By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 6/21/2016
Sometimes it’s better to just give yourself to something rather than to seek out its meaning. Not everything has to have one clear meaning, and in some cases, to bring concrete meaning to a work might mean imposing clarity on something that was not meant to have any. That imposition might actually come off as […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 6/7/2016
This short, spare, poetic, emotionally brutal piece from Cathy G. Johnson and Koyama Press captures the intersection of three lives, and the unlikely self realization that two of them enact on one. The story begins with two punks at a music show exhibiting destructive manners that disrupts the shows and gives them an opportunity for […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 5/18/2016
Arigato #rokudenashiko at #tcaf today! pic.twitter.com/EvfrJO83Jj — Shelley Savor (@shelleysavor) May 15, 2016 “Good for nothing” manko artist Rokudenashiko was the hit of TCAF and she’s in New York for a series of events. Tonights talk is sold out (DAMN IT ALL) but she’s also appearing at the Lady Tech Guild and at a Manko […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/12/2016
Koyama Press has just announced its fall line-up and it’s mostly on the adventurous side, with a few sure crowd pleasers. It definitely continues the tradition of excellence from this Canadian publisher with a well rounded slate that touches on all of the most popular contemporary indie comics genres. On tap: CAT RACKHAM by […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/5/2016
This year at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival, Koyama Press will release Gorgeous, a 64 page story by Cathy G. Johnson. In 2014, Johnson won the 2014 Ignatz Award for promising new talent, and she’s firing on all cylinders in her latest story about a young girl who meets some less than savory anarchist punks and learns […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 2/23/2016
Rokudenashiko (aka Megumi Igarashi) is a Japanese artist best known for creating a kayak that was based on a 3D scan of...an intimate part of her body. And she paddled around in it. Happily. The Japanese government was somehow offended by this and prosecuted her for obscenity—the trial has taken place and a verdict has not been rendered yet. Her memoir What Is Obscenity? The Story of a Good For Nothing Artist and Her Pussy, will be published this spring by Koyama Press, and she's coming to North America for a series of lectures and signings sponsored by arts organizations and free speech advocacy groups. And appearing at TCAF. So you will be able to hear all about her travels and canoeing*** in person.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 2/22/2016
Julia Wertz’s Eisner-nominated Drinking At The Movies, originally from 2010 but here with a handsome reissue from Koyama Press, is renowned for its humorous self-deprecating pile-on. At its root is the suggestion that beating yourself up is probably just part of personal growth. And that’s not just meant to make you feel better, but an […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 1/26/2016
Jane Mai isn’t merely self-deprecating. That phrase doesn’t capture her at all. Actually, I don’t know what to call it instead, but it comes out in the form of See You Next Tuesday, her comics diary from Koyama Press that mixes self-loathing with sweetness, as well as a lot of going to the bathroom and farting […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 9/22/2015
And yet more awesome comics are on the way from Koyama Press, with a particularly fresh line-up of indie comics up and comers. Patrick Kyle is known for his oddball fantasies while Aidan Koch has already gotten attention for her evocative experimental comics. Cathy G. Johnson is a fast rising star with a book coming out from First Second next year and an Ignatz under her belt; while Ben Sears name came up constantly when I asked about emerging male cartoonists. In addition, Koyama Press will put out its first translated comics: What is Obscenity? The Story of a Good For Nothing Artist and her Pussy, the story of Japanese artist Rokudenashiko (“good-for-nothing girl” or “bad girl”) whose work achives being truly transgressive; the Massive duo of Anne Ishii and Graham Kolbeins bring this one to English. PLease note, this comic is not about cats. And here's the complete lineup:
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/7/2015
Continuing our look at this fall’s top graphic novels, Koyama Press is reissuing Julia Wertz’s Drinking at the Movies, originally published by Three RIvers press but here reissued with all new material and an intro by Janeane Garaofolo. Wertz’s comic strips are autobiographical, but fearless in their honesty, and forgiving in bringing a light touch to […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 8/3/2015
It’s time to get back to what’s best in life: COMICS. The fall publishing season has been announced (and Spring ’16 is coming soon) so here’s some previews of what’s coming starting with Koyama Press . Next month will see the publication of Michael DeForge’s acclaimed series Lose with issues #7, now for the first time […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/22/2015
Canada’s Koyama Press continues to present a lively slate of boundary-pushing work, and this fall they are putting out their biggest line ever, including two books by Michael DeForge, new books by Jane Mai, Cole Closser and some newcomers, a kid’s book and a revamped version of Julia Wertz’s Drinking at the Movies. I expect one of the most interesting will be Robin Nishio’s Wailed which follows “a group of friends who also happen to be the vanguard of alternative comics making.” And you thought The Sponsor was shattering!
All the details below:
DRESSING
Michael DeForge
ISBN: 978-1-927668-22-1
$19.95
5 ½ x 8, 120 pages, colour, paper over board
September 2015
Like Very Casual, a collection of very odd odds and sods from the outré oeuvre of Michael DeForge.
Michael DeForge makes comics like no one else. This collection of the cartoonist’s mini-comics, zines, anthology work, and more, is a follow up to the award-winning Very Casual, and shows the artist at the height of his occasionally fever-induced powers.

LOSE #7
Michael DeForge
ISBN: 978-1-927668-18-4
$10.00
7 ⅛ x 10, 52 pages, colour, trade paper
September 2015
Lose, now in full colour!
The multi-award winning Lose series is Michael DeForge’s comics laboratory. The art form is pushed to its limits in these first-time-in-full-colour pages. Revel in a cartoonist at the height of their powers exploring the eccentricities of a woman who befriends her dad’s doppelgänger, and the realities of a flightless bird/boy hybrid.
BLACK RAT
Cole Closser
ISBN: 978-1-927668-24-5
$15.00
6 x 7 ½, 160 pages, colour, trade paper
September 2015
This aesthetically varied collection of nine graphic short stories is loosely linked by the recurring appearance of a black rat.
Black Rat is the sleeper in the shadow, the wanderer in the woods. He walks between worlds and travels through time—slaying monsters, solving mysteries and philosophizing with his fists amidst a barrage of butchered quotes and borrowed styles in a series of seemingly disparate, sometimes violently visceral vignettes.
COLE CLOSSER is a cartoonist and a graduate of the BFA program at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri, as well as a graduate of the MFA program at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. His graphic novel Little Tommy Lost was named one of the ten best graphic novels of 2013 by A.V. Club (the Onion), and nominated for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award in the category of Best Publication Design at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con. Cole currently lives in Springfield, MO and teaches drawing at Missouri State University and Drury University.
SEE YOU NEXT TUESDAY
Jane Mai
ISBN: 978-1-927668-25-2
$12.00
7 x 10, 128 pages, b&w, trade paper
November 2015
Autobio with bite.
