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Holy cow, Emily Carroll is amazing. She’s just posted a new horror comic called some other animal’s meat and just click on over and read it and prepare to be squicked out. As with many of her comics, image and body horror are at the root, but it’s also creepy as hell. And Carroll has […]

Emily Carroll -- who just won a British Fantasy Society Award for Best Graphic Novel -- is a Halloween tradition with her amazing webcomics which stretch the boundaries of the medium. Sadly she didn't do a new one this year, but you can read all the old ones here, and the most recent one, The Groom, which manages to find chills in a pipe cleaner. Carroll is truly a master of horror and if you haven't read her other comics, there's no spookier way to spend Halloween.

I must apologize for not remembering on whose blog I first learned about Through the Woods by Emily Carroll because I owe that blogger a big thank you. Through the Woods is a short story collection like no other I have ever read. Why might that be? It is a book of graphic short stories.

When I got it from the library I didn’t remember about the graphic part of it and I worried that perhaps I had made a mistake. How can you do a book of graphic short stories? Novel, memoir, biography, but short stories? But you know what? It totally works and it is great!

The stories are of the very short and ambiguous kind and they are successful because the art and the text work so well together to move the story along. They have a fairy tale quality to them and they all felt vaguely familiar because of that but they are completely original. They all feature girls or young women. They are about things like a cold snowy winter and dad has to leave his three daughters alone. He tells them if he isn’t back in three days they are to go to the neighbor’s house. Of course he doesn’t return. The eldest daughter refuses to leave, insisting that dad will be back any time. The youngest doesn’t really seem concerned about anything in particular. And the middle daughter, the one telling the story, insists they follow their father’s wishes because if they don’t they will be completely snowed in and without food. And then during the night someone comes to the door and the eldest sister goes with that someone and doesn’t come back. The night after that, the youngest sister goes with the stranger. The middle sister is left all alone. The food is gone. She walks most of the day through the deep snow to the neighbor’s house and…

Another tale is about a father marrying off his beautiful daughter to the richest man in the county. The house is huge and gorgeous but something is not right. Someone keeps her up at night singing a strange song. Her husband tells her she’s hearing things that aren’t there. One night while her husband is away, she goes looking for the source of the song and discovers more than she bargained for.

The art in this book is amazing. Stark, deeply saturated color in a limited palette of black, white, scarlet red and deep blue, creates high contrast and a rich lushness that magnifies the creep factor of the stories. I raced through them all in less than an hour one evening before bed. The final story gave me such chills that I told Bookman if I have any nightmares Through the Woods is at fault.

A perfect RIP Challenge read for sure, but guaranteed excellent for any dark night or stormy afternoon no matter what time of year.

Talk about an early Christmas present.

Emily Carroll’s delicious and innovative horror comics are a yearly Halloween treat, and now she’s gifted us with a Christmas themed comic about two little girls who are perfect angels…or are they?

Taiyo Matsumoto’s Sunny and Emily Carroll’s Out of Skin have been named winners of the Cartoonist Studio Prize 2014.

The prize is presented each year by Slate in conjunction with the Center for Cartoon Studies which helps select the nominees. This year’s judges wereSlate’s Dan Lois, Dan Kois, the faculty and students at the Center for Cartoon Studies, and guest judge, Christopher Butcher.

Sunny, which won the Graphic Novel Prize, is an understated, sad story about Japanese orphans who fantasize about a better life via a junked yellow car.

Caroll’s Out of Skin, which won Best Webcomic, is the latest in her series of groundbreaking digital horror comics which use navigation and screen size to generate the mystery. Just click on it and read!

Here’s the whole list of shortlisted works and winners — click on some of these links! I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

Graphic Novels
*** Sunny by Taiyo Matsumoto
Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang.
The Encyclopedia of Early Earth by Isabel Greenberg.
The Initiates: A Comic Artist and a Wine Artisan Exchange Jobs by Étienne Davodeau.
Julio’s Day by Gilbert Hernández.
Map of Days by Robert Hunter.
Paul Joins the Scouts by Michel Rabagliati.
The Property by Rutu Modan.
Susceptible by Geneviève Castrée.
Today Is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life by Ulli Lust.

Webcomics

***Out of Skin by Emily Carroll
As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman.
Bouletcorp by Boulet.
Gunshow by KC Green.
Household by Sam Alden.
The Lone Wolf by Jennifer Parks.
Lucky by Gabrielle Bell.
Oh Joy, Sex Toy by Erika Moen.
Sticks Angelica by Michael DeForge.
Subnormality by Winston Rowntree.

Emily Carroll graduated from Sheridan’s classical animation program before moving to Vancouver where she has since worked on animation productions and as a comic artist and illustrator.

Emily experiments with online comics storytelling such as Margot’s Room, an interactive clickable comic that requires the reader to explore panels to reveal the story.

Above is an alternate Adventure Time comic cover that Emily painted.

Emily also organizes the fan art she draws. Her Dune art is here and video game related pieces here.

Visit Emily’s portfolio and blog for more.

TweetYesterday was hourly comics day, John Campbell’s deviation of the 24 hour comic concept originally founded by Scott McCloud, which is a Ronseal sort of deal with participants producing a comic every hour. Most people tend to plump for  a narration of what’s taken place in their lives over the hour just passed, which I think is pretty brave: if [...]

Happy Halloween from Cloudy Collection! It’s a big week for us: we’ve just launched Hanging with the Dead (a 5”x7” letterpress edition), we put it onto a brand new website, and this Friday, we’re going to look at this new set, plus another new set, and all ten of the earlier editions on the walls of Pink Hobo Gallery in Minneapolis. That’s about 100 prints by 80 different artists from around the world!

Thank you all for helping make the project such a huge success! And remember: wash the zombie guts off your hands before handling your new print set.

P.S. Look at those “Dead” artists: Sam Bosma, Emily Carroll, Michael DeForge, Michael Slack, Natasha Allegri, Steve Wolfhard - are you kidding me? So good!

(via Cloudy Collection / Print Editions)

Emily Carroll, interview at The Comics Journal:

Emily Carroll drew her very first comic in May 2010. Thirteen months later, she won the Joe Shuster Award for Outstanding Web Comics Creator. So go ahead, pull “meteoric rise” out of the cliché file and wave it like you just don’t care—Carroll and her comics have earned the term.

Go! Go read Emily Carroll’s The Prince & The Sea

Emily Carroll shares her visual dream journal. She perfectly captures that surreal, fragmented nature of dreams. And boy, do her dreams seem more epic than mine.

drawthisdress:

… fashion from not-so-old people in this case: Dress by Issey Miyake 1985.

Two of my absolute favourite illustrators are collaborating on a blog and my head is gonna asplode from how fabulous this is. Their combined talent and creative energy makes me want to jump off a building. 

His Face All Red by Emily Carroll

Go read this terrific horrific comic by Emily Carroll. Go!

Emily Carroll on flickr.

I found her via Paul Pope’s favorites. I’ve subscribed to several artist’s flickr favorites in my RSS reader, and I can’t recommend it enough as a source of inspiration.

Here’s a fun activity if you’re looking for a little comicking inspiration. Jason Turner has started what he calls The Page 100 Project.

Take one of your favourite books, turn to page 100, and adapt it into a comic.

Here’s another from Emily Carroll, adapting page 100 from Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone:

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Tags: Books, Comics, Emily Carroll, Illustration, Jason Turner