Inkstuds

Jessica Campbell stopped by my office during her book tour promoting new book from Koyama , Hot Or Not. It’s a really funny look at modern artists as creators and as objects. Jessica has a really great sense of humour in her work that comes through quite nicely in Hot Or Not. Jessica also has a smattering of comics on her site and a couple of minis from the much missed Oily comics subscripti...

Anya Davidson joined me to chat about her new book from Fantagraphics, Band For Life . It’s an amazing complex look at relationships and people under the guise of a story of a punk noise band. I really enjoyed this book and was quite taken by characters. I highly recommend checking it out. Her other new work is Lovers in the Garden from Retrofit. A much smaller work than Band for Life, but u...

Photo by Whit Spurgeon My second interview at CXC in Columbus was a conversation between Noah Van Sciver and Seth. It was a blast to do. We threw it together last minute at the end of the day on saturday. It was neat to bring these 2 great talents into a room together. You can tell a lot of these seasoned comics vets have a lot of respect admiration for Noah and it comes through in this. Noah&#821...

Vancouver cartoonist, Troy Nixey joined us for a chat before he moved off to Alberta. Troy’s probably most known for his collaborations with Mike Mignola on writing duties, including the stellar Batman story, the Doom Came to Gotham as well as Jenny Finn. More recently, Troy has returned to comics after directing the movie, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. His most recent story The Black S...

While at the CXC comics show in Columbus, I did a couple of interviews in these weird little pod study rooms just off of the festival floor. It was very convenient to have and easy to use. My first interview was with Sean T Collins. Sean has been involved comics criticism since the early 2000’s. He has been on the inkstuds before for a critics roundtable many years. I don’t see Sean ve...

Last month, I had a privilege to host a panel on Comics with local Vancouver cartoonists and artists for the Canadian book design recognizing, Alcuin Society . I was joined by Sarah Leavitt , Nick Bantock and Johnnie Christmas . It was a fun conversation. If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon .

Tillie is a cartoonist from Austin, Texas who has released three books over the past two years from the UK publisher Avery Hill. The first was THE END OF SUMMER, a gorgeous story of a family who is about to lock themselves into a giant, maze-like mansion at the beginning of a three-year winter. I would†ve been curious to talk to her based on that dream-like family epic alone, but then she releas...

Cartoonist and publisher Kevin Czap joined me to talk about the new Kickstarter for his 2017 releases by other artists.   His latest book Fütchi Perf is a fantastic collection exploring some really forward looking story telling techniques. It’s a fantastic book. If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon .

I talked to Lawrence “Rawdog” Hubbard about his new collection from Fantagraphics . Real Deal collects the first seven issues of his self published series Real Deal. Originally concieved with writing partner, HP McElwee aka “RD Bone”, Real Deal is one of the most intense visceral comics I have read in a while. Coming out the early 90s in LA, Real Deal is a violent masterpie...

Powerhouse cartoonist team, Leslie Hung and Bryan Lee O’Malley , join guest host Sloane Leong at SDCC to talk about their new debut comic SNOTGIRL ! Leslie is an elegant illustrator and consummate cartoonist and Bryan’s virtuoso comic storytelling voice rings out strong as ever in this unique comic collaboration.

What happens when two cartoonists go for smoothies and talk comics. While Becca Tobin was in town for Vancaf, occasional Inkstuds co-host Brandon Graham met up with her talk about her great comics and paintings. Becca has a book from the great F rontier series out of Youth In Decline. Becca has since returned to the UK and continues to do amazing work. If you like this podcast and want to hear mor...

With the recent passing of cartoonist Geneviève Castrée, I thought it would be a good week to skip regular scheduled programing and revisit this interview. I really enjoyed it and got a lot out of the conversation. We discuss her graphic novel from Drawn and Quarterly, Susceptible .  It’s a Canadian great. I found it really impactful personally on a number of different levels. Geneviève...

