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Posted in NewsTagged banksy, brooklyn museum, caleb orecchio, Cameron Arthur, genevieve castree, karl stevens, mount eerie, phil elverum, retrofit comics, sara lautman, Sylvia Palacios Whitman, Yumi Sakugawa, Zehra Doğan
Aaron Cockle
Caleb OrecchioApril 26, 2018NewsCaleb Orecchio here filling in for Sam, and I've just read Prime Cuts #1! ————————————————————————————————— I am always interested in expanding the breadth of my comics knowledge, and was happy when Frank loaned me the first two issues of the Fantagraphics anthology, Prime Cuts. Published at the height of comics' new respectable reputation in 1987. A nice black and white magazine featuring various comics work of the time from cutting edge cartoonists like Eddie Campbell, underground veterans like R. and Aline Crumb, and reprints of Cliff Sterrett sunday pages; and many many more. The mag even featured prose fiction, plus a great (as always) spirited editorial by Gary Groth in the first issue. The first two issues are solid, but definitely reflect the times and the growing pains of independent comics. A lot of stories are clunkers and seem so stiff and outdated to my millennial eyes, though they don't take away from the great work. My favorite comic in the first issue has to be Eddie Campbell's strip "Blues Blues Blues." Campbell's work really sings and emits much more electricity than the its neighbors. The strip is dated "'83" and it's hard to tell if this was when the comic was made or when it takes place or both. Either way, the strip feels pertinent. Though I hate to use this cliché when describing art, "Blues Blues Blues" is kind of sexy. Sexy in the way one would describe Mean Streets or Reservoir Dogs at the time those movies were released if you liked them (and people tended to either love or hate them). There's a freshness to the comic that you can't help but be attracted to. The story emphasizes the recklessness of youth. The constant drinking and smoking and mingling and sulking and loving and losing that young people simultaneously rue and romanticize as they experience them. This idea is illustrated through a collage-y, unruled series of images supplemented by Campbell's lyrical writing along the left side (Campbell is secretly one of comics' best writers of words). Compound that with the signature loose-yet-perfect drawing, and you got yourself a classic. It feels like a diary or private confessional or memories jotted down in a notebook. I felt like I was hanging out with Campbell and George and all the other lads and lasses, smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor and splashing in the water. His hangover is my hangover. It's excellent. Unfettered thoughts and embarrassing stories. Real intimate like a folk set in 1955 at Café Wha? or something "They don't make 'em like they used to," as the saying goes. I am simply smitten. ————————————————————————————————— if you don't know, now you know Michael Tisserand on the cartoonist, Eugene Majied, who had a big impact on a certain famous boxer over at TCJ.com. While you're there, check out the interview with Jared Smith of Big Planet Comics. Josh Simmons is the latest guest on Process Party. Rob Clough reviews books by Sara Lautman and Tom Van Deusen. ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-26-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page:Read More:01/25/201802/13/2018Comic Arts Brooklyn 201709/21/2018...
A Comics Id is Tenderness: Notes on Cartoon Crossroads 2017
Comics WorkbookOctober 5, 2017Festivals and Showsby Adam Griffiths The first book I purchased on the expo floor at this year's Cartoon Crossroads Columbus was Kyle Baker's. Earlier this year, I had seen Baker speak at the Schomburg Center in New York about his book, Nat Turner to a roomful of kids. At the time, I had been struck by his ability to communicate; his engagement with the audience seemed intrinsically connected to his unabashed and explicitly mercantile use of language. Odd, how this seemed to captivate both his panel members and the audience, young and old. The persona of the salesman is an American motif – a motif that, under our current political climate, is being reduced to prideless status by the huckster in the Oval Office. When exactly did Americans need to believe that a good businessman's success is dependent upon rhetorical violence and winner-take-all bullishness? I chose the term 'A Comics Id is Tenderness' for this write-up because Baker's work revisited me several times during this expo. Over the course of the week, it became more and more clear to me that Baker has been a creator who has deftly championed the stories he feels are important to him alongside of his commercial work, who has kindly informed peers of his intentions, who brushes from shoulder the allegedly unforgivable concept of sacrificing creativity for financial gain. More on this later. To the lectures! (Editor: What follows are Adam's notes and thoughts on the lectures and talks he attended in the two days of CXC programming held on the OSU campus (9-28/9-29), and the two days of the CXC expo which was held at the Columbus Metropolitan Library (9-30/10-1.) ————————————————————————————————— Dan Gearino on Research Methodology Applied to Comics-Making History (Thursday, Sept. 28th 2017, at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum) Dan Gearino on Phil Seuling: Phil Seuling is regarded as a pioneer of comics fandom during the late 60's and early 70's – first when serving as organizer of the annual New York Comic Art Convention and then with his Sea Gate Distributors Company, which laid the groundwork for the direct market system of distributing comics. Did Seuling's arrest on March 11th, 1973 lead to the creation of the direct market as we know it today? Seemed so, but when Gearino went investigating, he found that the arrest, for 'distribution of obscene material', was nowhere near as simple as he thought. While fellow early comics distributors and champions of comics such as Jim Hanley sincerely believed that Seuling's aggravation with censors was the spark for his history-making wholesale business venture, Seuling's former business partner Jonnie Luvas could vouch for Seuling's motivations more clearly. The tricky part here was that Luvas, less a comics fan and more a business ingenue, had moved on from comics. To find this person who could truly vouch for Seuling's acumen in business, Gearino had to 'go outside of existing source records,' and penetrate several outlying personal networks of non-comics lovers. Luvas (yes, Johnny Thunder is named for her) was a key figure in Seuling's business life who understood that Seuling was actually seeking to escape his passionless teaching gigs. The importance and meaning of this investigation has to do with progressive incarnations of the comics business. Before the direct market, Gearino explains, comics were sold indiscriminately as mass market objects; this was how comics ended up as a part of mainstream culture. You could find them anywhere – on newsstands, in grocery stores, dime shops. By the late sixties, however, this business model was crumbling, and store owners were clearing gluts of low-cost, low-selling comics from their retail spaces. Seuling's creation of the direct market paved the way for the comics specialty shops of the 1970's and 80's. These specialty shops saved comics as we know them, as they could not only sell new comics being made, but also the comics of yesteryear. Comics hoarding found its reward in this new market. Back issues and loyal accumulations of forgotten works could be pulled out of obscurity. ————————————————————————————————— Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Highlights Tales from the Vault: 40 Years / 40 Stories, curated by Jenny Robb and Caitlin McGurk Comics history is both creativity and industry, here illustrated by selections of original works and artifacts. "Creepy" was the first word that came to mind when regarding this bathing suit from 1950, scribbled on by cartoonists such as Ernie Bushmiller, Milton Caniff, Alfred Androla, Otto Soglow, Ham Fisher and others. The museum has six of these bathing suits, and they were drawn on by these superstar artists at a promotional party for a waterproof ink pen. Life magazine photographed the party and later, deciding the images were not family-oriented enough, declined to publish them. Roe v. Wade Comics Comics has a documented history in its deployment for use in the political arena. Here, we see two causes with inverse agendas using comics as propaganda. You can read either of these comics in full at http://www.ep.tc/junior/ Who Killed Junior? 1973 This comic, published by the organization Right to Life (the largest pro-life organization in the country, now called The National Right to Life), illustrates the abortion procedure from the viewpoint of a destroyed fetus. Abortion Eve, 1973 By "Chin Lyvley" (Lyn Chevli) and "Joyce Sutton" (Joyce Farmer) The hazards of promoting abortion in America in any way are evident here in the authors' use of psuedonyms. The women both worked as birth control counselors at The Free Clinic in Laguna Beach, California. Under the heading of their company, Nanny Goat Productions, they published this comic which provides arguments for the legality of abortion, and also personal accounts from a diverse array of women about their abortion experiences. I Know! Let's Drop Taxes Completely and Let Our Kids Worry About 'Em! 1985 Jim Kammerud for Norfolk Daily Press / Times Herald ————————————————————————————————— Handwritten Notes from Talk and Teach Presentation: Kevin Huizenga on Depicting Time in Comics Form (Thursday, Sept. 28th 2017, at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum) ————————————————————————————————— SÕL-CON LUNCH BREAK AND TALK-BACK Kat Fajardo, Vicko Alvarez, Lisa Sheperd, Jiba Molei Anderson (Friday, Sept. 29th 2017, in Hal Hall, on the OSU campus) (Editor: Sol-Con is another comics festival that happens on the OSU campus simultaneously, allowing folks to move seamlessly from CXC events to Sol-Con events, as Adam did here and there. On Sat./Sun. the Sol-Con guests and exhibitors joined the CXC expo at the library.) "What is your favorite thing about comics?" was one of the questions asked by the large group of children attending SÕL-CON this year, which, in my year of absence had transformed into an intensive of workshops and instructionals on drawing and storytelling for youth. "My favorite thing," said moderator Frederick Aldama, "is seeing the younger generations take up making comics." A real standout during this talk was Chicago-based Tejana Vicko Alvarez, who couldn't stress enough that the kids present recognize that their taking part in SÕL-CON probably meant that each and every kid there was interested in a life pursuit doing what they loved. "I tried to find a career and got bored of it real quick," she says, and then admits, "the one thing I enjoyed I was told not to do. It was smartest decision I ever made to come back to art." She continued, it helps that "I had a really pushy friend," who encouraged her to follow her calling in comics. "How many of y'all have heard that art is gonna make you money?" Vicko asked the audience. All of the kids raised their hands. "How many of you like art?" All hands raised. At this point, Jiba Molei Anderson, who was watching the talk, joined the panelists onstage. "If I ignore something I love, my mental focus is gonna go out of whack, right?" Alvarez declared. The children agreed with her. "We are all here for the love," Anderson says. "Even when we're frustrated we're not gonna quit. Creative people, to survive we really need to create…that hamster wheel never shuts down." "But tethering that to real life is always a challenge to me," said Lisa Sheperd. Lisa Sheperd talked about how doing this expo was moving her back towards comics. "Seeing that spark in you guys' eyes reminded me of the spark I once had . That's a great thing that doesn't happen everyday! I'm putting my work out again because SÕL-CON encouraged me… Don't let it slide by and let life get in the way." More Quotes from SÕL-CON Panel "What don't you like about comics?" was a question from a boy who remained behind with his mother after the other children left for workshops. – "I don't like posers in art trying to tell me how to create," said Jiba. -"I don't like what I see when people not from my community try to tell my story," Vicko Alvarez said."What do you see when you see Latinas in the media?" she asked the audience. "Sexy hot mammas!" A woman called out. "Most Latina women look like my mom," Alvarez continued, and "if you don't tell your story, somebody else will, and they'll base it off of stereotype." -"Mainstream comics look to what we're doing right here, right now. The problem is, there are not enough people of color working at DC at Marvel," Jiba Andersen says. "the people here in this room today? Creators of color? We make our own. We do it this way because you have a community that has felt so maligned for so long… They see what we've been doing, we're here and we've been here. The problem is that the push-back can't be handled. They know that we can talk to people who cannot listen through our art." -Vicko: " …people put out tragedy porn and that's not changing a thing." ————————————————————————————————— Spotlight on Chris Ware (Friday, Sept. 29th 2017, at the Wexner Center, on the OSU campus) A near religious silence had fallen over everyone walking out of the Chris Ware dialogue at the Wexner Center. A masterful storyteller and illustrator, Ware's talents have been visibly leading the illustration world, in the name of comics, for some time now. His discussion with Caitlin McGurk signaled that he remains unrelenting. As I was listening I realized that Chris Ware's humorous import is indeed a formula, but that he definitely showed up at this discussion, and probably shows up at every discussion, trying to give away that formula, which is great. Any artist worth her/his salt is always acting within a spirit of generosity. Perhaps Ware is so incurably sad because of how bad he himself believes he is at communicating; a suitable contradiction for a person who has donated their life to creating works of art. The Chris Ware formula (or, American humor in a nutshell) 1) Declarative sentence. 