Good morning. Today we bring you Zachary Sachs's report from the recent Robert Weaver celebration at The New School in New York City, featuring Ben Katchor among others. Here's an excerpt:
In 1972 Weaver commissioned four artists associated with the Terry Ditenfass Gallery to make comics for an issue of Graphis magazine focusing on comics (he is nicely bracketed by contributions from Alain Resnais and Milton Glaser). In his accompanying essay, "Experiments in Time-Art", Weaver dilates on the power of the strip to transform visual art: "The artist working in the narrative strip medium can extend the single instant backward or forward in time. Not only can he move slowly or suddenly or not at all, change his mind, hold his audience in suspense, sustain a mood, surprise or destroy; he can virtually wire his pictures for sound."
We also have Sean T. Collins's review of Michael DeForge's online Ant Comic:
Ant Comic, Michael DeForge's magnum opus (so far; give him time), tackles the big issues—sex, war, parenthood, family, labor, love, the Other, death—with such brio and ease that it's more like a shopper methodically checking items off his grocery list in a supermarket he knows like the back of his hand than an artist grappling with the stickiest issues imaginable. That's because, in this story about a handful of insects living in a black ant colony that makes a disastrous decision to go to war with the red ants who live nearby, he's found the perfect vessel for all his preexisting preoccupations as a cartoonist.
Elsewhere:
—Department of Interviews: The Beat talks to Bob Fingerman, The AV Club talks to Douglas Rushkoff (who talks comics, among other things), Mono.Kultur talks to Chris Ware, and Gainesville Today talks to Tom Hart (about SAW).
—Department of Criticism: The Village Voice talks about Michael Kupperman and the new Al Capp bio, Illogical Volume of the Mindless Ones talks about Grant Morrison's Action Comics run, and John Adcock talks comics criticism in general (and recent events in particular). (I'm not touching that last one; there is plenty to correct or dispute, but personally, I'm done swimming in that particular tar pit.)
—Department of News Updates: The Jerry Siegel court case appears to be close to the end, and the Chicago Persepolis controversy lingers.
—Department of Random Items: The Doug Wright Awards blog has posted Seth's inaugural speech from 2005, Neil Cohn talks the science of reading comics, and Dash Shaw shares his e-mail inbox.
