The Comics Super Blog!
Participants are posting personal comics about autism throughout April.
April is Autism Awareness Month, and more than 30 cartoonists are raising awareness around autism and neurodiversity in a series of comic strips posted under the hashtag #ASDComicTakeover on Twitter.
Rebecca Ollerton, a.k.a. Bex, is spearheading the effort. She regularly makes comics about these topics.
Continue reading “Cartoonists put the spotlight on Autism Awareness Month”Bors will turn his attention to creating fiction comics and longer-form nonfiction comics.
After almost two decades, cartoonist and The Nib founder Matt Bors has announced he’s retiring from his weekly political comic. His comic on background checks that ran at the end of March will be his last regular political cartoon.
He plans to continue running The Nib, the award-winning webcomics site that features political and nonfiction comics on a daily basis by a variety of artists. He also said he plans to do more nonfiction comics, including comic interviews, for the site. And he’s preparing pitches for fiction comics as well.
“So I will be staying busy, as always,” he said in his announcement post. “Something had to give in my life to make room for other things and, frankly, it was an easy decision. I’ve drawn political cartoons every week since I was 19 and feel like I have said everything I can say, often a few times over. I know this may be disappointing to longtime readers, but my creative desires pull me in another direction, one where I hope to create more work on par with what I’ve done in this field. I also owe it to both The Nib’s readers and creators to keep the publication going as long as possible.”
Continue reading “Matt Bors retires his weekly political comic strip; will still run ‘The Nib’”The new series will delve into the comic book process every Friday.
The Infinite Loop creative team of Elsa Charretier and Pierrick Colinet have launched a new YouTube series, with the intent to “share their love of the medium and their professional knowledge of the field with comic book fans and aspiring creators.” The first episode went live yesterday.
“I’ve long deconstructed, studied and obsessed over the work of my peers; partly to elevate my art, partly because I can never get enough comics and graphic novels,” Charretier said. “Our YouTube channel is the latest offspring born out of that obsession and an exciting way to share our studies, professional tips, and love for sequential storytelling with everyone tuning in.”
Check it out below, as Charretier examines one of David Aja’s panels from Hawkeye:
Continue reading “Watch Elsa Charretier deconstruct a ‘Hawkeye’ panel in a new YouTube series”The artist returns to the place where he started his career almost 50 years ago.
After almost seven years working for Marvel’s distinguished competition, John Romita Jr. will return to the House of Ideas later this year.
Marvel announced the return on their website today, noting that Romita will begin working in the Marvel Universe again in July.
“I have been very fortunate more than a few times in my life, and now I can add this latest event to that list. I have returned to Marvel, the company that I started my career in, and I couldn’t be more thrilled!” said Romita in a statement. “I am literally, at this very moment, working on my next big Marvel project, and it’s a blast!!! I am JUST as excited as I was when I first started, and I will do my best to let the work show that again. I hope fans will see that too!”
Continue reading “John Romita Jr. returns to Marvel later this year”The one-of-a-kind story will go to the highest bidder of an NFT auction.
Creator Matt Kindt is exploring the world of non-fungible tokens with Mind MGMT: The Artifact, a full-length comic that’s currently up for auction on the NFT auction website OpenSea.
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have been making headlines recently; they’re a type of code that acts sort of as a unique certificate of authenticity for a digital piece of art, tied to bitcoin and block chain technologies. Both the Verge and NPR have Q&A’s up on what NFTs are and how they’re being used right now in the art world.
“I wanted to create an original Mind MGMT comic book narrative that would explore the nature of belief and the value of ideas and their intangible nature as a way of exploring the idea of NFTs,” said Kindt. “The best way to explore this idea was for the actual story – the Mind MGMT narrative – to become what it is about. This story is written as a Mind MGMT espionage narrative – an agent sent on a mission to retrieve a priceless artifact. There are secret codes, monk-ninjas. LOTS of monk-ninjas and a teenage immortal intent on stealing this priceless artifact. It is both a real apple…and a drawing of an apple.”
Continue reading “Matt Kindt jumps into the controversial world of NFTs with a new ‘Mind MGMT’ story”The comics creator who worked on Legion of Super-Heroes, Classic X-Men, Doom Patrol and more passed away from heart failure today.
Steve Lightle, an artist whose work appeared in Doom Patrol, Legion of Super-Heroes, Marvel Comics Presents and Classic X-Men, passed away this morning. He was 61.
His son, Matthew, posted on Lightle’s Facebook page that his father died of a cardiac arrest. His wife, colorist Marianne Lightle, followed that with a heartbreaking post where she said Lightle had tested positive for COVID, which led to heart failure.
Continue reading “Rest in Peace, Steve Lightle”Allegations of harassment and sexual misconduct mired the comics industry in the summer of 2020.
We continue our series that looks back at the biggest comics industry news trends of 2020. Watch for more posts all this week.
In the midst of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic and the countless protests in the United States following the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota this past summer, a wave of allegations against comics creators and industry figures became public. These allegations ranged from abuse to harassment to other forms of sexual misconduct. Many brave people stepped forward to tell their stories and share what happened to them over the course of several weeks in June.
