Vaccinated at the Ball

“Vaccinated at the Ball” given a Graphic Medicine award

Publicity, Work
An actual trophy!!

On Saturday I was excited to witness my comics journalism story, “Vaccinated at the Ball,” being given the 2023 GMIC Award for outstanding health-related comic projects (short-form). (GMIC stands for the Graphic Medicine International Collective, and the award was announced at this year’s GMIC conference, held in Toronto. I watched the ceremony on Zoom.) 

I knew the story had been short-listed for the award, but the competition was very stiff, with four other excellent pieces under consideration.

This is what the judges had to say about “Vaccinated at the Ball”:

The judges loved this comic. Josh Neufeld’s graphic journalism is performed with masterful skill. In this piece, he manages to create a brilliantly engaging graphic essay that draws the reader into the action while avoiding excessive narration or resorting to talking heads. The story sets modern-day anxieties about COVID vaccination against historical government malpractice in a way that sympathetically articulates the viewpoint of the vaccine skeptics while reinforcing the importance of vaccination in combating the pandemic.

I’m so grateful to have won, especially because this means more eyeballs on the story, which focuses on COVID vaccination in Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community, particularly house ball celebrations. The piece celebrates the work of UIC nurses Randi Singer, Natasha Crooks, and Rebecca Singer; healthcare advocate Noel C. Green; and of course, house ball legend/activist Jahari Stamps.

I’m thrilled to be sharing the award with my amazing editor Carmen Nobel and her organization The Journalist’s Resource, which commissioned the piece. One of the things I’m most proud of about “VatB” was that it was published under a Creative Commons license, which enabled it to be freely republished by, among others, the Chicago Sun-Times Sunday section — in print!

I’ve been interested in the form of graphic medicine (GM) for a while now — I’m still amazed that there’s an annual academic conference devoted to GM (and has been for over a decade now!). It just so happens that four of the last five comics journalism pieces I have done fall under the label of GM: “Supply Chain Superhero,” “A Tale of Two Pandemics,” “Kansas City and the Case for Restitutional Medicine,” and of course, “Vaccinated at the Ball.” And I’m currently at work on a new piece, on the topic of empathy and medicine. So being recognized by the GM community really means a lot. Thank you, GMIC, and thank you to the late Herbert and Nancy Wolf, who helped develop and sponsor the award.

Congrats as well to the long-form GMIC Award-winner, Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars, by Rick Louis and Lara Antal.

Contemporary Literature interview

Publicity
Contemporary Literature vol. 61, no. 2
Contemporary Literature Summer 2021 (vol. 61, no. 2)

Jonathan Najarian interviewed me about my work for Contemporary Literature, a journal published out of the University of Wisconsin.

In his introduction to the interview, Jon discusses various projects of mine, including A.D.; “The Trump-Russia memos“; “Bahrain: Lines in Ink, Lines in the Sand“; “Supply-Chain Superhero“; “A Tale of Two Pandemics,” and others. I was really struck by Jon’s close reading of my work, and his appreciation for the visual details I spend so much time putting in.

The interview is fun to look back on and read—it’s a real conversation, with some good back & forth, and I felt Jon’s questions really pushed me to go deep in my answers. Topics we discussed include whether comics journalism is “real” journalism, what subjects call out to be treated in comics form, collaborating with Brooke Gladstone, how comics are treated in the U.S. as compared to France, the media and Donald Trump, and the insertion of myself into my stories. Shout-outs to Joe Sacco, Scott McCloud, Harvey Pekar, Dean Haspiel, Martha Rosler, and Sari Wilson.

I can say for a fact that Jon’s intro and the interview itself is the most serious treatment of my stuff that I’ve yet seen. I’m blushing here!

Anyway, there’s a short excerpt from the piece here, but I think you have to have an academic journal subscription, or pay a one-time fee, to read the whole thing online.

pickle hurricane

Food/Riot Comix Collab with my Mom!