2) Rebuttal of declaration (typically more complex and cruel than it needs to be, so, funny.) 3) Agreement with his own previous rebuttal finally, because self-rejection is an un-frightening, redundant horror that should make you smile warmly. So then what Ware does is he puts the formula to work. The guise here begins with Ware saying: 1) "Comics are an art of memory." 2) But then, because everyone in the room including Ware is, y'know, kind of old, we then have to have a discussion about how terrible we all are at remembering things. Of course we have to bring this up, because in order to remember what we were just (just!) speaking about, we have to introduce dissonance tension to our brains through aural communication with other humans. We are becoming ridiculously complex here in the service of Ware's humor: "When you become a cartoonist, you begin to lose track of your language." We as an audience, are becoming redundant in order to allow Ware to mirror the brain's experience of memory for us. Where did Ware get the concept of "comics as an art of memory?" Why in fact, Ware states, rather meekly, he got it from a paper that his stagemate, Caitlin McGurk wrote! The room warms to Ware as the surprised McGurk, suddenly joyful, becomes flustered and confused, flushed and slightly embarrassed. Ware has delivered his sweet, sweet punchline. It's almost too saccharine, nearly syrupy! 3) The agreement that Ware has set us up for here is that we've been having a discussion about McGurk, not Ware, since we began, and that we will now remember, "Comics are an art of memory," in all its redundant, charitable, pitiable human glory. Too clean! ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— CXC Award ceremony (Friday, Sept. 29th 2017, at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum) (Editor: Kyle Baker was awarded the CXC Master Cartoonist Award, and Howard Cruse won the CXC Transformative Work award.) Revelations from the award ceremony: Tom Spurgeon praises Kyle Baker as a "Leticious learner." After thanking Howard Cruse for his "Masterful work," Tom Spurgeon asks Cruse to think about getting Stuck Rubber Baby back into print. 'Oh my goodness, it is a shit-ton of work to re-release a treasured, nearly forgotten book,' I scribbled. Then it dawned on me: Stuck Rubber Baby isn't merely a political story about the Civil Rights Movement. It's a teen mood sugar fiction that affects a whole country." ————————————————————————————————— The Other Mainstream: Indy Creators on Non-Indy Books Jeff Smith, Peter Bagge, Kyle Baker, and Connor Willumsen (Saturday, Sept. 30th 2017, at the Columbus Metropolitan Library) In this dialogue, we are revisiting Kyle Baker again. What's unfortunate in this particular discussion is that there is no visible female contribution. However, what ended up happening was that Kyle Baker – long known for his trademark crankiness – opened up to the audience in a way that is (apologies, meme) unexpected. Peter Bagge: "Spiderman (Bagge's creation → Spider-Man, Startling Stories: The Megalomaniacal Spider-Man – a reinterpretation of the SP origin story) was the best-selling comic I had ever made and the worst-selling Spiderman Comic ever." Kyle Baker laughs at Peter Bagge's comment, then goes on to say: Robert Morales, when developing the script for the series "Captain America: Truth," has used the term 'drugs' throughout the entire story. The story details a fictional declassified experiment in which African Americans are the precursor experiment to the secret project that creates Captain America. "We gave the manuscript and art to the publishers and they loved it, but they wanted to replace the term 'drugs' with 'serum,' so essentially the term "drugs" in Morales' story came to stand less for something like the Tuskegee experiment and more for the alleged HIV conspiracy." Baker then described how he revisited some of these themes from this book in Leticia Lerner, Superman's Babysitter, a short comic he completed in 1999 for the DC Elseworlds 80-Page Giant #1. I'm going to revisit Kyle Baker's work again at length here, to describe, I guess, what sort of happens with modern commercial illustrators in regards to their relationship with their employers. Baker is willingly immersed in comics mythology – it has replaced any previous myths imbued in him in concern to civilization – everything from religion to gender. Somehow, this deep engagement has made him an indispensable employee within a mainstream corporate media outlet. It may seem that Baker retains a sort of power through publishing these stories that are really important to him and to his progression as a drawer. However, the full picture we don't get from Baker when he is telling us about these industrial anomalies – these stories he most cares about – is that he's also completing an insane amount of commissioned work as he gets the access to publish these stories that mean the most to him. To end here, I want to include some quotes by Connor Willumsen, a fresh cartoonist whose work I think represents the next wave of comics, which is COMICS LITERATURE. "You can never predict what people are gonna respect or not." "With Witchlands, I tried to do it like uh, how these comics are invented?" "I always found out about these rules the hard way." What was so calming about when Connor spoke of his experience in mainstream comics contemporaneously was that the industry-men sitting next to him quivered at hearing of Connor's creative travails. Connor's a young man, no children to take care of, no family to support; his focus remains on the mythology and drawing practice, not on salary. What luxury had those seasoned professionals grown to actually? Who cares? It was nice to see those older industry men loosen up – they all asked Connor if they could take a look at his books later. I don't know who planned this discussion, or if anyone could foresee that this type of generational showdown might occur, but we were there to witness it. ————————————————————————————————— Howard Cruse, Emil Ferris, Mimi Pond, Derf Backderf: Quotes from Comic Memoir Discussion (Saturday, Sept. 30th 2017, at the Columbus Metropolitan Library) Below are a few quotes from this discussion, in which Emil Ferris, creator of My Favorite Things is Monsters, comes to the realization that these comics people are in fact, her people. "You can't be afraid to make yourself look like an asshole" -Derf Backderf "That guy who wrote Stuck Rubber Baby is a different guy than who I am today. The guy who wrote that book exists within the soft glow of goodwill." -Howard Cruse "I could see the danger of getting stuck in a place like that." – Mimi Pond, on writing about being a waitress in Over Easy and The Customer is Always Wrong. "Fine art was a pile of bricks accompanied by a long explanation… I finally came to the fact that this story was going to be a graphic novel." – Mimi Pond "When I first encountered Lynda Barry,'s work, I recognized an artist who goes to a place in her head that I've seen before in my own head." – Emil Ferris A question that came up was: 'Is the persistence of memoir comics a novelty of identity politics these days?' "All those labels are out the window. If it's good comics, we want it." -Derf Backderf ————————————————————————————————— Quotes from SÕL-CON Panel Three: Creators of Color & Industry Moderated by Crystal Gonzalez, J.M Hunter, Carlos Perez, Albert Morales, Andres Vera, and Verzelle James (Sunday, Oct. 1st 2017, at the Columbus Metropolitan Library) "You have to be proactive about finding your market." "They ask for diversity, and then they say,'uh, it's a little too diverse." – Carlos Perez "Respect is key. If you write a story without research, it's all that you don't know that gets left out." -Michael Bendis, cited. When I saw Verzelle James' comics earlier in the week at SOL-CON, I knew I had to have them. They were/are the best of what comics has to offer – symbology applied, in varied textures of ink, to the surface of a perfectly managed black and white newsprint surface. Seeing his work and getting to speak with him was like diving into a longbox, finding a floppy comic you like, and as you flip through it, the author sidles up and says, "Want me to sign that?" Only eight pages of comics here from 1991. James only had about four comics to sell, some reprints of pin-ups, and all of them were over a decade old. These were his passion projects. During this panel, James discussed how much commercial illustration work he had done. I realized, looking over his books, that whatever had happened to spur these floppies into being was something that he wished to revisit. How had he gotten this work into this conference? How do works of such creative fervor flame up again and manage to find their way into the eye-range of another creator? After the panel, James asked me how I felt about the discussion. "Insight from people in the industry is priceless," I said. He didn't seem to have a problem with that answer. Reasonably though, what does success really look like for people of color in the comics industry? I could bring up a few artists, one or two writers, sure! But progress, in and of itself, can masquerade too. I think that if Cartoon Crossroad Columbus is to continue upping the stakes for gender, age, and race inclusivity in comics, then something must be done about the SÕL-CON/CXC partnership. This year, the connection between the events became ever more evident, with Caitlin McGurk and Jenny Robb doing as much equal time as they could between both conferences, and SÕL-CON participants being flagrantly present at CXC events. The best innovation is how exhibitors from both cons are mixed in together during the expo and lectures that take place at the library during the weekend. This year, SÕL-CON took the step of educating youth about drawing, and CXC took the step of giving Kat Fajardo the emerging talent award. The first year of this conference, I remember running from one side of campus to another in order to get the most out of both cons. This year, I definitely did not have to do as much running, but I'm wondering if the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum couldn't stand to create some dedicated programming to incubate talent outside of the OSU student body that will engage at a community and studio capacity with their collection and resources. ————————————————————————————————— Emil Ferris Spotlight (Sunday, Oct. 1st 2017, at the Columbus Metropolitan Library) First, if you don't know about Emil Ferris' My Favorite Things is Monsters, read this article so I don't have to re-explain the miracle that this book is. Second, I have never read My Favorite Thing is Monsters. It was a book that came out to much acclaim this year, and it wasn't until I saw Ferris herself, and most significantly, heard her speak that I now feel the impulse to go and get the book. It took Emil Ferris six years to write My Favorite Thing is Monsters. What sold me about the book is what Ferris means by Chicago. "The west is nothing like everywhere else in the world. Everywhere else, the wealth you have is in the older people in your life," she says. Ferris means 'old' Chicago. In her own words, Ferris states that 'there were all of these older actors and actresses from the silent film era, Georgette Leblanc types who were living alongside survivors of the Holocaust. It was a deeply haunted population…I realized I had access to all of these stories." "As I was drawing forth my smaller self , love kept being the thing that kept me going…I realized that I wanted my kid to see me kick some ass, and we have to give our daughters badassery." "The line creates secret unknown things to people from the heart of the creator." "I began to see that each page I did had a taste. One page had a taste of rosemary and mint. Another tasted of syphillis, though I have never had syphillis…that's what synthesia does." ————————————————————————————————— Going to close on Kyle Baker's work. The best reason to visit a conference like Cartoon Crossroads Columbus is that you get encounters with current and historical works about modern life that aren't going to be seen elsewhere, all in one room. There is a cornucopia of independent comics creators from all walks of life here and let's face it: The fine art world doesn't accommodate unknown milestone creations from the world of comics, and the mainstream world of comics doesn't accommodate emergent comics that might be unquantifiable within the canon of superbabes, superheroes, blood, guts, and uberships. It's an in-between world where the sentiment of western middle-class expression is never treated condescendingly as ankle-browed nostalgia or visual brik-a-brak – a place where a commercial illustrator like Baker can let loose creatively, outside of his industrial obligations and have an audience, where an unconventional illustrator like Mimi Pond can fictionalize her own biography as a waitress without interpretational friction – a place where an established editorial cartoonist like Signe Wilkenson can introduce a new audience to her work within the appropriate context of its historical footnotes. It's intellectual even when it's pretending to be dumb. It's philosophical even when it's aping the pleasures of brain-vacancy. It's irreverent without portending the inherent complacency of 'fine.' It's comics, and it is the most central American art. ————————————————————————————————— Adam Griffiths is a comics artist from Takoma Park, MD. Catch his ongoing comic – American CRYO – HERE. 