animation, comics, exhibits, events, etc!

In Die By the Pen, Jared Gniewek discusses what feeds his fires as an author of comics, screenplays and radio dramas.

I’ve been contributing to the Sequential Art Collective blog for some time now and thought it appropriate to write about what it is I hope to achieve through these essays and through our organization. If it hasn’t become apparent through the text or if you are a new reader this will give you a chance to see what I represent towards this collective.

This blog (an ugly word if ever there was one) is a place where I have been asked to share my experiences as a writer, creator, and enthusiast. I think I’ve delivered on this for the most part. I’ve shared some of my techniques for slogging my way through written works as well as some of my social opinions regarding the state of comics. I fully intend to continue this way. Choosing whatever “feeds my fire” to discuss.

Some folks have said that my work here is unfocused, long-winded, and rambling. Some folks have said that this blog isn’t “about” anything and needs to have more of a viewpoint from which to emerge. They believe it isn’t consistently pointed, funny, or exciting. I aim to spin those talking heads like the pea soup puker in The Exorcist!

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In The Doctor is In, Allan “Doc” Dorison operates on a specific part of popular culture.  This week he sends a field report on the Sequential Art Collective’s recent Get Out and Draw event.

Sunday June 28th was the second Sequential Art Collective “Get Out and Draw” event in New York.  This time, we gathered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  After weeks of rain, it was finally a beautiful day in Manhattan and we chose to start off on the roof garden, where it was blistering hot!!!

The focus of the first sketch was layers. We used a Roxy Paine sculpture entitled “Maelstrom” as the front layer.

The people standing behind the statue became the second layer and the buildings behind them the third, etc… After about 20 minutes on the roof we needed to flee the heat. We hit the new cafeteria for drinks and snacks… $3.75 for a bottle of water? I guess that’s what you get for high art.

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In Strip Search, Jennifer M. Babcock reviews and recommends comic strips available in print and on the web.

I’m such a jet setter this summer! Within a week of coming back from Egypt I was back on the plane to Paris, France- ooh la la.

Now, most of what I was doing in Paris was pure vacation fun time but I did some Egyptological research there as well, and of course… comic hunting. Many Americans don’t realize this but the French are quite fond of comics, or “BDs” (short for bande dessinee) as they call them. Go to the Virgin Megastore on the Champs Elysees and you’ll see an entire floor dedicated to them. Fnac, the French equivalent of a Barnes and Nobles, also carries a tremendous supply of comic book albums, and if you take a stroll through the Latin Quarter, you’ll find numerous shops dedicated to comics and cartoon paraphernalia. While I was in Paris, there was an arts magazine that dedicated its cover to R. Crumb and his latest comic Genesis and another one that came out with its annual “BD issue,” which was all about French comic artists.

The French are often seen as cultural snobs so it may surprise many readers to hear that even adults embrace comics as a genuine and legitimate form of art/literature making, but I think if we look at what Francophone countries have in their comics history, it becomes more understandable. Most famously, Belgium, churned out comic greats like Herge (Tintin) and Peyo (Les Schtroumpfs AKA The Smurfs). More recently Americans have come to know the work of the Iranian-French author Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis).

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