Watching ICE in My Neighborhood by Tanya Crenshaw - Reflecting on how ICE raids impact every community.

Schizology by Andrew Field - Illustrating my slide into schizophrenia

Artist Talks

✏️ In our Artist Talks series, cartoonists talk about craft and share their comics-making process. All talks are online and by donation.

» March: Mattie Lubchansky, the author of Boys Weekend, Simplicity, and The Antifa Super Soldier Cookbook, will talk about creating trans-centric narratives and punchy political comics. RSVP here. Wednesday, March 25, from 5-6pm PST/8-9pm EST

» April: Author and artist Thi Bui will talk about her approach to making emotionally rich nonfiction comics. Thi is the author of the groundbreaking graphic memoir The Best We Could Do and is currently working on a book about anti-deportation and prisoner support work. RSVP here. Tuesday, April 28th, from 5-6pm PST/8-9pm EST

Workshops

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

» Draw Your Feelings: Whether it’s impostor syndrome, creative anxiety, or wider worries about the world, comics are a great way to face and move through big emotions. Artist Cassy Lee leads this two-hour workshop about illustrating your feelings as a tool for emotional regulation. Saturday, March 21st, 10am-12:30pm PST/1:30pm-3:30pm EST

» Intro to Digital Drawing with Procreate: For people new to drawing on iPads, this beginner-friendly workshop led by Crucial Comix editor Audra McNamee will go over a basic comics-making workflow in Procreate. Monday, March 16th from 4-6pm PST/7-9pm EST

» Pitching Your Graphic Novel: Are you trying to publish a graphic novel but aren’t sure how to break in to the industry? This workshop led by artist Al Benbow will help you get started! Thursday March 26th at 4-6pm PST / 7-9pm EST

Chronic Illness Comics Club

» March meetup: Do you make or read comics about chronic illness? Come hang out, build community, and share your work! This is a very chill, low-key monthly meetup. The next meetup is on Monday 3/9 at 4pm-5:15pm PST / 7pm-8:15pm EST. Zoom link: Here’s the link for the March meetup.

→ Check out all our upcoming classes

Andrew Field’s comic Schizology was published through Crucial’s volunteer editing program. Every season, Crucial brings in a cohort of four people who want to get more experience editing comics. This group meets monthly to review our submissions and then pair up to edit comics. Andrew pitched his comic about developing schizophrenia through our submissions page back in November. The whole group loved Andrew’s raw, evocative style and thought his illustrations about slipping into a world of hallucinations were eye-opening. In short, the comic definitely felt crucial! But it was also rather long and wordy, with a LOT of detail packed in. Editor Ali Holmes volunteered to champion the comic. She worked with Andrew over the next three months to cut out about half of the panels and to whittle down the text so the emotion of the narrative could shine through the visuals.  “The process of creating the comic felt exciting to me,” says Andrew, who also reviews comics for Graphic Medicine. “There are not enough representations of schizophrenia-spectrum illnesses in the arts, let alone comics! When I drew this comic, I felt a sense of purpose. I wanted to put a human face on the illness, but also represent aspects of my illness that aren't talked about often or enough, like delusions of reference and the more bizarre dimensions of symptoms.”

Creating a comic about psychosis was particularly difficult because, with psychosis, the images are all in your head. But comics have a unique power to express experiences through abstract images—artists don’t have to stick to literal reality. “I guess what made the comic exciting for me also made it challenging, which is to say the challenge of representing psychosis in the comics medium. Hallucinations, for example, are unshared, and this means there will always be something about hallucinations that are lost in translation when describing them,” says Andrew, who wrote a whole essay about the challenges of illustrating psychosis. “I think comics are a good medium for talking about or describing psychosis, because the visual aspect can get at some of the more hard-to-get-at aspects of the experience of psychosis (hallucinating colors, for example).” Crucial published the final version of the comic this February, check it out here.

Comics With Trans Characters

This week, cartoonist Al Benbow led the workshop “Telling Trans Stories” and highlighted the comics, seen above, that all feature complex trans characters. Here are three from Al’s reading list:

• Welcome to St. Hell by Lewis Hancox is a memoir for that will resonate with any teen who feels like an outsider in their hometown. Lewis shares poignant, funny, and angsty stories about growing up as a trans guy in a small town.

• Stage Dreams by Mel Gillman is a queer Wild West adventure. In this middle-grade graphic novel full of romance and robbery, Grace, a trans runaway, heads west to escape conscription into the Confederate Army.

• Gaysians by Mike Curato is a fierce and funny young adult graphic novel about four Seattle gay Asians navigating the daily drama of life and love.

>> National Park Artists-in-Residence: Did you know that 57 National Parks hire artists-in-residence every year? These are typically not paid, but artists often get free lodging within a national park for the duration of the residency. For example, Olympic National Park in Washington is currently looking for artists to embody the theme of “Marmots in the Mountains” (!!). Deadlines vary, more info is here.

>> Eisner Awards: The biggest award in comics is now open for submissions! It’s free to submit your comics (published in print or online) and you can submit self-published work. Submissions are due March 13th.

This newsletter was written by Shay Mirk. Crucial Comix is supported in part by our backers on Patreon and by the Sequential Artists Workshop (thank you, friends!).