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Juan FernándezMay 16, 2016NewsJuan Fernandez brings you: a collection of work Laila Milevski;Doug Wright Awards; Darwyn Cooke; Allison Bechdel; Melissa Mendes; Intruder; the Ines Estrada archive; Josh Bayer Week; Poor Artists; Aphantasia. ————————————————————————————————— L'avventura and La notte We're pleased to present a collection of comics by Laila Milevski on the site this week. Made in 2014 for Comics Workbook, this series is "an exploration of visual mechanisms and themes in the Antonioni movies L'avventura and La notte…narrated by the mild-mannered, neurotic man who is drawing the comics." Thoughful reflections, Exquisitely drawing, cleverly composed. Read it here. ————————————————————————————————— Doug Wright Awards From this weekend's Toronto Comic Arts Festival: Michael Deforge, Dakota McFadzean and Patrick Kyle took home the awards among one of recent years' most exciting nomination lineups of Canadian talent. Read all about what happened at the ceremony on the DWA's official site and read the jury statement's for the winning work. ————————————————————————————————— Darwyn Cooke Remembered Cooke challenged the "illustrational vibe" that became prominent in comics in the 90s, Fowler said. "Everyone was doing a lot of lines, a lot of detail with every panel photo-realistically rendered — and that's not what comics is about. Darwyn slammed that book down in the middle of the table and said, 'No, this is comics.' And he was right. He allowed us to be cartoony again." ————————————————————————————————— Allison Bechdel Awarded Allison Bechdel recieved an honorary degree from Smith College on Sunday. Bechdel's work is archived at Smith's Sophia Smith Collection. You can watch Bechdel in conversation in with Smith College's Susan Van Dyrne here. ————————————————————————————————— Melissa Mendes' Lou It's real! Mendes' Lou is out now! Andy Oliver gives a look at over on Broken Frontier to highlight its release: Originally published as a series of minicomics from the hugely respected micropublishing outfit Oily Comics, Melissa Mendes's Lou has received a much deserved collected edition. The book follows the adventures of the titular character – a young tomboy – and her two brothers John and Eddie in 1990s small-town America. Mendes juxtaposes quieter moments of family life with longer-running, overarching storylines focusing on the intrigue of dodgy dealings at the local pizza shop and the mystery of a fantastic secret hideout adopted by the local kids. If you're itching to learn more, check out Broken Frontier's review of the original 15 issue run and see for yourself, what the big hubub is about. Lou is now available via Alternative Comics. ————————————————————————————————— The Stranger on Intruder Intruder, a free publication produced quarterly since 2012 by Seattle comics-makers is ending. Alas. Rich Smith over at The Stranger reflects on the role of this free comics publication in the Seattle comics scene. Though Intruder is bowing out after the next issue, the paper has already made an impact on the local comics community. Palm said a comics-only paper up in Bellingham called Emergence and another one in Portland called Vision Quest cite Intruder as their inspiration. Kelly Froh, author and codirector of Short Run festival, said that Intruder got a lot of comic artists and comic enthusiasts to see the fun again, "When you can pick up free comics at your record store, or at a block party on Summit Avenue, that's making comics as accessible as they should be," she said. ————————————————————————————————— Inés Estrada, dig in. How familiar are you with Inés Estrada? Estrada is an illustrator and cartoonist from Mexico City, whose comics have been published in the US and Europe. She has also been self-publishing her work since 2006 under her label Gatosaurio, putting out comics, prints, shirts and merch of all kinds. If you're not intimately familiar with her work, I want to encourage you to read up on her! Estrada has 7 comics up over at Zco.mx for your reading pleasure. Of note is Sindicalismo 89, a funny stoner romp filled with gossip, parties, destruction, dreams and masturbation. Oh and don't miss Estrada's PFC Journal. It features Estrada's raw, first take cartooning as she documented her visit to Minneapolis for the Pierre Feuille Ciseaux group residency organized by ChiFouMi, MCAD and Autoptic in 2015. ————————————————————————————————— ICYMI – Josh Bayer Week on High-Low Rob Clough touched on all the bases of Bayer's minicomics, the big books, the ethos, the craft over on the High-Low blog last week. Take some time and catch up with this artist profile if you missed it. ————————————————————————————————— Why Are (Most) Artists (So Fucking) Poor? Oldie, but a goodie by William Powhida. Over at Hyperallergic. Great hand drawn graphs 😉 ————————————————————————————————— Aphantasia: the Blindness of the Mind Here's some food for thought coming to you from the cofounder of Firefox, Blake Ross. If I tell you to imagine a beach, you can picture the golden sand and turquoise waves. If I ask for a red triangle, your mind gets to drawing. And mom's face? Of course. You experience this differently, sure. Some of you see a photorealistic beach, others a shadowy cartoon. Some of you can make it up, others only "see" a beach they've visited. Some of you have to work harder to paint the canvas. Some of you can't hang onto the canvas for long. But nearly all of you have a canvas. I don't. I have never visualized anything in my entire life. I can't "see" my father's face or a bouncing blue ball, my childhood bedroom or the run I went on ten minutes ago. I thought "counting sheep" was a metaphor. I'm 30 years old and I never knew a human could do any of this. And it is blowing my goddamned mind. For those interested, Carl Zimmer at the New York Times has also written a piece on aphantasia. It's interesting to unpack the assumptions that are neurotypically assumed with the mind's eye. In that vein, what does visual literacy mean and how does it work for those who experience Aphantasia? What are comics like by those who cannot see in the mind? ————————————————————————————————— -stay fresh, Juan Fernandez Share this page:Read More:The Alabaster Pizzo…01/29/201805/14/201802/07/2018...
Rowhouse Residency Report – Jason Robinson
Comics WorkbookMay 24, 2018Residency Reports / School UpdatesJason Robinson is a comics maker, illustrator, and graphic designer living in Asbury Park, NJ. He joined us in Pittsburgh for a weeklong Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency in June of 2017. Here are his thoughts about visiting the city and his Rowhouse Residency experience. ———————————————————————————————— My plan, initially, was to chain myself to the desk and produce so much work. All the work! I was going to get soooo much done. And I did, but not in the way I had anticipated. I spent the first two days, working alongside fellow resident Patrick Bonato, essentially chained to the drawing table. I penciled the second chapter (16 pages) of a story that grew out of the Comics Workbook Correspondence Course I completed in 2015. I enjoyed overlapping with Patrick, especially since I appreciate his comics and (possibly more importantly when sharing a space) we have similar tastes in music. It was nice to work in a shared space and be able to talk constructively about each other's work and comics in general. Patrick departed the morning of my third day. I felt fortunate that I was able to share part of my residency with a fellow comics maker, but I was also looking forward to some time alone as well. But first, off to Copacetic Comics with Frank & Sally—a sunny, relaxed morning and afternoon of drinking coffee and reading comics…and drinking more coffee and reading more comics. Absurdly caffeinated, I sketched the views from the Copacetic terrace while Frank kept adding to the pile of comics at my side. That morning alone was worth the whole trip. When I got back to the Rowhouse that evening, I worked for a couple of hours. I started tallying up the days I had left and calculating what I could actually accomplish based on my output so far. I decided I would set my current story aside as it was already flowing well, and concentrate on starting something new. Okay, so what do I work on? Drawing blanks and feeling stir crazy, I found myself antsy to get out and see Pittsburgh. Half an hour later, riding up the old Duquenese furnicular, looking out over the city, I realized I might need to shift perspectives and expectations about this trip. It couldn't be about pure output. I needed inspiration. So after enjoying the sunset over the city, I went to the Andy Warhol Museum. It delivers. I was particularly taken with a small, easily overlookable exhibit detailing his technique for achieving his ink-blotted pen line. When I returned to the house I worked for another few hours, not on my comic, but just exploring different tools, brushes, nibs, and pens—experimenting—playing with different approaches. Day four: I spent the morning drawing on index cards one after the next in a stream of consciousness. Later, I reconnected with some old friends over beer and noodles—and as I unwound, I realized how stressed I'd actually been in my daily life leading up the residency—and that this was the first time in a long time that I wasn't beholden to someone else's deadline. Day five: Brunch at Spirit with Frank and Sally (and Tina), bought some choice comics from Frank while his friends dj'd and sold vintage clothing. Came home to work, which at this point in my residency meant devouring the library of comics laying around the row house—basically all of Dash Shaw's work, Olivier Schrauwen, Sam Alden, Noel Sickles, Roy Crane, Milton Caniff, and falling head over heels in love with everything John Stanley. Day six was filled with daydreams and the jotting down of enough story ideas to last the next five years. In many ways, I feel like I was just getting revved up and here I am at the end, hoping I have the discipline to continue this trajectory or at least ride this wave for a long while. Because only now have the chaotic thoughts begun to settle on the floor of my brain. And I'm able to calmly wander through, picking up bits and pieces, and notice how some seem to connect—to join together like pieces of a puzzle. I joined Frank and Sally for dinner on that last night. And a bit drunk on wine, I tried to convey this feeling by paraphrasing a similar concept I'd read somewhere about a scientist explaining that "it may not look like I'm working when I'm staring off into space, but what I'm really doing is constructing a 3-dimensional puzzle in my head—piecing together bits and bytes of information, and that takes time and focus to carefully construct this puzzle in my mind's sky so that it may stand on it's own. So, please don't interrupt me, or you risk the pieces of the puzzle caving in on each other, imploding into a cloud of ash." …Fortunately, Frank has a better and much more succinct iteration in his back pocket – "When I'm working, you may not see it, but I'm welding here. I have a helmet on, and my mitt, it grips a fucking torch-of-fire. So stand back, or you're in danger!" I'll close with some unsolicited advise to future residents: You don't have to chain yourself to the drawing table. Of course you may, and obviously there can be great benefits to doing so, I only argue that there are other equally constructive ways to make use of this time you've carved out for yourself. Paradoxically, doing "nothing" may be exactly what's needed to do the next something. P.S. For anyone reading this on the fence about the correspondence course or a possible residency, here's one more gem from Frank that may help. "Remember, Yoda was just a guy rooting around in Luke's lunch box." ———————————————————————————————— Many thanks to Jason for the housewarming gifts he brought along in 2017 (pictured above) and for his support of the creation of the Rowhouse Residency during the crowdfund of 2016! – Frank and Sally and the Comics Workbook team ————————————————————————————————————— Check out work by Jason on his website, and follow him on Tumblr and Instagram. For more information about the Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency visit this page or email santoroschoolATgmail Share this page:Read More:09/24/201809/07/201804/03/201803/16/2018...
