VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY’S
COMICALITY ISSUE 2
2011/2012
Words with David Malki ! Funning up the classroom with... comics? Washington D.C.’s new comics rag
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Letter from the Editors Dear Comicality fans, casual readers, and newbies,
COMICALITY ISSUE 2 – 2011 Editors David Fuchs Christine Stoddard Writers Paul Shuey Cindy Jackson Design Dominic Butchello Cover art David Fuchs Special thanks Mark Jeffries Greg O. Weatherford Funded by the VCU Student Media Commission
Thanks for picking up the second issue of the magazine. We’re just a little proud of it. Okay, maybe a bit more than a “little.” No. That’s a lie. We’re hugely, massively proud of this issue. Our pride for this magazine is bigger than Antarctica. Comicality is no mere student rag. Comicality is VCU’s New Yorker. We’re not really that pompous (most of the time). We’re only super-excited about this issue because we got it done! Putting together a magazine is burro’s work. And this issue would not have been possible without several incredible folks: The first incredible folk is Greg O. Weatherford, Director of the VCU Student Media Center. He was the first to encourage us to pursue this project and apply for a grant. He also showed us all sorts of magazines and newspapers that we could use for inspiration. Did we want glossy paper? Newsprint? Color? Black and white? What dimensions would make the most sense? Greg’s advice helped us make informed decisions about the magazine as a whole. The second person is Mark Jeffries, Media Production Advisor at the VCU Student Media Center. Mark has provided visual guidance for Comicality since the beginning. He designed the first issue of the magazine, as well as all of
our promotional materials. Then Mark realized how crazy we were and chose someone else to design this issue. Needless to say, Dominic Butchello deserves our appreciation, too. His labor meant we didn’t have to toy with InDesign for hours! Thanks, Dominic! Lauren Katchuk, Student Media Business Manager at the VCU Student Media Center, has been our money lady and chief negotiator with printing companies. If she hadn’t picked up the phone and turned up the charm, you would not be holding this magazine right now. Last but not least, we’d like to bow humbly before The VCU Student Media Commission. They’ve provided generous funding for both issues of the magazine. Without them, we would have had to hold many, many bake sales to make this dream possible. Other people and organizations we’d like to thank include VCUarts, VCU Department of English, VCU School of Mass Communications, Velocity Comics, Mary Beth Reed, the Stoddard family, and the Fuchs family. They’re all stellar. So...that’s all until next issue (assuming we get funding for it—wink, wink). Mucho amor, David Fuchs & Christine Stoddard vcucomicality@gmail.com
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Help Mama Kangaroo! Find the baby kangaroo hidden throughout Comicality! 4
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Kid artist, Noah Wilson B. 6/23/2000, Chesterfield County
In his words: “I’m good at detail, but I don’t work on complex details—I mostly work on making people laugh at my pictures. And just having fun with them.”
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The Plaid Avenger
by Christine Stoddard If you think your professors are crazy, you haven’t yet met John D. Boyer, a Geography professor at Virginia Tech. This man is insane--if insane means inventive, spontaneous, and highly engaging. In order to wake up his students and introduce them to the fields of international relations and world studies, Boyer has developed a full-fledged character and comic called The Plaid Avenger. He has teamed up with illustrator Klaus Shmidheiser to create one cartoony (but still incredibly informative) textbooks and two comic books. In his spare time, Boyer also makes Plaid Avenger
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podcasts to supplement his classroom lectures. Heck, there’s a whole Plaid Avenger universe at PlaidAvenger.com. During a visit to Blacksburg over Spring Break 2011, I met Boyer in the flesh after a VT friend told me all about him. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to interview Boyer then and there, so I took down his contact information and sent him an email after going through his books. Bada-bing! He came up with a video response. A 36:12 minute response, as a matter of fact. Because we have a page limit in Comicality, I didn’t transcribe the whole thing, but I did pull out the juicy bits. Here’s what Boyer has to say about his
unusual pedagogical approach: But first he prefaced his video response with this: “Sorry, even though I kind of am a writer, I really am much of a speaker, so whenever I get a bunch of questions, I’d rather just speak than try to write down ten million things. I really am a terrible writer. I’m much more of an oral historian.” How did you come up the idea of The Plaid Avenger? I don’t know! I think years back, maybe 5-7 years ago, I was thinking about ways to make current events more accessible because most Americans are completely and utterly clueless about what’s going on in the
world. That’s largely the product of our whole educational system because at no point during the educational process of K-12 do you take classes that are about what the hell’s going on right now. Nowhere. America as a whole is pretty insulated, which means we all think we’re the greatest country ever, so we as a general rule don’t give a flying rat’s ass about what’s going on in the rest of the planet. And, by the way, this isn’t just the current generation. I know lots of older folks like to say, “Oh, it’s those younger generations!” No way! This has been an American tradition for the past 100-200 years. We’re insulated. Isolated. We only focus on ourselves. We
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don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the world. We don’t care what’s going on in the rest of the world. Particularly since World War II when we’ve been the superpower, we didn’t HAVE to care. But times have changed, of course. And in a globalizing world, where America’s not the sole superpower anymore (and likely not to even be one of two superpowers but one of a multitude of superpowers for the rest of our lives), we as citizens or as successful business people or successful students or successful HUMANS are going to have to understand what’s going on in the rest of the planet to live, thrive, and survive. Having said that, I asked myself a while back, why does all education have to be confined to classroom spaces? Education is something you should be doing your whole life, specifically understanding what’s going on in the rest of the world. That certainly doesn’t stop after college. You have to read the news and stay involved. Well, you don’t HAVE to, but it’s to your own detriment. So why is education confined to schools? Entertainment, on the other hand, is confined to Hollywood, TV, and movies. The two should merge. I’m not the first one to come up with this; lots of people have found ways to combine the two for “edutainment.” But I started to think, what’s wrong with doing more stuff with the graphic arts in my World Regions class? I use graphics that incorporate flair, not just pie charts. It makes it easier for folks to absorb the material. I started to think why don’t I have a superhero, a fictional character, who I set in real-life circumstances? The character’s pure entertainment but he’s in the context of something real, like global warming. Thus, The Plaid Avenger was born.
