Eszter Szép

Curious about comics.

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Tag: patreon

  • New Patreon Project: Petr Sís, drawing, protest, post-soviet life

    The new project that I am undertaking with the help of Patreon folks is partly a conference presentation and partly an issue I have wanted to explore for a while now.

    I have been interested in how postcolonial theories could be used on postsoviet life and stuff – this is happening in literature and in flim, but comics haven’t been studied in this respect. Or not enough.

    I am also interested in drawing as a way of protest.

    So in the next project I’ll try to explore these ideas: the trick in the whole endeavour is that I have two weeks left until the annual conference of the Comics Studies society.

    The first post, in which I introduce the topic and Czech illustrator Petr Sís, is already on patreon for anyone to read – so it is not restricted to Patrons only this time. There are a lot of amazing images by Petr Sís, check it out.

    Go to post on Patreon.
    Children’s books by Petr Sís.

  • The Marie Duval Patreon Project

    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 new #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 favourite 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 the politics of her drawing style and why it was considered vulgar. Link.

    I think Marie Duval was a creative woman employee who provoked the norms of her age in many ways, including her employment, her lack of formal training, her style, her topics, her sense of humour, her acting career, and even her family. I simply adore her achievement. Check out the details of the project on Patreon!

    Here are some images that I love. They come from the Marie Duval archive.

  • Where Do Graphic Novels Come From?

    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. A teaser of the project is now available for anyone on my website.

    The project itself is longer than this teaser and is more argumentative. It is based on Dreaming the Graphic Novel by Paul Williams (Rutgers UP, 2020). I absolutely recommend this book. And my Patreon! Have I mentioned my Patreon in this paragraph yet?

    The project on Patreon (ha!) shows that in the 60s and 70s many people had many ideas about how comics should be rethought. Yes, creators, publishers, editors, retailers thought that comics was in need of some change.

    I do not dwell on this moral and financial crisis for long in my Patreon project (check!) , instead, I show the diversity of things people were doing and thinking AT THE SAME TIME. This is a dynamic and exciting age: noone knew that the graphic novel will turn out to be successful. They did not know it would be called graphic novel!

    Why Patreon? I am experimenting with new formats to keep on doing research, thinking, and discussing ideas. As some of you know, I am outside Academia, which gives me a hard time, but I have watched dozens of Neil Gaiman motivational speeches and I am actively looking for alternative ways to share what I know and to learn from you all.

    Distinguished guests, behold the project teaser:

    The argumentation and further details of how people were experimenting with long format comics is available on Patreon, where my previous project is also available: You can also listen to an audio/podcast/thing on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle. Here is the link: patreon.com/eszterszep

  • Why is vulnerability so important in Le Guin’s Earthsea? – Patreon News

    I am happy to share with you my first finished Patreon project.

    Patreon projects help me keep on academic work in the circumstances I do not want to waste time on describing now, I have done so here, in the general introduction of my Patreon endeavor. Patreon projects are academic investigations that create a bridge between what I do in English and what I do in Hungarian, and I am really grateful for the patrons for allowing me to carry on thinking.

    MY FIRST FINISHED PATREON PROJECT has two parts: a) an essay on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle in Hungarian and b) an audio / podcast on the same topic in English.

    Ursula K. Le Guin is acknowledged as one of the writers who undermined inherited fantasy tropes, wrote different quests and different conflicts, did not use characters who were evil just because they loved being evil, and, importantly, created tons of interesting female characters and made the gender of the characters a decisive factor. There is a sense of deep wisdom in all of her works.

    I show that we can understand the Earthsea cycle in a new way if we see 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. I think it is understandable even if you haven’t read the book yet. I hope so! 

    www.patreon.com/eszterszep

  • I have started a Patreon page

    These past months have been very difficult because it seems that being from Eastern Europe and being primarily a comics scholar (though I have also taught literature) make it impossible to get a job in academia either here in Hungary or in the EU / UK. This has negatively influenced all my other projects, such as our podcast, the various guest posts I write to blogs, the academic articles I should be writing (because I simply do not accept that I should quit) and I became more and more gloomy. I do not want to bore you with this, I am sure you have also had some negative spirals in your life. What usually helps in my case is watching Neil Gaiman interviews and feed on his creative positive energy.

    I have also decided to share my work (and also my difficulties) more openly because I love working on/with comics and recently I have felt so dark and alone.

    Here is a chain of tweets that explains my motives. You can find my page on patreon.com/eszterszep. I have spent some time in making the tiers personal, have a visit if you have the time.