Tag: Drawn and Quarterly

Smash Pages Q&A: Anneli Furmark on ‘Red Winter’

‘It’s like all the characters in the book have their own universe.’

Anneli Furmark’s Red Winter is a stunning book. It is a love story where the grand romantic scene and gesture happens in the opening pages. It is a narrative that is fractured told from multiple points of view, none of whom understand everything that’s happening. It’s about the politics of 1970’s Sweden and how they intersect with people’s lives. It is an impression of a time and of a place that is rendered and colored beautifully that lingers lost after one finishes reading he last page.

Furmark was kind enough to answer a few questions about her book and how she works.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Leslie Stein is ‘Present’

Over the course of five books, Leslie Stein has established herself as one of the great cartoonists of her generation. One reason is the way that her work defies characterization, avoids cliches and tropes, and instead forges its own idiosyncratic path. Some of her work can seem simplistic, but it’s quickly apparent that the choices Stein has made are complicated and thought out, and that the simple choices she’s made are effective and precise. She is a skilled artist, an inventive letterer and possesses an eye for color and composition that are like very few people in comics. Stein is also quite simply one of the funniest and most philosophical cartoonists working right now.

She’s an artist who is always experimenting, and her new book is no exception. Present, which came out from Drawn and Quarterly earlier this year, is her best work to date. The book collects many of the short comics that have been serialized in recent years on Vice.com, and she was kind enough to answer a few questions.

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Holiday shopping deals from comiXology, Drawn & Quarterly, Skybound and more

Get Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals on comics, merchandise and more.

With the arrival of Black Friday come several opportunities for comic fans looking for that perfect gift or just a good deal. Here’s a rundown of some comic-related things to check out today, over the weekend and on Monday (which is Cyber Monday).

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Smash Pages Q&A: Guy Delisle on ‘Hostage’

Delisle talks about the 15-year long process of making the book and its storytelling challenges.

Guy Delisle has a reputation for crafting a series of travelogue books that detail his travels and the long periods of time he’s spent in places like Myanmar (Burma Chronicles) and Israel (Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City), the latter of which received the Prize for Best Album at the 2012 Angouleme International Comics Festival. He’s also the cartoonist behind the series A User’s Guide to Neglectful Parenting.

Delisle’s book Hostage is a different book for him. It tells the true story of Christophe Andre, an administrator with Médecins Sans Frontiéres (Doctors Without Borders) who was kidnapped in Chechnya in 1997 and held hostage for 111 days. Delisle takes this story and makes the situation of a single man in a room both dramatic and visually engaging, working in a different style and color palate that readers of his earlier books might have expected. Delisle spoke about the 15-year long process of making the book and its storytelling challenges.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Seth on ‘Palookaville’ #23

The creator discusses the end of ‘Clyde Fans,’ the film ‘Seth’s Dominion’ and more.

In 2010 the cartoonist Seth revived his old comics series Palookaville as a series of hardcover volumes that come out once every year and a half or two years, in the smaller size and shape that Seth used in books like Wimbledon Green and The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists. Palookaville #23 has just been released by Drawn and Quarterly and like the earliest volumes, it contains a few different elements. There is a large selection of paintings that Seth created for two different exhibitions in 2014 and 2015. There’s the third chapter of Nothing Lasts, a memoir that Seth began in earlier volumes, and perhaps most notably, the fifth and final chapter of Clyde Fans.

Clyde Fans began many years ago in 1997 in the original Palookaville series, a followup to Seth’s now-classic graphic novel It’s A Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken. The story went on hiatus along with the series, and finishing the series has been one of Seth’s primary projects in the revived Palookaville series. In the interim he has been keeping busy, with a series of graphic novels, New Yorker covers, design projects like The Complete Peanuts, illustrating the Lemony Snicket series All the Wrong Questions, and making paintings and models for various exhibitions. We talked about what finishing the story means to him, what he’s working on next and some thoughts on the film Seth’s Dominion.

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Comics Lowdown: All is revealed!

DC announces their Writers Workshop participants, First Second unveils their Spring 2018 books, Viz licenses some new media, and Mimi Pond talks about her new book—and getting dropped from ‘The Simpsons’ because she was a woman

The Big Reveal: DC announced the names of the six writers who will take part in this year’s DC Writers Workshop: Magdalene Visaggio (Kim & Kim, Quantum Teens Are Go), Sanya Anwar (1001), Joey Esposito (Pawn Shop, Captain Ultimate), Phillip Kennedy Johnson (Last Sons of America, Warlords of Appalachia), Robert Jeffrey (Route 3, Radio Free Amerika) and Ryan Cady (Big Moose). Batman writer Scott Snyder will lead the workshop.

