New 'Rocky And Bullwinkle' Is Something We Hope You'll Really Like
https://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2018/05/11/609060876/new-rocky-and-bullwinkle-is-something-we-hope-you-ll-really-like
Friday, May 11, 2018
NPR's Monkey See on 'Rocky And Bullwinkle'
https://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2018/05/11/609060876/new-rocky-and-bullwinkle-is-something-we-hope-you-ll-really-like
Spike Trotman, formerly of Potomac, MD, profiled in Chicago
Iron Circus Comics brings diversity to the comic book market
Cheryl V. Jackson
RedEye Chicago April 5 2018
http://www.chicagotribune.com/redeye/culture/ct-redeye-c2e2-iron-circus-comics-20180326-story.html
RedEye Chicago April 5 2018
http://www.chicagotribune.com/redeye/culture/ct-redeye-c2e2-iron-circus-comics-20180326-story.html
Thursday, May 10, 2018
'Washington History' magazine now has comics
The newest issue of the semi-annual Washington History magazine, published by the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., includes a new comics feature called "Another Look" by ... me (Matt Dembicki)! "Combustible" is the inaugural story about Mayor Walter Washington's leadership during the 1968 riots.
Below is a photo of the page as well as one of me (left) and editor Chris Myers Asch at the release gathering Wednesday at the National Building Museum.
Below is a photo of the page as well as one of me (left) and editor Chris Myers Asch at the release gathering Wednesday at the National Building Museum.
Herblock award photos by Bruce Guthrie online
Ward Sutton was presented with the Herblock award last night at the Library of Congress and Bruce Guthrie got photos.
Presentation:
http://www.bguthriephotos.com/
Everything else (mostly reception):
http://www.bguthriephotos.com/
Presentation:
http://www.bguthriephotos.com/
Everything else (mostly reception):
http://www.bguthriephotos.com/
Wednesday, May 09, 2018
Comic Riffs on the changing world of editorial cartoons
Here's why 2018 is a huge moment in the history of political cartoons
Washington Post Comic Riffs blog
Avengers review by local writer Harrison Blackman
The manipulative storytelling of 'The Avengers: Infinity War'
How formulaic scenes, jokes, and a stunning finish distract from the blockbuster's narrative deficiencies
Harrison Blackman
is a writer from the Washington, D.C. region. He writes often about film, storytelling, and cities. Learn more at www.harrisonblackman.com/.
Tuesday, May 08, 2018
William L. Brown's Weekly News Drawing: Irantrum
Local cartoonist/illustrator William L. Brown issues a weekly, wordless commentary.
© 2018, William L. Brown
© 2018, William L. Brown
Monday, May 07, 2018
Hookah Girl out from MD's Rosarium
Now out - The Hookah Girl and Other True Stories! [
Where to find it:
In this current political climate, being a Palestinian is a hazard. However, there are common grounds where East meets West. The Hookah Girl is a semi-autobiographical graphic novel of a childhood as a Christian Palestinian in America. Told in short stories and with narrative ranging from growing up in a refugee family to how to roll waraq (stuffed grape leaves), this book is an account of living in two seemingly different cultures that actually aren't very different at all.
Keep an eye out for our creators at these events!
TCAF - Rosarium will be tabling, and Whit Taylor will be there! May 12-13th, Toronto
May 26th, 7pm, Bluestockings Bookstore in NYC, Marguerite Dabaie will be reading from The Hookah Girl and Other True Stories
Rosarians in the wild!
We presented at the Westover Branch of the Arlington Central Library on "Beyond Marvel and DC: Comics and Graphic Novels"! Thanks for the opportunity, Arlington Library!
Find us on social media!
Rosarium website: http://www.rosariumpublishing.com
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/rosariumpub
Instagram: RosariumPub
Want to be a reviewer, interview our creators, or have any questions about Rosarium? Email Melissa Riggio at melissa@rosariumpublishing.com.
Sunday, May 06, 2018
That darn Doonesbury (and what about Nancy?)
Attention all 'Doonesbury' and 'Nancy' fans [in print as Understanding comics].
Spencer L. Williams, Deborah Rimmer Leser, Becky Bray,
Washington Post May 5 2018, p. A15
Les Cites Obscures
by RM Rhodes
I was recently re-reading issues of Roger Stern’s run on The Avengers circa 1983 because I
remember reading those as a kid and I always got the impression that I didn’t
get the whole story. (As it turns out, I was right.) In some ways, this was the
flagship title of Marvel comics and represented a public face for what Marvel
comics felt their product should look like.
In that same year, 1983, in Brussels, these two gentlemen –
artist François Schuiten and his friend, writer Benoît Peeters – were well into
the establishment of a comic book universe of their own.