The comics industry isn’t unique in this regards; at the same time that the allegations against comics pros occurred, the professional wrestling industry was going through what was dubbed the Speaking Out movement. And both follow the bigger #MeToo movement that began to go viral back in 2017, which revealed the bad behavior by many entertainment industry figures (as well as politicians, captains of industry and, well, just about every other industry out there).
And in comics, harassment has, unfortunately, been part of the landscape for decades. In more recent years high-profile industry figures like Eddie Berganza and Brian Wood have been accused and subsequently lost work as a result, so to say that this is “new” would be inaccurate.
What seemed to set 2020 apart, however, was the number of allegations that occurred in such a short amount of time. Some were industry figures who had previously been accused, while others were newly revealed.
Continue reading “Looking Back | Speaking out”The new Image Comics series will launch next year — and will be created live on Twitch.
Charles Soule, Will Sliney and Rachelle Rosenberg have a new comic coming out from Image Comics called Hell to Pay, but it’s not quite done — and that’s where the fun begins. The creative team will give fans a direct view into their process by live-creating the comic on Twitch.
Both Sliney and Rosenberg plan to livestream their work on the platform. Soule plans to join them “to workshop design and story elements” in real time.
“Hell to Pay is a combination of a lot of things I love and one thing I don’t: supernatural adventure, treasure hunt stories, and the harsh consequences of late-stage capitalism! I think there’s a lot to say about money—everyone on earth is affected by cash in one way or another. Looking at it through a demonic lens is a fun way to play with the concept,” said Soule. “I’m also so excited to try something new by creating the book live on Twitch. Will and Rachelle are fantastic—this will be like being in a band, performing live every night as we come up with new ideas and implement them right then and there. I can’t wait—especially to do it in front of an audience. Scary? Maybe a little—but I do love a challenge.”
Continue reading “Soule + Sliney + Rosenberg will create ‘Hell to Pay’ in real time on Twitch”The award-winning artist whose work appeared in ‘Heavy Metal,’ ‘Hellboy,’ ‘Creepy’ and other publications, passed away Dec. 2.
Richard Corben, the award-winning artist whose work spanned from the underground comics of the 1970s to mainstream work in the 2000s, passed away on Dec. 2. following heart surgery. He was 80 years old.
Corben’s wife, Dona, shared the news on the Corben Studios Facebook page.
“Richard was very appreciative of the love for his art that was shown by you, his fans,” she wrote. “Your support over the decades meant a great deal to him. He tried to repay your support by working diligently on each piece of art going out to you. Although Richard has left us, his work will live on and his memory will live always in our hearts.”
Continue reading “Rest in peace, Richard Corben”The mural “merges the historical and the present fight for racial equity and fair housing through peaceful protest and voter participation.”
Jamal Igle, who you would know from such comics as Molly Danger, The Wrong Earth and Black, has drawn the artwork for a mural that’s been put up on buildings in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area.
Igle created the mural in conjunction with the organization March For Our Lives WI, and it “merges the historical and the present fight for racial equity and fair housing through peaceful protest and voter participation,” Igle said on Twitter.
Continue reading “Jamal Igle illustrates the fight for racial equality in a mural in Milwaukee”The Crogan Adventures creator posts a PDF version of the fourth book to his Patreon, saying it’ll never be finished.
Chris Schweizer, creator of the Crogan Adventures series of graphic novels that were published by Oni Press, has shared an unfinished version of a planned fourth volume on his Patreon.
“It’s not finished, and it’s not going to be finished, but I thought that I would put together a digital book sharing what I have: a finished version of an unfinished book,” Schweizer wrote about Crogan’s Escape. “It’s got (almost) finished pages, pencils, roughs and synopses, enough to get a sense of the overall book, as well as a few design bits and an introduction to contextualize the whole thing.”
Crogan’s Escape would have followed Crogan’s Vengeance, Crogan’s March and Crogan’s Loyalty, which were published between 2008 and 2012. Each volume focused on a different member of the Crogan family tree — which is filled with pirates, legionnaires, gunfighters, private eyes, flying aces, lion tamers and more. The first volume starred “Catfoot” Crogan, a sailor turned pirate, while this unfinished fourth volume starred Daniel Crogan and is set in 1920s China.
Continue reading “Chris Schweizer shares an unfinished ‘Crogan’s Escape’”‘Razorblades’ features comics, prose and artwork by a variety of contributors.
Batman writer James Tynion IV has launched not only a new webstore, but also a horror magazine containing comics and prose. Tynion is curating the stories with Steve Foxe, and also contributing some work of his own.
The magazine includes two new comics by Tynion: “Washing Machine” with artist Andy Belanger and a preview of “The Adventures of Killboy” with artist Ricardo Lopez Ortiz, which Tynion says he plans to serialize in the future. Other contributors include Sam Johns, DaNi, Michael Dialynas, Marguerite Bennett, Werther Dell’Edera, Lonnie Nadler, Jenna Cha, Michael Walsh, and more.
Continue reading “James Tynion IV launches a new horror magazine”
