Comics Lowdown | Cameron Stewart dropped from projects after sexual misconduct allegations surface

Plus: News on the Eisner Awards, new dates for Free Comic Book Day and more.

Multiple women this week accused artist Cameron Stewart of sexually preying on them, including one who was 16 at the time.

Artist and model Aviva Maï said Stewart groomed her, which is when an adult befriends a child to lower the child’s inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse. She said this started in 2009, when she was 16. Following Maï’s post on Twitter, many other women, including creator Kate Leth, made similar accusations against Stewart.

As a result of the allegations, Bleeding Cool reports, Stewart has been removed from an unannounced project from DC Comics. In addition, Martin Morazzo, artist of Ice Cream Man, said they will no longer use a planned cover by Stewart for the comic’s 20th issue. “We will be donating the commission cost of the cover to Safe Horizons,” Morazzo said on Twitter. He also revealed the replacement cover, which features a parody of The Cat in the Hat cover:

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Smash Pages Q&A: Warren Craghead on ‘TrumpTrump’

The creator of ‘La Grande Guerre’ discusses the latest collection of his drawings of Donald Trump.

Warren Craghead has been drawing Donald Trump and his cronies every day for more than two years, and he’s promised to continue “until this nightmare ends.”

When Craghead began this project, he expected it to last a few months, but he’s an artist who has worked on a number of long-term projects. Comics readers might know him for Speedy, which received the Xeric Grant, as well as How To Be Everywhere and Ley Lines. Online he’s spent years on projects like La Grande Guerre, a daily project detailing World War I, and Medz Yeghern, which documents the Armenian Genocide.

Retrofit Press has just released TrumpTrump: Modern Day Presidential, the second collection of Craghead’s daily drawings. We spoke recently about daily practice and the importance of paying attention.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Summer Pierre’s ‘All the Sad Songs’

The creator of ‘Paper Pencil Life’ discusses her latest book, poetry and more.

Summer Pierre has been making comics for years in the pages of her series Paper Pencil Life and in magazines and anthologies, including Mutha Magazine, The Rumpus, Ink Brick and Bottoms Up! She’s illustrated All the Pretty People by Ariel Gore, It’s Not You, It’s Brie by Kirstin Jackson and other books.

This month Retrofit is releasing Pierre‘s graphic novel All the Sad Songs. The book is about music, which sounds amorphous and vague, but Pierre begins by examining mix tapes she made and still has, the songs and the bands that defined her life, her own music and the years she spent in her twenties singing in clubs and cafes around Boston. Pierre and I have been running across each other at shows in recent years and often end up talking about poetry. When she mentioned that she had a book coming out, I asked if we could talk about the book and her work.

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Comics Lowdown: All is revealed!

DC announces their Writers Workshop participants, First Second unveils their Spring 2018 books, Viz licenses some new media, and Mimi Pond talks about her new book—and getting dropped from ‘The Simpsons’ because she was a woman

The Big Reveal: DC announced the names of the six writers who will take part in this year’s DC Writers Workshop: Magdalene Visaggio (Kim & Kim, Quantum Teens Are Go), Sanya Anwar (1001), Joey Esposito (Pawn Shop, Captain Ultimate), Phillip Kennedy Johnson (Last Sons of America, Warlords of Appalachia), Robert Jeffrey (Route 3, Radio Free Amerika) and Ryan Cady (Big Moose). Batman writer Scott Snyder will lead the workshop.

“It’s 13 weeks, and we meet for two, two-and-a-half hours online in a Brady Bunch-style box of windows. I teach it in such a way that it’s all superhero writing for DC. I try and make each week a lesson about a particular technique,” Snyder told Heat Vision. “My job is not to teach you how to write by formula for DC. It’s for you to come in and write the stuff you’re passionate about in your own way. I don’t care if that’s funny political, light-hearted, dark, whatever. Your job is to come in and have something to say. My job is to help you fit it into the rubric of superhero calculus and to help you maximize that story: look at where you should beef things up, slow it down, be aware of pacing. You need to come here and have something to say.”

At the end of the workshop, DC works with the writers to place them in writing slots for DC comics.

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