Come Up And See Me

The beautiful artwork of Stefari & Rhodora Jacob.
Come by BLICK and say hello.

July 16th @ BLICK

If you happen to be in the Seattle area this weekend, you should come see the amazing and diverse crowd of cartoonists who are participating in the Artist Alley, hosted at BLICK Art Materials this weekend.

BLICK is the hold-out arts supply store on Capitol Hill, and it's located in close proximity to Seattle Central Community College, on Pine and Broadway. 

I will only be tabling on Saturday, July 16th, so if you want to see me, come then.  But there will be artists there on Saturday and Sunday for you to visit.

I swore up and down earlier this year that I would table no events until I have new comics to sell.  Well.  I WILL have new comics in October, but I don't mind being at BLICK with Gone Girl Comics 1 & 2 plus Jezinkas.  It should be a new audience for me and I was part of the I Heart Comics Art awards. 

BLICK will be offering 50% Custom Framing discounts as well as other in store promotions. See you there! Special thanks to BLICK and Ladykiller for hosting.

Hot Off The Press: A Cool Summer Book Fair

A wide view of the event.  I'm hanging out in hot pink.

Me with cartoonist and poster artist extraordinaire, Pat Moriarity.
Behind us, wielding grilling tongs, is Seth Goodkind,
another fine Seattle cartoonist and co-founder of
Push/Pull Gallery.

The BLICK event will happen exactly one week after Hot Off The Press:  A Cool Summer Book Fair hosted by Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery.

I already knew there was a shindig going down at Fantagraphics last Saturday.  The Intruder, a free comics newspaper that I blogged about earlier here, decided to sunset their publication after four dedicated years and were throwing a sort of goodbye party there.  What I did not realize was that there was a mini tabling event featuring local independent cartoonists.

It was a sunny, sunny Seattle day and the artists were set up on the sidewalk.  I thought I was getting there early but the tables were full and I ended up setting up like a sunglasses salesman at a street fair (which I actually had fun with.  NO COMPLAINTS) between veteran cartoonist and illustrator Pat Moriarity and Eisner-Award winning cartoonist David Lasky. 

For Seriously.  Pat Moriarity and I both have stories in the Serbian anthology Skulptura? - though Pat did the cover!  I was thrilled to have such great neighbors.  Throw in the fact that we were also sharing space with the fabulous Fogland Studios and I couldn't have been in better company.

There were hot dogs, beverages, a ton of people, a lot of camaraderie, and I made enough in sales to buy a badly-needed new laser jet printer.  It's the kind of comics artist hang out you really want to be at - most of it most likely thanks to Fantagraphics heavy-hitters Larry Reid and Janice Headley.

The photos are by Mark Campos.  He's gotten good at the documentary thing.  You can find more event photos on the event Facebook page here.

Next week, I'll get back to the actual art.

Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

Grinding Up The Gears

Jezinkas!  My 18-page adaptation
of a Bohemian folk tale.
Now available on NoelFranklinArt Etsy.

Hello, Etsy!

So I've launched an Etsy shop.  Right now it only has a few mini comics on it, but I will be bulking it up with additional stories and lots of original arts in the coming two weeks.

You can find it here:  

https://www.etsy.com/shop/NoelFranklinArt

Once upon a time I had a shop associated with my website.  And then I foolishly allowed my URL to lapse and it was purchased by some URL brokerage and is being held ransom.  

DO NOT DO AS I HAVE DONE.  I totally need to relaunch a website.  

Until then, come on over and check my Etsy out!

Also know that I am available for commissions, including portraits, album and poster art or....try me.   You can contact me with requests at m.noel.franklin@gmail.com

 

Hometown Heroes and ECCC

The location of Hometown Heroes.
Emerald City Comicon is happening literally right up the
street, where Pine Street runs into Interstate 5.

Quick reminder come check out Hometown Heroes, an awesome sounding new comics event where you can sample the art and minicomics of 30 local Seattle independent creators.

The event happens on Friday, April 8th from 6:30 to 11:00.  The location is 1927 Events, just down the street from Emerald City Comicon.

You can check out the details on the Hometown Heroes Facebook Page. 

If you are going to be in attendance at Comicon, you can find me at the I Heart Comic Art Table, Booth L13 in the Artist Alley.

You can find full details here.

A work by Aaron Morgan from

Push/Pull Book Club Presents: The Master & Margarita

But What About Saturday?
Two Art Shows of Note.

Push/Pull Book Club Presents: The Master & Margarita

You already know I'm a big fan of Push/Pull Gallery in the Ballard district of Seattle.

