Matthew Thurber grew up on an island, was a teen when grunge broke in the Pacific Northwest and eventually made the trek across the country to attend art school at Cooper Union in New York. He never left the area, and now resides in Brooklyn with his girlfriend, the artist Rebecca Bird. Thurber is known as a multimedia artist. In addition to the recent publication of his collected masterpiece 1-800-MICE (published by PictureBox), Thurber has also just released a new album, under the name of his one-man musical project, Ambergris. Thurber is a veteran of the indie music scene after his stint in Soiled Mattress and the Springs.

As a cartoonist, Thurber’s work reveals a tension between complex but traditional narrative structures, boldly avant-garde visual storytelling, and the overall sensibilities of a gag cartoonist. 1-800-MICE is the culmination of many years of exploration in comics and is hilarious, absurd, thought-provoking, compelling, and pointedly satirical all at once. It’s a sprawling epic that leaps between the narratives of a number of different characters before drawing them together in unusual ways, depicting life in a vibrant, tense Volcano City set in a fantasy world where trees are sentient, banjo-playing gangsters hire sushi-chef assassins, and both consciousness and identity are highly fluid concepts. In this interview, we discussed Thurber’s development as an artist in a number of different fields, his diverse range of interests, and the wide variety of themes that emerge in 1-800-MICE. He was an engaged (and engaging) interview subject willing to explore any idea I introduced in great depth, and did so with a warm and open sense of humor.

On the Island

TCJ: You’re from Lummi Island, Washington. What was growing up there like? What was the size of the community?

Matthew Thurber: Lummi Island was beautiful and small. The phone book was one page long, double-sided. No police, so famous as a place to party. Also lots of mushrooms and newts. Fishing shacks moldering in the woods. A commercial fishing industry kind of limping along/dying. Indian reservation on the other side of the water. A safe, dreamy atmosphere and somewhat claustrophobic at a certain point.

TCJ: So just a few hundred people live there?

MT: There’s probably like 500 people year round and then it goes up to like a couple hundred more in the summer-time.

TCJ: How did your parents come to live there, and where were you born?

MT: I was born in Mt. Vernon, Washington, and then I grew up in Bellingham, which is a college town. It’s close to Canada, it’s up in the very northwestern corner of the state. and then my uncle had lived on the island, and we eventually moved out there when I was six. I think partially so me and my sister could go to the grade school there, which was a good little one-room school house. It was actually a two-room school house. They had one room for the young and first- through third-graders and one room for the fourth- through sixth-graders.  It was a pretty unique place to grow up, for sure. I don’t know what I can say about it.

TCJ: You said that at a certain point it got claustrophobic. How old were you when that started to happen?

MT: When I was in high school, I was spending a lot of time off the island and becoming enticed by what was available in Bellingham and the college town, and also trying to go down to Seattle. I mean, I love all the people on the island, you know, but it’s just like there was the promise of so much more, and that promise was shown to me by my parents and by my teachers. I did some summer-school classes farther away, and met kids there. These were kind of these optional nerdy summer-school classes. It wasn’t that I necessarily … well, maybe I was dying to escape, I don’t know. I love it there, but at the time when I was 18, I wanted to see what else was [out there].

A page from 1-800-MICE

TCJ: Are your parents still there?

MT: Yep, my mom works at the school, and my dad works on the ferryboat. It’s a really lovable place, it’s a pretty special community, but you know it’s the kind of place where you know everybody, for better or for worse. Some of my pals are still there, so it’s really nice to go back and visit.

TCJ: What do your parents think of your career now?

MT: Oh, they’re really proud of me and really, really supportive. They’re wonderful people, I really love them. They’re really happy the book came out and have been really supportive the whole time.

TCJ: Do they read all your stuff?

MT: They don’t read all of it, but I try to send them stuff, and they’re on Facebook so they see announcements.

TCJ: What did they think of 1-800-MICE? There’s some pretty wacky stuff in there.

MT: I don’t know, [but] my dad’s favorite movie is A Boy And His Dog.

TCJ: (laughs) Okay! Never mind!

MT: They’re not going to be that appalled. I was always worried at first that I thought it was going to be a big deal, but it was only a big deal in my mind, drawing sexual stuff. I think when I was 13 and drawing lots of grinning, malevolent looking guys holding butcher knives. They were a little worried then, but then they got over it.

TCJ: So they’ve always been supportive of your career as an artist? They haven’t tried to compel you to have a back-up thing?

MT: This was always the only thing that I was going to have. There wasn’t going to be any Plan B. They told me they’d be happy with whatever I did, even if it was driving a truck.

Growing Up With Comics

TCJ: Were comics a part of your life growing up? What comics did you read?

