Ladies Making Comics

Krystel is a French BD artist whose work is both haunting and beautiful. Her images have an international flair, suitable for a world market. If Neil Gaiman were still writing theSandman, Krystel’s art would be the perfect complement to his stories.

Cathy takes its place in this cultural progression by drilling in the notion that it doesn’t matter what the law says: you are being coerced not by the state but by your desire to be valued. In Cathy’s case, this manifests as a desire to get married—because what else is she going to do? She can’t imagine any satisfying alternatives.

For the past month, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy has played host to a very special union of French and New York-based cartoonists and illustrators in their spring celebration, Picture This! The event has already brought to fruition conversations between Hervé Tullet and Mo Willems as well as Alex Alice and Rom Wimberly, and last week, the Society of Illustrators commenced a thoughtful and at times hilarious dialogue between Gabrielle Bell and Boulet.The pairing of these two cartoonists could not be more fitting, as both have come to popularity with their webcomics inspired from moments and anecdotes from their own day to day life. At a time when autobiographical comics are now met with a growing appreciation in pop culture along with academia, both Bell and Boulet served as an insightful look into the perspective and process of turning life into comics.

Anne Ishii is a writer based in New York City. She may be best known to comics fans for her time at Vertical, helping fashion a market for adult-themed literary manga back when whether or not that would ever happen was still in doubt. Since leaving that company in mid-2007, Ishii has worked a series of gigs outside of comics on behalf of a number of wide-ranging projects. In just the last six months this has included writing work at her own Ill-Iterate and her shared-siteBlasian, driving attention to the 2012 installation Architecture For Dogs, penning a Slate piece on Eddie Huang's book and acting as a public point person for the recent film series They're All So Beautiful. Ishii is also a talented translator, bringing with that gig a skill-set that would prove to be deeply useful in both instigating and executing her current comics-related project.

Pop culture is a bizarre creature and often creates strange intersections in media. Brooklyn-based artist Jen Ferguson has found herself standing at a cross-roads of TV, blogging, and illustration in her projects OUT OF LUCK, based on the HBO series LUCK, and in the Triple Crown horse racing previews that she’s been asked to create. Ferguson has a long history in Brooklyn and Manhattan as a painter, producing both large fine art compositions of architecture and landscape and also prints and paintings in a more illustrative style that has more than once dabbled in the comics sphere, including being featured in Seth Kushner’s CulturePOP photocomix series on multimedia arts salon TRIP CITY.

For years, Cynthia Copeland has been mining her personal experiences to produce books about families and things families can do together. As a result, she has been recommended by Oprah and others and has carved out a nice little career with her prose and illustrations. She brings a friendly, kind sense of humor to her work making these great to read books. Now, though, she brings her personal experiences to a new work that is intimate and clear-eyed.

I was so excited to read Gail Simone’s latest addition to the DC line-up, The Movement. I heard her say that it’s probably the most diversity in a DC comic … like ever. And not just racial diversity; The Movement will tout diverse perspectives, lifestyles, politics and beliefs. Hera knows the heteronormative world of mainstream comics needs some variation in perspective. I certainly have a strong desire for it in comics (and elsewhere).

Kristina Stipetic’s created a delicate, gentle, freakshow of a comic, where the main character has so many flaws that  it’s very difficult to feel anything even resembling empathy, and consequently in a storyline so tightly focused on a couple of characters and their relationship that difficulty developing empathy means it takes a while to get into the comic. But once you do, once I did, there’s a painful, faltering love story carefully played out here.

Fay Dalton won a competition ran by the illustration agency Pickled Ink in 2010 to find an artist to draw the graphic novel Party Girls by Jenny McDade...A look around her website now reveals an artist influenced by the golden age of commercial illustration, such as the work of Robert McGinnis, and her comic pages show some influence from Look In-era John M Burns...Here’s hoping she stays in comics for the long run: her work is like nothing else being produced in the form right now.

I'm extra excited to present the following Five Questions with Prudence Shen and Faith Erin Hicks' of the graphic novel Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, in which we grill them (nicely, of course) about how the project got started, what the making-of process was really like, and what their favorite comics are. As someone who is hoping to create a graphic novel someday, I always enjoy reading about the process behind the final product, and I hope you enjoy it too!

