Matthias Wivel is here with a review of the giant Drawn and Quarterly 25th anniversary anthology:
Today, when you're ingesting the latest whirl of supremely controlled, cold-as-ice pages from Michael DeForge, or finding yourself having lost forty-five minutes cracking up knowingly while scrolling down Kate Beaton's Tumblr, it may hit you how strangely natural this feels. You might also look in the mirror and catch a fleck of gray hair, and then perhaps experience a residual sense of alienation.
Because, yes, it has been about twenty-five years since those heady days of comics suddenly—again—appearing like they were all promise. Yes, there had always been great comics and much ground had been broken in previous decades, but there was a crackle in the air in the early nineties. A sense, when you opened a new comic, not so much of a blank slate, but rather that those clear lines, those scruffy hatch marks were composed fractally of unrealized potential. At that moment, everything seemed (theoretically) possible. Precariously, but exhilaratingly so.
And yes, Chris Oliveros' Drawn and Quarterly was there, somewhere near the center of this breaking kaleidoscope. A fledgling publisher in hip Montréal, sufficiently shrewd—and lucky—to launch out with a handful of the finest cartoonists of their generation: Julie Doucet, Chester Brown, Seth, and Joe Matt. It may be obvious today, but the gauntlet they threw in the face of comics was radical at the time: a look at real life.
It did garner the publisher a reputation among reactionaries for publishing exclusively navel-gazing autobiography, which it took more than a decade to shake, but that was less due to any real predictability in their publishing line than it was to the shock of the new. Autobiography and other reality-based approaches to comics became the natural locus of the quiet explosion of tradition that was happening in comics.
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
—News. Yesterday, Janelle Asselin published a report on harassment and assault allegations against Dark Horse editor Scott Allie. In particular, writer Joe Harris stepped forward to claim Allie both groped him inappropriately and bit him at a party during this year's San Diego Comic-Con. An unnamed witness backed up his account. Allie has since issued an apology for his behavior. Dark Horse CEO Mike Richardson has also issued a statement on the situation.
—Reviews & Commentary. Howard Chaykin, Gary Groth, Mike Catron, Larry Hama, and a bunch of other people discuss the work and legacy of Wally Wood.
Bart Croonenberghs writes about Philippe Druillet's 6 Voyages of Lone Sloane.
—Misc. The New York Times visits with Betty Tokar Jankovich, a onetime girlfriend of Bob Montana and apparent model for Betty from the Archie comics.
