Kevin Scanlon

Jorge Cham

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

Jorge Cham got his introduction to cartoons as a child in Panama. His parents were engineers who worked on the Panama Canal. When an American family they knew moved away, they left behind a big box of comics, including Archie, Richie Rich and Peanuts.

Cham devoured them. His only other exposure to the medium was through anonymous underground newspapers. These were the Noriega years, and the papers carried biting political cartoons that satirized the ruling regime.

But it wasn't until many years later that Cham began to draw. He was a graduate student in robotics at Stanford, facing tremendous pressure to compete and succeed. As an outlet, he started sketching a cartoon that satirized the grad school experience and poked fun at the professors who ruled his existence. It was called Piled Higher and Deeper — Ph.D. — and it ran in the Stanford Daily.

Cham spent another five years in grad school before getting his doctorate, then a teaching job at Caltech. He did cartooning on the side, while focusing his research on "brain-machine interfaces."

"You know the plug in The Matrix?" he asks. "I was working on that plug."

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Kevin Scanlon

Sean Z. Maker

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

It's a given that Sean Z. Maker would grow up to create comics — he's been drawing them most of his life. That he would also produce one of the most intriguing comic book events in the country is a little unexpected, especially for him.

Maker, né Holman — his new name is a combination of his pen name, Sean-Z, and a Facebook handle — founded Bent-Con, an annual November event that's one of the few fan conventions dedicated to LGBT pop culture. In just three years, Bent-Con has gone from a one-day show in a small, vacant Silver Lake storefront to a weekend-long hotel bash at the Burbank Marriott.

Maker, 37, refers to Bent-Con as a "celebration" rather than a convention. "Everything that I do that is involved in Bent-Con is a reflection of my past," he says.

Growing up in Indianapolis, "I was always afraid of becoming the starving artist," he confesses.

Still, he went on to art school and, by 25, was a successful freelance graphic designer in Chicago. He was "miserable" working for corporate clients, however, and after a bout of bronchitis and some good advice from his mom, Maker moved to Los Angeles.

That wasn't easy. The uninsured FedEx delivery containing nearly all of his artwork went missing. There were jobs he thought would happen that didn't. In between such hardships, Maker created Myth.

See also:
*Bent-Con: Bringing LGBTQ Comics and Genre Entertainment to Los Angeles
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Liz Ohanesian

Geoff Johns and his dog hang out at Golden Apple on Free Comic Book Day

Have you walked around a comic book store or convention and wondered why so many people are wearing Green Lantern t-shirts? Geoff Johns might have something to do with that. The comic book writer helmed the series for nine years. He reintroduced Hal Jordan as the famed superhero with Green Lantern: Rebirth. The story was successful, so much so that he and artist Ethan Van Sciver continued to build this universe with the story Sinestro Corps Wars.

"A couple years into our run, we introduced the concept of an emotional spectrum," Johns says while sitting in a meeting room at Golden Apple Comics in Hollywood.

The premise of the "emotional spectrum" is simple, as Johns explains it. You have Green Lanterns. They're identified by a color and are the embodiment of "power and courage." So, why not have other Lanterns who were also identified by colors and emotions? John gives a brief breakdown. There are the Red Lanterns, "people and beings who lost somebody, who were driven by revenge." There are Blue Lanterns. They are motivated by "faith and hope" and live by the motto "All could be well."

"It wasn't the colors that made them different," says Johns, "but the emotions that they were driven by."

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Gilbert Hernandez

In Marble Season, Gilbert Hernandez creates a world that is as detailed as it is vague. The setting is suburban America, in a neighborhood similar to the one the famed cartoonist knew as a child in Oxnard. The exact year is intentionally unspecified, but it's sometime during the 1960s.

"I fudged a lot of the details," says Hernandez by phone, in advance of his appearance at Skylight Books on Wednesday, April 24. "I'm putting it right in the middle of the '60s in a way. The Beatles are introduced, that would have been 1964. The comics that they're looking at would have been earlier."

Hernandez calls the micro-universe in his latest book "a dreamworld of the '60s." References float in and out of the consciousness of the children who play with actions figures and argue about television shows. "I wanted to be specific with certain comic books and TV shows and music of the day, but also didn't want to be restricted," he says.

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Josiah Golojuh

WIP Featured Artists Meirav Haber, Kevin McTurk, and Sam Koji Hale

A movie must be completed before its screened, right? Not according to Graphation.