You touched upon this just a tad in your textbook, but why plaid? The idea is that I wanted to make an intentionally campy character so that people know he’s obviously fake. There’s a clear dichotomy between the character and the real stuff going on around him. Plus, I was spoofing the James Bond characters, who I always found utterly ridiculous. Everyone in the whole world knows who James Bond is and yet he’s mysteriously undercover. That’s why plaid. The character has no skills whatsoever and a woman always comes to save his ass. He’s a spy sneaking around but he’s wearing 1970s plaid everywhere. There’s no way he could ever be undercover, unless he’s at a tartan festival in Scotland. He’s also avenging fashion. He’s bringing plaid back, I think. How do your students respond to The Plaid Avenger? Most students love it. Students love it so much that the textbook’s been picked up at 10 or 12 other universities. We’ve developed a whole website that’s all for free to create a 21st century approach to education, too. We’re trying to create a community around this book. The professor’s online! In essence, what we have is a book that’s being re-written nonstop. What we eventually want is 1,000 universities using this textbook where students could talk directly to the author--me-or the Plaid Avenger about the Ivory Coast through the website. Students mostly respond very positively to the book; even students’ parents write to me, saying they think the book’s great. But I don’t think the book’s that great. We could do a lot better. I’m not going to lie about that. But it’s the presentation people like. It’s the book students will read. Illustrator Klaus, who’s apparently less of a theatrical fellow, typed up his responses and sent them via email:
Discuss your collaboration process. What’s easy about working together and what complicates it? We’ve developed our process over the years. The first issue came about over drinks while I was visiting Blacksburg while living in Vancouver (I had recently graduated from Tech and moved to Vancouver, B.C.). John acted out the whole story, talking me through the concept of the first issue while I frantically tried to thumbnail out some storyboards for the issue. After getting back to Vancouver, the first few pages I breezed through, but then the clarity from our earlier meeting began to vanish. It then became an effort of emailing sketches to John, him compiling notes and sending the pages back. We struggled through the issue, but managed to make it all happen (not bad considering neither of us had any prior experience in creating a fully developed graphic novel). The second issue was better because by the time I started it I was back living in Virginia. John and I worked through the story in sections and bridged it all together at the end. I would hand off the illustrations and he would put the final text in. So we were working a bit backwards, but it ended up coming together in the end. On our latest issue, I wanted create the comic in the standard tradition of developing a script first, which is broken into pages and panels, and then creating the illustrations from that script. We got an awesome political cartoonist/writer from Mexico City to help write a scripts from John’s original story concept. So, with each issue we are trying to tighten up our process. You have a kick-ass drawing style! When and how did you become an artist? Did you formally train or learn on your own? What other experience in comics do you have?
classes in college, but no formal training in narrative illustration. I read A LOT of books by other great illustrators like, Will Eisner, Scott Mcloud and Hogarth. I think the key to developing your own style is to examine the world around you all the time. Then study other artists techniques and processes and decide which methods fit with your own expressive voice. In the end, what an artist needs to do is create a reality through visual representations. In the comic world, that means creating a story and narrative that the reader can follow and connect with. Describe how you draw The Plaid Avenger. What are some of your key techniques? I always start with small thumbnails to see how the panels will flow on the page and get a small scale representation of the compositions in each panel. Then I scan those small panels and enlarge them on the computer doing a quick sketch overtop those thumbnails to define the forms. Once the compositions are cleaned up, I reduce the values to a very light blue tone, then print that onto a 11”x17” Bristol Board for final penciling. After the pencils are tightened up, I go over the image with inks using traditional quill tip pens and brushes. Once the inks are done, I scan them back into the computer and color in photoshop. It’s a pretty intensive process, it can take up to 12-15 hours on a complex page. It seems like the comics are mostly hand-drawn, yet the pin-up in the first edition of the comic seems like a computer graphic. Why didn’t you draw it by hand? I wanted the pinup to have a painterly feel, so I didn’t use any inking lines on it.
