Chris Ware

Moderated by Jake Austen
Sponsored by Quimby’s Bookstore

Special Guest Chris Ware is the author of Jimmy Corrigan – the Smartest Kid on Earth, which received the Guardian First Book Award and was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial of American Art. His most recent book, Building Stories, was voted a 2012 Top Ten Book of the Year by the New York Times, Time Magazine and Publishers Weekly. An irregular contributor to The New Yorker, he guest-edited the 13th issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and was the first cartoonist chosen to regularly serialize an ongoing story in The New York Times Magazine. His work has been the focus of solo exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Nebraska and the Gävle Konstcentrum in Gävle, Sweden, as well as regular exhibitions at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York, the Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago, and the Galerie Martel in Paris in March, 2013. Jake Austen, editor of the vital and influential Chicago cultural magazine Roctober, will host Mr. Ware in conversation, speaking on Ware’s career and his connection to Chicago and its living comics history.

Innovative Forms

with Jason Shiga, Deb Soklow, Aaron Renier, and Nate Beaty
Moderated by Caroline Picard
Sponsored by Anchor Graphics

Artists today are reinventing the boundaries of what is considered graphic narrative. From re-engineering the book, to capitalizing on the potential of the Internet’s infinite canvas, to mapping stories through physical space, experiments in format are exploding the possibilities of non-linear storytelling and evolving the way we read. Special Guest Jason Shiga is the author of Meanwhile, a tabulated, “choose-your-own-adventure,” capable of 3,856 different story combinations. Fellow Special Guest, Deb Sokolow creates narratives through gallery installations, in which physical size and space play a part of the story. They will be joined on stage by Aaron Renier, and Nate Beaty, who launched the expansive and dynamic comics web-project, The Infinite Corpse this spring. This discussion about comics’ outer limits is moderated by Caroline Picard of Green Lantern Press and BadAtSports.

Eyeworks: Parallel Lines

with Kim Deitch, Kevin Eskew, and Leif Goldberg
Curated by Alexander Stewart and Lilli Carré

The Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation is a film festival with a focus on abstract animation and unconventional character animation. The festival programs showcase outstanding experimental animation of all sorts: classic films, new works, and rare masterpieces. Founded in 2010 by Alexander Stewart (Library Book, Sideral) and Lilli Carré (Heads or Tails, The Lagoon), Eyeworks is held annually in Chicago, with additional curated programs presented in Chicago and other cities throughout the year. The Eyeworks program showing at CAKE this year, Parallel Lines, features animated work that highlights an overlap between alternative comics and experimental animation. The screening will include both classic and contemporary works on this theme, showcasing narrative and graphic parallels between the two forms. Immediately following the screening there will be a Q&A, with presented animators Kim Deitch, Kevin Eskew, and Leif Goldberg.
Parallel Lines: Comics and Animation

Richard McGuire, Micro Loup. 2003. 7:00
Peter Millard, Bodoobieboodongo. 2012. 4:00
George Griffin, Head. 1975. 10:30
Kathy Rose, The Doodlers. 1975. 5:00
Leif Goldberg, Wee Wee Attractors. 2013. 4:15
Kevin Eskew, Dumb Day. 2012. 10:00
Amy Lockhart, Walk For Walk. 2005. 11:00
Kim Deitch & John Kuramoto, The Ship That Never Came In. 2003. 2:30
Winsor McCay, The Pet. 1921. 11:45
Stefan Gruber, The Edible Rocks. 2012. 3:00

Mega-Solutions to Micro-Publishing: Oily Comics

with Charles Forsman, Melissa Mendes, Michael DeForge, and Anna Haifisch
Moderated by Max Morris
Sponsored by the Sequential Artists Workshop

In the current expansion of the micro-publishing field, Special Guests Oily Comics is a premiere imprint. Operated by Chuck Forsman (The End of the Fucking World, Snake Oil) and Melissa Mendes (Lou, Freddy), Oily Comics features some of the best talent in alternative comics. Joining them on stage will be fellow Special Guest Michael DeForge (Adventure Time, Elizabeth of Canada, Lose), and German cartoonist, Anna Haifisch (The Buddies, Future Tense). CAKE co-organizer Max Morris will moderate this exciting discussion.

Kim Deitch

Moderated by Caitlin McGurk
Sponsored by Chicago Comics

Special Guest Kim Deitch came from a legacy in the animation field and continues to form a legacy of his own. From the hey-day of the undergrounds, through the breakthrough of Raw, Kim Deitch remains a seminal force in alternative comics. Deitch will be speaking about his new book, The Amazing, Enlightening and Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley, out this year from Fantagraphics. He will be joined by Caitlin McGurk (Good Morning You), librarian at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.

Intimate Anxiety

with Phoebe Gloeckner, Julia Gfrörer, and Heather Benjamin
Moderated by Caroline Paquita
Sponsored by Comix Revolution

Beyond the shock tactics of portraying “inappropriate” subject matter in comics, we find the medium is exquisitely suited for grappling with explicit content, unchained from the trappings of taboo. Intimate Anxiety focuses on three artists’ ferocious visions of sex and death, made all the more visceral through gorgeous and painstaking details. Special Guest Phoebe Gloeckner sets the standard for work that probes these realms. From her experimental memoir, Diary of a Teenage Girl, to her iconic illustrations for RE/Search to her current work dealing with the ongoing femicide in Cuidad, Juárez, Gloeckner continues to confront difficult realities with groundbreaking graphic integrity. Julia Gfrörer’s art vibrates off of the page while crafting oblique erotic worlds laced with terror. Through sparse text and a perfect sense of visual timing, Gfrörer’s comics, such as Too Dark to See, Flesh and Bone and Black Is the Color bring language to the unspeakable. Joining them will be Special Guest Heather Benjamin, whose obsessively rendered drawings aim straight for the jugular vein. Author of the cult art zine Sad Sex and contributor to the prolific output of Collective Stench, Benjamin’s art delves headfirst into complicated scenarios that are emotionally fraught and sexually feral. Moderated by Caroline Paquita, author of Womanimalistic and founder of Pegacorn Press, Intimate Anxiety is a conversation about the power and truth that lies within impropriety.