Category: Creators

Rest in peace, Richard Sala

The prolific creator of ‘Delphine,’ ‘Cat Burglar Black’ and ‘Invisible Hands’ was 61 when he died.

Fantagraphics has shared the sad news that Richard Sala, creator of Delphine, The Grave Robber’s Daughter, Cat Burglar Black and Violenzia, has passed away at the age of 61. No cause of death was mentioned.

Sala’s work spans several decades, as he published his first comic, Night Drive, in 1984, and just a few weeks ago he announced a new webcomic, Carlotta Havoc vs. Everybody. In between, he combined his love of comics and monsters into a career that saw him published in anthologies like RAW and Blab!, create his own comics and graphic novels, and appear on MTV’s Liquid Television program, in a segment called Invisible Hands.

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Artists take the #SixFanarts Challenge

Melissa Capriglione kicked off a fun, art-filled meme in March — and the participants grew from there.

Way back in mid-March — which feels like a million years ago at this point, but was really just a few weeks back — Falconhyrste creator Melissa Capriglione kicked off a fun exercise that would turn into a widespread meme for artists across social media: The #SixFanarts Challenge.

What started has a simple tweet has blossomed into a fun and welcome distraction during these difficult times. And it’s pretty easy to participate: artists just ask their social media followers to throw out character names, and the artist draws six of them on a grid that Capriglione has provided.

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Project Art Cred returns with a new story from Tom Taylor

Different artists draw the same script to show the importance of artists to the comic-making process.

Project Art Cred returned this week with another round of artists drawing the same comics script to show the impact they have on the comics you read. This time around, they tried their hand at a very topical script by Suicide Squad writer Tom Taylor.

We had an idea to demonstrate the impact artists brings to a comic script. We gave artists a one page script written by the legendary @TomTaylorMade and they put their stamp on it.

Here’s the script. Check out some of the results below …

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Creators for Creators accepting 2020 grant applications through May 11

The Creators for Creators grant is ‘intended to encourage, support, and promote original works through grants and education.’

The nonprofit Creators for Creators is taking applications for their 2020 grant through May 11. Complete details on submitting can be found on their website.

As their website says, Creators for Creators “is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization intended to encourage, support, and promote original works through grants and education.” The grant was founded by several creators, who also serve as mentors for recipients: Charlie Adlard, Jordie Bellaire, David Brothers, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Nick Dragotta, Leila del Duca, Matt Fraction, Kieron Gillen, Jonathan Hickman, Joe Keatinge, Robert Kirkman, Jamie McKelvie, Rick Remender, Declan Shalvey, Fiona Staples, Eric Stephenson, C. Spike Trotman and Brian K. Vaughan.

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Cartoonists go all in on Hourly Comics Day

Check out comics by Becky Cloonan, Kate Beaton, Celeste Woods, Faith Erin Hicks and more.

It’s early February, which means its time for the annual #HourlyComicsDay, where cartoonists commit to making and posting a comic every hour for a day.

Most hourly comics typically fall into the “autobiography” category, as participants detail their day in comics form, but some will share fictional stories as well. Unlike Inktober, which has prompts and structure (and, apparently, legal issues now) Hourly Comic Day is just a fun challenge that artists choose to take.

Here are a few examples from this year:

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Project Art Cred spotlights ‘the impact artists bring to a script’

40 artists turn a Kieron Gillen script into a comic — with interesting results.

So this is pretty cool: artists Stephen Byrne and Declan Shalvey had an idea to showcase the effect a particular artist has on a comic, so they came up with Project Art Cred. Their idea was to have a comics writer — in this case, Kieron Gillen — write a one-page script, then have different artists interpret it in their own styles.

After 200 artists asked for the script, Gillen said in his email newsletter that 40 artists submitted pages, which have been shared on both Twitter and Tumblr. The artistic styles are impressive in their range and voice, bringing Gillen’s words to life in many different ways.

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Artist Tom Lyle passes away

The artist of ‘Robin,’ ‘Spider-Man,’ ‘Strike!’ and many other titles suffered a brain aneurysm in October.

Tom Lyle, co-creator of Stephanie Brown from DC’s Batman books and artist of titles like Robin, Spider-Man and Starman, passed away today at the age of 66.

Lyle suffered a brain aneurysm in October, which required him to be placed in a medically-enduced coma and to have surgery to remove a brain clot. According to artist Phillip Sevy, funeral details are still being finalized.

Lyle’s artistic career began in earnest in the 1980s, when he worked on titles like Airboy and Strike! for Eclipse. In 1988, he and writer Roger Stern teamed up to create a new version of Starman for DC Comics, bringing Will Payton into the DC universe.

