Nice Art

This month’s nice art comes from Sarah Robbins. She made 31 small prints with a Halloween theme. It looks nice and the shades of red and grey looks very sharp and put me in the Halloween mood every day this month. You can find her whole series over at her website and get a set of all illustrations as well.

Plugs

§ My favourite comic of 2016 is back in print. You can get of copy of Aatmaja Pandya’s Phantom over at the One Percent Press store page

§ Peow Studios announced a print edition of Mushbuh’s online webcomic series 310,310

§ Marc Jackson‘s released a free issue of his series Robo Hats on issuu. His style is charming and his work reminds me of early 2000’s Cartoon Network cartoons. Check it out

§ Ines Estrada has completed her series Alienation and you can get a copy over at her site, along with all the other issues of the series if you haven’t been following the series yet.

§ The Graphic Policy team (and frequent Comics Beat contributor Elana Brooklyn) talked about Copra during their latest Graphic Policy Radio 

Ottawa Comic News

§ Well, look at that, there’s a comic scene in Ottawa! Here’s a few updates from the Ottawa Comic Scene

§ Are you in Ottawa on Monday, November 6th? Come and join the Ottawa Comic Book Book Club at the Ottawa Public Library at the Sunnyside branch at 7:00 pm. The book this month is Rich Tommaso’s Dark Corridor. Rich has gracefully agreed to meet up the group via Skype. Come and chat with us and ask your questions to Rich.

§ Last chance to get print copies of Open Spaces and Closed Places by An Nguyen (Saicoink). She will no longer be printing those after this current run.

§ I met a cartoonist earlier this month called Pierre Talbot Johnson at the Bridgehead on Preston. You can find some his work over at his Tumblr page called What a tiny bug. He has a surprising wit, his two panel comic on drug and gentrification made me laugh.

§ Ottawa City Hall had an exhibition of Aislin’s political cartoon that ran from October 13th until October 29th. For those who may not know, Ottawa City Hall has a free art gallery section of the main floor. It’s surprisingly well curated and always offer interesting exhibit, but are often short lived. Anyway, it was a retrospective of Aislin’s 50 year career as a political cartoonist, fro Pierre Trudeau to Justin Trudeau.

§ Finally, Wilson Guillaume did an official launch for his comics series Dark Child. I’ve added some blurry photos below. The event took place at the Heritage College over in Gatineau and there was a great crowd. He was introduced by his wife and he provided a quick look at how a comic book is made, from early research and brainstorming all the way to colour and printing. It was a nice event though I couldn’t stay as long as I had hoped. His book was obviously the highlight of the evening, but the dynamic between Wilson and the crowd was quite nice. He’s charismatic and friendly and has an enthusiasm for comics, people and his family that permeated the whole event. He also decided to bring people together through the magic of food. There was enough food to feed an army, cheese platters, samosas, spring rolls and some Haitian specialties. You can find preview pages of Dark Child over at the G7 comics website and even read the first issue for free.

News

§ The Comics Beat, this very site, has been acquired by Lion Forge. Check out Heidi’s reporting on PR for this, again on this very site.

§ Kim Jooha of 2dCloud talks with Medium about what it means to support diversity in comics. She makes an interesting point about supporting artists, and also, not supporting adequate work as much. The worse you can do is “middle of the road” because it makes for forgettable stories and books.

§ Speaking of Kim Jooha, she also spoke with Ron Régé Jr over at The Comics Journal.

§ The three finalists for the ACBD Quebec prizes have been announced. The three finalists are Guy Delisle’s S’enfuir: récit d’un otage (published in English as Hostage by D&Q), Jean-Sébastien Bérubé’s Comment je ne suis pas devenu moine, and Isabelle Arsenault and Fanny Britt’s Louis parmi les spectres (published in English as Louis Undercover by House of Anansi).

§ While I don’t normally highlight Marvel Comics, Nnedi Okorafor is writing a Black Panther series so I felt compelled to mention it. Okorafor is the author of Who fears death and the Binti series. Her book Who fears death is being adapted by HBO as we speak. I haven’t read her books yet, but my wife is a huge fan of her work and have been praising her works for years. I’m looking forward to seeing what she’ll do in comic book format.

§ A couple of updates on comic book from the CBC. Leah Collins focuses on art by Rafael Mayani and his Inktober output.

§ Radio-Canada (the French CBC) has launched an online comic on the life of Raif Badawi (also available in English). Badawi is one of the most famous political prisoner in the world. He was a progressive Saudi blogger who was arrested and sentenced to a thousand lashes and 10 years in prison. It’s an interesting approach for this story. It’s fairly new, so I’m not quite sure what kind of reception it received so far.

