Lucy Knisley is a talented cartoonist, and Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, her new book out from First Second shows off her skills as an artist, which are considerable. However, the book demonstrates her failure as a writer on multiple levels. Relish seeks to be a memoir that is also a meditation on food and food culture and cooking, but it reveals almost nothing about Knisley, and while it demonstrates that she loves food, there is little evidence that Knisley knows much about food or food culture. Every time Knisley tries to make a larger sociological point beyond her own experiences, it’s unclear whether she’s simplifying the issues so that they’re impossible to understand or whether she simply doesn’t understand the issues she’s raised.

And then Robert Kirby reviews Kolor Klimax, an anthology of Nordic comics:

Klimax works well as both a follow-up and an expansion of the In the Shadow of the Northern Lights anthologies (2008 & 2010, Top Shelf), which were limited to Swedish cartoonists, and From Wonderland with Love (2009, Fantagraphics), which was devoted to Danish artists. Klimax adds artists from Finland and Norway to the talent roster. In his introduction, editor Matthias Wivel helpfully distinguishes some of the aesthetic traditions of the various countries. The Finns, for example, with less of a comics tradition to fall back on, tend to favor experimentation and creative freedom. Artists from Norway are often the opposite; their comics scene has sprung from more traditional, commercially-based roots. Meanwhile, the Swedish artists tend to create more reality-based and autobio work, while the Danes, skewing southward, have traditionally been more influenced by Franco-Belgian album comics and American comic strips. Whatever the countries’ aesthetic differences, their work melds together successfully; the result is a wide-ranging, vibrant collection that should be enjoyed by fans of the burgeoning European alt-comics scene as well as anyone with an art comics bent.

Elsewhere:

—CNN profiles Ali Ferzat.

—Matt Fraction has trouble getting people to believe him about Bob Kane’s grave.

—Webcomics get the BuzzFeed treatment.

—Webcomics continue to get the Sean T. Collins treatment (every Wednesday).

—Alan Gardner notes that Lynn Johnson has posted a series of rejected For Better or Worse strips.

—The Glyph Comics Award winners have been announced.

—And I don’t often point out crowdfunding projects on here, but this one started by Jack Kirby’s grandson will surely be of interest to a lot of you, so there you go.

If anybody had told me back in the 1940s that there would be a museum dedicated to Norman Rockwell, I would have thought it was a joke. A museum for a Saturday Evening Post illustrator? Impossible. And me in that museum? Sheer fantasy.

In 1947 I was graduating high school. For the Senior play I was cast as somebody called Alfred. I had only one line in the play. When an actor very proudly showed me a painting he had just done, I said— and here comes my line: “Gosh, that’s almost as good as a Norman Rockwell.” That brought down the house. And no wonder. Norman Rockwell was not considered a serious painter. As The New York Times once asked—this in a headline– was he “a painter,” or “merely an illustrator”? That question answered itself.

Elsewhere:

—Interviews. Michael DeForge talks to Open Book Toronto. Peter Bagge talks to CBR. Mike Diana talks to the Miami New Times (via). And I’m pretty sure I posted this before, but I can’t find it now, and someone e-mailed it to me: Paul Pope in his studio:

—TCAF. Former Heroes Con coordinator Dustin Harbin weighs in on the debate surrounding TCAF programming. Fantagraphics has another huge photo recap. And Brad Mackay has the video footage of David Collier’s already legendary award acceptance speech.

—Misc. Dick Locher’s retiring. Comics Alliance is winking? Robert Crumb is rushing the stage. The first review of Ivan Brunetti’s Aesthetics I’ve seen in the wild.

Elsewhere:

Following (coincidentally) on Tom Spurgeon’s recent thoughts on comics fitness/lifestyles, here’s Brian Wood on CrossFit.

I’m sorry to hear that the illustration blog Drawn! is no more.

Dustin Harbin has some thoughts on TCAF programming and how we place value on such things in comics.

Dash Shaw (known primarily as a TCJ-contributor) has some animation art he did with Frank Santoro up on eBay. Check it out.

Finally: True enough.

Oddly enough perhaps, Little Orphan Annie reached the zenith of its popularity during the thirties. “Odd” because it was the decade of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the man who gave government a social conscience. FDR’s mission ran in directions diametrically opposed to Gray’s ideas of self-sufficiency. Under Roosevelt’s tutelage, the down-trodden and the poor, the halt and the lame were encouraged to look to government for help rather than exhorted to help themselves by toiling determinedly and exercising tenaciously the principles of free enterprise. Gray’s message was precisely the opposite—although it was as much an accident of his story as it was a matter of political conviction.

The best way for a little orphan girl to make her way in the world without being simply a weepy milksop is for her to be self-reliant. As a good story-teller, Gray knew that. Warbucks and the rest of Annie’s entourage were natural outgrowths of this central notion. As Gray’s exemplar, Warbucks could scarcely espouse self-reliance and free enterprise during the Roosevelt years without, at the same time, seeming to attack FDR’s policies. And so Little Orphan Annie became the first nationally syndicated comic strip to be unabashedly, unrelievedly, “political.”

Last Friday afternoon, as most of you probably are probably already aware, we posted a special report on the end of the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, checking in with the three founding partners, who told conflicting stories of the reasons for its ending.

Elsewhere:

—Lots of Interviews to Read and Watch. Art Spiegelman & Françoise Mouly talk to the National Post. Mouly also talks to Hazlitt. Rutu Modan talks to the Jewish Journal. William Stout talks to Comic Book Resources. Lisa Hanawalt also talks to Hazlitt. Garry Trudeau talks to CNN. Ryan Sands talks to the Chemical Box.

—An Interview-Related Anecodote. From Anne Ishii, translating for Gengorah Tagame, talking to Butt magazine.

—So Many TCAF Reports. The official report from Brad Mackay. A report with a thousand photos from Robin “Inkstuds” McConnell. A short one from Brigid Alverson. A collection of TCAF-related videos at Forbidden Planet. And finally, an almost-as-long-as-War & Peace report from Tom Spurgeon, most of which is very positive, but part of which delves into the controversy this year over reportedly messy programming. TCAF Director Christopher Butcher responds to that part of Tom’s report here.

—Awards. Steve Gerber and Don Rosa win the Bill Finger Award.

—Comics History. The Billy Ireland museum finds early Jack T. Chick work, a Flinstones-esque gag strip. Paul Gravett writes about Crime Does Not Pay, which he considers America’s greatest crime comic. Michael May at Robot 6 highlights a Mark Evanier blog post I meant (but forgot) to highlight myself, on Chaykin, Infantino, and the historical treatment of comic-book artists. Jerry Beck, Scott Shaw, & Chad Frye talk Carl Barks (via):

—And Finally, a Lot of Video. The Society of Illustrators has posted video from several of the panels held at this year’s MoCCA festival. Here’s the one with guest of honor Bill Griffith:

Elsewhere:

You may have heard that the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival is no more. Tim will have a story shortly.

Let’s see…

Looks like Oily Comics is going to publish a Josh Simmons book. That’s a coup. An interview with Cecil Castellucci and one-time TCJ Diarist Sara Varon. A Groo review.

And I thought the news from Scott Eder Gallery of “Will Eisner’s ‘A Contract with God’ and Other Images, an exhibition featuring original art, sketches and drawings from the title story” of the book was interesting. For one thing, I can’t think of another show devoted to just a single comic book story. And also, I’m curious to see the process work. That is one of Eisner’s better visual efforts.

Finally, enjoy your weekend with Stan and Jan Berenstain.

Elsewhere:

—Ng Suat Tong released his annual survey of the “Best Online Comics Criticism” of the past year, including several mentions of works printed on this site. This is the first time I can remember being previously familiar with everything chosen (besides the year I helped judge, naturally), and also the first year that I largely agree that most of the picks deserve recognition. I remember past years featuring more adventurous, and just plain more choices, but I also remember past years featuring more clunkers, so maybe the two go hand in hand. Matthias Wivel weighs in on the selection here.

—The Beat has gathered audio from a selection of panels held at last weekend’s TCAF Festival.

—The only reason I don’t link to Rob Clough’s blog more often is that he’s so prolific that doing so would quickly become a full-time job. But maybe today’s a good day to remind readers of his other gig. Recent entries include a review of Abel & Madden’s Mastering Comics and Robyn Chapman’s Drawing Comics, and a roundup of recent minicomics.

—Jonathan Winters was also a cartoonist?!

