Blog of Cartoon Movement, the Internet's #1 publishing platform for high quality political cartoons and comics journalism
Edited by Tjeerd Royaards and Matt Bors
The blog of Cartoon Movement, the Internet's #1 publishing platform for high quality political cartoons and comics journalism. Edited by Tjeerd Royaards and Matt Bors.
www.cartoonmovement.com
France has a thriving comics culture. The Culturethèque, part of the Institut Français in the UK, is organizing a festival from 30 May to June 2 to promote and celebrate French comic culture: BD & Comics Passion.
During the festival, over 3000 comics will be freely available and accesible on computer, tablet and phone. Most of these will be in French, but over 200 will be available translated into English. There is a catch: you need to be a UK resident to gain access to the comics.
However, even if it is for a British audience only, it's good to see comics promoted in this way. What's even better, the selection includes various graphic novels that cover history and politics. Here are a few of the titles that will be available during the festival:
PopMatters writes about Army of God, the graphic novel about the Lord's Resistance Army first serialized by Cartoon Movement in 2012, and now also avalaible in print:
Wading through Army of God‘s reported account of things […] is exceedingly difficult. In its complete, collected form David Axe and Tim Hamilton’s story makes for a slim book. But as the subject manner is ceaselessly dreadful, its page count is deceptive—Axe’s telling, in the introductory essay as well as in the comics portion, is uncompromising, and Army of God calls for a commitment on behalf of the reader.
The Guardian writes about the grapic novel; read their review here.
The World also covers Army of God: 'The novel demonstrates why the show-and-tell nature of comics journalism works as a medium to talk about Joseph Kony and violence he has wrought.' They have interviewed David Axe, which you can listen to below:
The Center for Investigative Reporting has published another graphic journalism production, this time about the fishing industry. The focus in the report is on the US, but the system of quotas and tradeable catch shares (which leads to all the fishing rights being owned by a few large cooperations) is applicable to many more countries with fishing industries.
Today we are two years old. Although
our second year was probably not as eventful as our first (Arab
Spring, Occupy, a trip to Haiti – read about all we did in 2011 here), we did some
pretty cool stuff. It was also a difficult year for us. Cartoon Movement
launched in a period when funding was readily available for
innovative ideas in the Netherlands (our base of operations), but the
crisis in the eurozone and austerity measures have had a severe
impact on our financial base and outlook. One of our aims when we
started with the platform was to become financially independent as
soon as possible. Economic developments have forced us to redouble
our efforts to reach this goal, and although the future remains
uncertain, we are busy with numerous cartoon-projects that will allow
us to keep Cartoon Movement up and running for the foreseeable
future.
2012 started with Haiti week,
showcasing Haitian cartoons and Haitian comics journalism about life
in the tent camps, two years after the earth quake. Also very
impressive was the video (featuring animation) about homophobia in
Haiti. After Haiti week, we opened an exhibition at the London School
of Economics, showing a series of cartoons we produced to illustrate
their research project on justice and security in post-conflict
areas.
Haiti's Scapegoats by Caroline Bins
In February we published the first
chapter of the impressive 100-page non-fiction graphic novel Army of God, that explores the history of the Lord's Resistance Army. All eight chapters were published throughout the year. Army of God wasn't the only impressive comic to be published this year. One noticable development is that more and more comic artists take advantage of publishing online by including photos, videos and audio files in the comic. See some great examples here and here. The subjects ranged from undocumented immgrants in the US to the London Olympics. On of the highlights of the year was Tibet's Sacrifice: Exiled Lives by Dan Carino, which caused Cartoon Movement to be censored in China.
From Tibet's Sacrifice: Exiled Lifes by Dan Carino
And of course we also published some great cartoons. Our community has expanded to over 200 professional cartoonists, and they have contributed to some amazing projects in the past year. These projects often focus on broader themes such as peace, freedom and poverty, but also more specific subjects like the elections in Mexico. New this year is that we're using social media to crowdsource topics for cartoons. Your Peace Retweeted pioneered this new approach, and our new project 360 Degrees is centered around a weekly Twitter debate on a certain theme, inspiring cartoonists to visualize the different perspectives.
