Alexa Polito set up in the lobby of this year's AnimeUSA con in Woodley Park. She sold me a copy of her mini-comic Rough Sex Vol. 1: A NSFW Sketchbook and answered our usual questions after the show.
Washington City Paper: What type of artwork do you do?
Alexa Polito: I do character illustration, focusing on cool [...]
In which we take a look at a great big pile of review copies of comic books, cartoons, and graphic novels. This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Read Part 1 here.
Anyone mourning the gradual shrinking and axing of comic strips in newspapers should consider the comic-strip reprint collection. One of this year's most [...]
In which we take a look at a great big pile of review copies of comic books, cartoons, and graphic novels.
Somehow with the turn of the millennium, a weird cartoon switcheroo occurred, and alternative cartoonists became more mainstream than mainstream cartoonists. Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Adrian Tomine are regulars in the New Yorker. [...]
Gordon Harris has recently published his first graphic novel, Pedestrian, which he says is “an original full-color post-apocalyptic graphic novel without zombies or vampires.” His press release describes the book’s plot as “Ray, the pedestrian, wanders the post-apocalyptic suburbs and discovers a mysterious package, an elaborate tree house, and carrier pigeons. He meets [...]
David Miller is responsible for The Writer's Block, a how's it done? comic book where comics writers "are given the same chapter of continuity to script without knowing anything about the plot or being allowed to speak to one another. The authors let their muses take them (and you) on a unique comics reading [...]
Dale Rawlings is a member of the local comics co-op DC Conspiracy, which regularly sets up at the Small Press Expo. He publishes his own minicomics and contributes in the Conspiracy's anthology books and Magic Bullet newspaper. Rawlings is currently illustrating a story about the War of 1812 and the Decauter House for the [...]
Mark Burrier is an illustrator, cartoonist, and skateboard painter whose illustration work appears in the Washington Post’s editorial pages. His cartoon works are mostly minicomics, which he often self-publishes, and at least one's been nominated for an award at the Small Press Expo. He also does advertising work using comics. Burrier had a table at the [...]
Michael Uslan has to be one of the world's most powerful comics fans. He attended the very first comic book convention in the 1960s, taught what was probably the first academic course for credit on comics, and was a producer of all the modern Batman movies. Now, he’s penned The Boy Who Loved Batman, about his [...]
Mike Imboden's indie superhero book Fist of Justice first caught my eye in 2005, when one of its covers quoted a classic Jack Kirby/Vince Colleta Hercules vs. Thor battle (Thor No. 126, for those keeping score). Oddly enough, superheroes are under-represented in small press comics, perhaps because they are so over-represented in mainstream ones. Imboden [...]
Colleen Frakes is a cartoonist who is completely new to me, embarrassingly enough, so here's her biographical information lifted directly from her website: "Colleen Frakes makes comics and works in a library. She was a member of the inaugural class of the Center for Cartoon Studies, and was awarded a Xeric Grant to publisher her [...]
