Underground Comix Emerge from Database Lair, and other things…

Most of our subscription databases (sva.edu/library > Database and Article Searching) collect articles from magazines and journals, making them available in full-text (that you can read online or print out) or citations, which help you track down materials for your research. Their sources cover a broad range of work, from academic journals to popular magazines. SVA also subscribe to image databases, such as ARTStor, AP Images, Bridgeman Education and Cinema Image Gallery, to provide our students and faculty with research materials as well as inspiration.

But this year we have started a new and unique subscription to a brand new resource called Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels. This database features articles from the Comics Journal, the pre-eminant source for news, reviews and criticism in the wide world of comics. But it also features full issues of comics from the 1960s to the present. Many of these titles are rare, both in terms of supply and in terms of value. Other than having them reprinted in book format, they are largely inaccessible. Until now.

Say you have been reading about Art Spiegelman’s career and you get curious when he mentions the seminal magazine of comix he and Bill Griffith (of Zippy the Pinhead) edited in the mid-70s, Arcade. Go to the Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels database and you can read issues 1-7 online, in their entirety! **Note – Wikipedia only lists 6 issues for Arcade, yet we’ve got 7. This resource lets you go deeper than they even know about!

Issue 7!

Just as in our other magazine and journal databases, you can search by Keyword, Author, Title, Publisher, Genre and more. You can also browse alphabetically. And if you create a personal account (it’s free), you can set up lists of resources, whether to guide yourself back to your own discoveries or to share your favorites with others. You will not believe the range of titles: Eightball, Reid Fleming: World’s Toughest Milkman, Wimmin’s Comix,

As with all the databases, to access them off campus use your MySVA username and password.

Hey SVA Comicmakers – this Friday at 6:30 the Cartoonist Alliance (Cartoon Allies of SVA) is holding a meeting.
Here are their goals for the group (from the site):
*** to discuss improvement. (Round-table style)
*** to SEE our own growth. (When was the last time you compared old to new?)
*** to humble ourselves before peers of less practice. (Group critique nights coming up!)
*** to glimpse our potential in peers of longer practice.
*** to get to know each other better.
*** to practice talking about our work and our friends’ work, critically and constructively!

So if you are a cartoonist at SVA and want to get some peer support and interaction, come on down.

Upcoming for cartoonists and fans:
Tonight at Desert Island in Brooklyn – Adrian Tomine
NY ComicCon is less than a month away. And a little further down the road, on Dec. 3rd check out the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival. It’s free and jam-packed with stellar comic talent.

A tiny sample of comics by SVA alums in the Visual Arts Library:

Swallow me whole / by Nate Powell. – PN6727.P695 S9 2008