The News Blog of Comics Culture
Tweet This weekend it’s the Toronto Comic Arts Festival 2013, with the actual event to be held May 11-12 at the Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street in Toronto. Normally I would be listing debuts and parties and whatnot, but the TCAF site already has just about every shred of info you will need.
Tweet MIX is a comics confab held each year in Columbus, OH by the Columbus College of Art and Design. This year’s event will be held September 27-28th, and they are currently accepting proposals for panels and presentations. All the info you need is below, but there’s more here. The keynote guest is Jeff Smith, [...]
Well that’s what my copy editor called my story for PW How Graphic Novels Became the Hottest Section in the Library. Over a couple of months I talked to many of the major players in the GN/library connection like Robin Brenner, Mike Pawuk, Karen Green, Christian Zabriskie, Tina Coleman and so on to get a picture of where graphic novels got started in libraries and where they are going.
The Northlake library in Illinois has hatched a scheme to build a large scale— 9 foot tall—statue of The Hulk. To do so they have fashioned an Indiegogo campaign. So far they have raised only $920 of the $30,000 needed, so you better get your ass over and there and pledge because it’s pretty obvious that the world needs more giant statue of the Hulk outside libraries.
Confession: I did not know the name of the editor of the University Press of Mississippi’s excellent line of books about comics—spanning scholarly works on Chris Ware, Alan Moore, Osamu Tezuka and everyone in between—but his name is Walter Biggins and now he’s leaving. But luckily Jeet Heer, who wrote several books for the line, catches up with him first —hopefully USM’s strong comics list will continue:
Wow did we miss the boat on this. Two days in and we finally link to it. Shameful. On the other hand, it’s a sign of comics ongoing academic respectability that a three day comics symposium featuring Nick Bertozzi, Josh Neufeld, Erin Polgreen and more could be taking place and there would be so much other comics stuff going on that it would only be the most serious of six or seven other top notch events. Anyway read all about it here, and there’s still time to get in on the fun with tonight’s keynote and tomorrows panels:
Tweet In this week’s PW Comics World, I interviewed Jeremy Short—creator of the study on comics comprehension referenced here—about that study and a general overview of current research on how comics affect learning and cognizance. My takeaway: we’ll be seeing more of this. Along the way I chatted with Scott McCloud, who feels that the [...]
The early award season for books is here, and earlier this week the American Library association handed out a slew of literary awards. As has been the recent trend, several graphic novels were recognized among the pictureless books:
If there’s one trend we’ve noticed growing over the years its the use of graphic novels as teaching tools—on the must basic level, comics are now recognized as a way to get reluctant readers to get started reading. On a larger level, comics are being used as a general teaching tool. Josh Elder’s Reading with Pictures organization has been promoting this idea and cataloging the use of comics in the classroom. It’s not just the visceral appeal of colorful pictures that puts comics over—some think that the verbal-visual blend is the future of literacy, and comics could potentially be on the forefront of that.
TweetOkay, it’s not a comic. But it is a lavishly illustrated and pleasingly offbeat childrens’ book by the great comics and prose writer Neil Gaiman (his latest longer work is THE GRAVEYARD BOOK) and the best-selling picture book artist Adam Rex (FRANKENSTEIN MAKES A SANDWICH). Last spring at MoCCA Fest, the Children’s Literature panel spent [...]
Tweet Dr. Neil Cohn may soon become one of the most quoted people in the comics world. That’s because he’s a scientist who has been studyinghow our brains react to reading comics, and it turns out we process them much the same as we do sentences: At the same time, a freshly minted Ph.D. named [...]
Tweet Here’s an event that snuck up on us: An comics symposium organized by New Uork University’s Gallatin School of Independent study called GallaCon: A Pow! Wow! . The event runs tonight from 6:30 to 9:30 and includes three panel discussions, one of which The Beat will be on. The event is free but you [...]
Tweet Columbus Ohio’s Columbus College of Art and Design is throwing yet another awesome comics symposium called Mix 2012: Comics Symposium — there are two days left. Events include symposiums on Kirby, a Chris Ware keynote speech, and many other great things. I totally dropped the ball on covering this beforehand, but hopefully we’ll have [...]
New Yorkers who are are still in withdrawal from the amazing SPX just concluded, rejoice—this weekend’s Brooklyn Book Festival features a full line-up of comics programming, and some comics-focused programs during the week that will keep you in comics nirvana. The festival takes place all day Sunday, September 23rd, but there are satellite events listed below.
On the 14th of September, in a satellite event leading up to the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, comics creator Dean Haspiel took the podium in the James Madison building of the Library of Congress to make a little history on the basis of a subject small in size but impressive in cultural impact: mini comics. Haspiel had previously announced his personal 600 item donation of the comics, self-published and often diminutive in size, to the LoC via Warren Bernard, Executive Director of the Small Press Expo, who helped to arrange and conduct the donation. Haspiel’s donation will be part of a sub-grouping within the newly established Small Press Expo collection at the LoC. The collection will contain, among other worthy selections, past and future Ignatz Award nominated works. Haspiel was particularly appropriate to take the stage and explain the role of indie comics to his audience because his work has appeared in both mainstream comics like Marvel and DC as well as creator-owned and small press publications. As such, his works are actually filed under more than one category at the LoC: mainstream comics and mini comics.
In New York City, an active community of professionals working in comics and image-text combinations hopes to share their knowledge and benefit from the experience of others in the field. The New York Comics and Picture-story Symposium is a collective for trading stories, tips, critiques, and encouragement in a fresh setting by combining the social with the educational.
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