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Panel from "The Insurgent" by Isaac Goodhart
I stumbled across this gem of an online comics anthology (for sample, see left) put together by students from NYC’s School of Visual Arts under the watchful eye of Nick Bertozzi. The link is to the Act-i-vate website (a great website for free top-notch webcomics) and shows the end result of a project to visually adapt US troops’ combat testimonies during their recent tours in Iraq.
We’ve also published an extract of the first story from Borderland over at borderlandcomics.com, which I’ve added to the ‘Trafficking” page. Other updates include the Honduran Coup: A Graphic History video on the “Honduras” page, so please watch, pass on and leave your comments.
I’m also delighted to announce that I’ll have a comic published in the seminal activist art anthology, World War 3 Illustrated, which should be out later on in the year. It’ll be an extract from an oldie from the 2007 archive chronicling the scandal around Burger King’s exploitation of undocumented central American migrant workers in Florida’s tomato fields. You can read it over at the US Politics page, now with a handy drop-down menu.
As I near the end of putting Borderland together (my human trafficking comic, for those of you new around here), I’ve been debating various different cover designs, some of which I’ve pencilled at full size only to find that they lack the impact (emotional or visual) I’m looking for. So in keeping with the Honduran coup comic, I’m throwing it open to you: peruse the options below and choose your favourite in the poll underneath. I’ll reveal the winner in a few days, as the cover is due by the middle of next week.
1. Half realistic portrait of one of the victims, the other half filled in with a map of Eastern Europe/Ukraine against a black background.
Cover 2: Similar to the Honduran Coup cover: reflections of imminent danger in the close-up eye of one of the victims
Cover 3: Understated. Assorted items presumably belonging to a victim - passport, identity papers, etc with "Borderland" rubber-stamped on top
Cover 4: Scattered ID papers belonging to the 7 different victims whose stories comprise the comic. A bit cluttered perhaps.
Cover 5: The victims walking towards us down a typical Ukraine high street with Kiev landmarks in the background. Subtle nods to the locations mentioned in the stories (nightclub signs, bakery etc).
Cover 6: The victims in the foreground, overshadowed by the different buildings that constitute their homes/work/prisons in the comic
cover 7: A beaten-up, weathered Ukrainian passport (in dark blue), which you open up to see the contents laid out like a passport (photo ID, DOB etc) Cons: Passport cover design alone not enough to grab a reader's attention.
cover 8: my favourite (no bias). The black is a Ukrainian passport, with assorted mocked-up papers/ID photo stapled over the top, as if we were the case worker for one of the victims.
Hot off the drawing board, here’s a new piece from the upcoming Borderland comic I’ve been working on over the past year, turning the real-life testimonies of human trafficking victims from the Ukraine in partnership with Fulbright Fellow Olga Trusova. Comments, as always, very welcome. Especially on the spot colour.
More panels to come, as well as a good review and exciting update on the Honduran Coup comic. More regular updates will start back up again now that I’m nearing the summit of the mountain of pages needed to complete Borderland.
