The Comics Bureau

Head over to the Pro­ject Site, where Jim Woodring is ask­ing for dona­tions to build a giant fully func­tional dip pen.

I am soli­cit­ing $4,500 to man­u­fac­ture a giant steel dip pen and pen­holder for pub­lic demon­stra­tion and dis­play. I hope to pro­mote the under­stand­ing and use of this beau­ti­ful piece of ancient tech­no­logy through a series of per­form­ances, as well as cre­ate an art object in itself.

The dip pen is a bit of fet­ish item for me (as it is for many pen users). The pen is extremely dif­fi­cult to mas­ter but ulti­mately allows for an extraordin­ary degree of expres­sion. The well-constructed pen and ink draw­ing is a monu­ment to per­sever­ance, requir­ing tre­mend­ous patience and con­trol. I am thrilled by the chal­lenge of cre­at­ing such draw­ings in pub­lic and intro­du­cing new audi­ences to the allure of the medium. The pen (nib) itself will be approx­im­ately 16 inches long, made of steel and fully func­tional. The holder will be six feet long and made of wood with a metal sleeve insert to hold the pen. Nib and holder will resemble as closely as pos­sible the actual imple­ments on which they are based.

Once the pen and pen­holder are built I will train myself to ink with it; and once I’ve done that, I will arrange at least two pub­lic per­form­ances in which I will use the pen to ink large graph­ite draw­ings on 3′ x 5′ sheets of bristol.

Get involved by donat­ing to the project.

Here’s a post from Jim explain­ing how the pen will work;

The Birm­ing­ham Zine Fest­ival is rap­idly approach­ing, and fea­tures a whole host of events, includ­ing exhib­i­tions, a fair, work­shops and even a pic­nic! Head over to the site to acquaint your­self with the sched­ule and read some inter­views with exhibitors.

Joe List, the brains, hand and pen behind the Annot­ated Week­ender, last year’s must-have col­lec­tion of abrupt stor­ies ‘Freak Leap’ and the minicomic ‘Guts’ announced this morn­ing that he has star­ted a web­comic, also entitled Freak Leap.

You can read an inter­view with Joe for the Birm­ing­ham Zine Fest­ival here;

Q — What are your motiv­a­tions with your work? I notice there is a lot of humour. Is this espe­cially important?

A — I like telling half jokes, ideas that aren’t quite fin­ished. That’s what makes me laugh and so that’s what I try to con­vey in my comics.

The Freak Leap will be updated EVERY week­day, apart from Thursdays, as that is Annot­ated Week­ender Day. Update your book­marks, folks!

James Sturm, dir­ector of CCS, con­ducts an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment; he quits the internet.

As the dir­ector of a small school, I have a lot of legit­im­ate reas­ons to be online. Every day, I am com­mu­nic­at­ing with stu­dents, staff, vis­it­ing artists, board mem­bers, and alumni. I stay in con­tact with school pat­rons, found­a­tion officers, and elec­ted offi­cials for devel­op­ment pur­poses. I am work­ing on graphic nov­els and children’s books with car­toon­ists who are scattered across the country.

But essen­tial online com­mu­nic­a­tion has given way to hours of com­puls­ive e-mail check­ing and Web surf­ing. The Inter­net has made me a slave to my van­ity: I mon­itor the Amazon rank­ing of my books on an hourly basis, and I’m con­stantly search­ing for com­ments and dis­cus­sions about my work. I fol­low the Knicks on a daily basis (per­haps my most shame­ful admission).

I can com­pletely relate to this, but it has seemed to divide opin­ion, so read through the com­ments as well.

As part of the Com­ica events, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes and Audrey Niffeneg­ger will be in Lon­don and Brighton on the 24th and 25th May respectively.

Read the details here.

The big buzz at the moment is of course issue 2 of Sol­ipsistic Pop, the bian­nual antho­logy that show­cases some of the best work in the UK at the moment.

Aside from Luke Pear­son who has done the above cover (and whose work is BLOODY GORGEOUS), this issue of Sol­ipsistic Pop fea­tures work by some of the best and bright­est the UK has to offer. Get over to the web­site imme­di­ately, con­sider con­trib­ut­ing to issue 3, and buy issue 1 if you don’t already have it.

Hey! Are you aged between 16 & 25? Are you affected in any way by the reces­sion? Can you draw com­ics? Do you fancy win­ning £1000 and hav­ing your work dis­played in the Design Museum?

Well, head over to TheSite.org to read up on how to enter and to browse the competition.

You need to get your entries in before April 30th.

The strip above is by Ste Hitchen. You should prob­ably go and check his very nice work out.

If you are any­where near Leeds on the 6th of April between 5 –7 pm, head over to Trav­el­ling Man to see Emma Vieceli run­ning manga work­shops;

In part­ner­ship with Thought Bubble and Trav­el­ling Man, Leeds’ premier comic book shop, we bring you an amaz­ing oppor­tun­ity to learn how to draw manga char­ac­ters and cre­ate your very own comic book lay­out. Pro­fes­sional manga artist and writer Emma Vieceli will be on hand to take you through the steps of how to cre­ate char­ac­ters and fig­ures and illus­trate the tech­niques used in manga style pages in this fun and informal workshop.

If you are near Manchester on the 12-14th April, you should prob­ably try and get along to the Graphic Novel & Com­ics Con­fer­ence fea­tur­ing speak­ers such as Mar­tin Barker, Mel Gib­son, Paul Gravett & Roger Sabin.

Com­ics and graphic nov­els enjoy a para­dox­ical rela­tion­ship with main­stream cul­ture. Their nar­rat­ives and char­ac­ters are famil­iar to mass audi­ences through their adapt­a­tions in film, tele­vi­sion and other mass media. How­ever com­ics’ texts are rarely known or read out­side comic book cul­tures. In recent years com­ics have instig­ated them­selves into the pub­lic con­scious­ness due, to a num­ber of diverse cir­cum­stances such as the nar­rat­ive pos­sib­il­it­ies they offer in an increas­ingly com­plex trans­me­dia landscape.

I was at the UK Web & Minico­mix Thing this week­end, hawk­ing some print cop­ies of Oxford Clay on a table with the ter­ribly tal­en­ted Joe List who does this and this. I man­aged to find some time to nip around and take some pho­tos. I didn’t man­age to get every­body, so apo­lo­gies if I missed you out!