Juan FernándezJanuary 10, 2018los Cómics / NewsJuan empieza el día con el Puchi Award 2018 y Paul Karasik & Mark Newgarden charlando sobre Nancy! ———————————————— Los cómics y las noticias que me han llamado la atención esta semana: ~ In English and en Español ~ Deadline reminder: Jan. 10th 201 – TODAY -. La Horchata Zine is accepting submissions from creators of Central American ancestry. New Deadline: submissions for Ink Brick no. 9 are due Monday, Feb 19, 2018! Do yourself a favor and submit your comics-poetry, won't you? Belgian cartoonist and autobio-comics champion, David Libens, is starting to publish his current notebook online. His recent comics and zines have been coming from this notebook. There's some really amazing autobiography in here. First take cartooning, grappling with depression, love and the nuisance that is the call of the void. Earnest, painful and funny. The First 12 pages are available here. Happy reading. La Casa Encendida y Fulgencio Pimentel siguen buscando un libro. La convocatoria de #PuchiAward 2018 está abierta a todo tipo de géneros y formas: ficción, no ficción, novela, poesía, cómic, álbum ilustrado, ensayo, libro de cocina, geografía… Hasta el 25 de enero. The Latino Comix Expo is coming to Brownsville, Texas! Exhibitors can apply for a table, fans can get their your tickets! Cynthia Alfonso and Óscar Raña have created a new video for Spanish Psych-pop band Dois – this comes via with their new experimental animation studio called RAPAPAWN. Check out the European Fuzzy Vector Goop Abstraction in action. Paul Karasik & Mark Newgarden talk on the Virtual Memories Show with Gil Roth about their glortious achievement – How to Read Nancy, a decade-long experiment in close comics reading and visual literacy. Listen here. ————————————————————————————————— Frank Santoro and Simon Hanselmann, CAB 2013 – photo by Chris Anthony Diaz, colored by Graham Willcox International Students: The Winter Semester of thee Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers starts January 16th 2018! 8 weeks – 500 bux – coaching for as long as you need. The course is hard, but Frank will push your comics making practice to a new level, getting you to think about timing and color in new ways. His experience and ideas have influenced the likes of Connor Willumsen, Michael DeForge, and Simon Hanselmann (quote "I consider Frank Santoro to be my L. Ron Hubbard") among many others. Dig into something new in the new year! Full details and how to apply can be found HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 1-10-2018 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-10-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page:Read More:07-18-201804/18/201802/28/201810/01/2018...
Comics WorkbookJanuary 25, 2018NewsSam Ombiri on Coco Moodysson's Never Goodnight – plus other news and comics! ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here: I've been reading a splendid comic called Never Goodnight by Coco Moodysson. I found out about this fantastic book through Coco's husband, Lukas Moodysson. Lukas Moodysson is my favorite living movie director as it stands right now. His movies have received praise from Ingmar Bergman as well as Harmony Korine, and those two directors really speak to the sensibility of Lukas. Those are two filmmakers he admires, and from my understanding this admiration was independent of the praise he receives from those two directors. He made a great adaptation of Coco's Never Goodnight entitled We Are The Best. I just don't know where to start with this book. This comic is one of the most fun autobio comics I've ever read. The drawings are spectacular, it's great that she was able to summon enough of this creative energy for every panel, and deliver consistently. Her drawings are like candy that don't lose their sweetness when eaten too much. The drawings are simultaneously so expressive, but all done with that line that Sammy Harkham always talks about, where every drawing has the same weight to it and it doesn't deviate. It's easy to see why this book has the cult following it has. The storytelling is so clear, and I can see that the whole was considered, as opposed to some parts. The jokes in this book are really funny. The jokes don't even seem like jokes, or funny observations made by a distant person reminiscing. Which is not to say that there'd be anything wrong if that, were it the case – in fact it's commonly the case with autobio, or even non-autobio work (although people say all work is ultimately autobio). I guess this just speaks to the nature of life, but it's really interesting how Coco's comics don't have that reminiscing attitude, despite that being what she's doing throughout the whole work(reminiscing I mean). It's a really curious thing that when I read the comic it just feels like I'm watching life unfolding, and all the fun moments and funny moments unfolding with it. There is of course clear, concise timing in the way Coco leads us through the story, but I don't feel the least bit, shall we say, "manipulated". There are those moments in the book where it's so cute I want to hurl, but I'm still completely sold. For example, where Coco talks about how she bought dog food and hid it under her pillow in case she ever got a dog, (this was after they went around begging for money to buy a guitar and instead just splurged on a bunch of snacks). I don't know what to blame though: is it because Coco was such a likeable character to follow? Did I relate to it somehow? Are the drawings so charming that it's disarming my suspicion? It definitely seems earned because this specific brand of sentimentality doesn't pop up until the 78th page, and the comic hasn't demanded as much of an emotional response to be reciprocated to the work up until that point. It's become the trend in some comics that the author just demand that the reader reciprocate an emotional response, just because they're being courageous in expressing themselves in comics. I can't speak for every case, but people making comics should realize that you can't and shouldn't blame the reader. If what you're doing is independent of the reader, that's a different story. You can't just mumble some words and expect someone to read your mind and guess the rest of the sentence. You are responsible for making the sentence. Part of what's enjoyable (and at times it can be detrimental to me) is the ambiguity in experiencing and then re-experiencing work. This is with all art forms, though, and I really hesitate to say it's especially so with comics because of how it's words and images that you're looking at. You're also looking at the line work, you're looking at the design. Makers should consider all this and perhaps accept this when making work and not let their vain guise of "how courageous they are for expressing themselves" be where the value of the work is derived. Coco's book made me think of this because of how good it is. I didn't feel cheated for reciprocating the emotional response Coco called for. I feel that I should mention that it was surprisingly easy to separate the movie from the book whenever they would intersect. This goes deeper than them being different mediums, or what couldn't be in the movie due to Lukas and Coco's difference in sensibility. Even when I'm reading the exact same scene play out in the book that was in the movie, they seem so separate and this book is so distinguished that I don't even think about the movie. There's an aspect to this book that I have no idea how to approach. I don't know how comics are perceived in Sweden. It seems that there they have a tighter relationship with the literary world, maybe? I really don't know. Anyway, there's a panel in the book where Coco just coldly mentions how a friend's friend killed himself with a guitar chord. I'm rather puzzled at the intention of this. From what I understand, she was doing some work behind the scenes with Lukas' films, and they made some kind of comic together (which someone should translate!) so I can't help but to think there's this lyrical element to her including this in the comic, something that's similar to the lyricism in Lukas' movies. In contrast to this, though, there's a sequence where the girls run out and there's a homeless person with a syringe stuck in his arm, and he's just there as a gag to convey how loud the girls are being about a bunch of nonsense, and yelling "We Are the Best!" It's like he's just there to be annoyed, but there's a whole cute aspect to this. It's funny because of how certain elements that were in the book were taken out of the movie, probably because of how it would evoke a completely different feeling, and completely change the atmosphere. The sensibility of Never Goodnight feels a lot like a YA book, but introduces bleaker elements than those found in the adaptation made by Lukas (whom people sometimes liken to a more trustworthy incarnation of Lars Von Trier and who is associated with "the New Extremity" movement). It's just really funny how I don't know what to make of this. Not that the comic is any less fun to read as a result, it only makes it more interesting to read. In a lot of ways, and obviously this comes as no surprise, there's a lot of match up in terms of sensibility between Lukas and Coco. Maybe it's because of how Lukas described his creative process as different from Coco's that I anticipated a bigger difference. For example, Coco will say things like there's not enough brown, or whichever color. This is strange because her comic are done in black and white! I feel that however many accolades I can try to give this book would be a futile attempt at describing how great this book is. It's just such a wonderful book! – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— Other News Ben Passmore animated – check it out HERE. Ron Wimberly on Radix Media, talking the sensual experience of paper, among other things – HERE. Philippe Leblanc reviews Carta Minor's Passing for The Comics Beat. Zora Gilbert writes about Bingo Love by Tee Franklin, for Women Write About Comics – read the article HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Collected from the thousands of pages of material that Frank has left scattered all over the digital landscape, these 4 PDF collections contain Frank's best writing on comics and comics making from the past decade. Theory and process, reviews and discoveries, journeys both physical and spiritual. Check out the "Best of Frank Santoro" PDF collections, available HERE! ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 1-25-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page:Read More:10/18/201803/13/201803/01/2018Comic Arts Brooklyn 2017...
Aaron CockleMarch 1, 2016NewsThe 5 Obstructions This is a collaboration from 2008 wherein Matt Madden presented Tom Hart with a number of constraints, in the spirit of the Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth documentary from 2003. Charlotte Salomon: Leben? oder Theater? All of Salomon's Leben? oder Theater? can be found at the above link. It is an astonishing achievement. Paul Gravett has a piece about Salomon and her work on his blog. BDSM: Eleanor Davis via Youth in Decline New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium The 146th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, March 1, 2016 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Theodore Barrow will present and discuss his paper, "From the Easter Wedding to the Frantick Lover" — an exploration of the relationship between text and image in the long eighteenth century. Theodore Barrow is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Center, CUNY. His area of focus is intertextuality in the art of John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer. PUSH/PULL Share this page:Read More:03/16/201802/06/2018The Hannah K. Lee Interview07/06/2018...
Frank's 1st Workshop Tour
Chris Anthony DiazJanuary 29, 2016The Diaz ArchiveAll Photos by Chris Anthony Diaz and colored by Graham Willcox. Frank Santoro's first ever workshop tour – San Francisco's Mission Comics and Art – 2012 Share this page:Read More:01/22/201806/05/2018Comics Workbook…Rowhouse Residency…...
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:Read More:03/02/201804/10/201802/02/201802/27/2018...