The difference between English language comics and French
language bandes dessinées (commonly shortened to BD) has been distinct for some
time. Where the American industrial comic product is typically a floppy
twenty-two (or so) page booklet every month (or so), the French industrial comic
product is weekly or monthly anthology magazines that provide episodes of an
ongoing story in anywhere from half- page (weekly) to multi-page (monthly)
increments. If the feature was considered popular enough, it would be collected
in a reprint edition. This makes for a complicated publishing history.
Les murailles de
Samaris, the first story in what would eventually be known as Les Cites Obscures, was originally serialized in French in Casterman’s monthly anthology,
A Suivre (English translation: To Be
Continued), in 1982. Casterman released a collected edition in 1983 that is
still in print. The story first appeared in English, in the Heavy Metal November 1984 to March 1985
issues under the name The Great Walls of
Samaris, although the ending was badly mutilated and the translation is
generally considered to be sub-par. NBM published a collected edition in 1987
and called the series the Stories of the Fantastic. They kept the Heavy Metal translation but fixed the
ending. Copies of the NBM printing can cost $45 or more, but thankfully IDW
released a new version with a better translation in 2017. This version comes with
a translation of four episodes of an unfinished story that appeared in various
issues of A Suivre and other
publications.
Many of the older stories in the series were also serialized
in A Suivre prior to collection,
including La fièvre d'Urbicande
(original 1983, Casterman collection in 1985, NBM collection in 1990); La Tour (original 1985, Casterman in
1987, NBM in 1993); and Brusel
(original 1990, Casterman 1992, NBM 2001). By the time Brusel came out in English, the translation of the series name had been changed to Cities of the Fantastic.
There are still several stories in the series that have
never been translated into English, including L'archiviste, L'Écho des
cites, Le Guide des cites and L'ombre d'un homme. This latest round of
translations from IDW are a result of Stephen Smith’s decision to translate and
publish the entire run through his Alaxis Press, under the more accurately
translated series name The Obscure Cities. The first book was The Leaning Girl in 2014 and IDW
partnered with Alaxis Press for The
Theory of a Grain of Sand in 2016. Samaris
is the third edition in this collaboration.
It was smart of Smith (and IDW) to start with the
untranslated books first and work back to earlier translations. The original
NBM books were thin and printed on cheaper paper and tried to match the format
of Asterix collections. The newer printings in French are lush, with a better
paper quality, better coloring, and better overall production values. In fact, the newer editions
produced by IDW are more-or-less indistinguishable from their European versions
except for the language they are printed in.
As a consistent creative team, Schuiten and Peeters have been
allowed to flesh out their universe at their own speed. Because of the way that
French-language comics are serialized, there was no concern about having to
maintain a consistent commercial presence in A Suivre. They just showed up when they needed a place to serialize
their latest work and Casterman kept the collections in print. There has been
no change in artistic teams, and it would be very odd to think of anyone but
Schuiten and Peeters producing something in the series – although they have had
artistic collaborators (eg the photographed sections of The Leaning Girl.)
As the title implies, these art nouveau-inspired pre-steampunk science fantasy stories
are all about various cities on a massive continent on an alien world that is
not ours (although there is a suggestion that it’s a planet on the other side of the sun from Earth). The
mysteries of these cities add to the appeal of the series, as oblique
references to one story often show up in another. Research and/or investigation
is a consistent theme throughout and there is an entire book – L’archiviste – that is centered around
research into artifacts from these cities and, as a result, contains a healthy
heaping of references to other stories, including some that had not been made
when L’archiviste was originally
printed. You know, the sort of thing that makes people build websites to
explain the whole thing. More than anything else, this shared universe
presentation makes the comparison to The Avengers feel very apt.
Schuiten’s illustrative art style, however, is significantly
different than most English-language commercial comic work and it has gotten
better over time. He was trained as an
architect (his brother and father are practicing architects as well) and it
shows in his work. Indeed, Schuiten’s illustrative art style is so detailed and
distinctive that it sets the entire series apart from the pack. The reader is immediately
drawn to the art and is pleasantly surprised that the stories are good.
This is almost a textbook example of how a specific art
style meshes with a hyper-realistic kind of worldbuilding – and Benoit Peetershas actually produced a definitive piece about page layout. There is a lot of
material that has not yet been translated and one can only hope that sales have
been good enough to encourage IDW to finish the task. Between this and the
Corto Maltese reprints (also published by Casterman in Europe), IDW deserves much more
recognition. And now that I’ve got their attention, can I request a translation
of the other stories by Pellejero and Zentner? That would be great.
Why is this here? It's a long story. Mike Rhode first introduced himself to me when I first started vending at SPX. Over the years, we've talk to each other at Comic conventions around the DC area and never quite get around to sitting down for lunch.
