Day: April 22, 2020

Oni Press, DC, Binc unite to announce new fund for comics retailers

The Comicbook United Fund will provide one location to make contributions to support comic book shops and their employees.

The Book Industry Charitable Foundation, or Binc, has announced the launch of the Comicbook United Fund, a dedicated relief fund designed to provide financial assistance to comic shops and their employees. Both DC Comics and the Oni Press-Lion Forge Publishing Group joined them in the announcement, with both offering funds to the organization.

The idea isn’t new — last year, the Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group ​teamed with Binc to create the “Forge Fund.” It provides ​monetary support for comic retailers and their employees during times of hardship, like during Hurricane Harvey. The company continues to donate 5% of proceeds from their titles to the fund, and so far have donated $100,000 to the Forge Fund, which is operated by Binc

“The comic industry has a long history of banding together to protect and promote the art form we all love. We hope that this incredible action from DC will inspire a new wave of generosity and support for the great number of individuals and shops struggling through these times,” said James Lucas Jones, President and Publisher of Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group. “Comics is an expansive community that still feels like a close-knit family, and these efforts feel like we are helping family members.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Erin Williams

The creator of ‘Commute’ discusses her latest project for “The Believer,” her nontraditional approach to page design, the long-lasting effects of trauma and more.

In the February/March issue of The Believer magazine, Erin Williams has a new short comic “Dust and Doubt” which builds on the ideas and concerns of her acclaimed debut book Commute. One of the best books published last year, Commute was a look at Williams’ day but also at her life, at the male gaze, at taking up space in the world, about alcoholism and trauma, and how we dissociate in order to survive. It’s about what it means to live in a culture that tries to monetize this trauma, promising a “cure” for the trauma the society causes.

Reading Williams’ work, one sees echoes of other creators who have used the medium in nontraditional ways to try to convey these physical  understandings of how being in our bodies, the complicated interactions of mental and physical pain of the aftermath of trauma and finding not just new ways to consider this but depict and convey that experience. In both this short comic and her book, it’s clear that Williams doesn’t think in terms of a comics page or that formatted structure of paneled designs, instead using the openness of the page to explore how the words and the images can interact. We spoke recently over email about her work.

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