Comic Arts Brooklyn 2018!

~ vanderbergjames ~ Leave a comment

Ok so this happened last month…but I’ve been way to busy to recap.  Finally I am sitting down to figure out  what I’m doing with my comics and how to move forward.  I  have so many ideas brewing  for the  future I can’t  wait to get started!

 

CAB 2018 was a blast and I feel like my first table experience was a great one. I met cool artists in my area, I met LOTS of great people looking at the books and buying them, and I got a sense of what people are doing and what people want.   All in all it was a great success.  And I might have even broken even on the table cost!  Here are a few pictures from the event:

Get my  table dimensions down the night before.
The  table ready to  go at Pratt!
 
Lots of great people and err…bears came by to say hi!

The Lump

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Last January I began an 8 week correspondence course with Frank Santoro and the Comic Workbook school.  His class mimics the old comic drawing correspondence courses you used to find in the ad pages of old comic books.  The class is truly amazing and taught me so many invaluable things that I will use in my work for years to come.  The course was 8 weeks…it took me roughly 10 months.  Whatever, I have three kids.

The result is my first non-shop, full color, 16 page comic called “The Lump.”  The Lump is a highly fictionalized take on the first few months after my third child was born, and a minor yet traumatic surgery I had during that time.  These books will debut at Comic Arts Brooklyn in November and are available on my site for General Comics Press.  I’ve posted it here as well!  Special thanks to my brother Paul who scanned and compressed over 40 pages of hand drawn and hand colored tracing paper pages!

 

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Comics Workbook 2018 Composition Competition

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Whatsferlunch

Every year the great people at Comics Workbook in Pittsburgh, PA host a composition competition.  Depending on the year different comic formats are used, whether its a 16 page book or a single spread.  This year the format was a four panel gag strip in the style of old Peanuts or other daily or weekly strips.  I’ve been reading this great book, How to Read Nancy, which outlines all the essential aspects of comic art in a three panel Nancy strip.  The book is like a graduate course in comics on a super specific level.  You are only ever analyzing one strip with three panels and three lines of text.  But the way the authors take that strip apart and explain how Ernie Bushmiller perfectly lays it all out is enlightening.

For this year’s contest I had been thinking a lot about Nancy, and The Shop, and how I wanted to streamline the drawing and text to be more Bushmiller-y…Well this seemed like a perfect chance to try.  I added a panel to give some context and changed around the characters to fit The Shop world.  I’ve posted Nancy’s original version below.  Enjoy!

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The Shop now Available in Print!

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The Shop has been slowly coming along on this site as new comics were inked and scanned.  I am now happy to announce that issue #1 is in print!  It contains some of what is on this site and the ending to “Shelving.”  I know you have been waiting with baited breath to see if the lunch gets there on time or if the shelves go up!

I will try to update more and more and get excited for issues 2 and 3 which will hopefully be out in the new year.  For now check out Ghostbirdpress.org and Desert Island Comics in Williamsburg Brooklyn of a copy of The Shop!

Now get to work!

 

-J