Archive for the 'comics' Category

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Jessica Campbell reads Hot or Not: 20th Century Male Artists

Published on October 4, 2016 0 Comments
Nov ’16
4
7:00 pm

hotornot_cover

The history of twentieth-century art is filled with men, but one key component has always been missing: which of these men are boneable, and which are not. Jessica Campbell has created the definitive resource on the subject in this hilarious rundown of male artist hotness and notness with her book Hot Or Not: 20th Century Male Artists, published by Koyama Press.

“Hot Or Not: 20th-Century Male Artists […] is a hilarious, slyly subversive exploration of subjectivity, and the criticisms ultimate- ly reveal more about the critic than they do the artists.” — Oliver Sava, The A.V. Club

“With the way Campbell reduces Borduas’s or Mondrian’s ab- stractions even further, or captures what’s cute about Calder’s mien, she poo-poos macho ideas of artistic greatness, at the same time she showcases her own slyly unassuming skill.” — Sean Rogers, The Globe and Mail

Jessica Campbell is from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and is an enthusiast of jokes, painting and comics. She completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was the recipient of the Edward L. Ryerson Fellowship, and also a comics instructor. She has exhibited work in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Greece, and was selected as one of NewCity’s 2015 breakout artists. She is a member of the Chicago-based comics collective Trubble Club and has published comics with micro press Oily Comics, and contributed to Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels.

For more info:

Facebook event post to invite your friends

jessicacampbellpainting.tumblr.com

bestjokes.tumblr.com

Koyama Press, Ed Kanerva at ed(at)koyamapress(dot)com

Friday, November 4th, 7pm – Free Event

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Anya Davidson Celebrates Band for Life 10/6

Published on September 7, 2016 5 Comments
Oct ’16
6
7:00 pm

bandforlife

Band for Life collects the beloved series that follows a misfit band of Chicago punks trying to be self-sustaining with their finances and friendships as they navigate the often confounding art world. It’s the story, told in comic strip form, of a noise rock band and their community of friends and acquaintances based in an alternate reality version of Chicago. Though beset with disaster at every turn and frequently reduced to squabbling, they stick together because the band is the fulcrum of their otherwise confounding lives, and together they help each other find their way.

Fusing elements of the classic British sitcom The Young Ones, as well as classic kids comic strips like Charles Schulz’s Peanuts and John Stanley’s Melvin Monster, Band for Life is a work of dark humor, but also infused with genuine affection for its cast; in many ways it is a love letter to creative people compelled to create, with no hope of financial reward.

“I was raised on old school adult comics from the ’60s to ’80s, the artwork of Pedro Bell, Overton Loyd and Ronald Stozo of the Parliament-Funkadelic Universe, Ralph Bakshi movies, and the like. When I came across Band For Life, I was immediately drawn in. The art reminded me of Funkadelic album covers, but with its own original swagger. The storylines spoke to my personal experience as a lifelong musician and band leader/member, in the same way that This Is Spinal Tap made me cry once I realized my life was as absurd as the movie. Anya Davidson is tapped into the very human experience that makes life in a band the story of family.” — Norwood Fisher (Fishbone)

“Anya Davidson gets that being in a band is generally about 5% playing music and 95% anything but. In true punk form, Band For Life kicks into high gear with page number one and never lets up.” — Brian Chippendale (Lightning Bolt)
“Anya’s comics look like Dick Sprang and Boody Rogers got locked in a Pez factory and were told they would not be released until they produced hundreds of pages of a gutter punk Herculoids meets Josie and the Pussycats soap opera dripping soul and neglect.” — Gary Panter (Jimbo)
“Band for Life is a warped and hilarious portrayal of the banality and adventure of bandhood from someone who lived it, but  embellished gloriously by Anya’s imagination. Fucked up, feminist and funny. If you have ever ground away late nights in a basement trying to desperately remember the bad songs you just wrote, you will recognize your strife here with ‘the Wildest Band on Earth’.” -Jessica Hopper, author & Editorial Director, MTV News

Anya Davidson was born in Sarasota, Florida in 1983. She graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. She is a cartoonist, musician, teaching artist and printmaker whose work appeared in many zines and anthologies, including Kramers Ergot and Best American Comics. Her debut graphic novel, School Spirits, was published by Picturebox Inc. The Ignatz award-winning series, “Band for Life” is her first book with Fantagraphics.

