Broken Pencil

Aug 6, 2024 | brokenpencil.com | Thomas Campbell

Beat The RustComic, Kelly Fruh, 32 pgs, etsy.com/shop/StewBrewComix, $8Told in brief, deft, vignettes, Beat The Rust is the story of a woman named Ann’s descent into isolation and hoarding that’s exacerbated by a sexual assault. Mainly composed of nine panel grids and revealing splash pages, Fruh’s cartooning is elegant with smooth round shapes and ink wash that adds a depth. An accessible, utilitarian style. Our protagonist, Ann, is a nondescript everywoman. She has a college degree.

Jul 22, 2024 | brokenpencil.com | Evan Wright

Mike Adams isn’t comfortable with the ‘lyric video’ phenomenon, the recent trend of official music videos doing double time as karaoke. “Maybe it’s because it’s ‘new’ and I’m ‘old,’” the mastermind behind the musical act Mike Adams At His Honest Weight, says. “But I don’t like to be ruled by my fears, so here I am participating anyway.”Well, “participating,” but with a surprising twist.

Jul 11, 2024 | brokenpencil.com | Zach Rabiroff

One thing to understand about Trina Robbins is that she wouldn’t want me to be writing this eulogy. Trina was many things, but the most enduring of them was embodying an act of creative resistance. That is, resistance not only against the tone and character of comics, with their permeating, masculine violence and exploitative sexuality both overt and subterranean, but against the overgrown boys who made them and the undergrown boys who read them.

Jul 11, 2024 | brokenpencil.com | Masha Zhdanova

at the 7/11 outside Club QComic, Annabel Driussi, 14 pgs, adriussi.myportfolio.comat the 7/11 outside Club Q is a deeply personal zine, rendering moments of grief and joy in bright, primary coloured pencil. Cartoonist and science illustrator Annabel Driussi reflects on the aftermath of the shooting that occurred at Colorado Springs’ Club Q in November, 2022.

Jun 24, 2024 | brokenpencil.com | Will Sloan

Fifteen years ago, a New England-based singer songwriter named Matt Farley was scrolling through the yearly stats for his iTunes discography and made a discovery. Of all the dozens of tracks he had uploaded, most earned zero dollars, but one — a novelty song called “My Goldfish Is Dead” — had grossed two dollars. For most creatives, these numbers would be discouraging, but Farley had an epiphany: if one novelty song could make two dollars, then perhaps 20,000 novelty songs could make $40,000?