Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in InterviewsTagged alt-weekly comics, Dahmer, derf, the city, Trashed

J Kelly

Posted on March 17, 2016

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12/14/2016

Juan FernándezDecember 14, 2016los Cómics / NewsJuan con un poquito sobre Comic Arts Los Angeles – Las fotos de C.A.D.,Gerardo Vilches escribe sobre la vangardia contemporanea Frank Santoro sobre El Arte Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey;Iván Mazón con libros editados en castellano sobre el punk; Suzy y Cecil; y por supuesto el semestre de invierno del Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers . ————————————————————————————————— Comic Arts Los Angeles – Las fotos de C.A.D. Chris Anthony Diaz tomo unas fotos en Comic Arts Los Angeles 2016 (CALA) el domingo pasado en Think Tank Gallery, December 4, 2016, Los Angeles. Puedes ver todas las fotos del dia AQUI. Echale un vistazo al DIAZ ARCHIVE aquí en Comics Workbook para ver más retratos, entrevistitas, fotos de arte original, recuerdos, video, audio y prosa! Todo documentado por Chris Diaz. ————————————————————————————————— AvanGard – Y Que? Gerardo Vilches escribe sobre la vangardia contemporanea y internacional de los cómics. Su evolucion, su role y su crítica. Hoy existe una generación de autores que no responden al clásico perfil de fan que sueña con trabajar con sus personajes favoritos y replicar aquello que cautivó su imaginación de niño. Por el contrario, muchos de los artistas de vanguardia provienen de otros campos de expresión, han estudiado Bellas Artes, puede que no hayan leído cómic hasta que una novela gráfica cayó en sus manos de jóvenes adultos y no se sienten en absoluto obligados a respetar ningún canon. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Miami, FL – The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey La gran Vanesa R. Del Rey le ha dado permiso a Comics Workbook para publicar unas selecciónes de sus cuadernos de bocetos. Hemos diseñado esta publicación para que parezca uno de esos libros de de artistas los años 80. El texto es una transcripción de la entrevista que hicimos con Vanesa cuando visito la Residencia Rowhouse en 2016. Vanesa es un artista impresionante y inigualable, quien estudió con George Pratt y quien a dibujado con Grant Morrison. Estamos ofreciendo compras adelantadas a un precio reducido. Sigan a Vanesa por Instagram – @vrdelrey – y http://vrdelrey.com/ Le pedimos a nuestro director, Frank Santoro que nos contara un poquito sobre la fuerza feroz y imparable que es Vanesa R. Del Rey. FS: “Vanesa, I’m quite taken aback by your sheer technical ability which seems to be married to a poetic sensibility. There’s a lightness there. Sometimes illustrators with that ability get heavy-handed. Yet you manage the push-pull between these two sides of yourself–because you’re like a samurai. The humble samurai.” VRDR: “It’s about trying to remember that. I can get all this praise, I can get all these amazing responses from strangers, but at the end of the day—I’m still a student. I’m still learning. The crown doesn’t fit. The crown should never fit.” Este intercambio viene de una entrevista que Frank hizo con Vanesa R. Del Rey, que occurio en la Residencia de Comics Workbook en Pittsburgh, PA USA. 2016. FS: Me encontré por primera vez con VRDR en un festival de cómics en Toronto (TCAF) en 2014. Había empezado a hacer comics profesionalmente después de un período como un animadora. Fui Sorprendido por su la capacidad de ser como un camaleón de cambiar de estilos, y por su puesto le pedí ver más de sus obras. Desenterró pilas de cuadernos de dibujos de sus días en Cuba, cuando estudiaba el realismo soviético y de trabajaba con George Pratt, maestro de cómics pintados. La educación de Vanesa como artista hace el balance suavemente entre los niveles alto y bajo del arte, así como los valores estéticos del este y el oeste. Es una base asombrosa. Ella es, a la vez, consciente de la historia del arte, la historia de los cómics y la historia de la animación de una manera NUEVA que casi parecía imposible hace quince o veinte años. Debo admitir como un estudiante y fan de cómics que se enfocan en la mezcla de “alto y bajo” y en ” los cómics pintados” — Nunca he visto tal mezcla de habilidades al nivel de VRDR. Feroz. Imparable. Un competidor feroz. Michael Jordan-esque? ¿Es eso posible en la fabricación de cómic? Siempre he dicho que habría un “invasor vertical” en los cómics que podría emplear el “naturalismo” de la escuela de Noel Sickles / Alex Toth pero que podría pintar como una Alice Neel o una Jenny Saville. Creo que “el invasor” ha llegado en forma de Vanesa R. Del Rey. Puedes comprar tu copia AQUI¡ ————————————————————————————————— Leer hasta echar la pota: 16 libros sobre punk editados en castellano – Iván Mazón ha escrito un tronco de resumen de libros para que todos estudiemos los punks. Apuntate. Aunque resulte irónico si consideramos la esencia irreflexiva del género, se ha escrito mucho sobre punk. Y muy bueno. Más allá de las vidas de santos y el anecdotario mítico habituales en el rock, que también, el punk asocia un halo de trascendencia revolucionaria y hartazgo social (incluso de jugada posmoderna) que ha llevado a la reflexión desde múltiples perspectivas y complejidades. Desde entrevistas livianas a sesudos ensayos sociopolíticos, recomendamos una selección de textos sobre el gran arte de gritar lo jodidos que estamos. Pasado el suficiente tiempo en el ciclo generacional como para volverse respetable y con un mercado sobreexplotado a base de domesticación y banalidad, quizá no sea mala idea acercarse a los motivos sociales y anímicos de una generación que dijo basta. Y para eso está la literatura. Seleccionamos 16 obras editadas en España para que puedas leerlo tú mismo (y no incluimos el esperadísimo Punk, pero ¿qué punk? editado por La Fonoteca y escrito por Tomás González Lezana porque ya habrá tiempo de escribir y hablar sobre él en breve). ————————————————————————————————— ⚡️Comics Workbook ha anunciado el semestre de invierno del Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers – el curso empieza 29.21.2016! Curso de 8 semanas – 500 dolares – 10 estudiantes – presentate para el curso! Email santoroschoolATgmail for more details. Direcciones para la Solicitud de Ingreso al Santoro School : -3 figure drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards -3 landscape drawings done on blank 3 x 5 index cards -3 still life drawings done on blank 3 x 5 cards -draw in a contour line style – Think Matisse – no under-drawing – draw directly in ink -just send small jpgs of images – dont post to your blog pls -specific url links to any comics work you have done. Manda tu solicitud a: santoroschoolATgmail ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ Pittsburgh, PA – El comienzo de Suzy y Cecil Suzy y Cecil es una tira diaria, creada por varias estudiantes de Comics Workbook. Pueden seguir sus aventuras y su amistad en instagram: @Suzy_and_Cecil. ————————————————————————————————— hasta la proxima! juan Share this page: [...]