This collection of diary comics features the ennui and wee of twenty-something Jane Mai whose emotions and art traverse the high and low. Moments of visual poetry and heartbreak are interspersed by bad body hair and bathroom disasters; much like life.
JANE MAI is a freelance illustrator and comic artist from Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and self-published zines. In 2012, Koyama Press published her first book, Sunday in the Park with Boys, which was followed by the zine Sorry I Can’t Come in on Monday I’m Really Really Sick.
DRINKING AT THE MOVIES
Julia Wertz
ISBN: 978-1-927668-26-9
$15.00
6 ½ x 9, 220 pages, b&w, trade paper
November 2015
Julia Wertz is the anti-Bridget Jones; her diary comics are filled with life’s real and often really hilarious moments.
Representing Julia Wertz’s critically acclaimed first graphic memoir in a new format, with brand new material from Wertz, and an introduction by Janeane Garofalo. But don’t worry; we haven’t replaced any of the wrenching and ribald, whiskey-soaked coming-of-age tale. This is Wertz at her best, which is sometimes her worst.
JULIA WERTZ was born in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1982 and currently lives in Brooklyn. She is the author of the autobiographic comic books The Fart Party Vols. 1 and 2 (Atomic Books, 2007, 2009) both volumes were collected asMuseum of Mistakes in 2014, Drinking at the Movies (Random House, 2010) and The Infinite Wait and Other Stories (Koyama Press, 2012).
WAILED
Robin Nishio
ISBN: 978-1-927668-19-1
$21.95
8 ¾ x 10, 80 pages, CMYK rich-b&w, trade paper
November 2015
Page through the lives of contemporary cartooning’s enfants terribles.
Wailed is an intimate chronicle of a group of friends who also happen to be the vanguard of alternative comics making. In stark black and white, the lives of these young artists are illuminated. Comics are often associated with the past, but this is a document of their future.
ROBIN NISHIO is an accomplished illustrator and storyboard artist and his artistic acumen is also reflected in beautiful and raw photographs. His high-contrast black-and-white images recall the pioneering work of Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama. Straddling two market groups, art photography and cartooning, Wailed is a book with an easy hook, but a depth that allows it to transcend easy categorization.
CROSSWAYS
Phil Woolam
ISBN: 978-1-927668-23-8
$22.95
10 x 13, 52 pages, 3 spot colours, trade paper
November 2015
A modern Mondrian; Woollam sees cities as a latticework of vibrant colour and fluid forms.
Crossways presents the ever-changing grids that make up the modern urban center, be they intersecting streets, crisscrossing wires or the ladder that climbs up the side of a building, as pure abstraction. For Woollam, landscape is liquid and the city is a medium as fluid as ink.
PHIL WOOLLAM is an artist living in Toronto whose drawing based practice often focuses on multiples that recall the colourful geometry of the Memphis movement and De Stijl. Trained as a sculptor, Woollam has also created three-dimensional works including mascots based on the characters and designs of cartoonist Michael DeForge.
KIDS’ COMICS

JUNCTION
Nathan Jurevicius
ISBN: 978-1-927668-21-4
$19.95
8 ½ x 10, 52 pages, colour, paper over board
November 2015
Make a face when the wind changes and it will stick, but, in this myth, you might just love it.
For generations the Face Changers have made the clay tokens that change the winds and faces of their kin. This month the youngest is tasked to take the ten thousand footsteps to the top of the mountain and engulf the town in the winds of change.
NATHAN JUREVICIUS is an Australian-Canadian illustrator who has worked in a variety of media including designer toys, video games and animation. He is best known for his acclaimed multi-platform project the psychedelic and heartfelt modern folktale Scarygirl. Nathan currently lives and works in Toronto.
“Nathan Jurevicius’ work achieves the minor miracle of being aggressively weird, deeply compelling and entirely satisfying…a rare achievement that only a true master of mysterio autentico can accomplish.” — Jim Woodring, creator of Frank and Jim
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/9/2015
It’s time for our annual look at some of the comics coming out for this weekend’s MoCCA Festival, being held this year at Center 548, is located at 548 W. 22nd Street, just off the Westside Highway, with programming at the High Line Hotel on West 20th Street and 10th Avenue.
And here’s the books we got information on. This is just a teeny tiny smattering of the new stuff available — but scroll down for signings from Fantagraphics, NBM and more. And scroll around Tumblr for more more more, especially the MoCCA Festival tumblr.
I’m debuting a 20 page collection of my webcomic “Stranger Than Bushwick”, which is currently being serialized on Bushwick Daily. This collection explores a lot of New York by way of Brooklyn, millennial lifestyles, and hot-button issues like catcalling and gentrification.
What may also be of note is that I’ll be giving away limited “Gentrify White” crayons with purchase of the book. The crayons have been featured on Bedford and Bowery here.
Drew Brockington
BEACON, Five
The epic conclusion to the serialized graphic novel by Drew Brockington.
In the fall of 1903, when the new lighthouse keeper arrives on the shores of the small New England fishing village with the promise of a better future the town grows uneasy.
Fishermen are superstitious lot, and don’t take kindly to change. The local police soon find their hands full playing mediator between the locals and the government as well as solving the mystery of an unidentified corpse found on their shores.
Drew will debut the book at Mocca 2015 at table 224B, along with plenty of back issues for those who want to start at the beginning.
The first chapter of the series can be read at www.beaconcomic.com
Jamie TannerTHE CONSUMPTIVE #1, the first issue in a new ongoing mini-comics series. A sort of throwback one-man anthology grab-bag thing. Like a smaller, cheaper, lesser Eightball or something.
Uncivilized Books
Borb tells the story an urban Candide who’s misfortunes pile high at an alarming rate. It stings with bits of black humor, yet challenges the reader with the day-to-day details facing the urban homeless. Calling upon the depression-era imagery of Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie) and Frank King (Gasoline Alley), Borb follows the tradition of the comic strip slapstick vagabond, weaving a well-crafted narrative through elegant four-panel gag strips.
Incidents in the Night follows a fictional version of the author who’s obsessed with a mysterious literary journal and its occult editor. This second book entangles David B.’s previous, autobiographical work Epileptic with that of this series’ fantastical, adventurous tone. The questions posed by the first volume grow more complicated as the lines between dream and reality further blur. This edition is translated by novelist Brian Evenson (Immobility, The Wavering Knife, Fugue State) and Sarah Evenson.
Travelogue collects the first strips from http://traveloguecomic.com. The comic follows a group of nomadic friends as they travel a fantasy world, and focuses heavily on quiet, introspective moments and world-building.
