Tag: The Nib

Sunday Comics | Read The Nib magazine for free (while you can)

Also check out recent webcomics by Meredith McClaren, Simon Roy, Mad Rupert, Cat Farris and Mike Russell.

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 cool or you have your own recommendation, let us know in the comments below.

As editor and publisher Matt Bors announced back in May, the award-winning nonfiction webcomics site The Nib will stop publishing new comics at the end of the month. Bors is hoping to keep an archive of the site up and running, so he’s currently taking donations to help make that happen.

He has also made all the back issues of The Nib magazine available to read for free:

The Nib is wrapping up ten years of publishing and closing down at the end of August. But before we go, we are making all 15 issues of our Eisner and Ignatz award-winning magazine available for anyone to download for free. That’s more than 1,600 pages of comics, including our out of print Secrets, Nature, Food, and Color issues.

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The Nib will shut down after August

Editor Matt Bors announced the decision today, noting ‘The math isn’t working anymore.’

The Nib, the award-winning, critically acclaimed and much-needed political comics website and publisher, will shut down at the end of the summer.

Editor and publisher Matt Bors announced the decision on the site, noting the decision was “incredibly hard,” but “the math isn’t working anymore.”

“This was an incredibly hard decision to make and there’s no one factor involved,” Bors said. “Rather it involves, well, everything. The rising costs of paper and postage, the changing landscape of social media, subscription exhaustion, inflation, and the simple difficulty of keeping a small independent publishing project alive with relatively few resources—though we did a lot with them. The math isn’t working anymore.”

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Smash Pages Q&A | Kendra Wells

The creator of ‘Real Hero Shit’ discusses the role-playing origins of the graphic novel, working with publisher Iron Circus, their work at The Nib and more.

For years now, cartoonist and illustrator Kendra Wells has been one of those people making short comics for various outlets including The Nib, where they excel at finding ways to make readers laugh out loud as their blood pressure skyrockets, remembering just how angry they are at what’s happening in the world. Last year they collaborated with writer Sam Maggs on the graphic novel Tell No Tales: Pirates of the Southern Seas, and Iron Circus just released Wells’ debut as a writer and artist, Real Hero Shit.

Real Hero Shit features a mismatched group of adventurers who, in between attacking each other, do actually stumble onto a mystery and manage to help a village. It’s funny and weird, and it manages to walk that very fine line of loving and paying tribute to the genre and its tropes, while also undermining and mocking almost all of them. And while it’s no surprise that Wells is able to write funny dialogue, they deftly manage to juggle writing a long narrative with character moments, humor and making a story that feel familiar but also surprising.

The first of hopefully many such books, Real Hero Shit is out now and next week, a new dating sim game that Wells is the lead writer for, Kiss U, goes live on Kickstarter. They were kind enough to answer a few questions about their book.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Kasia Babis on ‘Re: Constitutions’

The political cartoonist discusses her work with Beka Feathers on the latest title from First Second’s World Citizen Comics imprint.

Kasia Babis has been making comics for many years, but she gained a new international audience when she began contributing to The Nib about a wide range of topics. In particular, her comics about Polish politics offer an outsider’s take on events within the United States.

Babis has drawn the new book, Re: Constitutions, part of the World Citizen Comics imprint. Written by Beka Feathers, an expert in political development and post-conflict institution building who has worked in more than a dozen countries to help draft constitutions and design political transition, the book is about constitutions, but it’s also about what it means to be a citizen, our political landscape, the rights of individuals and what binds us together. It is a complex topic, and Babis’ art and designs help to masterfully juggle many ideas and complex topics in striking ways.

We spoke recently about her work and making the book while being an engaged citizen in a period of protest, as many basic rights are being eroded by an increasingly authoritarian government.

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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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Comics Lowdown | A Charlie Hebdo survivor speaks

Plus: Lost Charles Schulz comics emerge, new graphic novel from Nnedi Okorafor and Tana Ford, and more!