06/14/2018

Sally IngrahamJune 14, 2018NewsSally here with a roundup of reviews and commentary on Frank Santoro’s “Pompei”, which was published in Italy in May 2018 by 001 Edizioni! ——————————————————————————— Frank Santoro‘s Pompeii (PictureBox, 2013) was published in Italy in 2018 by 001 Edizioni. Pompei was released during the Naples Comicon (April 28-May 1 2018) where Frank was a special guest. In addition, an exhibition of original artwork from Pompei was held at the Archeological Museum of Naples from April 18-May 31 2018. More about that exhibition can be found HERE. Several Italian critics, comics makers, and fans have written about Pompei since the release of the comic in Italy. Valerio Stivè, who translated Pompei for 001 Edizioni, was kind enough to translate those reviews into English for us. We present them here for you, with links to the original Italian publications where appropriate. The Afterward for the 001 Edizioni edition of Pompei was written by Manuele Fior (translated from Italian here by Valerio Stivè). If my personal library was threatened by a the eruption of a volcano, Pompeii by Frank Santoro is among the few books I would save. The subject of this graphic novel is drawing; drawing the living, that are drawn while they draw, and drawing the dead, who, hugging each other, become drawings. Here, the lines mix up, multiplying the levels of reading, and we don’t know if what we see is a face on paper, on canvas, or on a mural painting. The book is about drawing, and its ability to seduce, to distract from death, to imagine a future, and to establish an eternal testimony. There are no second thoughts in Frank’s line, no rubber strokes, only shameless immediacy that offers itself to the reader in its most direct essence, full of errors and clumsiness. This is the best and only way to express the unique strength of some of his compositions, of the raw sensuality of flesh, and especially, of the most necessary of all, the love between two people. This is a graphic novel that, for its intensity, I can never read in one breath. I have to stop, with shivers on my back, and reach for my heart. This is a book that looks like it was drawn on a stone dug up from the ashes, to which time has erased colors and details, while preserving the deeply human living trace of the intentions of this great cartoonist. – Manuele Fior Daniele Barbieri‘s review of Pompei was originally published on Fumettologica on May 5th 2018. Valerio Stivè translates it from Italian below (with sections in bold retained from Barbieri’s original piece): The idea of narrating a historic event through the personal events of a single fictional character in order to let the reader/spectator empathize with the story and understand the events – then comprehending History in a much deeper way than reading a History book – is not new. In literary fiction, as well as in cinema and comics, that is a common and effective narrative device, as long as the reader is able to understand it. Our present times can become the present of those events (despite the historical and cultural differences); and an every day life that we recognize as familiar suddenly fades into something totally different: the historic event itself. If limited to this, Pompeii by Frank Santoro could be seen as a story like many others, maybe more delicate and emotive. Yet there already are so many tales of the last days of Pompeii, even similar to this… The thing is that there is so much more in here. From the very first pages, even before one could figure out where the story would go, the drawing looks rapid, approximative; almost like a sketch or a storyboard – where the imperfect lines are not erased, but adjusted, leaving the imperfection in plain site. No colours, obviously, just some quick textures for the shadows, with an overall sense of temporariness and instability. Then, the story starts to take shape: Marcus, the main character, is an assistant to a painter who is probably going to become famous and move to Rome. Marcus prepares his colours and helps him with the paintings, while forced to be complicit in the painter’s affair with a princess, that needs to be kept hidden from Alba, his suspicious partner. Marcus has a woman too, Lucia, with whom he left Paestum, where he has no intention to come back: he wants to become a portrait painter in Pompeii – just like his master – to make money and start a family with Lucia. This is the picture of everyday affections and little tensions on which the eruption of the Vesuvius occurs. Obviously, the event leaves everyone astonished. However, Marcus encourages the painter to draw that shocking event right away (while it still has to fully take place). “You can add it to the landscape commission! You’ll be the first to paint the gods in action!” he says. The idea of drawing, which was there since the beginning of the story – but, before this, only in the work of the painter – now becomes more and more relevant. Please read the complete review in English HERE. Francesco Boille wrote about Pompei for Internazionale – you can see the magazine article in Italian above. Valerio Stivè translates it into English below. Pompeii fluidly tells a story of happy every day life of two couples from different social backgrounds, before the apocalypse that happened in August of the year 79 B.C. Santoro uses almost unfinished images that remind us of so many things from the History of Art, from cave painting onwards. He focuses on the act of drawing rather than on the act of painting – as Manuele Fior points out in his afterword – which “offers itself to the reader in its most direct essence”. This serves as a metaphor of the fact that images are only shadows, ghosts of the past, just like every one of us will be someday. Sketches of life and sketches of drawings are mixed up, and Santoro reverses the intense petrified physicality of the molds produced from human bodies in Pompeii into a totally lighter dimension. Looks like Frank Santoro, in contrast to the caducity of all things, is showing that the idea of how the strength of poetry expresses itself at best in its most ethereal form, as a unique way to go beyond time and space. To the cold and conceptual approach of most of American graphic novels, Santoro prefers a European approach, based on a free, soft and aerial line. Redesigned in a such a personal way. He comes up with a masterpiece of poetry in its most pure form, a masterpiece about the idea of poetry itself; and he does that while putting together frail and incomplete fragments of an artistic greatness that once was. – Francesco Boille, for Internazionale May 2018 Simona Di Rosa wrote a review of Pompei for FuoriPosto on May 23rd 2018. Valerio Stivè translates it from Italian into English below. Premiered at Napoli COMICON, Pompeii – a graphic novel published by 001 Edizioni from Torino – is written and drawn by Frank Santoro, and set in Pompeii a few days before the eruption that destroyed the city. The book – a large softcover edition – was published in collaboration with COMICON and the Archeological Museum of Naples, which until May 31st will be hosted an exhibition of original artwork from the book. Frank Santoro resides in Pittsburgh, where he manages artists’ residencies hosting and helping fellow cartoonists. He is not well known in Italy, and yet he is among the most original voices in contemporary avant garde American comics scene, thanks to Pompeii, published in the USA five years ago. Santoro has an artisanal approach to comics making, using poor tools – mostly pencils and markers – perfect to tell a story set in the ancient Pompeii, showing its historic value while supporting a touching plot, deeply touching despite the unavoidable outcome. Please read the complete review in English HERE. Get a copy of Pompeii by Frank Santoro in English from Copacetic Comics – HERE! Also, be sure to check out Frank’s new book, the stunning Pittsburgh (Éditions çà et là, May 2018 – currently available in French only!) You can read more about the book HERE. ——————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-14-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

