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Cartoonist Benjamin Frisch makes his graphic novel debut this summer with THE FUN FAMILY, a subversive look at the underbelly of the All-American family through the prism of Family Circus-esque Sunday morning comic strips. Frisch presents a surreal deconstruction of modern parenting, childhood nostalgia, and good old American narcissism. The book, which goes on sale […]

  All we know about Shipwreck, the new AfterShock book from Warren Ellis and Phil Hester is that is concerns “a very unusual and very secret shipwreck. Which, given the work of Warren Ellis is enough for me. Throw in Phil Hester and it’s a pre-order must. The book comes out in October and has […]

What’s your definition of all-ages comics? Often these book are mistakenly synonymous with kids comics. Yet there is a big difference between a book filed with drawings to catch the minimal attention spans kids have left and a book young children can read while not having themes or ideas diluted just to pander. Recently, Space Goat […]

Cerebus, the controversial comics masterpiece by Dave Sim, is returning in a one shot that, perhaps inspired by Mike Mignola’s latest Hellboy saga, shows us how the earth pig will be doing in Hell. The issue goes on sale in September and if successful will be followed by a four issue mini-series. Cerebus died in […]

Alexandro Jodorowsky is one of comics’ original crossover artists. An internationally acclaimed experimental filmmaker and novelist, he’s used comics as his chosen medium for some of his most powerful stories, including The Incal, The Metabarons, The Technopriests, and Megalex. Illustrated by artistic greats including Moebius and Juan Gimenez, his body of work contains is some of the […]

Nick Drnaso’s fictional world is a particularly joyless one where even coming together doesn’t much help the human condition. It might even make things worse. As depicted in the Drnasoverse, each human has their own internal monologue that other humans are shut out from, and this creates distance, alienation, and confusion. Since one of us […]

Boutique apps for digital comics aren’t the big thing they once were, but they are still out there. Comicker, a website that was introduced earlier this year with five comics series, just launched an iOS app, powered by the Horizon Factory. The app is free; a monthly subscription is $2.99. Comicker series will remain available […]

New comics! SF madness from Zack Soto, boxing fantasy from Neil Kleid, Jake Allen and Frank Reynoso; NYC history from Julia Wertz; a collection from Andrea Tsurumi; an intense Italian micropress; and a controversial kickstarter is finally coming to print.

Recorded live in New York, it’s More To Come, the weekly podcast of comics news, interviews and discussion with Calvin Reid, Kate Fitzsimons and The Beat’s own Heidi MacDonald! This week, the More to Come Crew – Heidi “The Beat” MacDonald, Calvin Reid and Kate Fitzsimons – discuss digital comics news from Archie, Hoopla, Google […]

by Alex Dueben Jessica Abel has produced a unique body of work in comics that ranges from two collections of her award winning comic series Artbabe (Soundtrack and Mirror, Window), the acclaimed graphic novel La Perdita, to co-writing the graphic novel Life Sucks and producing two textbooks with her husband Matt Madden which build on […]

Not going to NYCC this year? Sure you could spend hours hunched over the computer waiting for the latest news to come out of the Javits center or if you like a little punk rock with your reading you can spend that Saturday enjoying a full day of art, literature, and music in San Bernardino CA […]

Jonathan Bayliss's So Buttons is a long running—10 years!—autobiographical comic strip that has been published mostly as a series of minis. Bayliss has been chronicling his life with the help of a bunch of all star artists including Noah Van Sciver, Joseph Remnant, Rachel Dukes, Rick Parker, Hembeck, Dean Haspiel, Jay Lynch, Ed Piskor, Tom Scioli and more.

This year’s Comic Arts Brooklyn Festival will be held November 7-8, in the same configuration as last year — exhibits on the Saturday and panels on the Sunday. AND NO EXHIBITS ON SUNDAY — there was some confusion about that last year but I’m sure everyone will get the drill this time. The poster, by […]

AfterShock is the new kid on the block. Launched in April by comics vet Joe Pruett, it first made headlines when it hired Mike Marts as editor in chief. And now their first four titles have been announced. And they are:   ·       Replica, debuting December 1 from writer Paul Jenkins (Batman: The Dark Knight, […]

The SPX programming went live today, with a plethora of great programs and a bit of news: Bill Kartalopoulos, programming director for the last nine years, is stepping into an advisory capacity, mostly with international guests. This year's programming was handled by a committee led by Esther Kim of Fantom Comics that includes Michael Cavna and Jen Vaughn, with Kartalopoulos continuing in a consulting capacity with a focus on international guests. 