Sally IngrahamNovember 4, 2016NewsSally here, ready to shout about some cool comics and the women who make them. I've got notes on Lynda Barry, Julia Gfrörer, the She Changed Comics project, Lyn Chevli, Shade the Changing Girl #1, the CW Roller Derby "of the mind" League – plus an interview with Kevin Czap and Comics Workbook at CAB. ————————————————————————————————— Comics Workbook will be at Comic Arts Brooklyn this Saturday, Nov. 5th – find us upstairs at table 27! Frank Santoro, Juan Fernandez, Jenn Lisa, and John Kelly will be there, with other Comics Workbook students and friends stopping by throughout the day. Thee incredible Ronald Wimberly will be signing at our table at 2 pm! Just when I thought it was safe to pack up the purel! I'm guesting at @comicsworkbook table at @comicartsbklyn this Saturday at 2pm. I'll have Prince of Cats, Attack on Titan, and Something Wicked this Way Comes (The original to this is still available $300. Hit me in my DMs) #comicartsbrooklyn #comicbookworkbook #RonaldWimberly #FrankSantoro #GratNin #PrinceofCats #Hanzōbō A photo posted by Ronald Wimberly (@ronaldwimberly) on Nov 3, 2016 at 3:32pm PDT Also catch Whit Taylor and Alyssa Berg and Aaron Cockle tabling downstairs! ————————————————————————————————— I finally had a minute to pick up Shade the Changing Girl #1 while working at Copacetic Comics this week. Steve Ditko's original Shade the Changing Man series (1970s), and Peter Milligan's wild reworking of the Shade stories (1990s) seemed to be lurking around, wondering what these GIRLS were going to do with the material. I was curious too (I spent a fair amount of time this past summer just staring in awe at some of those Brendan McCarthy covers of Milligan's Shade). Shade the Changing Girl comes from creative team Cecil Castellucci (writer), Marley Zarcone (pencils), and Kelly Fitzpatrick (color), and at a glance, it certainly has the right look. The story ties easily into earlier Shade while quickly forging it's own plot line: university dropout Loma (a big fan of lunatic poet Roc Shade) steals the "madness coat" from a museum on the planet Meta, and zips to Earth where she takes up residence in the body of a dying teenage girl. It doesn't take Loma long to realize that dealing with high school, the uncontrollable madness, and the folks on Meta who want the coat back will make life a lot more difficult than she anticipated. Cecil Castellucci (whom I know from her work on The Plain Janes – which Jim Rugg did the artwork for) so far seems to be rocking this, and I'm pretty excited to see where the story goes. Here's an interview with Castellucci from July that details her own excitement about the project. Issue #2 came out this week – I'll be aiming to get my hands on it asap. ————————————————————————————————— The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund started the She Changed Comics project last year – it was a series they ran on their Tumblr during Women's History Month. They successfully Kickstarted a book in the spring of 2016, and it has just been released. The book was another one that I managed to check out this week during my time at Copacetic Comics. Meant to be much more than just an overview of (the dreaded phrase) "women in comics", the book claims to be "the definitive history of the women who changed free expression in comics, with profiles of more than 60 groundbreaking female professionals and interviews with the women who are changing today's medium". While a book that clocks in at 170 pages can hardly be called comprehensive, it did feel like a great who's who of important names, drawing from the breadth of comics history and the mainstream, syndicated, and alt-comics scenes. Cartoonists, publishers, and editors all got a shout out – Edwina Dumm to Jackie Ormes to Marie Severine to Diane Noomin to Kate Beaton to Roz Chast to Fiona Staples to Francoise Mouly to Karen Berger. With two pages devoted to each person, the book is definitely a good resource and a nice thing to have on hand when some idiot wants to claim that women don't make or read comics. Almost entirely written by women as well. My only complaint is that there weren't enough pictures! Get a copy of the book HERE. ————————————————————————————————— One of the women who gets a mention in the book above is Lyn Chevli, the co-founder of Tits & Clits – the first comic book written, drawn, and published solely by women (beating the first Wimmen's Comix to the newsstands by just a few weeks in July of 1972). Lyn recently died, at the age of 84, and Joyce Farmer (her Tits & Clits publishing partner) provided a remembrance of her on The Comics Journal – read it HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Lynda Barry of course also makes the CBLDF's list of women who changed comics, thoroughly, constantly, and wonderfully. She is featured in The Guardian this week, riffing on "comics, creativity, and Matt Groening". Her career has zigzagged through the comics industry, beginning in the syndicated world with the strip Ernie Pook's Comeek (which ran for 30 years), bumping into a novel or two along the way, and now exploding in both the classroom at the University of Wisconsin (where she was recently named as the UW-Madison's first recipient of the Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art) and a lively lecture circuit, where she preaches the gospel of creativity. Read the article HERE. ————————————————————————————————— You can see some pages from Julia Gfrörer's new book Laid Waste (Fantagraphics, November 2016) over on Flood Magazine, part of an interview with Julia that digs into her interest in the Middle Ages and the origins of this particular dark story. Check it out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Kevin Czap was awarded the CXC 2016 Emerging Talent Award a few weeks ago during Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. In the words of Tom Spurgeon, who presented the award to an astonished Kevin, "…this goes to a cartoonist whom we feel has plenty of promise as a cartoonist and has shown themselves to be a solid and giving community member as well… We love everything we've ever learned about you, in terms of your comics community heart." Alyssa Berg caught up with Kevin a week later and continued the conversation about CXC, comics, and community – and the type of energy a person consciously puts into their work. Their conversation is featured here on the site today. Catch Kevin and Czap Books at Comic Arts Brooklyn this weekend! ————————————————————————————————— The Comics Workbook Roller Derby League has shared the results of a recent "roller derby bout". The group is constantly expanding, while dialing in a deeper team practice and refining the goals and projects that we're about. Much more to come – meanwhile, check out some comics we've made recently. See the rest of this "derby bout" HERE. ————————————————————————————————— #sallyingraham #comics A video posted by Sally Ingraham (@sally_ingraham) on Nov 2, 2016 at 9:57pm PDT Have a fantastic weekend folks, and get up to some mischief. Don't let November get to you yet – and don't forget to turn your clocks back an hour on Sunday! – Sally (Rogue) Share this page:Read More:10/10/201803/23/201802/16/201809/21/2018...
Posted on April 17, 2018 April 17, 2018 by Aaron Cockle
Aaron here today with Latin American Art; Remembering Geneviève Castrée; Banksy/Zehra Doğan; Retrofit Comics 2018 Subscription
Sylvia Palacios Whitman, Passing Through
Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985
At the Brooklyn Museum through July 22:
The artworks on view range from painting and sculpture to photography, video, performance, and other new mediums. Included are emblematic figures such as Lygia Pape, Ana Mendieta, and Marta Minujín, alongside lesser‐known names such as Cuban‐born abstract painter Zilia Sánchez; Colombian sculptor Feliza Bursztyn; Peruvian composer, choreographer, and activist Victoria Santa Cruz; and Argentine mixed‐media artist Margarita Paksa. The Brooklyn presentation also includes Nuyorican portraits by photographer Sophie Rivera, as well as work from Chicana graphic arts pioneer Ester Hernández, Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez, and Afro-Latina activist and artist Marta Moreno Vega.
"Poetry seemed useless in the context of actual annihilation."
On Studio 360, Kurt Anderson talks with Phil Elverum, husband of Geneviève Castrée, who passed away in 2016, about Elverum's recent Mount Eerie albums, which are about Castrée's death. Her last book, A Bubble, will be published in June by D&Q.
Zehra Doğan/Banksy
Patricia Mastricolo at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund wrote about the Banksy mural protesting the imprisonment of Turkish artist and journalist Zehra Doğana few weeks back:
This first night the mural was revealed, a projection of the dark painting Doğan is imprisoned for showed over the mural. Based off a photo Doğan saw, she painted the rubble of a Kurdish town, destroyed by tanks, with the Turkish flag flying over the town. She painted the tanks as surreal monsters. The Turkish government said that the painting compromised military security, even though it was based on a government photograph.
Credit: Tony Cenicola, The New York Times
Sara Lautman
Retrofit Comics 2018
All the Sad Songs – Summer Pierre
Fashion Forecasts – Yumi Sakugawa
I Love You – Sara Lautman
John, Dear – Laura Lannes
Our Wretched Town Hall – Eric Kostiuk Williams
The Prince – Liam Cobb
Survive 300 Million 1 – Pat Aulisio
Survive 300 Million 2: Serpentine Captives – Pat Aulisio
The Troublemakers – Baron Yoshimoto
TRUMPTRUMP vol. 2: Modern Day Presidential – Warren Craghead III
Understanding – Becca Tobin
The Winner – Karl Stevens
Karl Stevens
Vision Box – 4-17-2018 – by Cameron Arthur
Joanie and Jordie – 4-17-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio
Austin, TX Scene Report
Frank SantoroDecember 25, 2011Riff Raff / Scene ReportsThis post originally appeared on The Comics Journal – 12/25/2011 Frank here. This week's scene report is brought to you by William Cardini. Mr. Cardini just finished my comic book correspondence course. Hopefully, you will someday see the comic that he produced during the course – it's pretty sharp. In the meantime, please enjoy his report on the Austin comics scene. ————- Austin Scene Report by William Cardini. Despite having been (and in some cases continuing to be) home to various comics legends, such as Chris Ware, Mack White, Cayetano Garza Jr, Shannon Wheeler, and the Armadillo World Headquarters crew, Austin doesn't seem to have the same reputation among cartoonists as similar cities such as Portland or Minneapolis, but I think it could. Austin has two comprehensive comic book stores, Austin Books & Comics and Dragon's Lair, that stock everything from local minicomics to Fantagraphics to manga. And if you're more interested in zines, there's Monkeywrench, an all-volunteer collective-run radical bookstore. Austin Books shows local artists on their back wall. This is a long distance photo I took from my show there with my wife Glade. You can see their deep back issue racks. The center of my Austin comics scene is Domy Books. An independent bookstore and gallery, Domy started in 2006 in Houston's hip Montrose neighborhood. In 2008, Domy co-founder Russell Etchen opened an Austin branch of the store, and it's been a boon. A towering, super friendly red-haired dude, Russell is always eager to make a recommendation or talk about obscure comics, artists, zinesters, and graffiti artists. He makes sure that Domy features a prominent zine section, screenprints, and a slew of art comics. He also curates the gallery section, featuring cartoonists such as Ron Regé Jr and Esther Pearl Watson. Russell also puts together the annual Monster Show, where he asks cartoonists from all over to do a 9×12″ drawing. Photo of this year's Monster Show opening by Carling Hale. If you squint you can see Jonny Negron. Speaking of Mr. Negron, Austin has a pretty full local creator roster. Here's a small sample: Jonny Negron – His drawings are charged with raw sexual energy. Ben Snakepit – Ben's been drawing three-panel punk rock diary comics every day since 2001 Aaron Whitaker and Melinda Tracy Boyce – This comics power couple just moved here from Portland. They do diary and literary comics collaboratively and singly. Zach Taylor – Zach does totally out-there adventures comics and runs the Austin Sketch Group, who meet up every Sunday to draw comics (and they're not the only draw club in town). You can see most of these folks once a year at STAPLE!, a local indy media/comics festival that's been getting bigger and better every one of the seven years its run. In general, Austin has a community that's really supportive of DIY efforts and art. The music, literary, and art scenes ooze over and intermingle with the comics scene. There are a lot of creative people doing a lot of things here. If only it weren't so damn hot. Share this page:Read More:09/10/1807/27/201802/06/201803/23/2018...