NBMOn April 11th & 12th, NBM Publishing (Tables 401, 402) once again heads to the MoCCA Arts Festival and we are happy to have attending both cartoonist Annie Goetzinger, who will be appearing to promote the debut of her luscious new book, GIRL IN DIOR and writer Julian Voloj who will be signing copies of his book, the powerful GHETTO BROTHER: WARRIOR TO PEACEMAKER along with the colorful subject of the book, Benjy Melendez.
The Girl in Dior is Clara, a freshly hired chronicler, fan of fashion and our guide in the busy corridors of the brand new house of Christian Dior. It’s February 12, 1947 and the crème de la crème of Paris Haute Couture is flocking to the momentous event of Dior’s first show. In a flurry of corolla shaped skirts, the parade of models file down the runway. The audience is mesmerized: it’s a triumph! Carmel Snow of Harper’s Bazaar cries out: “It’s quite a revolution, your dresses have such a new look!“ Dior’s career is launched and Clara’s story begins. Soon, she is picked by Dior himself to be his model…
A biography docudrama marrying fiction and the story of one of the greatest couturier in history, it is also a breathless and stunning presentation of his best designs such as Lauren Bacall wore, rendered by bestselling artist Annie Goetzinger, seen for the first time on this side of the Atlantic.
Ghetto Brother
An engrossing and counter view of one of the most dangerous elements of American urban history, this graphic novel tells the true story of Benjy Melendez, son of Puerto-Rican immigrants, who founded, at the end of the 1960s, the notorious Ghetto Brothers gang. From the seemingly bombed-out ravages of his neighborhood, wracked by drugs, poverty, and violence, he managed to extract an incredibly positive energy from this riot ridden era: his multiracial gang promoted peace rather than violence. After initiating a gang truce, the Ghetto Brothers held weekly concerts on the streets or in abandoned buildings, which fostered the emergence of hip-hop. Melendez also began to reclaim his Jewish roots after learning about his family’s dramatic crypto-Jewish background.
Signing Schedule, Tables 401, 402
Annie will be appearing on the panel, Biography: The Lives of Artists on Sunday April 12 at 12:30pm alongside cartoonists James Romberger, Marguerite Van Cook and Barbara Stok.
Annie, Julian and Benjy will be appearing at the NBM Table throughout the weekend.
SATURDAY
11:30 – 12:30 Annie Goetzinger
1:30 – 3:00 Julian Voloj and Benjy Melendez
3:30 – 5:00 Annie Goetzinger
5:00 – 6:00 Julian Voloj
SUNDAY
12:00-1:00 Julian Voloj
1:30-3:00 Annie Goetzinger (immediately following her panel)
3:30-5:00 Julian Voloj and Benjy Melendez
Annie, Julian and Benjy are available for select media interviews. So come on by, meet some cool folks and celebrate comics!
My new Billy Dogma comic, HEART-SHAPED HOLE, published by Hang Dai Editions, debuting at MoCCA. Described as “Billy Dogma and Jane Legit punch the apocalypse right in the kisser as their eternal war of woo breaks a Trip City-wide hymen.”
28-pages. Full color. Magazine size. Only available for sale directly from me, Dean Haspiel, or from Hang Dai Editions:
Origami Comics, table 222 will be debuting “Bonetti’s Defense: I Know Something You Don’t Know About Swordplay in The Princess Bride.” Wong, a former fencer, has definitely studied his Agrippa and his analysis provides history and context of the many fencing terms and actual fencing masters referenced in The Princess Bride movie and book. Who were they? What does it all mean? And does Thibault really cancel Capo Ferro?
This is a standard, 20-page, saddle-stitched comic; this is NOT one of my folded-shape origami comics (but those will also be available for purchase at my table).
Independent comics publisher 2d Cloud is debuting their Spring Collection books en force at MoCCA this weekend. All of the collection authors will be attending the festival and participating in a special signing event at Bergen Street Comics, Saturday night at 8 PM, with fellow publishers Koyama Press and Fantagraphics Books.
2dc author Blaise Larmee will also be participating in a MoCCA panel discussion, “Plagiarism as Practice,” also Saturday, at 3:30 PM in the Rusack Room at the Highline Hotel.
The Spring Collection books – 3 Books by Blaise Larmee, Qviet by Andy Burkholder, and Salz and Pfeffer by Émilie Gleason – are now available for pre-orders at 2dcloud.com/shop.
Blaise Larmee’s 3 Books, the much anticipated follow-up to his critically-acclaimed Young Lions, and his first graphic novel in four years, intertwines three separate narratives on sex and love, revealing Larmee at his most vulnerable and his most arrogant.
Andy Burkholder’s Qviet is the sum total of a multiyear series that focuses on the abstractions sex and of seeing, and the fluid relations between the two, available for the first time as a collected edition.
French author Émilie Gleason’s first English language graphic novel, Salz and Pfeffer, is an absurdist tale of magical kingdoms, alien abduction, and fart jail, evoking amusement and disturbed thoughts in equal measure. See more on the spring collection books at 2dcloud.com/shop. For more information
This weekend, Youth in Decline will be exhibiting on Floor 3 at Table 319B.
At the show, we’ll be debuting the new issue of our ongoing monograph series, FRONTIER #7: JILLIAN TAMAKI. This issue features Jillian’s new comic “SexCoven” – a 32 pg color story about IRL and online relationships, the seductive and secret world of early internet file-sharing, and life inside a commune (cult?).
Jillian will signing books on Saturday from 12-1pm, and on Sunday from 1-2pm.
In addition to the new Frontier issue, we’ll also have copies of previous Frontier issues, RAV 1ST COLLECTION by Mickey Zacchilli, Snackies by Nick Sumida, Wacky Wacko Magazine #1 by Seth Bogart, Love Songs for Monsters by Anthony Ha, and our stickers and patches!
Seth Kushner’s SECRET SAUCE Comix #! published by Hang Dai Editions, debuting at MoCCA Fest on April 11:
36-pages. Full color. Standard comic book size. For now, only available for sale directly from me, Seth Kushner, or from Hang Dai Editions: http://hangdaieditions.com/
VAGABONDS #4, published by Hang Dai Editions (HDE), which will be debuting at this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival.
“Josh Neufeld’s The Vagabonds #4 serves up a spicy blend of journalism, social commentary, memoir, and literary fiction. This issue features Neufeld’s story of racial profiling at the U.S./Canadian border and three collaborations with Neufeld’s wife, writer Sari Wilson. Throw in a couple of light-hearted travel tips, and The Vagabonds #4 is chock-full of the thought-provoking and witty comics Neufeld is known for.”
24 pages. Full color. Only available for sale directly from me, Josh Neufeld, or from Hang Dai Editions.
