The Comics Bureau

I should have pos­ted this long ago, but being a very slack blog­ger means I didn’t. What makes it worse is that not only am I a con­trib­utor, but also helped Jim out in a tech­nical capa­city, util­ising my wordpress-wrangling skills. My apo­lo­gies. Anyway;

Com­ical Animal has launched! Head over right now to see some rein­ter­pret­a­tions of vin­tage funny animal strips by Rob Jack­son and Francesca Cas­savetti, read an essay on The Mouse by the head keeper him­self, Jim Med­way and a host of ori­ginal funny animal strips by the likes of Gary North­field, Dave Shelton, Lizz Lun­ney, the affor­e­men­tioned Jim Med­way and myself.

As if this wasn’t enough, you can spon­sor an animal (just like a real zoo) Spon­sor­ship so far comes from Good Grief com­ics in Manchester, which you should all check out and Blank Slate Books, which has pub­lished books by Com­ics Bur­eau favour­ites Oliver East and Darryl Cun­ning­ham, and is there­fore auto­mat­ic­ally also a Com­ics Bur­eau favourite.

Need­less to say, you all need to sub­scribe to the mail­ing list to be informed of upcom­ing funny animal activ­ity, con­sider con­trib­ut­ing if you have a funny animal strip of essay idea that you are eager to share and finally, con­sider donat­ing money to keep it going.

Com­ical Animal is a labour of love, and it would be great to see Jim recoup some of the costs of web­space etc. You can either adopt an animal as an indi­vidual or a busi­ness or simply paypal over what you con­sider to be a fit­ting donation.

Why are you still read­ing this? Go there NOW!

Kevin Huiz­enga writes up a thought­ful post on Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy, Groen­steens Iconic Solid­ar­ity and Typography.

Draw­ing Nancy and Sluggo almost exactly the same each time, it’s like he’s mak­ing them into a font, like he’s writ­ing “Nancy” in Hel­vetica.  All the draw­ings of Nancy are trans­par­ently Nancy the way a com­monly used font will make a word “trans­par­ent.”  But I think say­ing that Bush­miller rep­res­ents the “dis­tilled essence” of com­ics is like say­ing Hel­vetica is the essence of the writ­ten alphabet.

Go and read the full post here.

Scott McCloud writes up some inter­est­ing thoughts on autobiography;

It’s a real open ques­tion whether any auto­bi­o­graphy can ever be more than 95% true. Mark Twain stip­u­lated that his mem­oir not be pub­lished until 100 years after his death (this year!), pre­sum­ably so that he could be 100% honest—a full imple­ment­a­tion of the Mys­tery Quote—but from what I’ve heard, the old guy doesn’t come across as par­tic­u­larly object­ive while rant­ing about his many late-in-life grudges.

Emo­tional hon­esty and fac­tual accur­acy aren’t the same thing after all. Twain may have thought he was hit­ting 100%, but maybe nobody can ever get past 95%. And maybe say­ing so upfront, as White and Hernan­dez both do in their own fash­ion, is the most hon­est way to start.

He also intro­duces us to Tracy White, whose book ‘How I Made it to 18′ is out now. Go and check out her web­site as a mat­ter of pri­or­ity. You should also check out an anim­ated excerpt of the first chapter on youtube.

Also intro­duced is Lea Hernan­dez, whose Near Life Exper­i­ence is great;

There has been plenty writ­ten about the latest Sol­ipsistic Pop recently. I par­tic­u­larly liked this writeup at Avoid The Future;

Some­thing that becomes more and more appar­ent when read­ing through this volume is how much more fluid it feels in terms of con­tent than its predecessor. Humberstone has done a com­mend­able job as editor, find­ing the elu­sive alchemy that gives an antho­logy the bal­ance between over­arch­ing cohes­ive­ness and styl­istic variety. Diverse in art and nar­rat­ive approaches, Sol­ipsistic Pop 2 really feels like a gate­way into the often unseen spec­trum of com­ics tal­ent in the UK.

Have a look through the list of con­trib­ut­ors and their web­sites here.

