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That’s right, my ICC comic is now live over at Cartoon Movement – click here to read it and please share it around the internets.
For a behind the scenes look at my process and how the project came together, check out this blog post. If you’re new to these parts, scroll over the headings above for a drop down menu to previous online comics, or sign up for the newsletter below for access to the “special features” part of my site.
My latest comics journalism piece on the International Criminal Court will be published online at Cartoon Movement on Wednesday. It uses a new framework for scrolling through a historical timeline that I’ve built, and I’d love to hear feedback, so be sure to stop by, check it out and leave a comment.
Oh and in case you missed it (what? you don’t already follow me on Twitter? All is forgiven, just click here) please vote for the two ONA (online news association) panels – Comics Journalism (natch) and Financing Meaningful Journalism. You’ll need a reddit account. Yes, it’s simple to set up and can be your good deed for the day.
More news on my intermittent musings and other upcoming/recently finished projects below the fold. Just scroll on down.
Kudos to Matt Bors, Tjeerd Royards and Caroline Bins over at Cartoon Movement for their excellent comics journalism work on Haiti and the ongoing plight of the thousands of disenfranchised people there, now that the mainstream media circus has predictably gotten bored and rolled out of town. What’s especially impressive is that CM has turned the mic over to Haitian journalists and creators to give them a chance to tell the story in their own voice, as opposed to the traditional 3rd person reporting we’re used to seeing. Here’s the first instalment of a comic by Chevelin Pierre & Pharès Jerome, “Tents Beyond Tents” that you should check out.
As if that wasn’t groundbreaking enough, there’s also an innovative mash up of comic art, audio and video in another related piece, this time focusing on the LGBT community in Haiti and the precarious nature of their survival in the tent cities:
I’m pleased to announce that one of the interactive multimedia comics that I worked on during my Knight fellowship is now live over at Cartoon Movement. To read the piece, click here. (Above is a sample tier). The piece tells the story of the Nisoor square shootings that took place in Sept 2007 in Baghdad, Iraq involving US contractor Blackwater (now renamed “Xe Services”). The tragic event saw 17 Iraqis killed and 24 wounded during the controversial shootings, which civilian witnesses argue was unprovoked. The case was dismissed by US courts in 2009 but reopened just a few months ago, in April 2011.
Meanwhile, Xe’s polemical CEO Erik Prince has moved to Abu Dhabi to export his unique brand of mercenary training:
Mr. Prince, who resettled here last year after his security business faced mounting legal problems in the United States, was hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi to put together an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the U.A.E., according to former employees on the project, American officials and corporate documents obtained by The New York Times…
Stay tuned for a separate post on what looks frighteningly like a School of the Americas for the middle east.
Cartoon Movement, the internet’s #1 platform for high quality political cartoons and comics journalism (and sister site of VJ movement) , is publishing my latest piece on the Sept 2007 shootings that occurred in Nisoor Square, Baghdad – there’s a little taster about it on their blog here. The piece will go up next wednesday, June 15th. In the run up to next week I’ll post some previews of the panels and give more of a sense of how the piece works, and the importance (not to mention the untapped potential) of incorporating interactivity into comics journalism pieces.
For now, let me break down the above screenshot, which is the main viewing area for the piece (which, incidentally, loads in its own window due to sizing constraints). The viewing area is comprised of 3 main parts: the timeline (corresponding to the 15 minutes that the incident took place over), which can be advanced by clicking on the play button, or dragged to a specific point); the background, which is comprised of a satellite picture of Nisoor Square together with an additional layer of brightly coloured icons (corresponding to the various people and vehicles involved in the incident) that move along their respective paths as the incident unfolds; and, of course, the panels, which appear as the user hovers over the said icons, providing an eyewitness account of the event from that specific perspective (the majority of which are taken from direct testimonies).
