2015 Eisner Awards...The Superhero Afterlife!

The Superhero Afterlife (Abridged), pg. 1
Starring Dr. Lewis himself

BREAKING NEWS - In the past couple hours the nominations for the 2015 Eisner Awards have been announced, and among them is my friend and colleague, Sacred & Sequential's very own A. David Lewis! His American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion: The Superhero Afterlife has been nominated for Best Scholarly/Academic Work, and from what I've seen of the book so far it deserves every bit of that accolade. I like to think I got a unique look at this work, from a different perspective than most, when Dave asked me last year if I'd be interested in turning an abridged version of his book into a short comic. That project went up on the Sacred Matters blog as "The Superhero Afterlife (Abridged)". I'm both immensely proud to have been part of Dave's process with this material and ridiculously excited to see the book getting the attention it deserves. Here's hoping it's a win on July 10th!

In the meantime, if you want to keep an eye on the excellent Dr. A. David Lewis and the work he's doing check out the Broken Frontier comics anthology, and keep a weather eye on Sacred & Sequential's website. There's always crazy stuff going on over there.

Sacred & Sequential at the Kelowna Art Gallery!

As a few of you are aware, I'm a part of a scholarly group called Sacred & Sequential, intent on exploring the intersection of religion and the comics art form. A. David Lewis brought me onto this project back in the winter with the group of gathering a scholarly community around the medium and its confluence with religious scholarship. At this point I'm pirating words from my LinkedIn profile (there are only so many ways to describe our mission), but our aim is to provide informed analysis and nuanced commentary on the topic of religion as it appears in or in relation to these graphic narratives. As both a cartoonist and academic I've got a unique toolset in this field of study; I can use the comics form as a pedagogical tool to present ideas visually. I see great value in creating a common ground in form between the subject and the critical discourse. Not to harp on a perhaps overused piece of comics theory, but Scott McCloud has used educational comics to great effect in the past. There's a lot of teaching potential in creating a visual accompaniment to textual material, and that's exactly what A. Dave and I are up to right now. He's dsitilled a portion of his dissertation into eight pages of tightly scripted goodness, and I get to put my pens to it and turn into panels and stuff. And now, for...

...some great news! I submitted this project a month back to the Kelowna Art Gallery's Superheroes and Supervillains show, and it's been accepted! So not only will the comic go up on Emory University's culture and religion blog Sacred Matters by summer's end, but come January 2015 you can go see the original page on display in Kelowna, BC among numerous other works of both superheroic and villainous disposition. It's going to be one heck of a show. Bring your capes.

If you'd like to see more of what Sacred & Sequential has done thus far, I suggest you check out Beth Davies-Stofka's article on comics and the Bible, which was recently picked up by the Huffington Post. We've got a variety of different projects in the works; you can follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sacredandsequential, and I shall do my utmost to keep you appraised here as those works come to fruition.

Sacred & Sequential on Twitter:
A. David Lewis
David McConeghy
Jeff Brackett
Elizabeth Coody
Michael J. Altman (Sacred Matters)
Jason Tondro
Christine Kraemer
James F. McGrath
Kori Pacyniak
Dan Clanton
Jeff Jackson
Andrew Tripp

...and others, but it's hard to keep track of all of us.

Cheers!