Happy November!
Starting this month, the Cartoonist Cooperative Newsletter is going to be beefing itself up with lots more material, looks at exciting comics by our members, news about comics, and so on!
Want to join the Cartoonist Co-op? Send us your info here or email us at cartoonistcooperative@gmail.com , and become part of our community of indie comics creators! The Cartoonist’s Co-op is committed to helping build the community of comics artists and to improve and protect the labor rights of comic industry workers worldwide.
As a member, we’ll help you find collaborators, share resources, get the inside scoop on the industry, and have your stuff promoted in this very newsletter! Members of our cooperative gain access to career development resources, creative feedback and assistance, promotional campaigns for members’ comics, exclusive discounted benefits, and more.
Let’s dive into it!
New Comics From Our Members
ANIMAL HEADS by Son M. and Sam Curtis is now available to purchase!
Animal heads is a slam-dunk of an action thriller graphic novel! Brought to print for the first time by Dark Horse in collaboration with Tapas, the revolutionary digital comics platform.
When four best friends enter adulthood with no job prospects and the insatiable pressures of family hanging over them, they get creative—the more dangerous the gig, the richer the reward.
BETWIXT: A HORROR MANGA ANTHOLOGY
Now available! Manga creators from Japan and the US present an international showcase of horror. Collected for the first time in Betwixt: A Horror Manga Anthology, six short stories reveal the universal fear of the space between the known and unknown. Will anyone cross that border?
Featuring stories from a range of award-winning and popular creators, as well as a foreword and exclusive cover art by global phenomenon, Junji Ito.
BETWIXT features a story by Co-op members Leslie Hung and Sloane Leong!
Gladiolus Magazine is full of incredible comics and prose focusing on Community, Culture, and Care. The magazine embodies a “for us, by us,” as with all Black Josei Press projects.
Gladiolus Magazine has 134 black-and-white pages that feature 23 comics, essays, short stories, interviews and guides by 38 amazing creatives of color from marginalized genders and sexualities. The magazine has content that ranges from Jackie Ormes cut-out paper dolls to horror and josei guides, to comics about sex, romance, gaming, mental health, creator interviews, essays about burnout in the comic industry, and so much more. Gladiolus Magazine was funded by The Ellies Award Creator Grant that founder Jamila Rowser (Wash Day Diaries) received from Oolite Arts and The Miami Foundation.
With Ghibliesque art and storytelling, “The Gift”, by Jamila Rowser and Sam Wade, takes the reader on a fantastical journey that will leave them with a new perspective on ancestry.
The comic follows 10-year-old Kenya and her father visiting an African art museum. At the museum, Kenya meets a mysterious visitor who takes her on an unexpected journey that leaves her with a new perspective on her roots. “The Gift” is a 32-page color comic about ancestry and identity by award-winning writer Jamila Rowser (Wash Day Dairies) and artist Sam Wade (Stoke). It also includes 10 bonus pages of process pages and an essay about the meaning and making of the comic.
A celebration of villains, creatures, & horrors from fables & legends around the world!
57 Artists have come together to create illustrations, short stories, and comics that pay homage to our ancestors’ stories from cultures throughout history. Available until November 17th!
THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE ALGORITHM
DEATH TO THE ROBOTS!
This Zero Issue of Tenebrous’ upcoming quarterly magazine has arrived to wrest the controls of artistic endeavor from the clutches of A.I. thieves and restore it to the rightful hands of human creators.
This collection of Sci-Horror short fiction, comics, poems, and art celebrates the connection between humanity and creativity in the face of ever-increasing pressure to submit to the inevitability of algorithmic dominion.
Profits from sales of THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE ALGORITHM go to the Algorithmic Justice League and the European Guild of Artificial Intelligence Regulation.
By C.J. McWillis and Anisah. Now available on Gumroad!
The adventures and shenanigans of a heavy-hittin’ bounty hunter and her rabbit.
Webcomics By Our Members
JUMPHERO by Marlene Santos recently wrapped up its first season!
JumpHero is a silly gaming webcomic about two heroes who have to save the princess… every other day! Follow the day-to-day adventures of Uptop and Downlow and all of their friends, and learn how they all got caught up in this strange and endless cycle. Will they ever stop the bad guy once and for all?
FLAP by Emiliano T. (Edited by Mika F. and Skullcaster) recently finished its second issue!
A town plagued by anomalous encounters…strange visions and portents…contradictory theories. But as the witnesses and reports pile up, a peculiar pattern emerges. A startling new reality creeps in from the woodwork, and no-one will be left unchanged.
THE MAGIC FREELANCER’S GUILD by Birdee Blake is a historical-fantasy LGBTQ+ comic that updates most Sundays.
Lana and Luca are the sole remaining members of the dilapidated Salvatore branch, a guild hall for people with unique magic abilities. While the branch and its surrounding quarter struggle to stay afloat, former confidence trickster Monty Birch joins them. As the political atmosphere of the city-state grows increasingly hostile, the branch’s unorthodox antics put them at odds with a fanatical local alderman and his aide– Monty’s ex.
LOVE BITES by Arin Bray and Emma Mark is now on Webtoons and Tapas!
A heartbroken vampire develops an unlikely friendship with a werewolf and together they investigate the strange disappearance of a fellow classmate.Love Bites is a supernatural mystery and LGBTQ romance comic about monsters, boarding school, and gay yearning.
A new chapter of BUBBLE DX by Lur Noise has started!
Bubble DX is a sci-fi comic which tells the story of a group artificial intelligences trying to save their home, and of the humans who wouldn’t give them one. The story will consist in two intertwining timelines, each of them in a different color: red for the present and blue for the past.
