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I’m back, after an extended hiatus in south america (sketchbook pages and an interview to follow) and a blistering sprint finish with several different pre-xmas deadlines before that. One of which was a short story featuring the snippet of panels above, chronicling miscarriages of justice in the american legal system. Another, out next week, is a second interactive piece for cartoon movement. More about it in the “news” section, just a scroll away, down below the fold.
Work on Alcatraz continues as I near the finish line, now that I’m well into colouring the inked pages. You’ll have to check out the “Extras” page from the tabs above for a glimpse of the finished pages as they come off my drawing board – but for that, you’ll need to get the passcode, which you can only get from the latest edition of the Archcomix newsletter (next one drops on Monday). Simple.
All this and I haven’t even mentioned my next big project, focusing on human trafficking in SF. I’m currently researching and doing interviews, and should have something for you in a few weeks. I’ll post separately about it soon.
As promised above, here is a link to the Yiddishkeit slideshow detailing my process of turning a comics script into finished pages, including using visual references, digital colouring in photoshop, thumbnailing, all that good stuff. Here is the Kickstarter campaign to erect a statue in Harvey’s native Cleveland.
Many thanks to Sterling Warner at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose for inviting me to talk about my work and comics journalism in general on Wednesday. It was great talking to the next generation of visual storytellers afterwards and I hope that some of them have made it here to the Archcomix online HQ – if so, welcome! Be sure to browse comics using the drop-down menus at the top of the page.
Meanwhile this week Alcatraz continues to rumble ahead, with the finish line now finally in sight; a new animation-based project involving Vietnam is in the works; I’m building another interactive piece, this time on the history of the International Criminal Court; pencilling some pages on a potential legal academic graphic novel; working on the follow-up to my crisis comix for Marketplace; AND laying the groundwork for my follow-up to last year’s Borderland, which will tell the story of trafficking in the US. Oh and the Stanford Graphic Novel Project! More about that on the soon to be re-launched”teaching” page – stay tuned for updates.
That’s right, my comics interviews with various partipants in Occupy Oakland is now live at Yes! Magazine. Check out their slideshow here, or enjoy the fully interactive version here.
That not enough for you? Then you’ll want to peruse the latest pencilled pages from my current hush-hush project, now uploaded to the “Extras” section. Don’t know the password? For that you’ll have to subscribe to my newsletter. Them’s the breaks.
The latest Archcomix newsletter is out now: click here to read it online or . Find out more about the Global Forum on Human Trafficking from this set of live sketches, visit the updated trafficking page or check out some of the new pages from the tabs above.
New visitors, welcome! Be sure to browse the comics using the tabs at the top of the page.
Click here to read my latest comics experiment, gleaned from a series of interviews I did at the Occupy Oakland protest on Thursday night. Something of a change in how I normally put work together, I skipped thumbnailing and dived straight into transcribing the interviews to let the subjects speak for themselves. I sprinkled in some interactivity too to keep/force readers to engage with it – and added some audio into the mix while I was at it. See what you think – it’s also been posted on this occupy portraits site too.
You’ll also notice that I’ve added a Multimedia page along the top, where you’ll find videos, animations, audio recordings and links to my most recent interactive visual storytelling experiments.
Ok, so it’s been a while since my last update – I can happily report it’s because I’ve been juggling deadlines for the past few weeks. That, and being at San Franciso’s Alternative Press Expo and starting a new semester back at Stanford teaching the graphic novel project. For your aural delight here is the recording from the panel I moderated at APE on “Exploring Comics Journalism”. Thanks to Matt Bors, Susie Cagle and Jen Sorensen for their contributions.
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/25001907″]
As ever, the fruits of my recent labours will be posted soon, but you’ll have to wait a little longer for now. What better opportunity could you want for perusing the archived non-fiction comics waiting for you behind the tabs at the top of the screen? Hover over them and then choose a comic to read from the drop-down menu.
In the meantime, above are some panels from my current project in progress on Alcatraz – check out the Alcatraz page for more details and the story behind them.
My latest interactive comic is now live at Poynter.org – click here to read it in all of its interactive glory.
The eagle-eyed amongst you will also notice that my latest comic on the Hard Hat Riots of 1970 is now available for pre-order via the widget on the right-hand sidebar.
As I mentioned in this previous post, about a month ago I spent a week in the woods outside LA (near Palm Springs), 6000 feet up a mountain, teaching a course on graphic novel writing. The adult students were amazingly dedicated and came on leaps and bounds in their visual storytelling skills, as you can see from the above tiers by Claudia Bear. Click here to visit her new site and read the rest of her comic. More from the other students to come.
In other news: The first mini-review of Yiddishkeit, featuring the 55 page comic I did with Harvey Pekar, is up online here. I’ll post more about it in the Non-fiction page (click on the above tab to access it normally). Here’s the official book page at Abrams if you’re interested in reading about the other collaborators, amongst them the mighty Peter Kuper and Spain Rodriguez.
Comics journalism is in the headlines more than ever these days: check out these two articles, one from The Atlantic (with a list of must-read titles), the other, from Truthout by Adam Bessie, features myself, Ted Rall, Sarah Glidden, Matt Bors and of course Joe Sacco in a round-up of the form’s movers and shakers.
At last! A powerful piece of comics journalism on the tragic treatment of indigenous communities at the hands of Canadian mining corporation Goldcorp. Rights Action has done a fantastic job of chronicling the spread of health issues, infant mortalities and suffering endured by communities near the gold mines, which you can see for yourselves here.
In the meantime, here’s the comics piece below – published on Scribd.
Extraction!: Comix Reportage – Gold (Guatamala) reportage by Dawn Paley/ comix by Joe Ollmann
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.
