I told folks who attended my workshop at the Chicago Zinefest that I would post my presentation on my blog for easy perusal, so here it is! Web-only viewers miss out on my witty banter and actual explanations, but…that’s cool. If you attended the workshop, feel free to comment with helpful suggestions or links to your work. Y’all were amazing, thank you so much!
–jb
[The above images are from the film adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, which does the book no justice but contains some out-of-nowhere gems.]
My piece “Back in the Fold: On ‘A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel’” is up at the Los Angeles Review of Books! Go check it out if you’re interested, and say nice things about it so I get to read and write about more comics and sci-fi and YA lit. Or, I strongly encourage you to share, either here, over at the LARB site, or even via twitter (@jennabrager) either your memories of reading L’Engle, your reactions to the adaptation, or your aspirations to LARP the Murrays with me.
–jb
Just a quick comic page from my sketchbook, drawn late at night after I couldn’t think well enough to write anymore.
In case you, like many of my friends, are Canadian or otherwise not familiar with the East Coast of the United States, D.C. is an hour further south than Baltimore. Also, geography is not taught in most public schools.
–jb
Please support the entirely-independent magazine that I write for, so they can afford to pay me, so I can afford to buy things. It’s only 2 dollars a month and while the web content is entirely free, the actual magazine is beautiful. I drew a flow chart, which probably doesn’t actually explain why you should subscribe. But, subscribe!
Miss you,
JB
Lately I’ve just been carrying around a watercolor set, sketchbook and a paintbrush and busting out sketchy little comics and doodles whenever I have a moment, not really about anything. My fingers are itching for when I have time to work on bigger things!
I’m also still blogging over at Lazy Femme, and am in the process of doodling these little “Dear Abby” heart author portraits. They aren’t very consistent so far, but I do like both of them.
JB
I’m frightening myself a little with the reference pics I’m gathering for my new comic project.
jb
Things are moving too quickly as usual, but I think it’s time that I got back into the swing of this whole blogging thing. I’m moving to New Jersey at the end of the summer to start a PhD program at Rutgers, wish me luck! I drew a follow up comic about it for Shareable, which posted today. The original grad school angst comics are being published in a real live book that you can buy if you want. The fact that Cory Doctorow may have read one of my comics makes me squeal a little, nerd heroes and all that.
In the meantime I’m busy planning the D.C. Zinefest and building my freelance/ illustration portfolio. I tumble a lot, for better or worse. After a lot of bellyaching, I decided to take a hiatus from Curmudgeon while I focus on other projects, and I feel pretty good about the decision.
Also I’m seeing the Carolina Chocolate Drops tonight, which fulfills all my dreams, and so I leave you with this live performance of Milwaukee Blues, which may capture an iota of the rapture that I will experience this very eve.
jb
I recently started drawing a piece about physical memory that I ended up not finishing–I’ll probably return to it in another guise at some point–and decided to ink the first two panels to play with some different styles.
Like many people invested in old things (thinking of course of garçonnière), I love the history of objects, the way they carry memory and affect across time and space. One of my most treasured possessions is this gold bangle that I inherited from my Oma–one of a set of seven, for the seven days of the week that my Opa loved her. During WWII, they were imprisoned in an internment camp in France which was bombed. My grandfather, a toddler at the time, was playing with the bracelets in the dirt when the bombs started to fall, and in the haste of their escape, my Oma always said, she lost her “Sunday”. This was a story we grew up with–part of my family mythology. When I was given the bracelet, and slid it over my hand, I couldn’t imagine how they even got them off my Oma’s wrist. I always imagined them as a part of her body. So that’s what I had started drawing about.
Solidarity in struggle on this International Workers Day, to everyone on strike and everyone stuck at work, and to comrades fighting for their lives, like Cece McDonald.
~jb