06/20/2017

Aaron CockleJune 20, 2017NewsAaron Cockle here today with Lauren Weinstein; Jillian Tamaki; Ad Reinhardt; Georgia O’Keeffe; Kriota Willberg; Snail Farm & Friends Book Fair ————————————————————————————————— Normel Person Lauren Weinstein continues her strong run of weekly strips at the Village Voice. ————————————————————————————————— ‘Each story shifts emotional and visual register.’ Jillian Tamaki’s new book, Boundless, receives another solid review, this time over at The Atlantic: An ambitious and eclectic set of tales, it focuses on the interior lives of unexpected subjects: the writer of a pornographic sitcom, a shrinking woman, a plant-nursery employee with an internet doppelganger, even a fly. Boundless uses a constantly varying visual treatment that keeps readers on their toes and mixes and matches artistic styles with a proliferating set of genres, from speculative fiction to domestic drama to magical realism. If a reader comes to Boundless with assumptions about visual storytelling, Tamaki will confound them. ————————————————————————————————— 5. No design. “Design is everywhere.” Via ARTNEWS, Ad Reinhardt’s 12 Rules for a New Academy: Much of today’s discussion of contemporary abstraction is centered on “Zombie Formalism”—Walter Robinson’s coinage for new work that revisits (or apes, one might say) historical forms of abstraction for purely stylistic reasons. Given the intensity of that debate, we thought it would be interesting, for this week’s Retrospective column, to jump back almost 60 years, to 1957, when Ad Reinhardt took up the subject of contemporary abstraction in ARTnews. Reinhardt, who had written for the magazine previously, said that the article—titled “Twelve Rules for a New Academy”—”constitute his last words on art in terms of words.” He sharply criticized his formalist contemporaries, offering instead twelve ways to achieve purity in art. There would be no forms, no texture, no color, nothing—just pure blackness, as in Reinhardt’s most famous paintings. Reproduced in full below is Reinhardt’s article, which takes subtle swipes at Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian, the Abstract Expressionists, and more. —Alex Greenberger The Six General Canons or the Six Noes to be memorized are: (1) No Realism or Existentialism. “When the vulgar and commonplace dominate, the spirit subsides.” (2) No Impressionism. “The artist should once and forever emancipate himself from the bondage of appearance.” “The eye is a menace to clear sight.” (3) No Expressionism or Surrealism. “The laying bare of oneself,” autobiographically or socially, “is obscene.” (4) No Fauvism, primitivism or brute art. “Art begins with the getting-rid of nature.” (5) No Constructivism, sculpture, plasticism, or graphic arts. No collage, paste, paper, sand or string. (6) No “trompe-l’oeil,” interior decoration or architecture. The ordinary qualities and common sensitivities of these activities lie outside free and intellectual art. ————————————————————————————————— Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern At the Brooklyn Museum through July 23, 2017: The exhibition is organized in sections that run from her early years, when O’Keeffe crafted a signature style of dress that dispensed with ornamentation; to her years in New York, in the 1920s and 1930s, when a black-and-white palette dominated much of her art and dress; and to her later years in New Mexico, where her art and clothing changed in response to the surrounding colors of the Southwestern landscape. The final section explores the enormous role photography played in the artist’s reinvention of herself in the Southwest, when a younger generation of photographers visited her, solidifying her status as a pioneer of modernism and as a contemporary style icon. ————————————————————————————————— ‘The Internal Body Interacting with the External World’ New York Academy of Medicine’s Artist-in-Residence, Kriota Willberg, recently concluded a 4-week workshop, Visualizing and Drawing Anatomy, and has a brief recap about it. And in a post from 2016, Willberg looks at some historical anatomical drawings: The images of Jacopo Berengario da Carpi’s Anatomia Carpi Isagoge breves, perlucide ac uberime, in anatomiam humani corporis… (1535) powerfully emphasize the fiber direction of the muscles of the waist. This picture in particular radiates the significance of our “core muscles.” Here, the external oblique muscles have been peeled away to show the lines of the internal obliques running from low lateral to high medial attachments. The continuance of this line is indicated in the central area of the abdomen. It perfectly illustrates the muscle’s direction of pull on its flattened tendon inserting at the midline of the trunk. ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 6-20-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 6-20-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 6-20-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

