Sotto Voce

Ozkan seems to be working in an early-Manara-meets-Moebius style with a ton of detail and an affection for stippling, which is just great to look at. I liked this page because it was just a great sequence of a man walking down the street. The POV character’s location in the panel really doesn’t change much, but the context does a lot, which is very effective. That last panel, in particular, tells a whole bunch of stories without lingering on any specific one.

Girl on the Balcony, Egon Schiele

Ramon Casas (Catalan-Spanish, 1866-1932) 

Portrait of Pablo Picasso, 1900

Developing a New Festival Toolkit - Juan Fernandez

I’ve just come back from CXC and I have only glowing reviews of it. It was such a breath of fresh air. To that effect, I’ve been thinking about the future of comics events in America. How we move into that future. I’m typing out loud, hoping for some conversation.

Festivals like Entreviñetas are the future. Period. If you’re not up to date on the incredible work that is being done in Colombia, check out Frank’s tour diary from 2 years ago. And then hop on over to their site.  It’s time that the rest of us caught up.

Why? Because as it stands, in it’s current, commodity focused culture, comics are facing a cultural choking point with respect to the role that comics making can play in broader cultural discussions. We need to give comics making and comics reading practices more breathing room. To grow. To continue expanding. We need to nurture interdisciplinary approaches to experiencing comics. We need our festivals to make this a guiding principle.

Comics making will no longer be a collectible, genre oriented narrative art form, but rather it can take its ascendant role in 21st Century visual culture, seen as a modality of communication with breadth and depth, that can survive in any kind of market driven cultural ecosystem. Hear me out…