Nick Sousanis
@nsousanis.bsky.social
5.5K followers 1.4K following 5.3K posts
Comics as thinking. Eisner winner. Unflattening from HarvardUP (http://bit.ly/1vENIO7). Former Detroiter/NYer/YYC/now assoc prof SFSU-Comics Studies! https://spinweaveandcut.com/ Tags #comics #Unflattening #Nostos
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nsousanis.bsky.social
I kept my twit-act in part because I’d been documenting progress on my new book since its beginning. As I fully phase out twix, sharing some past posts here as I go. This was the first finished spread - part of 22pg 15ft long continuous sequence retelling the Odyssey! Onward! #Nostos #Unflattening 2
A 2-page black and white comics spread, with imagery continuing beyond the side boundaries of the pages as it’s part of a longer sequence. The center is a tapestry that stretches through the page displaying Odysseus’s ship with the lighthouse of pharos, Penelope weaving a pharos, and the bag of Aeolus. The image of penelope emerges from the tapestry, near it there's a meta-tapestry with warp and weft of threads that make the page, all woven by hands from the reader’s perspective. They hands unwind at the wrists to merge with a labyrinth that fills bottom of page metapmorphosizing from greek key patterns that make the boundary of the tapestry. At top the moon in three phases and a double headed axe spins through the page - in one instance mirroring the full moon with crescents on either side. The axe transforms into a monarch butterfly across the page. Also there’s an owl who moves backwards across the page until it comes to rest on Penelope’s loom. It’s a complicated page... (oh, and I have twice as many characters as Twitter here - but that’s probably enough)
nsousanis.bsky.social
how our home was set in motion. The birth of our solar system - cloud set spinning... 5/30 panels on this page. End of the chapter is at last in sight!
#Nostos #Unflattening 2
a snippet from a comics page in progress - five small panels in horizontal sequence. The first one is a stellar nebula - a formless cloud of gas. Second panel is a supernova - and then we see the shockwave from that stretch over panels 2-4 emanating away from it, only to collide with this stellar cloud at the edge of panel four. And then the cloud has collapsed text reads "a nearby star's last violent gasp, as midwife, collapses this stellar nursery."
Reposted by Nick Sousanis
carlzimmer.com
Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE
nyti.ms
nsousanis.bsky.social
Sure, this was for my students - but it’s really for me. I like to struggle and believe in its importance entirely…
bsky.app/profile/nsou...
nsousanis.bsky.social
My statement on Ai from the mini-comic as syllabus i made for new class I'm teaching that starts tomorrow! It robs you of your decisions & struggles - and the joy of being surprised. We won’t to be robbed of our learning - this is essential. This & the full mini at post:
bsky.app/profile/nsou...
a snippet of a mini-comic, at top - straight line stretches from point A to B. Immediately below, same dot at A, then becomes a curving, meandering line that winds through the page and ends at a point with rays and a question mark emanating from it. Text reads: "Nothing can do this for you - for that robs you of experience and conflates answers with learning. Rather, it's all the decisions you make along the way, the mistakes, struggles, and surprises! These pathways you create - this is learning.
nsousanis.bsky.social
Hear hear!
junoryleejournalism.com
David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)
SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.
Reposted by Nick Sousanis
nsousanis.bsky.social
My students use this - it was all new to me when that first happened but they knew!
nsousanis.bsky.social
follow the yellow brick road...
nsousanis.bsky.social
All of this is insane but an @authorandreabeaty.bsky.social book?! Ugh on so many levels…
nsousanis.bsky.social
It should be fun, I’m really impressed with what I’ve learned about Lesley thus far - and excited to meet students, talk, and do workshops while I’m there!
nsousanis.bsky.social
I posted this today a little bit to give people an early heads up, but mostly because cooler than me speaking there, @doriskgoodwin.bsky.social is the speaker tomorrow evening! Wish I could be there...
nsousanis.bsky.social
Folks in or around the Boston area, I'm pleased to be speaking at Lesley University Thursday October 23 as part of their Thought Leadership series! Talking comics & thinking as I do! Open to the public - registration link coming soon!
lesley.edu/about-lesley...
The Thought Leadership Series | Lesley University
At Lesley University
lesley.edu
Reposted by Nick Sousanis
philipcball.bsky.social
Because there's so much awful stuff to write about, I decided to write my latest column for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social about something interesting and removed from all that: the discovery of a blue pigment in a Neolithic artefact.
www.thenewworld.co.uk/philip-ball-...
How did cave artists get a brand new pigment?
The discovery of traces of a blue pigment on a stone shaped into a shallow dish at a Palaeolithic site in Germany is quite a find
www.thenewworld.co.uk
nsousanis.bsky.social
Sweet! Our cargo terns have been life changing - almost no driving the past several years. When I don’t have small humans to take around everywhere, the foldable looks like a great option someday. Enjoy!
Reposted by Nick Sousanis
donmoyn.bsky.social
The elimination of USAID is a moral atrocity and all involved made a choice to enable, and then lie about, ending the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.
MAE SOT, Thailand (AP) - Mohammed Taher clutched the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son and wept. Ever since his family's food rations stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April, the father had watched helplessly as his once-vibrant baby boy weakened, suffering from diarrhea and begging for food.
On May 21, exactly two weeks after Taher's little boy died, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and declared: "No one has died" because of his government's decision to gut its foreign aid program. Rubio also insisted: "No children are dying on my watch."
That, Taher says, "is a lie."
Reposted by Nick Sousanis
jordancollver.bsky.social
I won't be able to make it to this excellent panel discussion with @karriefransman.bsky.social @paulfisherdavies.bsky.social and my boy Rik, but some of my art will be part of the exhibition alongsides greats like @nsousanis.bsky.social @kaysohini.bsky.social @cartoonkate.bsky.social !
nsousanis.bsky.social
thanks for sharing this - one back at ya! bsky.app/profile/nsou...
nsousanis.bsky.social
My statement on Ai from the mini-comic as syllabus i made for new class I'm teaching that starts tomorrow! It robs you of your decisions & struggles - and the joy of being surprised. We won’t to be robbed of our learning - this is essential. This & the full mini at post:
bsky.app/profile/nsou...
a snippet of a mini-comic, at top - straight line stretches from point A to B. Immediately below, same dot at A, then becomes a curving, meandering line that winds through the page and ends at a point with rays and a question mark emanating from it. Text reads: "Nothing can do this for you - for that robs you of experience and conflates answers with learning. Rather, it's all the decisions you make along the way, the mistakes, struggles, and surprises! These pathways you create - this is learning.
Reposted by Nick Sousanis
darrigomelanie.bsky.social
I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.
Reposted by Nick Sousanis
johnpfaff.bsky.social
Um, ICE just coldly shot an unarmed PRIEST in the head w a pepper ball when he (and everyone around him) clearly posed no threat.

For the crime of … complaining about government policy.

Core 1A speech.

With cameras rolling, they’re sniping priests for sport.
flglchicago.bsky.social
Here’s video of the incident
Reposted by Nick Sousanis