03/05/2018

Caleb OrecchioMarch 4, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here with, yet again, thoughts on Barry Windsor-Smith and his excellent adaption of Red Nails, plus the usual gang of links. ————————————————————————————————— All images herein are scans from Marvel Treasury Edition #4. Long story short, I think Barry Windsor-Smith’s Red Nails should be considered a masterpiece among the pantheon of comics. Old school fandom has more or less made this claim over the years, but the later “intellectual” generation (particularly the cartoonists and distinguished readers coming up out of the 80s) sees it as “good for the time”—at least, that’s what I sense. I also think many indie comics fans look down on adaptions as if adaptions are not a valid form of expression or something; or that a Marvel sword and sorcery comic simply is not good comics as a matter of principle and should basically be forgotten except when waxing nostalgia or appreciating good inking. I think independent comics and mini comics culture has come far enough to the point where we don’t have to demonize these old mainstream comics anymore. Yes, Red Nails is more or less violent, swashbuckling entertainment for young adults (or young adults at heart), but that’s what it was intended to be. No, I don’t walk away from it with a deep emotional revelation and it doesn’t cause me to rethink my life, but I had a damn good time looking at it. Smith’s images return to my thoughts for weeks on end and I marvel at the visual sensationalism. Is not the basic goal of a cartoonist to make something visually interesting and worth looking at/reading? I’d argue that this is the cartoonist’s most basic goal, and I’d argue that it’s in this manner that Barry Windsor-Smith achieved one of thee great works in comics. ————————————————————————————————— if you don’t know, now you know Good news for Chicago locals and CAKE 2018 attendees! The Monday after CAKE (June 4th) John Porcellino will be “running an All-Day Comics Workshop at the Chicago Publishers Resource Center.” More details are on the way, but save the date fer crying out loud! To raise funds to publish Linework 8, an anthology by Ivan Brunetti’s Columbia College Chicago students, Brunetti and company are holding a silent auction on Facebook from March 5 through March 9. This auction will feature select Brunetti originals(!) and other good stuff. Learn more about the silent auction here. And/or preorder Linework 8 here. Lauren Weinstein is the latest guest on Process Party. She also recently graced the airwaves of The Virtual Memories Show. RiYL has featured an extra dose of cartoonists recently including, Joseph Remnant, Emil Ferris, and Gina Wynbrandt. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-5-2018 – by Gabriella Tito Share this page: [...]

Gloria Rivera – Rowhouse Residency Report

Comics WorkbookApril 2, 2017Residency Reports / School UpdatesGloria Rivera is a comics artist from Canyon Country, CA. An alum of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers, and a member of the CW Roller Derby League, she joined us in Pittsburgh for a Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency March 23rd-29th 2017. Here are Gloria’s thoughts about her experience, in her own words. ————————————————————————————————————— The Quick List of What Happened: 22 pages completed, drawing to color w/lettering – comic 1 6 complete pages (B & W) – comic 2 Yona Harvey and Ed Piskor lecture at the Harris Theater Visit to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Copacetic Comics visits various nature walks, incidental birding with Sally Ingraham I had no expectations for my residency when I had arrived – only to work. I had followed Frank Santoro’s online presence for a few years prior and had taken his online correspondence course, but really couldn’t say that I had any idea of what kind of a teacher Frank was in person, or how much of a gift being in this space could be, not only referring to the Rowhouse, but to Pittsburgh – a town constantly working its bellows to support its comics scene. The first day I had arrived, I met Sally Ingraham. I was really blown away by Sally, who works as a coordinator for the Rowhouse Residency and holds various responsibilities for Comics Workbook. She is exhaustively knowledgeable, hardworking, and compassionate. She asked me what I had come to Pittsburgh to work on, and we sort of agreed that this first day I would work in solitude on my comic that I had started half a year earlier, until I felt I had gained some momentum, and then we would go from there, gauging if/when I wanted outside conversation. For the majority of my stay, the rhythm I kept to was non-stop working until a personal moment was offered (whether it be a walk, dinner with Frank and Sally, or short trips through the city), taking those moments, being present, and then continuing my work. Any time spent with other cartoonists (Frank, Sally, one of Sally’s 9-yr old students, cartoonists in a lecture, a.k.a Ed Piskor) was used to further my stride into my work. On the second day of my residency I met Frank. We had dinner at his house, where he was working on his new book. He is spirited, purposeful, mindful, and has endless passion for his work. He told a brief history of Pittsburgh, intertwined with his own of growing up, leaving and returning. It’s a story of dedication and belonging which I think not many people of MY generation are comfortable with, as many seem to be constantly striving for “better”, but without knowing, really, what “better” is. Aside from the stories Frank told about the city, he also gave me insight into the reality of living as a comics maker, which I would not have been privy to, and which until then I really was only guessing at. Some may be disheartened by these sort of conversations, but I am excited by how real it made things for me, despite it being a gauntlet. Topics for the week were: comics making process, the value of comics as a physical object/printing, the strengths of the avant-garde (non-narrative) against those of the narratively structured comic (two very different modes of storytelling), visual literacy, and comics community (inclusive of audience, publishers, comics friends, and family). The talks were long, but the time passed quickly. I tried my best to respect both Sally and Frank’s personal time to work, as they had mine. When Frank approached my work for advisement he was very objective, and I wanted his worst, so that I could do my best. Still, I think he saw my being in the work, and was courteous with his critique. Before coming to Pittsburgh I had half of my comic completed – 25 pages – and I completed the remaining 22 there. I completed as much as I did from August to November of 2016 in a week at the Rowhouse! I won’t say it was easy, but provided with the time to concentrate and motivation from the community, I was happy to put in any amount of time that my work demanded. Any formal education I had before comics was always for painting, and the more serious I allow myself to become about comics making, the more I see they are not so dissimilar. Frank is really great about sharing his knowledge and relating it to that which you came with. He was generous in his talks, while asking me to be accountable for the information I did know. One night Frank had casually presented me with some reading material; recommendations – mostly comics (Yuichi Yokoyama, Rich Buckler) – and among them two catalogues of Philip Guston paintings (it turns out that Frank is not only a comics expert, he is well versed in art history as a whole). Although in the past I have kept Guston as a sort of painting mentor (through books and image), I was surprised when I was presented with these catalogues – to be looking at his work during this comics residency. Phil Guston was a painter who understood the politics associated with images, but always kept a personal relationship with his visual library. Imagine your images are made of characters, places, things, each one a word, a letter, all making up your language. You hold this close to you. This is comics. What follows is an excerpt from a book of collected writings on Phil Guston: “Now, I think the original revolutionary impulse behind the New York School , as I felt it anyway, and I think my colleagues felt it, in the way we talked all the time, was that you felt as if you were driven into a corner against the wall, with no place to stand, just the place you occupied. And it’s as if the act of painting itself was not making a picture, because there are plenty of pictures in the world. Why make more pictures, clutter up the world with more pictures? But it’s as if you had to prove to yourself that truly the act of creation was still possible. Whether it was possible.” (Guston 58) I never expected to have felt this myself, to be able to talk to a group of people about images in such an earnest way – always internal conversation, now externalized. Frank and Sally offered their criticism, and experience, and questioning. I am working everyday to be worthy of comics as my form, and regardless, I put the pen to the paper – but over time I’ve forgotten to ask the big questions. Now I am more than willing to report that while the uninterrupted work time, the comics lectures, and accessible reading material was what whipped me into completing my goal, what I am bringing home with me – more than another book done – is a sense of what true community is, and the importance of holding your peers to standards that will benefit them in the longer run. It’s with great enthusiasm that I support the agenda of Comics Workbook, and the Residency program, and look forward to furthering my involvement with them to make better work (my own and that of others). ————————————————————————————————————— Check out more work by Gloria on her website, follow her on Instagram, and look for her new comic soon! For more information about the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency visit this page or email santoroschoolATgmail Share this page: [...]