It’s been wonderful to be able to revive The Vagabonds (previously published by Alternative Comics) after an eight-year “hiatus.” It’s really nice to have a place to collect assorted pieces of mine from the last few years, as well as have a venue for new work. I’ve spent the last half-decade or so in the trade books graphic novel arena (publishing A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge with Pantheon and The Influencing Machine with W.W. Norton) and pursuing comics journalism (including winning a Knight-Wallace journalism fellowship). As wonderful as it was to work with those major publishers, I really missed the world of alternative comic books and indy shows. What draws me to Hang Dai is the emphasis on creator-owned publications and personal interactions with readers. There was a great quote from an interview with the HDE guys that went like this: “You’ll get the books made by hand from the hands of their creators, which puts the ‘artist’ back in ‘comic arts,’ and puts you, the reader, in a position to engage directly with creators.” I cut my teeth in this business through self-publishing, and it’s refreshing to go back to my DIY days.
I’ll be with the rest of the HDE gang at table 314, Third Floor (Yellow Zone), at the new location, Center 548, 548 W. 22nd St., NYC.
Nobrow is thrilled to be exhibiting again, and this year’s MoCCA is extra exciting because not only will it be held at a brand new venue, but we will also be debuting three amazing titles from Flying Eye Books!
The latest from our Dahlov Ipcar collection of reprints, Black and White, will make its debut at MoCCA alongside Rilla Alexander’s inspiring Her Idea, and David Lucas’ hilarious This Is My Rock. We’ll also be carrying some of your old favorites like Luke Pearson’s Hilda series, Society of Illustrators Gold Medal winner Bianca Bagnarelli’s Fish, our handsome line of Leporellos, and plenty, plenty more. Don’t forget to mark your calendars, this is going to be a big weekend! The Nobrow team will be in attendance at tables 208 – 211 on both days of MoCCA, April 11th & 12th, at its new location Center548, 548 West 22nd St. in New York City. We can’t wait to see you there!
These will be debuting at MoCCA Fest 2015 in NYC on April 11 & 12, but are available for pre-order now.
Also in the works is the first issue of Jamie Vayda & Alan King’s “Left Empty” in which Alan relates the aftermath of losing his wife to cancer.
• Angry Youth Comix by Johnny Ryan Now, for the first time, all fourteen issues of Ryan’s career-defining comic book series Angry Youth Comix (2000-2008) are collected in one place. All the comics, the covers, and even the contentious letters pages, in one toilet-ready brick shithouse, taking full advantage of the medium’s absurdist potential for maximum laughs. Out in Stores: April 2015 $49.99
• Violent Girls by Richard Sala (FU Press) A limited edition portfolio featuring 44 action portraits lovingly inspired by the kind of dangerous females who have populated pulp fiction and B-movies throughout the history of pop culture-blazing their way through every kind of genre, potboiler, cliffhanger, and fever dream imaginable. Available exclusively at comic conventions and at the Fantagraphics online store, $35.00
First Second will be exhibiting at this year’s MoCCA Art Festival! You can find us at table 404.
We’ll be there with amazing authors Box Brown (Andre the Giant), Jillian Tamaki (This One Summer), and MoCCA Art Festival Guest of Honor Scott McCloud (The Sculptor)!
Here’s our signing schedule:
Saturday
12:30pm — Scott McCloud In Conversation (at the High Line Hotel)
2:00pm — Jillian Tamaki (This One Summer) signing
2:30pm — Scott McCloud (The Sculptor) signing with the CBLDF
Sunday
12:00pm — Scott McCloud (The Sculptor) signing
2:00pm — Box Brown (Andre the Giant) signing
Rebus will be exhibiting along with Domino Books andSpider’s Pee-Paw. They’ll have a bunch of VERY LIMITED QUANTITY of imported international books, including Yuichi Yokoyama Baby Boom (above) the first edition of Olivier Schrauwen’s My Boy and much more. Go to the above link for details, but if the names Yokoyama and Schrauwen for you excited, I’d make a beeline if I were you.
Rebus Books will also host Ilan Manouach and Gea Philes. Manouach will have with him a sample board from Shapereader, his 57-plate graphic novel for the blind and visually impaired.

Copies of books by Manouach will also be available, including his book Écologie Forcée, the détourned comic Riki Fermier, and MetaKatz, chronicling the publication of Katz. A privately owned copy of Katz will also be available for on-site viewing.

Gea Philes is a Chilean-born, multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her work encompasses drawing, painting, illustration, comics, photography, and film, including music videos for Momus and Jeffrey Bützer. Philes’s new zines, including I Sold My Soul to the Devil, will preview her forthcoming art book from Toulouse-based publisher Timeless Editions.

Finally, submissions for The Best American Comics 2016 will be accepted at the Rebus Books table. Any new, North American work published between September 1, 2014 and August 31, 2015 is eligible for The Best American Comics 2016. If Series Editor Bill Kartalopoulos is not present at the table, material can be given to anyone working Table 226 and it will be included with BAC 2016 submissions.
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By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 11/7/2014
Koyama Press is making many of its current and past graphic novels available in digital editions via the Sequential app. The titles available are yet to be announced, but according to the PR it will include some titles that have been out of print.
“From cosmic art critiques to despondent, down-on-their luck cats, we’ve got you covered.”
The launch is kicking off with a sale on Koyama Press titles this weekend, just in time for CAB. In a statement, Koyama Press wrote:
As always, we remain dedicated to making high-quality and highly awesome print books, but we are excited to be working with SEQUENTIAL creators Panel Nine who share the same alternative and artists-first mindset as us. SEQUENTIAL’s founder, Russell Willis, said, “We’re really delighted to have Koyama Press coming on board. They represent some of the most exciting and innovative comics coming out of the small press scene, and they’re a fantastic and valuable addition to SEQUENTIAL’s expanding lineup.”
Print is the cornerstone of Koyama Press, but we are really excited about its new digital companion. Moreover, this is just the first batch of Koyama Press digital editions, so keep your eyes and apps open for more exciting releases!
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 9/15/2014
On Sunday of the 20th annual Small Press Expo (SPX), The Beat grabbed a strange, backless hotel couch surrounded by vacated folding tables with Annie Koyama, the past, current, and future Publisher at Koyama Press, the renown Toronto-based small-press publisher dedicated to promoting and supporting a wide range of emerging and established artists. Their published work including comics, graphic novels, art books, and zines such as Safari Honeymoon, 100 Crushes, Very Casual, and Grey Supreme.
Comics Beat: As someone who has only recently been paying attention to Koayama Press, I’m curious what the “mission of Koyama Press” is and how it has evolved or changed over the years?
Annie Koyama: My mission is to help primarily emerging artists and get their work out there. But after seven years, I’m not only working with emerging artists anymore. [...] I’ve got Renee French and Julia Wertz here [at SPX], so that’s how it’s evolved. However, it hasn’t changed. I still choose to work with primarily emerging artists – it’s very satisfying to get their work out there.
