casa transparente llega a las librerías gracias a que la autora argentina se ha hecho con el I Premio de Novela Gráfica Ciudades Iberoamericanas que organiza la Unión de Ciudades Capitales Iberoamericanas (UCCI) junto al Ayuntamiento de Madrid y a la Editorial Sexto Piso. El jurado destacó la obra por su calidad, tanto en el dibujo como en el relato, valorando precisamente ese paso de la protagonista por distintas ciudades latinoamericanas –Luque recorre medio continente, de Buenos Aires a México, pasando por Cuzco o Bariloche– en una búsqueda de un espacio propio. Y aunque el jurado añade: «como le sucede a muchos y muchas jóvenes», esta novela gráfica no es necesariamente un relato generacional. Pueden léerlo todo AQUI. ————————————————————————————————— #GRAFBCN2018 Ya viene, ya llega. #GRAFBCN2018 a la vuelta de la esquina. GRAF is coming to Barcelona. Here’s all the info you need for #GRAFBCN2018‘s programming. March 2-4 at the wacky warehouse space, Fabra i Coats. It’s the ninth edition of the Festival so it should get pretty wild. You can sign up for workshops here: http://grafcomic.com/talleres ————————————————————————————————— Los Recreantes Delius (María Delia Lozupone) les ofrece un apunte sobre los “recreantes”* en el 2016. * los campamenteros del c.n.b.a. desde fines de los ’80 hasta ppios de los ’90. Todo en su blog. Delius: Durante el colegio secundario participé en la organización de campamentos para los alumnos, las actividades las organizábamos desde la “Comisión de Recreación” que tenía el centro de estudiantes en aquella época. Es una de las cosas que recuerdo con más alegría de mi paso por el C.N.B.A. Hace algunos años, los amigos de aquella época decidimos volver a reunirnos anualmente para pasar un fin de semana campamenteando, ahora como adultos. Posteo una historieta-apunte de uno que hicimos hace un año y medio, en el 2016, y un par de flyers de cuando decidimos volver a juntarnos, en el 2014. ————————————————————————————————— Los cómics y las noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: ~ en Español ~ En el último #FanzineMagazine Paloma García Zúñiga habla de “Necrópolis del Este” y el gran MAX les cuenta su música para dibujar con Victor Coyote y Mireia Pérez. Escúchalo aquí. Acabamos de saber que el juicio a Ramón Esono ha sido fijado para hoy. Aquí puedes escuchar su caso, explica su mujer Eloisa Vaello Marco en La Hora del Bocadillo. Esteban Hernández charla en Cafe con Vistas sobre tebeos y su Moneda músical. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 02-28-2018- by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 02-28-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]