Talking Trash With Derf

Posted on March 17, 2016 by J Kelly

Derf’s The City was one of the most popular alt weekly newspaper comic strips of all time, appearing in 140 papers at its height, and his international best seller My Friend Dahmer won the Angoulême Prize and named by Time magazine as one of the “top five non-fiction books of the year” in 2012. His new graphic novel, Trashed, is a great break-down of the garbage industry inspired in part by the time Derf himself worked as a garbageman. You can meet Derf on April 2nd here in Pittsburgh at PIX, where he’ll sign books and talk during the evening’s programming. We asked him to fill us in on a few things:

John Kelly: You spent years as one of the most visible alt-weekly cartoonists.
Other than the medium being pretty much dead or at least diminished what do you see as
the biggest changes in that world? Is it even an option for cartoonists today? And
what, besides Craigslist, killed it off?

Derf: Sadly, that is a genre that no longer exists. Neither do daily strips for
that matter, not as a viable career anyways. The weekly guys who are still
at it have all transitioned to a paid web model. Seems to be working for
them. I chose to go in a different direction. I was bored with it. Turns
out, judging from the reception my books have received, I was toiling in
the wrong genre all along! Oh well. Twenty years down the crapper!

The internet wiped out the weeklies, for sure. Not only by absconding with
its main sources of revenue personals and classifieds but by taking its
content. The weekly press was the internet before the internet. The
weeklies were also plagued by lousy management and stupid decisions. Look
no further than getting rid of comic strips for evidence of that! I pin
this on the bizarre corporate takeover of the alternative press. The
first generation of activist, local owners all cashed out by the end of
the 90s and sold their papers to corporate media companies. It was pretty
much all over at that point.

Everything has its time, and the era of the vibrant weekly press, and of
weekly cartoons, is long over. Its too bad, because it was great fun and
we did important work.

Kelly: Did you always hope to expand your work into these longer pieces like
Dahmer and Trashed? Both started out as smaller projects. Did you envision longer
pieces with them from the start?

Derf: My Friend Dahmer, absolutely. I always envisioned it as a long book. The
early, short versions were little more than samples that I hoped would
interest a larger publisher in the project, which didn’t happen. And also
was me working out how to tell and draw a longform story. There was a
bigger learning curve there, especially with the art, than I expected.

Trashed started as a 50-page floppy in 2002. I had no expectations there
of a larger work. But when it was so well received and got me my first
Eisner nomination, I decided it would be an ongoing project. I came back
to it in 2010 and 2012 as a webcomic. It only took that long because of
cancer and my decision to make Punk Rock & Trailer Parks first. I was
planning to keep adding to the Trashed webcomic until it eventually became
a book. I considered it a side project. It was my editor at Abrams,
Charlie Kochman, who prodded me to make it a book now, which was a great
call, it turns out. So the new graphic novel is basically the entire web
series I had mapped out.

Kelly: Rate your own garbage disposal/recycling habits. It all seems pretty
hopeless. Is it?

Derf: I do as well as I can. Im not an eco-fanatic. I recycle absolutely
everything, but, like all Americans, Im faced with over-packaging and
commercial waste at every turn. Until we cut down on that, at the
production end, our garbage will continue to be a huge problem. As I
explain in the book, the biggest part of our waste, almost a third, is
packaging. So the largest part of our crap is the crap our crap comes in!
That’s America.

I am, however, really obsessive about how my garbage is put out. Nothing
is too heavy, everything is neat and tidy and lined up for the garbagemen.
No piles of trash, no boobytraps. My wife laughs at me because I spend so
much time arranging the trash.

Kelly: Its clear that both Dahmer and Trashed were extremely researched. How
did your background at newspapers and as a journalism student help with this
process? Can you pick out anything you found during the research process for either (or
both books) that stands out as something that surprised you to learn? Also, as
someone who who was there for the Dahmer story, were there things that the media
just got wrong in their reporting?

