Month: September 2018

Oni Press launches voting information site — with comics, of course

‘Draw Out the Vote’ provides guidance and resources for registering to vote — along with a comic for each state.

Comics have always been a natural medium for political commentary and perspectives, whether its political cartoons or even comic books like Captain America and the X-Men. So this new site from Oni Press seems like a natural outgrowth of that decades-old relationship: Draw Out the Vote seeks to educate voters about their state’s voting laws through webcomics.

Each state is represented on the site, along with Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., and each gets it own comic from a different artist. Contributors include Arigon Starr, Jarrett Williams, Melanie Gillman, Rashad Doucet, Janet Lee and many more. In many cases, the cartoonist is from or currently lives in the state they drew a comic for. And in addition to a comic, the page for each state includes links to register to vote and other resources.

“Voting is the first step in civic engagement and something that should be relatively easy for every citizen, but that’s obviously not always the case,” said Oni Press Publisher James Lucas Jones. “With DrawOuttheVote.com, we want to give a platform for cartoonists to explore their passion for participating in the political process and to give voters a quick and easy starter guide on getting registered and making a plan to get their ballot in the box this November.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Carol Tyler’s ‘Fab4Mania’

The creator of ‘Soldier’s Heart’ discusses her latest graphic novel from Fantagraphics, which looks back at her own experiences with Beatlemania.

Carol Tyler has for many years been one of our great cartoonists. Her book Soldier’s Heart is quite simply one of the great comics of the 21st Century. After spending a decade tracing her family history and examining postwar culture, mental illness and many other issues, Tyler wanted to make something lighter.

Her new book Fab4Mania began more than 50 years ago, when Tyler became a Beatles fan. She was a fanatic, attended their 1965 concert at Comisky Park in Chicago, and in the months leading up to the anniversary of the concert, she crafted a blog about her life as a 13-year-old and life leading up to the concert. In what should be no surprise, she managed to capture that young voice in a truly striking way. We spoke recently about the book, about how she began to make sculpture and thinking like an engineer.

This weekend Tyler is a special guest at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, and on Friday afternoon she will give a talk about her work at the Library of Congress.

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Goth Jumanji: Gillen + Hans team for new series ‘Die’

Fantasy gets real this December from Image Comics.

Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, who previously worked together on Marvel’s Journey into Mystery, are rolling the dice on a new comic this December called “Die.” Clayton Clowes will letter the project.

“Stephanie and I have been wanting to work together forever – Journey Into Mystery 645 is one of my favourite things I’ve ever done, and this comes straight from there,” Gillen said in his weekly email newsletter. “The Earth needs a fantasy world created by Stephanie Hans, and I had to enable it.”

The story revolves around a group of teens who regularly play tabletop role-playing games. One night they mysteriously disappear, only to reappear two years later. Actually, forget my explanation — you can read this for yourself on this lovely, handy teaser the team put together:

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Smash Pages Q&A: Jordan Ellis on ‘The Sartorial Geek’

The founder of the clothing line Jordandené discusses the crowdfunding campaign for the quarterly “geeky lifestyle magazine.”

Jordan Ellis is the founder of the clothing line Jordandené, a geeky chic clothing line that’s handmade and sweat-shop free. Based in Brooklyn, the company has had a presence at shows across the country, and this year they launched The Sartorial Geek, a quarterly magazine that Ellis co-edits.

With articles that range from Sally Bowles to gatekeeping, Jane Eyre to cosplay to conversations with artists and designers, the magazine doesn’t read like anything else out there right now. Currently they’re running a Kickstarter before sending the third issue out. I reached out to Ellis to ask why anyone would launch a print magazine in this environment and trying to do something no one else is doing.

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AdHouse celebrates 10 years of ‘Skyscrapers of the Midwest’

New limited-edition comic and slipcase edition highlight the publisher’s plans to celebrate.

Joshua W. Cotter‘s debut comic, Skyscrapers of the Midwest, came out 10 years ago from AdHouse Books, and to celebrate the publisher is releasing a new Cotter comic, Skyscrapers Inc., and a limited slipcase edition of the original series.

“It seems like only yesteryear when a youngish publisher was walking the floor of the MoCCA Festival (when it was COOL and at the PUCK, you kids!) when he happened upon one of those skinny, unkept cartoonist types standing in line,” AdHouse publisher Chris Pitzer said on the company’s blog. “It wasn’t so much the cartoonist that caught his eye, but the comic that he held in his hands. You see, he had just heard tell of this comic winning the first ever Isotope Award for Excellence in Mini-Comics. The publisher then approached this cartoonist, and even though a table wasn’t between them, he offered to buy said Mini-Comic. Was it bought, or was it given? Only time and possibly the cartoonist knows!”

