Interviews Nostos Accessible Comics

A long time no posts – sharing here a couple new interviews, a sneak peek at the sequel to Unflattening, and news of the next iteration of our Accessible Comics project!

First up, those interviews. I spoke with Kay Sohini (whose comics dissertation I was pleased to be on the committee for her brilliant defense this May!) about comics as scholarship, my use of visual metaphors, and other things. All on the ComicsGrid here: https://www.comicsgrid.com/article/id/8773/. I also did a long form interview with professor Jason DeHart for the journal Study & Scrutiny on teaching with comics and my process, available here: https://journals.shareok.org/studyandscrutiny/article/view/1115. I was also pleased to have been included in The Ohio State University’s Comics & The Environment Show at the Billy Ireland that ran through Spring of 2022 – can learn more about that here.

$This is an extremely complex comics page (2-page spread) drawn in black and white. There are a lot of circles - i don’t know how many, i lost track a long time ago. Upper left, panels are 5 layers of concentric circles - the four outer rings split into segments - each filled with a different type of cell from the human body, the center being a stem cell. Below this/underneath it as well, a circle with a blueprint grid on it, with blueprint drawings of a baby in different views. Rising upward from this, a ton of small circles with tiny drawings in them of the inner workings of a cell, the scaffolding that helps the nucleus find the center of the cell and how that same process splits the cell. We are now on the right half of the spread and have moved back to the top (The text boxes facilitate reading flow here) the circular panels are now filled with the early stages of the blastocyst - branching off from this is another series of circles that show a progression of the fractal Sierpinski’s Triangle. Below all of this and leaning back onto the first page, is a large circle that is cropped, so we only see about the upper half and not all of the right side, upon which there are a number of examples of the Game of Life on bits of grid. Overlaying this are a series of segmented rings in 3dimensions, each segment functioning as a panel. Those panels contain some of the development of body plan for the cell, the latter sets of rings shows somite formation. How it all fits together is a bit more complicated than that!!$: 2-page spread from Nostos – with a lot of circles

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Work on Nostos proceeds, if slowly. Time has been difficult to find in the past couple of years, but I’m really pleased with what I’ve made so far. I post process images and sneak peeks occasionally on Twitter (@nsousanis) under the hashtag #Nostos #Unflattening (click here for the latest). The above is a recently finished spread and the sketches that led to its creation. More to come!

Last year, along with my colleagues at San Francisco State University Yue-Ting Siu of the Program for Visual Impairment and Emily Beatiks of the Longmore Institute for Disability, I organized some events around comics for blind and low vision readers (details of which can be seen here along with other resources: https://spinweaveandcut.com/blind-accessible-comics/) and response to that led us to set in motion our next phase, a Design Competition seeking teams to produce comics in accessible formats as a way to spur innovation, and demonstrate to the comics industry possibilities for making comics accessible. The Call for Proposals and further details are here: https://bit.ly/comicsa11y-cfp-2022. Have a look at the resources and the call and please share to help push the comics industry forward!