It looked for awhile that we weren't going to be able to lay our hands on any of these, but thanks to trusty Tony Shenton, we snagged a handful before they went the way of the Dodo. Limited to 300 copies, this horizontally formatted anthology of super indy comics was printed and bound at The Center for Cartoon Studies and sports a hand pulled silk screen cover drawn by Damien Jay and pulled by Alex Kim and Joseph Lambert. Here's its contributor list: Mickey Z, Jeff Lok, Ed Piskor, Warren Craghead III, Aaron Cockle, Melissa Mendes, Joseph Lambert, Mark Burrier, Alex Kim, David Libens, Ariyana Suvarnasuddhi, Dane Martin, Julie Delporte, Michael DeForge, Sean Ford, Samuel C. Gaskin, Scott Longo, Jose-Luis Olivares, Mari Ahokoivu, Max de Radigués, Damien Jay, Lydia Conklin. Whew! Grab it before it's gone!
Koyama Press presents the first English language translation of Canadian cartoonist diarist, Julie Delporte. 184 pages of full color diary-form comics delineate her life from February 2011 through October 2012. Koyoama states that "Delporte’s organic and immediate drawings ... utilize an uncanny sense of colour and composition to illustrate their intimate, diarist narratives. Cataloguing an emotional breakup, an artist’s residency at CCS and the anxieties and joys of everyday life..."
Despite the evident angst inhabiting it, the comics work of Julie Delporte has a relaxed, free feel to it. Reading , Everywhere Antennas one gradually becomes immersed in Delporte's colorful world, which here is constructed in page after page of lush colored pencil drawings (along with a single section entirely – and appropriately – rendered in graphite pencil) that, while somewhat haphazardly cobbled together with scissors and tape nevertheless manage to successfully coalesce around the primarily diaristic text accompanying them with a distinct artistic savoir faire. As the tale unfolds, it becomes increasingly apparent that savoir faire is precisely what its protagonist unfortunately lacks. It is ironic that Delporte's work can provide readers with those feelings of release and peeling away of stress that the character within her narrative is obviously searching for. One imagines that the creation of this work provides Delporte herself with similar feelings of release; such are the mysterious ways of art...
Delporte initially planned this work to be a biography of Tove Jansson, but as it progressed it eventually morphed into the volume we now have before us, which is more about Delporte discovering herself through Jansson's life and work than it is about Jansson herself (in this way it is somewhat like Geoff Dyer's struggle with D.H. Lawrence's life in Out of Sheer Rage). Jansson's presence is woven throughout, and represents a role model illuminating (Jansson, fittingly, lived in a lighthouse) a path for Delporte to follow. Yet This Woman's Work is primarily a meditation on being a (young) woman (artist) today. Delporte's painterly approach to comics, combined with her exquisite color palette, work together to craft an extended treat for the eyes. Each turn of the page brings a new pleasure. While Delporte articulates a clear dissatisfaction with her condition, as a woman in a world that she perceives as over(t)ly masculine, and struggles to identify and embody a feminist stance within the narrative, it is clear that she has quite successfully embodied being simultaneously a woman and an artist in This Woman's Work.
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