Well, they are having a fantastic art show of works inspired by Mikhail Bulgakov's brilliant book The Master and Margarita.  

The show will feature work by Seattle artists Corianna Garrels, Maxx Follis, Melissa McClintock, Aaron Morgan and Mark Campos.
 

The event runs from 6 -10 PM on Saturday April 9th.  Full details here.

But wait, there's more!

A Tribute to CREPAX: Art Show + Book Launch

I would be remiss to not mention Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery's tribute to late Italian cartoonist Guido Crepax. The event features an exhibition of original art by contemporary American cartoonists including David Lasky, Peter Kuper, Benjamin Marra, Roberta Gregory, George Pratt, and Mark Wheatley, as well as reproductions from the Complete Crepax Volume 1. 

The opening on Saturday, April 9 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM includes film shorts by Brazilian artist Alex Korolkovas, a sound installation by Sérgio Rocha of Portugal, a limited edition Crepax companion publication, and other exclusive merchandise.

NEXT WEEK. . . Twilight Gallery!

Defeo's Deadly Rose.
One of two works I'll be exhibiting at
Science +/- Art show at Twilight Gallery.

I will have two works in the Science +/- Art show at Twilight Gallery.

Science+/-Art examines the interplay of art (empathy, creativity, subjectivity) and science (categorization, rules, objectivity).

The show opens April 14th from 6-9pm during the West Seattle Art Walk and runs through May 28th.

Featuring artists include myself, Marie Hausauer, Jody Joldersma, Satpreet Kahlon and Jess Rees.

I LOVE THIS SHOW!!! And it may be my last gallery show for a while.  So stop on by!

Until next week!

C-log posts on comics, publication and community that publishes on Tuesdays.

 

Gone Girl - Origins

The NYT best seller.
Image from Wikipedia.

Sometimes if you begin a manuscript, stamp a title on it and then let it percolate for a decade, someone else publishes a New York Times best-selling book under the same name before you get yours underway.  OK, I'm sure it doesn't always happen that way, but that is what happened to me.

 

 Gone Girl the Prose Memoir

In 2006, I participated in National Write a Novel Month (NaNoWriMo) with the goal of creating a minimum 55,000-word manuscript.  I took a blood oath to complete the project along with two fellow artist and writers.  By November 30th I had written 77,000 words of a memoir outlining the years leading up to and after a friend's death.  I meant it to be an interesting travelogue that just happened to include a tragedy.  

Toast to our lost friends!  Taken on November 29, 2006
after typing the last words of my NaNoWriMo draft.
(It really was that cold in my apartment.)

It was not the Great American Novel, which is forgivable from an unedited manuscript written in 30 consecutive  late evenings.   The process did get the raw material onto the page, though, and--while I pushed the project aside to work on professional projects--it started a process that I hope will eventually lead to a work worthy of the subject.

The 1995 Cover.

 

 

Gone Girl the Poetry Chap Book

The obvious reason for titling my manuscript Gone Girl is that the book included two female lead characters and one of them goes away.  The less obvious fact is that I was falling back on a title I had already used in 1995.  It was the title of one of the poems I used to read on Portland, OR Spoken Word stages and later used as the title of my first poetry chapbook, which is copyrighted 1995.  

One night I was going to perform at Portland's historic Cafe Lena, and I told the poet Douglas Spangle that I was nervous.  When they called me to stage, he yelled "You Go Girl!" and when I walked off after reading he shouted "You're GONE Girl!" It stuck with me.

 

Gone Girl Comics - Then and Now

Gone Girl the poetry chap book also contains my first comic.  It's a four page silent comic that only has two word, GIMP and HEAL, spelled out in sign language at the beginning and end of the story.  Ten years later, I drew my second comics story--an illustration of a poem by David Lasky--and another 5 or so years after that I published my first all-out minicomic.  

Gone Girl, the novel by Gillian Flynn, came out shortly before I put out Gone Girl Comics #1, and I was unaware of it.  When people started referencing it, I didn't pay much attention.  Lots of things share titles.  Then her book sold very, very well and now the movie.  

Page 1 of 4 of my first comic.

I am disappointed, because all of the comics work I've done up to date has been preparation for
converting my initial manuscript into a full-length graphic novel under the title Gone Girl.  I have friends who pseudo-jokingly goad me to sue for the name, since I published first, but there's very little chance Gillian came across my 600-run self-published poetry/comic hybrid, to begin with.  And I'll leave fame-via-litigation to former Jerry Springer contestants er...special guest speakers.

On top of everything else, I've had women roll their eyes at me without even masking their condescension when reading the title of Gone Girl Comics.  Even if it lived in my mind first, and I'm attached to it, some faction from the Court of Public Opinion will always judge against my use of Gone Girl as a title for anything literary.

