John Porcellino
What Are You Reading? with Ao Meng
The Silence of Our Friends
Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? This week our special guest is Ao Meng, who writes about comics for the Daily Texan, the University of Texas newspaper, as well as Novi Magazine.
To see what Ao and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below …
- January 29, 2012 @ 01:44 PM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Fan/pro Bill of Rights; comics used in major drug ring
Bill of Rights
Creators | Writer Peter David shares a “Fan/Pro Bill of Rights” related to proper behavior at conventions, starting with a “Prime Directive”: “Fans and Pros have the right to be treated by each other with the same courtesy that they themselves would expect to be treated. Fans and Pros who act like jerks abrogate the right to complain when they themselves are treated like jerks.” [Peter David]
Crime | A Denver judge sentenced Aaron Castro to 45 years in prison after Castro pleaded guilty to drug and extortion charges. Prosecutors say he ran a major methamphetamine distribution ring and laundered the profits by buying and selling valuable comics in the collector’s market. [KMGH Denver]
Digital | Robot 6 contributor Graeme McMillan catches an error in Marvel’s press release from last week: Marvel was not the first comics publisher to release an entire line of comics simultaneously in print and digital—Archie Comics was. [Blog@Newsarama]
- November 14, 2011 @ 07:00 AM by JK Parkin
Jack Davis, Phoebe Gloeckner, David Mazzucchelli, Chip Kidd headline BCGF
The featured guests for the third annual Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival have been announced, and whoo boy, it’s quite a line-up. And it runs the gamut, too: MAD Magazine legend Jack Davis, book-design kingpin Chip Kidd, The Diary of a Teenage Girl author Phoebe Gloeckner, Asterios Polyp/Batman Year One artist David Mazzucchelli, Providence artcomix vets CF and Brian Ralph, grossout-humor queen Lisa Hanawalt, and minicomics patriarch John Porcellino. An opportunity to encounter Gloeckner live and in person is not to be squandered, folks, and that’s just for starters.
Organized by publisher PictureBox Inc., retailer Desert Island, and scholar Bill Kartalopoulos, this year’s BCGF will take place on Saturday, December 3 from noon to nine at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with programming hosted at the nearby Union Pool. If the last two years are any indication, it’s the alternative comics show to beat.
- November 7, 2011 @ 01:19 PM by Sean T. Collins
What Are You Reading? with Kelson Vibber
Elric: The Balance Lost
Hello and welcome to What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is Kelson Vibber, Flash fan and proprietor of the Speed Force blog. To see what Kelson and the Robot 6 crew have been reading, click below.
- July 10, 2011 @ 01:00 PM by JK Parkin
C2E2 | Some comics to look forward to
One of the best things about comics conventions is getting creators and marketers to talk about the things that aren’t quite ready for prime time yet, projects that are coming up but haven’t been the subject of a torrent of press releases. I heard about a number of interesting comics at C2E2 this past weekend; here are a few that piqued my interest.
The one that really grabbed me is Dark Horse’s nonfiction graphic novel about the Green River killer, which was first announced in 2009. The Dark Horse folks like to take their time with their books, and marketing director Jeremy Atkins tells me that it is now slated for a September release. The book is written by Jeff Jensen, whose father was a member of the investigative team on the murders. “It’s stories that have never been told before,” said Atkins. “It’s not sensationalized at all. It’s more for a true crime audience than a crime fiction audience.”
If that’s too dark for you, here’s a bit of sweetness and light: Amy Mebberson, whose super-cute art graced the global manga Divalicious (you can read the whole first volume online at the link) and many of Boom! Studios The Muppet Show comics, is not letting any grass grow under her feet: She is one of the artists on Ape Entertainment’s Strawberry Shortcake comics, doing the coloring and some of the pencilling. This increased my interest in Strawberry Shortcake 100%.
- March 24, 2011 @ 11:00 AM by Brigid Alverson
What Are You Reading?
Batgirl #17
Welcome to a long holiday weekend (at least here in the United States) edition of What Are You Reading? Today our special guest is Doug Zawisza, who writes reviews and the occasional article for Comic Book Resources.
To see what Doug and the Robot 6 gang are reading, click below.
- January 16, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by JK Parkin
It’s hard out here for a cartoonist
Mr. Porcellino's neighborhood
John Porcellino, creator of the long-running self-published minicomics series King-Cat Comics and Stories, is arguably one of the most influential comics creators of the past quarter century. That and $2.25 will get you on the subway, apparently. Today Porcellino blogged a series of photos of the seemingly economically depressed Illinois town to which he recently moved “in desperation” after losing his previous place of residence. “It’s times like these that make a man wonder ‘How?’, ‘Why?’,” Porcellino writes. And that is your soul-crushing quote of the day. Oh well, I suppose you could cheer yourself up by reading several complete King-Cat issues on What Things Do while waiting to hear how many Social Security cuts will be required to offset additional tax cuts for our billionaire overlords.