Derf: The media got just about EVERYthing wrong about Dahmer’s young life. That
was really aggravating, since I was still working in the press at that
time. It was thoroughly depressing watching the 24-hour news cycle in
action, right on my doorstep, actually.

The biggest surprise for me regarding Jeff, was how close to that first
murder my friends and I were. Mere feet away from the body, at some
points. When he carved up his first victim, the rest of us were just a few
houses away at a friends party! I had quite a few sleepless nights over
these revelations. But its all ancient history now. I have to keep
reminding myself Jeff was real. Hes become a character in a comic book to
me now, 23 years after his death. Thats a psychological defense
mechanism, I imagine.

Kelly: Can you talk about any other graphic novels that you feel really stand out?

Derf: I dont read many comics anymore, to be completely honest. I stopped
reading comics when I started making comics. Its just something I needed
to do for my own creative development. Im aware of whats out there and
whats good, but I dont feel I can offer any opinions. I will say this,
its a golden age of graphic novels right now. Every month sees a dozen
incredible books, and thats not even counting the avalanche of material
coming from micro-publishers. Its a fabulous time to be a comics fan.

Kelly: Any advice for people trying to break into the field?

Derf: Do good work. I firmly believe that good work finds a way to be seen. It’s
as simple as that, but, of course, thats not an easy accomplishment.
That’s the thing.

Kelly: What are you working on next/now?

Derf: Right now Im dabbling with another webcomic, The Baron of Prospect Ave.
Its a sequel to my first book, punk Rock & Trailer Parks. Another fun
side project. Except I actually got a big arts grant to do it! In Ohio we
have these Cultural Workforce grants and they gave three of them to comics
creators this year, which is pretty damn cool. You can read it on my
website www.derfcity.com. Its another side project, just for fun, but it
too will be a book eventually. My French publisher nags me about it
incessantly, in fact. But hell just have to wait.

I’ll also have more volumes of True Stories coming out later this year,
from the fine folks at Alternative Comics. These collect my stories from
my comic strip, The City. I have three more volumes planned. Its a nice
way to wrap up that part of my career and have an archive of all those
True Stories.

And then this spring and summer I’ll decide what my next new book will be
and start working on that. I have more ideas than I have time. I wish I
was faster. Work until you die! That’s my motto.

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Comics Workbook

An online magazine for comics makers

Posted in InterviewsTagged alt-weekly comics, Dahmer, derf, the city, Trashed

J Kelly

Posted on March 17, 2016

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07/21/2016

HarrisonJuly 21, 2016NewsDaily News with Harrison returns with drones, thoughts about war, dark animation, and ends with a question. ————————————————————————————————— Ride or Die “Jasper. We’re picking up a lot of drone noise. I think there’s a watch coming.” Sam Alden‘s Test of Loyalty at Hazlitt. Here ————————————————————————————————— Shadow and Form Jonathan Djob Nkondo’s Dark Day is a conflation of everything I want from contemporary animation; moody, inventive, stark, humorous, surreal, frightening, and impeccably illustrated. Pts. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. ————————————————————————————————— Before ” “NOddIN” is a collective launched by filmmakers and artists in the wake of the 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake and related Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. With the cooperation of a large number of Japanese animation artists, we spearheaded this self-production with the aim to animate the words of the book round-robin style, and our collaborative project was begun. After over a year of production including the conception period, we completed our short film.” – The NOddIN team, October 2, 2015 More about the film project here. More about the collective NOddIN here. ————————————————————————————————— Visions of Heroes Friend of Comics Workbook Chris Visions has a collection of fun drawing videos shot by Richmond photographer/videographer Tyler Q. Tucker on his site. Here. ————————————————————————————————— Why? Share this page: [...]

03/28/2018

Juan FernándezMarch 28, 2018los Cómics / NewsJuan Fernandez on Pepo’s EL CONDORITO and the Spring Semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers! —————————————— El primer libro de Condorito por Pepo esta descargable gratuitamente en el sitio de la Bibilioteca Nacional de Chile. You can now download the first collection of Chile’s national treasure, Condorito. Condorito is lazy, charming, and irresponsible. It’s a wonderful, top notch gag strip full of character. The strip was created in 1949 by René Ríos Boettiger(Pepo) in Chile as a specific response to the arrival of the American cultural offensive offensive to conquer South America ideologically via Walt Disney in 1942. His eponymous strip has been one of the most popular in all Latin America, in part because it is unmistakably Chilean. Download your copy of this 100+ page PDF HERE! ————————————————————————————————— The sterilization of Condorito Over on The Week, Lili Loofbourow‘s written a piece in response to Condorito‘s CGI arrival to the big screen. Her piece does a good job contextualizing Condorito in today’s media landscape and what is wrong with the latest movie. Condorito is a victim of the “design by committee” process that sterilizes anything that is ever intended for children… Essential to El Condorito is Pepo’s attention to sense of place. Pelotillehue, Condorito’s hometown, is a real, scrappy town with nooks and crannies and a history of its own. Akin to Carl Barks’/Don Rosa’s Duckburg in their respective Donald Duck comics, we learn and laugh as much from graffiti and street corners as we do from the strip’s gags. Lili Loofbourow: It’s hard to overstate how different Disney’s version of Chile as a paradise with snowy peaks and tidy houses is from Ríos’ irreverent corrective. Condorito’s world is hard and adult, and his town, Pelotillehue, is dirty and vital and populated by all kinds of weirdos. There’s Don Máximo Tacaño (Sir Maximal Stingy), a miser in tattered finery who’ll do the absurd to save a buck. There’s Ungenio (literally A Genius), a buck-toothed imbecile with the best intentions. There’s Garganta de Lata (Tin Throat), a red-headed alcoholic whose wife routinely awaits his return from the bar with a bowling pin. And then there’s Yayita, Condorito’s bombshell girlfriend, and her large and fearsome parents, Don Cuasimodo and Doña Tremebunda.) They had higher hopes for their daughter than a condor in patched pants who routinely brings her flowers ripped from her own yard. You can read it all HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Announcing the Spring Semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers 8 weeks! $500 bux! 10 spots available! Rolling start date because of spring break – start as early as March 30th 2018. Deadline to apply is April 12th. Read all about the course HERE and email santoroschool@gmail.com for more details or to apply. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 3-28-2018 – by Gabriella Tito ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-28-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