Peace, Freedom & Poverty (by Fadi Abou Hassan, Bernard Bouton and Vladimir Kazanevsky)
We are more than thankful for all the support we have received from artists and from our audience, and we're committed to being around for a long time to come. In 2013, we hope to expand our community further, both artists and audience. We might venture into the field of animation, because lots of people have been nagging us about it (and it seems a logical thing to include on the website). We hope we can count on your continued support. If you want to help our effort, consider buying a t-shirt; and if you work at or know an organization or publication that would benefit from a cartoon or comic project, send us an email. We'll gladly discuss the possibilities.
Tjeerd Royaards - Editor-in-Chief, Cartoon Movement
The Center for Investigative Reporting (featured before on this blog with two animations: The Cost of Gas and The Hidden Cost of Hamburgers) has published a graphic novel-like report about sexual harassment of mentally disabled persons. It's an impressive story, and it also shows how graphic storytelling can be used to tell a gruesome story in in a way that protects and respects the victims:
In August 2006, caregivers at the Sonoma Developmental Center found dark
blue bruises shaped like handprints covering the breasts of a patient
named Jennifer. She accused a staff member of molestation, court records
show. Jennifer's injuries appeared to be evidence of sexual abuse,
indicating that someone had violently grabbed her.
The Office of Protective Services opened an investigation.
But detectives took no action because the case relied heavily on the
word of a woman with severe intellectual disabilities. A few months
later, court records show, officials at the center had indisputable
evidence that a crime had occurred.
This Fall, Cartoon Movement is publishing journalism that showcases comics' ability to document events and inform on complicated issues in unique ways. Our pieces will take readers inside a prison, to the streets of Porto Alegre, and into the complicated world of NGOs in Haiti.
Later this month, writer Angela Watercutter and artist Wendy MacNaughton will take us
inside a famed penitentiary in "New Folsom Prison Blues," for a look at their struggling arts program providing a reprieve for those who live behind its walls.
"This is a haven," an inmate says. "People are eager to leave some stuff behind."
The long-delayed second chapter to our Haiti project will also be published in the next month. Haiti is famously run by NGOs, and in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake the country has grown even more reliant on them. In "Understanding NGOs in Haiti" journalist Robenson Geffrard and artist Chevelin Pierre will examine how the history of Haiti has shaped its current state – and why so much money given to the country never makes it into the hands of the Haitian people.
Finally, Augusto Paim is back with another piece from Brazil. In his first comic for Cartoon Movement, he explored the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Now, working with artist Bruno Ortiz, he looks at a day in the life of a single homeless man in Porto Alegre, Jorge, who they accompanied to document his daily routine in a city where thousands like him sleep on the streets every night.
The student movement that exploded in Quebec this spring and summer
was one of the most significant – but hardly reported – examples of the
popular protests sweeping the globe over the last few years. Today
Cartoon Movement publishes "Quebec's Not-So-Quiet Revolution", a
ten page piece of comics journalism by political cartoonist and writer
Ted Rall analyzing this highly organized popular movement that
mainstream outlets have been eager to ignore.
Rall recently visited Montreal, where he met with organizers of the
movement, which continues to expand beyond its initial concern over
tuition hikes, as it prepared for a major demonstration. After the
passage of the draconian Bill 78, emergency legislation that essentially
outlaws large protests, hundreds of thousands took to the streets on a
daily basis, and continue to hold regular large protests months later.
"A stone's throw from the U.S. is one of the biggest unreported
stories around, a militant protest movement that has allied college
students, the unemployed, labor, anarchists, advocates of Quebecois
independence and others disenchanted with the provincial government in
particular and capitalism in general," said Rall. "I appreciate the
chance that Cartoon Movement gives me and other cartoonists to raise
awareness of news that most outlets refuse to touch."
The student movement that exploded in Quebec this summer was yet another example of the popular protests we've seen taking place across the globe over the last few years. Political cartoonist Ted Rall recently visited Montreal, where he met with organizers of the movement, which continues to expand beyond its intial concern over tuition hikes. We'll have a full ten pages from him on Monday, September 17.
Today we run the final installment of Army Of God, the graphic novel from David Axe and Tim Hamilton on the hunt for the Lord's Resistance Army in Congo, along with an epilogue. Each chapter of the book has focused on a different group involved in the conflict; locals, missionaries, children, soldiers, diplomats. Now Axe and Hamilton focus on the efforts of UN peacekeepers working with Congolese soldiers to protect villages from LRA raids. Read Army Of God in its entirety on our project page.
