Archcomix

For a condensed summary of what comics journalism is, in comics format, check out my recent piece for Poynter.org here. Or you could read the fully interactive version here.

For those of you strapped for time, here’s a 3 minute explanation from my Knight Fellowship of what comics journalism is, how it works, and where it’s going.

This page is dedicated to showcasing graphic journalism/non-fiction talents around the world, from the professional level to grass-roots. I might even add an FAQ when I get the chance. For now, content yourselves with the following resources – and feel free to suggest any that I might have missed. To be clear: this is for multi-page, long-form comics, not single panel editorial cartoonists (Daryl Cagle), serialised 3-panellers (Doonesbury) or even multi-panel/multi-tiered rabble rousers (Ted Rall, though to be fair he did just come back from Afghanistan where he was researching his follow-up to the decent “Silk Road to Ruin”). The idea is that the work is presented as a window into a subject that does more than scratch the surface of said news topic with incendiary rhetoric, but actually aims to inform (dare I say educate) the reader.

 

 

 

Here’s the livestreamed feed of the Graphic Journalism Panel I was on with Susie Cagle, Erin Polgreen and Wendy Macnaughton at the Online News Association conference at the end of last year:

This is very much a work in progress, so please leave any more suggestions as a comment or send me an email if you feel I’ve missed anything/one off.

Listed below are some prominent comics journalists at the forefront of the field, followed by examples I’ve gleaned from around the world, organized by territory.

 

Comics Journalists:

• Joe Sacco, the comics journalist de rigeur and author of Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde, The Fixer, and many more, but most recently the Ridenhour award-winning Footnotes in Gaza

Click here to listen to the panel discussion I shared with Joe Sacco on comics journalism when he came to Stanford in May 2011

• Josh Neufeld, author of AD: After the Deluge (read it online at this link)
• Jens Harder, from Germany
• Augusto Paim from Brazil. Read a PDF of his pieces here.
• Jessica Abel (in her ArtBabe Anthologies)
• Bo Soremsky – interactive storytelling and beautiful design from Germany
• Susie Cagle

Click below to listen to the Oct 2011 panel on Comics Journalism I moderated at San Francisco’s Alternative Press Expo, featuring Matt Bors, Susie Cagle and Jen Sorensen:

Click below to listen to the Media Consortium Panel from Oct 2011 on Storytelling Pioneers in the Newsroom, featuring panelists from Mother Jones, Truthout and yours truly.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/25537651″]

• Seth Tobocman, You Don’t Have to Fuck People Over to Survive
• Tom Hart, who wrote this excellent article on standout works of graphic novel reportage. You’ll need to scroll down.
• Nick Bertozzi, whose piece on Shackleton in Syncopated first caught my eye, plus his Iraq War Stories at the Act-i-vate website
• Ho Che Anderson, most famous for his stylish graphic bio of Martin Luther King

Collectives:

• World War 3 Illustrated
• World Comics, a foundation that empowers artists from developing countries around the world to tell their stories in comics form.
• The Last Hours collective, from the UK
• The Stanford Graphic Novel Project
• VJ Movement (due a big site redesign to better incorporate comics), based in the Netherlands

Works:

• Rescue from the Charonne Metro: (in french) true story recalling a metro station attack in early 60s Paris at the height of the Algerian war.
• The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation: I’m not a fan of this for multiple reasons, but the opening section is a good example of how comics can be used to collapse the timing of narrative events. Review to follow. Soon.
• Illustrated People’s History of the US (originally by Howard Zinn)
• Brought to Light
• KZ Dora by Robin Walter – a French graphic novel about 5 characters’ experiences in a Concentration Camp during WW2. See below for cover art, courtesy of Eric Pape.
• Les Cahiers Ukrainiens by Igort
• 

Articles:

Comics Journalism by Region:

Europe:

GraphicJournalism.org, an Italian repository of comics journalism articles

Of the 2012 May protests in Russia

Articles on Comics Journalism:

Nieman Storyboard‘s Comic book news: a look at graphic narrative journalism (part 1)