Poetry Comics Month Guest Artists, Part Two

Travis Jonker, Austin Kleon, Vikram Madan, and Summer Pierre

Dec 01, 2023

Thank you, Incidental Comics readers, for following along with me for Poetry Comics Month. It was a fun challenge to create, edit, and post thirty days of new comics. Now I’m ready for a month of hibernation! Before I go into holiday mode, I want to showcase more of the guest artists who generously shared their work this month. Follow them, buy their books, and enjoy their visual poetry.

Travis Jonker

Travis Jonker is a children’s book author and illustrator and the co-creator of The Yarn podcast. Travis’s most recent picture book is JUST ONE FLAKE, about the quest to catch a perfect snowflake. He also wrote BLUE FLOATS AWAY, which I had the honor to illustrate. In addition to being a dynamic storyteller, Travis is a connector in the kid-lit community and an enthusiastic supporter of children’s literature. Listen to his podcast, follow his blog 100 Scope Notes, and find his books at your favorite library or bookstore.

Austin Kleon

is a writer who draws and the bestselling author of STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST. He makes groundbreaking books on creativity and writes one of the most entertaining newsletters out there. He’s also a cartoonist and visual poet who’s written beautifully about the links between poetry and comics. Find Austin’s newsletter at austinkleon.substack.com. Here’s what Austin said about his comics work:

In a previous life, I wanted to be a cartoonist, but I wound up doing whatever it is I do. I grew up reading a lot of comics (newspaper strips in particular) and I still do — I think learning the language of comics has rewired my brain and influenced pretty much everything I do with pictures and words.

1) Drawing comics is something I go back to when I really feel a need to light up all parts of my brain. I’ve stolen a ton of inspiration from Lynda Barry and I believe that when you draw you are inviting these characters to come and visit you on the page. These two characters, a human skull and a cow skull, showed up around the time I was writing my book Keep Going. I often draw them in the margins of my diary and I give them the voices I hear in my head when I'm trying to work. I redrew this comic and a few others as illustrations in the book. (Their black triangular garb was inspired by Mark Newgarden’s The Little Nun.)

2) Here's a concrete example of how comics has inspired my non-comics work. These four little newspaper blackout poems — poems made by blacking out the New York Times with a Sharpie marker — make up an illustration in my book Show Your Work! I realized at some point that I could stitch together these little tiny fragments into something that was like a four-panel comic with just dialogue, no characters. (The 2x2 4-panel comic works really well in my little square books.)

3) Reading James Kochalka’s sketchbook diaries, American Elf, made a huge impression on me about 15 years ago, and I learned from that strip that comics are a really powerful way to capture these little glimpses of family life. When I had my own kids, I started drawing comics in my diary as a way to preserve some of the wacky, wonderful, poetic things the kids were saying. These two strips were drawn while writing my book Keep Going. (You can see them really small in the back of the book where I show some pages from my diary.)

Vikram Madan

Vikram Madan is an author-artist in Seattle, Washington. He makes the award-winning OWL AND PENGUIN beginner graphic-novel series and created the graphic-novel-in-rhyme ZOONI TALES. His work combines comics and poetry in a fresh, approachable way that both kids and grownups love. These pages are from A HATFUL OF DRAGONS, a playful exploration of funny poems intertwined with cartoon illustrations. Find Vikram’s work at vikrammadan.com, follow him on instagram @artbyvikram, and check out his joy-filled books at your favorite library or bookstore.

Summer Pierre

Summer Pierre is a cartoonist living in the Hudson Valley of New York. She is the author of the Eisner-nominated book ALL THE SAD SONGS and the autobiographical series Paper, Pencil, Life. Her comics and sketchbooks have a personal quality that feels like you’re peeking into her life. She’s also a master of two-panel haiku comics of insight and brevity. Find Summer’s website at summer-pierre.com and follow her on instagram @summer.pierre.

Incidental Comics