You don't know it, but you've secretly been enjoying some more of Dylan Meconis's work these last couple of weeks. Our current PvP storyline has all been a product of the combined efforts of myself and Dylan in the PvP writers' room. This larping story-arc is leading into some bold new changes with PvP. We're unafraid and eager to see where we can take this comic strip. It's exciting and scary and exhilirating, all at the same time.

Since her almost wordless beginnings in 2000 with Lait frappé (milk-shake – L’Oie de Cravan) and Die Fabrik (the factory – Reprodukt) that Geneviève Castrée showed little inclination towards the orthodox storytelling so prevalent in the comics industry. Her comics are dreamlike, mysterious, symbolic, barely narrative....Pamplemoussi is a large square book (obviously, it has the form and size of the vinyl LP record that comes with it – or is it the other way around?).

Babymouse masterminds Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm have signed up to edit Funny Pages: Recess!, a comics anthology of stories about recess aimed at younger readers. Random House will publish it in July, 2014. Jarrett J. Krosoczka will co-edit and the book is said to pay tribute to classic Sunday comics. Contributors lined up include the editors as well as Dav Pilkey, Raina Telgemeier, Dan Santat, Gene Yang, Ursula Vernon, and Eric Wight.

Not every autobiographical comics artist is driven to create their own private book from the Bible. Sarah Lightman’s motivation came from her brother and sister having the Book of Daniel and the Scroll of Esther named after them, but there was no Book of Sarah, until now. A winner of the Slade Life Drawing Prize, Lightman began her diary drawings in 1995 at London’s Slade School of Fine Art, which she displayed as projections and accompanied with her spoken texts. Looking back, she thinks, “I am not sure if I could have survived my life without also drawing it. Often I make art about questions and situations in my life before I have even discussed them with friends and family”.

Gail Simone does not need an introduction if you like comics about women that kick ass first, and ask questions later. Renowned for her work at DC, she now has taken the torch to write about Red Sonja.

As you walk through modern life, you might need a no-nonsense voice to guide you away from self-pity, doubt, and the secret rites of blood donation volunteers. In By Crom! artist Rachel Kahn imagines that she is in constant consultation with the pulp hero Conan the Cimmerian.

Although some of Kahn's By Crom! comics juxtapose the fictional Hyborian Age that Conan comes from with the modern era and its coffee shops, public transit, and clothing that didn't come from an animal you killed yourself. But for the most part, it is about Conan as spirit guide; his warrior values are a chasm apart from Kahn's artist lifestyle, but she imagines a wisdom in his droll (and occasionally head-knocking) advice.

Whit Taylor is a thoughtful, interesting up-and-coming cartoonist who's mostly done autobiographical work. However, I think she's really found her voice with her high school vignettes in Madtown High, most of which are fictionalized accounts of real events. While based on her own experiences as a new kid at a high school, Taylor smooths out these events with a solid narrative structure and cohesive characterizations.

Anathema opens with a witch being burned. It’s one of those images which is instantly recognizable, the grim, hunched woods, the blazing pyre, the screaming woman and the black, rook-like figures of the Priests intoning the crimes she’s burning for. It’s familiar ground, after all Hammer spent so much time in these woods they practically bought real estate, which Ken Russell presumably rented from them a few years later. It’s familiar and as a result, not especially horrific. Then, in the space of a few pages, Rachel Deering’s script turns everything we know on its head....

Anathema is one of the best horror books on the market right now, and I’m completely unsurprised it was chosen as one of the standard bearers for Comixology Submit. From the very first page you can tell this is a book with a clear vision of where it’s going, and a script and art that constantly work with, instead of pulling against, one another. Filled with cold, black woods, barely human monstrosities and moments of almost Conan-like action, it’s a full blooded, teeth-bared comic that’s getting better every issue and absolutely deserves your attention.

Natalie Nourigat captured her senior year at the University of Oregon in daily diary comics on the web, and now they’ve been collected in this thick volume....Overall, this is the story of someone who’s on the cusp of starting “real life”, but reading (especially the last seasonal section of spring) shows us how much she’s already there. Natalie makes some big decisions, but as she points out, the difficultly comes when you have to choose between two good things.