https://www.calrbs.org/the-social-and-material-lives-of-comic-art-or-how-comics-get-around-2025/
International Journal of Comic Art blog
Articles from and news about the premier and longest-running academic journal devoted to all aspects of cartooning and comics -- the International Journal of Comic Art (ISSN 1531-6793) published and edited by John Lent.
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Upcoming California Rare Book School course "The Social and Material Lives of Comic Art,"
https://www.calrbs.org/the-social-and-material-lives-of-comic-art-or-how-comics-get-around-2025/
Friday, March 14, 2025
International Journal of Comic Art Index 1999-2023 now available as free ebook
International Journal of Comic Art Author, Country, and Genre Index Volumes 1-25 (1999-2023)
- Drexel Hill, PA: International Journal of Comic Art, 2025
- online at https://archive.org/details/ijoca-index-1-25-2023
This index is a culmination of previous indices created after five and ten years. Jae-Woong Kwon and John A. Lent were responsible for the five-year index. Xu Ying joined them on the ten-year index. Grace Hulme incorporated them into this twenty-five-year compilation that she updated from Vol. 10 through Vol. 25. She received help from Denise Gray, John A. Lent, and Mike Rhode.
originally published in International Journal of Comic Art 25:2, Fall/ Winter 2023, and slightly corrected and updated from that version
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
IJOCA seeks David Kunzle memorial articles
from: | John A. Lent <john.lent@temple.edu> |
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Graphic Novel Review: Wicked: The Graphic Novel Part I, by Scott Hampton
Wicked: The Graphic Novel Part I. Gregory Maguire,
adapted and illustrated by Scott Hampton. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks,
2025. https://www.harpercollins.com/products/wicked-the-graphic-novel-part-i-gregory-maguirescott-hampton
The publication of Eisner-winning veteran Scott Hampton’s wonderfully illustrated adaptation transports the transmedial Wicked phenomenon into comics. The strength of this property lies in the range of themes that underlie its overarching tale of transformation. Elphaba’s character transformation in Wicked portrays her as going “from being a misunderstood outcast to being a friend, a love interest, and a social movement activist” (Schrader, 2011: 49). Furthermore, “Elphaba's peers initially ostracize her for her physical difference, but we soon see that her real difference is political” (Wolf, 2008: 9).
fig. 1 |
fig. 2 |
fig. 3 |
fig. 4 |
fig. 5 |
fig. 6 |
In another couple of instances, speech bubble fonts randomly change (fig. 6). These are typographical and editorial issues that can be rectified in future printings; they do not impact the detailed watercolour art overall. It is, nonetheless, a very wordy comic, with lots of telling rather than showing. However, moments where Hampton shows, rather than tells, effectively and wordlessly capture tone and mood. Pages 146-47 present a particularly touching sequence that clarifies the impacts of the Wizard’s laws on the oppressed animals (fig. 7).
fig. 7 |
Gregson, Rebecca, Jared Piazza
and Ryan Boyd. 2022. ‘“Against the cult of veganism”: Unpacking the social
psychology and ideology of anti-vegans’, Appetite, 178, pp.
106143–106143. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2022.106143.
Julian Lawrence is a
senior lecturer in comics and graphic novels at Teesside University,
specializing in storytelling, graphic memoir, and comics pedagogy. As a
cartoonist, researcher, and teacher, his work bridges creative practice and
academic research, exploring comics as a medium for education, reflection, and
social change. http://www.julianlawrence.net/
A version of this review will appear in print in IJOCA 27:1
Thursday, February 20, 2025
Comics Research Bibliography 2024 E-book Edition available online now
Monday, February 10, 2025
Emil Ferris: My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book Two exhibition review
reviewed by Laurie Anne Agnese
Emil Ferris: My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book Two. Paris: Galerie Martel, November 7, 2024 - January 11, 2025. https://www.galeriemartel.com/emil-ferris-2024/
Like the werewolf stories that she treasures, Emil Ferris’s evolution as an artist started with a bite. “But it wasn’t the bite I thought it would be,” she explains in the Meet Emil Ferris documentary short that was playing at Galerie Martel’s show for My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book Two. “But it did make me a monster and it made me understand being a monster.”
In 2002, Ferris was celebrating her fortieth birthday when she was bit by a mosquito and contracted West Nile Virus. Ferris woke up from a coma three weeks later to discover her transformation: she was paralyzed from the waist down and unable to use her drawing hand. It closed the chapter of her life as a single mom working to support her six-year-old daughter on various commercial art freelance jobs in Chicago.
“The bite saved my life,” Ferris says. “Because if you lose something that you take for granted, all of a sudden it becomes extremely valuable to you.” She fought back paralysis so she could raise her daughter. She committed to drawing again, this time for her own art and enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago. To create the two books that comprise My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Ferris spent 14 years drawing at night, while working odd jobs and struggling with various health and financial issues.
