Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in Festivals and Shows, The Diaz ArchiveTagged dame darcy, Ebony Flowers, Emily Silva, Jr., Kevin Huizenga, mary fleener, Max Clotfelter, Ron Rege, Sammy Harkham, San Diego Comic-Con International, Seth, simon hanselmann, Tracy Hurren, ulli lust

Chris Anthony Diaz

Posted on July 23, 2019July 23, 2019

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06/16/2017

Sally IngrahamJune 16, 2017NewsSally here with Tatiana Gill; graphic medicine; the new superwomen and their fresh talk; Karen Green’s life in comics. ————————————————————————————————— Adam Griffiths attended “FRESH TALK: Who are the new superwomen of the universe?” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in D.C., on June 14th, 2017. He sent these notes for me to share with you: FRESH TALK: Who are the new superwomen of the universe? tag: #freshtalk4change Panelists: Carolyn Cocca : Author of “Superwomen: Gender, Power and Representation.” Ariell Johnson : Owner of Amalgam Comics & Coffeehouse, Inc. Gabby Rivera : Writer for Marvel’s AMERICA series. Ashley A. Woods : Artist for the Stranger Comics series, “NIOBE: She is Life.” Moderated by Emily Whitten. Tonight’s panel at NMWA was crowded with curious onlookers, geeks, comics fanatics and well-wishers for the comics medium, which has barely had a presence in the thirty-year old museum’s programs or collection. I have to admit I was a little nervous for the panelists; the selection of speakers intimated that the program would serve as a sort of general survey of this contemporaneous moment, where the concept of women and comics are discussed in a women-positive environment, on women’s terms. The fact of the matter is that this discussion has been going on for the past two decades. Like pulp fiction, comics has emerged from the margins of popular literature as a force that even Hollywood has had trouble quantifying. We’re learning that comic-book movies are made with all hands on deck. One misstep in storytelling or context can unleash a digital herd of comics aficionados. They are protective of their stories, passionate about cinematic interpretations of their heroes, and uncannily heeded by the industries that create this type of entertainment, probably because these fans are primarily men. When comics shop owner Ariell Johnson is discussing her first forays into comics, she mentions a male friend with a great collection of comics. She was always borrowing his, but when an image of Storm from the X-men pops up during her slide presentation, she lights up: “This woman was the one who started it all for me,” she says. There seems to be a little guilt there – the collection that she had access to ended at some point and perhaps could have ended her relationship with comics. Instead, she started her own shop. When Gabby Rivera begins discussing her writing, she’s still overwhelmed by the influx of community support she got for her early work, and how that motivated her to continue. Artist Ashley Woods remembers getting to comic conventions with no money, sometimes even arriving without her own book in hand to sell. There’s a thread here that’s tough to follow if you choose to really feel it; Gabby Rivera wants you to know that her mom is awesome. When Rivera’s mother calls she asks: “Gabby have you eaten something?” “eatsome’neat.” It’s something about how women hold fast to their communities, sometimes needfully breaking themselves in order to advance. Speaker Carolyn Cocca suggested that the cult of domesticity in the United States is responsible for sluggish progress for women in the comics industry. Within that history, we do know that there were women creators in comics. We also know that there were tons of women colorists, women letterers, women running printing presses. The standout artists and writers however are the ones that there are few of, seemingly. The mise-en-scène here is that women comics creators are piggybacking on each other towards an enhanced presence in the comics field. Last night, the room was very warm with this prevailing outlook. ————————————————————————————————— Tonight the reception for the 2017 Comics & Medicine Conference: Access Points will be held at the Fantagraphics Bookstore – featuring a book signing by Tatiana Gill. She will be presenting her new collection, Wombgenda; “fierce feminist comix” to all reports. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street and the event will be from 6-9 PM. The Seattle Review of Books writes about Tatiana Gill’s new comic: “The three long pieces in Wombgenda address Gill’s journey to developing a positive body image, her abortion story, and an account of getting a new IUD at Country Doctor. Her style in these strips is very reminiscent of Seattle cartoonist Roberta Gregory’s autobiographical comics from the 1990s — simple figures, little to no backgrounds, and a lot of words packed into every panel. They feel something like handwritten letters from a friend — confessional, intimate, exuberant, and heartfelt.“ Read the rest of the review HERE. This is the eight annual Comics & Medicine Conference, the bulk of which will be held at the Seattle Public Library Central Branch (June 15th-17th). This year the event features keynote speakers Hillary Chute, Georgia Webber, and Rupert Kinnard. Learn more about the event HERE. Seattle Weekly profiled the event, and spoke to co-founder MK Czerwiec about the importance of comics in health care. ” “Comics have the power to convey important information in ways that people who are dealing with issues in health care and caregiving find appealing to absorb,” Czerwiec explains. Comics have been used in public health situations for decades to make information accessible in ways that can “transcend language barriers,” but they also provide patients with a “form of reflection and … storytelling” that can help in the healing process. They also help others empathize with patients. For those reasons, she says, nursing and medical schools are beginning to use comics to teach students. Czerwiec says that Seattle has existed on this intersection between comics and medicine for a very long time. Cartoonist Mita Mahato, who has helped to organize this year’s Comics & Medicine conference, has long been a booster. Ellen Forney’s memoir about life as an artist with bipolar disorder, Marbles, has fast become a classic in mental health circles. And “of course, Meredith Li-Vollmer at the King County Public Health Department has come to our conferences in the past and presented projects that she’s done with David Lasky in the public health arena.” Li-Vollmer and Lasky worked on the comic No Ordinary Flu, which saw a print run of over half a million copies translated into a dozen languages and distributed around the country.“ Read the rest of the article HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Karen Green‘s life as a comic, by Nick Sousanis – or, “How a Butler librarian became Columbia’s first curator for comics and cartoons“. Check out the whole thing HERE. Nick Sousanis wrote about the experience of making the comic: “While only six pages long, this proved to be a huge undertaking – i was working on it December through March, and it was just published this week. When first approached to do this project, I was hesitant. Although I’m good friends with Karen and she was a great colleague while I was doing my doctoral work, biographies are not really the sort of comic I make. But then I got the idea to tell her story through homages to all the comics she read growing up and through adulthood – and that got me excited for the challenge (I did do one autobiographical piece a long time back that touched upon somewhat similar terrain). And it was a challenge – the amount of reference material for this short piece are kind of ridiculous but once you’ve committed to this path – can’t really stop walking. The comic draws on her lifelong fascination with Alice in Wonderland in a few places, the New Yorker, the Bayeux Tapestry, Archie, Little Nemo, Charles Burns, and the crowning achievement of the piece – a riff on Al Jaffee’s legendary Mad Fold-Ins! (See a recent interview with Jaffee here.) Although this final page was the quickest to draw in the end, it was by far the hardest to figure out.“ Read more of his thoughts HERE – and see the “fold-in” page in action! ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 6-16-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 6-16-2017 – by Sally Ingraham (based on a sketch by Gloria Rivera) Share this page: [...]

