Inkstuds

Minneapolis cartoonist Caitlin Skaalrud joined me to talk about her fantastic book, Houses of the Holy. It’s a really strong debut graphic novel. Caitlin takes some big chances in making this book and succeeds.

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Sophie Goldstein joined me to talk about her soon to be concluded series, House of Women. Sophie’s work has an amazing humanity and depth to it. I really enjoyed this series and her book from Adhouse, The Oven. We had some technical issues over skype, so there is some editing on this to splice it together.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon.

I’ve been wanting to interview Ryan Heshka for a quite a while. His painted work has long been a proud gem of the Vancouver illustration scene. His work has been featured in Blab and shown a string of fantastic galleries. We got together to talk about his latest work, Mean Girls Club from NoBrow. It was originally published as a risograph book to accompany an art installation, Mean Girls is  great new direction for Heshka’s work.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon.

In advance of his comics trip to North America, HTML Flowers aka Grant Gronewold joined me to talk about his art, comics and music. We also cover his personal health in some detail, which relates a lot to his comics. His series of mini comics, No Visitors, which is orderable right now, are extremely revealing looks into one person navigating chronic health conditions in modern medical bureaucracy. You also has a book out from space face called Virtual candle as well as his collaborations with friend Simon Hanselmann in Werefolf Jones and Sons. I really got a lot out of this conversation and am grateful to Grant for his openness.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon.

This interview has been a long time coming. Gilbert Hernandez is one of the greatest living comic creators. His work in Love and Rockets has ranged from horrifying to heart breaking to meditative to anywhere in between. His latest work is the Blubber series from Fantagraphics. It’s a frightnening horror show not for the light heart or for someone lacking of sense of humour. The latest Love and Rockets book is out now too. He also wrote a book with illustrator Darwyn Cooke out from Vertigo, Twilight Children.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon.

UK comics artist Simon Moreton joined me to chat about his new book from Uncivilized Books, Plans We Made. Simon has a really beautiful minimal style of story telling that works really nicely. Simon’s other work can be found in his Smoo mini comics.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon.

This week we’re joined by Vancouver comic artist Morgan Jeske to talk about his life, process, movies and comic work. Morgan is known for his work on Change, published by Image Comics, and his self published work Disappearing Town and ●●●● Vol. I. He also co-hosts a film podcast called Travis Bickle on the Riviera. His newest work ●●●● Vol. 2 feels like a fantastic meandering exploration of the self and other and wild liminal decaying spaces. Morgan creates unique comics with a strong sense of atmosphere and weight, so I’m excited to see what he does next. Interview by Sloane Leong.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon.

Leslie Stein joined me to talk about her latest book from Fantagraphics, Bright Eyed at Midnight. Leslie has been very active with new work being posted on her blog and Vice comics. Leslie’s work is a colourful balance of touching personal work mixed with an extremely joyful palette. Her style has been evolving and developing into an amazing discontructed way, boiling her work into essentials. I really like the direction she has gone in.

Apologies for the sound quality on this one. It was the first done on a new computer and forgot to set my stuff right.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon.

Blaise Larmee joined me to talk about some of the new work he has been involved with from 2d Cloud. Most recently, Blaise edited the Mirror Mirror anthology which is part of 2d Cloud’s current Kickstarter efforts. It’s a fantastic anthology/art book, exploring the more conceptual end of comics right now.

UPDATE Jan 2018 – Since posting this interview nearly 2 years ago, 2d Cloud has severed ties with Blaise and pulped his collection, 3 books in response to allegations in regards to actions by Blaise.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon.

This is Inkstuds Radio and I’m David Brothers, a two-time Eisner Award co-loser. I used to run 4thletter!, the internet’s most popular comics blog that also focused on wrestling, movies, music, Venom, and the black condition. I did Inkstuds Spotlight a few years back, taking a look at the world of comics from a variety of different perspectives, and Robin Inkstuds, the proprietor of this fine internet broadcast, gave me an open invite to come back and interview whoever I’d like.

I chose Zainab Akhtar, the mind behind Comics & Cola (found at comicsandcola.com, with a Tumblr supplement atwellnotwisely.tumblr.com) and a comics critic and tastemaker whose voice I appreciate greatly in the current comics landscape. She has a taste for things that are new to me, and a way of describing them that fascinates me. She’s done an Inkstuds or two herself, most recently with Michael Deforge.

I reached out to her for an interview/conversation, and she was kind enough to say yes. We talked about Mads Mikkelsen, her childhood experience with comics, what led to her critiquing comics, being focused on narrative, the community she has found herself in, serializing comics for others, friendship, a brief aside into Masamune Shirow, and whether Vin Diesel or The Rock is better, more or less in that order.

The intro music is Akira Ifukube’s “Godzilla (Main Theme).” The outro music is Amit Trivedi & Tochi Raina’s Motorwada Song.