Okay, you fucking hipsters, what do you think of this guy? He's recently opened a school for comics based off of his Comics Workbook curriculum, he still runs a yearly competition for best comics (set to strict gridding an colour rules) and when he's at the top of his game he writes great pieces about our beloved artform. His pieces on the old comicscomics blog are brilliant. A lot of creators adopted his ideas about geometrical composition within a page and his approach to colour and texture is pretty influential, too. Plus he's made some damn fine work himself--Storeyville and Cold Heat are near masterpiece-status imho. He knows the medium, too. Not just pretentious hipster garbage, his tastes and knowledge of the form runs deep across many genres.
So--best cheerleader and disseminator-of-ideas on thoughtful, innovative comics or annoying hipster? Or both?
What Does Cred Forums Think of Frank Santoro?
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pretty rad dude
comics blogging in the mid-00s was an interesting time I think because they've all but disappeared or have been legitimated into actual websites. He was one of the dudes to follow
Yeah, definitely.
What do you think of his comics? Any particular favourites? Do you enjoy his drawing and stories?
shamed to say i never read his comics just his blogging work but i remember his piece on nine-panel grids and center of the page to be particularly insightful
I liked Pompeii.
I should read Cold Heat someday since it's free on his site.
I love Frank. I think his writing is fascinating and I've discovered a lot of great stuff thanks to Comics Workbook. I even gave to the crowd funding thing for the school. It was just so I could get The Complete Truth Zone but still.
He's also kind of ridiculous and I like that too. That new Simon Hanselmann Landscapes thing has a great story with WWJ satirizing Frank Santoro where he guns down The Paris Review and calls out Aiden Koch biters.
Frank's a great teacher. I took the course awhile back and learned a lot. He's also cute as fuck.
Yeah he really thinks about that stuff. Those geometrical breakdowns of other people's comics were particularly good, I remember being blown away by the Barks' Duck and Tintin analyses in particular. Just the intuitiveness of those cartoonists to hit these "sweet spots" so unerringly in their page compositions...I love anything to do with process. Also his pieces on colour were ace, too, he did a great Steve Oliff interview and re-printed Dave Sim's interview with Neal Adams where he talks about how DC had half the colours Marvel did in the 70's and that they both used this same separation company in Conneticut which was entirely staffed by old ladies. Adams talks about the cover to Batman 245 where he used 100% each of red, yellow and blue to get this deep chocolatey brown--everyone said: "you can't do that! The printers won't be able to take it!" and of course, it worked. Can't tell you the amount of times I've linked the piece to user's who're interested in that stuff.
Haven't read Pompeii, Cold Heat is great, there was some good ancillary stuff in MOME and I have the Jon Vermilyea special too--pretty sure Frank did all the layouts for every Cold Heat story whether he drew the final thing or not.
Storeyville, though, is classic, it's almost like some old John Steinbeck novel, or something.
Oh man good for you! Christ, didja see the Daniel Clowes auction box? With his fucking Series 7 #3 brush, fucking zipztone, two drawings, a Lloyd Llewellyn t-shirt and shit?! God, I was fucking salivating--it went for like $1,500!
And, yeah, he can take the piss out of himself, he's deadly serious about what he does but is never po-faced.
Wow, cool. I like what I've seen of that curriculum. All the direct drawing and stuff, adhering to 8-panel pages and two colours and that...having restraints is a great way to learn something like comics, I think. As much as it CAN be "learned"--
Sorry ran out of space--was gonna say as much as comics can be learned it certainly doesn't hurt having someone who's pretty much a master taking you through every step of the process! You down for sharing your work, user? Would very much like to see something you did for the course--no problem if you don't want to, though.
Haha a good friend of mine is the fucking SPITTING IMAGE of Frank Santoro--he's not into comics at all so he has absolutely no idea who I'm talking about....
Also sorry to sound like an elitist arsehole but you guys have restored my faith in this place a bit, I didn't think I'd get any replies at all desu, it's cool to know there are still folks who love the medium as a whole and not just one or two particular genres. So thanks dudes.