03/02/2016

Sally IngrahamMarch 2, 2016NewsMarch is Women’s History Month, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is celebrating female cartoonists. First up was Barbara Hall, the main artist for Girl Commandos, which appeared in issues of Speed Comics in the 1940s. Read a bit more about her HERE, and check the CBLDF throughout the month for more biographical snippets of women in comics. How about a female cartoonist who is working today? Anna Mancini, or Manzanna, is a Brazilian artist. Click on the image above for more info about that particular comic. You can find much of Anna’s work on her tumblr, but it is nice to experience her comic Sadnesses HERE. A simple slideshow format brings a different rhythm to the panels, forcing, or allowing, you to slow down and really see it. This different type of viewing experience leads to a discussion of Stela, a subscription-based iOS app for reading comics that just hit the stores. The app was reviewed over on Polygon. Stela is experimenting with a variation on a format known as…the Infinite Canvas, a term coined by that mad scientist of sequential art, Scott McCloud. For obvious reasons, comics on screens don’t have to obey the physical limitations of print, and in his 2000 book Reinventing Comics, McCloud proposed that the screen could be treated as a window. Will it work or won’t it? That’s probably up to personal preference and the quality of the content. Fortunately comics like Ronald Wimberly’s GratNin are trying the app on for size, and if Ron can make the endless scroll bend to his will then there’s probably hope for it. On a somewhat related note, Simon Reinhardt has just released Mystery Town #4 and announced that it is going to be “officially a monthly thing for 2016″…! Who else is excited? Follow the link above to check out the whole thing, and read issues 1-3 as well. Tyler Landry has finished publishing The Jaundiced Eye on Comics Workbook. Stumble into a shadowy state that mesmerizes and terrifies almost equally. If you’re hungry for more CLAV after this, Tyler just loaded all of Shit and Piss #3 on Ello – check it out HERE. I hope these bits and bobs help you get through hump day! Cheerio – Sally Share this page: [...]

