>> Off Script by Whit Taylor 

Grappling with AI and digital blackface

>> I Am Not Your Asian American Doll by Feeb Om

You enjoy eating our food, but deny us a seat at the table.

✨ All of our classes and workshops are online and sliding scale.✨

Classes

In Graphic Detail: Horror Comics with Mel Gillman is a four week course about writing and drawing horror comics. Students learn about topics like tension building, creating strong narrative surprises, creature design, and horror character building and character arcs, and typically draw a short original horror comic of their own to bring in for in-class show and tell at the end. Tuesdays, October 6th – October 27th, 4pm-6pm PST/7-9pm EST.

Advanced Graphic Storytelling with Sanika Phawde: For this in-depth, six-week class on creating compelling graphic narratives, Sanika will walk participants through building a big project from an idea to the pencilling stage, with a focus on finding the core of a story and pacing a comic to express its emotional beats. Thursdays, September 3rd – October 8th, 4pm-6pm PST/7-9pm EST.

Editing Comics with Shay Mirk: Want to learn how to edit comics? This popular hands-on class focuses on editing other peoples’ nonfiction comics while also improving your own. Over five sessions, this class teaches both practical editing skills—like working with pitches and shepherding artists to publication—and is built around reflective discussions on topics like dealing with conflict and communicating well with collaborators. Wednesdays, September 23-October 21, 4pm-5:30pmPST/7pm-8:30pm EST

Introduction to Comics Coloring with Xenon Honchar and Ali Holmes: Getting the right colors is hard with millions of options to choose from. Professional colorist Xenon Honchar and comics editor Ali Holmes co-teach this five-week class exploring practical ways that comics artists use color to tell stories. Participants will learn about color schemes, comics tricks-of-the-trade like spot color, and discuss color from an accessibility perspective. Mondays, September 28 - October 26, 4pm-6pm PST/7-9pm EST

Upcoming One-Off Workshops 

Pitching Your Graphic Novel Are you trying to pitch a graphic novel but aren’t sure how to break in? This workshop will help you get started! In this two-hour workshop, artist Al Benbow will go over the key components of how to pitch a graphic novel, including writing a successful graphic novel pitch, querying agents, and submitting to publishing house open calls. Al is the author of the upcoming graphic memoir, UNBINDING, which will be published with Oni Press in 2027. Wednesday, September 9th at 4-6pm PST / 7-9pm EST

Intermediate Digital Drawing with Procreate: You’ve been around the block with Procreate a couple times, but you’re not totally comfortable with alpha lock and clipping masks, or you want to be more efficient when you’re coloring your artwork. This project-based workshop by Audra McNamee will challenge you to use new Procreate tools and settings as you make an illustration. Saturday, September 12 from 10am-12pm Pacific/1pm-3pm Eastern.

Free artist talks 

Artist Talk: Amy Kurzweil The author of Artificial: A Love Story and Flying Couch will talk about her approach to making innovative graphic memoirs. In this one-hour conversation with Crucial publisher Shay Mirk, she’ll discuss her craft and what she’s learned as a cartoonist who works on both single-panel gag comics for The New Yorker and in-depth graphic memoirs. Thursday, August 27th, 5-6pm PST/8-9pm EST

→ Check out all our upcoming classes

Jenn Woodall 

Years ago, Jenn Woodall designed a bold sticker calling out street harassment. Then men online, predictably, responded to the sticker with all kinds of comments about Jenn’s appearance. Her new comic She Must Be Ugly reflects on dialogues surrounding women artists and about years of dealing with misogynistic comments herself. —Skye Zufelt 

Did you find that the process of making this comic was different from any of your previous work, given the deeply personal nature?

Yes, definitely. This comic went through three different script drafts. Typically, I will have a super loose script and I will finalize it at the same time as thumbnailing. With this comic I was very concerned with getting my message across with clarity, so I spent a lot of time with the writing. When I do a more serious comic, I can be a bit too neurotic about editing.

As an unabashedly feminist artist, which artists inspire you the most?

I had always been a comic nerd and some of my most beloved inspirations from a young age have been Ai Yazawa, Julie Doucet, Naoko Takeuchi, CLAMP, Jamie Hewlett, Atsushi Kaneko, Shary Boyle and Sam Keith. Once I became a teenager, I was lucky enough to attend an arts high school where I took art history classes, and I loved the works of Barbara Kruger, Frida Kahlo, Yayoi Kusama and Jana Sterbak. I only learned about the work of Marisol a few years ago, but she is another artist I really admire.

What words of advice do you give aspiring artists?

Work on the things you're passionate about. The majority of my best work has been personal work I did just because I had an idea I felt passionate about creating. In my experience, people often gravitate to this kind of work because they can sense that you enjoyed making it. Attention and awards are nice, but they are fleeting and they won't fix issues that are deeper. Create for yourself and your expression at the forefront of your mind.

Besides making art, what other ways that you go about processing your frustrations with the world?

I go for bike rides, I exercise, and I watch bombastic violent movies for catharsis sometimes.  My sketchbooks have a lot of super rough unfinished comics, because sometimes I just need to get an idea down before I can mentally move onto something else.  Often, I find my frustrations seem more manageable with a change of scenery, so spending time with my friends or being outside in nature forces me to stop obsessing about my thoughts. Thinking about the state of the world and the things that bother you is extremely important, but it can really exhaust you if it is constant. It's important to take care of yourself so you have the energy to create art, be angry, and get involved in various causes.

→ Read Jenn’s comic: She Must Be Ugly

Five Fun Comics About Food

Eat these delicious comics! This week, we’re highlighting fun comics centered on good food, warm meals, and full stomachs!

• Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley is an autobiographical account of the author’s childhood as the daughter of a chef mother and gourmet father. Each chapter begins with an illustrated recipe from Knisley’s family—including some original creations of her own—and a serving of sage wisdom. 

• Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui is a fantastical series about an adventuring party as they fight their way through a multilevel dungeon on a quest to resurrect a loved one. Their notoriously poor luck changes, however, when one of them has a brilliant idea: The best way to beat the monsters is to eat them!

• She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki is a fictional, fluffy romance of what unfolds when Nomoto finds herself cooking more food than she can eat alone and begins inviting her neighbor Kasuga over to share.

• Let's Make Ramen!: A Comic Book Cookbook by Hugh Amano and Sarah Becan is a hybrid cookbook/graphic novel with more than forty recipes designed for readers to easily follow along at home. It’s time for cooking to be fun—and beautifully illustrated! 

• Meal by Blue Delliquanti and Soleil Ho follows young chef Yarrow as she pursues her passion of innovative cooking and tries to impress her personal hero (chef Chanda) with her insect-based cuisine.

→ Buy these books through Bookshop.org to support Crucial!

» A $1500 grant is open for any comics artist who’s creating “creating boundary challenging and socially conscious work” thanks to Michigan’s Athenaeum Comics Art. Applications close Monday, August 17th. 

» Looking to get published in print? Queer and trans small press Diskette Press is taking submissions of comics to publish in 2027. 

» Very fun artsy quarterly print newsletter The PIT is looking for submissions for their next issue: Sports! Send in comics by September 1. 

» Irish and UK artists: The Rachel Cooke Graphic Short Story Prize is open for the year. Submit a four-page comic by 30th November—the winner gets £1000 and their comic published in the Observer New Review.

This newsletter was written by Skye Zufelt, Chai Turner, and Shay Mirk. Crucial Comix is supported in part by our backers on Patreon and by the Sequential Artists Workshop.