K. A. Ryan and Gary Groth, Feb. 20, 2024 at 7pm ET

The 383rd meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 7pm ET. ONLINE PRESENTATION VIA ZOOM. Please email comicssymposium@gmail.com to register for this event. Free and open to the public.

K.A. Ryan with guest Gary Groth: The Blacklist and Burne Hogarth

A presentation by K.A. Ryan and a conversation with Gary Groth about the artist/educator at the hands of McCarthyism. 

Burne Hogarth (1911-1996) was born in Chicago. He augmented his early schooling at both the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. After moving to New York, he was hired to draw the Tarzan Sunday comics page for United Features Syndicate (1937-1950). He was the founder of the Cartoonists and Illustrators Center (1945), which he grew into the Cartoonists & Illustrators School (C&I 1947), expanding it again into the School of Visual Arts (SVA 1955). Hogarth authored six books of drawing instruction which are still in print.

K.A. Ryan is a teacher and historian. Some of his writing includes information on Hogarth for Oxford’s American National Biography. He lives in Vermont.

Gary Groth is the editor-in-chief of The Comics Journal, a co-founder of Fantagraphics Books, and the founder of the Harvey Awards. He lives in Seattle. 

Lat, Feb. 13, 2024 at 7pm ET

The 382nd meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, February 13, 2024 at 7 pm ET. ONLINE PRESENTATION VIA ZOOM. Please email comicssymposium@gmail.com to register for this event. Free and open to the public. 

Lat – Still a Simple Man from Malaysia

Having first published his cartoons at a tender age of 13, Lat’s inimitable style, wit and perceptive insights have won many fans across race, language and culture. Throughout the span of his six-decade-long career, he has managed to record his own life and the life of many who struggled with changes that come from moving from rural to urban life and the memories of Malaysia and the world. 

Facilitated by Lim Cheng Tju, this sharing will also consider Lat’s cartoons from a global comics history perspective, especially within the genre of autobiographical comics. 

Mohammad Nor Khalid, also known as Lat, is Malaysia’s foremost cartoonist, celebrated for his well-known work, The Kampung Boy. With over 20 published cartoon volumes to his name, Lat was honoured with the title of Datuk by the Sultan of Perak in 1994, acknowledging his role in fostering social harmony and understanding through his artwork. In July 2023, the Rumah Lat Gallery in Batu Gajah, Perak, was inaugurated to showcase the works and archives of this renowned Malaysian cartoonist. 

Lim Cheng Tju writes about history and popular culture. He is the Singapore country editor for the International Journal of Comic Art and his latest book is Drawn to Satire: Sketches of Cartoonists in Singapore, a comic book about comic artists. 

Allee Errico, February 6, 2024 at 7pm ET

The 381st meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, February 6, 2024 at 7pm, Live, in-person, at Topos Too Bookstore in Ridgewood, Queens, 59-22 Myrtle Ave. Also, streamed online via Zoom. Please email comicssymposium@gmail.com to register for this event. Free and open to the public. 

Allee Errico on “froggie.world #1”:  Comics + Catharsis

Allee will read from and talk about her auto-bio comics, and speak to the power of comics as a quick and cheap way to unveil the divine pattern. 

Allee Errico is a cartoonist living in Queens. “froggie.world Volume 1: Love Angel Music Bike” is the first print edition of her longtime auto-bio comic series, out this February from Cram Books. 

Michael Fikaris, Jan. 30, 2024 at 7pm ET

The 380th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, January 30, 2024 at 7pm ET. ONLINE PRESENTATION VIA ZOOM. Please email comicssymposium@gmail.com to register for this event. Free and open to the public. 

Michael Fikaris on Silent Army Projects and the Australasian comics scene.

