Janelle Asselin
A Weak Spot for Fantasy Elements: Aatmaja Pandya [Hire This Woman]
Aatmaja Pandya is a cartoonist who specializes in doing minicomics and zines as well as webcomics. Some of her past projects include The Bell Blues, Baker’s Dozen, and Travelogue, which is the webcomic she's currently working on.
Meet the Swashbuckling, Smutty, Tough Pirate Women of ‘Dreadful Sirens’
Yesterday, Karla Pacheco and Steve LeCouilliard launched a brand new comic called Dreadful Sirens based on real female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, which their website promises will be updated weekly at DreadfulSirens.com. It is pretty darn NSFW (even the website before you get to the comics is NSFW) but also pretty great. Dreadful Sirens is a webcomic in that it is on the web, but you have a few options to view it, including reading or downloading through Gumroad and their pay-what-you-like option. This way you can get great, entertaining, apparently misandrist comics for a price you can afford!
Marvel Introduces ‘A-Force Presents,’ An Anthology Collection Featuring Female Heroes
Marvel has announced a new bi-monthly book called A-Force Presents that will collect issues of various Marvel comics featuring female heroes in trade paperback format. Rather than the traditional collection of a single storyline, these collections will be more of sampler of what's going on at Marvel at any given time. This is a great idea from Marvel, and a really exciting example of how the publisher is taking women seriously as an audience.
Creators, Start Your Engines: Oni To Accept Submissions In May
Today, Oni Press announced that in May they will begin to accept submissions. This is a big deal in the comics world, as Marvel and DC don't accept unsolicited submissions and only some of the next tier of publishers ever do. Accepting submissions puts Oni in a better place to bring new talent into the industry, and to compete for that talent with the few publishers who do accept submissions, like Dark Horse.
‘Lighten Up’ is Ronald Wimberly’s Must-Read Commentary on Race In Comics
Today, The Nib released a beautiful and evocative comic by cartoonist Ronald Wimberly about race in comics. Wimberly tells the story of how a Marvel editor asked him to change the skin color of a character who had been historically Mexican and African-American. The editor wanted the character's skin tone to be lighter, and in Wimberly's piece he discusses why this is so problematic.
White privilege is absolutely a real thing, and the wide-ranging implications of this editor's request probably never occurred to her. Being an editor at a place like Marvel or DC means putting up with a punishing monthly schedule and many cooks in the same kitchen. Asking an artist to make a color change is pretty routine - and to many editors, this note would seem like a minor request. As Wimberly makes clear in his comic, however, the request has many problems.
Organic, Very Human: An Interview with E.K. Weaver [Hire This Woman]
Hire This Woman is a recurring feature on ComicsAlliance that shines a spotlight on female comics creators, whether they're relative newcomers or experienced pros who are ready to break out. In an overwhelmingly male business, we want to draw your attention to these creators --- and to raise their profile with editors and industry gatekeepers.
Cartoonist E.K. Weaver produced her webcomic The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal for five years and it is currently being collected in an omnibus that's being Kickstarted by Iron Circus Comics. She's also done things as varied as erotica for Smut Peddler and covers for Adventure Time.
The ‘Vocal Minority’ And Artistic Integrity In Comics
Things got interesting over the past few days for comics folks who keep their ear to online skirmishes over how welcoming comics is or isn't --- and how welcoming comics should be in the first place. Between the new Killing Joke-inspired and tonally jarring cover to Batgirl #41 (which was just pulled at artist Rafael Albuquerque's request, and in line with the creative team's wishes) and Erik Larsen going on a Twitter rant about comics pandering to a "vocal minority" that in his mind wanted superheroines covered up, it would be easy for readers interested in the new world order of "comics for everyone" to feel discouraged. After all, if some of the decision-makers at DC and one of the owners of Image Comics don't get it, how can we expect everyone else to get it? The answer is easy: we move on without them.
Kirby Krackle Urges You To ‘Mutate, Baby!’ With New Album
Nerd-rock group Kirby Krackle has been making geek rock and roll for years now, and is releasing their fifth studio album, Mutate, Baby today. The band sings about a little of everything related to geek culture: comics, video games, genre television, and general geek experiences. Their newest album has a lot in common with their previous albums, but it's also about putting a positive spin on geek life.
ComicsAlliance spoke with KK frontman Kyle Stevens to talk about this new album and the band's evolution and inspiration.
‘Symbolia’ Comics Magazine Calls It Quits After Current Issue
Symbolia magazine, the digital comics journalism brainchild of Erin Polgreen (editor and publisher) and Joyce Rice (creative director), just announced that their current issue will be their last. The issue just released is titled "The Future" and sadly marks the end of the magazine's two year run.
When Symbolia began two years ago, the landscape for comics was very different. Particularly when it came to comics journalism (in this case meaning journalism in the form of comics, not journalism about comics), Symbolia's mission was an ambitious one.
Paid to Draw: Lissa Treiman Talks ‘Giant Days’ and Disney Animation
Animator and artist Lissa Treiman is taking on her first regular comics work, after working at Disney Animation on movies like Wreck-It Ralph and Big Hero 6. She's teamed up with cartoonist John Allison to bring his webcomic Giant Days to the print comics world with Boom Studios. Treiman's style is charming and dynamic, as befits someone who works in animation, and the first issue of Giant Days is a lot of fun. ComicsAlliance spoke with Treiman about animation, storytelling, comics, and how she balances all of the above!