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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.
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).
More from my upcoming non-fiction project on human trafficking in Eastern Europe. Stick “Borderland” in the apture search bar at the top of the page for more info, or hit previous twice to go back to the start of the story.
As promised, the story continues. Hit “previous” for the start of the story, or stick “Borderland” in the Apture search bar at the top of the page for the full lowdown on the project, new page to be updated soon.
Russian lettering to be inserted into the roadside sign in the the first panel. Also, check out a over at the Comics Journal.
Hot off the drawing board, here’s a new piece from the upcoming Borderland comic I’ve been working on over the past year, turning the real-life testimonies of human trafficking victims from the Ukraine in partnership with Fulbright Fellow Olga Trusova. Comments, as always, very welcome. Especially on the spot colour.
More panels to come, as well as a good review and exciting update on the Honduran Coup comic. More regular updates will start back up again now that I’m nearing the summit of the mountain of pages needed to complete Borderland.
Above is a sample from my current project on human trafficking, called Borderland. The name comes from the translation of “Ukraine“. The comic, which will be around 32-36pages long, is made up of several different real-life stories recorded during interviews with victims at NGOs around the Ukraine over the past year. The finished pages will be B/W with a single spot colour over the top: search for “Roma” or “Trafficking” in the Apture search bar at the top of the page and you’ll find a complete page from a different story to see what I mean.
We’ll (my colleague and Fulbright Fellow Olga Trusova and I) then bundle those together with information and anti-trafficking resources (helplines, websites, NGO contact details), translate them into Ukrainian and Russian and disseminate them around Eastern Europe. I’ll be creating a dedicated page called ‘Trafficking” over the next few weeks that will feature more information on the project, as well as a gallery of pages, so be sure to come back and check it out.
My comic gets the group crit treatment for the first time in Kiev, Ukraine
One massive advantage for Olga and I as we’ve put together this comic on human trafficking has been the support of NGOs and student groups in the Ukraine. Knowing that you’ve been able to incorporate feedback from sources on the ground is critical not only to the credibility of a project, but also to dispelling any doubts that creep in about putting the world to rights from behind the cosseted safety of my drawing board, here in sunny California. The same was true of the Honduran comic, which included eyewitness reporting and drew on various different sources in Tegucigalpa. To give you a great example of this sort of collaboration, a few weeks ago, Olga presented the first draft of the story (3p) you see above to a group of students, professors and NGO workers in Kiev. They then workshopped the piece, bringing up concerns over the wording (always tricky given the tightrope between remaining faithful to a translation and not seeming too stilted), visual references (my original dumpster wasn’t right) and how effectively they thought it communicated the victim’s story. The second draft goes back to them next week, so fingers crossed they’ll be happy with the revisions.
I’ve steered away from commenting on news headlines of late to focus on what I’ve been working on, but one article about the recent furore around the ever-encroaching oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico caught my eye and is worth a mention. No, it’s not this priceless quote from BP CEO Tony Hayward:
“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume”
More from the Huffington Post here, or the Guardian’s interview with Hayward here.
Current estimates put the total amount of oil leaked at 400,000 gallons (1.5m litres) – not quite up there with the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill at 40.9m litres, but with the potential to rival it, given the vast area the BP spill looks set to cover. Another thing the two spills have in common is the response from the company executives. Here’s Mark Boudreaux, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, responding to claims that 18 years after the disaster, there are still 26,600 gallons of oil clogging up Prince William Sound:
“Based on our initial review of the report, there is nothing newsworthy or significant in the report that has not already been addressed. The existence of some small amounts of residual oil in Prince William Sound on about two-tenths of 1% of the shore of the sound is not a surprise, is not disputed and was fully anticipated.”
I’m not even going to go into the fact that Obama himself has weighed in on the “ridiculous spectacle” of oil executive finger pointing to chastise the companies’ refusal to accept any of the blame and pay for the cleanup, despite BP’s profits last year of $4.4 billion – an increase of 70 per cent on the same period in 2008.
No, what I’m interested in is BP’s elaborate attempts to cover up the magnitude of the spill from the media. Their measures include hiring local teams to ally with the coastguards and prevent journalists from getting access to the affected coastal areas (see left), as well as vetoing the taking or dissemination of aerial photography that would show the extent of the damage.
One man’s solution? DIY Aerial photography with nothing more than a makeshift rig, a balloon, and a cheap camera. Thanks to the Mediashift/Knight Projects Idea Lab for this excellent article. Visit grassrootsmapping.org for more info, and to get involved. Here’s the man behind the scheme (Jeffrey Warren)’s flickr page for more images.
As promised, here’s the first page of my latest project on human trafficking in Eastern Europe. All of the oral testimonies were collected and translated from the Ukrainian by my collaborator Olga Trusova, who’s spent the year visiting NGOs and talking to those who have experienced the horrors of modern-day slavery first hand. I’ve been experimenting with spot colours to give the art more depth and substance – what do you think about the tone? Got an idea for a better one? Suggestions and comments welcome. I’m trying to tracking down a ‘No trespassing sign in Ukrainian, so that explains the empty white box in the last tier, in case you were wondering. The AIPAC comic will continue to run next week. More news below the fold, so scroll down.
