Today: Frank Santoro on Julie Delorte's new book.
I’ve been following Julie Delporte’s comics work for a few years now. I enjoyed Journal, her first book. I like seeing fragments of her work floating around online. Her handmade graphic approach is very refreshing to me and I think her work often looks particularly striking online. Journal was good, but it became slightly repetitive as a comic book. Each entry had its own strengths and sometimes the pieces seemed to not hang together all that well to make a cohesive narrative. (I get that it wasn’t a narrative and that it is a diary–I’m just saying the book’s strength was not in its structure.)
So I was slightly hesitant to check out Delporte’s new book, Everywhere Antennas, only because I figured it would be another diary. Even when I was flipping through it at first it looks like a diary that is going to stick to a certain layout and a certain way of delivering information: one or two drawings floating amongst some text. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the “information delivery” varied from section to section. For the most part it is a diary; however, there is a part in the middle which utilizes more of a traditional comics approach. I like the tension between this section (that is rendered in gray) and the rest of the book (that is in color).
And some links:
Great cartoonist (Quadratino!) and design and illustrator Antonio Rubino spotlighted at 50 Watts.
TCJ-contributor Nicole Rudick on Karen Green's poetry/art -blend book Bough Down.
This link made me think of Dash Shaw, though he's not to blame for that.
Apparently a comic-con in Toronto was not very good.
A lengthy examination of the Howard the Duck/Steve Gerber/Marvel legal fracas of decades ago.