- November 24, 2010 @ 10:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
Hart, Corman, Porcellino launch new comics school [UPDATED]
Something tells me that sunny Gainesville, Florida, is about to see an influx of aspiring comics creators: Cartoonists Tom Hart (Hutch Owen), Leela Corman (Subway Series), and John Porcellino (King-Cat) have announced the opening of The Sequential Artists Workshop [UPDATED: link added], a new non-profit educational institution “dedicated to the prosperity and promotion of comic art and artists.” The school will offer a two-year program with its inaugural class to begin in 2012, while a “Spring Break Intensive” will be offered from March 6-12, 2011. The SAW will also feature a residency program for practicing cartoonists, online classes, gallery and performance spaces, a house anthology called The Seen in which cartoonists will do “cover versions” of pages from other artists’ creator-owned works, and the proverbial “much more.”
If you’re thinking the SAW sounds a bit like James Sturm’s Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, you’re not alone. According to the new school’s FAQ:
Isn’t this just like CCS?
Yes, a little, and maybe no. James Sturm, who founded Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) has done a great thing in White River Junction, VT and we are in constant awe of his gumption and smarts. James has been friendly with us and he has helped us enormously by offering advice in the forming of this school. We too offer a two-year program in comic art, and will require students to publish their own work at the end of the program. Our school is new and we don’t know how it will evolve. Right now, our goals may be similar, but the places and personalities are different enough that soon the differences between the schools will become evident.
The more the merrier if you ask me.
In addition to the announced faculty of Corman, Porcellino, and founder/executive director Hart — himself a longtime School of the Visual Arts instructor — SAW’s boards of directors and advisors feature an all-star line-up that includes Lauren Weinstein, Brendan Burford, Vanessa Davis, Shaenon Garrity, Bill Kartalopoulos, Donald Ault, Matt Madden, Joey Manley, Chris Staros, Phil Yeh, and William Ayers. School’s in!
- August 25, 2010 @ 09:00 AM by Sean T. Collins
The future of John Porcellino
from "Map of My Heart" by John Porcellino
If you dig minimalist minicomics, then go ahead and climb aboard the CBR mothership for an interview with King-Cat impresario John Porcellino by Alex Dueben. In addition to some impressively direct questions about working with an outside publisher (Drawn & Quarterly) and putting together a collection — both of which, after all, are outside the legendary self-publisher’s wheelhouse — Dueben draws out some interesting info about Porcellino’s future projects:
Is the plan or the hope for D&Q to publish a collected edition of the comic every few years like this?
Yes, the next collection will be called “From Lone Mountain” and will contain material from King-Cat issues 62- 68 or so. We plan on beginning to intersperse the release of the collections with books of all-new material as well.
[...]
In addition to your “King Cat” work, you have a graphic novel coming out from Drawn and Quarterly next spring, “The Hospital Suite.” I don’t know how much you want to say about or where you are in finishing it…
It’s one of those “all-new” books I mentioned earlier – my experiences from 1997-98, when I was very ill. That period was the hinge of my life thus far, and when I look back, things are clearly divided into Pre-Illness and Post-Illness. The story has been written for a while now, I just need to draw it.
I think we probably all have events in our lives that divide everything else into Pre and Post; seeing a self-observer as astute as Porcellino tackle his big dividing-line event should be absolutely fascinating.
- July 12, 2010 @ 03:30 PM by Sean T. Collins
John Porcellino sells, talks about comics
Don't YOU want to hear what John Porcellino has to say about this comic?
Wow, this is a delightful way to spend some time this afternoon. John Porcellino, whose quietly beautiful, self-published series King-Cat is the most influential minicomic of all time, has created a blog for his DIY distribution outfit Spit and a Half. And not only is he selling hard-to-find comics, zines, photography books, and manga by Alan Moore (!), Gabrielle Bell, Minty Lewis, Zak Sally, Dave Kiersh, Lilli Carré and many more, he’s also personally writing up insightful little descriptions of each of them. Whether he’s calling Moore’s underground magazine Dodgem Logic “a weird, bright, in-your-face blast of idiosyncrasy,” dubbing Kiersh “a Great American Artist — his art addresses a uniquely American flavor of loneliness and desire, with his recurring themes of suburban, teenage anxiety, lust, ‘romance,’ and desolation,” or explaining how Kazuichi Hanawa’s Doing Time was his “gateway” manga, his thoughts on comics are as worthy as his comics themselves. Check it out!