Last night, in Downtown Los Angeles' Hive Gallery, the independent film group kickstarted their first installment of Works In Progress by presenting three unfinished films to an audience. The focus of the WIP series is less on product and more on process.

"We want these things to be educational," Andrew McGregor, who comprises half of Graphation, explained during an after show interview. "We've shown finished works in the past, and the questions are always, "How did you come to this conclusion, this destination?" We want to be a resource to the creative community. With the digital revolution, you can make your own movie with an iPhone, but what does that actually mean unless you know how to shoot a film with your iPhone."

McGregor, clad in a cacophony of of patterns and capped by his signature, Jughead-esque felt crown, hosted this evening of movie demystification with his creative partner Josiah Golojuh. This initial WIP showcased a troika of filmmakers specializing in puppet based storytelling. Several dozen attendees crowded into the gallery to watch these artists present hand crafted claymation characters, field questions concerning their creative journeys and screen rough scenes from their infant projects.

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Zero Dean

Ethan Nicolle sketches in the background behind his younger brother, Malachai

You know who never gets writer's block? Five-year-olds. Probably the only reason they aren't all prolific novelists is they don't have the patience or know-how to do the typing.

Lucky for 5-year-old Malachai Nicolle, he's got his 29-year-old comic illustrator brother, Ethan, to sketch his imaginings. Malachai is 8 now, but when he was 5, he created Axe Cop, an ax-wielding, dinosaur-killing champion of awesomeness who, thanks to
Ethan's illustrations and guidance, now stars in six comic books and soon will have his own late-night animated TV show on Fox.

In December 2009, L.A.-based Ethan was frustrated with his efforts to break into the comic book industry. He had written and illustrated a critically acclaimed comic, Chumble Spuzz, but still had to work two day jobs to support himself, both of which laid him off right before Christmas. He was looking forward to spending a quiet holiday with his family in Washington, bonding with his brothers and sisters, and starting fresh in the New Year.

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Liz Ohanesian

In 2012, Stan Lee got his own comic book convention, Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo came to town, web sensations like the comic Homestuck and series Dick Figures had wild success on Kickstarter and Lloyd Kaufman put a whole ton of Troma films on YouTube.

Sure, there's plenty more that happened in 2012. This is just the stuff covered in this little ol' weekly column, Cult Stars. Keep reading to find out who made the Top 10 Cult Stars of 2012.

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Images courtesy of Archaia

Jeremy Bastian, creator of Cursed Pirate Girl

See also:
*Archaia Brings 'Lost' Jim Henson Screenplay to Life with A Tale of Sand
*More Comic Books coverage at L.A. Weekly

It's easy to get lost inside the pages of Jeremy A. Bastian's comic book Cursed Pirate Girl. The Michigan-based artist works with ink and a very fine brush to create panels that overflow with tiny details. Look closely and you'll see faces carved into the sides of rocks, a buckled shoe hidden on the ocean floor, even a dinner party turned upside down. It's these intricacies that make a young heroine's quest to find her pirate father all the more magical.

Cursed Pirate Girl has been making the rounds throughout the independent comic book world for several years now. Bastian self-published his first issue before it was picked up by Olympian Publishing. Two years ago, Olympian launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a hefty trade paperback. Their goal was $2500, but they raised over $36000. Recently, L.A.-based publisher Archaia, who brought Jim Henson's A Tale of Sand script to life as a graphic novel last year, picked up the book for a hardcover edition. This latest incarnation of Cursed Pirate Girl will be released on Dec. 12 and comes complete with new pages, a guest artist section (Hellboy creator Mike Mignola is amongst the contributors) and more.

Bastian and his art appeared Saturday night at Century Guild. The event marked both the opening of the Culver City gallery -- a Chicago transplant focusing on Art Nouveau and Symbolist work -- and the forthcoming Cursed Pirate Girl release. Below, Bastian answers our questions about his book and his art.

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Topless Robot, home for "nerd news, humor and self-loathing" is looking to immediately hire a new chief blogger and editor.

Yes, really!

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The Future Is Now: Our December 27 Comix Issue

Are you a cartoonist? Help us say good riddance to 2012 by drawing up your take on the future. The best strips will appear in the L.A. Weekly's annual Comix Issue on Dec. 27, earning a cash prize in the process.

Submissions should be created as true sequential art -- a full story unto themselves. Be creative! Although we have size restrictions, there are no restrictions on the number of panels or way they must be arranged. We hope you'll have fun with it.

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