Your daily dig into the alt comics firmament.
“April Issue out this Friday! A diary drawing compendium, an embarrassing time capsule collection of never before published sketchbook pages and pencilled comic pages. Available for pre order now until Friday. Gone forever after that.”
https://nategarcia.bigcartel.com/product/jambalaya-april-2023
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Man, I love Nate Garcia. He and Hanselmann and maybe in a different way Josh Pettinger, that little crew, they’re the true modernized sons of the 60s underground. Nate’s work hits every mark: Funny. Gross. Clever as hell. Plus his artwork is so gorgeous and beautifully colored, you can spend time just basking in it. Plum Pocket includes a full page exclusive painting by Hanselmann.
Plum Pocket by Nate Garcia. 32 pages. Full color. 3 Stories.
https://nategarcia.bigcartel.com/product/plum-pocket
Extract ↓
https://www.instagram.com/nategarciascartoons
https://nategarcia.bigcartel.com
*** Reposted from Feb ’23 for searchability, etc.
Last week (or the week before?) we took a look inside Nate Garcia’s Plum Pocket. Now, Gecko, his second full length comic, is back in print. A story of sadness, trauma, karma, E-Coli, geckos, and horse love. You can get a copy by heading over to Nate’s store.
Gecko by Nate Garcia. 28 Pages. Full color.
https://nategarcia.bigcartel.com/product/gecko
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Nearly a month in, alternative-comics.com is rebranding. Henceforth, it shall be known as The Comix Report. Along with the name change comes a shift to a once-a-week posting schedule. Different name. Same address. Longer. Better. Once a week. Links at the top. Extracts and further joys after. Onward!
devin[@]alternative-comics[.]com
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Links
Plum Pocket by Nate Garcia [Extract]
Andrew White Interview
Swag 5: Ballad of the Black Sun by Cameron Arthur [Extract]
Domino Books
All the Old Poisons
C.R.O.W.BAR 9 by Steve McArdle [Extract]
Doug Cueva
Czolgosz Syzygy Zine
Mailing List
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News
• WOW COOL President Valentine Sale 20% off storewide — February 14–21.
• Fantagraphics Warehouse Sale 50% off selected titles. 14 – 21 Feb.
• American Library Association releases best Adult GDs for 2022.
• Comics Beat Preview: Read an excerpt of TOKYOPOP’s GUARDIAN OF FUKUSHIMA.
• Portland, OR. Vendor Applications open for BWPCon.
• The Centre for Cartoon Studies opens applications for Cornish Residency Fellowship. CCS director James Sturm says they’re looking for a cartoonist who’s demonstrated a dedication to cartooning with a body of distinctive and compelling work.
• Birdcage Bottom Books launches spring crowdfunding campaign with slate of planned releases.
• Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair. August 10–13, 2023. Exhibitor applications are open.
• Seth Tobacman set to teach online course on comics as political expression.
Reviews
• BLAH BLAH BLAH #3 by Juliette Collet reviewed on TCJ.
• Andrew Neal’s Meeting Comics reviewed by Ryan Carey.
• Dan Hill’s The 50 Flip Experiment reviewed by Ryan Carey.
• Lewis Hancox’s Welcome to St. Hell: My Trans Teen Misadventure reviewed on Broken Frontier.
• Sam Wallman’s Our Members Be Unlimited reviewed on Broken Frontier.
• Vojtěch Mašek’s The Sisters Dietl reviewed on Broken Frontier
Interviews, etc.
• Lawrence Lindell talks to Broken Frontier about his graphic novel on Black Love, Joy, Rebellion and the Power of Community.
• TCJ Interview with Justin Hall and Vivian Kleiman re: No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics.
• Publishers Weekly interview with Youssef Daoudi and Adrian Matejka re: Last on His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century.
• Michael Dougan tribute and profile on TCJ.
***
Man, I love Nate Garcia. He and Hanselmann and maybe in a different way Josh Pettinger, that little crew, they’re the true modernized sons of the 60s underground. Nate’s work hits every mark: Funny. Gross. Clever as hell. Plus his artwork is so gorgeous and beautifully colored, you can spend time just basking in it. Plum Pocket includes a full page exclusive painting by Hanselmann.
Plum Pocket by Nate Garcia. 32 pages. Full color. 3 Stories.
https://nategarcia.bigcartel.com/product/plum-pocket
Extract ↓
https://www.instagram.com/nategarciascartoons
https://nategarcia.bigcartel.com
***
Back in January, Andrew White began posting a series of work-in-progress comics adaptations to his newsletter and website. The adaptations in question are various works from the canon of the late Italian novelist and short story writer Italo Calvino. Calvino is known for having had an interest in old newspaper cartoons, claiming them as an influence on his narrative style. His writings really burst off the page in the most joyous, quite moving way. Real moments of aesthetic wonder. For me, Andrew’s work often has that same kind of beautiful but hard-to-pin-down effect. So this should be great. The first instalments show a lot of promise.
Since this is such an interesting project, and maybe a comics-literature crossover made in heaven, I was thrilled when Andrew offered to answer a few questions via email. What an opportunity to try and get some insight into how and why one of the top names in poetry comics decided to tackle Calvino.
Andrew White on Italo Calvino, adaptation and process.
I.
I first came to Calvino through If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, many years ago, and his work has been an influence since that time. I’m inspired by the way many of his book-length works are essentially short story collections, where each chapter can be read individually but the whole is greater than the sum of those parts. I’m inspired by the way he integrated formal play into his fiction while retaining an emotional and narrative core that kept the work compelling.