§ Derf Backderf talks about My Friend Dahmer with Tom Power on Q.

§ Laura Ķeniņš talks about Bodies in Translation: Aging and Creativity, an exhibition at Halifax’s Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery.

§ Speaking of the CBC, I’m wondering if other public broadcasters in the US and UK cover comics as regularly as the CBC. Does NPR or PBS have substantial comics coverage? Let me know in the comments, I’m eager to know!

§ Cathy G. Johnson has a new podcast called Drawing a Dialog that focuses on discussing comics in a historical and educational context. There’s 6 episodes so far and seems like a wonderful  way to learn about specific historical contexts surrounding the creation of art.

§ Speaking of podcasts, I forgot Sophia Foster-Dimino was on Inkstuds last month.

§ Derik Robertson has a long academic essay on justifying poetry comics over at Comics Grid

§ Anders Nielsen draws Wolverine

§ In the wake of the Weinstein Storm, Katie Skelly talks about her own story of harassment during a festival over at The Comics Journal. I have the utmost respect for Skelly and all women who talk about these stories of harassment and assault. I can’t even begin to imagine what women constantly go through because pigs think they’re entitled to do whatever they want with their bodies. I hope that the conversation brought forward by women in comics and other industries will cause ripple and societal changes so that men no longer engage in that kind of behaviour.

§ Alex Dueben talks with Michel Fiffe about Zegas. The collected edition of Zegas is coming out shortly and it’s a wonderful way to get a better insight into this work.

§ News from the European comics market. Sales of Bandes Dessinées are up, but salaries for cartoonists are down pretty much across the board. It seems like the problems are similar to the American market, a higher number of materials available is increasing the level of sales for the medium, but lower sales for each books.

§ Maggie Umber has begun work on her next graphic novel The Man in the Blue SuitShe’ll be documenting her process on her Patreon page.

§ Zviane talks very honestly about the challenges of self-publishing. She started publishing a colour magazine in late 2016 and It’s been a pleasure to follow her series. Her sales model is also different than usual subscription. She distributes the magazine in a handful of bookstores or will sell it to you directly if you email her. In this article, she talks about the challenges she faced, money, the lessons she learned along the way and what she”s adjusted and changed over time. It’s a good look at the difficulty of publishing in colours.

§ Last month, I told you that Zviane had a new animated short that’s available at the National Film Board of Canada. Turns out it’s from a series of animated shorts by cartoonists, including Guy Delisle and Aude Picault. Lewis Trondheim and Jean Matthieu Tanguy’s short film should be out in November. In the meantime, go watch Guy Delisle and Aude Picault’s short below.

Comic

§ Lauren Weinstein made a comic on Puerto Rico over at the Village Voice. It’s crazy to think that the death toll in Puerto Rico is still rising and most of the island is still out of power. The Puerto Rico story will continue to play a part in the media until it’s resolved. It might take time.

§ Why I quit the Army by Kris Mukai

§ Leela Corman on Nick Cave and the loss of a child. It’s a deeply touching story about memories and grief.

§ Mairen Doyle started her latest webcomic Mildred on Study Group.

§ Laura Knetzger’s has been making comics about playing video games over at Medium. Her work is wonderful and deeply personal as usual. Go check it out

§ Maia Kobabe and Samuel Sattin’s contribution to The Nib is powerful. A fantastic exploration of racism and its effect on people.

§ Five cartoonists on the #MeToo campaign over at the Nib.

Congratulations

§ Congratulation to Spike Trotman and Iron Circus Comics for raising over 1 million dollars as part of their crowdfunding campaign over the last few years.

§ Congratulation to Isabelle Arsenault & Fanny Britt, they just won the Alvine-Belisle award for their graphic novel Louis Undercover

Reviews

§ Alex Hoffman reviews Lewis Trondheim and Brigitte Findakly’s graphic novel Poppies of Irak over at Sequential State. He didn’t like it very much.

§ Dominic Davis reviews Threadbare, a comic I didn’t see a lot of reviews for

§ Sam Ombiri talks about Maggie Umber’s Sound of Snow Falling over at the Comics Workbook

§ Nick Hanover looks at Sarah Horrocks new series Goro

§ And finally, Athena Naylor looks at the work of a great group of cartoonists such as Carolyn Nowak, Meredith Gran, Lynda Barry, Sarah Glidden, Alison Bechdel, Mariko and JIllian Tamaki and Kate Beaton

Maggie Umber’s Sound of Snow Falling

§ If you see something I should know about, tell me in the comments or tweet at me @Leblanc_Phil

 

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