Comments FeedAlthough I have been reading comics since a very early age, my interest in regularly creating comics was jump started by Scott Donaldson when I was a sophomore at Carleton College. He and I jointly founded the Carleton Comics Journal (now the Carleton Graphic), Carleton’s first and only student publication devoted solely to publishing student comics. Despite some setbacks, we managed to create a healthy and energetic publication, publishing roughly once every two weeks. (I’ve previously written at length about this process.)
During my three years as the editor of the Graphic, we published 34 issues and several minicomics. Thanks to the unceasing work of Kailyn Kent, we attended MoCCA 2011, and met many other young comics artists, most notably the then-editors of Static Fish, whose beautiful work I’d looked up to for some time.
As the Graphic grew, I became increasingly interested in similar publications at other schools. My impression was that nobody published as frequently as we did, but I had no idea if we were doing anything groundbreaking or unusual. I wanted to get in touch with other student comics magazines, trade some issues, and learn from their methods. The first step, though, was finding other college comics organizations, and that was harder than it seemed. It took me quite a while to amass a record of various other student-run comics publications, and even when I found them, they were often unresponsive to email or offers to trade comics or experience.
Something that likely contributed to the difficulty of finding other college comics magazines is the comics press’ widespread disinterest in such publications. At MoCCA we gave free copies of all of our books to every comic journalist who came by, and I personally emailed several comics interest sites multiple times, with no results. The Graphic has a complete online archive and a well-designed website, so I thought it was a natural candidate for a short write-up, but nobody ever seemed to show any interest. They were probably too busy reporting on hard-hitting topics like “Look at this mind-blowing fan-art of Batman wearing Ninja Turtles pajamas,” or whatever. One of the only people who would actually draw attention to us was Jessica Abel, whose kind attention was always greatly appreciated.
I feel that it would be interesting to review these other publications, defunct or not, in the hopes that more people learn about them and think seriously about student-published comic magazines. The more legitimately these publications are treated, the more encouragement such publications will have to make high quality work. That’s my theory, anyway. I’ve created a zip file with all the comics that were released for free, which you can download HERE. Some of the publications I review are no longer online or are difficult to find, so I figure this should make it easier if you want to check out some of the things I’m reviewing.
[Note: I am not going to review the Carleton Graphic. There is such an obvious conflict of interest that for me to review it would be to undermine my reviews of these other publications. I would like to encourage you to check out the Graphic’s archives, and keep an eye on them in the future. They publish often, and do interesting work. http://www.carletongraphic.com/ And if you’re interested, here are a couple links to work I did for the Graphic.]
The Gargoyle at the University of Michigan
Site: http://gargmag.com/
Representative article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gargoyle_Humor_Magazine
Established in 1909, the Gargoyle Humor Magazine is unique on this list in that it is far from being a comics-only publication. I include it because it has long been known for its New Yorker -style cartoons and, more recently, comics as well.
Obviously, 104 years of nearly continuous publication presents a problem to a reviewer hoping to succinctly summarize a publication’s successes and failures. Thankfully, I was able to get my hands on a weathered copy of The Gargoyle Laughs at the 20th Century, a choicely-picked “best of” volume that provides a sketch, at least, of the publication’s first century or so. It’s a great read, and I recommend it to anyone interested in a short history of a fascinating publishing venture.
At its best, The Gargoyle read a lot like the New Yorker. University of Michigan alums such as Arthur Miller submitted to The Gargoyle, and the cartoons, while quite standard, would hold their own against pretty much anything out of Punch.
In 1967, The Gargoyle published “Kill a Commie for Christ,” a cartoon by Phil Zaret, which became a popular symbol in the anti-Vietnam war movement. It also re-solidified The Gargoyle’s position as a cultural force, which had waned since its heyday in the 20’s and 30’s.
Now that I live in Ann Arbor I have access to contemporary issues of the Gargoyle (they also have a small online archive that collects recent issues.) Suffice it to say that the days of Arthur Miller and Punch-grade cartoons are long over – the current iteration of the magazine is tediously unfunny, and despite their supposed focus on comics and cartoons, only includes a comic or two an issue. It’s bad to the point that their recent “Gargoyle Comics #1” issue included only a single comic (and zero articles about comics,) indicating pretty clearly their current bent towards viewing comics as an aesthetic more than anything else.
Berkeley Bezerk (Defunct)
Site: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sap/
The Berkeley Bezerk is a funny publication. It ran eight issues in the early/mid-2000’s, each one exactly 16 pages in length (except for the first one, which ran only eight). Its pages are incredibly dense, and packed full of advertisements. The margins are often crowded with translations of comics into Chinese and sometimes Spanish.