—And finally, Jon Longhi talks to Robert Crumb (via):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4oj6oD9_SkQ

Even better is “The Carnival,” a gorgeously colored 32-page story that unfolds with mesmeric dream logic. Like Madeline, the hero of the piece, Henry, is a salesperson (his line is cars). He plods through life listlessly until one night when he impulsively skips town for a few days. On a whim, he stops at a carnival and meets a nameless woman with a young boy in tow (who upon closer look resembles Henry). Though Carré leaves the woman’s role ambiguous—she may be aligned with some elemental or supernatural forces, especially considering the memorable manner in which she exits the story—it is clear that she sparks something in Henry: sexual desire, to be sure, but perhaps also the ability to dream of a life less prosaic – or even the ability to dream at all. Subtle and ambiguous but not opaque, Carré leaves the story particulars and ultimate meanings for the reader to suss out, inviting a re-read or two.

Elsewhere:

It’s a slow news day…. Tardi and Luc Besson fans will be happy to know that The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec is getting a proper DVD/Blu-Ray release. This is a good relic. And I sure like that Emil Gershwin (yes, the same Gershwin).

And here’s the Doug Wright Awards video:

It’s also the second day of the Cartoonist’s Diary of Faith Erin Hicks. Today, she’s on the way to Stumptown.

Elsewhere: Not so much.

—Devlin Thompson at Bizarro Wuxtry has some great photos of Peter Bagge and Daniel Clowes’s Hateball tour, which took place twenty years ago.

—Chris Mautner isn’t that big a fan of Bazooka Joe comics. Go figure.

—Graeme McMillan notes that despite Marvel’s recent claims, Avengers: Endless Wartime is hard to justify as “Marvel’s First Original Graphic Novel.” Does the phrase “graphic novel” really have such fetishistic power that it’s worth making bald-faced lies like that?

—And finally, Jeet Heer takes to the Globe & Mail to review Gilbert Hernandez’s latest two books.

Mullaney: Those rights are what we, as individuals, make them. The issue is totally separate from legal rights. From a publisher’s perspective, if I want to reprint Alex’s Zorro comics, I need to pay a licensing fee/royalty to John Gertz/Zorro Productions, who owns the trademark to the character and the copyrights to those stories. If, on the other hand, I want to reprint Alex’s comics for Standard or Lev Gleason, the work is apparently in the public domain, so no licensing fee or royalties are due. If the original publisher failled to register or renew the copyright or that publishing entity no longer exists, anyone is legally free to reprint the stories. In the course of my long career in comics, I have made the personal decision that — in the case of public domain comics in which there is no rights holder requiring a fee or royalties — I would pay the artist or the artist’s direct heirs. I still have letters of appreciation from Jerry Siegel, Jack Katz, Reed Crandall’s sister, Ellie Frazetta, and other creators whose work I reprinted in the 1980s and 1990s and for which I paid them.

These “moral” rights run parallel to a previously obscure part the 1976 Copyright Act, which allows artists, under specific circumstances, to reclaim the rights to their work after 35 years. The intent of the law is to allow creative people a second chance to own material they sold to a publisher earlier in their careers when they may not have had fair leverage. I think we can all agree that very few comics artists in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s understood what they were signing away – or even IF they signed anything away. It seems to me that if we are in favor of Siegel, Shuster, and Kirby trying to reclaim their rights, then we should similarly should pay them for reprinting that earlier work. In my book, it’s all the same thing.

Elsewhere:

I’ve been at TCAF all weekend selling books. So while two days in the midst of comic-dom would have you think I’d have plenty to say… it doesn’t. TCAF was an excellent show for me. The Hernandez Bros were a big focus, which was great. There’s a new edition of Chester Brown’s The Playboy, with additional notes, new lettering and a whole format reconfiguration. Brown’s reworking of his text is so rigorous that each edition is a new work, which is exciting. What else… here are your Doug Wright Award winners, from the PR:

Best Book: The Song of Roland, by Michel Rabagliati

The Spotlight Award (aka “The Nipper”): Nina Bunjevac for Heartless

Pigskin Peters Award: Hamilton Illustrated, by Michael Collier

Held as a feature event of the 2013 Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), the evening also saw Albert Chartier inducted into The Giants of the North, the Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame.

The winners were decided by a jury that included: Joe Ollmann, Pascal Girard, Jonathan Goldstein, Natalia Yanchak and Julie Delporte.

And Tom Spurgeon interviews Ryan Sands, who had two much talked about debuts at the show.

And today is the final day of Joe Ollmann’s week running A Cartoonist’s Diary. There was a whole complicated schedule around this last entry, based on what Joe promised was going to be an incredibly exciting trip to New York City. As you’ll see, things didn’t go that way exactly. Anyway, this has been a great week for the feature, so thanks, Joe!

Elsewhere:

—Interviews. James Romberger talks to Michael DeForge. Rugg, Lex, & Piskor talk to Jeff Smith. SCPR talks to Gilbert Hernandez, and so does KNPR. In advance of TCAF, Forbidden Planet talks to reps from three companies, SelfMadeHero, Fantagraphics, and Blank Slate.

—Criticism. Ng Suat Tong reviews Fraction & Aja’s Hawkeye. Charles-Adam Foster-Simard reviews the Art Spiegelman “Co-Mix” exhibition in Vancouver. Chris Randle reviews Gilbert Hernandez’s Marble Season.

—News. Sports Illustrated writes about the influence of the manga Slam Dunk on the popularity of basketball in Japan. P. Craig Russell remembers Dan Adkins. (via) Tom Tomorrow delivered his Herblock acceptance speech:

—Misc. Miriam Katin went to Canada and drew comics. I learned that ulta-hard-boiled crime novelist Peter Rabe also wrote and drew an illustrated humor book about motherhood! Apparently the Man of Steel soundtrack is a little downbeat and a writer at The Guardian is complaining about it. I continue to be amused at the way the complaints of comics nerddom from a decade or more ago become the complaints of everybody else as the entire world of popular culture slowly devolves. I also continue to be amused at pictures of old celebrities clearly not enjoying comic books.

The longtime cartoonist Dan Adkins has passed away. Adkins was known for his sleek drawing for comic books including T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Dr. Strange and genre mags like Argosy and Amazing Stories. He was also perhaps Wally Wood’s finest assistant, working for the older artist in the 1960s. We’ll have a full obituary soon.

Elsewhere:

I’m not sure what this is, but it’s delightful.

Inkstuds host Robin McConnell has a lengthy report on his visits to recent comic book conventions.

PW looks at our publisher Fantagraphics’ digital moves.

A Neal Adams oddity throughout the years.

The third part wasn’t completed until after his death. How did you manage it?

Romberger: When it came to the third part, I had a lot less to work with. David had given me the gist of what he wanted, which was “I want to show myself at the current time, mourning the deaths of my friends, but then in the end it’s a beautiful day and I’m happy to be alive.” But by the time I actually got to sit and draw this thing and edit it—after David’s death—there wasn’t anything like that in his texts. There was no beautiful day, so the book ends with him dying.

He had done this really magnificent bit of writing that was in part of the Artist’s Space book that had gotten him in so much trouble with the NEA, and he had told me, Draw me huge on Fifth Avenue. By that time, what I remembered being on Fifth Avenue was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and David had once gone with Act Up to protest the church’s stand against public health and homosexuality, while mass was going on, so it made it sense to make Fifth Avenue St. Patrick’s and to draw him smashing it. These were decisions I had to make, but they are true to what his intent would have been, as close as I could approximate.

Did he think there would really be a happy ending to the third part? Or that there would be something good to end it with?

Romberger: In a way it’s a vulnerability we all feel—no one really sees themselves dying and if David had been able to hold on another year or two, perhaps the combination therapy that was developed within a couple years after he died might have saved him. A lot of people were brought back from the brink of death, and it is incredibly tragic that due to actions of people like David and others in Act Up—actions that got the medical establishment to loosen up on the approval of drugs trials—a lot of the work on AIDS and cancer was accelerated. And yet so many people died because things were being held off.

Van Cook: People were starting to be diagnosed and become ill, but that was something David wrote to us about in a letter—I’m rejecting that particular view of life and I’m going on to this brighter path. He didn’t want to be celebrating death and darkness anymore, as an artistic trope. He didn’t want to go down that artistic road, he wanted to go somewhere else. So even when things happened to him later on, he had embraced that more hopeful aspect.

Joe Ollmann is still in the middle of his excellent Cartoonist’s Diary this week. In today’s entry, he talks about his father’s recent death.

Elsewhere:

—It’s not strictly speaking comics-related, but it would be strange not to take note of film and special-effects pioneer Ray Harryahausen’s passing. Journal columnist Charles Hatfield has posted a tribute.

—Chris Ware drew the Mother’s Day cover for The New Yorker, and wrote a mini-essay for the site about the holiday.