Video credit: Meet Emil Ferris, 2019, director Mathieu Gervaise for Monsieur Toussaint Louverture (Ferris’ French publisher)
Ferris’ voice was heard throughout Galerie Martel whose curators placed this looped chapter of the documentary to preface their exhibit of original artworks from the second volume of My Favorite Thing is Monsters. At more than 800 pages, the two books represent a remarkable and wholly unique work that was praised by Art Speigelman for advancing the language of comics. But viewing the work through the additional lens of Ferris’ struggle also contextualizes the tremendous effort that informs the hard-earned message of the book: art has the power to heal.
My
Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book 2, continues the
story as told through the personal notebook of Karen Reyes, a ten-year-old
living in Chicago during the tumultuous year of 1968. This gothic romantic tale
of Karen’s coming of age is layered with her understanding of herself as an
artist, as a “good monster,” as a trangendered person. These transformations
are uncovered through a generic detective story that drives the narrative:
Karen is also on a dangerous quest to solve the murder of her neighbor, Anka, a
holocaust survivor, while also discovering that her life in her uptown Chicago
neighborhood is built on lies and violence.
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Photo credit: Vadim Rubenstein, courtesy of Galerie Martel |
The arrangement of
the artworks in the gallery was notably symmetric. To the left, drawings of
equal height showed the variety of visual techniques and forms borrowed from
comic books and artist sketchbooks. The
selection on the right side of the gallery were portraits of the gothic
characters who inhabit Karen’s imaginary and actual world. The focal point of
the arrangement was Book Two’s enlarged cover placed in the center of the
gallery: a self-portrait of Karen as she
sees herself as a monster.
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Emil Ferris’s original drawings of covers from My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book Two. |
But being a monster is not always observable from the exterior, but rather through actions and motivations. The original pieces offer a closer appreciation of the variety of styles employed by Ferris, such as the fluid comic panels and word balloons that are reformatted to make a page spread, to drive the action of the story and demonstrate how the characters live.
An original artwork (left) and the published version (right), from My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book Two. The monster on display is a supposedly religious man preaching the bible, while also abusing his followers, and keeping his secrets in his own notated version of the bible, which Karen reads.
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Original artwork which appears as a double page spread in the published book. |
Karen’s copies of fine art that she finds in books or during her cherished visits to the Art Institute of Chicago with her brother recall a form borrowed from the artist sketchbook. Karen’s interpretations of works of art are the book’s most exquisite and surprising, and they demonstrate Ferris’ demanding and labor-intensive style. Working with basic materials, ball point pens and cheap spiral bound notebooks, Ferris uses the materials that Karen could afford, building rich textures and shadows from the smallest of cross hatches.
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Original artwork from My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book Two featuring Karen’s rendering of Le Lit, 1892, by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec |
Ferris was so committed to the idea of creating Karen’s personal notebook that she originally worked on lined notebook paper but changed her process to working in layers to ease the labor of making corrections. The portraits featured in the exhibit demonstrate her use of layering, which add to the depth and complexity of each page, and by extension, the overall work.
Karen also copies many different artworks depicting the biblical story of Judith beheading Holofernes. Judith is a daring and beautiful widow whose village has been invaded by the Holofernes army. She gains his trust through a sexual seduction, and then decapitates him to save her village. Though Judith only appears in historical paintings, she’s featured on the character side of the gallery, because her story is so deeply pondered and brought to life by Karen’s imagination. In the published book, Karen reflects deeply the choice Judith made to use violence to save the people she loves and adds herself to the artwork as Judith’s loyal servant.
From left to right: Judith with the Head of Holofernes, 1665, Felice Ficherelli, Art Institute of Chicago; Emile Ferris’ original artwork; Published version in My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book 2.
In a later segment of the Meet Emil Ferris documentary, Ferris highlights the importance of collage and synthesis to her artistic process:
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Original
artwork from My Favorite Thing is
Monsters, Book Two. Franklin/Francoise (left) and Sylvia Gronan (right). Their published versions are below |
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Original Portraits of Stan Silverberg (Anka’s widower), Diego (Karen’s brother) and Anka as a ghost. |
The placement of the three portraits together allowed the exhibition the opportunity to show a compassionate side of Emil Ferris. Stan Silverberg is Anka’s widower rendered in blue, as is Anka’s ghost. Karen chose blue for Anka’s inner sadness that now her widower processes. The center portrait shows Diego, who is committed to raising Karen as best as he can while also being involved with the local mob in order to avoid the draft for the Vietnam war. He’s one the books’ many flawed heroes. In Karen’s portrait of Diego, she is responding to the advice of her friend who advises “when somebody is in a dark place the best thing you can do for them is to always try to remember their better, most beautiful selves.”
Unless stated otherwise, all photos taken by Laurie Anne Agnese