The New York Times profiles cartoonist Corinne Rey, who was working in the offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015, the day that two masked gunmen massacred the staff; Rey, who uses the pseudonym Coco, was just leaving the offices of Charlie Hebdo when two masked gunmen arrived and forced her to unlock the door. Her new graphic novel, To Draw Again, recently published in France, depicts that moment and its aftermath. Rey is now the resident cartoonist at the newspaper Libération, the first woman to hold that post.

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Matt Bors retires his weekly political comic strip; will still run ‘The Nib’

Bors will turn his attention to creating fiction comics and longer-form nonfiction comics.

After almost two decades, cartoonist and The Nib founder Matt Bors has announced he’s retiring from his weekly political comic. His comic on background checks that ran at the end of March will be his last regular political cartoon.

He plans to continue running The Nib, the award-winning webcomics site that features political and nonfiction comics on a daily basis by a variety of artists. He also said he plans to do more nonfiction comics, including comic interviews, for the site. And he’s preparing pitches for fiction comics as well.

“So I will be staying busy, as always,” he said in his announcement post. “Something had to give in my life to make room for other things and, frankly, it was an easy decision. I’ve drawn political cartoons every week since I was 19 and feel like I have said everything I can say, often a few times over. I know this may be disappointing to longtime readers, but my creative desires pull me in another direction, one where I hope to create more work on par with what I’ve done in this field. I also owe it to both The Nib’s readers and creators to keep the publication going as long as possible.”

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Smash Pages Q&A: Alexandra Beguez

The cartoonist and illustrator discusses her work on ‘Guantanamo Voices,’ her family’s escape from Cuba, her work process and more.

Alexandra Beguez is a cartoonist and illustrator whose work has appeared in The Believer, The Nib, Ink Brick, Adventure Time Comics and Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream. Her technical skill as an artist is apparent, but she manages to move from heavily researched nonfiction to inventive fantasy to her breadth of illustration work with seeming ease.

Guantanamo Voices was published earlier this fall by Abrams Books and the book, written and edited by Sarah Mirk, is one of the year’s most important titles. Beguez drew the book’s third chapter about whistleblower Matthew Diaz.

We spoke recently about the project, inking and her relationship to Cuba.

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Smash Pages Q&A: Gerardo Alba

The cartoonist and editor discusses his work on ‘Guantanamo Voices,’ working at the Latin American division of Webtoon and much more.

Gerardo Alba is a cartoonist who has had a busy year. He colored the recent graphic novel Fault Lines in the Constitution, which was adapted and drawn by his wife the artist Ally Shwed. He is one half of Little Red Bird Press, which released the anthology Votes for Women earlier in the year. Alba recently took a new job as editor at the Latin American division of Webtoon.

Alba is one of the artists on the recent book Guantanamo Voices, a great and important work of comics journalism, where he drew one of the key early chapters of the book. Alba was kind enough to take time out to talk about Guantanamo Voices and his many projects. 

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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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Smash Pages Q&A: Pia Guerra

Comic artist turned political cartoonist Pia Guerra discusses how her work has changed, the current political climate and more.

Pia Guerra is best known among comic book readers as the artist and co-creator of Y: The Last Man, but in recent years she’s spent much of her time and energy writing and drawing gag cartoons and political cartoons for The New Yorker, The Nib and other publications. In 2018 a collection of her political comics titled Me the People was published by Image Comics.

Guerra is living in Vancouver and I reached out to ask about how her work has changed, inking and what she’s working on now.

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Gene Yang, The Nib and more win 2020 Harvey Awards

Awards ceremony will be held this Friday.

The Harvey Awards have announced their 2020 award recipients through their outlet of choice, The Hollywood Reporter. The awards announcement comes several days before a virtual ceremony that’s supposed to be part of New York Comic Con and MCM Comic Con’s Metaverse event.

So why are they announcing them now? Who knows — 2020 is weird. But hey, here are the winners:

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