More info:
Facebook invite for this event. Tell your friends!
for press inquiries: Anna Pederson (event manager) pederson(at)fantagraphics(dot)com
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Dame Darcy Celebrates The Meat Cake Bible 10/14

Published on September 7, 2016 5 Comments
Oct ’16
14
7:00 pm

meatcakebible

Dame Darcy is one of the sui generis artistic talents of the past two decades — musician, actress, fortune teller, dollmaker, Gen X/feminist icon, and last but not least, cartoonist to the core — and has been bewitching readers for more than 20 years with her neo-Victorian horror/humor/romance comic Meat Cake. Alternating between one-off (often cruelly tragic) fairy tales and ongoing romps starring her eclectic cast of characters, including Effluvia the Mermaid, the roguish rou. Wax Wolf, Igpay the Pig-Latin pig, Stregapez (a women who speaks by dispensing Pez-like tablets through a bloody hole in her throat), the mischievous Siamese twins Hindrance and Perfidia, Scampi the Selfish Shellfish, the stalwart Friend the Girl, and the blonde bombshell Richard Dirt, all delineated in her inimitable luxurious scrawl, Meat Cake is like a peek into the most creative, deranged dollhouse you ever saw. The Meat Cake Bible is the definitive collection of the series, collecting every story from all 17 issues (1993-2008) — including “Hungry is the Heart,” Darcy’s legendary collaboration with Alan Moore — as well as new stories from the unpublished 18th issue. A gorgeous, unjacketed hardcover edition replete with cloth deboss, gold foil stamping, and a die-cut cover.

 

About Dame Darcy:

Renaissance woman Dame Darcy won a scholarship to the San Francisco Art institute at the age of 17 in 1989. There she majored in film and animation, studying under George Kuchar and Larry Jordan. During this time, she self-published Meat Cake Comix; joined the band Caroliner with Lisa Carver, where she performed, released albums and toured; and illustrated Lisa’s magazine Rollerderby, as well as other Bay Area magazines and papers.

Darcy moved to New York in 1992. Her Meat Cake comic-book series began publication with Fantagraphics Books Inc., who publishes Meat Cake and its compilations, which are distributed internationally, to this day.

When not working on her comics, illustration, and fine art, Renaissance woman Dame Darcy also works as a touring musician, dollmaker, animator, fashion model and designer, celebrity interior designer, art teacher, and reality TV star.

For more info:

damedarcy.com

fantagraphics.com/artists/dame-darcy

Facebook link for this event. Tell yr friends!

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Offsite & More: CAKE Kick Off Events & Tabling Exhibition …AND a QUIMBY’S 25TH ANNIVERSARY PANEL!

Published on May 26, 2016 0 Comments
Jun ’16
10
12:00 am

cake2016

Quimby’s is proud to co-sponsor The [CAKE], a weekend-long celebration of independent comics, inspired by Chicago’s rich legacy as home to many of underground and alternative comics’ most talented artists– past, present and future. Featuring comics for sale, workshops, exhibitions, panel discussions and more, CAKE is dedicated to fostering community and dialogue amongst independent artists, small presses, publishers and readers. The Fifth Annual CAKE tabling exhibition will take place on June 11th-12th at the Center on Halsted (more info below). Special guests include Chester Brown, Tyrell Cannon, Ezra Clayton Daniels, Sammy Harkham, Cathy G Johnson, Patrick Kyle, Laura Park, Trina Robbins, and Leslie Stein.

 There are all sorts of awesome CAKE-related things happening that weekend in other places that weekend too! Here are just a few:

Thurs, June 9th, 7pm  David Alvarado & Tyrell Cannon at Sulzer Library at  4455 N. Lincoln Ave (NOT at Quimby’s)

Fri, June 10th, noon-1:30pm Chester Brown at Graham Crackers Comics Downtown, 77 E Madison St. (NOT at Quimby’s) He’ll be signing and discussing his new graphic novel Mary Wept at the Foot of Jesus.

