Tag Archives: comic books

Trifecta! The Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics Collection

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Not only are these comics a good way to get into Bonnie Jo Campbell, they’re also a good documentation of my journey from adequate to proficient in Adobe Photoshop.

May seems to happen so fast, I completely forgot to post this little gem to my blog: Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics: Volume 3 (Women and Other Animals) exists! We distributed some at the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature’s symposium earlier in the month, and then most of them are being held back until WW Norton reprints Women and Other Animals in 2020. However, if you’re a follower of this blog, you can totally order one (or more) direct from me. Just contact me through this blog (email address is on the About page) and we can exchange details. I also have copies of the back issues for sale.

Prices as follows: 1 comic=$4, 2 comics=$7, 3 comics=$10 + $3 postage.

I’m going to post my presentation from the SSML symposium this week, too. It was a really great experience for me. The organizers want my work for an anthology they’re putting together, and, even better, the comics themselves are going to be added to the comic book archive at MSU. It is the academic comic book collection. The definitive scholarly repository with over 300,000 titles. It’s the place to be if your research requires comic books. It’s a good honor.

 

Fun with BJC Comics

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I’m glad to have accurately communicated the humor in these stories.

A high school English teacher sent me this photo of his students enjoying my work. He said he taught Bonnie Jo Campbell’s stories in his class, and I wonder which ones. I wonder if he teaches “Family Reunion.” I wonder how young readers respond to the accurate depiction of soon-to-be-destroyed male genitalia. I seriously hope that the teacher vetted these comics thoroughly. In some communities that picture would not fly.

If you want to traumatize children with my work, I do have copies to sell (and I expect I won’t have many left after the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature’s annual symposium, where I will be talking about Bonnie Jo Campbell, and Bonnie Jo Campbell will be releasing volume 3 of these comics, providing I finish 7 more pages in the next 4 1/2 weeks) and you can order them by emailing me at littledragonblue@gmail.com. It’s $5 for 1 (that includes postage) and $8 for both.

 

Don’t Take Me Down

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And did you further know what I am applying to myself right now?

This one started out as an extra page for the American Salvage book, a little introduction to the history of and academic discourse about comics that could explain the project’s intellectual value, but I could never figure out the last panel, how to bring it full circle or tie it in to the rest of the material. Like, where was this narrative going? Was there any joke in it? And how many copyright violations did I dare produce?

In for a penny…I drew all the licensed characters. I believe that this comic constitutes fair use but you know fair use is only for people who can afford lawyers.

Tonight I just decided to draw something for the last panel. I don’t know if this comic succeeds in saying what it wants to say, but at least it’s finished.

The Origins of Super Bon Bon

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I continue to not understand why a plain black dress costs as much as an F-350 stake-bed truck.

Bonnie Jo had the idea for a comic about the origins of American Salvage, and she sent me about 6 sentences, one per panel, and then we sort of bounced the script back and forth until it worked for both of us, so this is actually the first true collaboration we’ve done in 2 books. The other 31 (thirty-one!) comics I’ve written about her work didn’t really involve any direct communication or feedback during the process. So this was fun. I love memoir.

The dog in panel 5 was named Rebar, and he only had 3 legs. The picture of me in panel 6 is totally recycled from the last book. The donkey in panel 4 is the only donkey I drew for American Salvage, while Mothers, Tell Your Daughters is full of them. American Salvage, on the other hand, features many more drawings of blood and weapons.