Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

  NY Comics Artist, Jerry Ma has always had our back. I’m less interested in the super hero aspect, but more into the process and concept. I also got included. I enlisted graphics designer Sara Saedi to do an illustration for a short tiny idea I wrote out. My story is about a Robot which was built by the Japanese American inmates in the Concentration Camps during World War II. I wish I can expand that more. Great work, folks. (Washington Post – Shattered)
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“Where I was in Brooklyn, I don’t think I would have even known that there was a major storm happening,” says Adrian Tomine, the artist of next week’s cover, “Undeterred.” He continues: So I spent the whole night glued to the Internet and watching everything unfolding, just being shocked that this kind of dramatic destruction was happening just miles outside my home. And I started thinking about how it would affect the election. This is a first for me in terms of doing [a cover] that’s topical with a quick turnaround; and somehow, these two significant events just came together into that one image for me. Tomine adds: For all its really horrible effects, I feel like the storm has made real a lot of issues in the election that were hypothetical, that were thrown around as debate topics—global warming; and “Is Obama enough of a leader to handle a natural disaster?”; and do we need FEMA? It’s really interesting, and in a way useful, to see a lot of these things become actual issues that are right at hand. Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/11/cover-story-sandy-and-election.html#ixzz2B73WkdWx
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The word is finally out that PictureBox will be publishing the result of a collaboration between three GR friends, Anne Ishii, Graham Kolbeins and Chip Kidd all to honor and share the work (almost all of it never-before-translated into English)  of Gengoroh Tagame. Vastly different in content, context and audience than yaoi (boys loving on boys) manga, this collection could significantly impact the current generation of American comics creators exploring subversive and erotic themes. Tagame’s work is known now in the US in small circles to express a masculinity and sexuality that is rarely represented. I love, on so many levels, that this project has been undertaken, and it will be interesting to see how PictureBox, a pretty hetero outfit on the whole, moves forward with it. Graphically and thematically, it’s a big leap for them. Keep it on your reading wish-list. Graham has been passionate about Tagame’s work for several years now, and has always had an eye for the quirky but sincere. The proof is in his film projects, and in his Future Shipwreck pudding. Anne couldn’t be a better translator/producer of this project. She’s the smartest gay man that I know. Chip Kidd brings his clout, his design sensibility, quality control, and his passion for the hidden comic genre. All in all, this is a dream team that’s been assembled. Very stoked to see this go from conception to birth announcement! Spring 2013. Save your lunch/bondage gear/Butt Magazine money and buy this.
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