Brandon Graham's Blog, page 99

basemondo:ourcomicsourselves:I.D. by Emma RíosHi, I’m Jacob...

basemondo:

ourcomicsourselves:

I.D. by Emma Ríos

Hi, I’m Jacob Shapiro and I run Fantom Comics in Washington, DC! I was asked to guest curate this page with comics from my personal collection that matter to me. My fourth post is on Spanish artist Emma Ríos’ book I.D.

Ríos broke into the mainstream North American comics scene in the late ‘00s with work for Boom! and Marvel, before teaming up with Kelly Sue DeConnick for the mythological Western Pretty Deadly that really put her on the map and allowed Emma to showcase her intricate, flowing storytelling style. She gives American comics an injection of European flair with a heavy dose of Japanese influence as well, and in 2015, she teamed up with Brandon Graham to co-create the Image Comics anthology magazine Island–each month featured a selection of comics by independent artists from around the globe, hand-picked by Ríos and Graham.

Along with curating and editing the magazine, the first two issues of Island serialized I.D., the first comic ever written and drawn entirely by Ríos alone. In short, it’s a story about identity. Three people from different walks of life who are unhappy with their lives for different reasons all want to get an experimental surgery to get their brain (and thus their mind and consciousness) transplanted into a new body.

This comic is a strain of near-future hard sci-fi we don’t see enough in comics–not about spaceships or explosions but just humans being humans, and the potential realistic real-world implications of that. Ríos researched with neurologist Miguel Alberte Woodward, MD to figure out the actual prospects of a surgery like this, and he wrote a short essay in the back of the book:

“What Emma requested were the technicalities behind the process of changing the carcass, while retaining the soul. Not a clean and elegant method where some nano-robots build a new nervous system from scratch by replicating the original one which you then have to figure out what to do with, but rather a complex surgery with a trade-off between leaving the comforts of home and making the strenuous journey of meeting one’s urge, however founded or powerful, to change body. Setting aside ‘personal’ reasons, there might be a handful of medical conditions where a brain transplant would be considered an option, should the technology be developed some day.”

All this scientific research is really just the base for creating an emotional interpersonal story. Obviously getting a completely new body is a huge life change, and each of the characters has complicated reasons for wanting the surgery. But for the most part, I.D. doesn’t take place in cold research labs or hospital rooms–it’s a relatable human story that opens in a coffee shop on a rainy day and ends on a park bench under a tree.

But even with Ríos’ super heady plot (literally!), my favorite part of I.D. is still hands-down her artwork. I.D. is printed not in color or black-and-white but entirely in redscale, which immediately makes this comic stand out. And like many of Emma’s other comics, her page layouts are absolutely stunning: tons of inset panels-within-panels and playing with panel shape, size, and the transition from panel gutters to selective use of full-bleed pages.

With a comics industry toying with the idea of moving entirely to smartphone- and tablet-based panel-by-panel view digital comic reading, a book like I.D. showcases the power of entire pages together being greater than the sum of their parts, something we might lose if we ever move past physical comics as a medium. The story opens with circular close-up panels of hands, mouths, coffee mugs, and uses this extreme close-up technique through the whole book to keep the comic feeling grounded in human emotion while it grasps with gigantic existential questions.

The cover to I.D. is mostly blank white with light red on it, so you might walk past it if you see it in a comic shop, but anyone with a passing interest in hard science fiction or the human condition should pick this up. Also check out the interview I did with Emma last year for the now-defunct comics site Panels (now hosted on Book Riot).

You can find Emma on Tumblr at @steinerfrommars. I’m on Tumblr at @aleneigen. and Fantom Comics is on Tumblr at @fantomcomics.

@aleneigen with another lovely review (I.D. was what got me to buy Island in the first place - a decision I will never forget)

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3lix13:…some panels from the first few books of ‘The Waters of...

3lix13:

…some panels from the first few books of ‘The Waters of Deadmoon’ (Story: Patrick Cothias - Art: Philippe Adamov - Heavy Metal, May 1990 through May 1991 - originally published in France as ‘Les Eaux de Mortelune’ by Glénat, 1986 through 1989), very much to my liking in the same vein as ‘Freakwave’ by Milligan/McCarthy & very Moebius…  

giantboxofcomics:The 40 Years of Comics Project, Day 952.

giantboxofcomics:

The 40 Years of Comics Project, Day 952.

Juuust finishing this issue up

Juuust finishing this issue up

Do you believe that 'originality is undetected plagarism' ?

No. I think that’s weirdly cynical. 

I’m on the opposite end of that, where I think that coming up with something that feels unique isn’t that difficult. It seems like it would be more work to make something that actually felt like something that already existed than to just let an idea become it’s own thing.

I feel like so little of what I see even comes close to feeling like my experience in life anyway.  –and if art is showing your take on the world then there is a lot of room there. 

  I think being honest in your work is more important than thinking about originality.What do you value?, what is your perspective of the world you live in? Does a tree really look like that to you or are you just looking at how another artist draws trees? 

Sometimes I see people who draw noses like Sean Murphy or do jokes like Rumiko Takahashi, but I think that can just be influences that they have to work through to get to a new place. 

And that’s not to say that unoriginality doesn’t exist, Like many problems in creating art I think it’s an issue of quality. Better work is often also more unique. 

Where do you get your ideas from ?

I think a lot of it is a combination of trying to think of what I would be most excited to read and reacting to my own life and other people’s work.

At the start of Prophet me and Simon had a scene where John P goes to meet an alien contact (kind of a chicken with a vagina for a face) and his contact has sex with him before they conduct business. 

I was watching the movie “

The Limits of Control

“ (possibly my least favorite Jim Jarmusch movie) and there’s a scene where one of the people the hero is meant to contact is a beautiful woman that the hero has never met. She’s waiting for him with a gun naked in bed when he shows up and offers to sex him up. 

He turns her down saying something like “I never mix business and sex” but I was struck by the nerve of this woman– just assuming she was going to start a meeting with sex. I remember joking about how the scene would go if it was a middle aged business man acting the same way. – and that led to me thinking that it might be a thing an alien could do. 

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Sketchbook comic

Sketchbook comic 

hey brandon, is the prophet HC happening in any form?

No. 

I met with some people at Image,

Unfortunately sales past the 1st trade look like they wouldn’t support something so pricey.

The good news about the meeting was the publishers interest in me focusing on more of my books like King city and Warheads. (I’m finishing up the 2nd Warheads trade now)