Since then Cotter has gone on to create Driven by Lemons, Nod Away and other works, but Skyscrapers still stands as a strong look at childhood by an artist with a unique style and voice.

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D + Q to publish Rumi Hara’s ‘Nori’

The Ignatz Award-nominated story about a girl and her grandmother gets the graphic novel treatment in 2020.

Drawn and Quarterly has announced plans to publish Nori, the the debut graphic novel from Rumi Hara, in the spring of 2020.

“Nori is quietly enchanting, drawing you into the adventures of this little girl,” Drawn & Quarterly Publisher and acquiring editor Peggy Burns said. “At times it’s surreal and haunting yet simultaneously a light-hearted depiction of childhood and friendship. Rumi’s draftsmanship is gorgeous and she draws in many folkloric elements in the standalone stories.”

Nori’s story began in a series of minicomics. “It started as a minicomic first printed in 2016 about a little girl and her grandma’s encounter with an army of bats,” Hara said on her website. “I couldn’t stop thinking about this little sassy girl, and now there are 3 minicomics completed in the series.”

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Jim Zub, Stuart Immonen and more win 2018 Joe Shuster Awards

Annual awards recognize outstanding achievement in the creation of comic books, graphic novels and webcomics by Canadians.

The Joe Shuster Awards — Canada’s national award that honors and raises the awareness of Canadians that create, self-publish and sell comic books, digital comics and graphic novels — have announced their winners for 2018, which include Jim Zub, Jeff Lemire, Stuart Immonen and more.

Established in 2004, The Joe Shuster Awards are Canada’s national award recognizing outstanding achievement in the creation of comic books, graphic novels and webcomics. Named in honor of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster, the awards recognize the best of the Canadian comics world; nominees must be either Canadian citizens or permanent residents in Canada. The winners were chosen by a jury.

Winners are below. You can see the complete list of nominees here.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Mike Norton on ‘Lil’ Donnie’

The wonderfully multitalented artist discusses his work on his political satire webcomic, the first collection of which was just released by Image Comics.

Mike Norton has been working in comics for years. He’s drawn books in a wide range of genres including The Waiting Place, Jason and the Argobots, Gravity, It Girl! and the Atomics, and Revival. He drew a fill in on Astro City, in addition to Queen and Country, The Adventures of Archer and Armstrong, and many other comics. Norton has also been writing and drawing various projects like the webcomic Battlepug, and comics like The Answer and The Curse. He’s drawing the new miniseries Grumble, which starts this November.

Norton is currently working on a couple comics series, but he’s also been making a comic strip, Lil’ Donnie. A mocking satire of the Trump administration, Norton admitted that he’s an unlikely political cartoonist. The strip was initially a webcomic and is also available on gocomics. Now Image Comics has just released a collection of the strip, Lil’ Donnie: Executive Privilege and I asked Norton about the strip and how he works.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Dylan Meconis, Ben Coleman and EA Denich’s ‘The Long Con’

The creators of the “comic convention gone horribly wrong” series from Oni Press discuss the series, their own convention experiences and more.

The new Oni Comics series The Long Con is set “Five Years and One Apocalypse” in the future. At the center of the quarantine zone, the Los Spinoza Event Center, where a comic con was in full swing when disaster struck. Victor Lai was a third-rate journalist before the disaster and one of the last people to leave the convention hall before the disaster. Now he’s been convinced to return and finds that everyone inside the convention hall survived – and the convention never stopped.

Meconis is well known to readers for her comics Bite Me!, Outfoxed, and the ongoing webcomic Family Man. She’s currently finishing Queen of the Sea, a middle grade graphic novel coming out next year. Coleman is a journalist and a critic at the Portland Mercury, who has also written for the great radio show Live Wire. Artist EA Denich is know by comics readers for having drawn Yes, Roya, the acclaimed and beloved erotic graphic novel written by Spike Trotman, which was published last year. She’s contributed to various anthologies and comics including Oh Joy, Sex Toy, Rick and Morty, and has a story in the upcoming Smut Peddler Presents Sex Machine anthology, whose Kickstarter recently ended. I spoke to them about the series and Oni provided a look at issue #2, which is out Sept. 5.

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