10/07/2016

Sally IngrahamOctober 7, 2016NewsSally here with reviews of Sarah Glidden’s new book, some Village Voice features, Clara Jetsmark in The Nib, an odd new Washington Post strip, Anya Davidson, Jessica Campbell, and M. S. Harkness, and a funny Pittsburgh encounter. ————————————————————————————————— Sarah Glidden‘s Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria, and Iraq (Drawn & Quarterly, October 2016) just landed on the bookshelves and is already inspiring discussion and garnering praise. “Part memoir, part ethical inquiry and part travelogue, “Rolling Blackouts” resembles the work of her great hero, Joe Sacco, the author of Palestine and “Safe Area Goražde”, at least in the sense that it is about as serious and careful as a comic can possibly be. But it also has a gentleness that is all its own, perhaps because Glidden works mostly in soft watercolour, a medium that seems somehow to reflect her refusal to deal in certainties. Stories, as she writes in her introduction to Rolling Blackouts, are “how we make sense of a chaotic world” and she wants those she tells to be gripping; clearly, her material has to be edited, refined. But that doesn’t mean that she isn’t aware of her responsibilities or that they don’t weigh heavily with her. Just as a person’s life is much more to them than a mere story, so true objectivity is all but impossible in narrative journalism.” – The Guardian Read the rest of this article HERE. The article that the Huffington Post published on the work features some of Sarah Glidden’s sketches and notes from her travels – check it out HERE. Observer also has some thoughts on the book and comics journalism – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— 1st comic for Village Voice! A photo posted by Lauren Weinstein (@vineshtein) on Oct 6, 2016 at 8:39am PDT Lauren Weinstein has a strip in The Village Voice this week (preview above – check the news stands to see the whole thing!) ————————————————————————————————— The Village Voice also ran an article about the new Ms. Marvel series this week – an in-depth look at the character’s development, the author (G. Willow Willson), the acclaimed editor of the series – Marvel’s Sana Amanat – and the constantly swirling discussion of diversity in comic book stories AND their creators. Ms. Marvel is getting a lot of things right. “Written by Wilson, and inspired by the stories of Marvel editor Sana Amanat, the new “Ms. Marvel” is a study in conversion. Not of a religious sort (though Wilson, who is white, converted to Islam in college), but a creative transfiguration: the small to the large, the honest detail into mass appeal. The series is one of Marvel’s most successful, having entered an elite class within months of its debut, when that first issue hit a sixth print, a rare mark achieved by only a few genre classics, like the first issue of Wolverine. Amanat says she and Wilson never dreamed they’d make it to thirty issues, as they did this year. She puts their success down to Khan’s believability. “There’s that quote,” she told me recently, speaking by phone from the Marvel offices. ” ‘You achieve universality through specificity.’ We didn’t have a political agenda to prove to the world that Muslims are like this or not like this. You get to know Kamala Khan through the fact that she really wants to eat a BLT and she would really like to have her first kiss. And then you get to know that yeah, she’s a Muslim. She goes to mosque.” – The Village Voice Read the rest of the article HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Michael Cavna has a story about a new Washington Post “funny” you might have noticed – it stars a USDA worker, and begs the question “how?” Cavan explains how the real life Abbey Powell, public affairs specialist with the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, became an action-adventure comic character in James Allen’s new strip – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Clara Jetsmark and Tom Kaczynski collaborated on a recent comic for The Nib – Clara was interning with Tom for a few months, on loan from Denmark’s The Animation Workshop (like her fellow classmates Cathrin Peterslund and Emil Friis Ernst, who are currently spending time in Pittsburgh with Ed Piskor and Frank Santoro, respectively!) Here’s a taste of The Nib comic (it tromps through the political nostalgia and nationalism that surround the Trump campaign…): Read the whole thing HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Anya Davidson‘s Band For Life enjoyed it’s book release party last night at Quimby’s in Chicago, IL. Get a copy of Band For Life (Fantagraphics, September 2016) HERE. ————————————————————————————————— I’ve been dipping into Jessica Campbell‘s Hot or Not: 20th Century Male Artists (Koyama Press, September 2016) and can confirm that it is a hilarious and gratifying guide – a must-have reference for any trip to the art museum. “With the way Campbell reduces Borduas’s or Mondrian’s abstractions even further, or captures what’s cute about Calder’s mien, she poo-poos macho ideas of artistic greatness, at the same time she showcases her own slyly unassuming skill.” — Sean Rogers, The Globe and Mail Jessica will be on tour this fall – catch her at The Beguiling on Oct. 28th and ask for her further thoughts on Matisse’s overall hotness… ————————————————————————————————— The Rowhouse received a package from M. S. Harkness and Peter Faecke the other day, and I immediately stole all of M. S. Harkness’ comics. Her stories about wrestling and love are a perfect combination of badassery and humor, and the energy in her drawings is catching. Download some of her comics HERE – and catch her at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus next weekend! ————————————————————————————————— Naomi Nowak is a Comics Workbook sponsor – she is a cartoonist, illustrator, and fashion designer based in Sweden. Give her clothes and jewelry a look at her online shop – Raintower – where you will find some beautiful new items (all the clothing is made to order), and the majority of my Christmas wish list…! ————————————————————————————————— Copacetic Comics had a cool visitor today – David Conrad @crawford_conrad stopped by looking for Bill and left with some books ? @copaceticcomics ❤️ #pittsburgh #comics #marvelagentsofshield A photo posted by Sally Ingraham (@sally_ingraham) on Oct 6, 2016 at 6:44pm PDT Here’s a funny story – I was working at Copacetic Comics in Pittsburgh, PA, yesterday, and who should walk into the store? It was David Conrad – a Pittsburgh native and the actor who played Jim Clancy on the TV show Ghost Whisperer, and Ian Quinn on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (which is why I recognized him), among other things. He was visiting from L.A. and had been told to look up Bill Boichel at Copacetic Comics. Although he splits time between a number of locations, Pittsburgh is still his hometown, and he recently started writing a column for Pittsburgh Magazine – here is the September “Talk of The Tahn”. He grew up very close to where Comics Workbook and the Rowhouse Residency is located, and is still invested in the neighborhood and surrounding city. Keep up with him via Instagram – @crawford_conrad – and you may just bump into him somewhere in the city this weekend! ————————————————————————————————— Comics Workbook is heading to the UK for The Lakes International Comic Art Festival and to Columbus, OH, for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus next week. Hang out with Frank Santoro, Aidan Koch, Connor Willumsen in the UK – more details HERE. The team in Ohio will be doing workshops next weekend, and you can sign up in advance to get a seat – details HERE. Advanced signups will end Friday, October 7th, 2016. ————————————————————————————————— There is still time to get a bid in on the Michael DeForge drawings that we have up for auction – details HERE. Have you seen the recent collaboration between Frank Santoro and master jeweler Airi Maeno? Check out the Pompeii Medallion HERE. Help us get Connor Willumsen to The Lakes International Comic Art Festival – this way please! ————————————————————————————————— I’ll be back with you next Friday, reporting live from Ohio and Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. See you there! – Sally Share this page: [...]