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Tom Spurgeon, RIP

Comics has lost its greatest champion and best friend.

It’s a wonderful thing to be able to say of a person that they left the world a better place than they found it. 

Tom Spurgeon did that. He did it with journalism, and he did it with humanity. He left us this week at the untimely age of 50, but he has indeed left us, the readers and lovers of comics, better off than we were when he first arrived.

His site, The Comics Reporter, has been an essential read for anyone interested in comics since he launched it in 2004. It covers the world of comics with incredible breadth, from  corporate superheroes to tiny indy comics, corporations to creators, manga to BD to what-have-you. For the past 15 years, it has been the essential portal to the comics internet. Much of it was simply links, but Tom published original content as well, including lengthy, Rolling Stone-style interviews and Bart Beaty’s annual reports from the Angouleme Comics Festival.

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Inktober Spotlight: Bruce McCorkindale

The artist shares daily drawings of various Muppets mashed up with arthouse films.

October is also Inktober, where artists from all over the world create a different ink drawing every day of the month — or whatever schedule works for them. While the official Inktober site provides a list of “prompts” to help inspire artists, many of them choose their own themes.

And some of those themes can get really fun and creative. Today we feature The Falling Man co-creator Bruce McCorkindale and his series of arthouse films/Muppets mash-ups. Yes, that’s right — he’s combining the Fraggles with Wes Anderson, Bert and Ernie with The Seventh Seal, and Rowlf with Ghost Dog, among many others. It’s an inspired, fun series of drawings.

To see what other artists are doing, search Twitter or Tumblr using the #inktober hashtag, or visit our own Tumblr where we’ve been posting them all month. And check out some of McCorkindale’s drawings below:

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Matt Bors’ ‘We Should Improve Society Somewhat’ available for preorder

New collection by the man behind The Nib comes out next March.

Although probably best known as the mastermind behind the award-winning editorial cartoon site The Nib, Matt Bors is also a brilliant cartoonist in his own right. After crowdfunding his first collection of comics in 2012, he’s back taking pre-orders for the next one.

“This will be a collection of my best work from the Trump era, a 184 page collection with some additional commentary from me and an introduction by Tom Tomorrow,” Bors said in his email newsletter. “The book takes its name from what has become my most well-known comic and will hit shelves in March 2020. I’m doing a pre-order now through The Nib where you can order it with a sketch, get a tote bag, stickers and some other merch. Print still rules and I’m glad the people at Clover Press reached out to collect this era of my work.”

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Inktober Spotlight: Daniel Warren Johnson

The ‘Murder Falcon’ and ‘Extremity’ creator is drawing a different wrestler each day in October.

If it’s October, it must also be Inktober, the other great thing about the 10th month of the year.* During Inktober, artists from all over the world create a different ink drawing every day of the month (or every other day, or whatever schedule works for them). While the official Inktober site provides a list of “prompts” to help inspire artists, many of them choose their own themes.

With many comic artists once again participating this year — you can find a lot of them on Twitter or Tumblr using the #inktober hashtag, and we’ve been posting a bunch on our own Tumblr — we thought we’d spotlight a few of the fun ones we’ve seen so far.

In our first Inktober spotlight, let’s take a look at what Extremity creator Daniel Warren Johnson has been doing. “My inktober this year is themed around wrestlers, cause why not?” he said on Twitter. Since then, he’s shared images of legendary wrestlers like Dusty Rhodes and Andre the Giant, as well as more recent stars like All-Elite Wrestling’s Private Party and Kenny Omega.

He said he has plans to collect all his drawings into a book later this year, with a cover featuring — speaking of legends — an awesome color Jushin Thunder Liger. That’ll be something to watch for, but for now, check out a few of his drawings below. You can see more on his Twitter feed.

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R.I.P. Bill Schelly

Alex Dueben remembers Bill Schelly, who passed away last week from multiple myeloma.

Bill Schelly passed away last week from multiple myeloma. Schelly discovered comics fandom in 1964 and shortly after launched his own fanzines, where he wrote and drew. The most notable was Sense of Wonder. Schelly went on to be one of the great writers about comics. He was also one of the chroniclers of fandom in a series of books including The Golden Age of Comic Fandom and in his column for Alter Ego.

I interviewed Schelly in 2018 and we spent much of the conversation discussing his book Sense of Wonder. Schelly originally published the book in 2001 discussing his youth in comics fandom, but in 2018 published Sense of Wonder, My Life in Comic Fandom–The Whole Story. The new edition of the book was significantly longer, covering decades more than the original edition had, but more than that, Schelly wrote about being gay, about living in the closet and coming out, about the queerness of fandom back in the day. He wrote about his family and the death of son at a very young age. It was, in many respects, his best book.

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