Ladies Making Comics

Coming up this weekend is the 10th Annual University of Florida Conference on Comics, the theme of which this year is “A Comic of Her Own”. It’s goal is:

…to facilitate this dialog and foster the scholarly exploration of intersections between women’s writing in comics, women represented in comics, and the women who read them.

In other words, everything I care about in life, and I wish I could be there! Keynote speakers include Trina Robbins (of course), Leela Corman, and Megan Kelso.

The program details a number of tantalizing panel topics, ranging from the use of comics for women’s autobiographies to exploring sexual and racial identities of both real and fictional women, from women’s place in the world of webcomics to historical movements and contexts for women’s comics.

One panel of particular interest is Carolynn Calabrese’s defense of Moto Hagio’s The Heart of Thomas. She noted, as I did, that several male reviewers spent more time critiquing the femininity of the work and the tropes of the genres (genres it defined for the coming generations) without analyzing it in its historical context. Carolynn has informed me that one of the critics whose reviews she and I took issue with has agreed to run her critique after the conference, so watch this space for updates!

If you can make it to Gainesville, Florida this weekend, why not check it out? And report back!

This Week’s Events

Featuring: Laydeez Do Comics 1st San Francisco Chapter Meeting

Tonight! at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, Trina Robbins, along with Maureen Burdock and Heather Plunkett, are bringing one of the top 10 literary events of London stateside.

While there was a “pop-up” meeting in New York City last week, this San Francisco meeting is intended to be the first of a monthly ongoing US presence.  And who better to launch such a group than comics “herstorian” Trina Robbins!  Trina will be giving one of her excellent presentations on women cartoonists over the years, and I am envious of everyone who has the chance to go! (7PM - 9PM PST).

Other Events

Tuesday, April 10

• London: Simone Lia will be launching her new book Please God, Find Me a Husband! at Gosh! Comics tonight from 6:30PM GMT on.  There will be champagne!
• NYC: Molly Crabapple will be discussing her latest art endeavor, A Week in Hell, with Sarah Jaffe at McNally Jackson Books at 7PM EST.

Tuesday-Friday, April 10-13

• Hamburg, Germany: Hamburger Graphic Novel Days in Literaturhaus Hamburg will have panels with such European luminaries as Ulli Lust, Line Hoven, and Posy Simmonds

Wednesday, April 11

• Chicago: Jenny Frison and other members of Four Star Studios are going to be at the Apple Store discussing the role of technology in both creating and distributing comics (7PM CST)
• Calgary: Fiona Staples signing at Alpha Comics, 4pm – 8pm MST

Thursday, April 12

• San Francisco: Leela Corman will be discussing and signing Unterzakhn, at the Cartoon Art Museum. 7PM - 9PM PST.

Market Monday

Unterzakhn GN by Leela Corman

A mesmerizing, heartbreaking graphic novel of immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the 20th-century, as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths.

In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for ‘Underthings’) tells the story of sisters Esther and Fanya: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world; and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the ‘golden land,’ where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions.

~Preview~

pantheonbooks:

We’re gearing up for the release of a book we’re really, really excited for - Unterzakhn, an original graphic novel by the incomparable Leela Corman. We’re so excited, in fact, that we couldn’t wait until the book comes out on Tuesday (4/3) to start sharing some of the striking visuals from it. We’re especially fond of this panel, which highlights the (pretty but, ouch, uncomfortable) undergarments from the book’s turn-of-the-last-century setting.

It’s also apropos because “unterzakhn” is Yiddish for “underthings.” If you didn’t already know that, you’re definitely going to want to stick around the Pantheon Tumblr this week, because we’re gonna teach you some fun Yiddish words that range from useful to, er, less acceptable in most social situations (but still fun to say!).

A few years ago we pointed you at a 1950 Life Magazine spread that included various NCS cartoonists happily scribbling on swimwear covered models. Well, in the spirit of that shoot, but also to show how times have changed in 61 years, the Sequential Arts Workshop — the cartooning school founded by Tom Hart and Leela Corman — has updated these images with Ball Point Boxers which finds cartoonists Sara Varon, Leela Corman, Joan Reilly, Emily Flake, Hilary Allison and Jungyeon Roh recreating the stunt, this time with male boxers from Gleason’s Gym. Photographer Margarita Volfson was called in to record the proceedings and history was made…or remade. (via The Beat)