MT: Yes, they were available at the local store, The Islander, and within budget so I bought some there. I and my friends were pretty worked up about Bloom County and used to imitate Bill the Cat saying “Ack” jumping into the air. Later, I entered a dark phase of Elfquest and then Sandman/Batman romanticism. I was really into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when I was 12 or 13. I was just being blown away by what you could do, coming from Todd MacFarlane’s Spider-Man or Wolverine and then seeing Frank Miller’s Dark Knight and the more avant-garde Batman works being created, [like] The Killing Joke, etc. It just seems like expansion all the time: “This is cool, this is cool.” Finding out about underground stuff. When I got into high school, I became more of an arty snob. Superheroes wouldn’t have done it for me at that point. I wanted to see Blue Velvet and Gus Van Sant movies and Rocky Horror, but then I found RAW at that point. I was a total aesthetic asshole [Clough laughs]. I remember making fun of comics by the time I was in high school. I guess that was my period when I was like … I didn’t reject it, I just got interested in other stuff. I still liked the other stuff.

TCJ: Did you read any Fantagraphics stuff at that time? Did you read Hate when it came out?

MT: No, I didn’t read Hate. I didn’t pick up on that stuff until I was 17, 18. I got really into zines and art.

TCJ: What kind of zines?

MT: Murder Can Be Fun, Answer Me by Jim Goad, various kind of zines coming out of Olympia, Cometbus. There were a few good zinesters in Bellingham.

TCJ: Did your parents encourage reading comics? Did they give them to you?

MT: Yes, definitely. My mom was always taking us to the bookstore and enabling and nurturing a sweet tooth, or a book worm tooth, a sweet book worm tooth. Mom xeroxed my first comic book for me. They let me be a nerd because I convinced them I could be a writer someday and they could give me stuff and it would be all channeled into my becoming the next Stephen King…the joke was on them!

TCJ: Did you have friends or family who read comics?

MT: Not really family, though my adult cousin in Vegas once revealed a stash of D&D paraphernalia which blew my mind that adults could still be into that stuff. My sisters were not nerds, they liked Archie. My friends on Lummi Island were into various interesting things: making comedy videos, World War II, D&D and figurines, Warhammer, Monty Python, etc., etc. A lot of lore was passed down from Noel Dickinson, who was kind of like a mysterious New Wave dark knight, in high school while I was in sixth grade or so. I found him intimidatingly cool: he dyed his hair and wore a trench coat. And the Satanists were rumored to be out to get him, to beat him up. The lore of interesting culture, Depeche Mode and whatnot, descended from Noel to the Phillips brothers and then to me.

TCJ: How old were you when you started drawing? Did you have friends or siblings who drew with you, or was it strictly a solitary activity? Were you encouraged in this pursuit by your parents?

MT: I drew with pals in school. I drew and wrote all the time, it was encouraged. I am the product of a nurturing mushroom environment.

TCJ: As a multimedia artist, have you always had that desire to dabble in a number of different arts? Were you always doing music and making movies/animations?

MT: Yes, probably because there were other people to make stuff with. The Phillips brothers and I used to make videos, which we called “skits.” My nickname was “Bob” in grade school and we made some parodies of the “Man From Del Monte” commercials called “The Bob from Del Monte” in which I would be inspecting some tomatoes and then someone would whip out a pistol and the rest was a chase scene. Later, with my friend Raven and others, there was a good cartooning/creative writing/music posse in high school. Tom was doing a public access show a bit later. We did lots of recording on four-track. Rap songs, parodies … Tom and I had a band called “Durchschnit Atomkraft” that played only once, at a basement show.  We used to do jam comics in Sherrie’s, a 24-hour restaurant. I got into more “experimental” or pretentious drawing-writing-cartooning-collage stuff in early high school. Making zines, etc. What I made with my friends was more like comedy and entertainment and for fun.

TCJ: Given your current wide range of interests, what sort of cultural influences have had the biggest impact on you, both as a consumer and performer?

MT: Well, my dad is a musician, so seeing him play fiddle all the time when I was a kid and hanging out with jam sessions in our living room [was an influence]. I think maybe reading about Dadaism in the library … reading about, then hearing and then seeing Sun City Girls and Boredoms in high school … being kind of isolated and listening to a lot of radio throughout growing up, and reading about stuff in newspapers and zines but not really experiencing it … living near Bellingham, which had some amazing bands in the ’90s like Noggin and The Reeks and The Wrecks … reading about films like Eraserhead and then finally seeing them … seeing the Crumb movie with my uncle when it came out.

Schooling

TCJ: A very basic question: what year were you born?

MT: I was born in 77, I’m 33.

TCJ: That’s very interesting, that would put you at about 13-14 years old when grunge really hit the Pacific Northwest. And you were in high school, basically, or junior high school—was that something you became immediately aware of?