—The New Yorker’s site also has a short video interview with Dash Shaw.

—Sean Howe tags a Deadline story about the “absurdity” of some of the actors who appeared in The Avengers getting only $500,000 bonuses after the movie’s success. I wonder if there is anyone else being overlooked in these arrangements?

—Boing Boing has begun publishing stories from Dennis Eichhorn’s old Real Stuff comics, which is great news for me.

—The Dylan Williams Reporter site has reposted Williams’ 1995 interview with Seth. It’s a lot of fun to read the early interviews with major artists over there.

—The Beat talks to L Nichols.

—Finally, Curt Swan’s letter to a young Jim Shooter.

Elsewhere:

Here’s a lengthy exquisite corpse comic.

The comics symposium MIX is coming up, and there’s a call for papers.

Abhay Khosla writes the Iron Man 3 review for you.

A trip through Seymour Chwast’s rejection pile.

Writer about comics Gene Kannenberg, Jr on typography.

Here’s the beginning of multi-author a celebration of Matt Wagner’s 1980s alt-superhero, Grendel.

Matt Wagner: “The Hunter Rose version of Grendel was the first comic book character and narrative I ever developed. I wanted to feature the villain/anti-hero as my title character, a motif that just wasn’t done in the commercial comics of those days.

“After I moved my attentions to developing my first color series, Mage, I began to hear back from readers, asking me whatever happened to the story I’d abandoned in Grendel. So, I adapted that narrative to fit into 4-page segments as a backup feature in Mage.

“The result was that I had to really stretch my storytelling sensibilities and find a new and innovative way to tell that tale, little realizing that motif would become a hallmark of Grendel throughout its long history.”

And a bit of news on my end, the cartoonist Blutch has canceled his appearances in North America.

What hooked the manga scholar in me was Bharath’s “A form of writing: an essay on the comic,” a McCloudian intro to the medium and his own interests, published in Comix India no. 1. There’s a hefty segment on manga, and it wasn’t the usual. He had apparently been to Tokyo and met a few artists. I was curious. I arranged to meet him. He was giving a talk about manga in Delhi and asked me to piggyback with a lecture of my own. I interviewed him too, stupidly without a sound recorder. Now I am back in India, living in Mumbai – for “personal reasons” that do not include gurus or NGOs. I had to redo the interview.

Bharath presently lives in Pune, where he teaches at the venerable Film and Television Institute of India. On a recent weekend, I yanked myself away from writing and translation work, put myself on a train southbound, and holed up in Bharath’s pad until 2 AM with a litre of one of India’s finer scotches.

Oh, and I’m really excited about this week’s Cartoon Diarist, Joe Ollmann. Today he introduces himself and makes a few promises.

Elsewhere:

—The Harvey Award nominations are open.

—Criticism Department. Derik Badman comments on every comic he’s read in April, and includes information on what the mysterious Blaise Larmee has been up to for those who’ve been wondering. Domingos Isabelinho writes about Geneviève Castrée’s Pamplemoussi. Bill Morris writes about the new Herblock documentary. Glen Weldon writes about Superman’s dog Krypto.

—Interviews Department. Haaretz talks to Art Spiegelman. Tom Spurgeon talks to the writer and translator Anne Ishii. Forbidden Planet visits Karrie Fransman:

—Not Comics: A recent flap sparked by a Publishers Weekly interview with Claire Messud (see two perspectives here and here) has provoked a lot of discussion about the necessity (or not) of likeable characters in fiction. This can’t help but remind me of the critical response to Daniel Clowes’s Wilson a few years ago, and Clowes’s claim: “Likeable characters are for weak-minded narcissists.”

Elsewhere:

Tom Spurgeon carries on his convention travels at Stumptown.

Bill Kartalopolous on Eric Lambé’s Le Fils du Roi (Frémok, 2012),

Here’s an unusual recent Popeye story that never saw print.

Domingos Isabelinho on Pamplemoussi by Geneviève Castrée.

Finally, one of those lotsa covers, lotsa editions posts, this time for William S. Burroughs.

Elsewhere:

—Howard Chaykin wrote a candid remembrance of Carmine Infantino (“There was no greater animosity in that generation than the one that existed between Gil [Kane] and Carmine”) for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

—The Doug Wright Awards has started a series of posts introducing readers to their nine nominated artists. First up is Ethan Rilly.

—Brigid Alverson at Robot 6 talks to Darryl Cunningham.

—Paul Pope draws a short comic about his favorite books.

—Michel Fiffe picks out some of his favorite comic-book fight scenes.

—The satirical website and Twitter account That Comics Blogger has apparently decided to close up shop after the end of Comics Alliance, and offers up reasons why here.

—Andy Webster at the New York Times Book Review becomes the latest writer to review the new Al Capp biography.

—Michael Cavna at the Washington Post talks to Ruben Bolling about the multi-cartoonist political ad he put together last week.

—I’m pretty sure we haven’t yet linked to Frank Young and James Gill’s comic-book image site, Panels to Ponder. The Facebook incarnation of it is more active.

—A Moment of Cerebus digs up an old speech Dave Sim gave in 1995 to SCAD consisting of advice to young cartoonists. I think he’s wrong on the music thing.

—Not Comics: A 1938 rejection letter from Walt Disney to a young woman interested in becoming an animator. It’s easy to discount this as ancient history, but it is actually in living memory for some.

This morning, over breakfast, I read Gilbert Hernandez’s new book Julio’s Day, which I had just gotten the day before.

This evening, before dinner, I read Gilbert Hernandez’s new book Marble Season, which I had found waiting for me on the dining room table when I got home.

Crossing the synapse between these two lit my head up, like fireworks. In the stretch between the two of them, in the distance but also consistency between 2001 and 2013, is fresh proof of Beto Hernandez’s fidgety talent, his rare mix of raw provocation and affirming humanism, toughness and tenderness of heart. When it comes to Beto, the lightning keeps striking, and if it doesn’t strike exactly the same place twice, it does testify to the same divided genius. To read two new books by Hernandez in a day—and both of them self-contained and freestanding, unlinked to the elaborate continuities that shape his signature projects, Love and Rockets and the “Fritz B-Movie” series—this, to me, is a gift.

Elsewhere:

Michael Dooley on Stan Mack.

This is one beautiful Alex Raymond image.

Here’s a process piece on the recent Lovecraft graphic novel reviewed here.

Padraig O Mealoid continues on the Alan Moore trail, this time with the end of Eclipse Comics and what happened to Miracleman.

Tom Spurgeon makes a case for the new Matt Bors book.

And here’s a new Comics Books Are Burning in Hell from McCulloch, Mautner and (almost) Stone.

And Rob Clough is here with a review of Jon Lewis’s True Swamp: Choose Your Poison, a book that’s been quietly influential on any number of important artists you wouldn’t expect. Here’s an excerpt:

The obvious touchstone comparison for True Swamp is Walt Kelly’s Pogo, and Lewis clearly drew inspiration from Kelly in terms of setting up a particular kind of swamp patois and creating a huge, broad cast of colorful characters. Where Lewis sharply differs is in the way he depicts these characters. This is a raw, nasty world where death is always at hand, yet there are small joys to be experienced every day. Love, sex, friendship, jealousy, knowledge, and religion are all important concerns, but they are experienced in ways unique to each animal. The animals have animal needs—food, survival, and sex (just like humans)—and Lewis enjoys playing up the cruder aspects for humorous effect.

Elsewhere:

—A double shot of your daily Gilbert Hernandez interviews, one from Hero Complex and one from L.A. Weekly.

—Other interviews. Tom Spurgeon talks to retailer and TCAF honcho Christopher Butcher, and Alex Carr talks to noteworthy prose writer (and recent comics scripter) China Miéville.

—Michael Barrier reveals a story of Carl Barks in peril as a child that may have influenced some of his later work.

—Alan Gardner writes about a recent controversial Daryl Cagle cartoon (or pair of cartoons, rather), in which Cagle appeared to sell two versions of the same cartoon by changing the punchline to reflect both sides of a political debate. This sparked some consternation, including even the usually so-even-keeled Ted Rall. Gardner’s relatively forgiving, but as you can see from the comments to his post, opinions differ.

—Finally, Tom Spurgeon delivers the MoCCA/SPACE report to end all comics convention reports.

