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Rowser and Smith’s ‘Wash Day Diaries’ wins in the graphic novel category, while Segura’s novel about the 1970s comics industry wins in the mystery category.
Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith’s Wash Day Diaries has won this year’s L.A. Times Book Prize in the Graphic Novels/Comics category.
Published by Chronicle Books, their story actually began as a comic Kickstarter in 2018, but was later expanded into a graphic novel containing five interconnected stories.
Continue reading “Jamila Rowser, Robyn Smith, Alex Segura win L.A. Times Book Prizes”Noah Van Sciver, Tommi Parrish, Jamila Rowser, Robyn Smith and more were nominated this year.
The nominees have been announced for this year’s L.A. Times Book Prize, which includes a category for Graphic Novels/Comics.
The Los Angeles Times has given an award in the graphic novel category since 2009, when Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli won the award. Other previous winners include The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez, Duncan the Wonder Dog by Adam Hines, Beverly by Nick Drnaso, Tillie Walden’s On a Sunbeam and The Hard Tomorrow by Eleanor Davis. R. Kikuo Johnson’s No One Else won the prize last year.
The nominees for this year are:
Continue reading “Nominees announced for the 2023 L.A. Times Book Prize”The DC graphic novel by L. L. McKinney and Robyn Smith was honored during an awards ceremony this past weekend.
L. L. McKinney and Robyn Smith, who re-imagined Wonder Woman’s sister in the YA graphic novel Nubia: Real One, have won a 2022 Ignyte Award.
The awards “celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.”
The creative team won in the “Best Comics Team” category. Other nominees this year included the creative teams on Abbot: 1973, Count, Shadow Life and Squad. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, which was adapted into a graphic novel by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, won the award last year.
Continue reading “‘Nubia: Real One’ wins an Ignyte Award”The creators of the critical hit ‘Wash Day’ discuss expanding the story into ‘Wash Day Diaries,’ which is out this week from Chronicle Books.
Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith teamed up for the comic Wash Day, which was funded through Kickstarter and was released in 2018. It was a critical success, but while the two thought that the story was over when they finished the comic, the story has grown and expanded into the new book Wash Day Diaries, which is out this week from Chronicle Books.
Smith was a recent graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies when she first drew Wash Day, and today is best known for working on Nubia: Real One for DC Comics. Rowser, besides writing, has been expanding Black Josei Press and is publishing new work. I spoke with the two recently about how Wash Day Diaries happened, working through the pandemic and collaborating again.
Continue reading “Smash Pages Q&A | Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith”Plus: Three new members join the CBLDF board, Noelle Stevenson’s Substack and more!
The Harvey Awards Committee have announced the five creators who will be inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame this year: Manga creator Rumiko Takahashi (Ranma 1/2, Inu Yasha); horror comics artist Bernie Wrightson, the co-creator of Swamp Thing; cover artist and painter Jeffrey Catherine Jones; artist Barry Windsor-Smith (Conan the Barbarian); and Michael Kaluta (The Shadow, Starstruck). The latter four formed an artists’ commune called The Studio in 1975; in his 2011 obituary of Jones, Tom Spurgeon explained its significance:
Continue reading “Comics Lowdown | Harvey Awards announce 2021 Hall of Fame inductees”The co-founder of Geek Girl Brunch and former Girl Gone Geek blogger discusses two comic projects, ‘Wash Day’ and ‘Wobbledy 3000.’
Jamila Rowser is familiar to a lot of people in the comics community because she created Straight Outta Gotham, co-founded Geek Girl Brunch and launched the blog Girl Gone Geek. This fall though she’s doing something different, turning her attention to writing comics.
Wash Day is a comic drawn by Robyn Smith which was kickstarted earlier this year and is out now. In addition to an English language edition, there’s a Spanish language edition of the comic, Dia de Lavado, which is also available. Rowser is following that up with her second comic, Wobbledy 3000, which is drawn by Sabii Borno and is out this month as a digital comic from Black Josei Press.
The comics are very different, made with different artists and approaches, but both of them demonstrate Rowser’s skill at dialogue, her subtle talent of characterization and, through this, a very nuanced and lovely consideration of friendship. One book may be realistic and set in the here and now, and the other is science fantasy, but they are both an effort to tell slice of life narratives, and explore the lives of characters who are rarely explored in comics. Taken together, the comics show Rowser is very interested in finding ways to use the medium to convey and explore personal experience, to both break new ground and be a part of the medium and its traditions. I caught Rowser in between shows, and she was kind enough to answer a few questions.
