[comix/art] HARKHAM AND SALAZAR SIGN NEW KRAMERS ERGOT
IN L.A., JUNE 10
From Sammy Harkham:
On Tuesday, June 10 at 6pm, Souther Salazar and I will be at Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles with the first copies of
Kramers Ergot #4. Then we will be on a small book tour through Minneapolis, Chicago, Toronto, Providence and Cambridge, and finally ending at
MoCCA on Sunday the 22 of June.
It's a crazy book. and retailers so far have been ordering it sparingly. Ask your comic shop to order one so they and their customers can at least see what it is and this book might have a chance of finding readers. Below are more details:
Kramers Ergot Vol.4, shipping in July from Alternative Comics, is an oversized, full color 300+ page collection of some of the best new faces in comics. Featured artists are listed below.
Mat Brinkman is a cartoonist, musician, and a member of the collective Forcefield, whose videos and knitted costumes were recently featured in the Whitney Biennial (one of which now resides in its permanent collection). In the nineties he helped create a small but powerful comics explosion in Providence, Rhode Island with the Fort Thunder Art Collective. Brinkman drew the cover art for
KE 4 and contributes drawings, crayon cartoons and powerful comic strips. With funny and compelling work that is steeped in the fantasy genre, he proves that he is one of the most important new figures in comics. (Also showcased are Fort Thunder members and collaborators Leif Goldberg, Jim Drain, C.F., Ben Jones, Ron Rege Jr., and Joe Grillo.)
Souther Salazar, whose improvisatory madness has made a big impact on the world of art comics, continues to hone his idiosyncratic voice. He contributes "Don't Give Up" a thirty page story of hope and despair, which is charming, beautiful and awe inspiring.
Marc Bell lives in Vancouver, BC where he divides his time between his comics strips and his painted cardboard constructions. As well as appearing to several Canadian weeklies and monthlies, his work has been included in such book publications as
The Ganzfeld and
Rosetta. Also: in his own non-objective handmade small run book-works (including such titles as:
Gooma,
The Stacks,
Knoze Clippah!). His first comic strip collection,
Shrimpy and Paul and Friends, is due out from Highwater Books. In "There is No Escape" comics, paintings, collages, and gags co-exist in a beautiful self-contained world from which there is no escape and nothing to compare.
At the age of 18,
Sammy Harkham began collaborating with Will Oldham, giving "faces" to his songs for three albums. He has also exhibited with a prominent Tokyo-based gallery Poetry/Of/Sex. Harkham's
KE 4 story "Poor Sailor", is an epic tale of the sea, his most accomplished and heart-wrenching work to date.
Anders Nilsen is one of the most promising of a new generation of cartoonists. He uses the story of "Sisyphus" to deal with issues of fate, love and existence and does it with one of the most subtle whisper-in-your-ear pen lines imaginable. Also included in the book is Nilsen's "The Future", a vast drawing depicting a town submerged in water. Two words: Fucking Awesome.
Jeffrey Brown appeared seemingly out of nowhere in early 2002 with the brutally honest and heartfelt autobiographical graphic novel
Clumsy. In less than a year, he has been featured on NPR's
This American Life, in the
Chicago Reader, and
New City>. Brown has next graphic novel
Unlikely is due from Top Shelf in July. He contributes "Don't Look Them in the Eye", a comic that is at once about Chicago, race, and routine.
Rounding out the book are some great works from David Lasky, Renee French, Stefan Gruber, Lauren Weinstein, David Heatley, Billy and Laura Grant, John Hankiewicz, Tobias Schalken, Andrew Brandou, Josh Simmons and Allison Cole.
Kramers Ergot has grown in leaps and bounds with every annual issue. From a hand-printed zine of ten copies, to a modest comic book, to its current incarnation: a full-color art book. This is guaranteed to be one of the raddest books of the year and stands to confront expectations within and outside the comix community about the future of the medium.
Kramers Ergot Volume 4 is published by
Avodah Books and sub-distributed by
Alternative Comics. 8.75 x 10.75, full color, 328 pages, $24.95, ISBN 0-9677989-5-7
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