The editorial direction of the publication is, in a word, troubling. The magazine started with incredibly lofty ambitions, its first editor’s note announcing, “we are ready to bring entertainment to all of Berkeley and begin a golden age in the Bay Area comics scene.” The editorial choices of the Bezerk consistently worked in a way that severely overestimated the strengths of its contributors. This mismatch is perhaps most apparent in Issue 3 (Special Issue on the Middle East) which includes some incredible naivete, a completely straightforward depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in proto-manga style, and some casual racism. I’m assuming the Bezerk had an incredibly limited audience, because no retractions or changes in editorial style are evident in the subsequent issues. One student in particular submitted consistently offensive comics that would have caused a scandal if printed in any publication with an actual reader-base.
Of all the comics published in the Bezerk, the serialized Robot Girl is likely my favorite, but like many of the Bezerk’s comics, it’s rendered difficult to read due to the cramped page layouts. I admire the concept of translating some of the comics into Spanish and Chinese, but it’s a bizarre editorial decision given the lack of space page-to-page. (To be fair, the translations only seem to have existed for the first year or so.)
Pulse at UVA (Defunct)
Pulse at UVA is the opposite of the Berkeley Bezerk in almost every way. It ran for six issues from 2006-2008, with an average of 40 pages per issue. Its first issue contained an original interview with Art Spiegelman, and its third issue contained an original interview with Scott McCloud. It featured a print run of over a thousand copies per issue, had a casual and unassuming opening editor’s note, and left its pages uncluttered.
The comics themselves tend to be fairly mediocre, issue to issue. Pulse almost gives its contributors too much space, allowing rambling, insanely overambitious stories to run for six to eight pages, only to be ended by a (dishonest) TO BE CONTINUED… (On this note, what is it about fledgling comic artists that consistently leads to stories based around gritty, Bible-inspired myths, full of GOD and DEMONS and CHOSEN ONES, etc? It’s almost more ubiquitous than the “zany roommate” type storyline…)
“Emby” by Ellisha Marongelli
Issue 5 represents the high point for Pulse, not only because it contains the best looking comic they published, “Emby” by Ellisha Marongelli, but also because it ended with a fifteen page, well-researched article about “controversial comics,” written by Matthew Marcus. I know it’s funny to praise a comics publication for a lengthy prose essay, but I admire it because it displays exactly the kind of critical thinking I find so sorely lacking in the Berkeley Bezerk. Marcus identifies several comics published by college newspapers that inspired controversies, and thoughtfully examines the intent, actual content, and controversies surrounding each one. Pulse even published several cartoons poking fun at the controversies surrounding publishing an image of the Prophet Muhammad, which actually managed to be (relatively) tasteful.
UC Comics at Berkeley
Website: http://uccomics.wordpress.com/
A friend recently drew my attention to UC Comics, a website that collects comics by UC Berkeley students. Overall, the comics seem to be highly unpolished, and, as a person might expect from an online imageboard, completely unedited. The site design renders the comics largely unreadable, since there doesn’t seem to be a way to quickly preview the comics beyond clicking through the archives a month at a time, and seeing a tiny thumbnail of the first page of each comic (some of which are quite long.) A re-vamped site design would definitely help in making the comics more accessible, and a minimum standard of quality (all comics must be inked or darkened in photoshop to a point that makes them readable) would go a long way in making me want to explore. There are some gems hidden in the site (I find “Blue” very pretty) but a complete lack of attribution and bizarre page controls make it highly unattractive as a whole.
Shoujo Phonebook at SCAD
Website: http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?contributorId=283488
Founded in 2003, Shoujo Phonebook is an annual anthology released by the Savannah College of Art and Design. Their books can be bought in paperback or PDF form, and the cheapest book they offer is $3. Samples of representative work can be viewed at this page.
“Double Negative” by Lee Barrow
I bought the 2010-2011 PDF for three dollars. It’s 148 pages long, although much of the space is taken up by full page illustrations of elves standing around and looking wistful, cyborg girls looking over their shoulder at the viewer, and title pages with the artist’s name and major. The work is highly inconsistent, most of it falling into a very standard, well, shoujo format. Many of the artists seem constrained by the mandatory “comics for girls” mission statement of the publication. Many stories are highly incomplete, overambitious, or drag on way, way too long.
“The 12 Tales of Odelia” by La Toya De Brew
The editors of Shoujo Phonebook would do well to mandate a “complete stories” rule, because it’s infuriating to read the first four pages of what seems like it could be an interesting story, only to have it abruptly end. It’s equally infuriating to read what seems like a million pages of a sad elf explaining to a girl shocked by his exotic beauty that his mother didn’t want him.
