Kindling Xia Gordon (CREATOR) 2dcloud 2017 I first discovered Xia Gordon at the 2017 Toronto Comics Art Festival where I saw her beautiful artwork and included her in my Comics Creators You Should Look Out For list over at Book Riot. It was some breathtaking stuff and I filed it away in my brain, waiting…
Small Press Bites: Faves of 2017 Edition
Another year has come to a close, and in-between experiencing an existential despair heretofore unknown to me, I read a bunch of great comics. And so did our bevy of wonderful writers! And some of those comics happened to come from small presses, indie creators, self-publishing, and the internet. We’ve written up a collection of…
Comics Has An Abuse Problem: Taneka Stotts Opens Up About Her Assault At SDCC
Comics has long been an industry rife with abuse, exploitation, and seriously problematic behavior from creators and publishers alike. But despite the apparently inevitable, many of us strive to make the space better, to excommunicate those who harm others, and to create authentic work that speaks to our lived experience whilst navigating the often racist,…
Showtime: It’s Magic, There Is No Trick
Showtime Antoine Cossé Breakdown Press September 2017 This comic does such a good job of simulating the wanderings of an engrossed but unanchored mind that is back engineers the relaxation of sensory deprivation into your reading body. Your brain is tricked so thorgouhly into accepting the dream that it does some of the work of…
Gaysi Zine Vol 5 is an Exploration and Celebration of Queer Desire
The Gaysi Zine Vol 5: All That We Want Editors: Indu Jain and Priya Gangwani Contributors: Aarthi Parthasarathy, Abeer Hoque, Abhishek Chaudhary, Aindri Chakraborty, Akhila Krishnan, Akshay Mahajan, Alaric Moras, Anar-e Sistanem, Balbir Krishan, Benjamin Zachariah, Brian Horton, Dhrubo Jyoti, Jaya Sharma, Kaveri Gopalakrishnan, Kiran Rajagopalan, M.G. Ashley, Michael Giangrasso, Minal Hajratwala, Mira Malhotra, Parvati…
Colour in Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do”
The endpapers of Thi Buy’s The Best We Could Do are coloured in a wash of a sky blue hue, and depict a beach scene: shells of several sizes are scattered about, along with a pair of sandals. The effect of the opening endpapers, to which the reader turns from the cover image of a…
2017 Ignatz Awards Celebrate Diversity and Community
This year’s Ignatz Awards felt more charged than recent years, and the current political climate felt immediate and present even in the ballroom of the Bethesda Marriott where the ceremony is traditionally held. This wider perspective led to an evening of intensely personal speeches about the power of community, comics, and becoming an active participant…
Surreal Classrooms: The Academic Hour
The Academic Hour Keren Katz Secret Acres The Academic Hour, according to the book jacket, is a series of vignettes about the romance between Pothel, an architecture professor now banned from teaching architecture, and his student Liana. I am not convinced of this. The first hint that this comic is not actually a romance appears…
Kickstarting the End of Summer
It’s the end of the month, which means it’s a perfect time to take a look at some assorted comics crowdfunding campaigns! Summer 2017 – 2dcloud Juliacks, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Leif Goldberg, Xia Gordon (contributors) 2dcloud continues their run of Kickstarters to fund another season of really interesting projects — 3 books and two zines. Perfect…
Choosing Comics for Choice: An Interview with Editor Hazel Newlevant
Comics for Choice is a black and white comics anthology that features 60 contributing artists and writers, 41 stories, and is raising money for the National Network of Abortion Funds. You might recognize the publisher and co-editor Hazel Newlevant from her book, If This Be Sin, or her previous crowdfunded anthology, Chainmail Bikini: The Anthology of Women…
Small Press Bites: A Girl & Her Cat, A Catgirl, and More
Something Familiar Pam Wishbow Pam Wishbow’s work is delightfully creepy, always adorned with eyes and runes and enough esoteric symbols to catch my eye from across a room. Something Familiar, true to form, is a dark and creepy comic drawn in stark black and white, its shadows often dominating each scene in a way that…
Power and Magic Anthology Review: The Magic of Queerness
Power & Magic: The Queer Witch Comics Anthology Joamette Gil (Editor) P&M Press January, 2017 Inside all queer people is magic. When honed correctly we can cast our magic out and spread a rainbow that can save others. One such spell has been cast and I have had the pleasure to have fallen under it….