Comics, Publicity

Announcing a new collaboration between my mother, Martha Rosler, and myself: “Food Riot? Food Riot!,” a comics story just published by e-flux journal.

The piece is an adapted excerpt from my mom’s mid-1970s manuscript, The Art of Cooking, which features a mock dialogue primarily between Julia Child and Craig Claiborne (with various interlopers.) We took the excerpt and adapted it into comics form—and I am confident in saying that this is a very different representation of Child and Claiborne than you’ve ever seen before!

Why now? Good question! Here’s an excerpt from my mom’s intro to the piece:

The [story] centers on access to food. Specifically, it takes on the people’s right to affordable high-quality food—and the repeated effort to either get fair prices, with government support, from producers and middlemen or otherwise obtain and distribute food by other means, such as by seizing and allocating it via actions often called food riots, which are a recurring form of people’s justice.

Josh Neufeld and I have worked on this comic off and on for about a year, and its topicality and resonance have varied as we did so. In the run-up to publication, when hoarding and price gouging scarred the coronavirus pandemic response, the comic, as already written, seemed to pitch itself in one direction. But as we are about to go to press, with the comic still unchanged, a different question of justice is at stake: people’s right to demand justice and equal treatment as well as equal access to social goods under the law in every aspect of life. No justice, no peace.

Indeed!

My mother and I have done some collaborative comics before, including one on gardening and Guantanamo Bay, and one on Jonas Salk. This is the longest one yet. E-flux journal (to quote their own description) “is a monthly art publication featuring essays and contributions by some of the most engaged artists and thinkers working today. ” They also happen to be the sponsor of the Martha Rosler Library traveling exhibition, which was (to quote Wikipedia) “a reading room in which over 7,500 volumes from her private collection were made available as a public resource in venues in and around art institutions, schools, and libraries.”

Enough blather! Go check out “Food Riot? Food Riot!” on e-flux journal.

Scene by Scene with Josh and Dean DEBUT

Comics, Geek, Plug, Publicity, Tribute
Scene by Scene logo

I’m excited and proud to announce the launch of SCENE BY SCENE WITH JOSH & DEAN, a new weekly podcast I’m co-hosting with Dean Haspiel.

This season we will be breaking down the 2003 film American Splendor, scene by scene (thus the title!), talking about Harvey Pekar, our collaborations with him, and the joys & challenges of being professional cartoonists.

I was inspired by the burgeoning movement of “minute-by-minute” podcasts to launch this show, and am so thrilled to have Dino as my co-host. We’ve been friends and comics colleagues since high school, and Dean is one of the most talented and entertaining human beings I know. The fact that he also worked for Harvey for a long time — AND was integral to the American Splendor movie happening — made it a no-brainer.

Harvey Pekar has been deceased now for almost ten years, and it’s time people started talking about him again. (After all, it’s impossible to imagine iconic TV shows “about nothing” like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm without the example of the original “ordinary life is pretty complex stuff” American Splendor.)

In the podcast Dean and I will analyze each scene of the movie in order, episode by episode, with analysis, humor, and inside information. We promise to reveal previously unexplored connections between the original American Splendor comics and the film’s construction, and Harvey’s life & career,

Just as importantly, each episode will also serve as a jumping-off point for talking about Dean’s and my own careers. Topics will include the nature of identity, truth in art, and the realm of memoir/autobiography.

We’re having a lot of fun doing the podcast, and I think it shows — the tone is very much in the spirit of our friendship, irreverent and playful. 

Guests on the podcast will include other former Pekar collaborators, as well as actors, filmmakers, and producers. 

And it all starts today! All you need to do to prepare is watch the movie again (or watch it with us, scene by scene!)…

Scene by Scene can be found on all major podcast platforms and distributors. To listen, visit SceneByScenePodcast.com or your favorite pod-catcher. The Scene by Scene website also features examples of our illustrations, comics samples from American Splendor and other places, process drawings, and a store.