“Cast Off” by Starlia Prichard
The best thing in the collection is Jennifer Stewart’s “Pasmo,” a series of single page anecdotes about the Japanese subway system. It’s a good use of the space allotted, and ignores the “girl comics” mandate entirely.
Jennifer Stewart’s “Pasmo”
Wesleyan University Comics Anthology
Website: http://www.comixpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=wesleyan
Wesleyan’s University Comics Anthology was founded in 2006 and, as implied by this site, ran for only three issues. Two of those issues are for sale on Comixpress, as linked above, and I have not bought them. The thought of spending 13 dollars (including shipping) for 56 pages of an untested, college anthology went against my nature (also, Comixpress’ site is ugly to the point that I didn’t want to encourage them), but I was able to find a few previews from Issue One at this page.
Teddy O’Connor
From what I can see, UCA was a mixed bag. None of the comics in the preview leap out to me, although I do admire Teddy O’Connor’s pointillism and use of color. As with Shoujo Phonebook, I fail to understand why ambitious, undergraduate comics artists would try to force potential readers to pay for their work. I’m fine with the concept of buying a physical copy, but put your work out for free online, too. It seems totally counterproductive to ensure that the only people who see your work are close friends and (maybe) family members who are willing to pay 10 dollars for a small booklet hidden in the depths of a site like Comixpress.
Comic Anthology at RISD
Website: http://www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/rafael-attias/comic-anthology/ebook/product-17380926.html
RISD’s aptly named Comic Anthology (2008-2009) is like Shoujo Phonebook taken to a whole new level. Their book is available as a $25.90 paperback, but the PDF is totally free. At 102 pages, about half in full color, Comic Anthology’s stories are self-contained and relatively consistent. My biggest gripe would be that many of the stories feel like homework assignments more than inspired storytelling – the anthology opens with an almost completely straightforward retelling of The Tortoise and the Hare, and several stories contain the seemingly requisite hackneyed fantasy elements.
That said, a couple stories stand out to me. Alison Dubois’ “Life After Art” uses halftone really effectively, and exploits Lichtenstein-esque pop-comic style to excellent effect. Inna Komarovsky’s “Porridge” uses collage in an incredibly inventive way. Both stories are concise and leave me feeling quite satisfied.
Xerox Candy Bar at SAIC
Website: http://xeroxcandybarzine.blogspot.com/
Standard article: http://sixtyinchesfromcenter.org/archive/?p=10512
Xerox Candy Bar is another publication with almost no online presence. I became aware of them a little over a year ago, and tried getting in touch with their editors to buy some of their work or arrange a trade, but it never went anywhere. I ended up buying a couple of their books very cheaply from Quimby’s, who, in a stroke of excellent fortune, sent me several extra free XCB issues that they had lying around.
XCB is a highly versatile publication. They easily have some of the most inventive and interesting presentation I’ve ever seen – two issues came in screen-printed, sealed envelopes. Inside of each envelope was the comic, a stapled pamphlet whose cover is a manilla folder with a screen printed design. Two of the issues also came with lengthy CD’s, whose contents can be listened to and downloaded here.
XCB reads less like a comics magazine and more like a found art collection, featuring occasional poems, lots of sketchbook pages, and trippy, non-narrative comics. The more recent issues, Children’s Bedtime Stories and #19: Newspaper Edition are much more straightforwardly comics anthologies, in the vein of Smoke Signal. The Children’s Bedtime Stories issue is infinitely more linear than any other issue I have read, and is full of competent storytelling and interesting art. As a whole, it’s certainly a publication that I would read enthusiastically, but it might benefit from some stricter submission standards.
Inkstains at SVA (Defunct):
According to this page, Inkstains was founded around 2000. It’s very difficult to find record of it online, but thankfully traces do exist. This Geocities site has some Inkstain comics from 2005, and this site has an entire issue from Fall 2010 (called “The Missing Issue,” which I assume means it was never published other than online.)
“Sun and Moon” by Ogun Afariogun
It’s difficult to judge, but just from the snippets available I’d say Inkstains had a lot of visual polish but some trouble with pacing. Some of the stories end before any action is explained, and many seem to drag on and on. That’s a fairly generic criticism, I know, that could apply to pretty much any anthology, but there’s really not much to work with. Inkstains may have run for 10 years, but it’s virtually invisible online.
Avi Spivak
INK at SVA
Website: http://www.sva-ink.com/
Representative article: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/11/18/ink-sva-digital-comics-magazine/
The successor to Inkstains, INK’s visibility is through the roof. Launched as an online-only publication (constantly and proudly described as “the world’s first 100% student-run comics magazine app”), INK was launched in 2011 and releases issues twice a year.