07/28/2017

Sally IngrahamJuly 28, 2017NewsSally here with Lale Westvind’s work at Printed Matter, Ellen Forney’s Virtual Memories, Fabulous “Flo” Steinburg, and more. ———————————————————————————————— You have just a few days left to catch the “Something Unusual Is Happening” show at Printer Matter – it is up until July 31st 2017. Featuring work by 15 international comics artists, it delves into experimental comics and the art of visual narrative. More details about the show HERE. Over on the LA Review of Books Megan N. Liberty writes about the show and features the work of some of the specific makers. “Lale Westvind’sJoan the Drone Pilot & Mary the Drone (2017), printed with blue ink on pink pages (except the cover which is red ink on cream), is the story of a world that exists in several dimensions, with those in charge controlling those trapped in the lesser plane for profit, until Mary arrives and attempts to escape. A heavy-handed metaphor for our use of technology, or technology’s use of us when in the hands of advertisers, it has a more traditional structure, with spreads divided into panels and text in word bubbles and boxes. But its dense imagery, heavy lines, and block shading, reminiscent of ‘70s and ‘80s pulp comics, make it at times visually dizzying and challenging.” Read the rest of the report HERE. ———————————————————————————————— Gil Roth of Virtual Memories sat down with another female cartoonist of note recently, inviting Ellen Forney onto the show for Episode 228. “The great Seattle cartoonist Ellen Forney joins the show to talk about comics, civic art, being bipolar, and the challenges of maintaining! We get into her 2012 graphic memoir,Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me, finding a graphic representation of her depressive states, the evolution in her drawing style, the letter she stole from Michael Dougan, the process of going from comics panels to enormous murals for a light-rail station in Seattle, the influence of the Moosewood Cookbook, the importance of a psychology stats class she took in college, how she learned to teach comics, the moment when she felt she was using all her artistic tools, and why she needed Kaz to design her back-tattoo!“ Listen HERE. I went back through some of the past episodes and bookmarked shows with Posy Simmonds, Leslie Stein, Jennifer Hayden and Summer Pierre, Phoebe Gloeckner, Glynnis Fawkes, and Karen Green. I’m sure there are more good ones to dig up as well! Check out The Virtual Memories Show every Tuesday for a new interview about books and life. ———————————————————————————————— Flo Steinburg, longtime secretary to Marvel’s Stan Lee, died this week. She was 78, and still fabulous. At the San Diego Comic Con 2017 there was a panel on “Women of Marvel” which understandably kicked off with a remembrance of Flo. Rachel Maurer reported for The Comics Beat: “Many of the panelists have worked directly with Flo at some point in their Marvel careers, noting that she was more than Stan Lee’s assistant – she was the original Woman of Marvel, someone who forged a path for female comics creators and whose legacy will continue to do so. One major indicator of this is the panel itself, a useful benchmark for progress in gender equality. Nine years ago Marvel had zero female-led titles, while this year’s panel had nearly 20 on the roster.“ Read more about how these women are walking in Flo’s footprints – HERE. ———————————————————————————————— New page from Iona Fox‘s Almanac – check out more of her work HERE and keep an eye out for her strips in Burlington, VT’s alt paper Seven Days. ———————————————————————————————— Supplemental “A Brief Appreciation” of Leslie Stein – by Ken Perille on The Comics Journal. Also on tcj.com – An Interview with Katie Skelly. Carta Monir on Process Party Episode 42 – HERE. Gabrielle Bell‘s July Diary is close to concluding – here’s Thursday’s offering. —————————————————————————————————— Here it is – get ready to comic your socks off – thee Comics Workbook Composition Competition 2017 has been announced! This year it’s a riff on the 6-panel grid, in the traditional North American comic book size – but with a twist! Full details HERE. ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-28-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 7-28-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

