Inkstuds

Justin Hall was in town in support of his new book, No Straight Lines, an anthology looking back at 40 years of LGBTQ comics. It is a fantastic survey of work that heartily recommend. Justin knows his comics and has picked some great work. Because the show was done live in the studio, I had Ken Boesem join us as well. Ken has been doing a lot of work documenting and research Canadian queer comics history and has some great insights to add to the conversation.

Charles Forsman has been heavily active in the comics community since graduating from CCS. His Snake Oil series of comics have impressed me quite a lot. His latest endeavor is the Oily Comics publishing. Charles is offering a special subscription service for the series of mini’s that he is publishing by himself and other folks. The offer runs out on July 31st 2012, so get on while the going is good.

Prolific New York cartoonist, Josh Bayer joined me to talk about his work including the Suspect Device anthology series, Raw Power and much more. Josh has been doing some really great primal work.

Simon Bisley was one of those creators that had a profound impact on me when I was in my teens. Coming across his work in Slaine was amazing. It was violent, over the top and extreme in all the right ways. Simon has continued to make work and seems to never slow down. We cover a million different things in this interview, but somehow don’t even discuss what he is working on right now.

Mathieu Christe is one half of the Geneva comix publisher, B.ü.L.b comix. They produce some amazing artifacts that feature an amazing array of international creators, from Mat Brinkman and Charles Burns to Nicolas Mahler and François Avril.

Malachi Ward has been making some pretty excellent comics of late. His series, Expansion, a collaboration with Matt Sheean is some pretty forward looking sci-fi comics work. I am really enjoying his work. He is able to craft some great subtle stories that exist in a larger world that show’s a lot of promise.

I caught up with Providence artist and musician, CF aka Christopher Forgues about his latest comic work. He has been pumping out mini comics over the last couple of months, through his twitter feed. They have been pretty great, showing different directions that he is taking his work. CF also has a new book coming out in the fall from Picture Box called Warm Genetics House.

In promo for his Freak Scene art show, Keenan Marshall Keller came on the studs to talk about not only the art show, but also his own Galactic Breakdown series an the Drippy Bone Books publishing endeavor.

Providence cartoonist, Mickey Zaccchilli came on the show to chat about her RAV series of mini’s as well work in bunch of different anthologies like the Thickness, Root Rot, Monster and Sundays.

Austrian cartoonist Nicolas Mahler, joined me for a transatlantic phone call about his comics, including the newest from Fantagraphics, Angelman. We also had an interesting discussion about the current state of the mainstreaming of “graphic novels”, comparing between North America and Europe.