The temptation in looking back at this compelling exhibit, which the Urban Arts Space described as “the first in-depth retrospective” of Beyer’s work, is to search for a trajectory, a progression from one aesthetic or subject matter to another concurrent with the artist’s biography or history. Retrospectives encourage this, don’t they? Well, it was there if you wanted it. Following the exhibit’s route, you began in “With Text: 1975-2011,” starting with mainly black-and-white comics, including a wall of original Amy and Jordan comic strips, and proceeding to the commercial art of New Yorker covers and commissioned album art and posters, where words became images themselves, and his animated series The Adventures of Thomas and Nardo, where words were only spoken. You concluded in “Without Text: 1975-2012″ which was largely comprised of silkscreens and reverse paintings on plexiglas, absent of words or motion.

And yet, any argument the show might have made about the progression of Beyer’s work by dividing it into “With Text” and “Without Text” was leveraged by the fact that each section covered Beyer’s entire career. On the other hand, Beyer stopped publishing comics in the late 1990s and has returned to the form, so far as I know, only once.

Elsewhere:

David Brothers writes a nice appreciation of the excellent Johnny Wander. A new blog devoted to comic book mapping and explaining graphics.

Plus, new Ditko (60 years in) and old Kirby.

This is the first entry in TwoMorrows’s extremely ambitious attempt to provide a comprehensive history of the American comic book industry in America. Running from the 1940s to today, the series proposes to detail all the “pivotal moments” that occurred both behind the scenes and within the comics themselves, with different authors tackling different eras.

Just glancing at that timeline, though, gave me pause. Why start at the 1940s? Why not begin earlier? I understand that TwoMorrows wants to focus solely on comic books, but even so, to ignore the first forty years of the newspaper comic strip, which, to put it mildly, laid most of the groundwork and influenced many if not all of the cartoonists that worked in the first few decades of the industry (to say nothing of the high aesthetics of the work being done during that period) seems problematic at best. Turning the book over in my hands I wondered: Is this going to be a thoughtful, engaging look at how the industry has changed over time, or just a fannish reminiscence of bygone years?

Elsewhere:

—Talk talk. Tom Gauld talks to NHPR, Gilbert Hernandez talks to The Portland Mercury, Liza Donnelly talks to Cartoon Movement, Blutch talks to Craig Thompson.

—Award fever. Voting is now open for the Eisner Awards, with the ballot available here. Eisner judge Charles Hatfield addresses the recent controversy over Frank Santoro’s Before Watchmen comments. SAW has announced their latest round of micro-grant awardees. And the Doug Wright Awards has begun an auction of supervillain-related original art to help fund itself. Details are here, and the first item up for bid is the following piece from Seth.

—Critical commentary. J. Ryan Strandal reviews the new Ben Katchor book for LARB, and Kailyn Kent writes about cinema, music, and comics for HU.

—Miskellaneous. The terrible self-promoters over at Drawn & Quarterly get profiled by Huck magazine. A U.S. District judge has ruled that Superboy rights belong to DC. Ruben Bolling talks about organizing the following film, featuring an impressive group of cartoonists:

Elsewhere:

An interview with Gilbert Hernandez.

Alan Moore on writer Robert Morales.

Excellent Western comic drawn by Mort Meskin here.

Effective advertising?

Best thing I’ve seen in a little while. John Alcorn, what a great cartoonist and illustrator. Broad and ornate simultaneously.

Not comics but gag cartoon material.

A boy named Barnaby wishes for a fairy godmother. Instead, he gets a fairy godfather who uses a cigar for a magic wand. Bumbling but endearing, Mr. O’Malley rarely gets his magic to work — even when he consults his Fairy Godfather’s Handy Pocket Guide. The true magic of Barnaby resides in its canny mix of fantasy and satire, amplified by the understated elegance of Crockett Johnson’s clean, spare art. Using typeset dialogue (Barnaby was the first daily comic strip to do so regularly) allowed Johnson to include — by his estimation — some 60% more words, giving O’Malley more room to develop a rhetorical style that, as one critic put it, combines the “style of a medicine-show huckster with that of Dickens’s Mr. Micawber.” In its combination of Johnson’s sly wit and O’Malley’s amiable windbaggery, a child’s feeling of wonder and an adult’s wariness, highly literate jokes and a keen eye for the ridiculous, Barnaby expanded our sense of what comics can do.

Though one of the classic comic strips, Barnaby was never a popular hit — at its height, it was syndicated in only 52 papers. By contrast, Chic Young’s Blondie was appearing in as many as 850 papers at that time. As Coulton Waugh noted in his landmark The Comics (1947), Barnaby’s audience may not “compare, numerically, with that of the top, mass-appeal strips. But it is a very discriminating audience, which includes a number of strip artists themselves, and so this strip stands a good chance of remaining to influence the course of American humor for many years to come.” He was right.

Elsewhere:

—Egyptian cartoonist Magdi El Shafee has been arrested and imprisoned by security forces for dubious reasons. [Please see Ethan Heitner's comment below, and the World War 3 Illustrated Tumblr, for more information.]

—Since the last time I posted on this blog, the comics internet erupted with controversy over the Eisner Awards judging, especially in regards to past comments by Frank Santoro (who, as all readers surely know, is a Journal columnist and my friend), only to die down almost as quickly once the facts came to light. At this point, I don’t know how much there is to add to what’s already been said, but I think that Tom Spurgeon and Heidi MacDonald are both well worth reading. (My take in a nutshell: You want judges who have strong tastes and opinions, and Frank is one of the most knowledgeable people about comics I have ever met in my life.)

There are plenty of non-Santoro-related Eisner Awards links to share, too, including judge Michael Cavna’s memories of the nomination process, and quick takes on the event from all of the judges on the Eisner website.

—In other awards news, the Stumptown awards nominations have been announced, and are now open for voting, and Natalia Yanchak, one of the Doug Wright Awards judges, writes about those awards for the Huffington Post.

—And in still other awards news, Sammy Harkham’s Everything Together has just won the L.A. Times Book Prize.

—Double shot of Miriam Katin now: with a studio visit at the Paris Review website, and an interview at Inkstuds.

—Librarian Carol Tilley writes about the recent Persepolis debate for the CBLDF.

—Small publisher news: Sparkplug Books has announced that Virginia Paine will be taking over ownership of the company, and Domino Books owner Austin English announces an imminent move that will affect several small publishers and cartoonists, including Domino, Rebus, Revival House, etc., and says this would be a particularly good time to buy some Domino books if you’re so inclined. (I’d guess the same is true for Rebus and Revival House.)

—The Beat has been on a roll lately, with another very solid post on Gilbert Hernandez and children’s comics.

—And finally, Ed Piskor, Jasen Lex, and Jim Rugg visit the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library:

Castrée chronologically documents every hurt, every slight, every refusal of affection, and every thoughtless maternal dismissal. A child tends to crave routine, affection, agency, and a certain solidity from her parents. From her single mother, Castrée apparently received a life of constantly shifting emotional quicksand.

Elsewhere:

Ivan Brunetti is auctioning off an original comic strip page to help fund his student’s anthology, Linework #4. The page, originally published in The New Yorker, is beautiful and I’ve seen the earlier issues, which are accomplished and beautifully put together.

Here’s a good piece about the Eisner hullabaloo, and a view from the judging room.

Writer Robert Morales has passed away.

This Bulletproof Coffin project made me smile. Via. So did this.

The great Jim Hanley’s Universe is moving south and getting a new spin on the name.

TCAF has announced its slate of events.

And let me send you into the weekend with this bit of non-comics I’ve been enjoying: The Organist episode 3. It’s a podcast from The Believer and KCRW that covers a bunch of topics. Good stuff.

Joey had a plan for making money. By 2001 he’d begun talking to cartoonists, sometimes over email, sometimes in person. He’d made contact with an eclectic group of webcartoonists in Chicago and was wooing small-press creators in the Bay Area, taking them out to dinner and talking Internet. His plan: a subscription-based webcomics site. Maybe 30 artists, ongoing serials, a monthly or annual fee to read the archives, with the profits split between the artists based on number of hits. In the spirit of old pulp magazines like Amazing Stories and Weird Tales, it would be called Modern Tales.

Meanwhile, Joey was educating himself about webcomics. He set up a podcast, Digital Comics Talk, and a comics review site, Talk About Comics (which continued for many years in various forms, eventually morphed into Graphic Novel Review, and finally passed away peacefully in its sleep). He hung out on message boards. In a corner of the online world that was, back then, small enough that you could be Known pretty easily, he was starting to be Known.

I don’t know how Joey found my comic Narbonic, probably through the Bay Area indie crowd, but at some point it made it to the bottom of his list and he emailed me. He recruited me all sneaky-like. I know, because I kept the email.

