To Top
As promised, here’s the first page of my latest project on human trafficking in Eastern Europe. All of the oral testimonies were collected and translated from the Ukrainian by my collaborator Olga Trusova, who’s spent the year visiting NGOs and talking to those who have experienced the horrors of modern-day slavery first hand. I’ve been experimenting with spot colours to give the art more depth and substance – what do you think about the tone? Got an idea for a better one? Suggestions and comments welcome. I’m trying to tracking down a ‘No trespassing sign in Ukrainian, so that explains the empty white box in the last tier, in case you were wondering. The AIPAC comic will continue to run next week. More news below the fold, so scroll down.
Adding the spot tone using a Cintiq screen/tablet
Congratulations to the determined, dedicated, bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived, incredibly talented elite from the Stanford Graphic Novel Project 2010 who got our 192p graphic novel finally off to the printer yesterday. After a weekend full of post-production work on Illustrator and Photoshop, Monday night saw the handful of diehards switch seamlessly to Indesign to layout the final print-ready pdf, incorporating text tweak and colour edits along the way. This is only the third year of the Stanford GN project, but the progress the class has made is clearly visible from the jump in the production values, artwork and storytelling. Great job guys!
Now that Pika Don (“flash boom” in Japanese – the word used to described the atomic bomb blasts)’s finally finished, the next deadline is for the human trafficking comic I’m putting together with Fulbright Fellow, Olga Trusova. Olga’s been out in the Ukraine visiting NGOs and collecting victims’ testimonies for me to then turn into graphic narratives to give those that have been exploited a real voice. Too often even the most well-intentioned literature on human trafficking features the same visual motifs of girls in short skirts with pixelated faces walking down dimly-lit alleyways – despite the fact that sex trafficking is only one part of what is an enormous global industry. (Sweatshops, forced labour, piracy and fruit/vegetable picking are just some of the other categories). I’ll post some extracts on Friday to give you an idea.
An experimental vertical panel from my latest comic, which was published in full over at Religion Dispatches earlier this week. Please take the time to digg it by clicking here to get it to the top of the “politics” charts. Scroll down for news.
My comic on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is now headlining the newly-relaunched Religion Dispatches website. Above is the third extract of the piece. Click here to read it from the beginning. Sources/substantiating evidence below. New visitors: welcome! More comics are free to read by clicking on the tabs at the top of the page. Be sure to add the Archcomix RSS Feed to never miss an update, or become a fan on facebook here. Click here to support this site by ordering a hard copy of an issue of Archcomix.
Also, please click here to Digg the link to the RD article, or RT/Fwd. Thanks!
panel 7: for a full list of its offices, click here.
panel 8.1: for more information on the differences, click here.
panel 8.2: see below for the 3 page comic, “Lunch on K Street”, on the lobbying process in DC, that first ran in DC’s own Bash magazine a few years ago.
[GALLERY=25]
panel 9: paraphrased from an actual lobbying firm’s website.
panel 10: For more info, click here and here
Friday, May 8th 1970 marked the 40th anniversary of the Hardhat Riots, the subject of my upcoming graphic novel. Read all about it on the Hardhats page, together with some new photo evidence from the day that recently surfaced. Also, I’ve created an official press release for the Honduran Coup comic on the Honduras page – the link is so please RT it and share it around!
Here’s my page from the Stanford Graphic Novel Project’s latest book, based on the amazing true story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi, one of the few survivors of both of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan in the final days of WW2. Yamaguchi was actually at ground zero (within 3km of the blast’s epicentre) for both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations, and his testimony as to the after-effects and devasatation wrought by the blasts is truly unique. The above page is thanks to Topher, one of head thumbnailers and project managers, who gave me the Chris Ware-esque thumbnailed blueprint. Although I baulked at first, it was actually a lot of fun to pencil and I think the multiple actions contrasted with the near-silence of the page works especially well. More on the class’s amazing journey from conceiving of the graphic novel to getting it off to the printers (fingers crossed) within 6 months to follow next week. Once it’s done, that is. Here’s my original post about the project.
The rest of the piece will be published next week by Religion Dispatches. As ever, see below for sources:
Panel 4: Rosen’s quote from this 2005 New Yorker article. The comment about Rosen’s past as an espionage defendant concerns his August 4, 2005 Indictment on suspicion of passing US govt information to Israel. Read more here.
Panel 5: quote from p2 of Kenen’s book, Israel’s Defense Line: Her Friends and Foes in Washington, available to read online here.
Big news: I am delighted, proud and excited to say that I have been awarded a John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford 2010-11. For more, here’s the official press release. More on this when I come back down to earth.
Here’s the opening to my latest 3-page piece on the pro-Israel lobby in Washington – all of it should be up at Religion Dispatches in the next few days.
Sources: Panel 2: Attendance info from AIPAC’s website here, Clinton’s quote from the State Dept. website.
News, as ever, is below.
Recientemente he visto más visitas desde algunos países hispanohablantes, en lo que imagino tiene que ver con mi cómic sobre el golpe de estado hondureño. Si este es el caso, quiere ir aquí
para la versión española. Y no se olvida ir a mi pagina de facebook, en donde puedes registrar como seguidor de Archcomix para poder ponerse al día con todo mis cómics nuevos.
For the rest of you, see above for the latest hardhats panels. Sneak preview of the now almost finished AIPAC comic coming up tomorrow.
For more information about this story, or to read from the beginning, visit the Hardhats page. New visitors to the site, become an Archcomix fan here, or order your hard copy of the Honduran coup comic using the button the sidebar. News below.