I had been a fan of Brendan McCarthy’s work for quite a long time. Back when I was a teenager working in a comic store in the mid 90s, seeing the Shade covers he was doing were a revelation of this other weird world in comics that we weren’t seeing in my suburban-Canadian-West Coast comic store. I had followed his work as it appeared across my hands, in his own DC Solo book and the eve...

We’re back to talk to Gabby Schulz aka Ken Dahl, author of the collection WELCOME TO THE DAHL HOUSE published by Microcosm in 2007, the Ignatz award-winning book MONSTERS from Secret Acres in 2009, recently back in print in a handsome new edition , and SICK , out this month from Secret Acres. SICK is the story of the author being laid down by an illness in his cramped Brooklyn apartment. The...

You can only see her through a telescope anymore. Or is it a rifle scope? In diegetic terms, it is a telescope, but they can seem very much like the same thing. Regardless, it is now the only way to see her. Trevlin Utz drew comics professionally from 1994 to 1998. For the first three years he worked collaboratively, at a Virginia publisher he outlasted. For the last two, he worked alone, for an I...

Tom Ellard is the main mind behind Australian music project, Severed Heads . Their work in the early 80’s was well ahead of the curve for electronic music. Albums like Since the Accident have aged quite nicely 30 years later. This interview was conducted last year in advance of a north american tour. I recorded this interview last summer. I had lofty ambitions of doing a podcast interviewing...

Tim Hensley is among the many great living underappreciated cartoonists. His work is impeccably crafted, witty, inventive, it feels at once frozen and alive, questioning constantly the language, the medium, the relationship between drawings and words. There†s no one like him. Dan Clowes described Wally Gropius as “a work of unassuming genius that rewards on ever-deepening levels on each re-rea...

As a follow up to last weeks show, this weeks is the second panel, this time featuring Brandon Graham, David Brothers, Adam Warren, Meredith Gran and Farel Dalrymple. And of course, all this was hosted by the great and inquisitive Sloane Leong. The topic of this panel was about manipulating narrative time and space on the page through paneling styles, drawing styles, narration, staging and pacing....

This weeks studs is a little different. Inkstuds regular guest host, Sloane Leong did a couple of really interesting panels on comics with some great folks at Emerald City Comicon in March. This is the first. It features Brandon Graham, David Brothers, Jen Wang, and Meredith Gran. An amazing crew of fantastic cartoonists. The panel said that they would discuss alternative story structure, story th...

Prolific web-cartoonist, Evan Dahm, joined me to talk about hist latest self published work, Vattu . Evan’s work is extremely enjoyable to read. I really liked seeing where his work went, eschewing standard fantasy tropes to fully explore these weird world’s he has created. If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon .

Malachi Ward makes beautiful, intricate science fiction and fantasy comics. The stories are set in richly illustrated, fantastic landscapes, addressing existential questions and carrying a certain dark edge that I appreciate and associate with some of the very best science fiction writing in prose or comics. I was eager to talk about his recent work: a new short story collection from Alternative C...

Minneapolis cartoonist Caitlin Skaalrud joined me to talk about her fantastic book, Houses of the Holy . It’s a really strong debut graphic novel. Caitlin takes some big chances in making this book and succeeds. If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon .

Sophie Goldstein joined me to talk about her soon to be concluded series, House of Women. Sophie’s work has an amazing humanity and depth to it. I really enjoyed this series and her book from Adhouse, The Oven . We had some technical issues over skype, so there is some editing on this to splice it together. If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds o...

I’ve been wanting to interview Ryan Heshka for a quite a while. His painted work has long been a proud gem of the Vancouver illustration scene. His work has been featured in Blab and shown a string of fantastic galleries. We got together to talk about his latest work, Mean Girls Club from NoBrow. It was originally published as a risograph book to accompany an art installation, Mean Girls isÂ...

In advance of his comics trip to North America, HTML Flowers aka Grant Gronewold joined me to talk about his art, comics and music. We also cover his personal health in some detail, which relates a lot to his comics. His series of mini comics, No Visitors, which is orderable right now , are extremely revealing looks into one person navigating chronic health conditions in modern medical bureaucracy...