So click here and join us as our story begins on Halloween evening in the year 1950

AS 1: 1950 — Our Story Begins
AS 1: 1950 — Our Story Begins

FLASHed & Girl Through Glass at the Brooklyn Book Festival

Plug, Publicity

bkbf-logoSari and I will be ALL OVER the Brooklyn Book Festival this Sunday (Sept. 18), with two panels and a workshop. In addition, we will be promoting and signing FLASHed at our publisher’s booth. Here’s how it will go down:

At noon, Sari will be on the panel, “Remember All That? A Look Back at New York City,” along with Tim Murphy (Christodora) and Pia Padukone (The Faces of Strangers); moderated by Rob Spillman of Tin House. “New York City is host to grueling ballet careers, riots in Tompkins Square, a political campaign interrupted by a cross-cultural dalliance, and rare encounters of unmitigated beauty.” Brooklyn Historical Society Library, 128 Pierrepont Street. [Full details here.]

Flashed-cover400pxAt 3pm, Sari and I will run a multimedia flash fiction workshop, “Comics > Prose.” Flex your storytelling muscles as you write your own piece of flash fiction inspired by an original comic. One story created in the workshop will be published on the official FLASHed website! St. Francis College Workshop Room 4202, 180 Remsen St. [Full details here.]

At 5pm, I’ll be moderating the panel “The Art of War” with comics journalist Sarah Glidden (Rolling Blackouts), ex-Marine Maximilian Uriarte (The White Donkey), and historical graphic novelist Ethan Young (Nanjing). “Compelling comics can be drawn from conflict zones.” Brooklyn Historical Society, 128 Pierrepont Street. [Full details here.]

The rest of the day we should be at the Pressgang booth, with copies of FLASHed on hands (and hopefully with some FLASHed contributors as well!). Pressgang’s booth is #529, located near the corner of Joralemon and Adams, right in the heart of the festival.

BKBF is always a great event; we hope to see you there this Sunday!

Brooklyn Book Festival
Borough Hall and environs
Sunday, September 18 (10am-6pm, rain or shine)

Josh & Sari on Publishers Weekly podcast “More to Come”

Comics, Publicity

Sari and I recently had the honor of being guests on the Publishers Weekly podcast “More to Come,” hosted by PW editor Calvin Reid. We sat down with Calvin at the PW offices and talked about Flashed: Sudden Stories in Comics and Prose, as well as collaboration in general, and our own work.

Topics we cover in the podcast include my autobiographical travel comics collection A Few Perfect Hours (which includes a couple of collaboration with Sari), and my more recent work in comics journalism, including A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge. We talk about the online collective ACT-i-VATE and my long creative association with Dean Haspiel.

Talking about Dean, we discuss what it means to be a native New Yorker, which leads to Sari talking a bit about her debut novel Girl Through Glass. This broaches the very rich topic of New York City in the 1970s, and the contrast between that gritty period of urban blight and the rarified world of classical dance. I appreciated Sari’s point that “a novel works through contrasts,” which are really brought out in her book.

The second half of the podcast covers the concept behind Flashed: what is flash fiction, and how Sari & I, and our joint backgrounds in  the worlds of literary fiction and alternative comics, made this project come into focus. We break down a couple of section from the book to explore the connective tissue of such triptychs as “Night Games”—featuring Lynda Barry, Kellie Wells, and Box Brown—and “Mutable Architecture”—featuring Gabrielle Bell, Jedediah Berry, and Carol Lay. And we discuss the honor and pleasure of editing such a talented group of writers & cartoonists.

The podcast wraps up with a couple of shout-outs to some upcoming projects: the week-long comics memoir workshop Sari & I will be co-teaching at the Fine Arts Work Center this summer, and the still-burgeoning Comics & Graphic Narratives concentration I’m helping to develop at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program.

We really enjoyed our wide-ranging conversation with Calvin, and we think you will too. Give a listen here.

The Solstice Program and getting your MFA in comics

Comics, Publicity, Work

Solstice-banner-adThe Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College is starting a graphic narratives concentration—and I’ve been hired as the first faculty member/mentor. I officially start this July.