Is OP vollsticks?
I can neither confirm nor deny the identity of OP.....
>Can't tell you the amount of times I've linked the piece to user's who're interested in that stuff
What is this "link" you speak of? And what of the others you've mentioned?
Sorry it was the link to the Sim/Adams interview Santoro posted on comicscomics. Last time I checked (coupla months ago) it was all still up...here lemme check, user...
comicscomicsmag.com
Yep, the whole archives are still up,; here's the Neal Adams piece I was on about. If you're interested in the history of comics colouring it's very interesting.
Cool, thanks. I am actually really interested in the methods used to color comics. Well, the general print production process for comics. I have that Steve Oliff interview bookmarked from awhile back but haven't read it yet.
No problem, it really is fascinating to me, the old CMYK process. Re-reading it it's just a long PART of the particular interview that's concerned with colouring at DC in the '70's. From one of those old Cerebus tangential publications...Following Cerebus.
Thare are also some brilliant "round table" reviews of some comics--there's a "controversial" one of My Brain Is Hanging Upside-Down by David Heatley where the comments section gets pretty heated; also an insightful one on Heavy Liquid and (probably the best of the bunch) Al Columbia's Pim & Francie: Golden Bear Days. So much good stuff on that site. It guts me that it stopped 'cause Hodler, Nadel and Santoro, got poached to run the online iteration of TCJ which I think is a pale, weak version of comicscomics...even the old site before Nadel/Hodler was much better than it is now, it used to be my go-to for comics articles and news to a lesser extent but now I basically just read it for Jog's new release column, Santoro's Riff Raff pieces and the occasional review and interview. Looks a lot better but the content is shit. Rose-tinted goggle shit but how I long for the days of the Comics Journal Message Board....
I miss the 00s/early 10s indie scene as a whole - its almost way too politicized nowadays so the comics we're seeing come out of that is mostly autobio comics focusing on gender and sexuality and while that's fine and dandy, when it starts to dominate the form its like "oh, this again"
best indie book I read this year was the chippendale puke force collection
I follow his blog, I'm not always into what he posts but his passion for what he creates and teaches is inspiring more than anything. Seems like a really sound chap too
I know some dudes who've done his online course before and have nothing but praise for it and him
Indie comics have always trended toward autobio comics focusing on gender and sexuality.
I went to his comic sale.
It was at a warehouse on the west side highway with a phone number taped to the door. Cool shit.
Considering taking his class, but I can't draw. I wanna write, but I figure I can at least learn fundamentals.
Really? I feel like 00s indie was a wave of autobio initiated by Blankets and now we're moving away from that and getting a lot more genre fiction. There are certainly more insane action comics now that are big in the scene.
Well, indie comics cover a fairly broad spectrum of stories but I think indie comics, as we've come to know it today, is pretty much built on the foundation of autobiographical work. For many, the appeal of making indie comics is telling intensely personal stories and sharing/reveling in the weirdness/awkwardness of one's life. I think if go back to any era of indie comics and pick out the most prominent works you will find comics dealing with some combination of neurosis, psychosis, sexually frustrated adults trying to get laid, coming of age stories of people trying to get laid, and stories about people who can't get laid. Sex and sexuality become a pretty big part of most peoples lives from high school on.
O and you are right about there being a lot of genre fiction in indie comics now-a-days. I think that's because there are a ton of people who grew up watching anime and reading manga and want to make stuff like that. They either can't draw well or if they can, their style has a heavy japanese cartoon influence that doesn't really fit anywhere in the mainstream of comics. The manga industry doesn't want an influx of weebs. Anybody can make an indie comic. I mean, there is an establishment but it's not really official. Weeb kids have come in and taken over. When I look at what people are selling at cons, at least 75% of what I see is people peddling their own version of pokemon or final fantasy/zelda.
...
Santoro's tumblr is kinda lame though.