07/18/2017

Aaron CockleJuly 18, 2017NewsAaron Cockle here today with Helen Jo; Safari Festival Reminder; Chitra Ganesh; Helen Frankenthaler ————————————————————————————————— ‘Without a car, commuting into the city via public transit becomes a nightmare.’ Alex Wong talks with Helen Jo about Jo’s translation of Yeon-sik Hong’s Uncomfortably Happily: Do you think, compared to other books, there was less of a risk of the original material being lost in translation in Uncomfortably Happily? Because of all the universal themes that are covered in the book? I think that something may always be lost in translation. Translating from one language to the next is not mathematics. Even if you strip away all of the cultural context and stick to the academic bare bones of a language itself, you can’t fit a Korean peg into an English hole. Each language is a system of words, connotations, innuendo, context, unspoken intentions, and none of it is exactly equal to its foreign counterparts. I think a good translation is mindful of that fact, and tries to re-interpret the intent behind the words for the new audience. I may not have been able to provide an exact translation, because an exact translation cannot truly exist, but I did my best to bring the intention and meaning and context of each and every page to the English reader. ————————————————————————————————— Safari Festival 2017 ————————————————————————————————— Tales of Amnesia This is just a link to an image search for Chitra Ganesh’s Tales of Amnesia comics. ————————————————————————————————— As in Nature: Helen Frankenthaler Paintings / No Rules: Helen Frankenthaler Woodcuts Helen Frankenthaler has two exhibitions currently at the Clark Institute in Williamstown, MA, USA. ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 7-18-2017 – by Cameron Arthur ———————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 7-18-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 7-18-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

09/16/2016

Sally IngrahamSeptember 16, 2016NewsSally here with more on SPX, the Spanish Fever crew, Dash Shaw, Glynnis Fawkes, and Lynda Barry. ————————————————————————————————— Around this time last year I had just moved to New Mexico, and I was missing Pittsburgh desperately. I spent the weekend of Small Press Expo somewhat frantically composing my comic Walkabout (which is all about Pittsburgh) and watching the various small dramas of SPX unfold via meager internet updates. A year later I will be attending SPX myself, bringing copies of Walkabout with me, and also a car-load of special zines made by Comics Workbook for SPX and Fantagraphics‘ 40th Anniversary celebration. Quite the switch-up! You can get a copy of the “Fanta-zine” when you register at the show – and a copy of my comic as well as loads of other cool stuff from Frank Santoro, Andrew White, Juan Fernandez, Audra Stang, Emil Friis Ernst, and others at the Comics Workbook table – N8. Observe the nifty map below so that this info imprints in your memory bank: ————————————————————————————————— The workshops that Comics Workbook is hosting at SPX have created quite a buzz, and may set the stage for more programming along these lines at future shows. We are particularly pleased to be presenting members of the “new wave of Spanish cartoonists”. A portion of the talent behind the new Fantagraphics compilation Spanish Fever arrived in the D.C. area on Thursday, kicking off their US tour with a public talk at the Former Residence of the Ambassadors of Spain, moderated by José Villarrubia. “Asked if there was some stylistic through-line that characterized this new movement, Villarubia said, “I see the influence of American independent comics, the underground, the influence of French comics, Japanese comics. In terms of the art, the aesthetics are influenced by what everyone else all over the world is being influenced by. I think more and more people are reading comics online and have access to materials from many different traditions. This work is informed by that. The five creators who are coming are a really great sampling of that, with different styles and age and gender.” ” – via dcist.com Spanish Fever editor Santiago Garcia is joined by David Rubin, Javier Olivares, José Domingo, and Ana Galvañ as the tour moves on to SPX this weekend. You can catch them at a panel moderated by Matt Madden and then learn to make comics THEIR WAY at the Spanish Fever workshop session on Saturday, Sept. 17th at 3-5pm (Brookside A&B room). See you there! I could keep talking about SPX, but there will be plenty of time for that next week… ————————————————————————————————— Meanwhile, Dash Shaw’s film My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea is garnering praise from everyone who has seen it – No Film School sat down with Dash soon after the premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and dug into the production adventure: “NFS: The process of casting animators is in and of itself its own form of directing. Were you and Jane generally on the same page? How did you navigate when you weren’t? Shaw: Jane and I are married and we live together. When we were drawing this, it was a small apartment, so discussions from the movie would comically fall over into other aspects of life. It would be very long talks when there were disagreements about what a face would be like for a certain line. Somehow it would work itself out. Our marriage survived this movie. A great example: there’s a part where all of the characters are running and the background moves while they’re in silhouette. Jane does all the silhouettes. I did the collage paper that’s flying past them, and I think that’s a good moment to point to where it was Jane in full force juxtaposed with something that I did and it equals something that’s more than the sum of its parts.“ Read the rest of the interview here. ————————————————————————————————— Over on Mutha Magazine Glynnis Fawkes has a late summer harvest of comics about kids and adults and general weirdness. One such: Many more HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Lynda Barry has her 3rd New York solo exhibition opening this weekend at the Adam Baumgold Gallery. “The Marlys Show, from September 17th through November 5th…will be devoted to Lynda Barry’s beloved character Marlys, and will feature 80 original drawings. There will be work dating from the early appearances of Marlys in 1986 to watercolor drawings of Marlys from 2016, with stories from Barry’s books The Fun House; Come Over, Come Over; It’s So Magic, The Freddie Stories, and of course The Greatest of Marlys, which is being reissued this year in hardcover by Drawn and Quarterly. Also included will be many of Lynda Barry’s comic drawings that were published in Raw, The Village Voice, Esquire, Newsweek and The New York Times, among others.” -Adam Baumgold The opening reception is September 17th from 5-7 and promises to be a great party, although Lynda Barry claims she will be “smoking and drinking beer over in the corner and trying not to make eye-contact“…! More details about the show HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Today is the last day to apply for a spot in the fall semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers – DO IT! ————————————————————————————————— I’ll bid you farewell till next week and a very happy weekend and leave you in the joyous grip of the Dom Flemons Trio (who swung through Pittsburgh on Thursday to make a special stop mid-tour at Copacetic Comics so they could get the new volume of Hip Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor!) Cheers! Share this page: [...]

