Friday, September 06, 2019

Sept 11: Newsprint: The Medium That Launched Comics exhibit gallery talk


8/13 – 9/27, 2019

The Cade Art Gallery at Anne Arundel Community College

Exhibition Reception with curator Warren Bernard on September 11, 2019 from 5 to 7pm.

The multi-billion dollar pop culture phenomenon of comics finds it roots in the cheap paper known as newsprint.

The colorful world of newspaper comic strip characters and today's superheroes can be traced back to the 1890s with the development of high-speed color printing presses. Color printing gave publishers a competitive edge in the bruising newspaper circulation wars of the time.
Newsprint exhibition installation
The large size of a broadsheet newspaper gave both editors and artists a vast canvas upon which to create ground-breaking comics like Little Nemo in Slumberland, Gasoline Alley, and The Spirit.
Here in the 21st Century, we still find newsprint relevant to the comics world, even as physical newspapers and comic books fade in favor of digital content. Newsprint's cheap production price coupled with the latest digital technologies have encouraged publishers and creators of indie comics to embrace the medium.
Covers of Resist!, Magic Bullet #4, and Smoke Signal
This has led to the creation of such long-running newsprint-based publications such as Smoke Signal and Magic Bullet, both mainstays of the indie comics field. The editors and artists of these and other comics across the United States leverage the large form factor and low costs of newsprint to create stories and compositions that could not be entertained in smaller print formats like comic books or in any digital medium.

This exhibit of over 50 pieces is curated by comics historian and Small Press Expo Executive Director Warren Bernard from his personal collection. It traces the use of newsprint in comics from its first commercial application in 1892, through the adoption of this very old medium by today's indie comics artists.




Gallery Hours

Monday–Thursday: 8am–6pm
Friday: 8am–4pm
Saturday: 8am–3pm

Exhibition Reception

Wednesday, September 11, 2019 from 5 to 7pm
Curator Warren Bernard will be on hand to discuss the exhibition and answer questions.
The event is free and open to the public.

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