Panel: Place as Character

June 11th, 3:00–4:00 p.m. Place as Character

According to an old maxim, all cartoonists lavish attention on either their characters or their settings, but not both. The work of Emil Ferris, Sophie Goldstein, Laura Knetzger, and Mita Mahato give the lie to this assertion because, in their comics, place is itself a character. Through the use of highly rendered drawings that overtake the page (Ferris), dense cut-paper landscapes (Mahato), a forest that represents the joy and mystery of discovery and growth (Knetzger) or deadly and deceptively destitute dystopias (Goldstein), these artists make their stories’ settings come alive. They are joined in conversation by moderator Rob Clough, a comics critic who writes primarily for The Comics Journal and High-Low.  This panel is sponsored by Blick.