Self-taught for the most part. I had some figure drawing
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David Malki ! He finds charming, romantic illustrations from bygone days, manipulates them in Photoshop, and produces comics teeming with caustic characters. His name is David Malki ! (space and exclamation mark required) and his brainchild is the ever-amusing comic, Wondermark. Obsessed with the Victorian era but also a fan of less-than-prudish sarcasm, Malki ! is a pioneer in that field where found art and sequential art intersect. He is also a champion of web comics and alternative weekly newspapers, and a man who believes in both magic and modernity. Like his comic, he is many things. But why both with any more metaphors and adjectives? Here’s what Malki ! had to say in response to Comicality’s plethora of eagerly spat questions on fairy tales, the Victorian era, and, yes, his art: What about the Victorian age appeals to you? My work draws heavily on the arts and aesthetic of the era, and I’m particularly fond of the craftsmanship that went into the engravings and illustrations that fill Victorian publications. This was a time before photography was cheap or easy to reproduce for print, so any time an illustration was called for, an artisan had to create it, either as an ink drawing, woodcut, or engraving. There was a bit of a golden age between 1875 and 1890 when this artform reached a technical zenith...and then photographic technology improved in the 1890s and the more cumbersome technique (the illustrations) was rendered obsolete almost instantly as publishers raced
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to fill their pages with photos. And it wasn’t only in the printing industry--everywhere, horses were being replaced by automobiles; craftsmen by factories; farms by cities; and provincialism by the rise of mass media. It’s a period that’s removed from our present world but still recognizably modern, and it’s a welldocumented window into human nature: we can see how the people of the time dealt with and adapted to all these amazing transitions and how decisions that they made paved the way for the society we have today. So there’s that, and also I think the drawings look cool. Would you ever want to live in the Victorian era, if only for a day? I think it’d be fun to step into the life of someone from the Victorian era (or any far-off era, really)--not with our present understanding of convenience, technology, etc., but rather immersed in that world and understanding it on a fundamental level...then I’d like to come back out and compare notes after the fact. Being a tourist is one thing, but if some dark alchemy has the power to thrust me back into a world
by Christine Stoddard
long passed, it couldn’t be too hard to throw in an extra newt and see the world as a local while we’re at it. Which Victorian artists and writers do you particularly like? How does their work affect your work, if at all? Many of the volumes in my collection are filled with the work of artisans who toiled more-or-less in obscurity. Some went on to greater fame in book illustration (such as John Tenniel, who drew for Punch before going on to illustrate Lewis Carroll’s books), and others were simply masters of the spot drawing. My favorite is probably Charles Keene, another Punch artist, and many of my comics feature his characters. When using images that have a very distinct visual style, I try to keep each comic internally consistent to a certain degree, so many times I’ll find a piece by a certain artist, then page through the same book to find other work by the same artist to combine it with. Family reunions, for the first time! But I only even know the names of a very small number of the artists from the era-much of the work in American
publications is uncredited, and in a certain way that’s okay. The less context the image has, the easier it is for me to change it around and do something new with it. I love working with images from German books because when paging through, I don’t get distracted reading the articles like I do with British or American books! (Though now that I have a German officemate, I do trot over to ask him for the occasional translation.) Do you ever explore fairy tales in your work? How do you think fairy tales influenced the Victorian era and what kind of impact do they have upon your work? Fairy tales are important to a world--like the Victorians’, or like ours--that places a huge emphasis on science and reason and technical advancement and solving mysteries. Those things are all wonderful, but as old gods get crowded out by better and better telescopes, the stories that explain how the Northern Lights are Valkyries dancing on the graves of the Irish get harder to hear and less likely to be repeated. With all the charging and clanging progressmachines pressing bottlecaps by coal power, it’s easy to feel
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contented, like we’ve got the world pretty well under control-and that’s where fairy tales can keep us humble. A culture that respects the mysterious and the unknowable is a culture that can never act with impunity as the greatest power around. I’m trying to think of some way that I can retroactively recontextualize the entirety of Wondermark as one enormously elaborate interweaving fairy tale. I could probably do it if it wasn’t for that 40-strip run in which I methodically and exhaustively disclaimed the existence of pixies in the Wondermark universe. I guess we all have to learn to live with our mistakes. What role do magic and the supernatural play in your puns and themes? A lot of my most striking work involves monsters, or chimeras, or other weird, “this cannot be” elements. I think I’m drawn to that in particular because the source material-very realistically-rendered illustrations--gains a certain power when it’s used to portray unrealistic things. It’s almost like giving these creatures a stamp of authenticity, as if there really were hippo-headed giants and bird-riding warriors and Piranhasmoose that sat for portraits 120 years ago. And I like playing in a sandbox in which anything is possible. Readers never know what to expect when they come to read the latest Wondermark, and having the work occupy a world where absolutely anything can happen keeps things
