September
Landscape, Simon Hanselmann
Frontier #13, Richie Pope
What Happened, Simon Moreton
You Will Return to Places, Madeleine Witt
The Letting Go, Kevin Czap – It’s been fascinating for me how the Ley Lines series has moved from strength to strength with works that feel very different but are also clearly part of a single, coherent conversation. That trend is of course continued in this comic. I’m happy I completed my collection of Ley Lines (to date!) on a weekend when I got to express to both L and Kevin what an achievement the series is.
Resistance Rhode Island, MJ Robinson – I really, really enjoyed this. I read it on a plane feeling tired and stressed out. It helped me calm down. Different, superficially unrelated subjects intermingle until you suddenly realize how implicitly connected they are, and in fact that intermingling process is folded into the fabric of the comic. Puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly, except that’s the wrong metaphor because there’s nothing oblique or deceptive about this work. It’s also drawn in a quick, loose style – photos, sketches, words that are written rather than lettered – that feels intimate and conversational. It reminds me a great comic doesn’t necessarily need to be impeccably constructed. I don’t think it’s available online right now but you should definitely buy this comic when possible.
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Here is what I want to tell you: in the past week (so into October, I guess) I’ve drawn 20 pages of a new project. It felt good but slightly unnatural, like exhaling deeply after holding my breath for too long. Maybe I won’t use any of these pages in the end. That would be interesting. I was trying to think my way through this project and now I’m trying to draw my way through it. Sometimes that feels like walking simultaneously down two separate roads and hoping they’ll eventually converge.
It was really difficult not drawing for over half of September, which was a result of going to first SPX and then RIPE. At both conventions I had some extremely nice and fulfilling conversations. I’m grateful to anyone who spoke with me or bought some work, and I wish we could have talked longer. Sorry when I didn’t remember your name or when we made eye contact but I didn’t make the effort to say hello.
I had some conversations about making comics and about reading comics and about comics culture. At the moment it feels profoundly uninteresting to write about any of those things, though I am thinking about them.
At top, the comics I bought/received at SPX and RIPE. I forgot to get a bunch of stuff that I wanted – I sat next to Kimball Anderson all day and didn’t get a copy of their new comic! Oops.