The first panel I went to see at
SPX was a discussion and interview between Kate Beaton and Noella Stevenson.
Kate Beaton had just released her new book “Step Aside Pops” and Noella
Stevenson gained popularity with her graphic novel “Nimona” and more recently
“Lumberjanes”. They both talked about how they started working in the medium of
comics and what it meant to them. Kate Beaton said that she originally started
out as a humor writer at her college at which she was studying History, and she
didn’t find her writing was very successful but immediately was able to make
much better work when she started executing the same ideas in comics. Noelle
was actually a student at MICA before she became a popular cartoonist and she
was studying illustration here only a few years ago. She said that for her
comics were a way to explain to people things that were upsetting her or to
communicate with people directly telling them the way she felt in a way that
she wasn’t able to before.
They also discussed the
implications of their both being female cartoonists and described some aspects
of what the medium is like for women working in the indie comics industry as
well as what it’s like being a girl growing up reading comics. The last topic
of conversation was about how the internet has changed the medium of comics
because both of these creators gained most of their popularity first through an
internet following.
The second panel I attended was
called “Humour and Absurdity in European Comics” which featured three
cartoonists: Brecht Vanderbrouke, Joan Cornella and Bendik Kaltenborn. I was
already familiar with and a fan of the work of Brecht and Joan. These three
comic creators shared some stylistic qualities among which were that many of
their works were painted, in a style diverging from traditional comics
drawings. Each guest went through a brief biography of their trajectory in
their comics career and covered different important events.
One aspect of the panel which I
found very interesting was that both Joan and Brecht revealed that much of
their work was referencing or inspired by the cartoonist Her Seele, whose work
I was already familiar with and loved but I had never made this connection. The
cartoonists were all working in a satirical mode and produced confrontational
work that sometimes was politically charged or motivated by institutional
critique. They briefly described the publics varying response to their work in
different situations and also went over some future projects that they were in
the middle of developing.
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