CB: You originally came from producing films and commercials before jumping whole-hog into comics. What things came with you?
AK: Only that as a producer, I was organizing and managing stuff. Those skills are transferable to anything for the rest of life. I know how to organize stuff from events to tours – I can organize anything! I just transfer [those skills] to production schedules for going through a book, working with artists, that sort of thing. It’s all relatable.
Lose #3 by Michael DeForge
CB: When working on your 10 books a year, do you consider the influence that the name Koyama Press carries on the independent comics scene?
AK: No…I choose what I like. I hope that what I put out influences the scene because someone who didn’t hear about Victor Kerlow will now know about Victor Kerlow or now they know about John Martz – so hopefully it’s influential in that way. I have to stand behind the work [I publish] for a good 10 years, so why would I publish anything I don’t love? I only do 10 books a year and work way too hard, so I have to love every single one of them.
CB: It is literally your name on the book.
AK: Yes, but it’s their [the artist's] name too, so I owe it to them to work my hardest to get their book out there. Some of the people who work with me could go to other publishers, but they choose not to – so I work hard for them because of that.
CB: On the panel about Micro-Press, you talked about the ethics of making comics, especially when printing overseas. What is your “ideal” comics-making world like?
AK: For comics printing? That everyone had enough money to print locally and employ local people. It’s very simple but it’s never going to happen so we make the best of it. I have that choice: I can print locally and [publish] far fewer books or I can choose to print more books and get more artists out there. So for now and since day one, I choose to get more artists out there.
CB: I would think a lot of people would say that a good way to accomplish that goal without the problems of physical printing would be a digital route. Has this been something you’ve considered?
AK: Yup! I’m moving into that in a month or so, it’ll be announced properly soon. I waited a long time because I didn’t like the resolution on some tablets and that sort of thing, but I think that it’s changed a lot. So soon, very soon.
CB: Would it be through ComiXology or something like that?
AK: It will be through one of those places initially, but it won’t be an exclusive thing.
CB: Have you seen The Private Eye? It’s a pay what you want digital comic formatted wide-screen hosted by the creators themselves. It’s an interesting that options like this are possible.
AK: Any of my artists could also do something like that, but there are people who would prefer to read their work in a certain format or through app so we hope people will buy from where we’re going. Though, some of my artists prefer to put their work up for free, so it’s up to them.
CB: Also that kind of method requires an already-existing base of followers that’s strong enough to support it.
AK: That’s right.
Attack From Space by Jon Vermilyea
CB: That’s something I feel Koyama Press has become. Someone enjoying work published by you will likely get some satisfaction out of other Koyama-published works.
AK: I’m hoping so, but it’s a pretty diverse catalog so I’m sure you won’t like every single book I do. But if you read Jesse Jacobs you might like something else [...] it’s not too much of a stretch to go to Renee French from Jessie. There are connections.
CB: I love that some publishers, behind their bigger name, just have one person picking the work. The same sort of thing happens with Eric Stephenson at Image Comics. Different scale, but the same idea.
Another thing mentioned at the panel was the vacuum left in the comics scene that was filled by you and other micro-publishers. What would you say your relationship is with the rest of the comics industry?
AK: I think that in our alternative part [of the comics industry], it’s so small that we are, whether you like it or not, in the same boat. For the record, I don’t consider Koyama a micro-publisher anymore. When you have a large distributor and you’re doing a certain number of titles and paying out [to artists] in the traditional way [...] these things make you not “micro” anymore. I’m sure my runs are a lot higher the other people at the panel. But yeah, I think we’re in the same boat together – I love all the other micro-publishers, I think more people should sprout up and do it as long as they know they’re doing it for love mostly and not for money. There’s room for more people to do what they love – don’t wait for a publisher to ask. There’s just not enough of us to publish all the great work I see out there.
Annie Koyama is the Publisher at Koyama Press. She kicks ass, takes names, and publishes 10 amazing books every year. It was an honor and delight to sit down and chat with her at SPX this year.
Annie-mation by David Huyck.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 6/4/2014
Once again the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo was a huge success. CAKE 2014 featured over 120 exhibitors and drew 2,200 attendees over the course of the weekend, a ten percent increase from last year’s show. Conference organizer Neil Brideau said that CAKE was excited to continue increasing its scope, noting that “this was the first year we’ve had a large international presence.” He highlighted some artists who travelled a long way to attend the show such as Inés Estrada of Mexico, and Philippa Rice and Luke Pearson of the UK.
Brideau also emphasized that a major part of CAKE’s mission is to support the local comics scene in Chicago. “We’re working to become a non-profit right now, and we’ve funded some scholarships. John Porcellino is doing a week-long workshop immediately following CAKE at the Chicago Publishing Resource Center. We did two half tuition scholarships for that workshop. Today, we’ve announced the Cupcake Award, which is a grant and a guaranteed half table at next year’s CAKE for someone’s who is working in minicomics and has not been published by a major publisher. Annie Koyama from Koyama Press is our special guest juror for that award this year.”
CAKE, now in its third year, has made its home at the Center on Halsted. After an especially crowded show last year, CAKE expanded from a single exhibition hall to a include a second space while simultaneously reducing the number of tables. The show was much easier to get around than in previous years, but still packed the house later in the afternoon on both days.
The goal of the CAKE organizers is to create a “balanced show, that brings a lot of different styles and experience levels together.” To achieve this, the CAKE organizers crowdsource feedback on CAKE applicants from the Chicago comics community but also retain curatorial oversight over the final list of exhibitors. It’s a hybrid approach that attempts to sidestep the gatekeeper problem of a fully curated show while also avoiding the free-for-all of a lottery show.
I asked many of the exhibitors what makes CAKE such a special show, and Chicago’s comics community such a strong one. Isabella Rotman and Amara Leipzig suggested that the city’s art colleges such as Columbia and School of the Art Institute are incubators for a lot of comics talent. Lucy Knisley noted that Chicago’s climate was ideal for cartoonists — having 7-8 months of cold weather forces folks inside and encourages the hermit-like conditions that are ideal for comics making, while the welcome arrival of summer allows time for self-promotion and energizing interaction with other artists during the convention season. Michael DeForge said that it is one of his favorite shows because there is a heavier emphasis on zines and minicomics than there is at other comparable shows. Many, many exhibitors mentioned the importance of Chicago book, zine, and comic superstore Quimby’s in promoting the work of emerging artist and providing a focal point for the local comics scene.
Now let’s hit the show floor!
