8/21/08 - Blueprint Saints Magazine - Can you believe?

Big things are on the horizon. This is the year that comics are making some waves in Lexington. First there was the LexArts/CCG Comic Art Gallery Show showcasing Kentucky Comic Artists of all ages (with a Lexington Art League show - Comix - having an open call to National comic artists till November) and now it looks like we will have a dedicated Comic Magazine coming to Lexington! We are going from famine to FEAST!

At the June's CCG meeting in Common Grounds Coffee House me and several other area cartoonists, John Howard and Wolf Hicks, got to meet Ben Kuchera for the first time. Ben is a filmmaker and media arts professor with an impressive resume of degrees who, while teaching at a one of Lexington's private Colleges was struck by the number of students he met with an interest in creating comics but no clue how to proceed with their work to the public. Ben is (has become?) a driven man who has persevered and struggled to realize a project that he has repeatedly heard called "impossible". He is dedicated to his vision to create an add-free comic magazine with a two year run (minimum) that is freely distributed around Lexington and the UK campus. This magazine will be called Blueprint Saints Magazine. Continue reading for more about my early thoughts on this project and its architect. (I suppose I should warn you this is a bit of an editorial on my part...)

A Maverick Amidst the Bluegrass Thoroughbreds

By Jonathan Gilpin, Coordinator, Lexington KY Comic Creators Group

Have you ever heard the phrase "manna from Heaven"? Blueprint Saints Magazine and Ben Kuchera seem to fall in the category - at least to this comic-centric blogger. I met Ben Kuchera in person in late June and he presented his vision of an all comics, all Lexington talent free oversized (compared to current pamphlet comics - similarly sized to other area free distribution newsprint magazines: ala Chevy Chaser, Ace Magazine and the sadly departed Nougat Magazine) comic magazine to a handful of us in attendance at our June CCG meeting.

Frankly many of us were skeptical that this “field of dreams” project would ever see the light of day! Despite some serious time spent on a (then rev 2) design document (now rev 3) Ben's lack of insider comics publishing knowledge and the commitment he was asking from his team of contributors set off warning alarms in my mind. But, as time has passed and we have continued to communicate and exchange ideas and information, these concerns have lessened. Ben has embraced some more realistic business models (non profit organization status) for this two-year (24 issue) project.

But he has not changed his basic " if you build it they will come” concept. Ben really has me believing (and I hope not naively) that this is his way to allow the many artists and frustrated comic creators he has met thought his tenure as a local college instructor (and now a local comic magazine publisher) to have a venue to display their work and get some print exposure when and where they could find no easy way to get their work "out there". Ben has explained repeatedly that he just wants to create the venue and then step back so that it's the creator’s voices we will read and "heard" in BPS. As I have spent more time with Ben my second concern has been eased as well: he isn’t asking for anything that he hasn’t already been doing himself, working earnestly and with great verve and passion to promote and realize an open source venue for artistic and intellectual expression.

Will they succeed or will this be a grand exercise in wishful thinking? I think (and pray) that this will succeed and I will tell you why: "everyone loves comics" and good writing and art will just make the local content and inevitably local subject matter that much more to the Centerpoint (yes,Virginia, that is a jab at our local downtown high rise concerns).

IMHO, getting our message out is good for human beings - the way we choose or need to present our take on the human experience is different and ultimately as unique as the human source of the message. We create and we excrete (yuck you say - healthy I say). Sometimes you just got to get it out - long-term repression is bad for us all hairless apes. I think a free and open venue for heartfelt and passionate expression will just sing with voices that many of us have never heard and get some people thinking - there's nothing wrong with waking up a few sleeping giants in this world! And I believe the stories that will be told will ultimately help define us Lexington area inhabitants as a people and build our culture – serving to bring us together in a shared sense of identity.

Good golly yes! We (Lexington and Central Kentucky) need something like this - we need the artistic outlet and we need the conceptual outlet too! Our local institutes of Higher Ed (goodness, our entire city) are just teeming with young and old folks who want (and need) to be heard! I say having a local environment that is open to this type of expression will just help attract the students and faculty that our flagship university needs to meet the much alluded to Top Twenty Status.

Just imagine the political and social discussions/commentaries that this publication can host! Comics is a medium and not a GENRE - don’t expect tights and the undead (apologies to Robert Kirkman)! It can support whatever subject you can think of. Case in point see Wired Magazine contributor, Daniel Pink's recent book: Johny Bunco: The Last Career Guide You Will Ever Need written in the Manga form, if you don't believe me! Watch Marjane Satrapi and Sony Classics “Persepolis” too – but you really should read the book first!

Fans of comics, fans of satire, advocates of open community discussion - this is a project we should all get on board and support! There's no limit to what we as a living breathing community of artists, political action leaders, alternative voice advocates, editorial cartoonists, (I have come to thing of this rapidly disapearing group of multi-disciplinarian journalists as the "evangelists of Freedom and Critical Thought" - expect a dedicated post about recent trends in newspaper staffing that has me seeing red!), free thinkers and crazed Sudoku enthusiasts can breathe into and create a unique local and regional product that is home grown and grass roots! This work of our voices and our vision and our blood and sweat - it really does seem too good to be true doesn't it? Wipe that tear from your eye and get to work folks - Ben is still in recruitment phase - you can still join in on this groundbreaking operation that is Blueprint Saints Magazine. Why Ben, is that a feather sticking out from your collar…? JG 8/21/08

Comments and input are as always requested and desired.