To Top
Borderland, the comic I did with Fulbright Fellow Olga Trusova last year, just got a great review from The Comics Journal, together with a review of the latest issue of World War 3 Illustrated, which is carrying an extract from What a Whopper – talk about a double whammy:
Borderland is easily the most focused and best-looking work of his career…The stories are all different (and horrifying) enough so as not to start to drone; rather they succeed in grabbing the reader’s attention and raising awareness.
We did it! A predictable sprint to the finish line, but we made it (see above for our triumphant screenshot – the video is NOT a live link!) and you supportive pledgers will be receiving your comics, posters, badges, pdfs, special feature packages and original artwork (depending on what you chipped in, of course) soon. A massive thank you to everyone who pledged, tweeted, shouted from the rooftops, mentioned it to their mates, wrote about it, you name it – your efforts buoys us independent creators who can once again prove to the world that it is possible to use art to effect social change.
For those of you who want a copy but have only just heard about the project, there are still plenty of ways to pre-order your copy – I’m just adding Borderland to my “store” page now, plus there should be a link to Borderland Comic’s paypal site too: $10 for your own full-colour copy.
and help us support the IOM in the fight against modern day slavery. Last day today!!!! We need to raise $8000 or all of the money raised will be returned! Check out the preview below. More Archcomix news below the fold.
Thanks to all of those who came to see Olga and I speak at Stanford’s d.school on Thursday evening. About 40 people showed up to hear about how the project came together and discuss the challenges and obstacles creatives face in using their work to instigate social change. Journalist Cynthia Haven did a great piece about the event for Stanford, which you can read here. You’ll also notice that our fundraising tally is up – we’re at 76%, with less than 24 hours to go! Please RT and share the link to our Kickstarter page on digg, facebook, wherever – if you didn’t already know, Kickstarter will return all funds collected so far if we don’t make it to our $8000 goal by this time tomorrow.
Last week was also my first full week of classes at Stanford, which was simultaneously challenging, exhausting, exhilarating and fascinating. Running around to find my classrooms/lecture halls on the first day was surreal, but a week later I consider myself a veteran, though I’m still wrestling with some of the e-classroom/syllabi that we’re expected to attend or sign up for online. I consider it slightly ironic that my data visualization assignment took me almost as long to post to the course wiki as it did to complete. Teething troubles aside, I’ve really enjoyed throwing myself into new projects and classes that are clearly outside of my comfort zone: Human-Computer Interaction; Data Visualization; Beginner’s German; and Multimedia Production are my main courses this semester. Needless to say, good ol’ introduction to cognitive neuroscience didn’t even get a look in past week one – too many lectures to get to as it is! The project’s also coming along well, especially with the news that the Knight News Challenge is definitely on this year, so expect more about that in the next few weeks as I put my application together.
Welcome to Archcomix – if you’re new here, take a look around by clicking on the tabs above. Some have drop-down menus for individual stories under that theme. See what I’m working on at the moment as part of my John S.Knight Fellowship here and please support my Borderland comic through Kickstarter here – less than a week left to raise our money or it all gets returned. And we wouldn’t want that. Also, check out the new comics journalism page I’ve set up.
Part 2 of another comic from the upcoming human trafficking comic, Borderland. Featuring 7 true stories told by human trafficking victims in comics format. Now at 1/3 of our goal! Please order your comic via Kickstarter here – $5 for a digital version, $10 for a hard copy, as well as more luxurious options like signed posters, behind the scenes views of the project’s artwork, and the chance to sponsor a copy for a Ukrainian school or NGO. More news on yesterday’s SF Zine fest journalism panel below.
First panels from one of the stories featured in my upcoming Borderland comic – featuring 7 true stories told by human trafficking victims. I’ll be posting the next panels over the next week, but please order your own copy of the comic through our Kickstarter page to help us raise money towards printing and distribution costs. You can also help us out by sharing the link on FB, Twitter, Digg etc – thanks for your support!
My human trafficking comics journalism project is now live on Kickstarter. For more info and to see our video pitch, visit the link or check out the new “Trafficking” page I’ve added to Archcomix.com. Most importantly, please pre-order our comic through Kickstarter so we can meet our fundraising goal and get it printed and distributed here in the US to raise awareness about human trafficking.
Featuring artwork from one of the victims interviewed, part of one of the many anonymous surveys we drew our research from, as well as statistics from the IOM, I think this idea has more visual impact and sums up the aims of the comic (both educational and emotional) better than the other options you could have voted for. Please leave feedback below!
Thank you to all who voted in the Borderland cover design poll: I’m pleased to say that my preferred design, number 8, won with 24% of the vote, closely followed in a dual tie by numbers 1 and 6 with 18%. The final cover artwork is about 90% finished now and I’m really happy with it, so be sure to check back in later on this week when I’ll post a low-res version for your comments. If you’re late to the poll or don’t know what I’m talking about, go here for the designs and here for an introduction to the project. It’ll have its own page soon.
I’ve been making more back-end changes to the site, adding comics here and there from the archcomix archive as well as adding various widgets: check out my flickr stream below on the right as well as new comics (AIPAC in its entirety on the US politics page) and reviews (perma-link to my recent Comics Journal review on the revamped “About” page).