Fri, June 10th, 7pm YES, THIS IS AT QUIMBY’S: CAKE Presents Kramer’s Ergot 9 Signing, with Sammy Harkham, Andy Burkholder, Anya Davidson, Kevin Huizenga, Patrick Kyle, John Pham, and Lale Westvind. This event is also sponsored by Revolution Brewery, and will have refreshments provided while supplies last!

Sat, June 11th & Sun, June 12th 11am-6pm Tabling exhibition at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N Halsted Ave.  (NOT at Quimby’s) Workshops and panels and all that fun stuff! 

AND OH!!! Don’t miss the Quimby’s 25th Anniversary Panel at CAKE!

11:30–12:30 A 25th Anniversary Celebration of Quimby’s! 

All Panels are located on the 3rd Floor Hoover-Leppen Theatre at the Center on Halsted

Ok, so a lot of things happened in 1991: with George H. W. Bush still in office, the Gulf War came to an end, the indie comics scene was still recovering from the so-called “black and white implosion,” Superman had about a year left to live, and Nirvana released Nevermind. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Steven Svymbersky opened a little shop on Damen Avenue that, he said, would “carry every cool—bizarre—strange—dope—queer—surreal—weird publication ever written and published,” a place where you could discover, he added, “something you never even knew could exist.” A quarter of a century later, Quimby’s, stuffed with comics and zines and poetry and novels and magazines and newspapers and other paper things that don’t even have a name yet, remains one of the premier bookshops in North America. Jake Austen, editor and publisher of the legendary Chicago music and comics zine Roctober, will moderate a conversation with zinemaker Liz Mason and cartoonists Gabby Schulz (a.k.a. Ken Dahl) and CAKE Special Guest Laura Park (Do Not Disturb My Waking Dream) about the history of Quimby’s and its legacy of strangeness and delight. Who’s bringing the cake? This panel is sponsored by The Center for Cartoon Studies.

For more info about CAKE: cakechicago.com & Max Morris cakeexpo(at)gmail(dot)com.

This year’s banner by Chicago’s own Krystal DiFronzo.

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Chicago Alternative Comics Expo presents Kramers Ergot 9 Signing 6/10

Published on May 12, 2016 12 Comments
Jun ’16
10
7:00 pm

KramersPoster_new

CAKE is excited to present a signing event for Kramers Ergot 9, with CAKE Special Guest Sammy Harkham. Joining the signing will be contributors Andy Burkholder, Anya Davidson, Kevin Huizenga, Patrick Kyle, John Pham, and Lale Westvind.

  “I think this is the best issue yet and I couldn’t be happier doing it with any other publisher. Fantagraphics is the place where the best of the low brow and the literary strands of comics are equally represented and cherished on their own terms, and that’s something I have always strived for with Kramers, as well. So it’s a great fit.” – Sammy Harkam

Since Kramers Ergot ‘s inception in 2000, it has introduced new talents and solidified aesthetics; each volume is an of-the-moment, state-of-the-medium manifesto. This anthology has always been a reflection of creator/editor Sammy Harkham’s comics passions, both past and future. Kramers Ergot 9 gathers many of the best and brightest together in one giant, oversized collection.

Quimby’s is proud to co-sponsor The Chicago Alternative Comics Expo [CAKE], a weekend-long celebration of independent comics, inspired by Chicago’s rich legacy as home to many of underground and alternative comics’ most talented artists– past, present and future. Featuring comics for sale, workshops, exhibitions, panel discussions and more, CAKE is dedicated to fostering community and dialogue amongst independent artists, small presses, publishers and readers. The Fifth Annual CAKE will take place on Saturday, June 11 and Sunday, June 12, 2016, at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N Halsted Ave. in Chicago. For more info about CAKE: cakechicago.com & Max Morris cakeexpo(at)gmail(dot)com.

This event is sponsored by Revolution Brewery, and will have refreshments provided while supplies last.

Friday, June 10th, 7pm – Free Event

Click here to see the Facebook event to invite your friends!

kramers9bggr

revolutionbrewing

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