Study Group Radio: Process Party

This week: Dispatches from the show floor at Short Run 2017! Zack attended this always excellent show and got short interviews with Fiona Avocado, Jason T Miles, Fran Lopez, Anna Vo, Kevin Uehlein, Kelly-Sue Deconnick, Patrick Keck, & Cole Johnson. A good time was had by all! If you missed Short Run, catch the vibe now by proxy.

Sarah Horrocks returns! We last spoke to cartoonist and critic Sarah Horrocks in our "Best of 2016" episode, and she's back for a full length interview. She's got a new ongoing serial called GORO that she's releasing in print and digital formats, and we dive deep into that. Sarah goes in depth on her goals there, as well as digging into her writing and drawing process, philosophy of pacing both within a story and a page, mark making vs legibility, and staying true to the emotional content of the work over traditional styles of representation. We cover some of her big influences, like Bill Sienkeiwicz, Guido Crepax and Alberto Breccia. Sarah is also a respected critic of comics and cinema, and we talk about how that informs her work as a cartoonist. But First: Zack returns from Short Run with a convention report, and the Party Boys have some news about important changes to the Patreon that mean more content more often.

This week, Tillie Walden joins us on the party floor! Tillie is the author of the books The End of Summer, I Love This Part, A City Inside, and the newly released memoir Spinning. She's also recently completed an extended webcomic narrative in On A Sunbeam. We talk fiction vs autobio, writing and drawing process, her compulsion to work, career thus far, CCS, subtweeting, trauma, memory, the cruelty of teenagers, and of course a little bit about ice skating. Mike also details his time at the PULP Culture Comic Art Festival in Vermont last week.

Please welcome Karl Stevens, author of Failure & his upcoming book from Retrofit Comics, The Winner. We talked class war, drawing from life, sobriety, collaboration, and more. Also, Mike and Zack talk about the change of Editorial at TCJ, economics, and unions!

It's a special THROWBACK episode! Mike had a stomach bug that precluded us from recording this week, so we're posting an old conversation between Mike, Jim Rugg & Caitlin McGurk discussing Dan Clowes' Death Ray. It originally appeared on Mike's old podcast TCJ Talkies. A new regular episode will be up later this week, but for now enjoy this discussion about teenage friendships in the work of Dan Clowes, his use of color and full-bleed layouts, and also a photo of him Mike once saw where he's sitting at what looks like a giant novelty sized drawing board.

Join us for a Very Special Episode of Process Party: It's our Birthday! (aww) Mike and Zack got together and posted the first episode 1 year ago this week, and forgive us but we get a little misty thinking about it. That doesn't mean we spend the whole episode patting ourselves on the back, but we do take the opportunity to have a bit of the patented jibba jabba you know and hopefully love. We also took some questions from our listeners to spice things up this time! Topics include: Whither Shanna? Cover Design (is hard), Leaf Peeping, Comics Infrastructure, Inktober, Comics Academia, How we should totally have a TV show, "mean" criticism, The Real World Season 3, Being Grateful, and much more!

Please welcome to the party floor Christopher Sebela, writer and co-creator of Welcome Back, Heartthrob, High Crimes, among many others. Chris talks about his adventures at the Clown Motel, freelance writing, collaboration, work for hire and working within constraints, long-gestating projects, writing Harley Quinn, and more!

It's SPX time! One of the best & funnest alt-comics festivals, the Small Press Expo 2017 has come and gone, and Zack was there with his recording device to prove it. With short interviews from Celine Loup, Rob Clough, Chuck Foresman, Daniel Spottswood, Nathan Fox, Melissa Mendes, Kyle Bravo, Vincent Stall aka King Mini, Francois Vigneault, Mardou, Jess Fink, Glynnis Fawkes, & Shannon Wheeler!

It's our big 50th episode blowout! Welcome cartoonist and animator Jesse Moynihan. He's the author of The Backwards Folding Mirror and the consciousness-expanding Forming series. He was also a key part of the first 5 seasons of the Adventure Time cartoon, and currently working on pitching several of his own cartoon ideas to publishers. We get into all of that and more - From animation writing, to the origins of Forming, tantric sex workshops, airbrush theory, tarot, and what it's like to see your art become part of a genuine worldwide phenomenon. Plus: Zack calls in from SPX!

This one's a Mike & Zack episode, all Jibba, no Jabba! Ok, actually there's plenty of Jabba. Mike talks about feeling a bit nervous about an upcoming comic featuring some of his local politicians, Zack has a new short comic up on Study Group and discusses what goes into collecting serialized work into a satisfying book experience, specifically in relation to his long running Secret Voice series. We also talk Rose City Comic-Con, which Zack just got back from, and the coming week's show SPX. Unofficial episode producer Tom Spurgeon provides multiple questions for us to riff on, which mainly sends us down to a little place we like to call Memory Lane. We *may* spend some time talking about that time we elbowed a famous cartoonist in the head, as well as the immortal Warriors of Plasm. It's a real Process Party Potpourri!

