Sunday Comics | ‘Heartstopper’ will return in April

Plus: Get Dinosaur Comics texted to you! And check out some recent award nominees.

Here’s a round-up of some of the best webcomics we’ve seen online recently — and news about them as well. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below.

Heartstopper, the mega-popular webcomic by Alice Oseman that’s been adapted into a series on Netflix, will return from hiatus in April. The announcement came on Twitter from Oseman’s official account.

“The Heartstopper webcomic returns to Tapas, Webtoon, and Tumblr on the 1st April 2023! (I promise this isn’t an April Fool’s joke lol),” the tweet read.

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Tillie Walden named Vermont’s next Cartoonist Laureate

The creator of “Spinning” and “On A Sunbeam” will begin her tenure in April.

The Vermont Arts Council and the Center for Cartoon Studies have announced that Tillie Walden will serve as the next Cartoonist Laureate for the state. Her tenure will begin on April 13 when she will be recognized on the Vermont Statehouse floor.

“I’m so pleased Tillie Walden will serve as Vermont’s next cartoonist laureate,” said U.S. Representative Becca Balint (D-Vermont) in a press release. “She creates richly imagined worlds that transport readers on emotional and fantastical journeys and reminds us all of the importance of having a deep sense of self. Congratulations for this special accomplishment, and thank you for being part of a unique tradition that sets Vermont apart.”

Walden is the award-winning creator of several graphic novels, including the Eisner-winning Are You Listening? and Spinning, the L.A. Times Book Prize-winning On A Sunbeam and The Walking Dead tie-in graphic novel Clementine. She has two new graphic novels due out this year — a second Clementine book and Junior High, a collaboration with musicians Tegan and Sara.

Walden will be the fifth Cartoonist Laureate for Vermont, which I believe is still the only state that has one. Her term will last three years. She joins a list that includes James Kolchalka, Ed Koren, Alison Bechdel and Rick Veitch in holding the title.

Sunday Comics | A cartoon journey around Vermont

Check out recent online comics from Caanan Grall, Ben Passmore, Matthew Dow Smith, Lar DeSouza and more.

Here’s a round up of some of the best comics we’ve seen online recently. If we missed something, let us know in the comments below or on social media.

Vermont’s indie newspaper Seven Days produces an issue dedicated to comics every year, with the most recent one arriving about a month ago. Contributors included Sally Pollak, Michael Tonn, Jordan Barry, Coco Fox, Ezra Veitch and more, while Vermont cartoon laureate James Kochalka provided the cover.

“… any of the stories in the following pages could have been reported and written traditionally,” Assistant Arts Editor Dan Bolles wrote. “Presented in graphic form, however, they shimmer through the lenses of talented artists, who see the material differently from reporters.”

Some of the topics they covered included a visual trip through Guster lead singer Ryan Miller’s Vermont (shown above), a look at a Vermont law that allows to-go cocktails and an excerpt from a comic about the U.S. health care system created by Vermont’s Center for Cartoon Studies. You can find links to all these different comics from Bolles’ write-up on the issue.

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Slate announces the shortlist for the 2020 Cartoonist Studio Prize

Annual prize awards $1,000 to one print comic and one webcomic.

The Slate Book Review and the Center for Cartoon Studies have announced the nominees for their eighth annual Cartoonist Studio Prize, which awards $1,000 to the creator of one print comic and one webcomic.

Slate began the program in 2012; previous winners include Noelle Stevenson for Nimona, Chris Ware for Building Stories, Taiyo Matsumoto for Sunny, Winston Rowntree for Watching, Carol Tyler for Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father, Eleanor Davis for Libby’s Dad and Keren Katz for The Academic Hour. Last year’s winners were Keiler Roberts for Chlorine Gardens and Lauren Weinstein for “Being an Artist and a Mother.”

This year’s print nominees include:

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Slate announces 2019 Cartoonist Studio Prize shortlists

Winners of the annual award by Slate and the Center for Cartoon Studies will be announced April 12.

The Slate Book Review and the Center for Cartoon Studies have announced the nominees for its annual Cartoonist Studio Prize, which awards $1,000 to the creator of one print comic and one webcomic.