interesting for the readers and me both. Now imagine that I am a bear, saying all that. See? It STILL WORKS. How do you think comics and sequential art have evolved since the Victorian era? Comic strips (the precursor to comic books as we know them) didn’t come into being until the early 20th century, but you can see antecedents of comics in the Victorian era. Punch was doing humorous single-panel illustrations with captions in the mid-19th century, and once the market for documentary illustration flattened out (with
the advent of photography), all those highly-trained artists had to do something with their time. Many who worked drawing houses for Harper’s in the 1890s went on to draw comics in the 1910s, and in the Hearst days of newspaper wars and ubiquitous mass media, comics and magazine gag cartoons were tremendously popular and for some artists, tremendously lucrative. But that all came later! You can see precursors
to the multi-panel strip here and there in the 1800s: a gag cartoon might be broken into six panels on a page, each with a caption, explaining how some poor fellow’s vacation got worse and worse. In Wondermark, by taking the format and vernacular of a contemporary comic strip and populating it with characters and imagery from the Victorian era, it becomes something new--comics in the Victorian era (such as they were) didn’t look much like they do today. That’s kind of exciting to me! Sort of like introducing an old farmer to a modern grocery store, or putting a Model T engine in a
DeLorean. Wait--that wouldn’t work at all. What I do is like putting a Zeppelin engine in a DeLorean. Perfect. What advice do you have for people who want to buy Victorian illustrations like the ones you use in your work? It’s not as difficult to find as you might think! Most of the images I use for Wondermark are magazine and newspaper illustrations, and a lot of
that material is available as bound library editions. I do a lot of research in my local library’s microfilm periodicals archive, and it’s also fun to poke around Google Books, the Internet Archive, and other scanned repositories. But since I’m creating printresolution works, I need to work from actual paper sources...so once the research has pointed mento a particular title or volume of a title, then I look on eBay! You can get great stuff if you’re not too picky about condition (which I’m not). Weird stuff pops up in used bookstores too, but that’s strictly luck if it does. Allow for serendipity, but it’s good to put in the work as well. Also, important note: 1922 is the latest publication year where you can be absolutely certain the material is in the public domain. Okay, thirty-second elevator speech: why should people read Wondermark? If you think that life is fundamentally ridiculous, and you like staring through slightly warped windows to watch the wobbly world beyond, you
might like Wondermark. I didn’t mean for that to come out quite so alliterative, but I think it can only help my case so I’m sticking with it. Wondermark is by turns silly, sarcastic, incisive and good-natured--just like YOU. Any last words? That prompt sounds very ominous! What do you know that I don’t?? Wondermark.com
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Steve Fuchs Steven J. Fuchs studied art and graduated with a degree from George Washington University. He worked for ad agencies in the Washington area and ran his own graphic design studio for more than a decade. He currently lives in Virginia and works as a usability analyst for the Federal Government. After years of doing fine art gallery shows, Fuchs is working on a graphic novel titled Soyuz Blue, a science-fiction story about an emergency expedition to the damaged International Space Station in the wake of a massive solar flare. Set the scene of Soyuz Blue. It’s in the near future, after the space shuttle. At one point I talk about an American spaceflight and referred to the Constellation [human spaceflight program], which they’ve cancelled, so up until publishing I guess I’ll substitute whatever spacecraft they’re planning on using, right now it’s the Dragon. There are solar flares that damage the International Space Station, prompting a flight up to assess the situation and prevent the station from burning up in the atmosphere. Once up these things take a turn for the worse when a science experiment gets out of hand. Where did the idea for Soyuz Blue come from? I’ve always enjoyed stories of the supernatural, two-fisted tales, adventure stories. In some sketches from high school and college, I had the
idea of a haunted space station. My first idea for a graphic novel was a haunted grocery store, which I really liked but I thought that if I was going to spend so much time working part-time on a project, I thought I would make it something I was interested in. I started in 2006 working for a year on the first idea. Just as I was about to start real work on it, I was on a trip to Florida and on the plane trip I mapped out Soyuz Blue, eventually liking it enough to just do it instead. Space-wise, I was growing up when they were sending men to the moon, which was a big deal. Astronauts were like sports stars are today--everyone knew their names. Every flight was a big deal--you waited for LIFE magazine and the newest pictures to come out, first pictures from the Moon, first pictures of Mars… I became interested in doing [Soyuz Blue] featuring the Russians because the Soviet space program was doing the same things we were in a different way, with different approaches…sort of an alternate universe...the same engineering problems approached in a different ways. What I like about the Soyuz spacecraft is that it’s the Volkswagen Beetle in space--the launcher is 60 years old, the spacecraft is 50 years old, so it’s a wild throwback, a sort of horseshoe crab of engineering. Of course they killed four people in development, but since then it’s been very safe and reliable. Rather than being about extraterrestrials, the story is about a process going wrong. On the International
