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- Jul 18, 2018
- 4 min
Comic-Con’s Eisner Judging and the New “Comics & Design Awards”
By: Michael Dooley Forget about who’ll walk away with Eisner Awards on Friday at San Diego’s Comic-Con. Sure, there’ll be worthy winners. In my feature on Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing is Monsters, which garnered multiple well-deserved nominations, I wrote that it would easily top any comics and design “best of” award. More on that notion momentarily. But honestly, the Eisners are much more a popularity contest among comics industry professionals than it is any real gauge o
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- May 28, 2018
- 4 min
Beyond Black Panther: A Celebration of Black Comix Creators
Black Panther the movie has just been released on 4K Ultra HD. Marvel’s new Black Panther: World of Wakanda spin-off series from Marvel just scored this year’s GLAAD Media Outstanding Comic Book Award. And here in real life, multitudes of conventions and exhibitions nationwide are honoring the talents and accomplishments of black comics creators. If you attended the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAM Black Comix Expo, the Black Comic Book Festival at Harlem’s Schomburg Center, a
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- Mar 22, 2017
- 4 min
Skip Williamson & Jay Lynch Kept the Fun in Underground Funnies
Those underground comix artists of the 1960s may have been renegade outlaws, but they didn’t escape the “90% of everything is crud” law. Even at the peak of their popularity, I’d flip through most pages of their comic books and simply see a bunch of bland, uninspired visuals blurring into a background of crosshatching chicken-scratchings with little or no sense of design. Only about a dozen stood out, but ah, what a dozen. There were Crumb and Spiegelman, naturally. And of co
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- Dec 28, 2016
- 10 min
13 Best Graphic Novels & Books About Comics from 2016—A Designer’s Guide
You survived 2016 without having your head explode. So congratulations: You deserve at least one book by and about artists of comic strips, comic books and graphic novels. And here are some recommendations for designers who may also be animation addicts, history and/or biography fans, the politically and/or satirically oriented, the internationally inclined, eggheads, and/or just oddballs. And again: This was the oddest of oddball years, wasn’t it? See you in the funny papers
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- Nov 3, 2016
- 14 min
Picturing Famous Comics Artists and Animators, at Ease
By: Michael Dooley Photographer Greg Preston is a good-natured, low-key guy. There’s an ease about him that enhances his subjects’ comfort amidst their already-familiar surroundings. It’s visible enough in The Artist Within, a handsome, generously-sized hardcover from 2007 with roughly a hundred “portraits of cartoonists, comic book artists, animators, and others,” as the book’s subtitle has it. He’s captured a broad spectrum of extraordinary talents, from Al Hirschfeld, Jule
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- Aug 17, 2016
- 4 min
Sax, Dope, and Trina Robbins: the Making of a Graphic Novel
Subscribe to PRINT to get authoritative insights and inspiration from the thought leaders and award winners of the design world. Cartoonist Trina Robbins wants money for Dope… and soon. So her fans have been fixing her up on Kickstarter. After all, that comics version she did of British pulp mystery novelist Sax Rohmer’s neglected 1919 crime novel has been out of print since the early-1980s. And the separate installments haven’t been assembled into a graphic novel… yet. Trina
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- Jul 20, 2016
- 3 min
Wonder Women of the Eisner Awards
Sure, this week’s Comic-Con in San Diego is the most spectacular annual pop culture celebration in the universe, with hordes of geeks gorging themselves on genre TV and movie factory hype. But graphic designers have plenty of banquets to feast on as well. Just check my “21 Best Comic-Con Artists” list from last year. And 2016’s starter plate includes Howard Chaykin, Denis Kitchen, Chip Kidd, Keith Knight, Kenny Keil, Peter Kuper, Trevor Goring, Marc H. Greenberg, J. David Spu
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- Sep 2, 2015
- 6 min
7 Best Vintage Comics Revelations: A Designer’s Report
You’d never know it from media reports on San Diego’s annual Comic-Con International, but it’s your richest opportunity to discover and explore the creative and artistic heritage of cartoons and vintage comics. For starters, there’s Will Eisner. Last month’s convention had no less than four different panels devoted to the graphic arts innovator and educator whose 1940s Spirit was just the beginning of significant transformations both within and beyond the comics medium. And S
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- Aug 26, 2014
- 9 min
A Designers’ Guide to Comic-Con’s Hidden Pleasures
We’re now at the peak of comic book convention season. San Diego’s wrapped last month, Chicago’s just ended, and New York’s is currently gearing up. And these are just the biggies. This onslaught can be nirvana for pop culture nerds. But hordes of designers also flock to these events. This can appear puzzling, considering how media reports mostly emphasize the Hollywood hype, endless queues, cos-play nonsense and such. So let’s take a closer look in this comic-con guide. Pers
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- Nov 23, 2011
- 4 min
Long Beach Comic Con: My "7 Highlights" List
Kevin Eastman These days, the so-called San Diego “Comic”-Con‘s main attraction is sugary TV and movie confectionery. But if you enjoy graphic novels and cartoons – and, well, scary stuff – you may have attended the recent Comic & Horror Con at Long Beach, CA’s Convention Center. While SDCC has been around for over 40 years, the relatively pint-sized LBHCC just started in 2009. But it certainly doesn’t seem new. In fact, it feels downright retro. Sure, it had its panel sessio
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