I first adapted a Calvino story in 2012 (A Beautiful March Day, from the Numbers in the Dark collection) and have considered returning to Calvino over the years. As you noted in your initial write-up of this project, there are also a number of Calvino-comics connections that made the prospect even more appealing.
But I’m also skeptical of adaptation, both as a reader and as a cartoonist. Adaptations that I’ve read, that I’ve considering making, or that I’ve actually made often leave me wondering, even suspecting, that the exercise is pointless. What does the adaptation offer that can’t be found in the original work? Is it losing more than it’s gaining?
As some readers might know, I’ve worked intermittently over the last several years on comics biographies of Gertrude Stein, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Virginia Woolf. That work has been on my mind because I’m revising it for a forthcoming single volume collection, Together and Apart, to be published by Fieldmouse Press. Those comics have a strong element of adaptation as well, actually, because the text is drawn primarily from the subject’s own words in diaries, letters, etc. So I wondered if I was done with biographies, or if I could find some way to continue that project without repeating myself. Calvino, among many possible subjects, crossed my mind.
Calvino was known for being reticent about his personal life and even misstating aspects of his biography (most notably, he often said he was born in San Remo, where he spent most of his childhood, rather than in Cuba, since the former felt more true to him even if it was factually incorrect). So, I suddenly realized, simply adapting a selection of his stories was the best way to produce a Calvino biography. While some of my adaptations will be fairly straightforward, I’m hoping the answer to question I posed above–what is gained by adaptation?–is that the juxtaposition of unrelated Calvino works masquerading as a biography will reveal, to readers and to me, new insights about his work and his life.
II.
The first step was (re)reading all of Calvino. I was reading in English which excludes a few things, very possibly some key piece of material that would have pushed the project in a different direction, though to be fair Calvino’s bibliography in translation is fairly complete.
I took notes and did a bit of drawing as I read, looking for stories or moments that seemed like a good fit. Phrases that suggested more than they said or sequences with a strong visual component, for example. Calvino was fairly open about the formal constraints he set for his work, so in reading about that I soon decided on a structure for the project as well. This meant that at a certain point I had some organizing principles in mind and began to seek out stories that filled specific gaps.
Once I knew which stories I wanted to adapt, I could–inspired by Calvino–simply tackle each one individually and let the work accumulate. I’m still engaged in that process now, using the self-imposed monthly newsletter deadline to keep myself on schedule as I finish up the latter stories and return intermittently to the earlier ones. One real advantage of comics, something that could work well here if I deploy it carefully, is the way that repeated, refracted images and sequences can convey a sense of synchronicity that’s also present in Calvino’s various texts. The way his ideas are repeated or rhyme, but also evolve, as he explores them over time. So I’m sometimes returning to the stories I’ve already completed with that goal in mind. But it’s a balance, one never wants to be too obtuse or overbearing with that sort of thing…
***
The latest instalment of Cameron Arthur’s one man anthology series. Swag 5 is like a throwback to the golden age of cinematic Westerns. Slow boil simmering. When the narrative cracks, its like a rifle round going off. The artwork, the dialogue, the pacing are all slightly on the sparse side, creating a sense of vastness, of solitary desert wilderness and pitch-black nights. Wonderful. Very engaging. 3 Stories. 80 pages.
You can get a copy of Swag 5 by emailing Cameron directly.
camcom1228ATgmailDOTcom
Extract ↓
camcom1228ATgmailDOTcom
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Domino Books hit a number of milestones in 2022. $40,262.15 paid to artists. That’s up $6000 from 2021. Also $13,577.09 spent on postage. Austin English. The guy’s a one man old-school underground distro machine.
New @ Domino:
Fake Comics by Jason T. Miles
The Drifter by Anna Haifisch.
Restocked @ Domino:
Grip by Lale Westvind
The Glass Chamber 0 by Tia Roxae.
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Online micro retailer. Owner says he tries to make everything available at prices that allow readers to take a shot on a book–even foreign language titles. He’s enjoyed bringing in various small collections of Japanese work from the likes of Suehiro Maruo, Shintaro Kago, Katsuhiro Otomo, Kazuo Umezu, Yoshikazu Ebisu, Takashi Nemoto, and Teruhiko Yumura. Plus some screen-printed books from publishers Le Dernier Cri and Bongoût. Great collection. Well curated. Gorgeous stuff.
https://alltheoldpoisons.myshopify.com/collections/comic-books
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Gonzo genre brut: Republished 90s indie marginalia from partnership between Floating World and Power Comics. Metal sensibilities. Determinedly intense artwork. Bang-bang-bang story telling. The superheroes vs aliens genre stripped down to its adolescent core. Great fun.
80 pages. B&W.
https://floatingworldcomics.com/shop/comic-books/c-r-o-w-bar-9-80-page-giant-by-steve-mcardle
Extract ↓
https://floatingworldcomics.com
https://www.instagram.com/power_comics
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Ohio based cartoonist Doug Cueva has started posting some of his mini comics online. Politics. Humor. Space Opera. Well worth keeping an eye on, I reckon.
https://cavecomix.wordpress.com
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The first and so far only issue of off-and-on WW3 contributor and editor Ethan Heitner’s zine has been around for a few years now. It’s still hot and fresh. Politics. Comics. Interviews with Joe Sacco and Eleanor Davis. Yiddish modernist poets. Abolitionist writings paired with art. You’ll know whether or not this is your kind of thing. If it is, highly recommended. All profits donated to the Rawa Cultural Communities Fund.
36-page zine, magazine size (8.5 x 11), b & w, saddle-stitch stapled.
https://www.czolgoszsyzygy.com/product/the-czolgosz-syzygy-1
https://www.czolgoszsyzygy.com/
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