(via Annie Koyama)
- June 10, 2010 @ 01:30 PM by Sean T. Collins
Straight for the art | John Porcellino’s Batman & Robin
The Dynamic Duo by John Porcellino
From King-Cat to Dark Knight: Minicomics master John Porcellino tackles the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder for the Denver Comics Fest sketchbook. Click the link to check out the final version with colors from Noah Van Sciver. Then check out Noah’s take on his comrade-in-cartooning-Van-Sciverhood Ethan’s cover for The Flash: Rebirth #3 for the Covered blog. Gee, the Joe Chiappetta/Mark Chiarello collaboration of our dreams can’t be far away at this rate…
- February 19, 2010 @ 09:30 AM by Sean T. Collins
John Porcellino: The Movie
Porcellino in action
Now here’s a comics-to-film project I didn’t see coming. Minicomics master John Porcellino of King-Cat fame has revealed he’s the subject of an upcoming documentary by filmmaker Daniel Stafford, owner of Denver’s Kilgore Used Books and Comics. The doc is tentatively titled Root Hog or Root Hog or Die: Ballad of the King Cat.
Stafford’s started a blog to chronicle the process and post clips. So far he’s interviewed such comics luminaries as Joe Chiappetra, Jeffrey Brown, Ivan Brunetti and Zak Sally for the project, and he’s looking for fan-shot footage and photos. King-Cat fans, that’s your chance to be a part of film history!
- February 12, 2010 @ 07:24 AM by Sean T. Collins
Straight for the art | My David Bowie Sketchbook, SPX & BKCGF ’09
Origin story time: Back when I worked at Wizard, I was introduced to the concept of a themed sketchbook by coworkers like Ben Morse and David Paggi, whose Nova and Lockjaw sketchbooks celebrated their favorite obscure superheroes through the generous contributions of comics artists. My problem? I don’t have a favorite obscure superhero. The only hero I really love is Batman, and the problem there is that I’m sure most superhero artists doing sketches at cons are sick of drawing him, while most alternative artists doing sketches at cons are sick of thinking about him. Who could I choose that would fit the bill?
Then it came to me: David Bowie. He’s my favorite musician, and it’s fair to say his outlook and approach to art literally changed my life. Plus, with all those alter egos and ch-ch-ch-changes, he’s like a superhero anyway, right? And thus, at MoCCA 2007, the David Bowie Sketchbook was born.
I’ve since collected sketches of Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane, the Goblin King, Major Tom, or whatever else you care to call the former David Jones from 80 artists and illustrators. Below are the latest batches, from this year’s Small Press Expo in September and Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival last weekend. How must the others see the faker?
- December 10, 2009 @ 08:17 AM by Sean T. Collins
What Are You Reading?
Map of My Heart
Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. Pull up a chair and sit down, won’t you? Our guest this week is Bill Kartalopoulos, who teaches classes about comics and illustration at Parsons, is a contributing editor for Print Magazine, and a comics reviewer for Publishers Weekly. But he’s probably best known as the Programming Coordinator for the SPX convention in Bethesda, MD.
Bill and everyone else has quite a number of books by their bedside table this week, so we’ll get right to it. Be a dear and click on the link below, won’t you?
- October 11, 2009 @ 11:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Talking Comics with Tim: Nate Powell
Swallow Me Whole
Nate Powell‘s Swallow Me Whole is a graphic novel that demands and warrants repeated readings. Released by Top Shelf last year, the publisher describes it as “a love story carried by rolling fog, terminal illness, hallucination, apophenia, insect armies, secrets held, unshakeable faith, and the search for a master pattern to make sense of one’s unraveling.” My thanks to Powell for this email interview and his level of candor.
Tim O’Shea: What motivated you to start self-publishing mini-comics at the age of 14?
Nate Powell: Well, I’d been drawing comics with a few friends for a couple of years already. We had many issues of a comic series mapped out, and a friend’s uncle suggested that we finish up each issue and self-publish it. We didn’t really know what that entailed, but soon discovered a few neglected copy machines around town and in my dad’s office. We made 100 copies of the first comic, and they all sold in about two months; we’d never anticipated recovering our expenses, or anyone actually BUYING the books, to be honest. We just wanted to have a comic too, and found the most accessible way to make them. At this time I was already into the punk subculture and had been exposed to people who made zines and released records in much the same manner, but it was not until a few years later when I started writing zines and putting out records that I saw the inherent connections between these two realms of DIY entrepreneurship.
- June 8, 2009 @ 12:00 PM by Tim O'Shea