Aaron CockleAugust 27, 2018NewsL. Nichols; Risography!; NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium; Attentional Generative Networks; Ignatz Noms ————————————————————————————————— "Oh crap, I'm drawing myself." L. Nichols is interviewed by Martyn Pedler at TCJ: You talked about about figuring things out through your art. Did making Flocks change the way you thought about faith, or thought about God? It was very healing. I printed out the first five chapters, made floppies of them, and had people come and tell me how much it meant to them to read it. It means so much to me to hear that. What making Flocks changed is my faith in other people. It helps me feel more connected to myself and connected to others. I always felt like my uncomfortableness about sharing it would be offset by the good that would come of it. Making this always felt like something I had to do. I needed to do this. It wasn't easy to write. I feel like I relived so much stuff. I'm really glad that my wife is so supportive, and my in-laws are very supportive. I feel very lucky. I tried to end it on a good note. I'm a bit of a sappy person, just naturally, and I was trying to make it not too sappy. But I feel like I've ended up in a great place, and I have so much, and I'm so grateful that I have all that I have – so it's hard for me to look at my past with too much pain. If I hadn't have gone through that, I wouldn't be here. If I changed anything, I wouldn't be me. Writing the book has helped me embrace my past in some ways. To find new comfort in it, and new confidence in myself and who I've become. ————————————————————————————————— The Vintage Japanese Copy Machine Enjoying an Artistic Renaissance Atlas Obscura looks at the risograph machine and it's use in contemporary book-making: Independent publishing houses like Perfectly Acceptable and TXTbooks are helping turn the grainy likability of Risograph printing into a global aesthetic. The myriad color combinations that are possible (Davis' favorite being "mint and sunflower, 100 percent," and Terzis celebrating the mix of "any of the complementary colors, because when you put them together they really vibrate") makes it seem like the Risograph was destined for artistic flourish all along. But Issue Press founder George Wietor challenges the idea of the Riso's "look" overshadowing its intended purpose: "The simplicity of the Riso brings a specific kind of arts publishing within reach and allows me to work with ink and paper in a way that I would otherwise have difficulty achieving," he says, "but I am (only very mildly) concerned about elevating the Riso to something more than it is or, I believe, should be—which is a means of production rather than a specific style." ————————————————————————————————— New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium Fall 2018 Events Calendar Presenters of potential interest to readers of this news-blog include (but are not limited to): September 11: Sharad Sharma on Grassroots Comics: By the people, for the people. In the last 20 years World Comics has conducted more than 1,200 comics workshops in the most remote and disturbed areas of the globe and trained over 1,000,000 people in making comics about local issues. November 13: Jason Lutes speaks about completing his two-decade-long project Berlin December 4: Lala Albert will read from various short and long comics created over the past 4 years, featuring mainly works in sci-fi, erotica and sci-fi erotica genres. She will also discuss the process that went into making some or all of the comics. Check the website for more info. ————————————————————————————————— Text to Image Via Rob Beschizza at Boingboing via AttnGAN: Fine-Grained Text to Image Generation with Attentional Generative Adversarial Networks by Tao Xu, Pengchuan Zhang, Qiuyuan Huang, Han Zhang, Zhe Gan, Xiaolei Huang, Xiaodong He. A research team wrote about how they trained a machine-learning AI to generate images from text descriptions. When fed birds as its dataset, it got very good at painting birds… Try it out here. ————————————————————————————————— Small Press Expo Announces 2018 Ignatz Award Nominees ————————————————————————————————— Cement Mixer – 8-28-18 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page:Read More:09/25/201810/18/201803/06/201802/06/2018...
Art Trip: At the Magic House
MardouAugust 25, 2016Art Trip / EssaysThe notion of a Children's Museum just didn't exist in the 1980s when I was a child and let's face it, it's a complete misnomer. There's nothing "museum-like" about St Louis's Magic House, enjoyable as it is (for children). When I was a kid, the Museum meant the Manchester Museum, with impressive items pillaged from the British Empire and it's protectorates during the Victorian Era. The Manchester Museum still has that same collection of Ancient Egyptian artifacts and I remember them perfectly, on school trips pressed up against the glass, staring at partially unwrapped mummies with horrified fascination. One of the mummies was a male with a 2000 year bandaged up penis. You just don't forget seeing that as a child. Very unlike the Children's "museums" of today, which are more or less interactive play palaces. That's not a criticism, it's fine, my kid had a great time. But unlike the Milwaukee Public Museum, where we took a family trip earlier this summer, I'm assuming she won't remember much about the Magic House, except that she had fun. Nothing was learned, it's an "in the moment" experience only. But this cool tamarind monkey with its little hairdo at the Milwaukee Public Museum might be remembered for a lot longer. It already has legendary status in our family unit. (Note: Milwaukee Public Museum is perhaps the best museum I have ever been to. It's like stepping into a lurid 1970s text book. Everyone should go there.) In Milwaukee I didn't get to draw anything, as my participation in looking at stuff was required. At the Magic House you just sit around and wait for your kid to be done playing. Which works out great if you take a sketchbook. Maybe these pages will serve as a memory book for my child, now that summer is all but over. ————————————————————————————————— Art Trip is a series that features reflections on art and comics, and the adventures that transform those who seek it out. ————————————————————————————————— Sacha Mardou is a Brit making comics in St Louis, Missouri. Sky in Stereo is her most recent comic. Share this page:Read More:Rowhouse Residency…The Alabaster Pizzo…05/08/2018Rowhouse Residency…...
Sam OmbiriNovember 24, 2016NewsToday we have thoughts from Tyler Landry on the recent work-in-progress of Cameron Weston Nicholson, and Sam Ombiri's response to this with further exploration of the act of sketching and process work – plus other news items from the week. ————————————————————————————————— Tyler Landry here. I've been following some of Cameron Weston Nicholson's semi-secret endeavors over the last week or two, and the man is ON FIRE! Several simultaneous streams of intense character development are taking place here – some involving characters you might recognize from a certain book/film about a peculiar little girl who's looking for her place in the world, while some are brand new, straight from Cam's brain-swamp. The latter are the first manifestations of a new comic he's got in the works. Sssshhhhhh… There is a sincere (and successful) attempt here to accentuate each character's unique physicality which, for me, helps to telegraph their personalities directly into their appearance. Think of it like exaggerated facial expressions – for the whole body. This next set of character poses is as much about movement as it is about base structure. In this case, what they do outwardly speaks volumes about what's going on inside. Combined, the physical form and the gestures amount to much of what's required for these characters to communicate who they are. What Cameron's been doing here is the beginning of world-building for a story. Be it in comics, film/tv, a novel, or a video game, steps like these towards developing characters and, by extension, the world they inhabit, are essential. Cam's really feeling these guys out, trying to understand what makes 'em tick, how they dress, how they act, how they go about their business in the world he's going to place them in. Just like any exercise in copying the masters, there's a wealth of information to be gleaned from retracing the steps of your predecessors on the way to (or alongside) taking your own. – Tyler Landry Follow Cameron Weston Nicholson's Instagram to keep up with more of his process work – @prof_weston Watch the video of Cameron's Comics Workbook-hosted workshop at SPX 2016 HERE. We have presented this Feature in full, but you can also read it HERE on the site, and check out more links to Cameron and Tyler Landry's work. What follows is Sam Ombiri's response to the above piece about Cameron's work. ————————————————————————————————— Sam Ombiri here. Gary Panter said something like sketchbooks are your friend – sometimes you hide an idea in there and you find it later when you need it (I think that's what he said). CF said he likes to think of a sketchbook or blank page as an experimental plane. Mieko Kawakami said that for her, sketching (she actually said poetry – but it's in a different cultural context, which unless you avidly read contemporary Japanese literature in Japanese, and keep up to date with the trends in relation to the history of Western influence on Japanese poetry, mixing with the more traditional Japanese poetry, then going back to a mix of traditional and Western influence and just what's hot in the scene right now…you'd get it – not that I know anything about all that, I just heard it somewhere). Anyway for Mieko Kawakami "sketching" is like delusion and the "final draft" (she actually said prose) is like imagination. I kinda partly disagree with this illustration. I don't think – with my ignorance of what's going on with Japanese poetry right now – work of that kind is pure delusion, but it is emotion tapered with structure at least for the time being (though there's still structure at play, as shown in Cameron Weston Nicholson's work – see above – but there's room for expression created here. Or maybe it's just one's personal fears and reservations.) CF said something like the best way to draw is to turn your back on everyone you know and your ideals – at least I think that's what he said. Japanese poetry is really preoccupied with rhythm, so even with the "delusion" it's still grounded in something. Mieko Kawakami said the delusion she was referring to was like how she could have a family live in a house made out of pancakes – but ironically when she's referring to her imagination she feels she can't do that. It makes me wonder – why make novels that limit yourself if they are a "higher calling"? From my understanding, for awhile the attitude readers had for novels in Japan were: the more difficult the better. I'm not sure whether it was The Tale of Genji or Don Quixote that was the first novel, but I think it's safe to say the novelists most likely have a strong sense of tradition strictly built on the foundation that The Tale of Genji set up (I'm only assuming). So then, maybe that strong sense of tradition is what drives Kawakami to limit herself. That doesn't really make any sense though, because a lot of the more popular contemporary Japanese authors, at least popular outside of Japan, have been influenced by novels outside the Japanese tradition. I think she cited Virginia Woolf as a big influence. Someone said that the current movement is a fusion of the old difficult traditional Japanese literature and the new fun Japanese literature. Maybe in delusion/sketching/experimentation there's a lack of tampering (which isn't always the case). The only tampering to be found in imagination or in the work is in one's limitations (sometimes). Ambiguity is subtracted so there's a more possible chance of connection, but connection can happen either way. Sketches/process work is the most honest/real documentation. It doesn't always show up in apparent ways in all works but sometimes it shows up in the final work, which usually rocks. I like to be reminded when I'm looking at a drawing that it's a drawing made by a person who isn't always graceful. – Sam Ombiri ————————————————————————————————— A few other news items for the day: Ben Passmore has a comic up on The Nib this week about getting arrested for protesting the KKK – check it out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The New Yorker ran a piece last week about the "Hidden Black Female Figures of Western Art" that is well worth a read. An excerpt: "What began as a small experiment expanded into the history of art in the entire Western world. The museums were invisible graveyards. They were just sitting there: broken, defaced, unseen. A catalogue of bodies. It was an invisible archaeology—an archaeology that crisscrossed time and space. Everywhere I went, I found them, just off, just to the edge, just beneath: pieces of black female bodies buried in plain sight. A small black female carved into the handle of a tool. Miniature black women who could fit into your palm. A three-inch-long black female carved into a knife handle, so you could hold on to her body tightly whenever you sliced your daily bread. A palm-sized black woman in your hand when you brushed your hair at night, looking absently into the mirror. A spoon handle, a drum, a hammer, a flute—black bodies sculpted into the wooden frame surrounding a heroic painting of a white male on top of a white horse, riding triumphantly into war. Black female bodies ornamenting the tripods, the base of a table, sleeping inside the frame, selling, offering, tending in the background of innumerable paintings. Bending, standing, waiting. Our whole artistic history crawling with the decorative bodies of black women." – Robin Coste Lewis for The New Yorker Read the rest of the article HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Robin McConnell has a massive Cartoon Crossroads Columbus report up on the Inkstuds site – check it out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Matthew Thurber's comics have been adapted into the play 1-800-MICE, being put on by the Baltimore Annex Theater – info and tickets HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Comics Workbook has announced the Winter Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers – course starts Dec. 29th 2016! 8 week course – 500 bux – 10 spots available – apply by Dec. 13th 2016 and get $100 off course fee! More details can be found HERE – or email santoroschoolATgmail. Santoro School Application guidelines: -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. Send applications to: santoroschoolATgmail Share this page:Read More:01/29/201809/21/201807/27/201804/20/2018...