Also, we have Dominic Umile’s review of Ian Culbard’s adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s Case of Charles Dexter Ward:

Action-packed comics don’t often owe to depictions of characters sifting through moldy correspondence, deciphering archaic language, and unlocking mantras typically reserved for cellars or graveyards. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is largely driven by words, but Ian Culbard — evidently also prone to unearthing dusty texts — has adapted several novels for the comics medium and nabbed the British Fantasy Award for Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (2010), so he knows well how to move the author to a stylish visual format. There’s lots of talk here, yellowed newspaper cut-ins, and letter reading, each set on black pages. Culbard’s slope-chinned cast wears angular-cornered overcoats and facial expressions styled with minimal line work. They’re dead ringers for the affluent, early 20th century Brit zombies he drew for The New Deadwardians (2012), perpetually serious figures who mull documents and converse in the tall, plush chairs preferred by the era’s upper class. But within these dialogues and rigorous literary exploration lie an urgency and a textured work of horror.

Elsewhere:

—Eisner Awards judge Charles Hatfield reflects on the nominating process, which sounds like it was a very positive experience.

—Michael Cavna (also an Eisner judge this year) interviews Ben Katchor.

—Buried at the bottom of this promotional blog post is the news that Chester Brown has apparently rewritten all of the text and dialogue in The Playboy for a new paperback edition. He’s sort of becoming the Henry James of sex comics.

—Alan Moore talks at length about Nemo: Heart of Ice and his upcoming Lovecraft series Providence with his favorite interlocutor, the man whose name must be copied and pasted to be spelled correctly, Padraig O Mealoid. Also, video has emerged of an old Moore performance of his hard-to-find CIA conspiracy book Brought to Light.

—Image publisher Eric Stephenson talks the Saga/Apple/comiXology controversy, and the line’s upcoming schedule, with CBR.

—Journal columnist Craig Fischer talks about the overlap between comics and rock poster art.

—Not Comics: An interview with J. David Spurlock, the co-author of a new collection of Margaret Brundage art. Brundage may not have been a cartoonist herself, but her pulp magazine covers were a huge influence on early comic-book imagery.

—Apparently, there’s a long Les Coleman essay on Mark Beyer in the most recent issue of Raw Vision.

Yeah, a lot of your earlier work was more metaphorical and fantastical, less realistic.

I feel that I’m done doing more fantastical things. Who knows, maybe in ten years I’ll be singing a different tune. But it’s weird, because as I was making this book based on reality, I’ve encountered people who’ve said, oh, I wish there was more fantastical elements in this. And I personally feel there’s enough fantasy out there, there are enough beautiful landscapes. In the past, I think there were two factors in making those kinds of fantastical comics. The first factor was mainly that I was terrified, because I felt I still was under this impression that whatever happened at my house when I was a kid was nobody’s business but my own. And the second factor was that I was lazy [Laughs.] My default mechanism was to draw landscapes that were more from my imagination, and that’s kind of easy to draw, because you can make your pencil go and not have to look at anything. And for this book, because I wanted it to be as close to reality as possible, I had to find images, and I had to think of what kind of tree there would be in this or that geographical place, and in some cases look at photographs too, and I personally feel a lot more complete now that I’ve done that, as an artist I feel that I can do this! I can pull it off! And I just feel like a grownup about it. Also I care way more than I used to about facts, I think that all stories deserve to be from… even if I’m making stories that are not autobiographical, that are totally coming from my head, I like the idea that there would be these facts that could anchor it to a specific place in the world.

It’s a slow news day. Here are a few morsels:

The 2013 Eisner Awards have been announced. We’re pleased to be nominated for Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism.

Here’s Neil Gaiman on digital publishing.

It’s always a good day when a new Stanley Stories post appears. This one on stories published in 1946.

And the under-new-ownership Alternative Comics announced a whole slew of releases centered mostly around the publisher’s core cartoonists, a lot of whom really have been missing from the last handful of years of the publishing boom. More news, the best of the day, really: It’s Reggie-12.

Elsewhere:

—Department of Politics. Over at Hazlitt, TCJ columnist Jeet Heer reviews Victor Navasky’s new book on political cartoons, The Art of Controversy, by way of Hitler’s cartoon problem. Paul Gravett examines Margaret Thatcher’s influence on British comics. And Françoise Mouly and Toon Books have started an “Agitprop” section on the Toon Books Tumblr. (Here’s Sue Coe on animal farming.)

—Department of Interviews. Gil Roth, who I had the pleasure of meeting at MoCCA, just posted the first “live” episode of his Virtual Memories podcast, with special guest Ben Katchor. Alex Dueben at Suicide Girls talks to Ann Nocenti, who has had an interesting career. Michael Cavna talks to internet celebrity and Simon’s Cat creator Simon Tofield.

—Mark Waid remembers Carmine Infantino for the L.A. Times.

—Ars Technica reports on the final outcome of that strange, lengthy The Oatmeal/FunnyJunk legal battle from last summer. Apparently, Charles Carreon is out $46,000.

—D.B. Dowd talks about what he calls the cinematic narrative problem.

—Bryan Munn reviews Julie Delporte’s Journal.

—Steven Heller has a gallery of Mexican caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias.

Elaine – This book will have 80 new pages of very detailed sequential art that will need to be drawn, inked and lettered. Our basic goal is $44,000. That would allow Michael to finish the black and white artwork, me to finish the script and layout, pay for the lettering and print signed and numbered, hardback books and mail them. Plus, other incentives.

If we can get $69,000, the whole 140 pages will get new, fully painted, digital color. If we make what we need for the color, the painting can start right away on some of the many finished pages, while Michael is drawing new ones.

We’re hoping to finish the work by end of December of this year. Then we’re allowing a couple of months to get the books printed.

I used to love going to the previous iteration of this comic-con.

Here are five things being thought about by comics people that Tom Spurgeon knows (guest appearance by yours truly).

Joanna Draper Carlson on the ComiXology/Saga controversy.

And these are particularly fine looking comics by Sam Alden (via Jordan Crane).

I wouldn’t say I look forward to these shows, because I keep bringing things to read, assuming this is the week I’ll fight the temptation to stare, but it didn’t take very many trips before I started to respect these shows, a whole lot more than I would have expected to. They’re well-made entertainments, built around very base, very broad concerns: sex, money, violence, family. The people in the fictional stories are trying to get ahead, with some relying on hard work, and others relying on trickery. Love seems important, although loyalty is what they talk about most. The game and talk show hybrid relies more heavily on schtick, with the humor usually coming via very feminine fat men; the women give it to you straight, while dressed just on the classy side of risque. I don’t respect these shows as art, but they don’t want me to. They just want me to pay attention, and while my own ignorance keeps me a bit removed, they’re incredibly successful at doing that.

And elsewhere on the internet, I’m not having much luck. Sometimes, there’s a lot of news, sometimes there’s a little.

—Chris Ware’s Building Stories won the 2013 Lynd Ward Prize, with Lili Carré’s Heads or Tails and Theo ELlsworth’s Understanding Monster also picking up honors.

—Elaine Lee talks to The Beat about her Kickstarter-supported Starstruck project.

—The Secret Acres team honors tradition by delivering another of their lengthy annual must-read MoCCA Fest reports. This year, they were on the steering committee, so it’s particularly interesting.

—And Frank Thorne is still out there, making magic.

“Operation Vaporizer” is a short sharp shock of a war/sci-fi/horror comic, narrated by a veteran reminiscing about his time with a top-secret unit that tested an experimental telepathic weapon in the jungles of Vietnam. The Full Metal Jacket-style slang (“I was in The Shit”) and the dingy green and red-orange palette root the thing to the period, providing a solid platform for diving out into the Weird.

Elsewhere:

Peggy Burns brings attention to a worthy Kickstarter campaign: Portland’s Reading Frenzy, which is an excellent store and all around resource for small press publishing.

I’m still waiting for the hobo revival. So’s Sam Henderson. I always have time for T.S. Sullivant. And some fine Moebius here.

More MoCCA coverage with a report from the “Art as Profession” panel. Everyone knows it’s no kinda profession, but read on.

TCJ-contributor Michel Fiffe’s three issue compendium of his series, Copra, reviewed.

And finally, Cerebus, widescreen.

The second day I slit the cellophane wrapper.

Elsewhere:

—The longtime New Yorker cartoonist Ed Fisher has died at the age of 86. That magazine’s cartoon editor Bob Mankoff announced the news on his blog. The New York Times has an obituary here. Mike Lynch and Michael Maslin offer their own thoughts on the artist.

—Apple has reportedly decided not to offer Saga #12 to iPhone and iPad users due to two pages in the issue featuring somewhat distorted images of gay sex. Series writer Brian K. Vaughn responded by declining to change the images in question, and directing readers to other outlets (and the CBLDF). You can see one of the images in question below.

