“Lana Del Rey once said ‘Doing what you love is freedom. Loving what you do is happiness.’ It’s interesting how those twelve little words perfectly sum up the entirety of why artists endure and struggle and create. But one word from that statement stands out above the rest: love. Love has driven countless people to…
How Long Is Your Pull List (Do You Have One At All?)
The humble pull list–the act of asking one’s comic shop to hold a copy of an unpublished comic for one’s own potential purchase. We began discussing them last week when we asked how our number heard of a pull list, who explained it, and in how much financial detail. This week, question two!
Five Asian Dramas Which Make Me Feel Better About Living Life, Honestly
So, you’re online, and you feel bad about the world. What can help? And for cheap-to-free? Asian Dramas. They’re long, they’re lengthy, and they’re full, at their best, of the spectrum of human emotion. And when you feel bad, that’s what you need, something to take you by the nose and lead you through the…
Pondering Pull Lists, Part One: Why? What? Really?
We couldn't have said it any better. pic.twitter.com/faPdRAuRcT — Joey Von (@JoeyVonKinsley) January 11, 2017 Pull lists. What a notion! A non-binding agreement with a supplier of goods, a supplier of goods whose order from their supplier of goods–when it’s Diamond, which is usually–is binding. A simple little option, the ability to say, “Hey man, hey…
Cover Girl: Island #15 by Dilraj Mann
This month, the Cover Girl team has convened to discuss the cover of Island #15, by Dilraj Mann, from Image Comics. It hits stores on February 8, 2017.
Top Indies, Small Press, and Webcomics of 2016
I asked our small press comics fans to tell me not what the best comics of 2016 were, but which ones were their favourites. Here’s what they said: Mattress Stiff With Blood Tom McHenry Self-published There’s something that’s incredibly natural about the cartooning Tom McHenry does in this work—everything flows so seamlessly from one topic to…
Movies That Moved Me In 2016
I’m not particularly interested in Best Of lists. After the third list it gets stale and instead of discussing art that moved us, the discourse instead seems to focus on who wrote the best list, what rank the obviously good things appeared in. So this year I asked our writers to tell me about the…
Juliet Looks Through a Fishtank at Romeo: Romance Manga Aquarium
There’s a sweet and lovely feminism to the shoujo romance stories found in Tomoko Taniguchi’s Aquarium. Femininity is their strength. Tomoko Taniguchi was active in the Japanese market by the early nineties, but those same stories experienced a second, translated wind a decade later, in the bubble days of the American manga market. There’s very…
Zorse: An Interview with Ramzee
When I caught Ramzee (the Artist formerly known as Ramsey Hassan) at November’s premier comics convention Thought Bubble, he was one day post-award show. On stage at the Young People’s Comic Award presentation (which he did not win, but top-five nationwide is nothing to sniff at) Ramzee wore a black and white Union Flag robe. Minding…
Roman Muradov and the State of His Bladders
Jacob Bladders and the State of the Art Roman Muradov Uncivilized Books November 2016 Roman Muradov’s newest work follows Jacob Bladders as he tries to complete his job as a newspaper cartoonist, in the cut-throat world of corporate illustration. Hijinks, and hijacks, ensue.
Iconic Scenes: Beauty and the Beast’s “A Tale As Old As Time”
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was released in 1991 and was the first Disney film to incorporate digital animation. Since its release, Belle has become an integral part of Disney’s Princess brand, and the film has been adapted into a stage musical and as a live action film, due out later this year. The film…