We had the pleasure of hosting Jeff Smith on the party floor this week. He's the author of indy comic turned kid's lit publishing juggernaut Bone, Shazam!: The Monster Society of Evil, RASL, and Tuki: Save The Humans (currently in progress). He's also a co-founder and organizer of the Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (aka CXC) festival.  We get right into his work on TUKI, including the tough decision to pull the book from both online & print serialization when he realized it wasn't quite working the way he wanted it to. Jeff's back hard at work on a revised and refocused version of TUKI, and we talk about the stylistic choices, inspirations, and goals involved along the way. His role as a driving force behind CXC is touched on, and we get the secret origin of the fest itself! Indeed, there's a lot in the way of history lesson this episode, as Jeff talks about the origin of the species, the genesis of BONE, his experiences with Will Eisner, the Billy Ireland Library, and the comics scene of the 1990s. Plus: RA

Please welcome to the party floor, the excellent Jim Rugg! Jim is of course the co-creator of Street Angel and Afrodisiac, as well as artist on The Plain Janes and other books, and designer & curator of not just his own books but multiple zines and magazines. After a lengthy hiatus, Jim & co-creator Brian Maruca are producing a series of new, full color Street Angel hardcover albums through Image Comics. We get into the return of Street Angel, formatting considerations and all, but first we do a brief recap of Jim's long career in the trenches. From there, it's on to a variety of topics such as Clowes' Death Ray, favorite drawing tools, Jim's old and much missed podcasting days, and pro-wrestling and comics!

Welcome to the party floor transmedia artist and cartoonist, Juliacks! The author of Swell, Invisible Forces, and Codas, among others - Juliacks has a brand new book called Architecture of An Atom, out now from 2dcloud (currently kickstarting this and others from their upcoming line of books). AoaA isn't just a graphic novel, it's also a movie! And an installation! We talk about how all these pieces fit together. We also talk artist's residencies, being a bi-continental artist, and more. But First: Mike & Zack talk SPX (Zack's going) and the Ignatz awards (Mike's nominated), and Juggalos (they're marching that weekend).

Welcome Kramer's Ergot honcho and creator of the ongoing series Crickets, Sammy Harkham! We spend most of our time talking his serialized graphic novel Blood Of The Virgin, an ode to LA and C movie houses in the 1970s. But We don't stop there, and cover all kinds of stuff including the need for a comics magazine of record, writing techniques, the importance work spaces, and even a couple SCOOPS! This episode is one for the books!

We welcome comics critic and cartoonist Darryl Ayo to the party floor this week. Darryl is the author of Little Garden, an ongoing comic strip (or series of one-pagers) about mythological creatures that live in a more or less idyllic world. We talk criticism, twitter, the genesis of Comics Cube, Little Garden past and future, and evolving platforms for both comics and talking about comics. It's a fun talk with the Ignatz award winning cartoonist! But first! Mike & Zack recommend a podcast, and talk coincidence in comics vs real life.

This week the party is joined by the hilarious author of Someone Please Have Sex With Me, Gina Wynbrandt! Gina lays it down on a variety of topics including Justin Beiber, dating, getting derailed after finishing a book, her art style & her writing process. But First: Mike & Zack talk about derailments of their own! Post-project derailment, apathy, depression, and laziness. You know, the usual!

This episode we welcome cartoonist & podcaster Carta Monir! Carta is the author of several short comics and the recent 2Dcloud release Secure Connect. Carta talks her writing process, Tomb Raider, family stories, drawing perfectly vs drawing real, her book Secure Connect, 24 hour comics, therapy depicting the fragmented nature of internal thought processes, how technology changes us, and more! But First: Mike & Zack (sort of) debate using shortcuts in art!

We delve deep into Eric's creative process, from writing to drawing, to final product. His new book Vague Tales is a fairly surreal bit of near-automatic writing and Eric details the way it all came together. We also talk about his general cartooning career path, as well as his time as a producer on the tv show Mythbusters for many years. There's also a decent bit of political chit chat, as we get into his recent short piece The Resister. The past is the future and the future is the past in this great talk with a visionary creator! But First: Mike & Zack get a bunch of business taken care of, talk current events (Spills! Thrills!) and Zack has a new/old webcomic up on Study Group.

Episode 40: PHASE 2! What’s Phase 2, you ask? Well, it’s not much, really. We just got to joking around about being relaxed from our respective recent vacations. Anyway, WELCOME TO PHASE 2! This episode is actually One From The Vaults. Way back in April 2015, Mike and Zack recorded a conversation in the glorious, unspoiled past to talk about one of the biggest superhero comics of the 1990s: Kingdom Come by Mark Waid & Alex Ross. This was a fun back-and-forth, and is in many ways a proto-Process Party! BUT FIRST: Mike & Zack catch up after their travels, get excited about Patreon goals, talk about movie habits (& touch on Spider-Man: Homecoming), and have a Democratic Minute!

It's a bit of an Ink Panthers reunion as we welcome Mike's old podcast chucklebuddy (and creator of Box Office Poison, Tricked, Too Cool To Be Forgotten, Lower Regions, & Our Expanding Universe) Alex Robinson! Mike & Alex rekindle their old jibba jabba vibe while talking about Alex's current (& wildly successful) podcast Star Wars Minute. No holds are barred as we talk about the recent attempt at re-serializing BoP in color, and Alex's current long term project Cosmic Saga. There's a lengthy digression into "stuff that sucks to draw" spurred on by Alex's new rule that Cosmic Saga should be (gasp!) "fun to draw."