Month: February 2020

Devil’s Due launches Ballot Box Comics

New imprint is ‘dedicated to progressive politics and populist movements that challenge both the right and the center-left.’

Looking for a palate-cleanser after the chaos of Iowa and the mendacity of the State of the Union Address? Indy comics publisher Devil’s Due has announced a new spinoff label, Ballot Box, which is “dedicated to progressive politics and populist movements that challenge both the right and the center-left.”

The company, founded by Josh Blaylock in 2000, published Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Freshman Force: New Party Who Dis? last year and is currently running a Kickstarter for a Ballot Box collection featuring work by Blaylock, Tim Seeley, Jill Thompson, Robert Sikoryak, Dean Haspiel, Marguerite Dabaie and many others.

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Make some noise: Editor Erin Bried shares how ‘Noisemakers’ came together

The founder and editor-in-chief of Kazoo Magazine discusses her first foray into comics anthologies.

Four years ago, Erin Bried made history with Kazoo Magazine, the highest-funded journalism campaign on Kickstarter ever. Envisioned as a way to “celebrate girls for being smart, strong, fierce and true to themselves,” the quarterly magazine went on to gain fans and win awards, including the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2019.

In creating Kazoo, Bried also became something else — a comics editor. Each issue of Kazoo features a comic strip by a different female creator, celebrating the life of a woman who has made history. Those comics helped jumpstart Bried’s latest project — an anthology collecting similar comics by a host of talented creators. Noisemakers: 25 Women Who Raised Their Voices & Changed the World arrived in stores today, featuring comics by, among others, Emil Ferris, Lucy Knisley, Lucy Bellwood, Maris Wicks and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, whose strip about Hallie Daggett, the first woman hired as a fire lookout by the United States Forest Service, can be seen below.

It’s an impressive line-up of talent, and Bried took some time to answer my questions about how it all came together.

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‘Strange Adventures’ becomes a Black Label title

Tom King, Mitch Gerads, Evan “Doc” Shaner and Clayton Cowles’ Adam Strange maxi-series will be aimed at readers over 17.

DC has announced that Strange Adventures, the upcoming Adam Strange maxi-series by Tom King, Mitch Gerads, Evan “Doc” Shaner and Clayton Cowles, will now be a Black Label title and will carry an “Age 17+ content descriptor” on the cover.

“As Strange Adventures was coming together, we had to take a step back and look at what made the most sense for the project,” said DC Group Editor Jamie S. Rich. “Since its tone and themes are more in the vein of Mister Miracle than, say, Tom King’s work on Batman, we decided that it made more sense to give Strange Adventures its own space, where Tom, Mitch, Doc and Clayton could follow the story to all the different places it might take them.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Malaka Gharib

The creator of ‘I Was Their American Dream’ discusses zine culture, being creative every day and more.

Malaka Gharib has been making comics and zines for years now, including The Runcible Spoon, a zine about food and fantasy she’s been making since 2010. Last year her first book I Was Their American Dream was released, looking at growing up as a Filipino-Egyptian in the United States and exploring questions of race, identity and belonging in different ways. 

Gharib has an active and entertaining Twitter and Instagram presence where she’s regularly making art, putting together things like a “5 minute zine” or other small projects. In her day job, Gharib is a writer and editor at NPR in Washington, D.C. She recently made an episode of the podcast Life Kit, about weaving art into your everyday life. We spoke recently about the book, zine culture and trying to make one creative thing a day.

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Top Shelf to publish Pat Grant’s ‘The Grot’ in May

The creator of ‘Blue’ returns with a new graphic novel about greed and environmental calamity.

Since the release of his well-received debut graphic novel Blue back in 2012, Pat Grant has been busy working on his dytsopian follow-up, The Grot. He’s been serializing the comic online and creating single issues, and come May you’ll be able to get your hands on a printed collection, courtesy of Top Shelf here in the U.S.

Grant is one of several literary cartoonists in Australia who have been catching people’s attention recently and what I’ve read of the webcomic is really strong. So this is one to watch for in May.

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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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