Slate began the program in 2012 in conjunction with the Center for Cartoon Studies. Previous winners include Noelle Stevenson for Nimona, Chris Ware for Building Stories, Taiyo Matsumoto for Sunny, Winston Rowntree for Watching, Carol Tyler for Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father, Eleanor Davis for Libby’s Dad and Keren Katz for The Academic Hour.

This year’s print nominees include:

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Dispatches from the Graphic Medicine Conference: Day 1

Brigid Alverson reports from the scene of the 2018 Graphic Medicine Conference in Vermont, which is focused on graphic novels that describe the experience of illness and of being a patient.

I’m up in White River Junction, Vermont, home of the Center for Cartoon Studies and, for this weekend only, the Graphic Medicine Conference. Actually, the conference has two venues—it starts at CCS and moves to the Dartmouth medical school on Saturday.

Stephen Bissette giving the opening address at the Graphic Medicine Conference

The term “graphic medicine” may conjure up an image of a comic about healthy eating or the wonderful world of the circulatory system, but graphic medicine in this case has a more literary bent. It’s part of the field called medical humanities and focuses not on educational comics but on graphic novels that describe the experience of illness and of being a patient, embracing titles as disparate as Jennifer Hayden’s The Story Of My Tits, Ellen Forney’s Marbles and Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (I wrote a short primer on the topic for School Library Journal recently.)

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Keren Katz, Michael DeForge win 2018 Cartoonist Studio Prize

Created in conjunction with the Center for Cartoon Studies, the program offers $1,000 to each winner.

Slate has announced the winners of their annual Cartoonist Studio Prize, which awards $1,000 to the year’s best print comic and webcomic.

This year’s winner in the print catgeory is Keren Katz for The Academic Hour, published by Secret Acres.

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Slate announces 2018 Cartoonist Studio Prize shortlists

Winners of the annual award by Slate and the Center for Cartoon Studies will be announced March 30.

The Slate Book Review and the Center for Cartoon Studies have announced the nominees for its annual Cartoonist Studio Prize, which awards $1,000 to the creator of one print comic and one webcomic.

Slate began the program in 2012 in conjunction with the Center for Cartoon Studies. Previous winners include Noelle Stevenson for Nimona, Chris Ware for Building Stories, Taiyo Matsumoto for Sunny, Winston Rowntree for Watching, Carol Tyler for Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father, and last year’s winners, Eleanor Davis for Libby’s Dad and Christina Tran for “On Beauty.”

The shortlists for both prizes are:

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Smash Pages Q&A: Sophie Yanow

The creator of ‘War of Streets and Houses’ talks about her journalism comics collection, ‘What is a Glacier?,’ and her work translating ‘Pretending is Lying.’

Since her book War of Streets and Houses was published by Uncivilized Books, it seems as though Sophie Yanow has been publishing work on a regular basis. She’s become a significant comics journalist, regularly publishing pieces in The Nib and The Guardian and elsewhere, covering the protests at Standing Rock and the U.S. elections. This year she has two very different comics coming out. The New York Review of Comics has just released Pretending is Lying, a comics memoir by Dominique Goblet that Yanow translated. At TCAF, Retrofit Comics released What is a Glacier, which collects some of Yanow’s journalism comics.

Yanow is currently teaching at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont and this career model – making nonfiction comics, teaching, translation – has existed among prose writers and poets for generations, but it’s something new to comics. We spoke recently about Goblet, translation, nonfiction and the idea that Pretending is Lying.

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Eleanor Davis, Christina Tran win Slate’s Cartoonist Studio Prize

Created in conjunction with the Center for Cartoon Studies, the program offers $1,000 to each winner.

Slate and the Center for Cartoon Studies have announced the winners of the Cartoonist Studio Prize, which awards $1,000 to the year’s “best” print comic and webcomic.

Libby’s Dad by Eleanor Davis, published by Retrofit and Big Planet Comics, won for Best Print Comic. Christina Tran’s “On Beauty” won the award for Best Web Comic.

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Slate announces Cartoonist Studio Prize shortlists

Winners of the annual award by Slate and the Center for Cartoon Studies will be announced in April.

Slate has announced the nominees for its annual Cartoonist Studio Prize, which awards $1,000 to the year’s “best” print comic and webcomic.

Continue reading “Slate announces Cartoonist Studio Prize shortlists”