More Than A Laughing Matter

“When you hear the word comics or cartoons you might first think of the strips or panels that appear in the daily newspapers. Indeed, there is a long history of humor and satire via graphics that have appeared in publications. But, since the development of the printing press and movable type, graphic images have also been used to convey moral and religious messages, to speak out on political issues, and to convey the sometimes harsh reality of our lives.

The five Ohioans we are featuring in our exhibition depict superheroes, historical narratives, social and political commentary, and personal narratives. Each brings a particular vision to the ideas that are presented. Graphic arts have the ability to add power to the stories being told, and the graphics (comics art) of Bentley Boyd, Christian Colbert, Gary and Laura Dumm, and Michael Sangiacomo are More Than A Laughing Matter. I hope you will be moved by both the art of the images and the messages conveyed.”

— Reid Wood, Curator

Gary Dumm

Laura & Gary Dumm

Environmental Series

Artist Statement:

Ripping relevant issues from the news and putting them onto canvas, the Dumms’ hope their collaborations will start conversations and promote awareness. Their work catches the viewers’ attention with its brightly colored pop surrealism, and inspired themes that ponder the ramifications of society’s actions.

“Color is my first love and nature is my second. My goal is to create paintings that give the eye many places to explore and the brain many things to think about. I thrive on images and or shapes partnered with a bright color palette. One viewer said of my paintings “You cover every inch of that canvas! There is always something new to look at!” — Laura Dumm

CLICK HERE to view Laura’s Bio

“Normally one would expect original pieces in an art show about comics to be rendered in black and white. And that is true for the most part. But the large, painted images are the logical outgrowth of a collaboration between two very different artistic approaches. I am mainly a comic book artist, and my wife Laura is a painter. As a life-long lovers of comics and comics art of all kinds, we like to think of these paintings as large editorial cartoons fully rendered and elaborated upon in paint. Each of these is a single panel “cartoon”, utilizing classic horror movie monsters to represent human activity. And each tells a specific story while simultaneously directing the viewer’s attention to a current concern or problem which looms large in our collective consciousness and our lives.” — Gary Dumm

CLICK HERE to view Laura and Gary's book about their Environmental Series

 The Dumms’ environmental paintings are all available as smaller size, quality digital prints at  www.dummart.org,  and an archive of their other works is viewable at ww.dummart.com. 

Bentley Boyd

Bentley Boyd, Lucretia Mott sketch, ink on paper, 2018, NFS

The historical research comes first. The next step, a sketch like this one, is not just a chance to try out visuals; it is the first step in editing. How much text will fit? What information am I trying to convey? What can I show instead of tell? This is my version of the storyboards that Hollywood directors use to plan out a movie before they ever go to set. In this one-page life of feminist Lucretia Mott, note the choices of the visual in the second panel, the posture of the man in the fourth panel, and the cartoon anger clouds over the women in the fifth panel.

Bentley Boyd, Lucretia Mott, digital, 2018, NFS

Here is the Lucretia Mott page as submitted to the National Women’s History Museum for their website. What has changed since the sketch? In the balance between words and pictures, the drawing of images with ink on paper is just one stage of my creative process. Computer software allows me to add color and type (my own handwriting is a font in my software). I often make last minute edits; sometimes cutting one word makes a big difference.

Bentley Boyd, Satchel Paige, digital, 2020, NFS

Creating stories for my smartphone app allows me much more space to tell stories. Instead of the seven panels for Lucretia Mott’s biography on a webpage or the 40 panels to tell a story in my printed comix, my smartphone app stories are 80 panels. This is one panel from my story that combines several biographies, most notably Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks, to describe the beginning of the civil rights movement in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Bentley Boyd, Twain, digital, 2020, NFS

This is another single panel from a story created for my smartphone app. Using the isolation recommendations of the COVID-19 public health emergency, I created 10 new app stories in the first 19 weeks of quarantine. The quiet time has allowed me space and time to create drawings with more detail than I could do during the five years that I created stories for a Virginia newspaper. I hope that the historic details give readers a better sense of how different the settings of my stories are from the world we live in today. Good storytelling is based on good details.”

Bentley Boyd, What Did Freedom Seekers Find in Oberlin, digital, 2011, NFS

My history of Oberlin is one of the favorite projects I’ve completed in the past 20 years. My work was already well-loved in Virginia, but this was a test of whether it could translate to other communities and other histories. The page by page format is exactly the same as the structure of my Virginia stories, and I think it worked well.

Bentley Boyd, What Was the Northwest Ordinance, digital, 2017, NFS

One of my nerdiest pages ever. This is where the educational purpose of my comix really stands out. I published a biography of Alexander Hamilton in 2017 to catch some of the interest generated by the hit musical, and—as I have for 25 years—I used the flash to add some other core historical information that would have otherwise seemed boring to many modern readers. Hamilton’s work on the Constitution was my doorway to include some Ohio history and an important document that most modern Americans couldn’t describe. Note how most of the page is not narrative but what the modern journalists call an “infographic.” Comix have been infographics for decades!

Michael Sangiacomo’s Collaborations & Collected Works

Artist Statement:

I never set out to be an original art collector simply because I could not afford it. But over the years I have somehow managed to collect a few nice pieces. The first was a gift to me from Brian Michael Bendis, a page he drew for one of his early works, "Goldfish," where he used me as a model. Bendis has since gone on to become a superstar at both Marvel and, more recently, DC, as a writer. I still enjoy Bendis' art the rare instances he has time to draw anything. The others I picked up mainly as gifts from the generous creators.

Bio:

Michael Sangiacomo has been collecting comics his entire life, starting at the age of 5 when his brother, Joe, used to read the adventures of the Golden Age team, the Justice Society of America. I was hooked. I have been a journalist for various newspapers in the Philadelphia, Chicago and Cleveland area starting while still in college in the early 1970s. I wrote articles about comics for all of them but my big break came in 1993, when I convinced my editor at the Plain Dealer in Cleveland to allow me to write a weekly column on comic book news and history. The column was syndicated to newspapers around the country. In the days before the Internet, the column was well regarded as a source for news and opinion. I retired from the Plain Dealer in 2019 after 30 years. I took my column with me, and continue to write about comics for magazines and websites such as comicsarego.com.

“I was convinced by the former president of Marvel Comics to write my own books. Adopting the adage, "Write what you know," I wrote a series for Image Comics called Phantom Jack about a newspaper reporter who turns invisible. I followed that up with Phantom Jack: The Nowhere Man Agenda for IDW Comics. Readers would be surprised to know that much of the work in those two series was actually based on true events, minus the invisibility aspect. But then reporters are trained to feel invisible, to blend into the scenery and observe. I then wrote my Magnum Opus, Tales of the Starlight Drive-In for Image Comics, a collection of connected short stories about a drive-in theater from the 1950s and 2008. I was blessed with an amazing array of artists who illustrated the stories. Again, most were based in reality. Starlight was voted the Best Graphic Novel of 2008 by The Comic Buyers' Guide, the national newspaper devoted to comics, based on a readers poll.

My latest book is Chalk, about a chalk outline drawn around a murdered priest that comes alive to hunt down and kill the murderers. I'm still looking for a publisher for that one. 

Bio:

Christian Colbert was born, raised, and currently resides in Oberlin, Ohio. Christian primarily works digitally, and with traditional pencil, pen and ink. He’s inspired by the world around him, music, film, television, and pop culture. Christian has been illustrating and designing for nearly two decades, with such professional credits as Spider-Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. However, Christian is most excited about his own intellectual property, “Lantern Falls” being optioned for development as a feature film/television series.