[UPDATE: ComiXology has issued a new statement today, contradicting earlier reports. I find this all somewhat confusing, and don't understand how to reconcile comiXology implicitly confirming the original story with this new information, but there it is. You can read the statement here.]

—The Doug Wright Awards have announced the members of the 2013 jury, including Julie Delporte, Pascal Girard, Jonathan Goldstein, Joe Ollmann, and Natalia Yanchak.

—Paul Gravett profiles Belgian cartoonist/architect François Schuiten.

—And then there are lots of reviews. Richard Samuel West reviews the recent Thomas Nast biography, Craig Fischer reviews Jim Rugg’s Supermag, Tom Spurgeon reviews the new Tom Gauld collection, Christopher Stigliano reviews Sidney Smith’s The Gumps: The Saga of Mary Gold, and Chris Mautner reviews a whole bunch of stuff.

The Seattle home office uncovered some bits left out of the published Groth/Infantino interview. Of particular note is Infantino’s take on C.C. Beck, as well as his departure from DC Comics. Also from 1996, a TCJ article on a Kirby/Infantino controversy.

And Joe McCulloch rounds it out with his week in comics.

Elsewhere:

MoCCA Fest returned this year. It was vastly smoother, well organized, and altogether pleasant. Here is one roundup and another.

And here’s a manga business overview. Oh, here’s some wondering after Vertigo.

Finally, a recommendation: The Harvey Kurtzman exhibition at the Society of Illustrators in NYC is excellent. I’ve seen Kurtzman originals before, but to see so many covers, and, best of all, a full set of rough breakdowns for an EC war story, was an unusual treat. Kurtzman’s pencils have all the gestural verve I always felt in his brushwork, but it’s that much more immediate here. The Bill Griffith exhibition upstairs is smaller but full of excellent work, both single drawings and complete strips, from throughout Griffith’s career. Like Kurtzman, Griffith is both a master satirist and a highly skilled artist devoted to his craft. It shows in the work.

In 1956, [Julius] Schwartz chose Infantino to pencil a tryout issue of a new version of the Flash. Working from a script by Robert Kanigher, Infantino’s pencils on “Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt!” in Showcase #4 (September-October 1956) achieved a new kind of superhero action, emphasizing design and movement, with a kinetic quality that was exhilarating. Infantino’s design for the retooled Flash — an all-red costume except for bits of yellow — was like a sleek, modern sports car. His visual conception, along with uncommonly mature stories by Robert Kanigher and John Broome, sold the reinvented character to the burgeoning number of baby boomers who were looking for something new and exciting. The success of the Flash led to the reinvention of Green Lantern and other Golden Age heroes at National/DC, which in turn inspired Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to create the Fantastic Four in 1961. Later comics historians would identify Showcase #4 as the kick-off for what came to be called the Silver Age of comics.

Infantino was also memorialized in The New York Times. Mark Evanier and former assistant Nelson deCastro have also posted their thoughts.

Elsewhere on the internet, as we wait for the deluge of MoCCA fest reports. (I went Saturday. It seemed much improved in terms of organization, I met up with various people I like to see, & I got some interesting-looking comics I haven’t read yet. Otherwise, I didn’t get a strong sense of how the people at tables felt about the show.)

—Peter Bagge was interviewed by Reason:

Which alerted me to the fact that somehow I missed that Bagge had reviewed the new Al Capp biography.

—Tom Spurgeon, who was in fine form at MoCCA, has interviewed one of the other big ’90s humor cartoonists, Bob Fingerman.

—The CBLDF has named the new members of their advisory board.

—Steven Heller reviews The Best of Punk Magazine, and interviews Nora Krug.

—Lilli Carré has a new Tumblr I don’t understand, but in a different way than the other people’s Tumblrs I don’t understand.

—And people are still writing long stories about Bill Watterson keeping to himself.

Like several others in his generation, Infantino began his career by doing a number of different jobs — writing, pencils, inks, even some support work — for a variety of publishers and titles. His strongest work during this period was for Shelly Mayer at National, where Infantino worked on popular second-tier superhero titles like Flash and Green Lantern.

Infantino produced his most fondly remembered and important comics art for DC in the “Silver Age” of the 1950s and 1960s. He was the artist on the title which marked the beginning of this period, the revamped Flash, from its launching in 1956 into the mid-’60s. His art on Adam Strange, with its elaborate cityscapes and elegant line-work, remains for many the quintessential American science-fiction comic. In 1964, his work on what was called the “new look” Batman saved that title from cancellation and pointed the way to several refashionings of the character of the next 25 years.

A popular artist and extremely effective cover designer, Infantino scaled back his artistic output at the height of his powers to become DC’s artistic director. He eventually became publisher in 1971 and then president of DC. In all of these positions, Infantino presided over a number of experimental titles and laudatory publishing efforts: comic-book version of pulp characters like The Shadow and Tarzan, the fan favorite Green Lantern-Green Arrow series, the Fourth World saga of Jack Kirby, and the revival of C.C. Beck’s Captain Marvel among the high-profile efforts; the luscious Sergio Aragones/Nick Cardy Bat Lash and the active recruitment of Filipino artists among his most important, lesser-known efforts.

We’ll have further coverage next week.

Infantino was not the industry’s only death this week. New Yorker cartoonist Ed Fisher passed away, and longtime Archie writer George Gladir also died.

On the site today:

Tucker Stone and co. with the wrap-up. And Lucy Knisley finishes out her week-long residence on the site.

Elsewhere:

Interview with Gilbert Hernandez are always a treat. Here’s one.

Bil Keane will have a statue built in his honor.

I never ran across this group of images by Spain on his Facebook page.

Finally, here’s something on self-publishing with a you-guess-it comics connection.

The entire book is drawn in colored pencil. This adds a vibrancy and immediacy to the comic that makes it look like it was ripped right out of Katin’s sketchbook. It also allows her to shift from naturalism to a cartoonier style with little effort. Katin’s own self-caricature is one of the best I’ve ever seen from an autobiographical cartoonist. The scribbly lines of her hair, the slightly pointy nose, the tiny but wriggly eyebrows that express so much emotion and the way her posture alternates between slumped shoulders and excitedly active tell the story of a woman who is so often bursting with energy. In real life, Katin is poised, stylish, and charismatic, so it is funny to see her depict herself as slightly disheveled and neurotic in the pages of her book.

And Lucy Knisley is on day four of her Cartoonist’s Diary.

Elsewhere:

—Speaking of Katin, she drew a fun short comic about the NYC launch of her new book tour.

—Another sad comics death this week, with the passing of European cartoonist Fred.

—In a smart get, Tom Spurgeon interviews the Society of Illustrators’ Anelle Miller about this year’s MoCCA festival. It will be interesting to see how things go there this weekend. People seem enthusiastic about the show in a way I haven’t noticed in years.

—The CBLDF has posted a story and short documentary about Ryan Matheson, the young man arrested while crossing the border into Canada a few years ago, because of various manga images customs found on his laptop:

—The Toronto Globe and Mail profiles Shary Boyle in advance of the Venice Biennale, Paul Di Filippo reviews Ben Katchor’s Hand-Drying in America, Discaholic Corner interviews R. Crumb about his record collection, and Paul Gravett turns in a late Angoulême report.

—It’s been too long since we had a good debate about how much work Stan Lee did versus how much Jack Kirby and the other Marvel artists did, so I’m sad Stephen Bissette posted this old “Bullpen Bulletin” that I’m sure will put the matter to rest forever…

—Serge Gainsbourg loved to laugh.

—Sean Kleefeld finds the missing link in the Prince Valiant/Jack Kirby Demon story… And an unexplained something that had been nagging at my subconscious for years is suddenly free and clear.

—Abhay Khosla unearths a 1997-era art tutorial from Mike Mignola, and Spitzenprodukte does the same for a 1980s UK feminist propaganda comic featuring Tintin.

—Fiona Deans Halloran, author of the new Thomas Nast biography, appeared on C-SPAN2′s Book TV.

Few books are as communal, as catch-all: every page a new hero, a new tale, a new voice. Or, rather, the same voice, a collective voice: Katchor yanks at his sentences with his characteristic taffy-pull between narration and dialogue, so that each merges into and props up the other, so that each person talks like the rest, and everyone contributes to the same conversation. A strip that begins with a narrator pondering the “velvet rope and stanchion” as “that most pernicious symbol of corporate greed,” accompanied by a management figure extolling the system’s virtues, soon opens its ranks to welcome in people off the street—“middle-aged men with hernias, unwed teenage mothers and tattooed first offenders”—who stage small, symbolic acts of rebellion, ducking under the ropes, violating the inflexible rules of the queue. “The physical expression of our free will,” they say, as Katchor draws them teetering, acrobatically off-kilter but assured in their acts of defiance. The effect is bathetic, of course—a bold “act of transgression” turned quixotic, the body awkwardly contorted to ridiculous effect and little gain—and yet Katchor, and the people who populate his America, will find their triumphs where they can.

