David Kiersh is an illustrator and cartoonist with a love for personal comics. He created the comic strip Drop-In and published the books Afterschool Special and Dirtbags, Mallchicks and Motorbikes which he also wrote and illustrated. By day, he has worked as a planetarium narrator, children’s librarian and graphic designer.

His website, davidkiersh.com showcases his illustrations and comics over a period of twenty years. More recently, Dave has created and maintained a personal collection of obscure comics and related ephemera into the searchable site/archive comicartandbooks.com

You can check out his shop to help support his projects and encourage him on his journey to create more books, both handmade and heartfelt. Or visit his website for a deep dive into this exhaustive survey of his portfolio, most of which has never been published elsewhere!

Fiona Smyth is a feminist Canadian cartoonist, illustrator, and comics educator born in Montreal. She began creating comics while studying at the Ontario College of Art. She soon became immersed in the art world, creating paintings, murals, comics, and zines, and then went on to contribute her work to various anthologies. Her work has appeared in Exclaim! magazine, Vice magazine, and more.

She's been published by Seven Stories Press, Koyama Press, Annick Press, and Pedlar Press. She's received many awards for her work and is now teaching the next generation of cartoonists at OCAD and working on her next book.

Hi! Welcome back to The Terrible Anvil! Tom Hart and Jess Ruliffson love to talk about making comic-making EASIER, and in this episode, we’re asking “What’s the worst that could happen?”

We're talking about the fear of failure and utter collapse of our mental understanding of our own self-esteem. We're talking about large and small audiences, and envisioning the "fiery crash" of those potential failures, finding that a lot of times, they don't actually hurt. But some do, and we talk about avoiding those! Finally we talk about how communities (like SAW) provide readers and support, and that's what art is about!

Here at The Anvil, we ask the tough questions…

Thanks for being here!

Megan Kelso is primarily a cartoonist but also teaches art and does freelance illustration. She graduated from Evergreen State College in 1991 and started her comic series Girlhero, which won her a Xeric grant. 

Her graphic novel, Artichoke Tales, was published by Fantagraphics along with three collections of mini comics. In 2004 she edited a comics anthology titled Scheherazade, that showcases the work of many female graphic novelists. You can find her on Blogspot and Instagram at megangirlhero.

Vanessa Davis is an illustrator and cartoonist currently living in Los Angeles. She is the author of Spaniel Rage (Buenaventura Press, 2005) (re-released in March 2017 by Drawn and Quarterly) and Make Me a Woman, (Drawn and Quarterly, 2010). She's currently working on her next book for Drawn and Quarterly and mentoring at the Sequential Artists Workshop.

In recent years she's taught at California College of the Arts, and was the art director and comics editor at Popula. She won the Terry Southern Award for humor from The Paris Review in 2017. Some of her other clients include: The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, SpongeBob Comics, Amplify Education, and Bento Box Entertainment.

Diane DiMassa is a feminist and comic artist from New Haven, Connecticut, who began drawing 'Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist ' in 1991 as a form of anger therapy. Hothead Paisan is a character who uses guns, grenades, guillotines and anything else that can be used as a weapon to avenge wrongs against women, creating a popular underground comic for lesbians, feminists and recovering addicts.

Tom and Jess on What Kind of Creator are You?

In this episode, Tom had a list of archetypes he wanted to run by Jess. Are you a Pantser or a Planner? Are you a Strong Finisher? Are you a Never Edit-er? Jess shared a sketchbook project that took her 4 years or 20 minutes depending on how you look at it. And we talk about how to not feel like a failure when your routines suddenly feel boring. What kind of creator are you? Thanks for being here!

Paul Pope is an American artist/designer living and working in New York City. He has been working primarily in comics and screenprinting since the early '90s, but has also done a number of projects with Italian fashion label Diesel Industries and, in the US, with DKNY.

His recent collaboration with Errolson Hugh/Acronym for Nike’s AF1 debuted spring 2017. His media clients include LucasArts, NBC, Disney, Cartoon Network, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Conde-Naste, Kodansha (Japan), Sapporo (Japan), Dargaud Editions (France), EMI Canada, The Grateful Dead Estate, and The British Film Institute.

His iconic Batman: Year 100, a science fiction take on the classic Batman origin tale, appears frequently on many Top 10 Batman story lists. In 2010 Pope was recognized as a Master Artist by the American Council Of The Arts. His short science fiction comic strip Strange Adventures (DC Comics)--an homage to the Flash Gordon serials of the '30s-- won the coveted National Cartoonist Society's Reuben Award for Best Comic Book of the year. He has won 5 Eisners to date. His latest book, Battling Boy, debuted at #1 on the New York Times best-seller list, his third book to hit the NYT Top 10.

Tom and Jess talk about what we do or don’t Keep to Ourselves!

Tom and Jess about making memories and habits in your art!

Tom and Jess about making detours in your art!

Tom and Jess about making bad decisions early on, and how to get out of them…

Tom and Jess about art budgeting, and making your graphic novel without feeling bad...

Join us live on Wednesdays at 2 pm Eastern / 11 am Pacific, as Tom Hart and Jess Ruliffson talk about how to make a graphic novel, and take your questions!

Hi, welcome! This is Tom Hart. We're really honored to feature Craig Thompson.

Craig is arguably one of the best cartoonists of his generation. In addition to having sold tons of books, he's also got a beautiful way with words and pictures and has garnered the appreciation of hundreds and thousands of people, including a lot of artists.

So, it's wonderful to sit down with him, and it was really kind of a shock to hear him name me as one of his early inspirations; that's very kind. And Craig also expands the web by mentioning some other people at the end of this interview that we should be contacting.

But more importantly, I want to talk about how that web expanded, because we went to a little, not only out of the way, but sort of secret cafe in Providence, Rhode Island to film this interview. It's surrounded by artist lofts, and we hadn't even started yet, and we're filming outside, and a woman, Claire, came up to us and we had her ask the questions because she was interested in what we were doing.

By the tail end of this interview, and especially after the interview, we realized that Claire was deeply interested in these values. So much so that she was probably living them more than Craig or I. She and her partner, Femi, who also appeared for a few moments in the interview, have an art studio nearby where they host events and have art shows, and Claire, for instance, hates Instagram had some things to say about the soothing scrolling that is hurting her generation.

And way more interestingly., the way you find out about events in their art studio is, you have to call their landline, which is a rotary phone. And so we were really happy to connect with artists almost half our age, who really believed in the value of face-to-face contact and walking across town or walking from town to town, and reaching out the slow way, and the the mindful way and also the cumbersome way.

We were really honored to to be speaking with them. It's in the interest of connecting all these generations that these oral histories have been started and preserved.

So, I want to thank Claire and Femi, and I also want to thank Craig for sitting down with us, and thank what's left of the really interesting parts of Providence, Rhode Island for being there, and the secret cafe and everything else have a listen. Thanks!

SAW spoke with YLP Alum and FLOW + Publish member Dusty McGowan about his experiences with comics, his creative process, and his unique perspective as a psychotherapist cartoonist.

Dusty was also a guest on the most recent episode of SAW’s Comics Karma podcast with hosts Tom Hart and Lauren Weinstein. Check out the episode!