Douglas Wolk, writ­ing for Tech­land, writes up eight ques­tions for com­ics cre­at­ors at the begin­ning of a new pro­ject;

2. What is it going to look like?

How does it look dif­fer­ent from every other comic book out there, includ­ing oth­ers drawn by the same per­son? There are no great gen­eric car­toon­ists; first-rate car­toon­ists treat style and design as integ­ral ele­ments of every indi­vidual pro­ject, and it’s gen­er­ally true that the more pre­med­it­ated a par­tic­u­lar comic’s look is, the bet­ter it comes out. (The Dark Knight Strikes Again doesn’t look like Sin City, which doesn’t look like 300…) This also extends to col­or­ing, of course. Think of Patri­cia Mulvihill’s work on 100 Bul­lets, say, or what Frank D’Armata’s been doing on Invin­cible Iron Man lately: they’re dis­tinct­ive, care­fully thought out, and hugely import­ant to the way both series work.

Head over to Flavorwire.com to have a look at some illus­tra­tions for Cor­mac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian;

Draw­ing com­par­is­ons to both Dante’s Inferno and Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick, Cor­mac McCarthy’sBlood Meridian is a work of genu­ine mad­ness, and one of the most viol­ent books in con­tem­por­ary lit­er­at­ure. Zak Smith (who pre­vi­ously illus­trated each page of Gravity’s Rain­bow), and five other artists (Sean McCarthy, John Mejias, Craig Taylor, Shawn Cheng, and Matt Wiegle) have taken on the daunt­ing task of illus­trat­ing every page of the grizzly tale. The styles range from haunt­ingly vivid to extremely abstract, each image com­ple­men­ted with a quote from the source mater­ial that served as its inspiration.

Barath Murthy writes up some thoughts on how to build a suc­cess­ful Indian com­ics pub­lish­ing scene here;

This essay is a present­a­tion of my views on the com­ics medium in India, and my solu­tion for the growth of the form. These ideas are the res­ult of the last few years spent try­ing to under­stand the medium. My back­ground is in paint­ing, (I stud­ied paint­ing in col­lege) and I want to cre­ate as well as pub­lish com­ics suc­cess­fully to the end of my life. These views come from this com­mit­ment to the form. I also stud­ied film mak­ing, and strangely enough, I had an oppor­tun­ity to make a fea­ture length doc­u­ment­ary film in Japan about its vast self-published com­ics (doujin­shi) cul­ture. I learnt about the manga industry and found out why it is the the most suc­cess­ful com­ics industry in the world. I met many manga authors, pub­lish­ers, print­ers, read­ers and real­ized how little west­ern­ers and Asi­ans like us know about Japan­ese manga. Before mak­ing this film, I also sniffed around a little bit into the Indian com­ics scene, hav­ing received a grant from the India Found­a­tion for the Arts, Bengaluru, to study Indian com­ics. I wrote a 5000 word essay about Indian com­ics which is to be pub­lished in Marg magazine. While doing this, I star­ted a dis­cus­sion forum on the Inter­net called Comix Dis­cus­sion Board of iNDIA (CDBi) http://www.comixindia.com/cdbi .What fol­lows is a ‘fact find­ing report’, and the ‘recom­mend­a­tions’ of this report on how we can have fun, make money and gen­er­ally enjoy cre­at­ing and con­sum­ing com­ics in India.

While we are on the topic, visit Barath Murthy’s site (we are word­press theme-buddies), read his books, Learn­ing to See and the Col­lec­ted Blog Writ­ings and then buy them. Also have a nose around the fas­cin­at­ing Comix.India site.

PJ Holden writes up an excel­lent ana­lysis of a page lay­out and com­pos­i­tion;

I think, the import­ant thing is we read let to right, but only when there’s some­thing to “read” — fail­ing that we go search­ing for some­thing of interest. In the case of panel one, my eyes scan down until we get to the mutant, whereupon I read and move towards Dredd. Panel two, I think, nat­ur­ally, I fol­low the eye­line of the mutant to Dredd (and I read his body and end at the knee — oddly). Panel 3 focus goes from Dredd’s chin to the bit of the Hel­met he’s work­ing on. And Panel 4 doesn’t really force the reader to any par­tic­u­lar point — save around the mask — below the “S” shape (whereupon they’ll be met by the dialogue).

As ever, head over to Paul’s Blog, Web­site and fol­low him on Twit­ter.

Jenni Chasteen, writ­ing for Inspired Magazine writes up her thoughts on how com­ics can make you a bet­ter designer;

Long before I ever picked up a Wacom tab­let or even heard the word kern­ing, I read comic books. I absorbed the art­work, page lay­outs and char­ac­ter designs like a nerdy little sponge. To this day I can’t fig­ure out why com­ics are con­sidered a low form of art. Pre­ten­tious design­ers pass it off as kid stuff, but they’re miss­ing out on some valu­able sources of inspiration.

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.