Sunday Comics | Comic strips pay tribute to COVID-19 essential workers

Check out new comics by Louise Simonson, Jan Duursema, Ali Fitzgerald, Roger Langridge 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.

Comic strips from Dick Tracy to Doonesbury are celebrating medical personnel on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis today, as the Sunday strips feature six “hidden” items like a microscope and a medical mask that relate to essential workers during the pandemic. The idea for it came from Rick Kirkman, who is one of the creators of the comic strip Baby Blues.

Maria Scriven provides a look at the six items:

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Comics Lowdown: MoCCA postponed due to coronavirus

Plus: News about WonderCon, Jim Lee, Webtoon, Dark Horse and more!

Events: New York’s MoCCA Arts Festival, originally scheduled for April 4-5, is the latest event to be postponed due to the novel coronavirus, which has now been declared a pandemic.

“While New York is not officially calling for events of large gatherings to be canceled, many have been and we do not know what the next few weeks will entail. We recognize the amount of work and finances our exhibitors put into their tables and are trying to minimize the burden on them,” The Society of Illustrators, who puts on MoCCA every year, said in a statement.

They added, “In the meantime, we have made the decision to move forward and continue to judge the Awards of Excellence. In addition to the cash prize and Wacom tablets for Gold and Silver medalists, the Society will feature the award winners in an exhibition at the onsite Gallery we build at MoCCA Fest.”

A new date for the two-day festival has not been announced. It joins the Emerald City Comic Con, South by Southwest, E3, the London Book Fair and countless other events that have been impacted by COVID-19.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Monica Gallagher

The writer and artist discusses her webcomic ‘Assassin Roommate,’ collaborating on ‘The Black Ghost’ and much more.

Monica Gallagher has been writing and drawing print and web comics for years. People might know her for work like Gods and Undergrads, Bonnie N. Collide, Lipstick & Malice, Part-Time Princesses, Glitter Kissor many other projects. The past year thought has been a particularly busy and productive one for Gallagher, who has been writing and drawing multiple projects.

She’s been making the weekly webcomic Assassin Roommate; drew the weekly webcomic Boo! It’s Sex, which was written by Danielle Corsetto (Girls with Slingshots); co-wrote the podcast Lethal Lit; and has co-written the new comics miniseries The Black Ghost with Alex Segura, which is being released by comiXology Originals. The first issue is out now and the second issue comes out Oct. 16.

Additionally Gallagher is running a Kickstarter campaign to collect the first year’s work of Assassin Roommate. We spoke recently about her many projects.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Dean Haspiel on ‘Starcross’

The prolific creator discusses the next chapter in his New Brooklyn universe.

Dean Haspiel has always been a creator doing many things and making many kinds of projects. From drawing books at Vertigo including The Quitter and The Alcoholic, to helping to launch webcomics first at the collective act-i-vate to the series Street Code that he made at DC’s Zuda imprint. He received an Emmy Award for designing the titles to the HBO show Bored to Death, co-wrote and drew The Fox for Archie Comics, and drew the children’s book Mo and Jo, which was written by Jay Lynch. In recent years he’s written three plays which have been produced in New York City and just launched the podcast Scene by Scene with fellow artist Josh Neufeld.

In recent years he’s been making The Red Hook, a superhero saga that he’s been serializing on Line Webtoon in two volumes, the first of which has been published in a print edition by Image Comics. Over the course of two volumes, the focus has gone from the titular character to other characters, and that focus continues to expand in this third volume in interesting ways. The third Red Hook story, Starcross, is being serialized starting this week, and we sat down to talk about the book.

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‘Finality’ by Ellis, Doran debuts on Line Webtoon

“It’s like Muppets re-enacting Cormac McCarthy out here at night now.”

The megapopular webcomics site Line Webtoon launched a new series earlier today that reunites the Orbiter and Super Idol team of Colleen Doran and Warren Ellis. You can read the first three chapters of Finality now, with more to come.

“Warren Ellis and I started working on Finality way back in 2016, but I got too sick to continue for awhile, and it had to go on the back burner,” Doran wrote on Tumblr last month. “As I’m doing the color here, I realized the lead character in Finality is a dead ringer for Elisabeth Moss, lead actress in The Handmaid’s Tale! She’d be perfect in the role, too!”

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Joelle Jones, Tom King, Lee Weeks and more win 2018 Ringo Awards

Marc Andreyko receives the Dick Giordano Humanitarian of the Year Award, while Denny O’Neil receives the Hero Initiative Lifetime Achievement Award.