TCAF 2016 | Chippendale, Mickey, Como, Marra, Minette, Jesjit
Juan FernándezJune 3, 2016Festivals and ShowsShare this page:Read More:07/11/201807-18-201809/28/201802/28/2018...
Aaron CockleJune 20, 2016NewsAaron Cockle with GG Comics; Aidan Koch Exhibiting; ELCAF Capsule Reviews; Susan Te Kahurangi King; Jason Shiga; Ink Brick 5; Hopper Process ————————————————————————————————— Unattainable by GG CW's featured comic for this week, from 2015. All of GG's comics can be read for free on her website (completed stories) and on her tumblr (in progress stories). ————————————————————————————————— The person you are trying to reach is not available Work by Aidan Koch & Ieva Kraule, at Hester Gallery in NYC, continues through July 3, 2016. ————————————————————————————————— Some quick reviews of comics purchased at the recent East London Comic Arts Festival Healy's storytelling is superb. The book begins with a double page from each story, context free, before we travel back to the beginning of each. Gradually, connections emerge and the beautiful colouring does nothing to stem the slowly dawning horror as the conditions worsen. As the members of the 1921 expedition find themselves stuck on a deserted island, with crossing hundreds of miles of sea ice the only hope of escape, the discovery of bear skulls and the threat of scurvy reveal just how indifferent the friendly arctic is to humans. There are numerous brilliantly understated details throughout, and the fact that we know Blackjack has a sick child at home makes her plight all the more awful. This is a book with a strongly compelling narrative – the expertly timed switches between the three stories encourage you to keep going – and I found myself reading the book in a single evening. The artwork is terrific, with really effective use of colour, and although the influence of Chris Ware can be seen in the characters it's certainly not to the extent where it becomes derivative. Healy is a very talented storyteller and artist, and this is a strong release. — via Pete Redrup ————————————————————————————————— THERE IS NO CENTER: Dan Nadel on Susan Te Kahurangi King at Edlin Gallery At first glance King's drawings are unlikely candidates for the amount of press they've received, let alone a full-blown museum exhibition—we're talking about small, cartoon-based pictures, all made using the same pencil-and-crayon techniques and often in scrappy condition. But compositionally, King's pictures permit various points of entry, providing the viewer a license to interpret freely. We may recognize cartoon characters and humanoids, but the odd secret of icons like Woody Woodpecker, Bugs Bunny, and Daffy Duck is that, embedded as they are in our cultural memory, they read however we want them to—invested with historical meaning or as hollow masks, purely formal agglomerations of shapes. — via Dan Nadel ————————————————————————————————— Jason Shiga Interviewed at TCJ Why did you choose Risograph printing for this series? What is your process like? I bought a Risograph printer because I wanted to do a two-color comic and it's the cheapest option. I do also like the way it looks. It has that really warm, organic feel to it. And when the registration is just a little off, it looks really sweet. I do my penciling with ballpoint pens. If I make a small mistake I'll just write an "x" through the line and draw another one. There's no need to erase it since it doesn't show up in the finished art anyways. I draw my pencils on letter size paper, I blow them up to ledger size on a photocopier, and then I lightbox those and ink them with a brush and a pen. That's pretty much it. For lettering I print out the letters in Photoshop so I can adjust all the kerning and get that right, and then I just trace over that with a Micron. Then, I do my coloring in Photoshop and call it a day. Something that's always attracted me about comics is that you can buy all the raw materials you need to get started for five bucks. There's no reason you cannot be a cartoonist! — Interview with Jason Shiga conducted by Jeanette Roan ————————————————————————————————— Ink Brick Issue 5 INK BRICK is a journal dedicated to comics poetry. This issue features work by 29 creators using the visual language of comics to make poetry. There's also a special section featuring an excerpt from a forthcoming collection of Jenny Zervakis's mini comics work, to be published by Spit and a Half and the Sequential Artists Workshop. Featuring original work by: Louise Aleksiejew, Kurt Ankeny, Nicky Arscott, Colleen Louise Barry, Aaron Cockle, Letisia Cruz, Allie Doersch, Shawn Eisenach, Winnie T. Frick, Mike Getsiv, Dina Hardy, CB Hart, Jason Hart, Aurélien Leif, Courtney Loberg, Maxine Marie, Antoine Medes, Laurence Musgrove, Myra Musgrove, A. Noreña, Thilini Perera, Ellis Rosen, Sam Ross, Alexander Rothman, Samplerman, Alexey Sokolin, Deshan Tennekoon, Paul K. Tunis, Jenny Zervakis. Front and back cover illustrations by Samplerman. Submissions for INK BRICK no. 6 are due Sunday, September 4, 2016. ————————————————————————————————— How Edward Hopper Storyboarded 'Nighthawks' These drawings are among 19 studies for Nighthawks, brought together for the first time, in a revelatory show now at the Whitney. "Hopper Drawing" deploys 200 Hopper drawings—part of a trove of 2,500 bequeathed by the artist's widow, Josephine—to showcase the role of drawing throughout his career, from his life drawing classes at the New York School of Art in the early 1900s, to his travels in Europe and Paris from 1906 to 1910, to the studies he made at the Whitney Studio Club and beyond. (After closing at the Whitney on October 6, the show will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center.) — via Robin Cembalest at Art News ————————————————————————————————— Share this page:Read More:02/06/2018Comic Arts Brooklyn 2017Digital Ways of Seeing…04/03/2018...
Juan FernándezSeptember 7, 2016los Cómics / NewsJuan con tus noticias sobre los cómics en Latinoamérica Y España! Entreviñetas 2016, un preview de Tokio Zombie, de Yusaku Hanakuma;Mireia Pérez reseña Grandes Preguntas de Anders Nilsen;Tetas Tristes – Convocatoria de Septiembre; el nuevo libro de Connor Willumsen, Portraits. ————————————————————————————————— Felicitaciones a TODOS los que crearon y sometieron sus cómics al concurso concurso de composición de este año ! Los Resultados: Primer Lugar– $500 premio en efectivo : Cameron Nicholson – For a Lack of Better Words Segundo Lugar – $250 en crédito a Copacetic Comics: Shee Phon – I Know It's Not About Me, But I Don't Want To Die Tercer Lugar – $100 en crédito a Copacetic Comics: Cameron Arthur – Oasis Mención de Honor – $50 en crédito a Big Planet Comics: Lisa Wilkinson – The Last Time I Saw Tate; Janne Marie Dauer – Blame It On the Night Moves; Luke Howard – Extragalactic; Niall Breen – Śūnyatā Premio Especial– $25 en crédito a Copacetic Comics: Lina Madöry – Reflection No Prize Shout Out!: Jillian Fleck – I Got A Job; Phillip Dokes – Falling Felictationes a los ganadores y a todos que compitieron. ————————————————————————————————— Entreviñetas 2016 ¡Pronto comienza la séptima temporada de Entreviñetas en Colombia! El #FestivalEntreviñetas2016 tendrá a Bogotá y Medellín como sedes. Preparate y tomate un paseo visual por los invitados al Festial 2016. Brecht Vandenbroucke (Bélgica), Michael DeForge (Canadá), Olivier Kugler (Alemania), Elenio Pico (Argentina), Aidan Koch (Estados Unidos), Zane Zlemeša (Letonia), Inés Estrada (México), Diana Ojeda (Colombia), Sole Otero (Argentina), Pablo Guerra (Colombia), Marco Tóxico (Bolivia), Hernán Sansone (Argentina), Olea (Chile), Phoebe Gloeckner (Estados Unidos), Benjamin Dix (Reino Unido), ICINORI (Francia), Alexandra Zsigmond (Estados Unidos), Puño (España), Miguel Gallardo (España), Cabizbaja (Colombia), David Avend (Colombia), Jean Paul Zapata (Colombia) Si el cómic es lo que te apasiona y vives en Latinoamérica, no se lo pueden perder! ————————————————————————————————— Tokio Zombie Heta Uma en España! Podeis leer las primeras páginas de Tokio Zombie, de Yusaku Hanakuma, en exclusiva en Canino Mag. Tokyo Zombie es el nuevo lanzamiento de la editorial de tebeos española más asilvestrada e inclasificable del panorama nacional, Autsaider Comics. El principal representante del estilo de manga heta-uma (malo pero bueno), Yusaku Hanakuma, presenta su obra más popular (fue llevada al cine en 2005), rebosante de zombis, sangre y sexo incorrecto. Tenemos el primer capítulo en exclusiva para ti. ————————————————————————————————— Gorriones y Conejos Mireia Pérez nos ofrece su reseña de la obra maestral de Anders Nilsen, Grandes Preguntas (Fulgencio Pimentel, 2011) en forma vlog. Una de las más grandes obras de la literatura universal. "Grandes Preguntas" de Anders Nilsen. También hablo sobre "Watership Down" de Richard Adams. AQUÍ podéis leer un artículo que escribí sobre el tema donde desarrollo un poco más su semenjanzas. ————————————————————————————————— Tetas Tristes – Convocatoria de Septiembre Si alguna vez has deseado crear alguna obra autobiografica, colectivo de cómics feminista, Tetas Tristes les presentan la oportunidad! El póder lo encontramos escribiendo, y dibujando. A dibujar chicas! Hola, la nueva convocatoria para el mes de Septiembre es dibujar un cómic con cosas que te de #vergüenza hacer en la realidad. Muchas veces una/e se limita a ""dejarse ser"" tal cual es por vergüenza o pena, como le dicen en México. Las invitamos a dibujar esas cosas vergonzosas que hacemos por torpes o no hacemos por parecer finas/elegantes jajaja Rompamos las reglas. Envía tus aportes a tetastristes@gmail.com ————————————————————————————————— Llego la Melancolía La obra más reciente de Simon Hanselmann, Melancolía ya esta disponible en España! Esto es, por supuesta gracias a la editorial, Fulgencio Pimentel. Puedes aprender un poquito mas sobre esta nueva entrada en su serie de antihumor, Megg, Mogg y Buho en http://www.fulgenciopimentel.com/. Melancolía es la última entrega de la serie de antihumor de la década y Simon Hanselmann la estrella del nuevo cómic independiente internacional. Quienes disfrutaron de Hechizo total, Bahía de San Búho o Hail Satan! ya pueden prepararse para una descarga aún mayor de abulia, hastío y desesperación. Porque Melancolía es el "libro negro" de Simon Hanselmann. Lidiar con la depresión sin más aliados que el abuso de estupefacientes, la comida basura, una acuciante frustración sexual y un mando a distancia solo puede convertir la vida en una fiesta. ————————————————————————————————— Portraits – Connor Willumsen. Este libro de 16 páginas bellamente impreso (por WestCan – que también imprimio el Manual de la Escuela Santoro) de retratos del gran Connor Willumsen está disponible para pre-pedido. De momento, sólo ofrecemos pre-pedidos para los Estados Unidos. Ofreceremos pre -pedidos para pedidos fuera de EEUU después de que mandemos el libro a los impresores. Dalé click AQUI para pedir tu pre-order! http://auction.comicsworkbook.com/2016/08/18/portraits-by-connor-willumsen-pre-order/ ————————————————————————————————— hasta la proxima! JF Share this page:Read More:05/09/201801/31/201802/28/201805/16/2018...
