Category: Interviews

Picture + Panel | K Czap + Suzana Harcum talk about love stories

Check out our interview in advance of a live question-and-answer session between the two creators in Boston next week.

We continue our interview series with creators speaking at the monthly Picture + Panel event in Boston, which brings together two comic creators to talk about a specific topic — in this case, love stories.

K. Czap, Suzana Harcum,and Owena White, along with Lily Barrett from the pop-up romance book store Read My Lips, will engage in a discussion about “the many faces of falling in love.” The event is hosted by the Boston Comic Arts Foundation, Porter Square Books and the Boston Figurative Arts Center.

Suzana Harcum & Owena White, a lesbian couple from Tucson, Arizona, and Worcester, Massachusetts, respectively, are an artist-writer duo making LGBT-centered comics. Their collaborative efforts blend Suzana’s art with Owena’s storytelling, crafting stories that explore communication, self-discovery and acceptance. In creating together, they seek to share their perspectives and experiences growing up queer, through heartfelt slice-of-life comics. They enjoy making relatable stories for readers, aiming to foster a sense of community and understanding through their work.

K Czap is an acclaimed cartoonist, author of Four Years and Fütchi Perf, and colorist for comics from Scholastic, First Second and more. Residing in Providence RI, Czap is a board member of Binch Press × Queer.Archive.Work., an artist studio collective.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Matt Kindt on ‘Mind MGMT: New & Improved’

After moving his Flux House imprint from Dark Horse to Oni Press, the cartoonist prepares to launch another round of his mind-bending series.

Matt Kindt has proven to be one of comic’s most restlessly inventive creators, particularly when it comes to story structure, formal experimentation and the physical design of the books themselves. From his early work on Pistolwhip and Super Spy to Mind MGMT and beyond, Kindt has never been content to make a comic that looks or reads like anything else on the shelf.

Now he’s making a move. After launching Flux House at Dark Horse Comics, Kindt is relocating his imprint to Oni Press, where his first two titles will be Mind MGMT: New & Improved and Fort Psycho, the latter co-created with artist Brian Hurtt. Mind MGMT: New & Improved #1 arrives in June, billed as a self-contained entry point for new readers. Although Kindt would be the first to tell you, you should probably read that disclaimer with some skepticism.

I spoke with Kindt about this new chapter, both for Flux House and for Mind MGMT, how the new series differs from the previous one and his zany approach to the blind bag cover program for the first issue. My thanks for his time.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Mark Russell on ‘The Forgotten Divine’

The award-winning writer of ‘The Snagglepuss Chronicles’ and ‘Not All Robots’ talks to us about his latest project for Ahoy Comics.

Mark Russell’s new book with artist Russ Braun is about how ordinary people fall into cults. The Forgotten Divine follows Rodney Coleman, an unhoused veteran and former bomb disposal expert whose dreams of a faraway planet draw him toward others who’ve had the same visions, and the group that forms around their shared experience.

The book arrives via AHOY Comics’ first-ever Kickstarter, which gave the team the freedom to tell the story they wanted to in the format they thought fit it best. I spoke with Russell about the project, the Kickstarter campaign, why he takes his “kiss of death” ideas to AHOY and more.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Joe Palmer on ‘Destination Kill’

The ‘Time Before Time’ and ‘2000 AD’ artist talks about his new series from Oni Press, which debuts in May.

Joe Palmer had been carrying pieces of Destination Kill around in his head for years before he finally had the chance to put them all together. The British cartoonist, known for his work on 2000 AD, Time Before Time, Write it in Blood and more, spent that time accumulating ideas, characters and images that didn’t quite have a home yet, but found one in this new title that he’s writing and drawing.

The result arrives from Oni Press on May 13: a 40-page first issue set in 2125 London, where a superfast transatlantic train, a robot workforce and a citywide worker uprising collide. We talked about the genesis of the project, going solo and lettering your own comics, among other topics. My thanks for his time.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Jay Eaton on ‘Runaway to the Stars’

With a Kickstarter launching this week, we talk to Eaton about biology degrees, base-8 numeral systems and why a wall clock can take hours to draw.

Jay Eaton describes their path to comics less as a choice than as an inescapable gravitational pull, one they spent years trying to resist before giving in entirely.

After pursuing biology in college and working in horticulture, Eaton eventually committed full-time to the project they’d been building on the side all along: Runaway to the Stars, a hard sci-fi slice-of-life graphic novel about a centaur aerospace engineer, a shipwrecked AI pirate and the unlikely friendship that upends both their lives.