The 2018 Mike Wieringo Comic Book Industry Awards were presented this weekend at the Baltimore Comic-Con, celebrating the “creativity, skill and fun of comics.” The awards program is named for artist Mike Wieringo, who passed away in 2007.

This is the second year the awards were presented, and they include both “fan favorites,” which were selected by open voting, and “jury and fan winners,” selected by a combination of open nominations and jury voting. You can see the breakdown of how the winners were selected on the Ringo Awards website.

Congratulations to all the winners:

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Smash Pages Q&A: Dan Schkade on ‘Lavender Jack’

The creator of ‘San Hannibal: The City of Love and Fear’ discusses his latest comic, which is now available on Line Webtoon.

Dan Schkade has been working in comics for a few years now. Readers might remember his artwork from books like Will Eisner’s The Spirit, which Matt Wagner wrote; Battlestar Galactica: Gods and Monsters; or San Hannibal: The City of Love and Fear, which he wrote and drew, among other projects. His new project is Lavender Jack, a new weekly series on Line Webtoon. The titular character is a thief and vigilante exposing the misdeeds of his town’s corrupt and wealthy elite. Desperate the Mayor seeks out the world’s greatest detective, Theresa Ferrier.

Set in a vague time early in the 20th Century, the book is witty and erudite, and feels familiar in many ways even as it strikes its own path as a woman who was once the world’s greatest detective is now older and disillusioned comes face to face with a new kind of adversary in a new kind of century. It’s a book about crime and conventions with a love of design and verbal wordplay. Lavender Jack updates every Tuesday and I reached out to ask Schkade about how he works and the unique but familiar world he’s created.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Dean Haspiel on New Brooklyn, his new play and more

The comics creator and playwright discusses The Red Hook, War Cry, his newest play and much more.

Dean Haspiel has always been a busy creator. Right now he’s writing and drawing War Cry, a weekly superhero comic for Line Webtoon, which wraps up next month. It’s a sequel to The Red Hook, which will be published as a print collection by Image Comics in June, part of the New Brooklyn Universe that Haspiel has overseen.

This month Haspiel has the world premiere of his new play in New York. The Last Bar at the End of the World is Haspiel’s third play and his second in two years. Haspiel has been one of those creators doing many things, from making his own comics, drawing books written by other people, working in television and film. This fall The Alcoholic, which Haspiel drew, will be reissued in a 10th anniversary edition. There will also be a collection to Haspiel’s The Fox: Fox Hunt series coming out from Archie Comics.

An Off-Broadway play, an indie superhero, a realistic graphic novel, an Archie superhero – and the fact that Haspiel is able to move from one to other with such ease is just one of the reasons his work has always stood out.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Olivia Dinnall on ‘Bi-Assed’

‘The Purple Alien’ discusses her work on the popular Line Webtoon comic, which explores what it means to be biracial and bisexual.

Olivia Dinnall aka “The Purple Alien” is a cartoonist and illustrator whose webcomic Bi-Assed runs on Line Webtoon. The comic explores what it means to be biracial and bisexual. As Dinnall describes the book:

“You would think that ones race and sexual orientation wouldn’t have anything in common, and for the most part, that’s true. But when you’re a biracial and bisexual person growing up, you come to realize that the two have more things in common then you would think…..those things being the ridiculous stuff people say to you based on the two.”

The result is a comic that will make you cringe in sympathy – or cringe because you’ve encountered those comments in your own life. It’s a great comic, and following Dinnall on social media one can see that she’s always drawing, often in different styles and approaches. She’s working as hard as ever on the webcomic and planning future projects, but is also collaborating with a friend and making some changes to Bi-Assed, and we talked recently about how she works.

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Check out Colleen Coover’s ‘Rose’s Heart’ on Webtoon

The ‘Bandette’ creator shares a spooky story from 2012, which will also appear in the upcoming ‘Gothic Tales Of Haunted Love.’

Multiple Eisner Award winner Colleen Coover just announced a new issue of her wonderful comic Bandette is coming out in October, which is awesome news — but if you’re jonesin’ for a fix of her gorgeous artwork right now, you can check out a gothic horror story she did back in 2012.

“Rose’s Heart,” Coover’s homage to “the horror tales of the comics of the 1970s,” is now available on Line Webtoon for your reading pleasure. It’s a quick read best experienced on your mobile device, but it’ll get you through the next few weeks until the new Bandette story is available.

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