by David Fuchs
Space Station, they’ve found that certain things become much more virulent in zero-G Salmonella and botulism are much nastier, and they’re not exactly sure why. That informed the story a lot. What is your process for conceptualizing and crafting the graphic novel? I did a first draft of the story, like a shooting script, to figure out where I was going with the story. As a writer I tend to throw in a lot of junk and hackneyed stuff, so when I revise it forces me to be a little more original. Rather than pencilling and inking whole panels I drew individual pieces and then scanned the pencils in with some sharpening, creating panels out of a montage technique. Then I use levels in Adobe Photoshop to turn the grey lines into more defined, high contrast black. I like the rougher, more linear pencils because it’s warm and dirty--it’s more interesting than the clean hard edges of the last 60 years of comics. I’m looking for a more expressive look. I probably average 2-3 pages a month. Luckily I still enjoy what I’m doing and enjoy how the pages are turning out. I made a deal with myself not to be too exacting because then I’ll never get it published. So I develop things to a certain point and then keep going. What else influenced the work? In many ways Soyuz Blue is really a movie in graphic novel form, and filmmakers
have accordingly influenced it the most. One of my favorite filmmakers is Alfred Hitchcock and in many ways I’ve structured Soyuz Blue like a Hitchcock film. I grew up reading Marvel Comics in 1960s and 70s. My favorite artist is Gene Colan, and Tom Palmer is my favorite inker. Thus the Tomb of Dracula and Doctor Strange comics they did together are my favorites. In structure and pacing, a lot of Neil Adams work influenced me-he did the comic equivalent of long takes with several panels of the same scenes. I like a lot of the newer and more experimental comics too--The Loneliest Boy, Jimmy Corrigan. I think they are very different, and they reach across the superhero stereotype. I definitely have no interest in superheros--I enjoy them, but they’ve been done and I can’t imagine myself doing such a story. How do you plan on releasing Soyuz Blue? Once I get close to finishing, I think I will start publishing pieces of the story online in installments. My thinking is to do it as a weekly serial like Prince Valiant--I’d have around 30 chapters. Before the story finishes, I’d offer the complete story as a vanity press release. Depending on the success of the iPad, I could customize the drawing I have now for a similar screen size. What I definitely will have is bonus print incentives-an alternate ending. The thing about giving something away is that you can’t half-give it-you have to follow through
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and publish the whole thing. Look at Scott Adams. He got flamed for turning Dilbert into a subscription. You can’t change the terms in the middle of a project.
What advice would you give to young artists? As someone trying to sell themselves, you have to know yourself. I love to draw, but I have issues
with bad proportions. Because I’m scanning my work, I can luckily fix it later--I couldn’t have done this project without the computer. The more you understand yourself,
the more you can focus on what you are good at and market that. As you can, go back and work on areas you can improve.
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Tour God
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Brandon Jeune
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From the mind of...
Paul Kang
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Pizza From Scratch
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Bill Lemmond
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Tarzan
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Mike Cody
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Steampunk Doll
Josephine Russell
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Magic Bullet, Washington, D.C.’s new comics newspaper
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Magic Bullet Christine Stoddard Like Comicality? Well, Washington, D.C. has their own comics rag. It’s Magic Bullet and it’s everything you love about the funny pages... but free. Here’s what Rafer Roberts, the Big Cheese of Magic Bullet, has to say about his efforts to make the art of cartooning more widely available in our nation’s capital: So...how did this get started? Give me the who, what, when, why, and how. Magic Bullet is a semi-annual newspaper made up of oversize single page comics made by some of the finest cartoonists around. Previously DC Conspiracy members Matt Dembicki and Evan Keeling had done comics for a now defunct local newspaper, and after that folded Matt had the idea for the group to put out our own newspaper. In 2010 we put out the first issue of Magic Bullet which was made up entirely of comics created by DC area cartoonists and Conspiracy members. That first issue had a really small print run and is nearly impossible to find now. With the second issue, we increased the print run in order to support wider distribution. Part of that distribution included handing copies out to Metro commuters. We’ve also handed copies out at about a dozen different comic conventions and put copies in most of the local DC area shops. The second issue is made up mostly of comics from local cartoonists, but we did bring in a few cartoonists from parts elsewhere to round things out. Artists such as Jim Rugg, Steve
