Sketches from "Comic New York," a symposium at Columbia University

Let's see if I can catch up on posting my symposium sketches.

Last March, I managed to attend most of Comic New York and managed to sketch most of the participants. I never managed to sit too close and hence may not have managed to achieve many likenesses. Still and all, here's what I did:

 Political New York  Moderator: David Hadju, Denis Kitchen, Sabrina Jones, John Carey


Alternative New York  Moderator: Gene Kannenberg jr, Bill Griffith, R Sikoryak, Charles Brownstein, Julia Wertz


Keynote: a conversation with Chris Claremont and Louise Simonson  Introduced by Eric Wakin





Periodical New York  Moderator: Eddy Portnoy, Irwin Hasen, Emily Flake, Ben Katchor, Lauren Weinstein



 New York as Breeding Ground  Moderator: Danny Fingeroth, Al Jaffee, Miss Lasko-Gross, Tracy White, Dean Haspiel
 
Comic New York and the Academy  Moderator: Jeremy Dauber (Columbia University), Jonathan W. Gray (CUNY/John Jay), Paul Levitz (Columbia University), N.C. Christopher Couch (University of Massachusetts/Amherst & the  School of Visual Arts)

 

Some lovely ladies in the audience:

 

Some artifacts in the room:

 
 

Check out my amazing cartooning students!

Enrollment is under way for my spring continuing ed courses at the School of Visual Arts-- Cartooning Basics and Figure Drawing for Graphic Novelists.

a comic page by Ken Frederick

Come study the figure in the comic book context. We'll deal with anatomy, sure, but also run through skills-building exercises in character design, forceful movement, theatrical staging, body language, costumes, storytelling, design, inking,...

The Cartooning Basics course similarly covers steps in the creation of a short comic, from the concept to the printed booklet, with time devoted to fundamentals in the graphic language of form, perspective, composition, camera movement, lettering, inking,... Cartooning involves a lot of basics, but there's nothing more fun!

The school has just posted these galleries of student work. Have a look!
http://www.sva.edu/continuing-education/galleries/figure-drawing-for-graphic-novelists-13-cs-cic-2218-a
http://www.sva.edu/continuing-education/galleries/cartooning-basics-13-cs-cic-2011-a

Mot Unmasked

The new issue of Not My Small Diary includes the following piece in which I reveal my origin story, secret identity, and all that fine comic-booky stuff. Get it here!

Recent Tragic Strip: Mac Fold-In

Here's another in the Made Out of "Mac" series. It appeared in The Brooklyn Rail over the summer. You'll want to download this, print it out, and fold it up.

Through the Manga-fying Glass

Here's one of the comics I'm showing in the Aliens on Broadway cartoon art show at the New World Stages, opening this Friday. If you're in NYC, come check it out!

Recent Tragic Strip-- My Cookbook for Existentialists

This is a piece I've been fiddling with off and on since college. It's a nice feeling to finally take it off my docket.

From the Archive: A Happy End, 1990

This is one of the pieces I highlighted (highlit?) when I spoke recently at the Picture Story Symposium. It's an anti-"choose-your-own-adventure." You're told to read it one way, but if you ignore the instructions and read it like a normal comic, you'll see what's really going on.

As I said at the symposium, I consider it a powerful rhetorical device to put panels on a page and then direct the reader not to look at them.

This ran in Boing Boing, back when it was still a magazine.

New Tragic Strip

Here's a strip that ran in The Brooklyn Rail a couple months back. Open it in a new browser window to read it full size.
Enjoy.

From the Archive: Let Me Out of Here, 1987/1999

This one goes back to this one job I had where, y'know, I just really wanted to get out of there.
It was published as a minicomic in 1987. In 1999 I touched it up a bit, for whatever reason. It could use another round of corrections, but I haven't the energy right now.