'Sugar Ninjas' grace comic art
Women's exhibition holds opening today
By CHARLES RUNNELLS •
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• August 6, 2010
ORIGINAL ARTICLE AVAILABLE ON THE NEWS-PRESS WEBSITE
No blood flows here. Just gallons of paint and ink.
And when the smoke bombs clear, you won't find a heaping pile of bodies. Unless, by "bodies," you mean cuddly bunnies, wide-eyed manga mermaids and tea-sipping T-rexes.
And plenty of pink.
These Sugar Ninjas aren't killers. They're female artists and painters. And they hope to make a killing in the comic-book world. Or - at the very least - a living.
Former art professor Bob Pendarvis christened these women "Sugar Ninjas" because he liked how it sounded - both tough and girly at once.
"The title made perfect sense to me," Pendarvis says.
Last year, he collected dozens of those artists in the first two volumes of his self-published "Sugar Ninjas" art books. The second two volumes debut today at Howl Gallery, which is also hosting the Ninjas' first art exhibit.
The exhibit mostly features Pendarvis' former students at The Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), where he helped start the school's sequential-art program in the early '90s (the first of its kind in the United States).
Some of those students have already found work in the super-competitive comic and illustration field.
Heidi Arnhold, 26, illustrated a 2007 Tokyopop comic-book series based on the Jim Henson movie "The Dark Crystal." Now the Atlanta woman is working on an anthology based on Henson's HBO series "Fraggle Rock."
Like many comic artists, Arnhold started drawing on notebook paper in middle school and quickly became obsessed. Now she's developed a style that's part manga and part American comics.
For the "Sugar Ninjas" books, she contributed a short story based on her pet rabbits - a subject near and dear to her.
"All of my friends know I ramble on incessantly about my 'children,'" she says and laughs. "I'm a crazy bunny lady. It's a big thing for me."
Gally Articola, 23, is also a SCAD graduate. Now she works for Marvel Comics as an art refurbisher - re-drawing and re-coloring old, scanned-in comic panels and bringing them up to modern publishing standards. Her work appears in the series "The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe."The Germantown, Md., resident hopes that job leads to more creative drawing and coloring work.
"Comics are my first love," she says. "I love the creativity and the diversity. There are very few rules in comics."
Arnhold and Articola are just two of the approximately 28 artists appearing at the Howl Gallery show. Together, these artists prove that something exciting is happening in the comic-book field, Pendarvis says.
"Comic books have been kind of a boy's club for decades," he says. "Now you're starting to see more girls."
Credit the ongoing popularity of manga (Japanese comic books). Translated manga books started appearing in the United States in the '90s, and now many fans have grown up to become artists, themselves.
In many cases, these artists bring a feminine sensibility to the macho comics world, including fewer superheroes and an overall lighter touch.
"With a lot of the girls, there's a gracefulness to the drawing," Pendarvis says. "The guys tend to be more heavy-handed."
Pendarvis has published more than 150 artists in the "Sugar Ninjas" series (including his own work under the pseudonym "ANA" - his own first name, Bob, with each letter shifted one slot to the left in the alphabet).
"I just felt weird being a guy publishing an all-girl anthology," he says. "So I needed a code name."
The Howl Gallery exhibit features comic-book pages, comic strips, picture-book illustrations and more.
Gallery co-owner Andy Howl loved the idea of an all-women comic-art show. He hopes the exhibit sheds more light on their impressive artwork.
"It's sort of like a mystery group," he says. "Who knew female comic artists even existed?"
In time, everyone will know, Pendarvis says.
It's bound to happen.
Young adult novelists such as "Twilight's" Stephenie Meyer and "Harry Potter's" J.K. Rowling have already found a target market. So female comic artists will find an audience, too.
"There's a vast, untapped potential audience out there," Pendarvis says. These female artists have at least one parallel to real-life ninjas, Pendarvis says.
In ancient Japan, ninja assassins would blend into crowds and wait for just the right moment to reveal themselves, he says. "Then, all of the sudden, you're dead. Because there was a ninja there and you never even knew it."
He sees female comic artists the same way. They've been there for years - hiding and largely unrecognized in an industry dominated by men.
In that time, though, they've honed their talent to a razor's edge. And now they're jumping from their hiding places and finally making their mark.
"These girls are talented and amazing," Pendarvis says.
The artists just feel glad to get some respect, finally.
They're tired of waiting in the shadows.
"You see more women in the industry now than ever before," Arnhold says. "And I think that's a very, very good thing."
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AUGUST 6TH, 2010.AVAILABLE ON THE NEWS-PRESS WEBSITE