Becker and Jeff McComsey fit right in with DC’s own Andrew Cohen, Carolyn Belefski, Mal Jones and Scott White. But as far as the why of it all, there is just something fantastic about comics printed on oversize newsprint. In a world moving more and more towards held-held digital devices, there is a certain aesthetic uniqueness to a comics newspaper. The tactile sensation of newsprint, the smell, sound of crinkling newsprint all add flavor to the comics. What’s your publication schedule? We’re working under a twice
a year schedule, with one issue printed in the early spring and one printed in early autumn. The next issue is planned to come out in early September for release at the Small Press Expo held every year in Bethesda. What’s unique about the comics scene in Washington, D.C.? I asked DC Conspiracy member, and Magic Bullet prepress editor Michael Auger to answer this one. He says: “Washington, D.C. is usually thought of as button-down and political but, under the surface, there is an untamed and highly creative sub-culture of artists,
writers, poets, and dreamers. D.C. has a diverse mix of people from all backgrounds. It’s a wonderful melting pot similar to New York but not as overwhelmingly big. The majority of comic creators in the D.C. area all know each other. It’s a close knit, and supportive group.” How do you personally contribute? How did you get involved? I am the editor of Magic Bullet, as well as one of the contributing artists. I got involved initially as a contributor because I loved the idea of a comics newspaper, and somehow I convinced everyone to put me in charge. I’ve been self publishing my own comics for about a decade now, so I guess that helped me trick everyone into thinking that I knew what I was doing. What’s the latest news? What can readers expect in future issues? Right now we’re in the “gathering stage” where we are in contact with various artists and soliciting artwork. We do have an open submission policy so anyone interested is welcome to submit a page. (Guidelines are on the website MagicBulletComics.com). Deadlines aren’t until August of each year, so things are moving at a leisurely pace for the time being. Mid-July is when things will start getting a little crazy. I’m pretty excited at the crop of artists that have expressed interest in contributing.
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Adventures with Drain Baby
Christine Skelly
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Retro Pin-ups
Josephine Russell
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Futureboarding
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Space Radio
Jared Throne & Hillmon Ancrum
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The Truthful Dragon by Christine Stoddard
Roar. That’s right. I said it. Roar. No passion in that. Just a one-syllable word that I practically spit out. I don’t pump up my lungs and bellow like in all those corny books and films. For the record, dragons don’t do that. Our lungs are too weak--what’d you expect from born smokers? I’m surprised I can speak loudly enough for you to hear me now. It’s probably only because I’ve hidden myself in a cave so long, not uttering a sentence that I can speak up now. I mean, what’s the point of talking to yourself out loud? Aren’t your thoughts loud enough? I don’t know how humans are wired, but we dragons can’t adjust the volume in our minds. The voices in our heads are BOOMING and we can’t change that. We’re not quite so
magical. I admit my limitations, just as any real beast should. My critics might argue that there’s no reason for me to admit these limitations before an audience of human foes. As soon as I do that, those critics would say, I’ve given you an incentive to slug me one. To come on down to my cave and baby-punch that treasure right out of my acrylic claws! That’s because those dragons are playing tricks on you, foolish mortals. Tricks. There is no treasure. NO TREASURE. I’m a big, burly reptile who lives alone with nobody to impress. Why would I want jewels? There’s not some giant Dragons ‘R’ Us ‘round the corner, full of wondrous dragon goodies waiting for me to buy them. I don’t need a velvet armchair; I just sit on my cushy
Art by Matt Schmidt
tail. I don’t need a fancy car; I have wings. I don’t bother with gourmet food because my tongue’s so scorched I don’t have any taste buds left. Voles, moles, spiders, deer, heck-caviar!--one flavor’s as good as the next. Don’t give me that, “But what about the texture?” bull, either. Meat is meat. And jewels are essentially money. If I don’t need money, I don’t need jewels. Everything I could possibly want is available right in my cave. Let me guess--you’re going to ask about damsels in distress. That’s another one of your human myths. Nothing is more annoying than a screaming woman, pounding her puny fists and kicking her stick legs. She’s crying, her mascara’s running all down her cheeks. Her hair’s so long, then it gets tangled in her hands
and feet as she’s distressing so she becomes this huge hair ball. Ugh. I don’t want to eat a hair ball, especially not a shrieking one. Okay, then some of you sickos say, Well, if you dragons don’t want to eat these damsels, you want to seduce them. Check out my anatomy and re-think that statement. Your damsel’s no more appealing than a toothpick, no matter how red her lipstick is. The next time you see a damsel in distress, I promise you it’s not because a dragon’s in the vicinity. She’s probably freaking out because she missed her appointment with the manicurist or put a run in the only pantyhose that match her frilly dress. Hey, I’m just telling it like it is. Don’t you want a truthful dragon?
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A Cookie Jar
Rajan Sedalia
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Help make Comicality a permanent publication at VCU! Or these swans die.