 

One cover image from the
Real Gone Girl site.
Courtesy Miriam Libicki

 

Other Gone Girls

My Gone Girl is gone.  I've changed the title of my pending graphic novel to Girl on A Road, which is a song by Ferron, suggested by cartoonist Mark Campos.  But it's worth noting that Gillian Flynn just might have lifted the title Gone Girl from a short story of the same name by noir writer Lew Archer.

I'd also like to mention Real Gone Girl comics by Miriam Libicki.  Miriam lives in Canada and creates beautifully rendered and well-written autobio comics about her service in the Israeli army during the second Intifada, among other things.  Though our comics have shared a similar name, I can't imagine a much more different life than mine, and I'm really happy that the whole copyright issue led me to discovering her stories and artwork. Be sure to check her work out here.

C-log posts on comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

Sweet! Celebrate! (Get To Work!)

I don't think I could call myself a comics blogger without mentioning the San Diego Comic-Con that happened over the weekend.  Though I hear stories that it's become a playground for video game releases and blockbuster movie swag, it is still the spot where they hand out the coveted Eisner Awards.

This book won the 2013 Eisner for "Best Reality-Based Comic."
If you don't own it already, you should!

The Eisners!  They are the Oscars of the comics creating world.  And this is the second year I've been able to bask in hometown pride.  Last year, Seattle cartoonists David Lasky and Frank Young brought home the Eisner for "Best Reality-Based Comic" for their graphic novel The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song.   I highly recommend it, and you can read more about it at Carter Family Comics:  Don't Forget This Blog!  

THIS year,  Fantagraphic swept the Eisners!

Artists and stories published by the Seattle-based comics company took home three top awards.  The Fantagraphics wins are particularly poignant not only because of the passing of Fantagraphics publisher, Kim Thompson, this year but also because many believe recognition of Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez - the creators of Love and Rockets - is long overdue.

I copped this image of Gilbert and
Jaime Hernandez from the
Fantagraphics blog, here!

Fantagraphics has an excellent write up about it on their own blog, here.

I am personally very excited that Jaime Hernandez was awarded "Best Artist of the Year."  He created the character Maggie for the series "Music for Mechanics."  She was a teenage female latino punk mechanic, and I related to her a great deal as a teenage female mixed-Native goth arc welder. 

If the character correlations weren't strong enough, I'll let you in on a secret.  I currently go by my middle name, Noel, but my first name is actually Margaret.  No really, Maggie and I share the same first name.  So, there you go.  I often felt like Jaime was somehow eerily ghosting my life is some of Maggie's stories.

All "WOW-that-character-is-just-like-me!" stories aside, though, Jaime's artwork is incredibly well-executed.  It's rare to find that great of a story-teller and artist in the same human being.

I'm celebrating my own small win, this weekend.  No Eisners, but my story Shipyard Espionage has been accepted for publication by the Indie Ladies Comic Anthology for 2014.  It rounds out this year's projects nicely and will give me another publication I can offer at my table at Short Run in November. 

(Public Service Announcement:  BOTH Short Run applications and Indie Ladies Comic submissions close on July 31st.  If you read this on the Tuesday I publish it, get thee to their application sites!)

A portrait of my former self drawn into Shipyard Espionage (right)  as
Maggie the Mechanic from Love and Rockets (left, by Jaime Hernandez).

I put a lot into the story Shipyard Espionage.  It's a 7-page autobiographical story about working in a large shipyard in Bellingham.  It's a story about work and art.  I'm hoping it will serve as a calling card for what I want to do with my graphic novel.  And because it's about my days as a welder, I drew an homage to Maggie the Mechanic on the 2nd page.  To be truthful, I feel like I'm going to have to give Jaime Hernandez a visual nod at some point, so why not now, early on in my comics making life?

Now that Shipyard Espionage is done, I'm busy creating a short story on the history of the Chicago Picasso, a 50-Foot sculpture that Picasso donated to the City of Chicago when they built Daley Plaza in the 1960s.  I'll be writing about next week.  Not only is it an interesting story, but I'm telling it for an interesting project.


So back to it!

C-log posts on comics, publication and community every Tuesday.

Comics and Medicine

Today's C-log is a guest Blog by Meredith Li-Vollmer.  Meredith is a risk communication specialist for Public Health - Seattle & King County here in Washington State who spearheaded the project Comics 4 Health Coverage.  I did a 4-panel comic for the project because so very many fine cartoonists were discussing their involvement in Comics 4 Health Coverage that I had to learn more about it for myself. 