Comics are now being taught at almost every college and university in the country, and there are even a few other MFA programs out there. But Solstice is one of the first low-residency programs to offer an MFA in—pick your favorite term—cartooning/comics/graphic narratives/sequential art.

Here’s how Solstice describes the low-residency component:

Students are in residence on campus for ten days, twice a year, for a total of five residencies over two years. During the 10-day residencies, students and faculty gather on Pine Manor College’s lovely, wooded campus—a mere five miles from downtown Boston—and attend workshops, classes, panel discussions, and readings. At the end of the residency, each student is matched with a faculty mentor with whom he or she will work individually during the six-month semester to follow.

During that six-month semester, students study independently, sending “packets” of work to their mentor every month. The Pine Manor campus really is beautiful, and the program—run by Meg Kearney and Tanya Whiton—is both serious and welcoming. And the other faculty members are an impressive group.

I’m excited to help craft Solstice’s graphic narratives concentration. It’s ironic, because I personally have no degrees in comics or cartooning—only 25+ years of professional experience. When I was becoming a cartoonist there were no programs out there to guide me; my own development was intuitive, and heavily influenced by my favorite comics: Hergé’s Tintin and American superhero comics. Eventually, I came across a copy of Will Eisner’s Comics & Sequential Art, which was the first text I encountered that discussed the form of comics as a subject worthy of study. Later, I was heavily inspired by Scott McCloud’s seminal work, Understanding Comics. But as I evolved, a lot of what I had to do was un-learn a lot of bad habits I had picked up during my youth as an aspiring superhero artist: melodramatic facial expressions, distracting page layouts, and the like.

The most important skill I have developed in my adult years is writing for comics. Growing up, in my mind I artificially segmented the practice of comics into different jobs: writer, penciler, inker, letterer, etc.—because this assembly line system had been institutionalized by the big publishers to meet their monthly deadlines. Discovering the world of “alternative” and literary comics made me appreciate the role of CARTOONIST—a jack-of-all trades in the comics world. This is what I aspired to be as I learned to write—first with memoir and auto-bio comics and now with journalistic stories. (I continue to collaborate with writers on occasion, but that’s because I really enjoy the back-and-forth “mind-meld” that a good comics collaboration produces.) Yes, comics are an amalgam of words & pictures, but I firmly believe a good comic/graphic novel starts with a good story. In the end, the art serves the story.

So as developer of the Solstice graphic narratives concentration, and chief mentor to the students, I will stress writing as the foundation of our practice.

And at this point, my own teaching experience is fairly extensive. I was an Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist, where I worked with eight mid-career cartoonists on their nonfiction graphic novel projects. For a number of years I’ve taught week-long comics workshops at the Fine Arts Work Center summer program. And I’ve taught day-long comics workshops at universities, and for students in the U.S. and abroad (including my many foreign trips as a “comics cultural ambassador” for the U.S. State Dept.’s Speaker/Specialist program). I’ve taught comics workshops at the Society of Illustrators, and I’ve served as a thesis advisor for students at the Center for Cartoon Studies and Hunter College.

As part of the first residency, I’ll teach a single two-hour CCT (Craft, Criticism, and Theory) class, as well as lead daily three-hour workshops. As a teacher/mentor, what I most enjoy is helping cartoonists find their voice, identifying their strengths as writer/artists. Over the course of the two-year program, I’ll work closely with my students on their individual projects: a complete comics manuscript—and, of course, an MFA!

These will be the foundational texts of the graphic narratives concentration:

  • Scott McCloud, Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels (William Morrow, 2006)
  • Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (William Morrow, 1994)
  • Jessica Abel & Matt Madden, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures (First Second, 2008)
  • Will Eisner, Comics & Sequential Art (Poorhouse Press, 1985)
  • Ivan Brunetti, Cartooning: Philosophy & Practice (Yale University Press, 2011)

I’m really looking forward to getting this exciting new degree program off the ground. The growth I’ve seen—just over the course of my own career—in the appreciation of the comics form is truly astounding, and I’m excited to support the next great group of cartoonists in reaching their goals. The low-residency format is a great option for motivated, independent creators who can devote a few weeks a year to gathering together in bucolic Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

Check out the Solstice website for further details, including an interview with me about what’s in store. (Here’s an article about my coming on board with Solstice.)