When I moved to Arlington two years ago, I didn't realize that Mike lived within a mile of my building. Nor did I realize that he lived next door to my girlfriend's friend from college. We also discovered, by accident that we work two buildings away from each other, because we work in adjacent organizations. The world is a very small place, sometimes.
It really feels that way when I run into Mike at the local farmer's market. Naturally, that's when I pitch him article ideas. I'm reading the entire run of Heavy Metal in public (in blog format) because I happen to own the entire run of Heavy Metal. This means that I'm engaged in an ongoing study of the magazine. In addition, I have a diverse and idiosyncratic reading list that tends towards the weird corners of comics history. Sometimes one circumstance or another results in long articles that I don't really have anyplace to put. Mike has been gracious enough to let me publish them here.
In summary: this is an article about comics from someone in the DC area.
Saturday, May 05, 2018
Flugennock's Latest'n'Greatest: "Cops And The Klan: Hand In Hand"
From DC's anarchist cartoonist Mike Flugennock:
"Cops and Klan: Hand in Hand"
http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=2511
From Sacramento to Newnan to Charlottesville -- it should be clear to one and all at this point that the police are there to "protect and serve" corporations and fascists. Now, as always -- cops and the Klan go hand in hand.
12.5 x 14 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.6mb
"Cops and Klan: Hand in Hand"
http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=25
From Sacramento to Newnan to Charlottesville -- it should be clear to one and all at this point that the police are there to "protect and serve" corporations and fascists. Now, as always -- cops and the Klan go hand in hand.
12.5 x 14 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.6mb
From the Vault of Artleytoons
From the Vault of Artleytoons
When daily television broadcasts from U.S. Senate began in 1986, there was some concern that Senators would be more prone to grandstanding than tending to affairs of State. So, I offered this cartoon. (click on image for larger view).
See more recent work by Steve Artley at Artleytoons.
Friday, May 04, 2018
Jason Rodriguez on Story Collider
Identity: Stories about figuring out who we are
Jason Rodriguez and Josh Silberg
This week, we're presenting stories about identity, whether its an external sense of cultural identity or an internal sense of self.
Part 1: Mathematician and comic book writer Jason Rodriguez feels torn between separate cultural and professional identities.
Jason Rodriguez is a writer, editor, educator, and applied mathematician. Jason spends the first half of his day developing physiological models of human injury. In the evenings, Jason creates educational comic books about American history, systemic racism, and physics. On the weekends, Jason tends to visit conventions, museums, libraries, and festivals in order to talk about the unparalleled joy of comic books, and how that joy can spark a desire to learn and create in kids. Jason lives in Arlington, VA on the rare occasion when he's home.
Part 2: As a graduate student, Josh Silberg begins to question whether he's cut out for science.
Josh Silberg has researched everything from humpback whales to whale sharks to rockfish—he just couldn't decide on one creature to study. After earning a Master's of Resource and Environmental Management from Simon Fraser University, he joined the British Columbia-based Hakai Institute as the Science Communications Coordinator. Now, he gets to share all sorts of coastal science stories through blogs, videos, and the occasional poem. In his free time, he can be found photographing wildlife, hiking, or searching for creatures in tide pools. You can follow him on twitter @joshsilberg.
May 25: Molly Crabapple at East City Bookshop
BROTHERS OF THE GUN, Molly Crabapple In Conversation with Latoya Peterson
https://www.eastcitybookshop.com/event/brothers-gun-molly-crabapple-conversation-latoya-peterson
Event date:
Friday, May 25, 2018 - 6:30pm
Event address:
East City Bookshop
645 Pennsylvania Ave SE
Washington, DC 20003
tel 202.290.1636
--
Please RSVP on Facebook or at rsvp@eastcitybookshop.com
--
Join Molly Crabapple, co-author and illustrator of Brothers of The Gun, and Latoya Peterson, deputy editor at ESPN's The Undefeated for a reading, discussion, Q&A, and signing.
A bracingly immediate memoir by a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun is an intimate lens on the century's bloodiest conflict and a profound meditation on kinship, home, and freedom.
In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends—fellow working-class college students Nael and Tareq—joined the first protests of the Arab Spring in Syria, in response to a recent massacre. Arm-in-arm they marched, poured Coca-Cola into one another's eyes to blunt the effects of tear gas, ran from the security forces, and cursed the country's president, Bashar al-Assad. It was ecstasy. A long-bottled revolution was finally erupting, and freedom from a brutal dictator seemed, at last, imminent. Five years later, the three young friends were scattered: one now an Islamist revolutionary, another dead at the hands of government soldiers, and the last, Marwan, now a journalist in Turkish exile, trying to find a way back to a homeland reduced to rubble.