HELL INC. by Jeff Martin is updating every Monday (don’t you hate Mondays?!)
We all know work is Hell, this just confirms it.
A new chapter of THE RAVENBLACK COURT by Adorabirb is now up on Webtoons.
Summoned by the mysterious Ravenblack Court, Willow, a homeless woman from Queens, delves into an underworld of witchcraft and magic. Tasked with bringing solace to the restless spirits of New York City, a place teeming with the living and haunted by billions of the dead, she embarks on a supernatural journey of discovery and redemption.
CLOVER AND CUTLASS by Lonely Tuatara updates Mondays.
Do you wish there were more shoujo manga about orc girls kissing? Then do I have a comic for you!
Clover & Cutlass is a LGBTQ romance comic following a group of young adventurers in a Dungeons & Dragons-inspired fantasy setting. It’s a coming of age story about learning to disappoint your parents, about the fundamental horror of group projects, and about getting so distracted by a pretty girl that you get hit in the head with a chair.
COMICSTRIPP by Tripp Gustin updates weekly! Gag a day comics.
A goofy little comic strip in the style of gag-a-day webcomics or newspaper funnies. None of this is canon! There is no plot! You can read these in any order!
HEXPULSE #2 by RadonX9, a Halloween zine… OK, we’re a little late to this!
Featuring three brand new comics, including the debut of new series “Paranormal Normal Club” and an as-of-now unnamed graphic novel, as well as a return to Rosetta, WA for this years Rosetta Falls Halloween Special! Plus bonus illustrations and introduction.
HOLE by Cori Walters just celebrated its first anniversary!
27 year old Jane Nowak is forced to confront her tumultuous past when the ghost of her childhood best friend/rival Asenath “Nat” White begins to torment her. As the haunting takes its toll on Jane, forcing her deeper into a spiral that affects her performance at her job and tanking her mental health, she must relive the trauma of what happened between her and Nat in high school and the bodies left in their wake.
Crowdfunding Campaigns
BOOK OF SHADOWS: PARADISE LUST is still available to back for 1 more week!
Conceptualized by Nero Villagallos O’Reilly and co-edited by Iris Jay and Hye Mardikian, Book of Shadows is a deluxe series of LGBTQIA+ erotica artbooks themed around occult subjects. Its demon-themed first volume, BUFFOMET, was successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2019 and fulfilled through the pandemic year of 2020.
At its core, the Book of Shadows series aims to provide a luxurious, LGBTQIA+-centric showcase for our creators to express their interpretations of “revelry in the divine, the delicious, and the decadent.” Bound in a beautiful, soft-touch and spot UV hardback at an 8.5×10.5” size, this artbook is dedicated to showing off its heavenly host of illustration and prose pieces in a gallery-like format. Our first title, BUFFOMET, summoned sexy Baphomet-adjacent demons to celebrate diverse sexualities. Now that we’ve been through Hell, where do we go for book two?
Made possible by a pun and tying perfectly into Book of Shadows’ first subject, PARADISE LUST’s nirvana certainly won’t be lost unto its blessed readers. With a 100+ page count, this high quality-stock artbook is filled with sexually explicit depictions of angels from across all religions, interpretations, and mythos.
PAWN by Marcus Jimenez, Anas Abdulhak, Baggs and Gagnon is funding until November 18th!
This is the first chapter of a fantasy adventure set in the magical Deadly Living universe! Pawn follows a reclusive assassin emerging from isolation to reclaim the one thing that can set him free.
Step into a mesmerizing world beyond your wildest dreams – The Deadly Living Universe! This captivating realm is a treasure trove of enchantment, concealed right beneath our very feet, where imagination knows no bounds. PAWN is the first story spinning out of this world, as we explore this magical adventure filled with fantastical creatures, and assassins with unparalleled skills.
DON’T PUSH THE RED BUTTON ANTHOLOGY is crowdfunding for 10 more days and still needs $6000!
Don’t Push the Red Button is a 100+ page anthology of stories inspired by a social dilemma: If you could press a button and receive lots of money, but one stranger would die, would you press the button? What if that person wasn’t a stranger at all?
The anthology will explore 11 different stories from over 30 professional creators across multiple genres such as SUPERNATURAL, HORROR, SUSPENSE, DRAMA, AND MORE.
New at the Co-op Journal: Shortbox Comics Fair Interviews
October featured a ton of new interviews with artists and creators who were selling their work via the Shortbox Fair! Shortbox is over but you can still read these great interviews:
Blue Delliquanti (Pickled Onions)
Cam McCafferty: (Baptism in the Mud)
Tan Juan Gee (A Three Body Problem)
Azam Raharjo (Someone Died Here)
Madeline McGrane (Synthetic Snow)
Karenza Sparks (Avoiding Work at the Sunny Day Café and Bakery)
Val Wise (When Death Comes I Will Follow)
Cynthia Yuan Cheng (Wee Wanderings: My Solo Trip in Scotland)
Nero Villagallos O’reilly (Phobiaphilia)
Featured Article: “Restoring Arnold”
In “Restoring Arnold”, Charles Brubaker writes about discovering an obscure, nearly-forgotten comic strip and his journey to bring it back to the public consciousness.
Featured Opportunity: The Alaska Comics Camp
To receive additional opportunities and resources every month, we invite you to become a member of the Co-op!
The Alaska Comics Camp is accepting applications until November 17th. Comics camp takes place in the middle of the southeast Alaska rainforest. It’s a three-night retreat for working artists to connect, learn, explore and relax. There’s a loosely organized schedule of workshops and conversations along with plenty of tromping around in the woods and hanging out.
