patreon.com/eszterszep
I am experimenting with Patreon as an alternative framework for discussing and disseminating ideas influenced by my academic background.
I create written, spoken, and video content on comics and books and focus on a different topic each month.
PATREON PROJECT #1
A two-part project: a) an essay on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle in Hungarian and b) an audio / podcast on the same topic in English.
The project is about showing that vulnerability is gradually becoming a central topic of the six books of the cycle.
I talk about the ethics of vulnerability (which is a key idea in my upcoming book, Comics and the Body), and then I show how this works in the second book of the cycle, The Tombs of Atuan. I tried to give many examples and no spoilers.
The essay is now published! Link.
PATREON PROJECT #2:
Contrary to the myths inherited from the 80s and later, the graphic novel was not invented or made popular exclusively by Will Eisner or his manager. In my latest Patreon project I dig into the origins of the graphic novel format and I also explore the origins of the term.
I explore the 1970s with the help of Paul Williams’s book, Dreaming the Graphic Novel, and tell you about it in a visual form.
Patreon Project #3: Translating a comic on comics scholarship
Patreon Project #4: MARIE DUVAL
In 2018 Roger Sabin gave me a Marie Duval T-shirt. Now THIS is the way to put ideas into someone’s head: you give them a T-shirt with a cool pattern related to a little known aspect to their research, and they are doomed… Yes, my next #patreon project is on Duval.
Marie Duval was drwaing to the British humorous-satyrical weekly Judy from 1869, and she started drawing the adventures of the first comics superstar, Ally Sloper. After her death, there were conscious attempts to misattribute her work and to erase her from the history of cartooning and visual journalism.
My project is based on the fantastic book Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist by Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite (2020). In the four parts of the project, I explore some of my favorite topics in the book: #1 Duval’s career, #2 women and work in Victorian Britain, #3 the influence of theatre on Duval’s cartooning, and #4 her drawing style and why it was considered vulgar. Link.
Project #5: Petr Sís – illustration and protest
I am sharing thoughts on Czech illustrator Petr Sís as I am preparing for a conference presentation on The Wall – How I Grew Up Behind the Iron Curtain. I have been interested in how postcolonial theories could be used on postsoviet life – this is happening in literature and in flim, but comics haven’t been studied in this respect. Or not enough.
The first post with an intro and lots of pics is already on patreon for anyone to read. Check it out! Link.
Eszter Szép 