Sophie McMahan had her latest issue of You Were Swell, her comic that combines loose dream-inspired narrative with 1950s and ’60s pop culture characters (such as the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Elvis). Sophie was one of many artists who was also showing off non-comics handmade objects — in this case, funky earrings made from Shrinky Dinks of her characters.
Jack Gross was among a significant contingent of Minnesota based creators at the show. Jack debuted Wizard Friends at the show, which she described as a departure from the “moody pencils” of her earlier work. I asked Jack about her unusually keen backgrounds, which are drawn from real locations in her hometown. She said she worked hard on that aspect of her comics after an especially tough critique from an art school professor. That’s the American higher education system working for you, folks.
Dawson Walker, also lately of Minnesota, showed off his latest work, The Granville Syndrome, which grew out of his thesis project at MCAD. The Granville Syndrome tells the story of a group of amateur stormchasers and deals with Walker’s own experience of migrating from Alaska to the Midwest. Walker’s cinematically wide panels are meant to evoke the wide-openess of the Midwest landscape.
One of the most physically beautiful objects I saw at the show was a CAKE debut from Rosemary Valero-O’Connell, a twelve page silkscreened mini called Amarinthine. Featuring a heavy gold metallic paper cover and three-color interiors, every page of this comic is a single panel that captures a moment in the life of a pair of childhood friends as they grow together and grow apart. This comic was a great example of how the care and craftsmanship of the physical object can add to the emotional impact of the narrative within.
Speaking of handmade books, Mita Mahato of Seattle creates beautiful comics that combine collage and traditional comics. For Mahato, the physical layering of images relates to the layered quality of her narratives. Her comics deal with nature, magical realism, and the grieving process. She is a board member of Seattle’s Short Run comics festival.
Carrie Vinarsky, who designed the poster, badges and other print materials for this year’s expo, also had some wonderful bespoke objects on display at her table. Each copy of the limited edition debut Fried Coolaid was individually bedazzled with glitter and googly eyes, and interior pages feature such surprises as a spray-painted page which is different in every copy.
At CAKE, comics come in all shapes and sizes, from massive tomes like Raymond Lemstra’s Big Mother 4 (left, with Tucker Stone for scale) to tiny volumes like Rebecca Mir Grady’s She is Restless. She is Restless volume seven, subtitled “Lost at Sea,” debuted at CAKE. Each volume contains a single fold-out page that deals with a current event from an environmental perspective. Previous volumes have been inspired by wildfires and drought conditions in the Southwest and of course, the Polar Vortex.
Leigh Luna was displaying the latest minis collected from her webcomic Clementine Fox. She told me that Clementine Fox was recently picked up by major humor comics house Andrews McMeel, who are looking to market Luna’s first major publication next year.
Ben Passmore and Erin K. Wilson’s table featured the debut of Passmore’s Daygloayhole: The Beast in Me and Wilson’s micro-mini Server. Wilson talked to me about her graphic novel Snowbird and the Kickstarter that helped her fund and create it. “I had mixed feelings about the Kickstarter,” said Wilson. “I don’t know who I thought I was that I was going to write my first graphic novel in three months.” It ended up taking about two years. “It was really hard because I had 368 backers, who were for the most part really supportive, like ‘hey, you got this! We’re just happy that you’re making it!’” But a vocal minority ended up making things uncomfortable for Wilson. In order to appease some less patient fans, Wilson began posting every page online as she finished it. “It’s not how you’re supposed to do it. You’re supposed to storyboard the whole book, pencil the whole book, ink the whole book, shade the whole book, and release it all at once. But I did it one page at a time.” Although she was still very happy with the end result, she felt that the pressure from her Kickstarter backers did compromise the process in some ways.
Hellen Jo, one of the convention’s Special Guests this year, also expressed some trepidation about Kickstarter. She admitted to having toyed with the idea of leveraging her popularity online to get funding for comics, but ultimately decided “I’m scared of Kickstarter.” She cited her slow work rate, saying that she wasn’t sure that Kickstarter backers could ever be patient enough for her. Jo is currently working on the second volume of Jin & Jam, a minicomic whose first volume appeared in 2008. But Jo has a good reason for working slowly on her comics: for the past year, she’s been working on a series of Girl Gang paintings which were recently collected as a monograph by Youth in Decline. She also has had full-time gigs doing storyboards for Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe and Regular Show.
Hellen Jo joined Jesse Moynihan and Jo Dery on a panel titled “24 Panels a Second,” moderated by Trubble Clubber Jeremy Tinder. The panelists started by citing some of their earliest animation influences, which included, Goofy, Garfield, Sailor Moon, Ranma ½, and Wizards by Ralph Bakshi. All of them mentioned how important their parents were in getting them into cool cartoons early in life. Although all of them loved animation from a young age, they didn’t consider it as something to pursue. Said Jesse Moynihan “Watching cartoons doesn’t translate to ‘I can do that.’ … the thing that made me think I could tell stories was comics.” Self-published comics like Cerebus and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles inspired Moynihan to create his own comics, which only later led to his work as a storyboard artist on Adventure Time. Hellen Jo’s story was similar – it was the circulation of her comics online that led to her first animation job as a Storyboard Revisionist at Cartoon Network.
What was the biggest hurdle for these creators in transitioning from comics to animation? For Hellen Jo, it was the pace: “I’ve never drawn so fast in my life.” Jesse Moynihan cited a cultural difference between comics creators and artists with formal training as animators: “All of the comics people who work on [Adventure Time] are very precious and protective about their work. The people who come from an animation background are more willing to collaborate and have less ego.”
Jesse Moynihan also took time out to sign Forming II at the Nobrow table. It’s the second volume of Moynihan’s full color trilogy that combines mythology, science fiction and humor in an epic battle for the soul of humanity. Also at the Nobrow table were samples of the new concertina book from Kellie Strom, Worse Things Happen at Sea. This intricately detailed Leporello features beautiful colors created through a chromolithographic process, a near-extinct hand color separation technique that was once used in the production of currency. Those interested in how Strom achieves the fine level of detail and vibrant coloration of his work will be interested in this process video.
The highlight of Fantagraphics’ table this year was the debut of Twelve Gems by Lane Milburn. The 150-plus page chaotic space opera, which had not been previously serialized, was sold out by 11:30 AM on Sunday. Fantagraphics’ Jacq Cohen called it Fantagraphics’ book of the year, noting that the book “sold out faster than we could have possibly imagined. It’s incredible to see Chicago supporting a local artist like Lane.” Milburn was tabling with Conor Stechschulte, whose graphic novel The Amateurs is also new this summer from Fantagraphics. The Amateurs tells the story of a pair of butchers who suddenly find that they have completely forgotten how to do their craft. Stechschulte says it was inspired by a story from Werner Herzog about an unbelievably inept butcher shop he encountered in Quito while filming Fitzcarraldo.
