Edited by Justin Melkmann
New Observations, Spring 2000
by ERIC REYNOLDS
This is apparently over a year old, but my otherwise pulsed-up fingertips just smeared some barbecue sauce over it for the first time, so maybe it will be new to you, too: The Spring 2000 issue of New Observations focuses on comic books and cartooning, and is a must-have.
The magazine (a non-profit contemporary arts journal "written, edited and published by the arts community," whoever they are -- sounds like one of those large eastern syndicates to me) features a rotating guest editor and topic every issue. Justin Melkmann, about whom I know very little but who seemingly knows his business, headed up this comics-themed issue, that features an eclectic batch of essays by cartoonists about their art and craft.
Among the contributors are Jim Woodring, Adrian Tomine, Phoebe Gloeckner, Penny Van Horn, Dame Darcy, Dave Cooper and Debbie Drechsler. The essays widely vary in quality, and there are a couple of puzzling inclusions among the excellent artists already mentioned, but never mind that. Most selections offer unique, if fleeting, perspectives that a lot of interviewers would likely never even think to try and mine. The must-reads are Woodring's "Cartooning," a written tribute to the form of comics (and Walt Kelly) that ironically shows Woodring to be every bit as good a writer as he is a cartoonist (and at that he's one of the greats) as well as Tomine's "On Meeting a Cartoonist for the First Time," which is a more modest but nonetheless heartwarming true story of a prominent underground cartoonist peddling marijuana to his adolescent protegé. If that doesn't intrigue you and this magazine does, we're doing something wrong.
