Get to Know the Oberlin Comics Collective

Jaileen P

Have you heard of the Oberlin Comics Collective, a new student org at Oberlin? Maybe you noticed them last year, or at the connections fair, and wondered if you had ever seen them before. To get to the bottom of what this org really is, I sat down for an interview with two members, Kate and Emma. 

What is the Oberlin Comics Collective?

It’s for creators and enthusiasts of comics, but mostly creators. Enthusiasts are welcome to attend our meetings and read what we publish. But its purpose is to be a creative space for people to come together and make comics. That includes cartoonists who want to both draw and write their own stuff but also creative writers who don’t draw or artists who don’t write. We want to have a space for them to team up and make something together. We want people who are interested in comics to come to our club and realize that anyone can make comics! There’s no skill level needed.

Can I have a brief history of the Oberlin Comics collective?

From looking through the archives, we think it was started around 2014 by MJ Robinson ‘14. At some point the club had access to these risograph machines, which are printmaking machines that can make copies really, really quickly based on stencils. At some point during COVID, those two machines were shipped off and the club kind of dissolved. Last year there was a brief interest meeting about restarting the comics collective, but it never went anywhere. And so late last semester, our group got together, submitted the paperwork, thought about what we wanted to do, and now we’re here!

What’s your game plan this year? What are you hoping to achieve?

Our goal is to publish something, ideally by the end of the semester. But this semester might mostly be about gathering interest and creating a community. We’re not sure if we can rally enough people to fully submit and get enough for a publication by the end of the semester, but certainly by the end of the year. In the past, the collective would publish semesterly issues made up of comics made by members of the club. That’s what the risograph machine was for. And we want to bring back that idea, especially since there’s such a big art scene at Oberlin. But there’s not really an avenue for people to see what art students have been working on,  outside of showcases. We would like the Oberlin Comics Collective to be one avenue for that. And we’re hoping to get people who are interested in art but maybe not particularly interested in comics to join us and vice versa. 

So, it’s a publication?

That’s what we hope to do!

How can people get involved?

We have an email list going and are hoping to start regular meetings soon. We also want to host community events, like the zine jam we did last year, which was a bunch of people getting together and making weird little books. The Oberlin Comics Collective has this archive file cabinet full of student work from the last decade. We want to do an event where people come in, read all those, and get inspired! We also want to work on a website where we upload these archives. For now, we have an interest form https://tinyurl.com/OCC-email-list and an instagram @oberlincomics. 

Who’s the official leadership?

We have a treasurer, Natalie, and that’s about it. We all make decisions by committee and none of us really like the idea of having a single editor-in-chief, considering how young the publication is right now. Functionally, we’re all equals. 

What drew you to comics?

We all had interest in comics from growing up reading comics like Bones, Calvin and Hobbes, and stuff. Most of us met through some official art channel. We all took sequential illustration and some of us did a comics winter term, which spiraled into us wanting to revive Oberlin Comics Collective. 

Side question: Is there a connection between the Sequential Illustration courses and the OCC?

You don’t have to have taken it to be a part of the collective, but many of our members met in the class! And Michael Roman, Sequential Illustration professor, is our advisor. We reached out to him for some resources on how to teach people how to make comics. 

Do you have comic recommendations?

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel ‘81, she talks about her time at Oberlin! And her Coming Out comic. Also, This One Summer by Marako and Jillian Tamaki, it’s really gorgeously illustrated with great dialogue. Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang and Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley!

After seeing their posters and events last year, I was curious about what this org had to offer. And as a student currently enrolled in Intro to Sequential Illustration, I was even more curious to see how I could get involved. Now finally, my questions are answered! Be sure to follow them on Instagram and fill out their interest form if you want to get involved, too.