Welcome to the end of the week. We are veritable volcano of content today, all crammed in on this mid-May day for a variety of time-based reasons.
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And now, on the site today we have Tom De Haven's commencement address for the Center for Cartoon Studies. Thanks to James Sturm and Michelle Ollie for this. Tom discusses his own comics education, as well as that of others, and drops this fine story:
The lessons of the Famous Cartoonists School were written by (or ostensibly written by) such luminaries as Al Capp, Milt Caniff, Rube Goldberg, Willard Mullins, Whitney Darrow Jr., Gurney Williams and Virgil Partch. Of course, I sent away for the informational material, but the cost was prohibitive. My mother worked in a bank and brought home less than $45 a week. It was crushing blow, although (and this such was a wonderful thing, for which I’m still grateful) my mother looked around on her own and found a far less expensive illustration and cartooning home-study course, the Washington School of Art, out of Port Washington, New York. And she signed me up for it. Twelve booklets and an impressive, to me, box of supplies consisting of two pencils, one brush, one pen staff with three different nib points, a fabulous soft blue eraser, a few charcoal sticks, a Conte crayon, a bottle of ink, and a T-square. I took that course, imperfect as it was, and I wish I still had all my returned artwork with their taped-on see-through overlays with corrections made in red pencil. Unfortunately, for me, only two of the lessons pertained specifically to making comics, but even so, it was realinstruction–and there were real teachers telling me what I’d done right, and what I’d done wrong and how to correct it.
In less happy news, Steve Ringgenberg contributes an obituary of Tony DeZuniga. Additionally, we have Brad Mackay on The Art of Daniel Clowes and, as ever, and thank heavens, Tucker Stone on the global comic book trend.
I suppose it's possible you will want to go elsewhere for yet more comics content, in which case you might be overdoing it. Still, I feel compelled to guide you:
Is there anything more awesome than a Gilbert Hernandez comic book called Fatima: The Blood Spinners? Of course not. Read what the man himself has to say about it.
Thank you, Warren Ellis. Keeping it real.
I also love Frank Robbins. In fact, I love the whole dang Caniff-school of comic drawing. Lee Elias, William Overgard, et al. So good. But Frank Robbins in the '70s was hallucinatory and great. Milo George has a great appreciation here.
Oh, and I can't believe I'm missing this. Luckily we have embedded a TCJ correspondent on the ground to bring back all the dirt.