06/15/2017

Sally IngrahamJune 15, 2017NewsSally here with Shannon Wright, Jillian Tamaki, Adam Griffiths, and James Baldwin to get your Thursday morning started! ————————————————————————————————— Shannon Wright made this comic to share with her followers on Instagram this week (@shannondrewthis) and it speaks volumes to her recent experiences as a young, talented artist who has recently gained a lot of attention. Her illustrations have appeared in numerous national publications and her comics have been featured on The Nib among other places. Her Black hair illustration series, mentioned in the comic above, is an ongoing project that touches on many recent discussions about cultural appropriation and the image of Black women in history and pop culture. I appreciate Shannon’s honesty and blunt politeness in embracing her new fans and dealing with her (probable) frustration with other folks’ demands and expectations for her time and art – this comic is cute and classy. Good luck Shannon! ————————————————————————————————— Adam Griffiths continues his web comic American Cryo – the 7th strip is seen above – check out the rest HERE. Get a copy of Adam’s comic The Permanent Night – which he worked on during a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency earlier this year – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— There is a James Baldwin celebration going on in Harlem – 77 boxes of Baldwin’s manuscripts, photos, letters, notes and more, have come back to where it all started – the contents are on display at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on Malcolm X Boulevard, just a few doors down from the elementary school that Baldwin attended. Other bookstores in the area are featuring Baldwin’s work and churches and schools will be hosting lectures and other events in the next few weeks. More detail HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Jillian Tamaki speaks to The Guardian about her new comics collection Boundless. “The stories in Boundless often started as thought experiments, for which Tamaki would conjure up the domino sequence that follows. Half Life exemplifies her simultaneously deadpan and sensitive voice: protagonist Helen slowly shrinks in size, as if possessed by an intractable force. “If gets pushed and pushed and pushed, it is relentless. There’s no changing her path,” explains Tamaki. But it is Helen’s reactions that are the focus of the story. “I think the story is quite fantastical, obviously, but it’s also fantastical in that she is completely calm about it. She’s not afraid, she’s not freaking out – people around her are freaking out – but she is completely adapting to the new circumstances.” “ More HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 6-15-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 6-15-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-15-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

San Diego Comic-Con International 2019

Posted on July 23, 2019July 23, 2019 by Chris Anthony Diaz

San Diego Comic-Con International 2019, San Diego Convention Center, Exhibit Hall, Thursday, July 18, 2019

Nathalie Marsh, Peggy Burns, Tracy Hurren and Julia Pohl-Miranda

Bigger Little Enid doll by Presspop at the Disburst booth

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Chris Anthony Diaz

Posted on July 23, 2019July 23, 2019

Explore

09/15/2017

Sally IngrahamSeptember 14, 2017NewsSally here at Small Press Expo with much more to come – but also some comics news from beyond these hotel walls…! ———————————————————————————————— Small Press Expo begins tomorrow! The Comics Workbook crew has arrived a bit early, and we’re taking today to finish plotting our workshops (full details on the workshops can be found HERE), and lay claim to a corner of the hotel restaurant. Tomorrow, find us at table N9 in the exhibitor’s hall, alongside the likes of Jim Rugg, and Andrew White, or downstairs in the official workshop space – the Glen Echo Room. I’m excited to encounter the great lineup of Special Guests – including Eleanor Davis, Jillian Tamaki, Ann Telnaes, Tillie Walden, Emil Ferris, Hannah K. Lee, Sloane Leong, Gabrielle Bell, Janet Lee, and Anais Depommier – plus many more! Between a terrific programming schedule, an Exhibitor’s hall packed with talent, the always exciting Ignatz Awards (presented by Caitlin McGurk!), and the gathered comics rabble, it’s sure to be a fun weekend. We will be reporting on the show via the Comics Workbook Instagram feed – @comicsworkbook. Live vicariously, or perhaps we’ll see you there. ———————————————————————————————— Elsewhere in the comics world…(mostly) Lynda Barry suspects that smartphones are hampering creativity by inhibiting boredom, loneliness, and and uncertainty – get into her head and maybe take what she says to heart – HERE on Open Culture. Sara Lautman writes about being an Ignatz Awards juror this year – includes mini reviews of 10 of her picks – read about it HERE. I (Sally Ingraham) was interviewed on The Comics Beat earlier this week – part of The SPX Interview series put together by Philippe Leblanc – read about my teaching, and thoughts on drawing Suzy & Cecil HERE. Sophia Foster-Dimino is on the most recent Inkstuds – listen to it HERE. Katie Skelly on Artist Spotlight: Beyond the Longbox Episode 8 – here’s the “A-side“, and here’s the “B-side“. Vanesa Del Rey‘s sketchbook collection, published by Comics Workbook last December, is reviewed as a Staff Pick at Orbital – read about The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey here. Creative Women’s Circle talks with Mirranda Burton, an Australian print maker and cartoonist – HERE. The Comic Art Workshop 2017, a residency for comics makers in Jogja, Indonesia, takes place this October. This residency is specifically for emerging artists from Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia, and this autumn it will feature the assistance of Sarah Glidden and Sonny Liew. Keep it in mind if you are a cartoonist from the Asian-Pacific part of the world – the next residency will take place in 2019. If your SPX shopping list still needs some added suggestions, here’s a list from Just Indie Comics of 10 debut works – including new comics by Comics Workbook alumni Andrew White, Warren Craighead, and Connor Willumsen. GG‘s new comic from Koyama Press – I’m Not Here – is previewed and reviewed on the A.V. Club. Here’s a comic by Katie Fricas on The New Yorker – The Smells of Capitalism. Rob Clough made a list of 10 artists to check out out at SPX, and most of them are women – check it out HERE. ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 9-15-2017 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

