Three Count | Keith Knight, TCAF panels, Joe Latham

Here are three things in comics to to buy, to listen to and to support today.

1. To Buy: Good On Both Sides by Keith Knight

Gentleman Cartoonist Keith Knight, creator of The K Chronicles and the inspiration for the Hulu series Woke, has a new collection of his (th)ink comic strip available through his Big Cartel shop. He’s offering both a standard edition and an artist’s edition (which is signed, numbered and includes a doodle) of Good on Both Sides. Both have fairly limited print runs, so buy early and often.

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Nominees announced for the 2021 Reuben, NCS awards

Winners will be revealed in September.

The National Cartoonist Society has announced the nominees for the 2021 Cartoonist of the Year, commonly known as The Reuben Award, as well as the many divisional awards they give out each year.

Keith Knight, Edward Sorel, Bill Griffith, Hilary B. Price and Mark Tatulli are all up for the Reuben the year, with several of them being nominated in years past. Last year Curtis creator Ray Billingsley won the award.

The divisional awards cover everything from comics and graphic novels to comic strips, editorial cartoons and even greeting cards. They also nominate the cartoonist or artist, vs. the work or the entire creative team. I’ve included the nominations that are relevant to the world of comics below, but you can see the full list on the NCS website.

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Sunday Comics | ‘Amelia Shadows,’ 24-Hour Comics and more

Check out recent comics by Matthew Dow Smith, Noelle Stevenson, Melanie Gillman, Keith Knight 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.

We kick off this week with a new comic from Matthew Dow Smith, who created and posted the comic Johnny Chaos on Twitter earlier this year after the pandemic hit. Alex Dueben spoke with Smith back in July about getting work done during the pandemic; like a lot of other creators, when pens went down at various publishers, Smith started working on his own comics.

This newest, Amelia Shadows, can be found on Tumblr, or, if you’d like to see it a day early, it’s on his Patreon as well (along with a lot of other cool stuff).

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Tamaki, Valero-O’Connell and more win 2019 Ignatz Awards

Annual awards presented at the Small Press Expo honor excellence in independent comics, graphic novels and minicomics.

The winners of the 2019 Ignatz Awards were announced this weekend at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland.

The big winners of the night were Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, who took home three awards between them, including “Outstanding Graphic Novel.” The political cartoon site The Nib also continued its recent winning streak, taking home the award for “Outstanding Series.”

The Ignatz, named after George Herriman’s brick-wielding mouse from the classic comic strip Krazy Kat, recognizes exceptional work that challenges popular notions of what comics can achieve, both as an art form and as a means of personal expression. The awards have been presented annually since 1997.

The awards presentations were hosted by cartoonist Keith Knight:

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Comics Lowdown: Trump tweets swiped and altered cartoon

Plus: Tramp’s closing down, submissions open for a feminist critique of Whedon and more!

Indianapolis Star cartoonist Gary Varvel was surprised, and none too pleased, when Donald Trump Tweeted one of his cartoons—with some unauthorized alterations. The original cartoon, which was published in January, was a play on the “Trump train” trope, showing a Trump-branded locomotive with a donkey plastered on the front. (Varvel was careful to note that the donkey is “resisting” the train but not being flattened by it: “No cartoon donkeys were killed in the making of this cartoon,” he said.) Trump retweeted another version that replaced the donkey with a CNN logo, added a line about “fake news,” and cropped out Varvel’s signature.

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