Email vcucomicality@gmail.com if you want to be considered for a staff position including executive editor, managing editor, designer, writer, cartoonist and PR specialist for next year. Comicality 45
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Easter
Christine Stoddard
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Forgotten Fairytales
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Marvel vs. DC Movies Paul Shuey In recent years, there has been a surge of movies based on comic books. The two main companies that the characters for these movies come from are Marvel and DC. Marvel has released decidedly more films than DC has, and I don’t think it’s simply because they have a better distribution company than DC. I’m going to throw some numbers at you. In the past ten years, Marvel characters have been in twenty wildly released films, with three coming out later this year. In comparison, DC has had twelve films in the last ten years and only one coming out this year. Marvel movies have made over seven billion dollars, whereas DC has
made less than half. Marvel movies have featured nine characters that have their own comic titles, with many of those characters getting a second or third movie; DC movies have only featured 3, only one of which got a sequel. Those are some pretty drastic differences, ones that can be traced back to the characters themselves. Something Marvel prides itself on is how realistic and grounded their characters are. At least, as realistic as characters that can fly and bench press tanks can be. All the cities that their superheroes protect are real cities, mostly New York City. Despite the fact that they’re gods or aliens or whatever, they have “real people problems” that readers can identify with.
DC on the other hand is all about suspension of disbelief. They’ve made up a dozen cities and countries for their heroes to live in. Plus, these characters have the burden of being super-powered. They must protect the universe from all the pure evil there is. Many of the origin stories are fantastical and do not relate to the guy on the street. Take the origin stories of two of the movies coming out this year, Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger and DC’s Green Lantern. Captain America was once a normal guy who got put in an experimental program to make a super soldier. It worked and now he is the pinnacle of human potential. Green Lantern is a stubborn guy who got a magic
ring from an alien that can make things he imagines real. This dissimilarity is very apparent when you compare these two movies. Captain America is actually pretty normal; he just has ginormous muscles. Green Lantern is just a guy, but he has the power to take over a world (as has happened in the comics). People don’t find characters with otherworldly power very relatable and aren’t usually sympathetic to their problems. This is a very basic quality of people that can’t simply be overcome. Because of this, DC is doomed to have poor turnouts for their movies, and Marvel will continue to flourish.
Will Eisner at the VCU Library! Cindy Jackson Did you know that VCU Libraries has been the repository for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards Archives since 2005? The collection is part of VCU Libraries’ Comic Arts Collection located in Special Collections and Archives on the fourth floor of the James Branch Cabell Library on the Monroe Park campus. The Eisner Awards have been given annually since 1988 for creative achievement in comic books and are named for Will Eisner. The Archives contains over 1,500 items that were both nominated and won in over 20 different categories. The collection contains comic books, graphic novels, books about comics, journals, and even actual awards. The prestigious award is often referred to as the “Oscars” of the comic industry. Some of the items added to the collection include: Umbrella
Academy: Deluxe Edition signed by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba; Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1; Aikra; Alan Moore’s Lost Girls; DC: The New Frontier; Frank Miller’s 300; Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life; The Best American Comics; and Cartoonist on Cartooning. These and many, many more titles can be found in the VCU Libraries’ online catalog by searching “Will Eisner Comic Industry Award.” So just who is this Will Eisner and why is he so important to comics? Will Eisner (1917-2005) was a groundbreaking American writer and artist who pioneered the use of comics as an educational tool and helped establish the modern graphic novel as a literary genre with his seminal 1978 work, A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories. Eisner also wrote numerous books about the technical side of comic arts, including titles like Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling.
Comics as an educational tool? Yeah right. Eisner was already famous for his work on the 1940s era Sunday newspaper comic-insert “The Spirit” when he was drafted for duty during World War II. While in the service, Eisner put his artistic talents to work in Army publications, creating a character named Joe Dope. After the war, the Army wanted to design a publication dedicated to preventive maintenance that soldiers would actually want to read, and turned to Eisner’s company, American Visuals Corp. The result was PS Magazine, where Eisner served as artistic director from its inception in 1951 through 1972. Each issue of PS Magazine consisted of a color comicbook style cover, eight pages of four-color continuity story in the middle, and a wealth of technical, safety and police information printed in two colors. VCU Libraries’ PS Magazine Collection consists
of 145 regular issues, three special issues and 14 index issues generously donated Fred D. Faulkner in early 2007; the digital collection now features a total of 229 regular issues, three special issues and 22 index issues. You can check out the digital copies online at http://dig.library.vcu.edu. All this stuff is cool, but can I use it? The VCU Libraries’ Comic Arts Collection is not limited to just researchers. Anyone is welcomed to use the collection, even if you just want to read. Just keep in mind that all materials in Special Collections and Archives do not circulate. Feel free to stop by anytime during our regular hours of Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information: See our webpage at www.library.vcu. edu/comics or contact Cindy Jackson, Archival Asst. for Comic Arts, at hcjackson2@vcu.edu.
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Caption contest
Say what????? Comicality’s Premiere Caption Contest?????