11/14/2016

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

07/06/2016

Juan FernándezJuly 6, 2016NewsJuan Fernandez here with your Spanish language comics news: Cuadernos de cómic número 6;los consejos de Inés Estrada; Novedades de Fulgencio Pimentel; la historia del cómic Chileno; una reseña del PLAYGROUND de Berliac. ————————————————————————————————— CuCo, Cuadernos de cómic número 6. Junio de 2016 La nueva edicion de la revista de estudio y crítica de la historieta, CuCo, hay sido publicada este fin de semana! Puedes descargar Revista 6 aqui – GRATIS. Entre sus ensayos, debates, y estudios esta edicion incluye entrevistas con Martin Lopez Lam, Mirion Malle, y Sergio Garcia. En CuCo, se toma lo del cómic en serio! ————————————————————————————————— Consejos de Inés Estrada Hot tips and encouragement from Inés Estrada on how to make comics and illustration work for you. Lots more over on her site. *Expensive tools aren’t mandatory I draw all my comics with just a mechanical pencil and I have a 10 year old wacom tablet. I only splurge on nice Fabriano paper. This is what I’ve found that works for me. Find whatever works best for YOU, it doesn’t have to be the same as what other people use! *Share your work anywhere you can If you can go to fests or shows, that’s great, but if you can’t, use the internet! I grew up in Mexico City where there is no “comics scene” but I was still able to make it because I’ve been consistently posting my work on the internet for years. Commit yourself to posting your work on Tumblr, Twitter or Instagram as often as you can. Try to have a separate account for your professional work that doesn’t feature a million photos of your beautiful cat and the delicious breakfast you made today. NEVER STOP DRAWING, NEVER STOP MAKING, DON’T LET ANYTHING DISCOURAGE YOU! STAY TRUE TO YOURSELF! ————————————————————————————————— La historia del cómic Chileno La Biblioteca Nacional de Chile le ofrece una vista cronológica del desarrollamiento del cómic chileno desde 1906 hasta el presente. Aunque no sea exhaustivo, es un buen punto de partida para quienes quieran aprender mas sobre el mundo del cómic Chileno. Edúcate! La historia del cómic en nuestro país se encuentra estrechamente relacionada con el desarrollo de la historieta y el humor gráfico, que iniciaron su recorrido entre el siglo XIX y la primera mitad del siglo XX. Este desarrollo, en sus inicios, estuvo centrado principalmente en la sátira política, y más tarde en publicaciones orientadas al entretenimiento infantil. El primer personaje de historietas nacional, Von Pilsener, fue creado en 1906 por Lustig (Pedro Subercaseaux), y sus aventuras fueron reeditadas en la década de 1990 por el poeta e investigador Jorge Montealegre. De estos años datan gran cantidad de publicaciones con historietas extranjeras y nacionales, entre las que destacaban algunas como El Pibe (1923), Don Fausto (1924), Pulgarcito (1938) y Pobre Diablo (1946), así como otras más conocidas por los lectores de hoy, como Topaze, dedicada al humor político, y El Peneca, dirigido desde la década de 1920 por Elvira Santa Cruz. Nació también antes de 1950 el más famoso de los personajes ilustrados de nuestro país: Condorito. ————————————————————————————————— Reseña de Playground por Berliac “ ‘Playground’ is a fundamental work to understand comics of today. It’s a complex, postmodern piece, about the medium and its limitations (…) Berliac breaks through these limits and starts from scratch (…) using, in short, all the posibilities of comics”. – Jesús Jádiva, Zona Negativa Y no se pierdan la reseña de Playground que Frank Santoro hizo pare TCJ en 2014. Te dara otra perspectiva en el valor de esta obra de Berliac. ————————————————————————————————— Novedades de Fulgencio Pimentel Editorial Fulgencio Pimentel a lanzado su nueva suscripción, y como mola: 1. Beverly de Nick Drnaso 2. Meeting Jari de José Ja Ja Ja 3. Melancolía de Simon Hanselmann 4. Talco de Amanda Baeza 5. La yaya Meti de Aapo Rapi 6. Mi pequeño (edición integral) de Olivier Schrauwen Suscríbete por 89.00€ hoy! Presentación DMLQL en Barcelona Y si estas en Barcelona, no te pierdas la presentacion de Gabriel Corbera este Sabado en Fatbottom! 9 de julio a las 12:00 horas. Fatbottom C/ Lluna, 10. Barcelona DÍAS MÁS LARGOS QUE LONGANIZAS de Gabriel Corbera es sencillamente uno de nuestros tebeos favoritos ever. Deudor del manga más cinemático tanto como de las novelas de Marcial Lafuente Estefanía, salpicado de referencias a videojuegos, envuelto en una atmósfera ominosa y risible a un tiempo, DMLQL es mayormente una lección acerca de cómo se ordenan los silencios y los blancos de un poema; o para el caso, de un tebeo. Para nosotros, desde la primera lectura, este tebeo es El Rock y El Verano, los dos en uno, y eso a pesar de que DMLQL es un cómic de tormenta. ————————————————————————————————— hasta la proxima! JF Share this page: [...]

