Friday, December 05, 2008

Big December news update

Hi everyone,

Have lots of news to report in on. First off, I haven't posted any artwork for awhile. Here is one I just completed. I'm still doing a lot of WWI research for the first chapter of the Bull book. This is a study of soldier's face from WWI. I thought the photograph was really haunting and tried to capture this feeling in the drawing.
Soldier's face, WWIThe Londoner
The local community paper The Londoner, did a feature story on me this week. Here's a link to the article (I'm linking to the print-friendly version, because my mom thinks the photo in the regular version is the worst picture ever taken of me). Anyway, the day the article came out, I found out that the reporter who did the story - Ben Benedict got laid off as part of The Sun Media cuts. The Londoner is one of the few community papers in the country that has an excellent circulation and actually makes money. Why does it make money you ask? Because it contains a lot of relevant local community content. Who writes these articles? Ben Benedict.

Really, this just makes me mad. Its so short-sighted. I am sure they will start running associated press articles, or Toronto Sun Media articles instead, people will slowly stop picking the paper up, then 12 months from now the Sun will think it's a mystery as to why the paper isn't as profitable as it used to be. sigh. So that's my rant for the day. Ben also really went out of his way to cover local arts news that didn't get covered anywhere else. Good luck to you Ben!

Holiday Comics and Graphic Novel Recommendations
Sequential is listing people's recommendations for graphic novels and comics to give as gifts for Christmas. I submitted my picks as well. You can find the whole list here. Take a look if you're looking for X-Mas ideas. I will also take the opportunity to add one other suggestion to - What 2008 comic would you recommend for an adult woman 18-100?
  • I'm adding "Jamilti and Other Stories" by Rutu Modan (published by Drawn and Quarterly). I really like Modan's drawing style, and bought this collection of her shorter stories recently. This book didn't get as much attention as "Exit Wounds" which came out last year to much acclaim, and if anything I think this book is much stronger. I've had it my bedside table for at least a month now, and keep picking it up and looking at it. The stories have really stuck in my head as well. Great stuff!
MIT
Finally, MIT recently posted the podcast version of my talk on "Comics and Social Conflict", with Jeet Heer and Ho Che Anderson. Jeet also did a write-up of it on his blog here.