05/10/2017

Juan FernándezMay 10, 2017los Cómics / NewsEmpezamos el día con los vanguardistas; Vanesa R. Del Rey; La Polola; Ana Tijoux; Alexis Ziritt; Elizabeth Casillas; Carla Berrocal; Fabian Rangel Jr.; y los tebeos de Comics Workbook. ————————————————————————————————— AvanGard – Y Que? Gerardo Vilches escribe sobre la vangardia contemporanea y internacional de los cómics. Su evolucion, su role y su crítica. Hoy existe una generación de autores que no responden al clásico perfil de fan que sueña con trabajar con sus personajes favoritos y replicar aquello que cautivó su imaginación de niño. Por el contrario, muchos de los artistas de vanguardia provienen de otros campos de expresión, han estudiado Bellas Artes, puede que no hayan leído cómic hasta que una novela gráfica cayó en sus manos de jóvenes adultos y no se sienten en absoluto obligados a respetar ningún canon. ————————————————————————————————— ⚡ The Art of Vanesa R. Del Rey La gran Vanesa R. Del Rey le ha dado permiso a Comics Workbook para publicar unas selecciónes de sus cuadernos de bocetos. Hemos diseñado esta publicación para que parezca uno de esos libros de de artistas los años 80. El texto es una transcripción de la entrevista que hicimos con Vanesa cuando visito la Residencia Rowhouse en 2016. Vanesa es un artista impresionante y inigualable, quien estudió con George Pratt y quien a dibujado con Grant Morrison. Estamos ofreciendo compras adelantadas a un precio reducido. Sigan a Vanesa por Instagram – @vrdelrey – y http://vrdelrey.com/ Le pedimos a nuestro director, Frank Santoro que nos contara un poquito sobre la fuerza feroz y imparable que es Vanesa R. Del Rey. FS: “Vanesa, I’m quite taken aback by your sheer technical ability which seems to be married to a poetic sensibility. There’s a lightness there. Sometimes illustrators with that ability get heavy-handed. Yet you manage the push-pull between these two sides of yourself–because you’re like a samurai. The humble samurai.” VRDR: “It’s about trying to remember that. I can get all this praise, I can get all these amazing responses from strangers, but at the end of the day—I’m still a student. I’m still learning. The crown doesn’t fit. The crown should never fit.” Este intercambio viene de una entrevista que Frank hizo con Vanesa R. Del Rey, que occurio en la Residencia de Comics Workbook en Pittsburgh, PA USA. 2016. FS: Me encontré por primera vez con VRDR en un festival de cómics en Toronto (TCAF) en 2014. Había empezado a hacer comics profesionalmente después de un período como un animadora. Fui Sorprendido por su la capacidad de ser como un camaleón de cambiar de estilos, y por su puesto le pedí ver más de sus obras. Desenterró pilas de cuadernos de dibujos de sus días en Cuba, cuando estudiaba el realismo soviético y de trabajaba con George Pratt, maestro de cómics pintados. La educación de Vanesa como artista hace el balance suavemente entre los niveles alto y bajo del arte, así como los valores estéticos del este y el oeste. Es una base asombrosa. Ella es, a la vez, consciente de la historia del arte, la historia de los cómics y la historia de la animación de una manera NUEVA que casi parecía imposible hace quince o veinte años. Debo admitir como un estudiante y fan de cómics que se enfocan en la mezcla de “alto y bajo” y en ” los cómics pintados” — Nunca he visto tal mezcla de habilidades al nivel de VRDR. Feroz. Imparable. Un competidor feroz. Michael Jordan-esque? ¿Es eso posible en la fabricación de cómic? Siempre he dicho que habría un “invasor vertical” en los cómics que podría emplear el “naturalismo” de la escuela de Noel Sickles / Alex Toth pero que podría pintar como una Alice Neel o una Jenny Saville. Creo que “el invasor” ha llegado en forma de Vanesa R. Del Rey. Puedes comprar tu copia AQUI¡ ————————————————————————————————— Cómics y noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: Sol Díaz Castillo y Marcela Trujillo tienen una nueva edicion de La Polola Podcast! En este capítulo las chicas conversan con Ana Tijoux acerca de sus inicios en el rap, su forma de hacer canciones, su vida como inmigrante, la diversidad y mucho más. . Alexis Ziritt os ofrece una serigrafia bien chula del forro de Space Riders #3. Blanco y Negro. Liempo. Poderoso. En la nueva ediction de Revista Cactus, Elizabeth Casillas os trae lo más transgresor e innovador del cómic actual. Pura vanguardia. Ya hace tiempo, las editoriales en Colombia le apuestan a las novelas gráficas, fanzines y libros ilustrados. Conozca cuáles son. The Fine Art Collective ES entrevisto a Carla Berrocal. Fabian Rangel Jr.‘s new comics series “Helena Crash” gets a micro-review. It’s pulse pounding, caffeine fueled, sword swinging, machine-gun firing, car crashing sci-fi adventure comic. You know the type. ————————————————————————————————— Blinkers – 5-10-2017 – by Jack Brougham ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 5-10-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 5-10-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]

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