Pigs in Maputo: August 2012

Friday, August 31, 2012

the bad chemicals

I'm not sure who draws the bad chemicals (someone called brent, maybe), but I like it more often than not. It can get quite nasty, which is usually when I like it. Here is a sample of the cartoons I saved from the website. It almost makes me feel a bit dirty.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

What the Duck

What the Duck, drawn by Aaron Johnson, is a pretty awesome comic strip about duck photographers who never get paid properly for their work. Anybody who likes taking pictures can relate to it. I don't know how often he updates it but I always wish it was more frequent. Here is a sample of his comics.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Ryot IRAS

Ryot IRAS is my favorite webcomic from Brazil. It is drawn by Ricardo Yoshio Okama Tokumoto. Most of the comics are in Portuguese, but here are some that can be understood by non-Portuguese speakers as well.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Lucy Knisley

Alex brought back a book by Lucy Knisley that he asked her sign for me. So out of the 10+ kilos of comics he brought back from TCAF, that one was explicitly meant as a gift for me. I first found her stuff too wordy but later I read it and liked it all (my favorite from that comic selection was her description of the Twilight series, which saved me the trouble of reading the books). Then I saw her bio and learned that she lives in Chicago, rides a bike and studied at The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) and I decided to apply for it because I had also lived in Chicago before and used to have a bike. Therefore, Lucy Knisley was the official responsible for making me want to go to CCS.
Here is the comic about the Twilight books. Click on the image to go to the source.

Monday, August 27, 2012

John Porcellino

When Alex came back from TCAF he brought a lot of comics by John Porcellino. I thought they were annoying at first, because the drawings were so simple and he would add words to describe some of the actions in the panels and the sequential art didn't always seem logical to me.
However, their simplicity made them great bathroom reading material (relaxing and slightly depressing at times). After one month or two of reading them everyday, I started liking them too. This pretty much describes how this happened. I also discovered later that he does live from the sales of his comics.
One of his nicest is "Thoreau at Walden". Here is a sample from the book.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

The Brown Family

Actually, I'm on vacation for the entire month of August doing some yoga training and the Pigs in Maputo comics I had prepared ahead of time for the month ran out. Therefore, this week I am going to post about some of the comic artists I like. Many of them were introduced to me by Alex Noriega (the Spanish dude), after he brought back a bunch of comics from TCAF in 2011.
The first trio is what I call "The Brown Family", because their last names are all Brown. Chester Brown, Jeffrey Brown and Box Brown. I don't think they are related. If they are brothers, I'm pretty sure they have different mothers.
Chester Brown is Canadian and I read his book "Paying for It", an autobiographical account of his relationship with professional women (prostitutes). It is an awesome book, with lots of references and footnotes. This is the book I was referring to in my post The River Test.
Jeffrey Brown wrote a lot of comic books, and my favorite is "I am going to be small", but I haven't read all of his books yet.
Box Brown has, among other things, a print series called "Everything Dies" that includes "A Heart of Stonework", a story about a monk, as well as explanations on different religions. It's great because it feels like a little spiritual class through comics but not really.

And here is a picture of Charlie Brown, perhaps the most famous character from the Brown family.