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Follow this link to read several of my short story comics that have been published by Bash magazine over the last year – and compare the Chile piece with the Beggars story to see how much progress I’ve made. A big thanks to Jason Lutes for his invaluable crit advice.
Sadly Bash has had to shut up shop in the wake of print journalism generally dying, so pay your respects and visit the site today!
I’m back in Cali after an xmas jaunt to the UK, hence the lack of recent updates, and it’s all kicking off. I’ve just finished next month’s Bash piece on Nigerian beggars, and am putting to bed the latest issue of Archcomix, which contains all of my recent non-fictional work. The Chile strip will be picking back up now, so be sure to stay tuned. I’m aiming to get it all done and dusted by Jan 28th. Fingers crossed.
I’ve joined the Stanford Graphic Novel Project as a TA of some description, where I’ll be contributing my artistic insights into what will be the follow-up to the highly successful Shake Girl graphic novel they made during last year’s class. Today’s assignement was a crit of Nick Abadzis’s Laika, which blew me away. Fantastic storytelling, great characters, excellent use of colour – well, why don’t you just read my 2 cents below:
For a story that is so tightly paced and heavily research-driven, there is a great looseness to the style of the book. Abadzis’s use of two techniques – drybrushing (using a paintbrush caked with dried ink to create a jagged, scratchy line) and drawing with a china marker (again, leaving a crayon-like mark) are both clearly visible on the cover and lend a real hand-crafted, impressionistic feel to the book. Both of these rely on being combined with colour to bring them to life, and the first sequence of Korolev’s escape from the Gulag shows just how crucial colorist Hilary Sycamore’s contribution to the book was. One subtle effect is the use of colour in the page background (in between panels) to reflect the change in temperature and mood – from the bleak black desperation of the first shot of Korolev, which gradually lightens with the presence of moon, until changing to normal white when he arrives at the inn. In a nice parallel, characters or backgrounds are reversed to their black and white negatives in moments of extreme emotion – such as p.14 when Korolev comes close to death, or p.143 when Yelena is told about Laika’s tragic fate.
Abadzis seems well aware of his own weaknesses, hence the scarcity of large panel close-ups on chracters’ faces – one such jarring example being the old lady’s face on p26. However, when he gives up on accurate representation and instead aims to convey raw emotion, the faces get really interesting – see Mikhail’s anger on p37 or his demagogic Dad’s on p.31. When he does go in for a close-up, Abadzis ramps up his use of blacks and the grease pencil, like p.14, 119, 137, although I think he’d have been better off preserving the consistency of his ‘less is more’ style for the sake of heightening the drama.
Certainly, page layouts carefully consider their setting – p11’s vertical panels to emphasize the starry sky and the expanse between Korolev and the moon; p82 horizontal format and rhythmic ‘to and fro’ contrast of Kudryavka and the technicians testing for G-force, and of course the dream sequences. But one original addition that crops up a few times is Adbadzis’s use of overlapping panels, which work as a full-stop/periods, overriding the authority of the page breaks to jump space/time: p.20’s change of scene from Antonina and Mishin’s chat to Korolev’s meeting with Krushchev; the p.38 jump from Mikhail being outside to his decision later that night to drown poor old Laika; or to show the time lapse in p.147 when Laika’s being operated on. He quickly builds up a visual vocabulary so that we know immediately that a circular, non-bordered panel is a window into Laika’s dream-state (p. 88).
I felt the book started strong, but lost some of its power in the build-up to the launch as it sacrificed its characters to the needs of the plot. The wordless episodes early on where the emphasis was on Kudryavka’s character as she experiences the world around her – foraging for food after surviving being dumped in the river, or experiencing zero gravity for the first time (p.91) – really stood out as we watched the dog’s personality come to the fore against a really rich, vivid background.
Above Panel from Laika by Nick Abadzis, courtesy of First Second Books
My new pages over at Bash Magazine have just gone up on their website, so check them out here.
The piece is called ‘Lunch on K Street’ and is a behind the scenes look at the machiavellian machinations that go on in Washington’s Capitol Corridors. So for an introduction to who lobbyists are, why they exist and how they influence government spending and appropriations – all in three pages – visit the link and please post your comments.
I’ve just got back from San Fran’s APE con, where I headed up the CCS table and co-chaired a colour workshop, as well as touting What a Whopper and my latest project – a longer version of the 3page Bash piece I did on the 1973 Chilean Coup. Thanks to those of you who stopped by – I’ll post photos forthwith. Enjoy!
It’s been too long since my last post I know, but there’s been a lot happening, so bear with me:
I submitted a poster for Moveon.org‘s Obama Poster Campaign:
It didn’t make it to the DNC (old hat of a news story now), mainly cos it looks like they were after more art with a capital A : click here for the paintily finalists. I’ve also been working on a new strip for BASH around the Sept 11 Chilean Coup that brought Salvador Allende’s Socialist regime toppling down, though you’ll have to wait a bit before I post it online. PLUS I’ve finally become a star of the silver screen!! I’m in a trailer for a new documentary out about the Center for Cartoon Studies, made by the award-winning Tara Wray. Click here to watch it.
One of sketches features around 30 secs in too. I don’t remember why, but I also provide sagelike advice on why you should never trust clean shaven men. Which I stand by.
AND most importantly of all, I got ENGAGED!! All my love to my blushing, supportive and amazing fiancee Jodie.
Here’s the next page in the Cuba Libre story running in August’s issue of Bash Magazine – read the earlier ones by clicking in the side bar menu. In other news, Microcosm are now distributing my What A Whopper comic across the US of A.
