High-Low

Editing and publishing one anthology is hard. Doing multiple issues is a thankless task that requires equal parts vision and determination. It's clear that Andrew Alexander has both, because CRAM...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/04/cram-part-3-cram-2.html

The underground/alternative comics anthology is a tradition dating back close to sixty years that has birthed movements and introduced exciting new talent to a larger audience. Beginning with Zap...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/04/cram-week-part-2-cram-1.html

One of the most interesting new publishers is CRAM Books, helmed by Andrew Alexander. To date, he's published three volumes of his CRAM anthology, as well as minis by himself, Angela Fanche, and ...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/03/cram-week-part-1-andrew-alexander.html

Poison Pill was one of the more exciting comics of 2023 because it had this kind of young guns energy going for it, as six young cartoonists who are all entering mature phases of their careers ma...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/03/poison-pill.html

K.Wroten is one of the most thoughtful and philosophical cartoonists working today. Their first major full-length book, Crimes, was published by Pyrite Press, and it's remarkable for its complex,...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/02/pyrite-press-part-2-kwrotens-crimes.html

Pyrite Press is Brice Gold's publishing concern. I don't think it's currently active in publishing new books, but I did meet Brice at CAKE last year and picked up several books. Part 1 of this r...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/02/pyrite-press-part-1-vinnie-neuberg.html

Emily Zullo is a cartoonist and animator. Her Comics About A Bunny Girl is a funny story about anthropomorphic animals and post-ironic crushes. The otherwise nameless Bunny is at a party (we...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/02/short-mini-reviews-sean-bieri-julia.html

Noah Van Sciver remains in his productive groove of comics with the second issue of Maple Terrace, from Uncivilized Books. The series picks up on Van Sciver at a young age, living in a ramshackle...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/02/noah-van-scivers-maple-terrace-2.html

There's an extent to which this run of very funny and varied issues of the ridiculously titled Peepee Poopoo feels like a warm-up for Caroline Cash. Sure, she's self-consciously harkening back t...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/02/caroline-cashs-peepee-poopoo-issue-80085.html

DOP: Comics As Craft is an interesting mini-anthology published by the students of Paul Karasik at a CCS workshop. It's a fitting comic to review after my long CCS feature, although Karasik's met...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/02/dop-anthology.html

This was the longest feature I've ever run on the Center for Cartoon Studies, totaling 45 days and including 73 different cartoonists. It's exciting to see the breadth and depth of work emerging ...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-index.html

Let's jump back into the world of Aaron Cockle and Andalusian Dog. Cockle's been hard at work pumping out issues of his enigmatic pastiche of and ode to the work of sci-fi author Philip K. Dick, ...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-45-aaron-cockle.html

Natalie Norris has been producing memoir about trauma since before she started at CCS. Even in her earliest assignments at the school, she turned standard first-year assignments like adapting a f...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-44-natalie-norris.html

The latest issue of Sean Knickerbocker's Rust Belt Review (#5) is light on CCS content but heavy on other interesting stories. Knickerbocker runs a blend of one-shot stories as well as serials, w...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-43-rust-belt-review-beth.html

Issy Manley 's No One Wants To Work Anymore is a series of comics essays addressing labor and one's role in global capitalism from a personal perspective. Their tone widely varies, given the venu...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-42-issy-manley-anna.html

Filipa Estrela has long been a leading proponent of constructed comics made from unconventional materials. Meandering Realms is an anthology that she edited full of such comics. Be it woodcuts, c...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-41-meandering-realms.html

Josh Rosen follows up on illustrating a work of graphic history with another one, this time focusing on the home front of World War II in the US. Working with writer Kate Hannigan, World War II: ...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-40-josh-rosen.html

What The Gnomes Know is an anthology centered around artists from CCS and the Columbus scene. There's a good mixture of both, and there are a number of artist-writer combos that are somewhat unu...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-39-what-gnomes-know.html

April Malig is an avid zine-maker whose work varies from hyper-specific narrative comics, to journals revolving around drawing, food & travel; and abstract experiments with color and form. In I ...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-38-april-malig.html

Filipa Estrela is one of the more fascinating graduates of CCS due to their interest in what they refer to as "unconventional material comics" or "crafted comics." These are comics made in whole...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-37-filipa-estrela-and.html

Mac Maclean' s comics tend to be about body image and grief, and there are a lot of intersections. They are also fundamentally about queerness. Ode To A Body is a brief mini accompanied by illust...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-36-mac-maclean.html

Zaria Cannon is a second-year student who's mostly working in genre-related fiction, albeit stories that have a personal and human touch. Ignited, for example, is about a couple of kids at a supe...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-35-zaria-cannon.html

Iris Gudeon' s comics are delicate, deeply warm and sincere, and clever. One Horse Farm is the humor entry here, as it's a POV story where the reader is being offered a job at a farm that strange...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-34-iris-gudeon.html

Laura Meilman is a talented cartoonist with a particular knack for color and a delightfully scribbly line. Her proficiency with colored pencils and playful sense of humor make reading her frequen...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-33-laura-meilman.html

It's difficult to get a handle on what kind of cartoonist first-year CCS cartoonist F.G. Meanie is at this point from the two comics they submitted for review. What is clear is that Meanie is a t...

http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2024/01/45-days-of-ccs-32-edea-giang-fg-meanie.html