Eaton has been building this story on the web for years, and now it’s coming to print via Kickstarter through Iron Circus Comics. We talked about world-building as narrative, designing for bodies that aren’t human and what a biology degree is actually good for when you’re a cartoonist.

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Smash Pages Q&A | D. B. Andry on ‘Estuary: A Ghost Story’

The co-writer of the new horror comic from Oni Press talks about West Coast horror, Catholic guilt, working with Tim Daniel and more.

A haunted cabin in the woods, an abandoned scientific research station in the arctic, an empty road with no civilization for miles … the best horror stories start with the right setting. David “D. B.” Andry and his co-writer Tim Daniel have built a reputation for comics that know exactly where they live, including Denizen, Morning Star and Red Vector.

Their latest, Estuary: A Ghost Story, arrives in stores today from Oni Press, and it may be their most atmospheric work yet: a four-issue supernatural thriller set along the California coast, where a 400-year-old Spanish mission sits atop a tidal estuary full of buried secrets, housing a reclusive nun who has spent decades making sure they stay that way.

I caught up with Andry to talk about “West Coast Horror,” the Catholic Church’s complicated California legacy, underwater ghosts and what it means to write horror with a collaborator who has more ideas in a day than most people have in a lifetime.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Dave Baker + Nicole Goux on ‘Punk’n Heads’

The creators of ‘Fuck Off Squad,’ ‘Forest Hills Bootleg Society’ and more discuss their latest project, a punk rock coming-of-age story that Top Shelf will release next week.

In addition to their solo work, Dave Baker and Nicole Goux have jammed together on numerous graphic novels over the last several years that includes books like Fuck Off Squad, Forest Hills Bootleg Society and Everyone is Tulip. Next week they’ll add another to the list, Punk’n Heads, a punk rock, romantic coming-of-age story about being “young, messy and alive.”

“Punk’n Heads is a book for all the broken hearted losers out there,” Baker said. “The kids who wanted to accomplish great things and then ended up playing shitty back-room punk shows. If you’ve ever broken up with someone in the back of a van, right before six idiots in Doc Martens are about to pile in, this is the book for you.”

“For anyone whose journey hasn’t been a straight path, Punk’n Heads might just bring you a little solace,” Goux said. “Join Hannah, Jerry, Morgan and Birdie in their quest to make something cool, make it big or maybe just be a little less sad.”

I spoke with Baker and Goux about getting the band back together for their latest graphic novel, as well as being young, following your dreams and what happens when those dreams get derailed. You can also check out some preview pages from the book before it arrives in stores next week.

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Picture + Panel | Meera Subramanian + Katy Doughty on making comics about the climate crisis

Check out our interview in advance of a live question-and-answer session between the two creators in Boston next week.

We’re happy to continue our interview series with creators speaking at the monthly Picture + Panel event in Boston, which brings together two comic creators to talk about a specific topic — in this case, stories about “humanity’s closest brushes with extinction.”

On April 6, Meera Subramanian and Katy Doughty, along with WBUR environmental correspondent Barbara Moran, will discuss what it takes to keep the world alive, given the current climate crisis and, well … (motions at everything). The event is hosted by the Boston Comic Arts Foundation, Porter Square Books and the Boston Figurative Arts Center.

Meera Subramanian is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes narrative nonfiction about home in the personal and planetary sense, in a time of climate crisis. Her work has appeared in publications such as Nature, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Orion, where she is a contributing editor. Her first book was A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, which was short-listed for the 2016 Orion Book Award. A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis, a graphic novel she did with artist Danica Novgorodoff, arrived in March.

Katy Doughty is a California-born, Texas-bred, New England—educated illustrator who holds a bachelor of fine arts in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design and a master of public health from Boston University School of Public Health. Her unique background fuels her interest in the intersection of visual communication, research, and health care. She lives in Boston with her husband.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Ben H. Winters on ‘Benjamin’

The creator of TV’s ‘Tracker’ talks dead sci-fi authors, sunny noir and why comics let you do “any damn crazy-ass thing you want to.”

Ben H. Winters has built a career out of defying easy categorization. He’s the Philip K. Dick Award-winning novelist behind The Last Policeman trilogy and Underground Airlines, a TV writer whose credits include FX’s Legion and Apple TV’s Manhunt, and the creator of Tracker, currently one of the biggest hits on CBS. If that sounds like a lot, it is, yet somehow he’s also found time to dive headfirst into comics.

