Pat Grant, ‘The Grot,’ and the difficult, demanding task of creating a graphic novel

July 29, 2020July 29, 2020 / Matt Petras / Leave a comment

About eight years ago, Australian cartoonist Pat Grant started writing his graphic novel The Grot. He started the comic primarily channeling a fascination in con-artistry, but ended up finding himself interested in so many more aspects of the comic and its story.

“As it happens when you’re telling stories, you become interested in it on its own terms and each of the individual characters on their own terms and it becomes something very human,” Grant said. “If you’re doing your job right.”

The Grot, released in the United States by published Top Shelf Productions in June this year, is a 200-page graphic novel about two brothers navigating a world of con-artists in a dystopia brought about by a plague. Continue reading →

Australian cartoonist Chris Gooch and his upcoming graphic novel ‘Under-Earth’

July 22, 2020 / Matt Petras / Leave a comment

Chris Gooch loves the thick spine on his upcoming, nearly 600 page graphic novel Under-Earth.

“That was a fantasy,” Gooch said. “I wanted to have a book that if you threw it at somebody and you hit them with it, it would really hurt.”

This upcoming book, slated for release in October, marks the third book published by Top Shelf Productions from Gooch, an Australia-based indie cartoonist who has done a wide variety of both short and long form comics that run the gamut on style, format and subject matter. Continue reading →

Max Clotfelter and his journey becoming a respected, talented cartoonist

July 15, 2020July 15, 2020 / Matt Petras / Leave a comment

As an adolescent, Max Clotfelter would make crude, extreme and offensive comics that alarmed the adults around him.

“I had a hard time making friends at school, so making these filthy, transgressive comics was a cheap way to get attention,” Clotfelter said in an interview with Sequential Stories.

As he grew older, he stopped making dark and weird comics that were crude and offended for the sake of offending, but he didn’t stop making dark and weird comics.

Today, Clotfelter dips in autobiographical, dystopian and psychedelic storytelling styles to create his cool, funny and bizarre comics.

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Keiler Roberts and her autobiographical comic series ‘Powdered Milk’

July 8, 2020 / Matt Petras / Leave a comment

Keiler Roberts doesn’t like to keep secrets.

“To me, if I have a personal secret, like when I was pregnant… for a while, it’s a secret, and nobody knows, but there’s this huge thing about you that you can’t stop thinking about,” Roberts said. “Everything feels like that to me. It just destroys me not to tell people.”

Through the medium of comics, Roberts tells funny, melancholy autobiographical stories about her life, exploring her relationship with her family, mental illness and a lot more.

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Allison Conway’s bleak, wordless debut graphic novel ‘The Lab’

July 1, 2020July 1, 2020 / Matt Petras / Leave a comment

Allison Conway studied illustration in college. Her college offered illustration and comics classes in the same building, and she didn’t decide to try a comics class until her final semester.

“I just kind of had this moment where I was like: ‘What am I doing? I’m about to graduate, and I didn’t even try comics,’” Conway said.

With the help of that class, she came up with the pitch for The Lab, her haunting, wordless debut graphic novel about exploitation, which was released this year and published by Top Shelf Productions.

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Fred Noland, a serious moonlighter

June 24, 2020July 1, 2020 / Matt Petras / Leave a comment

In his comic Working Stiff, Fred Noland exhaustively outlines all of the jobs he’s had, from a Taco Bell gig as a teenager to doing design work for the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District. Throughout much of his life, he’s done comics alongside other work.

“I think I once would have just described myself as a cartoonist, but the way I look at it now is I see myself as a visual storyteller,” Noland said. “And as I’ve gotten to broaden my palate work-wise and actually had more opportunities, I’ve seen there’s ways to apply what I learned in editorial and what I’ve learned doing comics and these other venues.”

Noland, who has an eclectic bibliography of comics that encompasses fiction, autobiography as well as historical biography, continues to make comics alongside other meaningful visual storytelling work.

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Alex Graham makes weird, personal and spiritual comics

June 17, 2020 / Matt Petras / Leave a comment

Early on, Alex Graham made comics by accident.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but when I was a kid, I was kind of making comics without knowing they were comics,” Graham said. “I would draw a picture of my day and then narrate it underneath. So I always had an urge to tell stories and to illustrate them.”

Today, the 32-year-old, Seattle-based artist paints and creates independent comics like Angloid, which follows a painter with some experiences strikingly similar to Graham’s – along with some cosmic alien encounters.

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