Did you ever want to be a comics writer? Do you have wit, charm and pizazz? Well, even if you don’t, now’s the time to show off your mental shine in the FIRST EVER COMICALITY CAPTION CONTEST!!! Da Rulez: Write your hilarious caption in silver Sharpie® on a sheet of 6.976”x4.54” unlined florescent pink paper. Include your name, email address, and phone number on a different sheet of paper—doesn’t matter what kind, as long as it’s bright white 80# cover. Mail your submission in a manilla envelope with seven stickers on BOTH the front and back of the envelope. Address the envelope to Comicality Magazine, c/o Miss Christine Stoddard, P.O. Box 4844, Richmond, VA 23220. Be sure to add one more stamp than necessary. All submissions failing to follow these guidelines will be fed to a docile Beagle/Husky mix. Prize: A big ol’ bag of bragging rights. Maybe a piece of butterscotch. Comicality 49
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Artist bios Mike Cody makes his living as a graphic designer and illustrator in Richmond, Virginia. He has worked mainly in the printing and publishing business, but also enjoys studying painting. One of his favorite themes to illustrate is the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The piece shown here illustrates a scene from At The Earth’s Core. David Fuchs: Co-editor of this darn comics rag, as well as a writer, artist, and aspiring fulltime motion graphics guy. Chris “Kilika” Malone’s bio comic script: Panel 1: Chris is working at his desk super late at night. Panel 2: Show that Chris work is illustrating comic strips, books, and kids’ books. Panel 3: Chris takes a break from making comics by reading other cartoonists’ work. Panel 4: Reveal that Panel 2’s term “work” is for lack of a better word. Being a cartoonist is one of the most awesome and fun gigs ever. Check out his work at www.blueandblond. com! Bill Lemmond: “The main reason I started cartooning is to help depressed people. I’ve been in remission for a dozen years now; it’s how I finally got through college. I had spent decades wishing for a terminal illness. I communicate much better through writing, especially cartooning. My doctor says I’m just autistic enough that people only think, “He knows better; he’s just a jerk who doesn’t care.” I’m also missing a quarter century of
social experience most people my age take for granted.” Josephine Russell: An aspiring illustrator/comic book writer/ Gil Elvgren-wannabe. Currently enrolled in Communication Arts at VCU with hopes of one day ruling over all people of the free world. Her interests include pinup girls, death metal, and any form of digital media. Personal motto: Live long and prosper, go forth and die. Rajan Sedalia’s comic strip, Cookie Jar, touches on human relationships at a microscopic level. Blending the boundaries of comics, graffiti art and industrial design, Rajan’s work includes inventions, art and new product designs created for BMW, the CIA, Hasbro and J Crew. Recognized by Newsweek “Who’s Next Readers’ Choice,” www.artjar.com highlights the latest work featured during a PBS interview and The CBS Evening News. He can be reached at hello@artjar.com. Klaus Shmidheiser: “I don’t know about writing a bio. I feel weird about that. Just make up something funny and exciting.”
Ya know, for the ones who weren't total bums and took 30 seconds to write theirs. His website is aboutjared. wordpress.com. Jared met Hillmon Ancrum, who lives in Columbus, GA, on a comicbook website and they’ve been making comics together for over a year a half. Space Radio was their first project, and they are now working on a webbased comic called Bad News Kids.
And the prize for the longest bio goes to... our (not-so) snobby academic type! John Boyer is a senior instructor and researcher in the Department of Geography at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He has served in this position for over ten years, during which time he has conducted multiple research projects on the viticulture industries of Virginia and North Carolina. Boyer is a long time VT resident, receiving an B.A. in Geography in 1996 and an M.S. in Geography in 1998, both from Virginia Tech. His original thesis work (Thesis title: Geographic Analysis of Viticulture Potential in Virginia, 1998) produced a
series of map packages which highlighted viticulture potential across a wide area of the Commonwealth. This mapping project has been widely utilized within the state, and emulated by other states, to encourage and facilitate ‘smart growth’ of the viticulture industries. In addition, Boyer teaches large sections of the very popular World Regional Geography and Geography of Wine courses. He has received numerous awards for teaching including the 2002 University Sporn Award for Excellence in Teaching Introductory Subjects at Virginia Tech; 2002 Inducted into the Virginia Tech Academy of Teaching Excellence (ATE); 2002 National Council for Geography Education Distinguished Teach Achievement Award; and Student Alumni Associates (SAA) Student’s Choice Award for Faculty Member of the Year; 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011. He also taught the largest class in the history of Virginia Tech: in Fall of 2008 and Fall 2010, there was a single section of World Regional Geography of 2750 students.
Christine Stoddard: Founder and co-editor of this darn comics rag; artist; journalist; street urchin. Jared Throne was born in California but grew up moving around the country with his family and eventually settled in Virginia where he became a Christian. He now attends VCU and is an aspiring comic book writer and musician.
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