SPACE (Small Press & Alternative Comics Expo) , Columbus’s longest running die comics show, has announced its 20156 dates: April 9 and 10, 2016, as well as a new free admission policy. The venue will be the Northland Performing Arts Center. This year’s SPACE had a problematic date the weekend after the San Diego Comic-Con, […]

It truly is a new Golden Age of comics, not just because of the fantastic output from such publishers as Image, Fantagraphics, Oni, etc., but also because of how many great comics are going unnoticed. The market is brimming with material that has gone largely undiscovered. I experienced that in a big way with Shawn […]

Keith Burns is an artist out of the UK that keeps an extremely low profile, at least on the Internet. He’s an artist you should know about that you probably don’t know about. There are not a lot of interviews or pieces on him,  which is crazy considering his talent and his pedigree as someone who has […]

by Alex Dueben At a time when many comics are criticized for their approach to female characters, it’s interesting to read a comic which is about fetish models.  Moreover, it’s wonderful to discover that the comic is far less exploitive and sensational than many mainstream comics. In NBM’s new graphic novel,Magenta: Noir Fatale, Italian writer and […]

Rarely do I get to learn the story of people who have moved away from the comics industry. Artist and creator Thomas Boatwright is an interesting example of someone who did the comics thing for awhile but eventually, initially not entirely by choice, moved on to other ventures. As a fan of his comics I’ve been […]

Centrala is a Polish indie comics publisher that recently opened a London office, which s helping their books get wider distribution. They have three new books including what sounds like an intriguing tale about two German police officers who join the Klan to make friends and meet girls, an anthology mixing comics and cooking and a book adapting a famous Polish poem about a train into a 60 foot long comic! Eastern European comics are usually thought of as an "emerging" scene, but with publishers like Centrala and the Latvian kuš! collective getting notice, they've emerged quite a bit. Here's the Centrala books, which are all available for order.

In his latest weekly video, Cerebus creator Dave Sim reveals that an anonymous donor has agreed to leave a bequest of $500,000 to The Cerebus Trust Fund. So it turns out someone really likes Cerebus! And Sim need no longer worry about money for getting his comic The Strange Death Of Alex Raymond published, and […]

“Dogs and cats, living together!” – that’s what immediately popped into my mind yesterday when I read Tony Isabella praising DC on Facebook for how it was treating him in regard to Black Lightning.I’ve never seen the original contract between DC and Isabella in regard to Black Lightning so I have nothing to say of substance in regard to the property’s legal status, but as anyone who has followed Tony’s online writing over the years can tell you, Isabella’s statements about DC’s treatment of him and his landmark creation have not exactly been complimentary. That changed, however, yesterday, when Isabella called attention to an Amazon listing of the April 2016 release of Black Lightning, volume 1, the first of what could be a series of collections featuring DC’s first African-American superhero to star in an an eponymous book.

According to Isabella, the rapprochement is the result of outreach by Dan Didio and Geoff Johns, and Isabella is confident that DC will treat him fairly in regard to the payment of royalties. He also raised the possibility of doing more work for DC given sufficient reader demand; the prospect of Isabella working with, say, the creators of the revived Milestone line on a multi-generational crossover is particularly intriguing, given certain thematic resonances with Milestone’s nuanced reflections on creative identity.

To say that Isabella’s announcement is the most unexpected Facebook post of the year is an understatement — it’s one of the most dramatic turnarounds I’ve seen in decades of reading about comics-related disputes, and kudos to all involved for bringing about what I hope will be a truly lasting peace in our time.

by Melanie Burke

Images courtesy of Northwest Press

“It’s like an after school special but it’s a good one,” says Adam Pruett of the anti-bullying comics anthology RISE. “I’m not just saying that because it’s my book and I want to promote it—I actually believe in the material.”

Born from a frustration with caustic attitudes and gatekeeper mentalities within the comics community, RISE is the collaborative effort of editors Joey Esposito, Adam Pruett, Erica Schultz and Kristopher White. With hundreds of different contributors from all over the globe, the book currently has two issues out with Northwest Press and a third is slated for digital release this summer.