Brothers of the Gun is the story of young man coming of age during the Syrian war, from its inception to the present. Marwan watched from the rooftops as regime warplanes bombed soldiers; as revolutionary activist groups, for a few dreamy days, spray-painted hope on Raqqa; as his friends died or threw in their lot with Islamist fighters. He became a journalist by courageously tweeting out news from a city under siege by ISIS, the Russians, and the Americans all at once. He watched the country that ran through his veins—the country that held his hopes, dreams, and fears—be destroyed in front of him, and eventually joined the relentless stream of refugees risking their lives to escape.
--
Illustrated with more than eighty ink drawings by Molly Crabapple that bring to life the beauty and chaos, Brothers of the Gun offers a ground-level reflection on the Syrian revolution—and how it bled into international catastrophe and global war. This is a story of pragmatism and idealism, impossible violence and repression, and, even in the midst of war, profound acts of courage, creativity, and hope.
--
"From the anarchy, torment, and despair of the Syrian war, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple have drawn a book of startling emotional power and intellectual depth. Many books will be written on the war's exhaustive devastation of bodies and souls, and the defiant resistance of many trapped men and women, but the Mahabharata of the Levant has already found its wisest chroniclers."—Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger and From the Ruins of Empire
"A revelatory and necessary read on one of the most destructive wars of our time . . . In great personal detail, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple poignantly capture the tumultuous life in Syria before, after, and during the war—from inside one young man's consciousness."—Angela Davis
--
Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer in New York. Her memoir, Drawing Blood, was published by HarperCollins in 2015. Brothers of the Gun, her illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, will be published by One World/Penguin Random House in May 2018. Her reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, VICE, and elsewhere. The New Yorker described her 2017 mural "The Bore of Babylon" as "a terrifying amalgam of Hieronymus Bosch, Honoré Daumier, and Monty Python's Flying Circus." Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Rubin Museum of Art and the New York Historical Society.
Latoya Peterson is deputy editor of digital innovation for ESPN's The Undefeated, where she works across editorial, product and data teams to help implement trailblazing new forms of storytelling. Peterson is editor/owner of the award-winning blog, Racialicious, covering the intersection of race and pop culture. Forbes magazine named her one of its 30 Under 30 rising stars in media for 2013. Her work has been published in ESPN Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Essence, Spin, Vibe, Marie Claire, The American Prospect, the Guardian and others. Her honors and fellowships include being a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, focusing on mobile technology and digital access; a Harvard Berkman Center Affiliate, a Poynter Institute Sensemaking Fellow, and one of the inaugural Public Media Corps Fellows.
Ryan Holmberg on alternative manga
Sometime MD resident has a new article up:
http://www.tcj.com/the-weight-of-postwar-life-tsuge-tadao-vs-takano-shinzo-1969/
The Weight of Postwar Life: Tsuge Tadao vs. Takano Shinzo, 1969
May 4, 2018http://www.tcj.com/the-weight-of-postwar-life-tsuge-tadao-vs-takano-shinzo-1969/
NPR's Weldon rates Free Comic Book Day
Free Comic Book Day 2018: A Guide To The Best Bets And The Best Avoided
https://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2018/05/03/603652979/free-comic-book-day-2018-a-guide-to-the-best-bets-and-the-best-avoided
Flugennock's Latest'n'Greatest: "Blue Wave II: Banzai Pipeline"
From DC's anarchist cartoonist Mike Flugennock:
"Blue Wave II: Banzai Pipeline"
http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=2507
Well, the latest news from the "Blue Wave" midterm election scene actually isn't looking that good for the Democrats. Despite a Reuters poll showing a 9% drop in Milennials' support for the Democrats and – on top of that – the Chump Schumer DACA sellout, the Doug Jones disaster, their support for a massive war budget and the bombing of Syria, their continued support for Saudi brutality in Yemen and Israeli barbarity in Gaza, the collapse of the Russiagate freakshow and the whole Joy Reid hot mess, the Democrats are still acting all cocky and talking smack about a "Blue Wave" this November that will supposedly flood the House of Representatives with new and better Democrats.
Uh huh. I'll go heat up the Jiffy-Pop.
"Blue Wave II: Banzai Pipeline"
http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=25
Well, the latest news from the "Blue Wave" midterm election scene actually isn't looking that good for the Democrats. Despite a Reuters poll showing a 9% drop in Milennials' support for the Democrats and – on top of that – the Chump Schumer DACA sellout, the Doug Jones disaster, their support for a massive war budget and the bombing of Syria, their continued support for Saudi brutality in Yemen and Israeli barbarity in Gaza, the collapse of the Russiagate freakshow and the whole Joy Reid hot mess, the Democrats are still acting all cocky and talking smack about a "Blue Wave" this November that will supposedly flood the House of Representatives with new and better Democrats.
Uh huh. I'll go heat up the Jiffy-Pop.
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