More from the Fantastical Epic Narrative Department: Downfall Arts’ Alan D. Caesar told me all about his ambitious series Rena Rouge. The series started with volume 37, and Caesar plans to continue the series by alternating volumes that are numbered forwards and backwards, so that eventually, volumes one and 74 will be released simultaneously. Volume 38 debuted at CAKE, and Caesar had this to say about the project: “ I like worldbuilding. I want people to feel like they’re entering a world that’s fully realized.” The comics feature jam-packed interior pages and lush covers created by offset printing colored paper with fluorescent inks — the covers look even better when viewed under a black light.
Founded by a group of Columbia College grads, Yeti Press has released eighteen books since starting in 2011. One of the eye-catching new releases at their table this year was Andrea Bell’s Rose From the Dead, which Bell described as a “dude in distress” tale. Officially debuting at CAKE was Erik Nebel’s Well Come, the first print edition of his popular tumblr comic. Well Come tells an interwoven fantasy narrative with many characters, all conveyed without words in a simple, geometric style with bold colors. Nebel told me about the origins of the vibrant color palette he employs:
“I read this book called Environmentalism in Pop Culture , and she [author Noël Sturgeon] has this point of view she calls Global Ecofeminism. She analyzes all of the stories of the last 100 years of American pop culture and makes a convincing argument that in all of the stories we tell, we’re creating this false dichotomy. Pitting things against each other that aren’t even separated, for example men and women. That’s a societal construct, the idea of gender identity. The same thing with nature and civilization. And in advertisements and general imagery, there’s black and white. Black is associated with nature, white is associated with civilization. And women, and black, and nature are lumped together, and men, and white and civilization are on the other end. It sets up this superiority where the lighter colors have this symbolic meaning where they represent something pure, more clean, sophisticated. Darker colors are natural, wild, ethnic, tribal. So when I was thinking of the color palette [for Well Come] I started out with human creatures and made them a dark red, and animals I made a light orange, because I wanted to reverse that idea that dark colors are nature and light colors are human. I wanted to take that whole idea and flip that around.”
Uncivilized Books’ CAKE presentation featured the first bound volume from the white-hot Sam Alden. It Never Happened Again includes a pair of stories in Alden’s soft pencil style. I asked Alden about the many formats and media he experiments with: “The pencil stuff is like my wife…everything else is just a fling.” Uncivilized publisher Tom K was also very excited to debut Truth is Fragmentary by Gabrielle Bell. Part travelogue and part surreal adventure, the book explores the intersections of memory, reality and imagination across three continents.
Canadian boutique publisher Koyama Press has been at CAKE every year of the conference. According to marketing manager Ed Kanerva, Koyama considers smaller conferences like CAKE as essential to the publisher’s mission of being at the forefront of the graphic arts. Like many artists at the show, Michael DeForge, who released Very Casual with Koyama last year to great acclaim, still self-publishes zines and minis even after having found a publisher for his work. DeForge said he “couldn’t imagine” not making minicomics. Asked if his rapid rise in popularity had affected him or his work, DeForge said it hadn’t and told me “I still spend most of my time in a basement.”
Koyama’s newest release at the show was Elisha Lim’s 100 Crushes. Elisha, who is based in Toronto, told me about their roots in the queer comics community and said they broke through when “Alison Bechdel wrote an intro for a comic that I dreamed of doing.” Koyama and Elisha were connected through a mutual friend, leading to the publication of 100 Crushes. “Basically it’s all different ways that I’ve met queer people on three different continents. The first chapter is about butches and having crazy crushes on them…another chapter is going with friends to the men’s changing room in stores and what it’s like to try on men’s clothes…and there’s one at the end that’s not really queer content, it’s about jealousy, and trying to draw what it feels like to feel jealous.” Elisha said they create comics primarily for the queer community but that their real audience is any “intelligent, or informed” one, and that’s they’ve been blown away by the way their work has been embraced by the comics community at large.
Another Toronto-based artist, Eric Kostiuk Williams, was debuting the first collected volume of his Hungry Bottom comics. Hungry Bottom combines Williams’ own story of self-actualization in the Toronto queer community with wide-ranging pop-culture reference and sampling. Like the three individual volumes, the Collected Hungry Bottom features a four-color risograph cover and two-color risograph interiors in an oversize 7”x10” format.
Some of the most talked about comics at the show were Gina Wynbrandt’s works inspired by “sexual humiliation” and her status as a True Belieber. Wynbrandt debuted her minicomic Someone Please Have Sex With Me earlier this Spring at Chicago Zine Fest and her comic “Fish Vagina” was featured in the 2014 CAKE anthology.
Miranda Harmon, who was singled out to me by a CAKE organizer as one of the artists to watch at the show, was tabling at a comics show for the first time ever. She had previously only brought her comics to SPX as an attendee. Harmon, a recent graduate of Goucher College, had four debut minis at CAKE: Journal Comics, More Good Demons (a menagerie of not-so-scary monsters), Peat in the Woods, and Bad Comics. Regarding the comics collected in Bad Comics: “They’re okay,” said Harmon.
Emily Hutchings was also tabling for the first time. Trained as a sculptor, Hutchings decided to try her hand at exhibiting this year after her friend Ian McDuffie sold a book of her drawings at his table last year. Hutching’s offerings included the beautifully assembled Doesn’t Matter, a starkly minimalist collection of illustrated nihilist poems.
Anna Bongiovanni debuted a minicomic collecting the Grease Bats strip they draw for Autostraddle.com . The (Mother Fuckin’) Grease Bats has the tone of a buddy comedy or sitcom even as it addresses serious issues of identity and acceptance in the queer community. Also on hand for the show was the awesome educational comic A Cheap and Easy Introduction to They/Them Pronouns. Bongiovanni created this comic in order to explain and promote the use of gender neutral pronouns for those that choose to use them. It’s a great tool and as a writer I can say I found the guide really positive and helpful. They made it accessibly priced to make it easier for people to share with friends, family and coworkers, and they plan to release more comics in the Cheap and Easy series including an upcoming pamphlet on consent within the queer community.
The Comic Nurse, MK Czerwiec, was at the show to inform about the burgeoning world of medical comics. She told me about the scene: “I started making comics during the AIDS crisis when I was working as a nurse and was so overwhelmed by what I was experiencing and couldn’t figure out how to process it. I stumbled into making comics, and it turned out to be a really effective way of dealing with what I was seeing as a nurse. I ended up getting a degree in Medical Humanities, and, this was about ten years later, I wanted to look back critically and ask ‘why did that work?’ what was it about the form that helped me process experiences, and a large question, can comics have a serious role in medicine, in education, and what can they do for our patients and providers?” Around the same time, Ian Williams was creating the website Graphic Medicine to catalog comics that told of the experience of severe illness for patients and loved ones. Soon, MK and Williams were arranging a conference based around comics and medicine. This year that conference will celebrate its fifth anniversary at John Hopkins University in Maryland. MK herself teaches at Northwestern Medical School using comics in her classrooms.