Here is Meredith to tell you about her project and the 

Comics and Medicine community: 

 

“You mean there are others like you?”

When I told my public health colleagues that I was going to a conference called Comics & Medicine, this was the bemused response I got. And truthfully, as I sat surrounded by 285 people from 12 countries in a lecture hall at Johns Hopkins Medical Campus, I was giddy and astounded by how many share my quirky interest.

David Lasky and Meredith Li-Vollmer hawking their
pandemic flu comic book at Comics & Medicine marketplace.

Our eclectic crowd included cartoonists, clinicians, linguists, bioethicists, medical illustrators, and literary scholars, gathered to share our work and generate new directions for comics. I’ve been collaborating with cartoonist David Lasky on educational comics about pandemic influenza and other dire public health topics since 2007, but I had no idea how many other ways people were using comics in medicine and health.

The conference featured a staggering 70+ talks demonstrating the power of graphic narrative to help people intimately grapple with the complexity of health and medical issues. For instance, fellow Seattleite Ellen Forney gave an amazing reading/lecture/performance piece that explored her diagnosis of bipolar disorder as detailed in her graphic memoir, Marbles. In Marbles, Forney masterfully used the visual vocabulary of comics to convey the intensity of her emotional states and to explain how she reconciled her diagnosis with her identity as an artist.

Artwork by Lydia Gregg, Chair and Lead
Organizer for Comics & Medicine.  Lydia
is an Instructor and Certified Medical
Illustrator at Johns Hopkins University School
of Medicine.

It’s that ability to flesh out the inner life of a character and make visual the sensations experienced that makes comics so well suited for stories about physical and mental health. And creating comics also offers possibilities of transformation for those who create them. In Vermont, James Sturm, co-founder of the Center for Cartoon Studies, is helping veterans with PTSD and substance abuse issues use comics as a way of communicating—and processing—what they went through. In the impoverished Dharavi neighborhood of Mumbai, Benita Fernando is teaching locals to make comics as a means of expressing their concerns about sanitation issues and talking about mental health.

Several physicians gave talks about the use of comics to reflect upon their clinical and medical school experiences, a practice that is gaining traction in a few medical education programs. The Annals of Internal Medicine even has a call out for comics after an enthusiastic response from their readership when they published Missed It, a comic by Dr. Michael Green that tells about a missed diagnosis he made as an intern.

Importantly, graphic memoirs are providing a platform for patients to tell their own stories, shifting the perspective of illness narratives from the doctor-driven case studies. David Brenner and the cartoonist Mindy Indy presented on No Tears: Life with FD. This weekly webcomic about living with familial dysautonomia (FD), a rare, life-threatening disease, has created a community of rare disease patients who can relate to the humanizing depictions of daily struggles and moments of levity.

I gave a presentation on Comics 4 Health Coverage, a project I spearheaded with a small group of comics scholars and cartoonists in Seattle to tell personal stories about health insurance. Why health insurance? After reading several graphic memoirs related to illness, we were struck by the centrality of health insurance to these memoirs: for example, would Ken Dahl, author of Monster, have suffered such self-loathing and isolation if he had been able to afford the test for herpes sooner? What if Marisa Acocella Marchetta, the uninsured protagonist of Cancer Vixen, had not had a wealthy boyfriend who could cover the costs of her chemo treatment?

Noel Franklin's contribution to
Comics 4 Health Coverage

We were also highly aware of the low levels of insurance among artists and writers, so when enrollment opened for Obamacare, we issued a call for comics on why health insurance matters. We hoped that personal stories told through comics would spark thoughts or discussion, and perhaps motivate others to explore their coverage options. The idea had resonance, as seen in the range of stories we received from both seasoned and first-time cartoonists about what it means to have—or not have—health insurance, candidly told in four panels. And the presentation on the project certainly drew interest at Comics & Medicine, most notably from attendees from England and Brazil who were flabbergasted at the lack of universal coverage in this country.

In retrospect, it’s not that surprising that there were so many of us willing to travel to Baltimore to talk Comics & Medicine. Fans of the comic medium know the power of comics to transport readers into the experience of another. So it makes perfect sense that people with interests in health and medicine are increasingly using comics to tell stories about some of the most profound human experiences.

It was inspiring and liberating to be surrounded by so much creativity and passion related to my professional field. I haven’t drawn much since my teen years, but after this conference, I’ve been drawing a quick comic every day so that I can be more than just a writer of health comics. The next Comics & Medicine conference will likely be in Riverside, CA.  Care to join others like me?

Meredith Li-Vollmer

C-log posts on comics, publication and community every Tuesday.