This talk will be a first hand account of working within a socio-cultural discourse of comic art in Australia, with a focus on artist anthologies made by the imprint Silent Army. There will be a focus on my practice in the independent comics scene as an editor and small press publisher over the last 20 years or so in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia). I will be showing images of activities in my hometown during this time and cover my involvement in the past 10 years with artist communities in South East Asia. There will be images of editions made by the imprint, some never available to the public and will include a selection of images from the upcoming anthology of Indonesian and Australian artists.

Michael Fikaris is an Artist, Editor and Publisher based in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia).  Fikaris has produced dozens of comic art anthologies under the imprint Silent Army and collaborates regularly with communities in Asia and Europe. His work in comics has seen him win several local awards, including the national Platinum Ledger for ‘outstanding service to Australian comics’. He has put together collections of contemporary Australian comic artists with international publishers including ‘Down Down Under’ with European publisher Kus which was nominated for an Eisner award in 2020 for best anthology. 

In 2024 Fikaris is working on the collection Opposights: Alternative comic art scenes from Australia and Indonesia.

For more see:   www.fikarisart.com   and    www.silentarmy.org

Nate Garcia, Jan. 23, 2024 at 7pm ET

The 379th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, January 23, 2024 at 7pm ET. ONLINE PRESENTATION VIA ZOOM. Please email comicssymposium@gmail.com to register for this event. Free and open to the public.

Nate Garcia: The Cartoon Life

Nate Garcia will discuss his relationship to comics, and how he processes the world through his stories in the 21st century, as a cartoonist born after 9/11. 

Nate Garcia is a cartoonist living and working in Philadelphia, who has made a name for himself from self publishing. Most known for his on going funny-animal cowboy comic series “Alanzo Sneak” which has been translated in French. He has self published many books including three issues of his previous series “HORNRIM”, “Muscle Horse”, “Gecko”, “Jambalaya”, “Plum Pocket” & his latest work “Flippy” published by Austin English. 

Spring 2024 events

for more details.

Meredith Hale, Dec. 5, 2023 at 1 pm EST

The 378th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, December 5, 2023 at 1 pm EST. ONLINE PRESENTATION VIA ZOOM. Please email comicssymposium@gmail.com to register for this event. Free and open to the public. PLEASE NOTE THE 1 PM STARTING TIME.

Meredith Hale on The Function of Political Satire

This talk considers the function of political satire through a discussion of key examples ranging in time from seventeenth-century prints by one of the genre’s earliest practitioners, Romeyn de Hooghe, to the multi-media productions of present-day satirists such as Roger Law (Spitting Image) and Stephen Colbert. By examining some of the fundamental tensions within the genre—between the general and the specific and between the revolutionary and the conservative—we will reveal the dynamics of political satire and its fundamental purpose, which, I shall argue, have changed remarkably little over three centuries.

Meredith Hale is a Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter, UK. She received her PhD from Columbia University and was the Speelman Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge, until 2018. She is a specialist in Netherlandish art of the early modern period and her research interests include print culture, particularly political satire and international print markets. Her first book, The Birth of Modern Political Satire: Romeyn de Hooghe (1645-1708) and the Glorious Revolution, was published by Oxford University Press in September 2020. She currently holds a Research Fellowship from The Leverhulme Trust to write her second book on the subject of Anthony van Dyck’s oil sketches for his famous print series known as The Iconography.

[above] Romeyn de Hooghe, Arlequin sur l’Hypogryphe à la Croisade Lojoliste.
Armée van de Heylige Lingue voor der Jesuiten Monarchy (Harlequin
on the Hippogryphe in the Loyolist Crusade: the Army of the Holy
League of the Jesuit Monarchy), 1688–1689, etching, engraving, and
letterpress, Library of Congress, Washington DC 

Melek Zertal and Christina Svenson, Nov. 28, 2023 at 7pm EST

The 377th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 7pm EST. ONLINE PRESENTATION VIA ZOOM. Please email comicssymposium@gmail.com to register for this event. Free and open to the public.

Melek Zertal and Christina Svenson: Today’s Special / poetry in comics

The talk will be about Today’s Special, a project published by Perfectly Acceptable and co-written by Christina and Melek. We will talk about how this collaboration came to be, how to write a comic book with poetry as its base, and the challenges it brings in the storytelling as to not be redundant.