If you’re a cartoonist aspiring to take your work to the next level, or know someone who would be interested, please think about applying. The application deadline for the summer 2016 residency/fall semester is April 15, 2016. I welcome cartoonists working in the realm of fiction or nonfiction—and everything in-between.

This Summer in P-town: Josh & Sari Week-long Memoir Comics Workshop

Plug, Publicity

SariFAWX Summer Workshops 2016 and I are proud to announce that this summer we’ll be co-teaching a week-long comics-making memoir workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.

This marks the third time we’ll be doing a comics workshop with FAWC and it’s always been a really rewarding experience—for us and for our students. We learned that nothing makes a better combination than writing and art… or summer and beautiful P-town… or Sari and Josh! (*wink*) So that’s why we’ll be teaching the class again this summer, during the week of July 31–August 5.

Here’s the course description for our Memoir Comics Workshop:

Comics use words and pictures together to form powerful narratives. In this workshop, you will use material from your own life to create an original minicomic. It can be about last night’s dinner, or a moment that changed you forever—as long as it fits into a booklet of 8-12 pages. At the end of the week, we’ll reproduce and swap our minis, and set up an open studio to share our work.

We’ll examine some basic principles of visual storytelling. We’ll also do writing, brainstorming, and collaborative exercises we’ve found useful in producing strong comics work. There will be group feedback to hone our stories, find the narrative “beats,” and help each other discover our “true” story. We’ll generate ideas for solving storytelling problems—and look at how other cartoonists have grappled with them.

You’ll have time to work on your projects in class each day, but you will also probably do some drawing on your own. One of the key features of comics is that they are printed and reproduced. You’ll also design and produce a small edition of your minicomic to share with the other workshop members and for open studio. You’ll come out of this workshop with a tool set for taking your work to another level.

Please email a short description of the autobiographical story you’re going to work on and two character sketches (yourself and another character) to workshops@fawc.org by July 10. This prior work will help you—and us—jump into this intensive project.

Click this link to find out more about the program and how to register. And please spread the word about the week-long workshop, and encourage people to sign up soon. Classes fill up quickly.

This Saturday: Grand Comics Fest, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Publicity

GCF-logoThis Saturday, I’ll be in the heart of Williamsburg at the 3rd annual edition of Pat Dorian’s Grand Comics Fest. The original plan was for myself and Hang Dai Editions co-founder Seth Kushner to both be at the festival, but as you probably know, Seth tragically passed away less than two weeks ago.

Seth’s presence at Grand Comics Fest (and going forward) will be sorely missed, but his work will be there nonetheless, including his newest comic, Secret Sauce. I’ll try to have Seth’s other comics on hand as well, including Force Field Fotocomix and Schmuck Comix. And there may be some sort of raffle/giveaway to help raise money for Seth’s outstanding medical bills.

Vagabonds #4As for my own work, I will have copies of The Vagabonds, issues 1-4 (issues 3 & 4 being published through Hang Dai), as well as my books A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, A Few Perfect Hours, and The Influencing Machine. In other words: pretty much everything!

Other cartoonists scheduled to be at the curated show—which is open and free to the public—include such luminaries as Derf, R. Sikoyrak, Kriota Willberg, Jess Ruliffson, James Romberger, Marguerite van Cook, Box Brown, Paper Rocket Comics, and Ink Brick. Come on by!

Details:

Grand Comics Fest
Saturday, June 6, 12 noon – 8pm
Bird River Studios
343 Grand Street (corner of Marcy & Havemeyer)
Brooklyn, NY 11211

For more information, email grandcomicsfestival@gmail.com.