“Out of that [frustration] came this idea, ‘Let’s do an anthology of celebrating being yourself’ and if there’s any place where that should be acceptable it’s the comics community,” says Esposito of the book’s initial inception.

The editorial team began working together in 2010 and approached Northwest Press several years later, launching a Kickstarter to fund printing costs in October of 2014. The Kickstarter platform, in addition to the for-sale issues on the Northwest Press website, made it possible to fund a book that is largely given away for free.

In addition to being available for free download at risecomics.org, RISE is distributed at all-ages events and school tours by Stand for the Silent and Prism Comics.

“It feels like we’re contributing to society,” says Esposito. “In a small but important way.”

Part of the goal for the editorial team was to approach the issue of bullying from all sides—hence the power of an anthology that delivers such a diverse voice and wide range of art styles. The individual narratives range from tales of redemption and forgiveness between reformed bullies and their former targets to frustrated scientists with singing plants to aliens admonishing their peers for participating in late-night cow tipping.

“It’s not us and them, it’s not good guys and bad guys,” says publisher Charles “Zan” Christensen.“I think that the stories do a good job of showing that it’s not just there are bad people who do bad things, but that people sometimes do bad things.People can change, people can learn and do the right thing in the future.”

Tackling such a sensitive subject in a grand-scale way produced its own unique challenges—like coordinating such a large group of contributors.

“We’re working on four different time zones, two or three continents, god knows how many countries,” says Schultz.“You’ll send an email off [and it] will be the end of the night, and then the next person who gets it is replying the equivalent of 2am for me.”

“It’s like herding cats,” says Esposito, laughing.

Additionally, the team had to make decisions regarding language and content for a young audience, without sacrificing the sometimes brutal realities depicted within the anthologies.

“That process was really illuminating,” says Christenson.“It was good to have those discussions and figure out how to strike that balance.”

Schultz says that the trade off to the chaos is “being introduced to creators who I wasn’t familiar with. And not just comic creators but people who work in different mediums as well coming on to write comics. That’s always great, getting to meet new people, getting exposed to different styles.”

For Esposito, the excitement from contributors helped fuel the process. “[Seeing] the enthusiasm from everybody but seeing these really established creators come on board—donating their time and artistic talent to do something like this—was really exciting for me.”

The third and last issue of RISE will release sometime late June or early July of this year. After that, the team hopes to see the project continue in any variety of ways—potentially a once-a-year anthology.

“I hope it takes on a life of its own,” says Schultz.

Tons of pitching, tons of submissions, I’ve done pretty much everything I could think of to do to get in through the door. I’ve got some published works as a result, but nothing really satisfying, or that I really felt confident about. So, self-publishing, once I started doing that, that’s when I felt like I was creating comics on my own terms. COPRA is a natural extension of that, especially when I started giving myself a monthly schedule, mimicking the schedule of mainstream comics. For me, that’s the interesting dichotomy of it, where I’m harnessing this kind of “old-school” rigorous schedule to fit my independent needs.

But are there significant challenges you find? I know there’s promotion that would be available in a big house publisher, like if you were working with Image there’d be press releases constantly. Is bandwidth an issue?

Well, motivation is always the biggest hurdle to overcome, especially given an unrelenting schedule. I have to wake up every day and treat this like a job, because it IS my job, it is my full-time job. I have to get it done somehow, I can’t wait for the muse to strike. I have to get an issue done a month, or as close as possible. But as far as challenges in not having the marketing muscle of other companies? I’d rather stand apart from the wall of noise. How many press releases does anyone really read, anyway?

Your comics, at least in their monthly form, are only available on your Etsy page and I noticed that you share that with your significant other, I think I saw some nice craft jewelry I think?

Yeah, Kat Roberts sells all kinds of stuff, zines, handmade purses, prints. I totally piggy-backed off her store on Etsy. That was a platform I was familiar with, so when I started publishing Zegas (Fiffe’s first self-published comic) I didn’t have a place to sell it from, except conventions and maybe the occasional store that would take a risk on it. Etsy allowed me to slowly build up my readership. By the time I got to COPRA, there was a significant amount of people that were interested in the stuff I did and that made it easier for me to move forward.