Melek Zertal is born in 1994 in Algeria. She’s a comic artist and illustrator, based between Paris, FR and Oakland, CA. She graduated from HEAR Strasbourg in 2017 and has published a few short comics with Colorama Print, Studio Fidèle, Perfectly Acceptable and Les Requins Marteaux. Her illustration work appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Society, Marie-Claire France, Lagon Revue and she has collaborated with brands like Gucci, SSENSE, tamburins, Lazy Oaf…

Christina Svenson is a poet and writer from Panama living in Oakland, CA. Her first collection of poetry, dollop, was published by Nueoi Press. Her latest title, Today’s Special was published by Perfectly Acceptable in collaboration with illustrator Melek Zertal. Christina’s writing has appeared in Silver Operation’s first volume of collected poems as well as Slate, VICE, Insider, and Hobart, among others. Christina holds a BA in English from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dog’s name is Mimi, after Mariah Carey.

Shary Boyle, Nov. 21, 2023 at 7pm ET

The 376th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, November 21, 2023 at 7pm ET. ONLINE PRESENTATION VIA ZOOM. Email comicssymposium@gmail.com to register for this event. Free and open to the public.

Shary Boyle on Storyshifting

Shary will revisit some early zines and comics, and talk about transitioning from 2D narrative to overhead projection performance ‘moving pictures’ to sculpture. There will be a side path to visit some spectacular Inuit story-drawers from the Arctic, whose work she discovered while travelling north to collaborate with the cosmic-graphic genius, Shuvinai Ashoona.

Shary Boyle’s work considers the social history of ceramic figures, animist mythologies and folk-art forms to create a symbolic, feminist and politically charged language uniquely her own. She is the recipient of a 2021 Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Ontario College of Art and Design University where she graduated from in 1994, before developing a multidisciplinary practice centred on drawing, sculpture and performance. Boyle activates her practice through collaboration and mentorship, engaging other creative communities and disciplines with a characteristically inclusive spirit. Her solo touring exhibition Outside the Palace of Me was presented by The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2022, the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2023, and the Museum of Art and Design, NYC in 2023/24. 

Shary Boyle, Cephalophoric Saint, Lithograph, 2018.

Thierry Groensteen, Nov. 14, 2023 at 1pm ET.

The 375th meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 1 pm ET. Please note the 1 pm starting time. ONLINE PRESENTATION VIA ZOOM. Please email comicssymposium@gmail.com to register for this event. Free and open to the public.

Thierry Groensteen: 1880-1914 : The Birth of the Comics industry in France

Thierry Groensteen will summarize the main facts established in his latest essay, La Bande dessinée en France à la Belle Epoque (2022). During the period that precedes the First World War, comics, which until then existed only as a handful of books, experienced a spectacular development both in the children’s press and in the satirical magazines for adults. Moreover, the provincial newspapers started publishing comic sections that were conceived for them in Paris. Animal strips, silent comics and trooper comedy were some of the most popular genres. About 180 artists produced comics on a regular basis and the period saw the birth of popular characters such as Bécassine and Les Pieds Nickelés whose careers would last for decades.

Born in Brussels in 1957, Thierry Groensteen has curated the Comics Museum in Angoulême from 1993 to 2001. He has also been the chief-editor of two important journals: Les Cahiers de la bande dessinee and Neuvième Art. The latter has become the online journal NeuviemeArt2.0. Groensteen is the founder of the publishing company L’An 2, now a department of the group Actes Sud. He has long tauught at the Ecole européenne supérieure de l’Image, in Angoulême, and curated many exhibitions. 

An occasional scriptwriter and novelist, he is the author of numerous books about the history, the semiotics and the aesthetics of comics. The University Press of Mississippi have translated three of his authoritative essays:  The System of Comics, Comics and Narration and An Expanding Art.