When it first published, INK was met with unparallelled reporting from comics news outlets. No other college comics publication has come even close to garnering the attention that INK managed to, heavily assisted, I suspect, by the perceived novelty of the “app” and by SVA’s reputation of being a school that creates comics artists.
The first and second issues of INK contain perhaps the most bombastic editor’s notes I’ve ever read. They read, in their entireties:
(For the record, the editors’ note in the most recent issue turned down the rhetoric almost 100%.)
So, how does INK hold up? I think INK, more than any other publication I’ve reviewed on this list, has problems with pacing and clarity. I say “more than any other publication” not because I think that any of the stories are worse than the worst of the Berkeley Bezerk, but because I feel that INK, more than any other publication, has consistently wasted potential. The featured artists are given three pages in which to tell a short story, and, almost without exception, deliver an astonishingly good looking story that goes absolutely nowhere. Almost every story feels like it should be part of a longer work that explains the characters and sets up the action, but as it is, every issue is frustrating to read. The Fall 2011 issue also contains a story that comes across as surprisingly racist, in which a young, white man is walking down the street with his white dog, and is stopped by a black man who shouts, “Yo, you got a dalla?” He then threatens the white man with a switchblade knife, but the white man’s white dog transforms into some sort of Chinese demon, and bloodily kills the black man. THE END.
Jose Feliciano (I think)
A serious oversight on the part of the editors in the first issue was failing to attribute any of the comics to their creators. The inner cover had a list of all the artists, but gave absolutely no indication who created what, which is an unforgivable sin when the explicit purpose of your publication is to give exposure to talented young artists. Future issues corrected this error by having a grid on the inside cover that showed a thumbnail of each artist’s submission with their name superimposed over it, but it’s still a confusing decision. I personally would put the artist’s name somewhere on the pages that contained their submission, but since the pages aren’t even numbered, I guess there’s an aesthetic being adhered to that I don’t understand.
One of INK’s staples are its interviews with successful SVA faculty and alumni working in the comics industry. The interviews are given an incredibly glossy, multiple page treatment with glamor photographs and, in one instance, the worst headline I’ve ever read (“The Doctor is INinja”) I like the interviews, but they feel a little out of place, especially considering that most of the stories feel cut short. The benefit of publishing digitally is that adding extra pages doesn’t cost anything, but it does feel oddly weighted when an interview goes on significantly longer than the stories seem to, and there are three interviews per issue.
I feel like INK could be an incredibly good publication if contributors were forced to work harder on fleshing out their stories (or getting more effective at short form storytelling.) I’ll keep reading every issue that comes out, and am hopeful that it keeps improving.
Static Fish at Pratt
Website: http://mysite.pratt.edu/~statfish/
Representative article: http://www.comicsbulletin.com/interviews/3506/sequential-arts-future-static-fish-comic-anthology/
Static Fish is the oldest comics-focused college organization/publication I’m aware of, having started in 1985. I’m obviously not able to review all 27 years of its history (especially since they have no online archive whatsoever) but I was able to get my hands on Issue 2 (1985), two issues from 2001, and three recent issues (spring and fall 2010, and spring 2011).
The 1985, second issue of Static Fish is fascinating to me. More than any of the publications I’ve reviewed so far, this must have taken a ton of time and technical effort to print (this is, of course, from before the days when you could lay out a publication in InDesign the night before.) It’s printed on oversized, glossy paper and is 36 pages long. The stories inside follow the opposite trend of many of the publications I’ve reviewed so far – they are nearly entirely complete, multi-page short stories. The art is incredibly crisp, and the comics can only be referred to as a product of their time. Take a look at this spread from my favorite comic in the issue, “Poppies” by Rich Rice and Ken Wilson:
I don’t think the content of the 1985 issue is particularly good – there’s a lot of regurgitated Bloom County or Mother Goose and Grimm influences, and failed attempts at Heavy Metal storytelling, but it’s an impressive first effort. None of the other comics publications were able to pull off this kind of quality by their second issue, and I’d say that it holds up relatively well art-wise.
The couple issues I have from the early 2000’s read a lot more like Pulse or Ink. The stories are much more inconsistent, and the art much less crisp (although I would attribute that to the students obviously using poorly calibrated scanners.) The covers are full color and glossy, and some of the stories are competent, although not nearly as interesting as the 1985 stories or the contemporary ones. These couple issues also do what I complained about INK doing: they don’t name their contributors except on the first page.
Jory. The editors didn’t see fit to give anyone’s last name in the credits, either.
