Desert Island is an essential comics emporium in Brooklyn that also publishes a tabloid called Smoke Signal. As the project’s website states,
For the first 10 years, Smoke Signal was a submission-based anthology with multiple artists in each issue, edited by Gabe Fowler with occasional guest editors. Starting with issue 30 in 2018, Smoke Signal has shifted to a series of solo artist issues, which has changed the project significantly. The recent issues feel more like artists’ books in the form of a newspaper. … The paper is always free in NYC, with supporters’ copies available for preorder before printing each issue.
Issue 44, featuring the work of Gary Panter, came in the mail yesterday—and unfortunately for you, it’s currently out-of-print. I asked Gary for a bit more on the project:
“This issue of Smoke Signal, which I call ‘Flycatcher’ for my favorite bird, the state bird of Oklahoma, is part of general art making through drawing projects. During COVID I did more than 100 drawings compiling images that I could use as elements of an associative hieroglyph. Fancy way of saying, elements from comics that seem useful and elemental … that when they are put next to each other, have associations, as things will typically do. So I used all those elements to make this body of drawings for the publication. They are not like a rebus, but when I look at them my mind will start telling me little vague stories. I might try to write some of those vague stories, but I didn’t do that yet. They are something like a comic with few boxes.”
He added, “I have been stuck for about a year on my second CRASHPAD2 hippie comic, and hope eventually to get back on track.”
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