BOSTON – The Boston Comic Arts Foundation hosted its most recent session of Picture + Panel on Nov. 3, with comic artist, Tana Ford, conversing with comic writer Colleen AF Venable about cats in comic books at the Boston Figurative Arts Center. The panel was moderated by Katie Armour, the Foster Care Coordinator at the MSPCA Adoption Center.
Ford spoke about the artwork she did for a recently released sci-fi graphic novel called “The Space Cat” and Venable talked about her writing on an ongoing graphic novel series called “Katie the Catsitter”. Armour’s moderation guided the conversation through discussions about: how the previous pets of the creators contributed to their world view, if cats see ghosts, and what cat personalities the creators have and methodology behind their work. The floor was then opened to questions from attendees.
“I feel like it’s really hard to stay in an utterly bad mood when you have any sort of pet,” said Venable, who currently has one cat and two bunnies.
Both Ford and Venable said that they’ve incorporated real world pets owned by themselves and their friends into their work. For Venable, this meant including the names of about 200 cats that belong to people she knows.
“I’ve snuck every dog I’ve ever loved in this book and a lot of my friends’ cats,” said Ford.
Further discussion focused on the details of comics as a collaborative art form, with Ford describing the medium’s “co-creation situation” between artist and writer contributing to the “beauty of the artform,”
“The difference between a good work and a great work is someone being able to accept feedback and change,” said Venable.
After the panel, Ford discussed the difference between drawing humans and cats.
“The cat, I can stretch and squish and animate and have it go kind of crazy, and so I think that there’s a nice potential for sort of stretching what is real and playing around with it in a way that’s really vibrant,” said Ford.
Picture + Panel is held on the first Monday of every month at the Boston Figurative Art Center, with BCAF Outreach Director, Gina Gagliano saying the goal is to bring creators “to the forefront of the conversation” within the comic scene.
“I can’t think of another city that has as big [an] indie comics community like this,” said Venable.
This article was produced for BINJ.News, the independent weekly magazine published by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and is syndicated by BINJ’s MassWire news service.
