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I will be attending the Global Forum on Human Trafficking in Sunnyvale, CA today and tomorrow to meet like-minded abolitionists and discuss new ways of combatting human trafficking (through visual storytelling, in my case). If you’re a new visitor to the site, check out my trafficking page for information on my Borderland comic, which translated the voices of several victims of human trafficking in Eastern Europe into comics format. Also, be sure to check out the latest details of my new storytelling project, focusing on trafficking in India and Nepal, which will take place in April/May of next year at my new site Graphic Voices.
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.
I’m pleased to say that all of you who pledged your support for our Borderland human trafficking comic will be receiving your comics very soon – hopefully by the end of the week (domestic) and sometime next week for the internationals. The comic looks fantastic, even if I do say so myself, and was well received at the Alternative Press Expo last weekend. For more on that, scroll down to read my full report.
Here’s another taster from one of the stories to give those of you who aren’t familiar with it an idea – more online at the Borderland page.
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.
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.
That was the title of last night’s talk at The Hub, San Francisco featured Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, in conversation with David Batstone, President of Not for Sale as led by Michael Kieschnick, CEO of CREDO Mobile and Urban Studies Prof at Stanford. I’ll edit my video of the talk and put it on youtube later today. For the time-pressed amongst you, the highlights are below.
Olga and I cornered Jack and David at the end to tell them about our trafficking comic, Borderland (two weeks left until our Kickstarter time limit expires – order your comic now, plug plug!), as well as to discuss the opportunities for incorporating more storytelling into social media as a way of packaging the seemingly endless torrent of tweets, posts etc. Dorsey steered me towards Posterous as a way of embedding visuals in tweets – any Posterous users out there who use it to sync their WP, twit, Fb accounts?
“The power of twitter isn’t the number of people following you, it’s the potential of the universe in just one tweet” (JD)
Products in Development:
Social Media Collaborations that came up:
Thanks to the Hub for putting on a great event.
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!
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.
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.