After contributing to Oni Press’s acclaimed revival of the EC Comics line, Winters has now made his miniseries debut with Benjamin, illustrated by the Leomacs. The book follows Benjamin J. Carp, brilliant, slightly self-destructive sci-fi author who died in 1982, as he wakes up inexplicably alive in 2025 Los Angeles, forced to investigate the impossible mystery of his own existence. It’s surreal, funny and deeply strange in the best possible way. The trade paperback collection of Benjamin is out now from Oni Press.

I got the chance to talk to Winters about how he came to comics, what makes Benjamin tick, and what it’s like to bounce between network television and deeply weird graphic novels. He also let slip some details about what’s coming next.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Bruno Redondo on ‘The DC Art of Bruno Redondo’

From a 12-year-old reading ‘Incredible Hulk’ to three Eisner Awards, Redondo reflects on the career that led to his first major art book.

Bruno Redondo has spent the last decade building an impressive body of work in comics. From his early DC work on Human Target and Batman: Arkham Unhinged to his career-defining runs on Injustice and Nightwing, he’s developed a visual language that’s entirely his own — fluid, expressive, and packed with personality. Along the way, he’s picked up three Eisner Awards and won over countless fans.

Now, Clover Press is giving his work a retrospective with The DC Art of Bruno Redondo, a 200+ page, 9″x12″ hardcover collecting his best DC work to date, with an introduction by his longtime collaborator Tom Taylor. The campaign is live now on Kickstarter, with edition options ranging from hardcover to signed slipcase, plus extras like a fold-out edition of the iconic Nightwing #87, rarely-seen sketches and commissions, a sticker pack and more.

I recently had the chance to talk with Bruno about how he fell in love with comics, what makes his creative partnership with Tom Taylor tick, what it means to look back at a career still very much in progress. and more. Here’s what he had to say.

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Picture + Panel | Robert Mgrdich Apelian + Shaina Lu talk about the intersection of food, family and comics

Check out our interview in advance of a live question-and-answer session between the two creators in Boston next week.

Today we continue our interview series with creators speaking at the monthly Picture + Panel event in Boston, which brings together two comic creators to talk about a specific topic. Robert Mgrdich Apelian and Shaina Lu, whose graphic novels explore “the intersections of culture, community and comestibles,” talk to us about food and comics. You can find more details on the Feb. 2 event here.

Picture + Panel is a monthly conversation series produced in partnership by the Boston Comic Arts Foundation, Porter Square Books and the Boston Figurative Arts Center, Picture + Panel provides thought-provoking discussions for the unique form of expression that is the comics medium.

Robert Mgrdich Apelian (he/him) is an Armenian American author-illustrator based in Everett, Massachusetts. He’s an avid reader of seinen manga and is especially passionate about making the most of comics as a storytelling medium. A primary goal of his work is to celebrate the diversity and cultural excellence of the Middle East and to portray it as something other than tragic and war-torn.​

Shaina Lu (she/her) is a queer Taiwanese American community artist exploring the intersection of art, education, and activism. She graduated from Wellesley College and Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she studied arts in education. When she’s not creating community art, she works with young artists and makers in Boston’s Chinatown. Most important, she drinks juice every day, and she is full of sugar.

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Picture + Panel | Jesse Mechanic + Tom Hart on creating comics on grief and loss

We continue our interview series in advance of a live question-and-answer session between the two creators in Boston next week.

Today we continue our interview series with creators speaking at the monthly Picture + Panel event in Boston, which brings together two comic creators to talk about a specific topic. Today, Tom Hart and Jesse Mechanic will talk about grief and the impact it has had on their work, and we’re fortunate to present a preview of that conversation. You can find more details on the event here.

Picture + Panel is a monthly conversation series produced in partnership by the Boston Comic Arts Foundation, Porter Square Books and the Boston Figurative Arts Center, Picture + Panel provides thought-provoking discussions for the unique form of expression that is the comics medium.

Tom Hart is a critically acclaimed Eisner-nominated cartoonist and the Executive Director of The Sequential Artists Workshop in Gainesville, Florida. He is the creator of Rosalie Lightning and the Hutch Owen series of graphic novels and books. The Collected Hutch Owen was nominated for best graphic novel in 2000 and has received a Xeric Grant. Tom has taught sequential art at the University of Florida and at NYC’s School of Visual Arts.

Jesse Mechanic is an opinion columnist, essayist and artist. He has published work in Mother Jones, In These Times, HuffPost, Truthout and other publications. Jesse enjoys woodworking, the television show Cheers and working diligently to dismantle the various oppressive systems that define our world. The Last Time We Spoke is his debut graphic novel.

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