“It’s 13 weeks, and we meet for two, two-and-a-half hours online in a Brady Bunch-style box of windows. I teach it in such a way that it’s all superhero writing for DC. I try and make each week a lesson about a particular technique,” Snyder told Heat Vision. “My job is not to teach you how to write by formula for DC. It’s for you to come in and write the stuff you’re passionate about in your own way. I don’t care if that’s funny political, light-hearted, dark, whatever. Your job is to come in and have something to say. My job is to help you fit it into the rubric of superhero calculus and to help you maximize that story: look at where you should beef things up, slow it down, be aware of pacing. You need to come here and have something to say.”

At the end of the workshop, DC works with the writers to place them in writing slots for DC comics.

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Final ‘Berlin’ collection due in fall of 2018

First published in 1996, Jason Lutes’ historical comic heads toward its conclusion.

At Comic-Con International, Drawn and Quarterly announced that Jason Lutes’ long-running historical epic Berlin will see its final collection, Berlin: City of Lights, released in the fall of 2018. They also plan to release a deluxe hardcover of the complete trilogy at that time.

“Berlin will stand as a singular achievement in comics—an ambitious and detailed exploration of a fascinating time in history by a cartoonist operating at the peak of his talent,” said D+Q Executive Editor Tom Devlin. “I’ve read the numerous chapters of Berlin many times over the years and each time I come away in awe of Jason Lutes’ precision in portraying real people during a time so tumultuous that it could easily overshadow their humanity.”

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Drawn and Quarterly announces 2018 titles

New graphic novels by Shigeru Mizuki, Rina Ayuyang, Nick Drnaso, Matthew Thurber and more.

At Comic-Con International on Saturday, Drawn and Quarterly shared their spring/summer line-up for 2018, which includes titles from Matthew Thurber, Nick Drnaso, Shigeru Mizuki, Rina Ayuyang and more. Here’s a rundown of what they shared:

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Comics Lowdown: Walking Dead to end, Remembering Bernie Wrightson

Todd Klein walks us through Comic-Con. Plus: Robert Sikoryak parodies Trump, San Diego Police, beer for the thirsty con-goer.

And the winner is…: The Eisners are tonight! Our own Brigid Alverson will be live tweeting the awards show and the results on our Twitter feed @smash_pages. The Eisners are scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. Pacific.

Robert Kirkman with some pals (photo: Skybound Entertainment)

The Walking Dead will die: Creator Robert Kirkman has confirmed that the Walking Dead will have an ending. At the Walking Dead panel in San Diego, Kirkman told fans, “I think about two or three years ago, I had a pretty good idea for a definitive ending. I have known that since then and been working towards that, so I know exactly where I’m going and what’s going to happen when I get there.” He expects the series will wrap up in the next 2-3 years.

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D+Q bring Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Julie Doucet comics back to print

‘Love That Bunch’ and ‘Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet’ both due out next year.

Drawn & Quarterly announced at Comic-Con this week plans to publish new editions of comics by Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Julie Doucet.

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D + Q to publish Lisa Hanawalt’s ‘Coyote Doggirl’

Hanawalt’s homage to and lampoon of Westerns to arrive in fall 2018.

Cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt heads west — to the Wild West, actually — for her next graphic novel. Drawn & Quarterly has announced they will publish Coyote Doggirl, the new graphic novel from the creator of My Dumb Dirty Eyes and Hot Dog Taste Test, in the fall of 2018.

“Lisa is enormously talented at creating fantastical worlds that are gorgeously technicolored and rendered, and she has a very funny gift for the anthropomorphically absurd,” said D + Q publisher Peggy Burns. “Once you look a bit closer however, you can see Coyote Doggirl is not just a send-up of the Western genre, but a deeply personal story for Lisa. Watching it unfold across the desert landscape is thrilling.”

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D + Q announces, then cancels, Berliac’s ‘Sadbøi’

Publisher sites 2015 essay “comparing cultural appropriation and transgender people” as a reason they canceled the project.

Three days after announcing plans to publish Sadbøi by cartoonist Berliac, Drawn & Quarterly issued an apology and said they no longer plan to release the graphic novel.

The quick version:

  1. The project was announced last Tuesday, which spurred several reactions on social media.
  2. The issues raised mainly centered around statements Berliac made in 2015 in an essay comparing cultural appropriation and transgender people, and his subsequent reaction to criticism of that essay.
  3. Berliac responded to D+Q’s decision on Facebook.

So what’s this all about? Let’s break it down …

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