Art Trip: The Orlando Museum of Art
Gabriella TitoAugust 12, 2016Art Trip / EssaysThe Orlando Museum of Art is located in Loch Haven Park with the Science Center close by. Their biggest exhibition right now is their Contemporary Art exhibit from May 13th to August 28th. When I visited recently I was pleasantly surprised to find that the the exhibition was extremely diverse, with many female and Latino artists. Of the many artists I saw, it was Maria Martinez-Cañas who stood out to me. She is an artist who works WITH photos but does not really use a camera to take photos. My interest was captured as soon as I walked into the exhibition and saw the faded out prints. Her Vestigios Series is my absolute favorite body of work in the museum. She takes images from Gelatin silver prints or printed pages of books and manually "erases" them with sandpaper, creating a vintage look. Her whole Vestigios Series can be found HERE. I feel like she was trying to find a connection to the past in this series. In the same exhibition room, there was a video of Dawn Roe's Mountain Field Studies being projected onto the wall (pictured above). I almost felt like I was looking at a comic of fleeting observations of a mountain. In this series, she carefully put together details of a mountain into a series of blocked out images, and even some grids thrown in there! I couldn't help but think about the observations I make when I'm creating a comic based on the environment around me. When I'm making an observational comic, I'll usually make broader "statements" at first, meaning I don't go too much into detail with the environment. These drawings will usually be wide shots of the scene, or even quick silhouettes of the subject matter. Then, I'll start zooming in more and capturing those details in different ways. I like holding the tempo sometimes and lingering on a subject for a panel or two and then moving on. I apply this concept to other works I make as well and it hasn't failed me yet! Also, on Dawn Roe's portfolio site I found something in her statement that I completely resonated with – "This earthly presence is distinct from the seemingly stable, reproducible image – one that persists, suggesting that all matter is sound enough to endure the world's relentless shifts, however benign or catastrophic." In her statement, Dawn talks about the spaces that objects in the world make and that she captures the "unique situations" these objects make. This completely applies to comics as well – not just observational, but the way cartoonists capture moments in time, opinions, a romantic scene, and just about everything you can think of really. You can watch Dawn Roe's Mountain Field Studies HERE. Throwback to Sally, I also ran into a Georgia O'Keefe piece! Red Hills and White Flower was her featured painting there. I really enjoyed my visit to OMART! There were so many galleries and exhibits there, it was a little mind boggling – but these were just some of the pieces I thought more intensely about. I went in there thinking like a cartoonist, but I also kept my mind open to new thoughts and art forms I had never been exposed to. ————————————————————————————————— Art Trip is a series that features reflections on art and comics, and the adventures that transform those who seek it out. ————————————————————————————————— Gabriella Tito is a cartoonist living in Orlando, FL. She is a graduate of Frank Santoro's Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers and a member of the Comics Workbook Roller Derby team. You can find more of her work HERE. Share this page:Read More:Simon Hanselmann Bad…04/30/2018Rowhouse Residency…09/21/2018...
Aaron CockleApril 24, 2017NewsAaron here today with Annie Mok/Gabrielle Bell; Mohammad Sabaaneh; Sophie Calle; Anthony Cudahy; Paul Laffoley. ————————————————————————————————— "Can I put that in a comic?" Sally linked to this last Friday, but here's another look at the Annie Mok/Gabrielle Bell talk, in support of Bell's new book, Everything is Flammable. MOK: At least one of your minis for Uncivilized consists of roughly drawn diary comics. What's the difference between the diaries and the finished product for you? BELL: Mostly I keep a diary every day. Then I'll take one of those entries and turn it into a more refined story. I'll stop keeping a diary while working on a story. And I would sort of lose the connection to the source of the story. I always have to break it down and go back to the roughest version, which is the diary. I go through cycles. Sometimes I don't keep diaries at all because I get so absorbed in the one part of it. Or I'll get this standard in my head where I think the diary has to be a refined story, to look like a the finished product. I always get to some point where it doesn't have any spontaneity anymore, so I have to let myself be bad at it again. Let it be boring and awkward and have no point again, to get back to the raw data of it. ————————————————————————————————— A special meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Wednesday, April 26, 2017 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Please note: This is a Wednesday night event. The Art of Political Cartooning in Palestine Mohammad will discuss his craft, including his production methods and artistic choices, and his artistic influences and how he navigates the challenges of editorial cartooning in Palestine. He will discuss, accompanied by slides of his work, his own development as an artist and cartoonist – from how he started out, to how his techniques and style evolved over time. Mohammad Sabaaneh is a Palestinian graphic artist based in Ramallah in the West Bank. He is the principal political cartoonist for Al-Hayat al-Jadida, the Palestinian Authority's daily newspaper, and has published his work in many other newspapers around the Arab World. He is a member of the International Cartoon Movement, as well as the VJ Movement connecting visual journalists across the globe. Sabaaneh's work has been displayed in numerous collections and fairs in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. He won third place in the Arab Caricature Contest in 2013. ————————————————————————————————— Sophie Calle gets the full-on, super-slick, NY Times Magazine treatment over at the NY Times Magazine: Though Calle works in a variety of media, she favors photographs with text, written or edited in her precise, detached style, with its poker-faced humor. Some projects live only in books, small works of art unto themselves. Her writing has long been acclaimed, her pictures not as much. That began to change in 2010, when she won the Hasselblad Award for her photography. And she is currently shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (the winner will be announced on May 18) for 2016's "My All," a petite portfolio of postcards covering her entire oeuvre. Several of her most recent projects, with arguably her best pictures — including "Take Care of Yourself" and 2011's "Voir la mer" — will be part of "Sophie Calle: Missing," a major show in June, when Calle takes over four buildings at San Francisco's Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, with parallel programs throughout the Bay Area curated by Ars Citizen. ————————————————————————————————— 'But the things I make paintings about, I don't want to make zines about. And the things I make zines about, I don't want to make films about. ' Justin Alvarez paid a studio visit to Anthony Cudahy a couple of years back: You should be able to see a conflict in every painting. A lot of times, I'll think I'm done with a work, but when I stand back, it looks so rendered and tight. If I realize that I didn't learn anything from it, I'll wipe the whole thing. I don't keep a sketchbook. I always thought there was something wrong, that I wasn't a real artist because I didn't like sketching. But the idea behind sketching is to experiment, and I like to experiment on the canvas itself. I also try to limit the color palette. I hate yellow as a color, but that's not a good reason not to use it. Limiting color expands what you can do with the colors you're using. ————————————————————————————————— I think what happened to me on the night before I headed for New York City was a precognitive dream brought on by extreme anxiety of being "grand juried" out of the "Harvard Graduate School of Design" for "conceptual deviance." Kent Fine Art has a PDF available with work by Paul Laffoley from the 2015 exhibition, THE FORCE STRUCTURE OF THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE. ————————————————————————————————— A Cosmic Journey – 4-25-2017 – Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 4-25-2017 – by Sally Ingraham ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 4-25-2017 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page:Read More:06/08/201803/20/201804/24/201803/29/2018...
Sally IngrahamSeptember 30, 2016NewsSally here with Meg Lemke on censorship, the return of Karen Berger, reviews of work by Whit Taylor, Hazel Newlevant, and Daryl Seitchik, Ulli Lust on "drawing as language", and Sarah Bowie's adventures in Angouleme. ————————————————————————————————— On the site we have the first roundup of photos from the Comics Workbook hosted cartoon workshops at the Small Press Expo 2016! Check them out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— The last week in September is traditionally Banned Book Week. This annual event put on by the American Library Association brings attention to the books that have received censorship across the years, but more importantly it is a celebration of the freedom to read whatever you want. Meg Lemke, Editor-and-Chief of MUTHA, wrote a piece for Pen America on Jillian and Mariko Tamaki's This One Summer, which has been frequently removed from schools and K-12 school libraries for it's use of "profanity" and "vulgarity". Comics have always had a close relationship with the firing squad, and Lemke muses on why: "As with other banned comics (such as Alison Bechdel's lauded Fun Home), we see how easily images read as obscenity to those unfamiliar with the form. They are seen as more dangerous by their accessibility. It is what makes them attractive to younger readers, and too tempting a mark for censorship." – Meg Lemke for Pen Read the rest of the piece HERE. Read an excerpt from This One Summer HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Karen Berger is BACK! If that name is unfamiliar, get on the same page quick: "For three decades, she worked as an editor at mega-publisher DC Comics, and her long list of accomplishments while there can mostly be traced back to one risky venture: creating and running a mature-leaning imprint called Vertigo from 1993 to 2013. In that position she did more than just about anybody else in comics history to get ambitious, avant-garde, serious non-superhero work in front of a mass audience. The Sandman, V for Vendetta, Preacher, iZombie, Y: The Last Man, Transmetropolitan, 100 Bullets, Hellblazer — those are just a few of the better-known titles Vertigo produced during Berger's tenure." – via Vulture.com After a falling out with DC Comics and a silence of 3 years, Karen Berger has returned to the scene, making her return with a new comic she's edited – Surgeon X – which hit stands on Sept. 28th. More on this story HERE. (via The Comics Reporter) ————————————————————————————————— Rob Clough has reviews of Whit Taylor's Wallpaper and Hazel Newlevant's Tender-Hearted on High-Low this week! Check them out HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Ulli Lust has a report on the International Comics Festival Boomfest on her blog – check it out HERE and plug into the Russian alternative comics scene for a bit. Speaking of Ulli Lust, she has a preview on her website of one page from the new book she's been working on over the last 3 years. Page 333: ————————————————————————————————— And to continue speaking of Ulli Lust, she was one of several cartoonists who appear in a series of films about "drawing as language", made by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Art. Gabrielle Bell, Ben Katchor, Jooste Swart, and Joe Sacco, among others, are also interviewed. Ulli Lust's film is below: ————————————————————————————————— The Comics Beat presents a review of Daryl Seitchik's Exits (Koyama Press, 2016). "Moving past something might be the central message of Seitchik's story, and the idea that even as a healthy endeavor it might not look like we expect it and it might have its own set of issues. Claire moves past the corporeal being that she feels is the center of her problems, but pushing that aside to another state doesn't really solve anything for her, and reality becomes the result of whatever you make of it." – John Seven Read the rest HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Sarah Bowie is in Angouleme, doing a residency in La Maison des Auteurs – and she is keeping a diary of the adventure. Today's story: Catch up and keep up with Sarah HERE. ————————————————————————————————— If you haven't seen it yet, check out the video of Cameron Weston Nicholson's workshop at SPX – he riffs on many of the things that I love about making comics myself. Well worth a watch! ————————————————————————————————— Help send Connor Willumsen to the UK for The Lakes International Comic Arts Festival in October! ————————————————————————————————— It's finally feeling like Fall in Pittsburgh! I have plans to usher October in with some spooky reading and adventures in apple orchards. Have a good weekend folks! – Sally Share this page:Read More:Comics Workbook…05/24/201809/06/201802/02/2018...