And Lucy Knisley continues her week here with day three.

Elsewhere…. it’s kind of a slow new day, aside from various PR blasts. So, really you oughta just read Sean’s piece, above, but if you must leave this site, well here you go: The Decadence crew from the UK is discussed in this podcast. Hey, it’s Billy Possum! This is a classic “Oooooh Comics” story. And the great Dylan Horrocks is having an art sale with amazingly affordable prices.

And it’s also day two of Lucy Knisley’s week as our cartoon diarist.

Elsewhere:

—Bob Clarke, RIP. Tom Richmond and Mark Evanier have reminiscences. I’m sure more are to come. Clarke was one of the great finds of the Feldstein era of MAD, with a gift for pastiche that helped him create many memorable covers and parody ads into the ’90s.

Here’s a Peanuts parody by Clarke from around 1961 (found here):

—Another sad death: Paul Williams. He has no direct connection to comics that I am aware of, but as the founder of Crawdaddy (the first serious magazine of rock criticism) and as a promoter of (and later literary executor for) Philip K. Dick’s writing, his cultural impact looms large. (Here’s his 1975 Rolling Stone article on Dick that really got the ball rolling.)

—Stefan Kanfer writes about George Herriman and Krazy Kat for City Journal, and Robert Boyd reviews six semi-recent comics on his art blog.

—Sean Kleefeld posts an old Life magazine story explaining why Al Capp finally decided to let Lil’ Abner get married.

—If you frequent more superhero-centric parts of the comics internet, you may have heard that Valiant is planning to relaunch the old Quantum & Woody series, without the original creators’ involvement. Prompted by this, V.R. Gallagher reposted some old thoughts of Q&W writer Christopher Priest, and offered some of her own on working in superhero comics as a minority.

—Chip Kidd has created some images to use as memes in support of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis in the ongoing Chicago schools case.

I committed myself to several positions that I realized were ill-advised, but rather than pulling back on them I doubled down. On top of that I was in a savage mood generally, for reasons that had nothing to do with Harvey Pekar or his ideas. It had to do with a premature return to the world of dreary but remunerative work after a couple of years of working at a fun job with Fantagraphics, due to some very poor decisions I had made. In retrospect my performance in this conflict reminds me of nothing so much as that fight where Mike Tyson got frustrated and bit a piece of his opponent’s ear off.

And cartoonist Lucy Knisley, author of Relish, begins her week-long Cartoonist’s Diary.

And elsewhere around the web:

Let’s pop around and look at some comic book conventions. Here’s a super-depressing panel at WonderCon: The Creator’s Role in the Future of Comic Publishing. More and more comics is just a buncha different worlds, with no shared knowledge and zero historical awareness. Its like the ’80s never happened.

If there was historical awareness you might find the idea that Ben Jones was on a WonderCon panel about Axe Cop pretty funny. There’s a victory there of some kind. Times sure have changed. I wish there some more Bobby London in this Quick Draw post, but I’ll take what I can get. And Ann Nocenti was in the spotlight at the big Con. She remains a nostalgic favorite for Daredevil. On the other coast, Gil Roth goes to the Asbury Park Comic Con.

There’s something about The Phantom. Just like Tarzan, but that purple and weird colonialism. I always want to read it but am mostly content remembering it projecting onto it.

Oh, and here’s a two-part video interview with Alan Moore.

And finally, it was just that kinda night (nsfw)

Elsewhere, the news is a little light this morning:

—Hogan’s Alley interviews Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen about their new Al Capp biography, and CBR interviews Jim Rugg.

—Jason Lutes and several CCS students have an interesting looking Kickstarter project.

—Stephen Bissette has started a series of posts chronicling the history of the 1980s activist “prozine” WaP!

—The Beat as a group is spotlighting various artists for 24 Hours of Women Cartoonists.

The extravagance of his graphic inventions inspired similar excess among those who attempted to describe what they saw going on in front of them. In Newsweek: “The line drawings of Partch’s angular and rectangular characters have something in common with the tragic figures of Picasso’s Spanish War ‘Guernica’ … But Partch’s men, with their bushy or bald heads, pop eyes, bird-beak noses and cavernous mouths have their own particular brand of frenzied insanity, which makes them funny in almost any situation.”

Partch’s cartoons, said Goldstein, “made a style of drawing and thinking, with roots in cubism, surrealism and dada, part of America’s daily life.”

And Collier’s movie scribe Kyle Crichton thought Partch’s work “revealed plain signs of a pathological condition.”

The anonymous author of the Partch entry in Current Biography (1946) noted that “a Vip character sometimes wears an expression of dazed or wondering imbecility, but more often is glaring at some person or thing with fanatic intensity. … One Partch admirer has said, ‘the cartoons are funny if you enjoy remembering your nightmares.’” But it is not recommended, according to another critic, that Partch’s cartoons “be probed and examined for deep hidden meanings.”

And around the web:

Joanna Draper Carlson writes about her approach to crowd-funding comics.

Over at the CBLDF site: A capsule history of obscenity rulings.

The mighty SPX is expanding due to exhibitor demand.

Apropos of nothing, Jay Babcock’s uncut first five years of the band Black Flag.

And this is a fine looking poster.

Reverie is critical to Muse — originally titled Songes, or “Dreams” — a new collection of bandes dessinées drawn by Terry Dodson, a prolific 20-year veteran of the American superhero scene. It is fruitless to summarize such a long career in just a few sentences, but I think it’s fair to suppose that an artist who’s titled his homepage “The Bombshellter” is best known for his drawings of women, specifically the kind of top-heavy heroines who all but erupt, at times, from their tight ensembles, bounding into action with a twinkle and grin. But unlike the similarly-interested examples of Guillem March (who faced a terrific blowback over a Catwoman cover last year) or Adam Hughes (widely admired yet also prominently criticized), Dodson has evaded any wide denunciation for sins of depiction. He is one of “the good ones” – the girlie artists whose commitment to high-quality drawing supersedes more fundamental qualms over their aesthetics.

And then newcomer to TCJ.com Daniel Kalder on District 14:

Picking up District 14, I was mildly concerned. The first couple of pages show an elephant disembarking at Ellis Island, taking a shower, and then getting ripped off by corrupt officials who want to seize his mysterious seeds. The elephant makes a break for it, fleeing directly into a crime scene where a stag-headed mobster is delivering a suitcase with a severed chicken’s head in it to a man in a black suit. Shots are fired; the elephant meets a plucky news photographer with a beaver’s head; hi-jinks ensue.

Shite, I thought. Is this going to be completely trite Euronoir like Blacksad, a pile of clichés enlivened only by the gimmick of giving stock characters animal heads?

Elsewhere:

—LitReactor has a brand-new interview with Phoebe Gloeckner; Chris Mautner has an interview with a top recent contender for the title of most likeable person in comics, Rina Ayuyang; Mark Kardwell at Robot 6 talks to 2000 AD “reprographics droid” Kathryn Symes; and Nick Gazin drops in super-short interviews with Ben Jones and my colleague Dan Nadel in the middle of his latest Vice column.

—If you prefer your interviews multimedia, then Inkstuds talks to the cult-artist Sadler brothers here, and Jared Gardner talks to Ed Piskor there:

—The Reuben Awards announced the rest of this year’s nominees.

—Ben Katchor’s latest is reviewed in the L.A. Times.

—Jeet Heer drew my attention to the following George Herriman panels from the March 25, 1931 Krazy Kat daily strip, which seem relevant to the case currently being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jeet came across the image at Michael Tisserand’s Facebook page, who suggested their relevance. Jeet wrote about another possible connection between Krazy Kat and gay culture in a blog post about a DC-area Krazy Kat nightclub.

Elsewhere:

It’s an interview with Katie Skelly over at Tell Me Something I Don’t Know.

An interview with the organizer of the Asbury Park Comicon.

Christoph Niemann made an app and then made a great visual narrative about making the app.

These Ron Rege Jr. illustrations are pretty divine.

This is an aptly named article about DC Entertainment. I’m interested in how far a major publishing company can take its “we’re a buncha dicks” image. Pretty wild.

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.