Jump forward a couple decades, and Static Fish’s budget has increased exponentially. Each issue is laid out differently, two are hardcover (one full color), and one has a foil cover and gilded pages. Seriously. These are college comics taken to a higher plane, and it is honestly harder for me to find a story that I don’t like than for me to find one I think is excellent. It’s hardly surprising that recent graduates of Static Fish seem to be wildly successful. Illustrator Kris Mukai, painter Anthony Cudahy, and Koyama Press favorite Jane Mai are all fresh graduates who made their mark on the recent output of Static Fish. Seriously, if you’re able to get your hands on some of these books, I highly recommend them. They make me mad, they’re so good.
Extra credit:
Oxy Graphic at Occidental
Modeled on the Carleton Graphic, the Oxy Graphic is a fledgling publication at Occidental college. With four issues under their belt, they are steadily becoming a regular and interesting publication. Unfortunately, they do not yet have online archives, and since I’ve been directly involved in their formation, it would feel wrong for me to review them. Keep your eyes out, though.
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I hope this way-too-long review of these student-run comics publications kindled your interest in at least one or two of them. I think that there’s a lot of really great work and a lot of really talented artists working in these undergrad magazines, and that it can be a lot of fun to follow their progress, especially since this kind of publication goes largely ignored by the world outside of its campus. IF YOU KNOW OF ANY OTHER PUBLICATIONS THAT I’VE LEFT OUT, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! Defunct or not, these are fascinating experiments in self-publishing that should not be forgotten.
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45 Comments
Thanks for a very informative article. I’m going to add it to my Comics Research Bibliography under ‘student cartoonists’ since what usually ends up there is articles on either children drawing comics as part of class, or the all-too-typical “editorial cartoonist offends everyone on campus.”
Oh fantastic! I had a similar problem when I was searching for these – you always get the scandals or elementary schoolers, and very rarely do you get anything by college students.
You may want to try contacting the Pratt library in Baltimore. They’ve set up at SPX in the past irrc to build their ‘zine’ collection and may have gotten some that you don’t know about.
BTW, it’s not student, but Wash DC has had 2 free tabloids in the past few years – Bash and Magic Bullet. MB is still running with a new issue coming out in March.
Oh awesome, thank you – I didn’t know about the Pratt Library or the two tabloids. I’ll look them up!
Here’s a piece of info about the Baltimore collection – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uyE3Npg_jM
Really thorough article — it’s great to see how many publications there are devoted to comics, especially outside of art schools.
I do have an issue with the categorization of the Carleton Graphic as a student-only publication. The Graphic’s own website says it “provides a space for artistic experimentation for students, alumni, and guests alike.” While, to the best of my knowledge, it publishes primarily student work, it certainly does not do that exclusively.
That’s a good point, Scott – I think several of the other magazines I’ve listed also occasionally accept alumni/outside campus submissions. I probably should have said “student-run comics publication” rather than “student-only.”
Thanks or this, Jacob! I don’t doubt there’s a whole raft of publications out there under the radar completely. There’ a huge zine library in Seattle that might be a good research point for more investigation– ZAPP.
I was an adviser to several school comics publications during my five years as a high school teacher– more here–
http://hoodedutilitarian.com/2010/08/what-do-i-do-with-those-damn-anime-kids/
That’s an excellent post, Sean, I hadn’t read it before! Thanks for linking it.
I should check out ZAPP. I’m getting recommendations left and right, I’m excited to start checking some of these out!
Great article, Jacob–thanks for this! So many great links and small press publications here. I look forward to tracking some of these down if I can find copies.
Another great place in Chicago to find an archive of small press zines and some comics(student and otherwise) is the Read/Write Library, formerly the Chicago Underground Library, on California. There is more info here:
http://readwritelibrary.org/node/1
Thanks for the link, Brian, that looks like a really incredible library. Don’t forget the download link I provided up at the top – if nothing else, you can have almost the same files I do (I left out the pdfs I paid money for.) I found the back issues of Static Fish on Ebay, and AbeBooks sometimes has what I’m looking for, too…
I have some work in the latter two issues of the Wesleyan University Anthology. My contributions were pretty rough, so I’m not too upset that it seems to be lost to posterity. There were some good contributions though. If memory serves, the anthology was distributed on campus for free–I think the pricing there may just be a side effect of the way comixpress works.
That’s fair enough, Simon – my gripe was mostly that there’s not a free online version. The online pages I could access were billed as a “preview,” which seems geared toward expecting a potential reader to buy the book (mostly) sight-unseen, which was what seemed counter-intuitive to me.
The “Harvard Journal of Pictorial Fiction” was the first college publication I’m aware of that was specifically related to comics. Three issues were published, on an annual basis, from 1974-76.
However, I can’t recall if they featured any original comics by Harvard students, or if they were more a critical analysis of existing comic books and comic strips. I know I have at least one issue, so I’ll dig it out tonight and check.
