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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).
Wow. I know lately I’ve been prone to postponing my once-daily digital diatribes, but the sheer amount of work I’ve been getting through of late has tipped we way over the line. The main reason for that was the big push to the end of my Knight Fellowship at Stanford, which I’ll write more about in detail on my Knight project page. In the meantime, visit this link to watch my 3 min hyper-summary of comics journalism and what I’ve been working on at Stanford. Or click here to see how the rest of my incredibly talented cohort spent their year via the re-engineering journalism Knight Fellowship Garage.
That’s right, click here for the full 1.5 hr audio of “The World in Frames” panel organized at Stanford last week. Featuring Andrea Lunsford (Professor of English), Adam Johnson (Assoc Professor in English and Creative Writing), Adam Rosenblatt (Ph.D. Candidate, Modern Thought and Literature, representing the Program in Human Rights) and, of course, myself (Comics Journalist, John S. Knight Journalism Fellow).
Joe goes into detail on his process, what tools he uses (nibs and paper types, the whole shebang), his influences, and why he chose comics as the medium for his journalism.
I have finally succumbed to the lure of After Effects, Final Cut and Flash for my visual storytelling needs of late. Not that I’ve turned my back on my drawing board (or the more accommodating sketchbook – additions to which are up on flickr). More like I’m finally able to start experimenting with different ways of presenting the visual stories that up until now have been pencilled, inked, scanned and printed (or published online). Turns out After Effects is more intuitive than I thought, though the avalanche of sub-field arrows reminds me of the first time I got plonked in front of Photoshop CS2 at Penguin many moons ago. So I’m finally on track to combining video, audio slideshows and interactive comics from one story into an online rich-media maelstrom. The question is, what is the best way to hack them altogether? Is it Flash, or will that be the online publishing equivalent of Quark in a few year’s time? By now, loyal reader, you’ll have no doubt closely watched the Pulse and Seda videos that I’ve posted (scroll down in the News section below if not), and will be anxiously awaiting the latest offering, which should be wrapped up by Weds. It centres on two Bhutanese refugees who have been resettled in Oakland, and their contrasting experiences at different ends of the age spectrum.
With the help of the indomitable Christopher Lin, I’ve also managed to put out a new version of my interactive comics reader prototype, now featuring a vertical as well as horizontal scroll, and pop-up windows from linked panels. It went down very well at our Knightly outing to Google last week, where I presented it to teams from Google News and Youtube. Fellow fellows Hugo Soskin and Di Pinheiro are putting together a video of the talks (also given by Cafe Babel founder-now OWNI partner Adriano Farano and Investigative Journalist Evelyn Larrubia), so I’ll post a link when it’s up. The excellent comics journalism resource Cartoon Movement have also expressed an interest in an interactive narrative visualization (like a data viz, but with visual stories as opposed to infographics, though I suppose the panels technically constitute information graphics) I’m putting together of the Nisour Square shooting of 2007, so expect that down the pipeline soon. To keep you sated until then, check out this video from a talk I gave to the MA journalism students at Stanford last month on comics journalism, my path into it, process, and all that good stuff.
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.
A brazilian comicsphile feels the inky pull towards a page of Archcomix
Congrats to Augusto Paim for organizing the Comics journalism conference in Brazil at the Porto Alegre Goethe Institute. I wasn’t there in person sadly, but some of my artwork made it through the ether- check out this photo from my comic on Chagos, a panel of which is above, back in the days when I used to watercolour. To read the whole comic, click here.
More details are now out about my upcoming talk on comics journalism at the Miami Book Fair, so those of you on the east coast looking for some thanksgiving sun prime your diaries for 4pm this Sunday. Get the full skinny here. I’m sharing the panel with war correspondent David Axe, writer of War is Boring, which was then turned into a comic by Matt Bors. (Wars might be, but coups definitely aren’t).
For an update on my Knight fellowship project at Stanford, click here.
Me, Olga and an Ogre in a tutu
A big shout to everyone who came by the Archcomix/Center for Cartoon Studies table at Alternative Press Expo this weekend. Copies of the hot-off-the-press Borderland comic (which arrived nail-bitingly late last week, just in time for the con) flew off the table, hotly followed by the second print run of the Honduran Coup: a Graphic History, now with newly amended Honduran Spanish translation (thanks to Fabiola Maldonado). Although I didn’t get much time away from manning the table, I managed to see the Dan Clowes interview panel as well as hang out with fellow comics activist Gan Golan, who has put out an amazing looking new graphic novel that takes the aesthetic of vintage superhero comics to explain the recession and current economic crisis. When else would I bring myself to pose with costumed superheroes? Ladies and Gents, I present: The Adventures of Unemployed Man. It’s actually out tomorrow from Little Brown, so beat the rush and get a copy as soon as you can! I also had the pleasure of hanging out with
My kind of superheroes (Tights optional)
Matt Bors and David Axe – otherwise known as the War is Boring team – as well as Susie Cagle, fresh with issue 2 of her Microcosm-published mini, 9 Gallons, to chew the comics journalism cud. In amongst the weekend’s hectic cocktail-party-conveyor-belt-atmosphere of pitching my work to anyone in the vicinity of table 276, I also found the time to read Ken Dahl‘s truly awesome Monsters, at last collected by Secret Acres into one volume. It’s about as approachable and confessional as herpes lit could be.
More on last week’s events at Stanford, plus a new comic and a breakthrough in my Knight Project, once I get some sleep.
Loads of news to fill you in on today – Honduran Resistance Members’ insights into the situation on the ground and the gathering momentum for the constitutional reform petition; the Dalai Lama’s talk at Stanford this morning (off to the next one this afternoon) and about to go to veteran US intelligence officer Ray McGovern’s talk at the Stanford Law School. Only at Stanford could you go from a CIA officer to the Dalai Lama via a brief stroll across campus. I’ll type it all up this evening in between the gargantuan amount of comics I have to spray paint ahead of APE this weekend.
The more observant among you will notice the addition of a subtle “support comics journalism” widget on the left-hand sidebar. If you’re a regular visitor to the site or have enjoyed what you’ve read then please help keep the site going by chipping in a few cents. Every little micropayment helps. If you’re into the big bucks, then just head to the store and you’ll get a hard copy of the comics for your hard-earned cash.
Click here to read this 2007 comic on mountain top removal from the start. Also, be sure to check out the updates to the Knight Project page and scroll down for news. Or order your hard copy of all my comics over at the store page. Support independent comics journalism today!
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.
