Dispatches from Comics Class

I have started a small publication on Medium to collect students’ comics: Dispatches from Comics Class. I like it because students post the work themselves as opposed to giving me permission to post it here. All current and former students can contribute, and I’ve also contributed a few posts about things I’ve done in class. Check it out!

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This is the avatar for Dispatches from Comics Class, by former student Keith Warner-Harder

Find me (and some of my students) on Medium

I haven’t updated this website in forever, but I have been posting some diary comics from time to time on Medium.

I’ve also created a publication on Medium, Dispatches from Comics Class, where students from my comics classes at UBC can post their work. I’ve also included a couple posts about my teaching. I hope to keep adding content here as I continue working with the wonderful students at UBC. This past year was my first as a full-time lecturer. This sounds super cheesy but it is totally true: the students blew my mind with their curiosity, enthusiasm and hard work. It was also exhausting! This summer I am finishing some new comics, mostly about having a partner with chronic pain and fatigue, as well as continuing work on my graphic novel, Agnes, Murderess. More work will be posted soon. Until then, back to my drawing board…

Why not draw cats

Creature of love

Ugh. I am not doing much besides class prep + working on my book… But sometimes I post these little drawings on Medium; it’s a series I’m calling “Creature of love.” Then I wonder if I should be doing Instagram instead. Then I think about that and research it for a while and then I don’t draw and then I do self-recrimination. But in between I draw these little guys.

Creatures calm and worried

 

I love Tangles in Korean (part one)

This week I got my copies of the Korean translation of Tangles. I’d seen a PDF of the cover and I knew it was aesthetically pleasing, but I didn’t expect to start crying when I held the book in my hands. Partly I was touched by how much time and care had been put into the book. But there’s also something very intense about watching someone take Tangles and make it into something new. It’s a certain kind of honouring of the story and of my art.

Like here’s the cover. Look how the designer searched through the English Tangles and picked out little bits of the drawings and put them all together into something new. [I just realized I need to email the publisher and get the designer’s name so I can credit him/her here!] Designers are Jihye A and Joonoh Jang of Sparksedition. Tangles is published in Korea by Woorinabi Publishing.

Tangles Korean cover frontTangles Korean cover backThat sideways cat is my favourite. It looks so bratty. How did they think to turn it sideways? Awesome.

Then on the inside pages they just kept going…

I am so excited about how they found this tiny flower from one of the panels and made it into this crazy beautiful pattern.

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This is where it originally appeared:

Screen Shot 2015-09-21 at 8.58.33 PMThese plants on the first inside page are all from different chapters: willow from walking along the river in Fredericton, bird of paradise from my parents’ apartment in Oaxaca, and some other plant behind my mom that I don’t even recognize, really. And look at that tiny deer, for God’s sake!

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The experience of looking at characters that I can’t read is very interesting — the writing becomes another element of the artwork for me. (How does this relate to Eisner, McCloud, et al’s discussions of how text and image combine? What happens if you cannot read the text as text but only as pleasing marks?)

There is something so odd about looking at pictures of yourself and your family speaking a language that you don’t speak. This was true of the German and French Tangles but I find it even more strange and thrilling here… My sister and I talk on the phone in Korean. Though oddly my dad’s letter to me is not translated.

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Even the cat speaks Korean:

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I really want to know how they decided what to translate and what not to translate. Like my dad’s letter above and here, when my sister and I are banished to the treehouse because we can’t stop saying bad words…

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In part two, my mother writes in Korean…

New book coming fall 2017: Agnes, Murderess

I’m so excited to tell you: My second book will be published by Freehand Books (fantastic Canadian publisher of Tangles) in fall 2017. It’s called (at least for now) Agnes, Murderess, and you can read a little bit more about it here. I plan to post some snippets of drawings and share a little bit about my process over the next 24 months. It’s been a crazy learning curve for me: fiction, dip pen and ink, drawings a bit more detailed… yikes. But so much fun!

Sneak peak of Agnes Murderess: Agnes buries a victim

Tangles (Le Grand Desordre) reviewed in France!

My publisher sent this from Le Nouvel Observateur (L’Obs) — I guess it’s more of a mention than a review, but extremely nice and exciting for me! According to Wikipedia, it’s the “most prominent French general information magazine in terms of audience and circulation.”

On adore le témoignage de Sarah Leavitt (…), ce journal magistral intègre au passage l’histoire des liens familiaux, ceux auxquelq on ne pense pas toujours.

I’m also happy about these reviews:
France 3
Publikart
BD Blogs Sudouest
MaXoE

There are a few more mentioned on the Steinkis website.