Today on the site, Annie Mok interviews Eleanor Davis.
One of the most desperate feelings that I contend with, and that I feel like a lot of folks contend with, is—like, you mentioned earlier, like a desperate sense of isolation. Not being understood, being cut off from the people around you. In that way, wanting to have an effect on the reader isn’t manipulative. The purpose of it is to try to have a connection in some way. Like, if I have this strong feeling, I’ll make this other person who’s so disconnected from me, who’s so far away from me, make them mirror that feeling. Then that will help me feel a little less alone. Will help me feel a little less scared of the feeling. I don’t know.
One of the things that feels odd to me about people’s response to Happy is that—I tend to think of those stories as sad and a little bit cynical, but people respond to it in a positive way, and say that it feels uplifting to them. What they mean is that it’s a relief to read something that they see themselves in, or they feel a connection with me as the author of the story. It’s really complicated, and maybe a little bit of a burden in some ways. Before I put the book out, I was far less aware of the audience. These stories were made seeking an audience, seeking people to relate to, people to connect with. When I found them—it kinda freaked me out.
And last Friday, we published my interview with Richard Sala, about his latest book, Violenzia, politics, serialization, horror, and once making a child cry.
I actually once made a little kid cry by telling him a spooky story. He was the nephew of one of my exes and we were watching after him and telling him stories and he listened to my scary story about a monster who lived in a cave, then suddenly burst out crying. It was awful. I've never stopped feeling horrible about that. I also remember being extremely upset myself by an EC comic, reprinted in one of those Ballantine paperbacks and which I was probably too young to read. It didn't scare me, it just depressed and disturbed me on a level I had never felt before. It was so bleak and cruel. I couldn't sleep and went down to the kitchen in the middle of the night where my mom was also still awake and sitting at the table smoking a cigarette. That human connection and small talk was enough to reassure me and I went back to bed. And despite what Dr. Wertham might want you to believe, that story didn't make me run out and kill people, it made me want to be kinder to people because life is so horrible. Take that, Wertham!
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
—News. The longtime New Yorker cartoonist William Hamilton has died at the age of 76, after a car accident in Kentucky.
Robert Mankoff has gathered a selection of Hamilton's cartoons.
Carol Tyler and Boulet have won this year's Slate Cartoonist Studio Prize.
A new $30,000 Creators for Creators grant for cartoonists has been announced.
—Interviews & Profiles. Slate interviews Chester Brown about his new collection of Biblical adaptations, Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus.
Your central contention is that Mary was a prostitute. Why was this an important assertion for you?
It’s important because I’m someone who’s involved in the sex worker rights movement—at least to some degree, at least an ally in the movement. It seems to me that Christianity is the force behind the opposition to prostitution, starting with St. Paul. The condemnation of sex work and prostitution all comes from there. If I want to attack that sort of thinking, why not attack it at the root? Christianity.
A Moment of Cerebus has published the first part of Dave Sim's enormous 2003 interview with Chester Brown. This is a true meeting of comics eccentrics.
How did I know you were going to see it as a gender thing? Having met rational women and overly-emotional men, I fail to find convincing your contention that women are emotion-based and men are reason-based. You're right that there isn't a universally agreed on perception of what reality is and that there's a clash of views-of-reality going on, but I don't see that clash divided between emotion-based beings and reason-based beings. I think the division is between everyone. I think that, if we were able to somehow create a society that was completely made up of Sim-approved reason-based humans, there would still be people in that society who would seem crazy to the majority.
Alex Dueben talks to Brian Chippendale about Puke Force.
Maybe I'm spoiled because I play drums in a pretty wild band and those shows are definitely cathartic, so I'm not sure if releasing books can compare. The release of "Puke Force" feels OK because it is political. Certain aspects of politics do change quickly, so you want your satire to come out when it's still relevant. But luckily, or unluckily, divisiveness and paranoia has only been increasing since I started "Puke Force," so I'm still pretty on target.
I think we all do live with all these concerns and obsessions, and as an artist, I take time to dig them out and work with them, make connections. Excavating internal garbage, that's the job.
—Misc. Dangerous Minds has excavated the Feds 'n' Heads board game invented by Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers creator Gilbert Shelton.
