Apr 30 2008

Christophe Blain Book Tour of the U.S.?

Normally I pretty much skim over the “Comics Briefly” section of Publishers Weekly Comics Week newsletter; I read ComicsReporter and Journalista! pretty regularly during lunch each day, so usually there’s nothing there I haven’t seen before. When looking over this week’s issue, though, I spotted the heading, “Blain U.S. Tour” and wondered: that can’t be referring to the French cartoonist Christophe Blain, can it?

Well, sure enough, that’s exactly what it was about. According to the article, Blain “will be doing a book tour in the United States sponsored by the French Embassy’s Cultural Services Department.” The only events mentioned are an appearance at Portland’s Floating World Comics (I think I’m the only remaining cartoonist who hasn’t moved to Portland) and a book festival in Los Angeles. I’d love to think there’d be more appearances by the cartoonist, but the French Embassy’s site doesn’t have any info on it, nor could I find anything on the website of Blain’s American publisher, NBM.

So, you may be asking yourself, Who the heck is Christophe Blain? Christophe Blain is in my opinion one of the very best cartoonists working today. His work, to me, has exactly the right balance of abstraction and realism; his linework is somehow loose but precise at the same time; his coloring is gorgeous; and his stories are exciting, dramatic and poignant yet at the same time exciting and fun. The series to check out from NBM is Isaac the Pirate, two volumes of which are available at the moment. Hopefully the third is in the works. I believe it’s already out in French. Here’s a typically gorgeous page from the series:

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I find it odd that he’s not more known here in the states. (I guess I find it odd that more European cartoonists in general aren’t known here.) I have, though, noted his influence in a few American cartoonists recently, most prominently Nick Bertozzi, particularly in his great online story about Sir Ernest Shackleton. Likewise, British cartoonist Nick Abadzis’ Laika seems to me to have a bit of Blain-vibe to it visually.

Anyway, I’m keeping my eyes open for more dates in the U.S…

Update: 

Courtesy of Chris Pitzer of Adhouse, there’s plenty more info from the original press release over on Chris Butcher’s blog, including the list of appearances, all of which unfortunately are on the West Coast.  Have fun hanging out with Christophe Blain, ya’ damn hippies!

Apr 28 2008

Gimme Some Ninjas, Bub

This is another piece, like the Inhumans thing I posted a few weeks back, that I’m putting together with an eye toward the upcoming convention season.  As you can tell, I’m a fan of the old-timey ’80s Frank Miller-style Wolverine who smokes cigars (I almost gave him one here) and fights ninjas.

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Apr 24 2008

Piltdown: Free Comic Book Day

J. Chris Campbell just sent out this fantastic cover image from the upcoming Wide Awake Press book for Free Comic Book Day:

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The title of the book obviously is Piltdown, and here’s the skinny:

Wide Awake Press follows up last year’s successful download comic EATS with an anthology of prehistoric tales. Go to wideawakepress.com on May 3 and download the FREE comic PILTDOWN. Join us on our journey back in time and see what stories surface when artists draw upon thier inner cro-magnon. Dinosaurs, Cavemen and all types of prehistroic beasts gather together for you to discover.

The book will feature my giant sloth story that I’ve posted a few sketches from in the past.  Chris is being pretty tight-lipped about who’s contributed stories, but I’ll post info when the book’s available for free download on the third.

Apr 23 2008

Sketchbook 4/23

Confederate submariner and Maryland Oyster Navy Captain, Hunter Davidson (original sketch, and sketch with underdrawing removed with Photoshop):

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Apr 22 2008

I Review Drawing Words and Writing Pictures

If you’re signed up for the Publishers Weekly Comics Week email newsletter (and you know you should be!) you’ve probably had this appear in your inbox already, but I’ve written a review of Jessica Abel and Matt Madden’s new comics teaching book Drawing Words and Writing Pictures in the current newsletter. As you can probably tell from the review, I really really enjoyed the book. It’s a major achievement and a great stride forward in the somewhat anemic field of comics instruction texts. From the review:

While colleges, universities and art schools have been busily adding comics-making classes—and in some cases, concentrations or even entire departments—in parallel with the current “graphic novel boom,” good-quality textbooks to use in conjunction with those classes have been hard to come by. As I imagine other comics teachers have, for my classes, I’ve wound up cobbling together bits and pieces for my students, drawn from comics’ scattershot history of “how-to” books—from venerable classics such as Will Eisner’s Comics & Sequential Art and Jack Hamm’s Cartooning the Head and Figure, to more recent works such as Scott McCloud’s Making Comics. None of these books, though, offered a single, complete course of comics-making starting with fundamentals, covering the technical nuts and bolts, and culminating with a finished student-assembled comic book.

It should be no surprise that this is exactly what Jessica Abel and Matt Madden have set out to do with their new book on comics instruction, Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, since both have been teaching comics at New York City’s School of Visual Art for many years. (read more…)