I didn’t know colleges, or high schools for that matter, were involved in formal self-published comics like these, but I think it’s terrific that some are.
One would think it’s a no-brainer, but I think the reason it never was a widespread movement in the past is because the institution involved generally would require some sort of overseer to advance screen any art appearing in such “official” publications.
I did a strip for my high school newspaper in the 1970s, but every strip needed to be reviewed by the teacher responsible for supervising the student editors and submissions (despite these precautions, however, I still managed to create a big stir with one of my strips).
I’ve been a fan of self-publishing since the early 1970s, and to my knowledge, such learning institution publications are pretty scarce. Most creators prefer to publish on their own, outside of the umbrella of any overseer.
There are often college literary publications (poetry and prose.) I wonder if advances in desktop publishing has just made it feasible to do something similar with comics when it would have been more difficult before? Or alternately maybe comics have more high art bona fides than they once did, so non-commercial quasi-academic ventures like this seem more natural…?
Not to sound elitist, but writing, drawing and lettering reasonably competent comics is a helluva harder than writing reasonably competent poetry and prose. Which means only a tiny percentage of a typical student population during a given timeframe can be tapped for such self-publishing projects.
No, I don’t think that makes sense, Russ. I mean, most published comics aren’t what I’d call reasonably competent; given that, I don’t see why the inability to find work of reasonable competence should stop amateur college publications.
Well, I certainly don’t think lack of desktop publishing tools was the show-stopper. Desktop publishing software has been readily available since the early 1990s. But even before that, self-publishing the old-fashioned cut-and-paste way was pretty easy. Throughout the 1980s one could use copier technology to mass produce ‘zines that were quite nice. I have literally hundreds of such 1980s-era self-published material.
Academic attitudes may have played a factor during the 1960s and early 1970s, but by the late 1970s and 1980s, mainstream academia had shed most of their anti-comics bias.
Any other suggestions?
Not from me, really. I’m kind of stumped….
It could be that even if there’s not a bias, there’s not an institutionalized support system quite either? That is, lots of literary magazines are linked to/take inspiration from creative writing departments, at least to some degree. Most schools don’t have comics departments, so….
When I left the University of Oxford in 2011, the first issue of 9th Art had just come out. I’m not sure if it’s still going, though.
Just from anecdotal experience, I can say that I encountered a lot of resistance to the idea of comics as any kind of art form when I was an undergrad trying to pursue a double major in studio art and English. This was in the early 1990s. In my studio art classes, comics were regularly derided as “picture-making” and mere “illustration.” How things have changed in twenty years!
I found less resistance in my English courses, although when we were assigned to read Maus for a Holocaust Studies class around 1994 some of my fellow students were initially very dismissive of it. The faculty I knew who had been trained in cultural studies and literary theory, however, were very open and encouraging about the idea of writing on comics, which is one of the reasons why I quietly abandoned my double major plans and stuck with English.
I didn’t notice a major shift in attitudes about comics in academia until the last decade or so–but, again, that is just my experience, though perhaps it can explain why student comics publications were so rare until fairly recently.
When I got to college, I was a little like the main character in John Porcellino’s Perfect Example–I thought everyone there would listen to Husker Du and read comics/make zines! It wasn’t until I got to grad school later in the 90s that I met other folks interested in comics. So while there was certainly some growing acceptance of comics in the 70s and 80s, due to the work of pioneers like Thomas Inge and Rusty Witek, for example, and then Marianne Hirsch in the 90s, I think it’s only been in the last decade that we’ve seen significant–and, I think, exciting and encouraging–developments regarding the acceptance and support of comics within the confines of academia.
Look at this! http://www.9thartmagazine.com/index.phtml Didn’t see it in any of my searches, but I’ll need to check it out. Thanks for mentioning it, Alex!
As far as desktop publishing software goes, it certainly makes publishing much, much easier. I spent many nights editing the Graphic and putting it together literally just a few hours before I would export it as a .pdf and send it to our campus printing services. We certainly wouldn’t have published as frequently if we hadn’t had such incredible technology.
In my experience at Carleton, the faculty was almost totally indifferent to our publication. I think to really get a publication like this off the ground a school that isn’t Pratt or SVA requires an obsessiveness on the part of the editors/contributors. It was like taking an extra class to make enough comics and lay out the issue once every 2/3 weeks (and none of us were making comics for homework like some of our art school contemporaries were), and I can tell you we had zero faculty support beyond an occasional “glad you’re drawing!” I never detected any hostility towards comics, but nobody was particularly excited either. Whether or not our comics were any good, it still takes quite a lot of work to publish on any regular schedule (which is, I assume, why most college comics magazines come out quarterly or, more commonly, twice a year.)