The grand tradition of the flame war as a snapshot of the pressing issues of the day and as a catalyst for criticism that has its own literary worth is not new. (For the 1730s version, check out Jonathan Swift’s “The Lady’s Dressing Room” and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s “The Reasons that Induced Dr S to write a Poem call’d the Lady’s Dressing room.”) At its best, before the Internet was widespread, The Comics Journal letter pages, dubbed “Blood and Thunder,” served essentially as a message board for the comics community. It was a forum where cartoonists, fans, critics and professionals debated and dissected every development — aesthetic and commercial — in the medium at the time, whether it was the formation of the Direct Market, Creators’ Rights, “writing for the trade,” or “craft is the enemy of art” (or simply trolled each other: The insults in the great R. Fiore/Kenneth Smith showdown got positively Shakespearean).

Elsewhere:

I have a softspot for 1987′s Return of  the Skyman, drawn by Steve Ditko. This issue contains Ron Frantz’s account of searching for Skyman-creator Ogden Whitney. Most of what Ron found remains all we know of Whitney. Ogden Whitney and Steve Ditko: The only cartoonists I’d like to have met.  Anyhow, Bob Heer kinda likes it, too.

It’s cartoonist and TCJ-contributor Eddie Campbell talking over at The Beat.

And to send you merry into the weekend, “The Perils of Pauline,” Renata Adler’s 1980 take-down of Pauline Kael. I’m not sure if this piece has just been posted online to coincide with the reissue of her novels, or if it’s been up awhile. Whatever. She has so much to say about critical writing, all of it worth considering.

As befits a comic that mostly takes place in a rowboat going nowhere in the middle of the ocean, Black Is the Color frequently collapses time and space into one another. Often its two-panel rows, or indeed entire pages, will depict a contiguous space split between the panels, the passage of time conveyed by the movement of your eye from one panel to the next within that space. Clouds drift and morph; a lonely cabin looks out over the sea; a storm descends over multiple pages, dwarfing a lone doomed ship; merfolk make idle chatter while watching men burn and drown; a mermaid descends through fronds of seaweed after leaving her dying lover to the daylight.

Elsewhere:

—The same Sean, inspired by the recent Diary of a Teenage Girl film teaser, resurrects his 2003 interview with Phoebe Gloeckner. Among her other accomplishments, you can definitely list memorable conversationalist.

—Grant Morrison always gives good interviews, too, though I have to say that the example he uses here to argue for how comics alone can accomplish things impossible in other media (having Superman break the fourth wall to talk to the reader about the devil) is rather depressingly unambitious — not to mention not hard at all to imagine being done in other media.

—Chris Randle’s interview with Geneviève Castrée at Hazlitt about her debut graphic novel ends our comics discussion trio nicely.

—Paul Gravett writes a long essay on Roy Lichtenstein, his recent show at the Tate, and his legacy as it relates to comics. (Dave Gibbons makes a guest appearance.)

—Michael DeForge’s Lose #4 is reviewed by Ale Hern at The New Statesman.

—I don’t know Dorothy’s last name, but I really enjoy her series of super-short Nancy appreciations at Comics Workbook, and am glad she put up a new one this week.

—Via reader e-mail comes this article I missed on Josefina Larragoiti’s Editorial Resistencia, a publisher trying to establish a market for serious comics in Mexico.

—Has any other publication boasted a dream team of cartoonists to beat the old Chicago Tribune? Not many… (via)

Byrne’s succinct description of The Magician (published in an edition of 20 by Marquand Books) is: It’s set in a public bathroom. The Magician is this character that goes through and reconciles opposites. Every misunderstanding I have about the universe is documented in these objects. And creation myths, too. But it’s all tongue-in-cheek.” The Magician takes different forms. He is a sleeping figure. He is a hand. He is sperm. He is a cape.

Elsewhere:

Truman Capote and New Yorker cartoons.

Al Jaffee, Arnold Roth and Drew Friedman discuss Harvey Kurtzman on the Leonard Lopate Show.

This article on the publishing biz and technology was zooming around the web yesterday.

From R. Fiore comes Petra Haden singing the Superman theme.

And here’s one I knew nothing about: A teaser for a film version of Phoebe Gloeckner’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl.

Elsewhere:

—As you no doubt have heard, last week a dispute erupted over whether or not the Chicago public school system would be pulling Persepolis out of 7th grade classrooms. Here is an article at the Chicago Tribune, and here is a recent roundup of reaction at Robot 6. Search around if you want more — there’s plenty of commentary out there, though it’s pretty repetitive. Usually in these cases I can sort of understand the rationale for censorship, even while almost always disagreeing with it, but this time around, I’m at a total loss.

—In the department of reaction to The Comics Journal: Glen Weldon raves at The New Republic over issue 302′s Maurice Sendak interview, and a reviewer at the A.V. Club uses the occasion of a Fantagraphics-published book on popular music to flail at a tiny straw statue of Gary Groth he’d apparently built for himself in the early ’90s.

—Stephen Bissette and Richard Gagnon are trying to use media coverage of the next Spider-Man movie to draw attention to Marvel’s treatment of co-creator Steve Ditko.

—Lisa Hanawalt racks up an unusual accomplishment for a cartoonist: being nominated for a James Beard Award.

—Gil Roth interviews Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist Matt Wuerker.

—Chuck Austen tells his fellow Tokyopop creators to “move on.”

—Finally, via the entire internet, a short PBS video on webcomics:

Elsewhere:

Here’s a beautiful Connor Willumsen comic originally worked on for our own Frank Santoro’s correspondence course.

A Xerox bought on eBay from TCJ-contributor Ron Goulart leads to some thoughts from Paul Tumey on Cole’s early technique.

David Lasky interviewed.

Tom Spurgeon picks up and comments on the recent internet meme going around: working for free.

More online comics: Thomas Herpich at VICE.

Finally, I know I’m showing my age here, but when I was an 11 year-old comic book fanatic, this comic somehow seemed old, hard to find, and mind-blowing. All those heroes in one place? Unthinkable.

Hypothesis: it was designed for sale to Japanese male businessmen and sex tourists, who were sometimes one and the same. This makes sense not only time-wise, but also content-wise.

Tourism exploded amongst the Japanese in the 1970s. Thanks to increasing affluence and a strong yen, more Japanese had the ability to travel both domestically and overseas. In Japanese studies, one often reads about the “Discover Japan” campaigns initiated in 1970, targeted primarily at young women, urging them to find themselves through trips to exotic corners of their country. This is also the period that young artists and middle-class Japanese began flying to the centers of European civilization, or hopping across America from San Francisco to the Grand Canyon and over to the Big Apple. In the pages of Tezuka Osamu’s COM circa 1970, there are a couple of articles about its artists visiting the States, Nagashima Shinji in New York, Fujiko Fujio meeting Roy Thomas. Meanwhile in Garo, Tsuge Yoshiharu was becoming famous with literary versions of his solitary sojourns to fishing holes and hot springs in the Japanese countryside – not organized tourism, obviously, but a sign that the romance of travel was beginning to grow in various corners of Japanese culture.

Elsewhere:

—The digital manga service JManga announced that it is shutting down at the end of May. Johanna Draper Carlson has commentary.

—The Harvey Awards are now accepting nominations.

—Dylan Horrocks draws Jack Kirby, and explains the provenance of that famous “Comics will break your heart” quote.

—Interviews. Jaime Hernandez talks to Hazlitt, James Vance talks to CBR, and Julia Grörer talks to Inkstuds.

—Lea Hernandez remembers Toren Smith.

—Drawn & Quarterly has announced their fall list.

—Kickstarter kontroversy kontinues.

—The Robot 6 team talks about reading digital Marvel comics on the new app.

—Grady Hendrix at Film Comment writes a short history of Mad magazine’s movie parodies.

The chief occurrences of Capp’s life are treated in great detail: the loss of his left leg at the age of nine and the probable psychological consequences; his education at a succession of art schools he was too poor to pay tuition to; his apprenticeship to Ham Fisher and the dispute about who created the hillbilly Big Leviticus in Joe Palooka; the resulting feud, its nastiness, and Fisher’s attempt to smear Capp’s reputation; Capp’s emergence as a pop culture celebrity; his shrill attacks on the New Student Left on college campuses; his notorious visit to John Lennon and Yoko Ono; the subliminal eroticism in Li’l Abner; Capp’s extracurricular sex life, preying upon show girls and college co-eds, and his fall from grace as a result. In every instance, the book offers insights into these events that are new to me (and I’ve researched Capp’s life for my book, at least as much as publicly available documents permit).

Elsewhere:

TCJ-contributor Sean T. Collins writes about the web comic Haunter.

Cartoonists on rabbits.

Publishers Weekly reports on SXSW and SelfMadeHero.

Richard Brody on Pixar’s storytelling.

A Kirby “rant” from Rob Steibel centered around the Captain America #200 letters column.