Filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro keeps his obsessions close at hand. They have a home in his numerous sketchbooks and notebooks that are filled with detailed drawings and notes for his fantasy films. In many respects, Del Toro’s notebooks are where his phantasmagoric imagery gestates and eventually blossoms into fully-developed visual metaphors and motifs. Del Toro’s   Read More …

Sometimes, artists have to wait for the audience to catch up to the edgy velocity of the actual work. Comics creator Lawrence Hubbard is gradually finding that a new audience is growing hip to his outrageous, no-holds-barred comic-book assualt of the senses known as Real Deal Comix. Earlier this summer, JJ Villard introduced me to   Read More …

Comics fans might be familiar with comics creator Guy Davis who brought his immense drawing talent to the table with Dark Horse Comics’ B.P.R.D comic series. But his exceptional drawing skills jump to a new level of dark grandeur with his magnum opus, The Marquis: Inferno that mixes the elegance and decadence of a period   Read More …

Various media outlets paid tribute to the late Joe Kubert, a major comics creator who passed away this summer. For the uninitiated, Kubert was the artist behind the gritty images in such comics as the World War II comic Sgt. Rock. Kubert’s signature drawing style and approach to storytelling in the comics medium were hugely influential,   Read More …

Last year, I posted a link on Facebook to this video where “The Colonel’s Son” by the late Chilean writer Robert Bolano, best known for such critically acclaimed novels as 2007′s The Savage Detectives and the 2008 epic novel 2666, is animated using the HTML-5 program. The result is a visually striking and brutal assault of   Read More …

With the year gradually drawing to a close, 2012 is proving to a career benchmark for comics creator Daniel Clowes. The Chicago-born cartoonist’s first museum retrospective The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist opened to popular and critical acclaim at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) and the exhibition features original artworks from his early creative   Read More …

Iranian comics creator Marjane Satrapi found her voice as an artist in her graphic memoir Persepolis, chronicling her adolescence during the 1979 revolution in Iran. The critically acclaimed non-fiction, coming-of-age comic was eventually adapted into an animated film that further broadened her audience. Now, Satrapi continues to grow as a filmmaker with her new film   Read More …

It’s always a good thing to see comics get positive ink in the mainstream media. The proof is National Public Radio’s recent article by Oliver Sava providing capsule reviews of five books exploding with comics art including the new monograph The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist. Fans of Clowes’ best-known graphic novel Ghost World   Read More …

The late Jean “Moebius” Giraud was hardly camera shy. In his later years, the artist’s interviews reveal a comics creator looking back fondly at his career that had a profound effect of a range of media. In the CTN’s An Evening with Moebius, the French artist discusses his groundbreaking art and stories in comics and   Read More …

As a huge fan of the late Jean “Moebius” Giraud, I found the BBC documentary Moebius Redux: A Life in Pictures to be a fascinating window into the art and life of this unique comics creator. For those unfamiliar with Moebius’ prolific body of work, the French artist’s futuristic images found a welcome home in the pages   Read More …

Comic creator Mark Waid is a pioneer and advocate for pushing comics into the digital frontier. The transition is unavoidable and Waid is helping to adapt comics for smart phones and other video screens. So, how will this impact comic-book stores and other venues that are linked to print media? That’s the question addressed in   Read More …

Comics and academia are an unstable and potentially volatile mix. I should know since I went through the gauntlet of teaching my own Comics and Graphic Narrative course at San Diego State University for two years. My students loved the opportunity to not only read and discuss major contemporary comics and graphic novels, but they   Read More …

My artist friend, Kiyoshi “Lucky” Nakazawa is teaching a new installment of his popular comics-making course at the Blue Rooster Arts Supplies (located at 3245 Casitas Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90039; phone: 323-661-9471) starting Wednesday, Aug. 15 through Sept. 19. The class meets on Wednesdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. and artists at all   Read More …

Finally! San Diego, home of Comic-Con International, can now boast that it has its very own school for aspiring cartoonists and comic-book artists! And not a minute too soon, I might add. The school is appropriately named Little Fish Comic Book Studio, located at 4837 Voltaire Street, San Diego, CA 92107. Little Fish offers artists   Read More …

My good friend, comic creator Ies Von Hebal will be promoting his comic-book series Sir Reel: Theatre of the Mind at this weekend’s Space City Con located in Austin, Texas (see links below). Von Hebal’s phantasmagoric, comic-book epic catapults readers into the terrifying netherworld of a bizarre catatonic mental patient who is the key of   Read More …

  Did you know that you could go to college to be a cartoonist? For those who relish the sequential art of words and pictures working in unison, Vermont’s Center for Cartoon Studies is the place to be. In this quiet corner of White River Junction, students learn from a dedicated faculty like James Sturm,   Read More …

If you’re new to comics or just curious about the art form, you might be asking yourself, “Where do I start?” Fortunately, the staff at Kotaku have put together a short primer to guide you through the process. Think of it as an instruction manual on where to get comics and what comics might be   Read More …

The cast of characters in Comics Are Everywhere includes the one-and-only artist extraordinaire JJ Villard. For those unfamiliar with Villard’s artworks, you can check out his evolving portfolio on Facebook and his Web site (see links below). Villard’s art-damaged eye candy is laced with riotous nightmares and stream-of-conscious rants that strike an unlikely balance that holds the   Read More …

Comic creator extraordinaire Daniel Clowes’ extraordinary body of work in alternative comics is hitting a new plateau of visibility and public awareness. Museum-goers and film enthusiasts alike can marvel at Clowes’ traveling career retrospective at the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) and the upcoming production of Oscar-winning film director Alexander Payne’s screen adaptation of his   Read More …

Here’s a no-brainer. Zombies are a hot commodity in pop culture! Well, a dead brainer is more like it. For a while, I’ve been developing an original idea for a comic and screenplay involving an undead protagonist (sorry, you won’t find any details here since I need to safeguard the concept) and I’ve been doing   Read More …