The dirth of self-published ‘zines in the past may have been due to indifference, as Jacob’s anecdotes allude to. Regular self-publishing requires an in-house champion to keep a project alive, and, in the past, there just may not have been enough academic champions to foster a self-publishing climate.
The Harvard publication I mention only lasted three years, which means its lifespan may have only lasted as long as the students behind it were around. Howver, if a professor or department had been the driving force, it may have lived on.
Russ, iirc, Harvard Guide to Pictoral Fiction / Crimmers (it had 2 names) was a journal of criticism. There were 3 issues and scans should be floating about on the web.
Dirth = dearth
Geez, sometimes I’m lazy
Mike — I forgot about Crimmers. I think I remember it as being big — a real odd size
I think Crimmers did feature fan (student?) art.
“The Harvard Journal of Pictorial Fiction” was the product of the Harvard University Comics Society. I don’t when it was started or how long it was around, but the 1974 edition was edited by a junior, Thomas Durwood.
The issue consists entirely of essays about comics or comics creators, and all of the art is reproduced from printed comics publications.
The essays are interesting. One compares Jack Kirby’s visuals to that of German film great Fritz Lang. Another film/comics comparative essay was written by Gil Kane (which could be why he drew the issue’s cover). A third essay was by Charles Wooley, who some may remember from the 1980s when he operated a comics auction business and published a series of “Wooley’s Auction Gallery” catalogs.
“I never detected any hostility towards comics, but nobody was particularly excited either.”
Which is understandable considering they probably’ve had minimal exposure to them for their entire lives.
I found the dearth of undergraduate college zines, in comparison to poetry or lit zines, is due to comics already having a regular outlet in the school newspaper. While newspapers are not as flexible as a dedicated zine (nor as nice looking, nor as likely to last long), they do allow you to create a larger body of work and probably get a bigger audience. A college cartoonist who’s getting published once a week (without having to worry about the logistics of publishing, etc) is less likely to put in the work of making a school zine as well. Compare that to a college poet or lit writer who doesn’t have a built-in outlet for their work. I can see how they are far more willing to work on their own dedicated anthologies.
I do think a comics zine may bring people out of the woodwork that wouldn’t normally submit cartoons for a newspaper (which is usually gag oriented). But it’s hard to judge these things in advance, especially at a non-art school.
Also, for what it’s worth: I was at Wesleyan with Simon (hey Simon). I don’t think there was any ever any intention of selling the comics anthology, I think the editor just threw together that website and put up the comicspress link (which auto-prices it high) in case some random person was interested. The comics anthology died immediately after the editor graduated. We already had a weekly comics page in the newspaper plus very few people were making comics to begin with.
Great article, Jacob!
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R. Maheras says:
Not to sound elitist, but writing, drawing and lettering reasonably competent comics is a helluva harder than writing reasonably competent poetry and prose. Which means only a tiny percentage of a typical student population during a given timeframe can be tapped for such self-publishing projects.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
No, I don’t think that makes sense, Russ. I mean, most published comics aren’t what I’d call reasonably competent; given that, I don’t see why the inability to find work of reasonable competence should stop amateur college publications.
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By “competent,” I don’t think Russ meant “of high aesthetic quality.” (Conversely, though, there are countless artists rendering the most inane superhero drek who can technically kick the asses of many a Fine Artiste around these days.)
And, shouldn’t it be obvious that — unlike poetry or prose — creating comics requires a set of varied skills: writing, drawing, lettering, visual narrative…
Moreover, most comics are an infamously labor-intensive art form; another reason for their relative lack of presence in college publications.
Mike — You may be on to something with the “labor intensive” part. I remember when I was doing a full-page strip for my high school newspaper. It took me weeks to do each one, hence only three were ever published. And since they were continued, my school mates never found out if Teen Avenger ever defeated Dr. Devious. It was a superhero satire strip, so most readers probably didn’t care anyway.
Jason — Yeah, that’s what I was talking about regarding a champion. When the student interested in doing self-publishing graduates, a lot of times his/her project withers and dies on the vine.
[...] Jacob Canfield has a VERY THOROUGH survey of Student-Run College Comics Magazines from the obvious _ Pratt, RISDE — to the not — Wesleyan. Bookmark this one for future [...]
Hi Jason – that makes a lot more sense, thanks for explaining that. I totally agree about the school newspaper – before we founded the Graphic I was the editor of the Carleton student newspaper’s comic section, but after the Graphic showed up that section disappeared entirely. I don’t think you could easily have both, unless you were at a really big, enthusiastic school.