10/20/2016

Sally IngrahamOctober 20, 2016NewsSam Ombiri is here today with some thoughts on his experience at the Pittsburgh Zine Fair, and then Sally Ingraham rounds up some other happenings in the greater comics community! ————————————————————————————————— thank you for attending the 2016 #pittsburghzinefair! we had almost 700 attendees this year, our largest turnout ever! another big thanks to our exhibitors, sponsors, and partners. watch this space for upcoming events soon! #zines #pittsburgh pic credit: @annesleyadventures A photo posted by Pittsburgh Zine Fair (@pittsburghzinefair) on Oct 16, 2016 at 6:49pm PDT Sam Ombiri was helping run the Pittsburgh Comics Salon table at the zine fair this past weekend. He writes: The Pittsburgh Zine Fair was a lot of fun, it was a such great environment. There was a constant wave of sound the whole time I was there. I’d try to make out what people were talking about from a small distance, but I guess that’s not how it works. I like how one person doesn’t see what the other sees – I maybe see person 1 and 3, but because I’m moving along too quickly I totally miss person 2. So I could think I found the coolest zines, but someone else shows me that’s not the case. This one guy’s book was about being in a place where someone else had previously left their mark there, and his fascination of the ghost like quality that comes with someone else being there before he’s there – but as he said, “I’m trying to avoid being didactic about it.” His name was Alex Lukas. I dig his marks, I wish I browsed more of his stuff, he has really cool work on his website. I talked to him a bit, then I went back to my table, then I went back to buy a book from him, then I gave him one of my zines (without intention of trading,) to which he generously gave me three, and then I walked away. He wanted to have a lot of ambiguity in the work, so that the readers draw their own conclusions to it – altogether irrelevant from his intentions. I started to think about what Alex’s intention was for his pictures of, say, rocks with chalk drawn on them by some mysterious people (who we don’t know what they looked like, their way of life, or their concerns – we know about them themselves through the marks that they left). In my view, the marks on the rocks were fueled by boredom, and the ones who drew it were moving their hands before they themselves realized they were moving their hands, and something else altogether powerful was moving through this, and that power is there in those marks they made. With that mark they left there’s not too much concern about design or maybe there was concern with design. So, Alex’s work, or at least the book, makes you think it’s design oriented. I guess this happens because Alex has designed the book, but the people who leave their marks not so much. There’s a couple of photographs of graffiti and signs, but he wasn’t taking a picture just because it just looked cool, I think. This will most likely be the only way we have of knowing them instead of seeing their face or hearing their voice. Then on top of that Alex copied the pattern on security envelopes and added them to confuse you as the reader, to my understanding it was just for having an effect there, but he said it also served in adding ambiguity. There was other people I got great stuff from as well – I did not leave dissatisfied, far from it. – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— Frank, Aidan Koch, and Connor Willumsen made it safely back from the U.K. earlier this week, after a wildly successful trip to The Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Kendal. Frank scribbled some thoughts about the show on the plane home, and we have shared them here on the site. A taster: “One of the current riffs about comics festivals is that many different shows exist within the show. Meaning, you can go to SPX and not even see everything or miss your friends completely – whereas in years past you could lap the room each hour and see everything and everyone there. LICAF is different insomuch as it is not situated centrally in a hotel or a convention center. So what happens is that one has their interactions in the town of Kendal itself. The Brewery Arts Centre provides ample space to host everyone and the short walk to the Clock Tower is where I found myself most often running into friendly faces – friends and strangers alike. It was very pleasant, I thought, especially because it was so unlike what we are used to in the States and specific to the town of Kendal.” – Frank Santoro Read the rest of the report HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Cartoon Crossroads Columbus for the Comics Workbook team – in one minute! Full festival report coming Friday, thanks to Whit Taylor – stay tuned! #comicsworkbook #cxc2016 A video posted by Comics Workbook (@comicsworkbook) on Oct 19, 2016 at 2:20pm PDT The rest of the team was in Ohio last weekend for Cartoon Crossroads Columbus – Whit Taylor will provide a full report for us soon – meanwhile you can get a taste of the show above! ————————————————————————————————— Alyssa Berg led a workshop for Comics Workbook at CXC, and as I was cleaning up afterward I noticed that attendee Phil Dokes had left his pages behind – check it out: ————————————————————————————————— #Repost @madegibbs with @repostapp ・・・ Ronald Wimberly at CMA, ey! A video posted by Ronald Wimberly (@ronaldwimberly) on Oct 18, 2016 at 6:16pm PDT Ronald Wimberly is the 2016 graphic-novelist-in-residence at the Columbus Museum of Art – over 100 pieces of his art will hang in the museum through this coming February, and he will be staying at the Thurber House through the end of this month working on his own projects and hanging out with high school students in the Young Writers’ Studio program. He got a lot of hype over the weekend of CXC, of course, and the Columbus Dispatch wrote a nice piece about him and the residency program. ————————————————————————————————— Copacetic Comics is hosting an auction of some SUPER scarce or rare Michael DeForge items – check it out HERE! ————————————————————————————————— P.S. A video about the Pittsburgh Zine Fair by Dan Scullin: Share this page: [...]