Continuing in the practical-comics vein, Isabella Rotman debuted Gatherer, an easily-pocketed illustrated guide to fifteen edible plants which can be commonly found on the East coast and in the Midwest. Her tablemate Amara Leipzig had a gorgeous new book called The Ruins, which asks, “If a person grew up with no preconceptions, would they choose science or religion?”
Rotman will be one the artists featured in the upcoming anthology Speculative Relationships. The kickstarted anthology reached its funding goal on Saturday of the convention. I spoke to editor Tyrell Cannon about the book. “Anthologies are usually bad,” he said. One of the problems is a lack of cohesion. Speculative Relationships has a tight focus: Romance comics with a science fictional setting. The PDF of the anthology should be ready this month, with print editions headed to backers by the end of July.
Odin Cabal debuted the eighth issue of his self-publishd series Midwestern Cuban Comics, which collects several stories including the multi-part epic “¿O hermano, donde esta usted?” Cabal’s comics incorporate everything from baseball to MMA to one-night stands to the fairy godmother. He’s based in Kenosha, Wisconsin, but like many artists at the show, he got his start in comics when Quimby’s began carrying his work.
Scott Roberts, creator of the Star Spangled Angel, took a long break from making comics and returned to the form about four years ago. I asked him what brought him back: “It was what had exploded, the alternative world was so much different. It was a combination of art, printing and illustration. I hadn’t really thought of comics as such a great means of expression before. I mean I loved it, I loved RAW back in the ‘80s, but I always thought you had to have a publisher.” Though Roberts said he wouldn’t mind working with a publisher, he said that’s not the goal. He encourages younger artists to think of making their comics as an ends in and of itself, and not always a jumping off platform to more money and success: “There’s no real money in [comics] anyway. If there was a lot of money in it, you’d have a lot of different personalities involved. Some of the young kids go around passing out business cards. What in the world would I do with that? Just make some comics, and I’ll look at your comics!”
At the same table, Keiler Roberts had the latest issue of Powdered Milk available. “It focuses on my daughter who’s three years old, the things she says, domestic moments. It’s more structured than some of my other work.” It was the funniest comic I read at the show.
*****
CAKE was an amazing show this year. The event continues to grow and expand and is quickly gaining recognition as one of the significant alternative comics shows on the crowded summer festival roster. There were many more brilliant self-published and small press comics than I could ever hope to chronicle here — the only way to see everything is to check out the show. Hope to see you at CAKE 2015!
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 3/29/2013
Ah, Jane Mai, she who I am a little bit in love with. I think a lot of people were a little surprised by Mai’s first book release, Sunday In The Park With Boys, from Koyama Press late last year: finding the subject matter of mental quicksand, psychological cages and depression was largely at odds with the work she had produced til date. Yes, her comics can be cute and culturally referential, but that’s Mai’s forte: she can go from whimsy and rainbows to stuff that’s atmospheric and unsettling, often mixing the two for acerbic and biting commentary.
And she doesn’t do it through writing alone -compare the images above and below for example, and observe how the change in art style contributes to the feel and emotion of the narrative at hand. So yes, Mai is pretty damn talented, and while I’ll check out anything she makes, I particularly hope she produces more long form comics that continue to explore her interests and capabilities in as fruitful a manner as her current output.
Aside: I love how Mai draws on coloured backgrounds (the choice of colour usually reflects the tone of the piece)- I’m sure other artists do this too, but I associate it only with her and it’s very fitting somehow.
You can find Mai’s website here, and buy her work here.
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 2/19/2013
TweetThe Infinite Wait by Julia Wertz Koyama Press I have a complicated and knotty relationship with auto-bio comics, beset by apprehension and cynicism. There’s no doubt the genre produces some interesting material- Art Spiegelman, Seth, Robert Crumb, to name but a few, but more recently I’ve found a lot of it to be, quite frankly, boring. The [...]
By: John,
on 8/19/2011
My version of Kickass Annie, the logo/mascot of the awesome Koyama Press
Lovely!
By: John,
on 5/12/2011
Yesterday on Twitter, Anthony Clark suggested that people should draw Steve Wolfhard’s Cat Rackham to celebrate the release of Steve’s new book from Koyama Press, Cat Rackham Loses It. Steve has posted the results in a Flickr set of over 100 drawings.
Shown here: Jon Klassen, Kyle Jones, Vera Brosgol, Chuck Groenink, and, in some sort of zombie miracle, Charles Schulz.
By: John,
on 4/5/2011
Trexels - Star Trek Pixel Art by John Martz and Koyama Press
I made this print with Koyama Press, featuring 235 Star Trek characters in pixelated form. Can you name them all? We’re giving away two copies to the Trekkies with the best guesses. The print debuts at MoCCA in New York this weekend, and then officially goes on sale a week from today.
By: John,
on 2/21/2011
May is going to be so much fun! Check out this trailer for Elio’s new book, published by Koyama Press, and set to debut at TCAF!
Elio’s blog.: Monster Party! Book Trailer.
By: John,
on 11/16/2010
It’s looking like Michael DeForge will maintain his fantastic batting average. This new offering through Koyama Press looks stunning. I won’t be at Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Fest where it will debut, but you can bet I’ll be snapping it up once he makes it available online.
Spotting Deer – Koyama Press « King Trash
By: John,
on 10/27/2010
Diary Comics #1 by Dustin Harbin
Are you reading Dustin Harbin’s comics yet? The first volume of his Diary Comics from Koyama Press is one of my favourite books of the year.
As with other diary comics — and I’m thinking of James Kochalka’s American Elf here — their strength is in numbers. It can be difficult to make every day seem interesting, and minutae can only take one so far. But when you read all of them together as a whole, suddenly you’ve got something far greater — like puzzle pieces coming together to form a larger picture. And in the case of Dustin, you can also see how his rhythms and even the art improve over time as he settles into the practice.
Art directors, take note. Judging by the quality of the sketches he includes in each book, he has far too much time on his hands, and not enough illustration gigs. Get on that.
By: John,
on 10/24/2010
Annie Koyama’s growing collection of artist interpretations of Koyama Press’s Kick Ass Annie mascot (designed by Aaron Leighton).
The roster of artists includes Chris Kuzma (shown here), Michael DeForge, Hellen Jo, Jim Rugg, Britt Wilson, and yours truly.
[…] Read the whole review here! […]
[…] Speaking of The Comics Beat, John Seven reviewed Patrick Kyle’s new book over there this week. […]