I checked out the Oxford magazine – I’ll probably end up doing a follow-up post with all the recommendations people have given, but it follows pretty much the same standard (and is maybe defunct?) So many of these publications seem to last as long as the original editor is in school plus maybe an additional year.
It seems like the most successful ones are definitely the ones that focus on succinct storytelling. Several of these publications had a 0-10% success rate with “To Be Continued…” and those are the ones that, understandably, wouldn’t draw a lot of outside reader interest, since they don’t go anywhere. Especially since the stories that end “To Be Continued” often go on for maybe five pages of really drawn out storytelling and end in a GASP!!!!
Mike; re comics as labor intensive. I know this is kind of a truism among comics folk, but as somebody who has written poetry and made comics, my own experience is that it’s just not necessarily true that the second takes more time than the first. One single page poem I wrote took me six months working pretty much every day and probably hundreds of pages of drafts. On the other hand, the abstract comics I did probably took a couple of days each, and I’ve done gag cartoons that took a day or something. Not that that’s representative or anything…but I don’t know how representative anything is when you’re talking about artistic process. Different people work in really different ways.
Noah — You know, of course, that the artist vs the writer battle has been going on since writing was invented.
;)
Noah, approaching it from a rushed student perspective, though, comics almost definitely take longer. If nothing else, you’ve got drawing, scanning, editing, and layout to do. When you write a poem there are fewer steps that get in the way of your deadline – I can rush essay writing, but I find it very hard to rush comics.
Jacob — Good point. If a writer and a cartoonist finish plotting and writing a script at the exact same time, the writer is done, while the cartoonist is just getting started.
The mechanics of logo design, panel and rough lettering layout (with guidelines) alone take considerable time, after which the artist has to start the penciling process. This often involves considerable amounts of reference time, whether it’s referring to model sheets, photographs, lighting references, or whatever. Then the lettering is inked, the balloons drawn, and finally, the pencils are inked (not simply “traced,” Kevin Smith).
As someone who has done a considerable amount of both professional writing and cartooning, I’ll take writing any day of the week.
I mean…I write pretty fast now, because I’ve gotten a lot of practice and because you have to if that’s how you’re trying to make your money. But there are definitely writers who write very, very slowly, and cartoonists who seem to create with great facility and ease. FWIW.
You’re right of course, Noah, but at the undergraduate level a student is much, much likelier to be a quick and effective writer than he or she is to be a quick and effective cartoonist. I’d say it’s a rare contributor who has devoted a lot of time to comics before deciding to submit to a magazine in college. If cartooning were a mandatory high school class then I think there would be a more natural distribution of people who are quicker at cartooning or quicker at writing, but as things are, the cartoonist students are either just starting in college, or have developed whatever skills they have in their spare time.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Mike; re comics as labor intensive. I know this is kind of a truism among comics folk, but as somebody who has written poetry and made comics, my own experience is that it’s just not necessarily true that the second takes more time than the first. One single page poem I wrote took me six months working pretty much every day and probably hundreds of pages of drafts. On the other hand, the abstract comics I did probably took a couple of days each, and I’ve done gag cartoons that took a day or something…Different people work in really different ways.
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Sure, one might do a Flaubert: “I spent the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon removing it.”
…and one could slap out a comic-book page in five minutes.
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Not that that’s representative or anything…but I don’t know how representative anything is when you’re talking about artistic process.
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Well, no one here is saying everyone has to put the same amount of effort into creating a comics page/poem/piece of prose.
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rep·re·sen·ta·tive
…serving as a typical or characteristic example
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/representative
…What, however, is the typical, “representative” situation, is that making comics is far more labor-intensive than writing.
Re pulp writer Lester Dent (creator of “Doc Savage”): “Dent’s productivity as a writer alone qualified him for superman status: he could write around the clock, putting himself as much as a year ahead of schedule when he wanted time off, and often working on three different stories at once, moving from typewriter to typewriter to keep from getting bored…In addition to his 55,000-word Doc novels each month, and his various nonliterary endeavors (treasure hunting, house-building, and so on), Dent continued writing for other pulp magazines, westerns, mysteries, serialized novels for Argosy…” ( http://what-when-how.com/pulp-fiction-writers/dent-lester-pulp-fiction-writer/ )
Now, what did Jack Kirby, the comics-world equivalent of superhuman creativity require, for a proportionate far smaller monthly output? The assitance of an inker, a letterer; people who did a substantial amount of the work that then went to the colorists and printer.
Aha! I’m sure that’s the issue; so much more focus on writing in the pre-college curriculum. That makes perfect sense.
http://crinkledcomics.com/2013/02/17/introducing-the-nowsills/ has a link to a pdf for a class project by Steve Bissette. Tip to Gene Kannenberg.
Oh awesome! Thanks for the link!