“How we were thinking” – The Zeitgeist and The Complete Wimmen’s Comix

MardouMay 26, 2016EssaysMystic novelist Doris Lessing interspersed her autobiographies with news clippings and thought-snippets that she’d saved from the years she was writing about. It’s not something you see very often in personal biography; history books are preferred when pulling in contextual ‘fact’. Instead Lessing supplies us with flavors of 60’s London (such as “in cinemas and theatres we stood up for the national anthem”). There’s something so evocative about how she pulls on that shared current of her time. Some of ‘the times’ get culturally hardened and recorded in history books, but lots of it doesn’t. In a similar vein, singer Ian Svenonius notes the transient attitudes of the Then-and-Now, using The Velvet Underground as an example , “…groups that failed in their own era despite catchy tunes, cool shades, turtlenecks and solid connections might have ‘felt’ bad to their audience…conversely, groups which might have felt ‘right’ at the time (the Grateful Dead, Grand Funk, Free etc) may seem confusing to listeners of a later era who are not privy to the pheromones said groups were releasing at their concerts.” Reading the two-volume release of The Complete Wimmen’s Comix made me think about those sort of cultural assumptions and blank spots. The first volume in particular feels like a powerful raw gust of real comics history. The pretty pink and black covers (with inset blue, bruise-like half moons) kicks off with Trina Robbin’s anthology It Aint Me, Babe (1970) and then the complete run of Wimmen’s Comix. I’ve read individual issues before and was somewhat ambivalent. Getting to read the whole gamut is a much different experience, especially the aforementioned first volume (1970-1985). The second volume contains a lot of great stuff too (and more of the artists I’d cite as direct influences on my own work such as Julie Doucet, Phoebe Gloeckner and Alison Bechdel) but the first volume stands out. It seems more experimental, wilder and much less conventional. I wouldn’t have name checked any of these artists in the 70’s/early 80’s as personal influences but this book has made me look with fresh eyes. There’s bold storytelling, some crazy comics layouts and lewd, unapologetically sexy content. It’s in stark relief to the relative lack of risk-taking I permit myself. (And yeah, I’m going to keep thinking about that one). Another aspect that occurs to me is that volume one is essentially my mother’s generation making those comics (I was born in ’75) which makes the lack of respect for cultural niceties and cartooning norms seem even more punk rock and revelatory, as well as being somewhat nostalgic. It reminds me of looking though my aunt’s closet in the early 1980’s and finding all her old platform shoes and boots. My childish trespassing got me yelled at after the event, but I’m glad to own that childhood memory of trying on and walking around in those beautiful and weird, too-big-for-me ‘space’ shoes. It’s not just surface and style though, the content is a match to the macho mores of its time. I’m old enough to remember the casual chauvinism of early 80’s primetime TV shows, as much as I remember seeing housewives with black eyes in the supermarket on Saturday mornings. Though, I was in 1980’s Northern England and not 1970’s San Francisco – yet it’s close enough to spark that consciousness. It’s kind of the thrust these feminist cartoonists were aiming at I think. This volume has also made me re-evaluate Aline Kominsky-Crumb’s work. I found her book Need More Love a little tiresome in tone but reading her juxtaposed with other women artists in this context is such an enjoyable experience. Set amongst her generational peers it’s easier to see the frank humor and flippant skill in her work. She’s so great! A lot of the comics here do miss their mark artistically but it’s not important overall. There was enough I found exciting (and fun!) in these volumes to remind me of the direct power of comics in print – a single cartoonist to a single reader through ink and paper, sharing the highs and degradations of the female experience. This is a big, beautiful, door-opening book and I’m really glad it’s out there. ————————————————————————————————— Sacha Mardou is a Brit making comics in St Louis, Missouri. Sky in Stereo is her most recent comic. Share this page: [...]

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