News
Page 10
Street Roots • September 8-14, 2017
Using comics to
create change
The Miss Anthology project
disrupts homogeneity with a
platform for female and
genderqueer youth comic artists
BY E M IL L Y PRADO
S T A F F W R IT E R
early a century has passed since the
foundation for modern-day comic books
was created in the United States.
Although comics had existed within
newspapers and magazines, “Funnies #1,”
published in 1929, was the first stand-alone
collection of comics.
Today, the Miss Anthology project
in Portland is taking that
creative foundation and
using it to “support
racially and
economically diverse
female and genderqueer
youth” by teaching comics
and publishing their work.
Co-founded by Melanie
Stevens, Emily Lewis and Mack
Carlisle, Miss Anthology is made
possible through generous grant
funding from a variety of sources,
including the Precipice Fund and Andy Warhol
Foundation. After a successful summer of
workshops led by comics instructors and
enthusiasts within the community, the first
volume of Miss Anthology has finally come to
fruition. This weekend, a handful of the newly-
published youth authors will
join Stevens at the Rose City
Comic Con to experience the
N a r r a tiv e s te n d to b e b o th convention and showcase
their work.
a re fle c ts ® » a n d a re la «
While publishing their
to fe e m e a t e l s o c ie ta l p o w e r
s tr u c tu r e s , a a d I t h i n k t h a t stories is one component of
the Miss Anthology project,
s u b v e r t in g a n d I n te r r u p t *
Stevens explains that the
la g c o m m o n n a r r a tiv e s
other major component is
a n d tro p e s cast b e a f o r m o f education. In its inaugural
programming, up to 15
a c t iv is m / "
- fiSELA« STEVENS students - most of them new
to the art form - were
invited to delve into the
world of comics over an
eight-week course. Beginning
with comic origins and history, each workshop
focused on a unique element of comics and
slowly introduced techniques and new
materials.
“Each student got their own sketchbook, a
Pigma Micron pen and graphic pencils. We just
kind of wanted to sort of whet their appetites
for how to begin the process of making these
comics and making these stories,” said
Stevens.
Anna Vo, an illustrator and zinester, taught
students about the significance of lettering and
how to evoke emotion with hand-drawn fonts,
while Kinoko Evans provided a basis for comic
layouts and writing. Kelly Fitzpatrick, an award
winning colorist that has worked with Dark
Horse and DC Comics, among others, gave an
N
overview of digital
inking, coloring, and
postproduction. “The first
two (segments) were really
getting into the meat of where
comics came from — both in America and
abroad - and (provided) some of the history
through different decades,” Stevens said. "Part
of that was instilling a media literacy and
intentionality, as well as critical analysis about
what (the students were) looking at as artists
and how to decipher the coding that goes into
the creation of different images in art.”
Although she’s a talented illustrator and
writer with an MFA from the Pacific
Northwest College of Art now, it wasn’t until
college that Stevens remembers picking up her
first graphic novel. "I was particularly attracted
to graphic novels because of the combination
of visual art and text, and the ability to tell
stories,” she said. “I found that particularly
fascinating and a rare opportunity to exercise a
type of agency with narratives that isn’t often
afforded in other genres and mediums.”
Stevens was raised in Atlanta, Ga., and
recalls having created art for most of her life.
While she’d spent some time working with
youth in collaboration with the Boys and Girls
Club, this was the first time she’s worked so
closely with youth and for such an extensive
amount of time.
“I think a lot of the problem with diversity,
in witnessing it myself as a black woman in the
art industry, is that I feel like we’re getting to
the problem a little bit too late in the game,”
she said. "So my feeling is that if we start
earlier - if we empower youth to learn how to
tell their own stories, how to go around the
gatekeepers, how to disseminate their art —
that we would unveil a tool that would be
useful for them in the future and (would)
create a real opportunity to change the
landscape.”
The landscape that Stevens refers to is the
comics industry which remains severely
homogeneous. Comics historian and
researcher, Tim Hanley, found that as of 2014
there were eight times as many male creators
as there were female when examining DC
Comics and Marvel. Furthermore, 79 percent
identified as white. By focusing on youth who
are underrepresented within the comics
industry, Miss Anthology hopes to propel them
into a network of supportive peers and
professionals.
"Narratives tend to be both a reflection and
a reinforcement of societal power structures,
and I think that subverting and interrupting
common narratives and tropes can be a form
of activism,” Stevens said. “I know for myself,
it was often very difficult to ingratiate myself
with pop culture because I rarely saw myself or
people who looked like me in various
mediums. So I took to creating my own
narratives and creating my own art which did
reflect the people that I knew or the people in
my life or the people who looked like me. It
was empowering to see this work that I didn’t
get to see in mainstream art. That can be a
powerful tool — it’s a source of agency.”
As the group gears up to debut their
finished product at Rose City Comic Con,
Stevens said the six artists who submitted for
Miss Anthology are budding with excitement.
“The age range is from 13 to 17 (years old) and
it s a pretty big deal to get your work
published. We’ve gotten a lot of good reactions
from them.”
Stevens hopes that by next year, more youth
will get involved and those who participate in
their workshops will feel encouraged to
submit. I think that a lot of them felt very
insecure about their work so that’s definitely
something that we’re going to work on in the
future. There are some miscommunications
about what people consider a finished work, I
think. Instead of printing 100 pages of content
again, Stevens said Miss Anthology 2018 would
like to see that number doubled..
P H O T O BY
E M IL L Y P R A D O