Let me turn to the actual creation process of an individual issue, say you’re sitting at your desk and working on Issue 22 right now?

That’s the one that just came out.

Good, let’s use that one as an example, if you’re working on Issue 22, what is your step by step? Do you script first and then directly move into the illustration phase? Do you create thumbnails? How do you piece your typical issue together?

It always changes, but the constant thing is that I always map out the story, page by page, and then I script it loosely. Then I start penciling loosely with the first draft in mind. The real work portion of the process begins when I start refining the script while inking and sometimes hand lettering. That’s when it all starts coming together. But generally I have a very loose plan in mind per issue. It’s equal parts organic and strict. I just have to get a number of pages done every day, that’s basically my main objective.

What’s your average rate right now?

Comfortably, I’d say about two pages a day, complete with full color. And that may range, sometimes I may get three, sometimes just half of a page, it just depends. And then you also have to consider the managerial aspect of it after the book is done. I have to get it shipped out to readers  and stores and that’s definitely a job in of itself.

Was there ever a page or spread or a panel layout that was really hard to crack? Was there any particular example where you just said “oh my god, what am I doing with this thing?”

Every page is like that, but I try to make it work somehow. I have to bring that blank page to life somehow. But the trick is to not think about it too much, because if I over-think it – which is my natural inclination – it kills it. You can get caught up in that and then nothing exists, there are no results. I strive for perfection, but being my own worst critic, I have to be real careful to not crush my gut instinct.

You’re a real master of negative space, and I read an issue and think “damn, Fiffe really knows how to use that white”. I think that’s a rare talent, and I’m not trying to kiss ass, but when I read through recent issues it’s hard to not notice how much your craft continues to grow every single issue. I’m floored by the way you use this stuff.

Thanks, man!

Back to COPRA‘s origins, if I may, when you began to pull together your characters designs and tried to piece together the different teams…and there’s a number of different teams now I guess, you’ve got COPRA, Asesinos…

Right, it’s all splintered.

Yeah, I almost have a hard time keeping track.

I should map it out.

I would love that, if you would put a thing at the end of each issue with the full cast.

I’ve been thinking about that, actually.

That would be awesome, and I’ll take full credit if it happens. But when you were conceiving of your core cast, there are obviously analogous elements to Ostrander’s Suicide Squad.

Absolutely!

Did you ever find it was difficult to skirt the line between your own original ideas and those aforementioned analogous elements or did you just say, I’m going to use this as a starting point and go my own way?

When I initially set out to do this comic, I put myself in the mindset of: “what if a publisher hired me to take over a title, and gave me complete freedom”, which would never happen in the current landscape. So using that fantasy to guide me, I took the Dirty Dozen-esque concept, which has been around for a while in many different forms, and I used it as a blueprint to work from. I wanted a world I could really sink my teeth into month in and month out. I wanted to make something that was serialized, that maximized the nature of the single issue, I wanted to build a place that made it easier for me to explore all my interests. The analogous aspect of it… I was reluctant at first, but I had forgotten that some of my favorite comics are analogous, too, some more blatant than the others.

Are there any examples you can cite? At least of the ones that fall favorably with you?

I mean, the Fantastic Four included a Kirby monster, Plastic Man, and Carl Burgos‘ creation as the Challengers of the Unknown… as a response to JLA.  Watchmen, Marvelman, Supreme, everything Alan Moore does, basically. That’s no secret. So I moved forward citing those comics, using the current cultural momentum of irreverence to just do whatever I want. Plus, I figured no one’s going to be reading this anyway! We’re talking small press here, not many copies exist. It was liberating.

How far ahead did you map out your story?

Not that far, I did it issue by issue. I also wanted it to feel like a very immediate, raw, I wanted it to be as direct a thing as possible. So, it was really just one or two issues ahead. I mapped out twelve issues with super brief descriptions and that’s all I had to go on. I also wanted to make sure that I could fill twelve issues worth of stories. Luckily it worked out.

Look for Part 2 of our discussion on Sunday, when we discuss the possibility of digital distribution and what readers can expect in upcoming issues of COPRA.

You can purchase recent issues of COPRA at Michel Fiffe and Kat Roberts’ Etsy store, or you can order. While Bergen Street Press is currently sold out of both collected editions of the series, you can purchase the first collection at InStockTrades.