MT: Oh yeah, totally. Just prior to that, I mean, there was kind of a festering trash rock scene that came out of punk and stuff, and I was becoming aware of that, and had gone to a few shows in people’s garages or basements. Then in high school, the first day of high school, you know, I remember sitting on this blanket outside of school or sitting on the grass, and people were smoking and also blowing bubbles from one of those little bubble wands. Just like a little congregation of geeky hippy or punk kids and somebody was like, “Hey dude, you should listen to Nirvana!” and threw a cassette tape of Nirvana down on the blanket, and that was the first day of school.  It was like a silly, cliched event or something.

TCJ: Wow, that’s kind of insane.

MT: I know, yeah, and I never got to see Nirvana, but I saw a ton of other bands at that time, Bellingham was a good stop of the circuit, you know, it was a college town [Western Washington University] and it had a great music and arts space called the Show-Off Gallery, that was basically like a loft space, you know? Some people lived there and they threw amazing shows all the time, and there were good bands at the college, too.

TCJ: That’s interesting, you’ve lived these weird narratives, almost the narrative of the boy growing up on the island, and then coming into this story of [the] punk-scene, and seeing the exploding thing happening there. When you were going through these experiences, did you process everything as normal, or did you process everything as “This is really interesting, and maybe not everyone else lives like this?”

MT: I think everybody was pretty cynically aware of what was happening in the music scene, and aware of that sort of narrative of Seattle blowing up, which all seemed sort of comical to a lot of us who had a wider range of interests. My own narrative, yeah, sometimes seems a little funny, but I mean a lot of people have a story of coming from a small community, and escaping that, and going to a big city and finding themselves or reinventing themselves or discovering anonymity. Some people’s narratives are that they stay in their communities and contribute to them and become a lifer, or an important part of the arts there. I don’t know why New York. I was excited to go to New York, specifically just because of the kind of art and literature and stuff that I was reading about. When I was wanting to jump in a car and run away in high school I wanted to go to New York.

TCJ: Given where you were raised, what was it like to move to New York City?

MT: It was pretty crazy. I didn’t go to Brooklyn my first year. I was terrified the first time I went to Williamsburg! It had a bad reputation still! At least among wussy college students. I’ve been here for a long time now, since 1996. I used to get really unhappy about it, but I actually think that I would be unhappier in any other smaller town. I used to get jealous of Providence, Baltimore, etc., but then I realized New York is still the best, the most intense, most amazing! I love it. I always need more information. I’m so happy that there’s always more to learn here. I’m getting obsessed with reggae and calypso music right now and there are like five stores that sell that kind of stuff that I can go explore! And every day brings a strange new episode, or twenty of them. Today I got my thumb snarled in somebody’s iPod cord getting off the train .. .it’s actually gotten better and more enjoyable to live here the longer I’ve stuck it out.

TCJ: What was your experience like as an art student at Cooper Union? Were you still making comics at the time you enrolled? Did they encourage comics there?

MT: I guess they didn’t discourage them. I didn’t need to do them while I was there. I was reading comics among lots of other things, and doing narrative scroll projects and drawings with words and pictures. Unlike everyone else who is still bitter at their painting teacher, I was able to bypass that over-familiar confrontation and work on videos and animation and drawing and stuff. Now there are cartoon schools where you can just burrow into one medium and never learn to do anything else! It seems a little tunnel-visioned to me. Anyway, I loved school and was extremely glad to get the chance to go.

TCJ: What was the Cooper Union neighborhood like at that time?

MT: Well, it’s right smack dab in the middle of the East Village right next to St. Mark’s Place, so there was a real youth culture, or kind of [a] silly punk culture. There were still a lot of very lively music venues in the East Village. I don’t feel that there are as many anymore. It was kind of like the last couple years of that area as a bohemian center, before it all migrated to Williamsburg, and maybe just because I was young when I moved there, I didn’t go to Brooklyn or Williamsburg for the first whole year that I lived there.

TCJ: You were terrified of the idea of Brooklyn.

MT: I was too caught up in trying to process there being art galleries and the NYU library where I would go and watch movies and just an infinity of cultural opportunities and crazy book stores like the Strand. I mean, I lived upstairs from St. Mark’s Bookshop. The Cooper dorm was upstairs from there, and the anthology film archive was several blocks away.

A page from <i>What Kind of Magic Spell to Use?</i>

TCJ: Yeah, it’s crazy that you lived upstairs from St. Mark’s Bookshop, which is one of the greatest bookshops I’ve ever been in, and it’s actually in danger of being forced out right now.

MT: Yeah, by my school! (Laughs) Because it’s a free school, which is wonderful, but then the way they make their money is by becoming landlords in that area. The rent has been $20,000 a month, they’re petitioning to have it reduced to 15,000, but that’s a crazy situation. Maybe Cooper Union should move to Staten Island or something (laughing). That was exciting and crazy for me, and it still hasn’t felt like it entirely has sunk in, but I’m glad I got to live in Manhattan, at a time when there were more subcultural or weirdo, cheap, poetic elements to the place. It’s not cheap, and if you look at movies, like that Downtown 81 movie, and you see how crazy and vacant it all was, or if you imagine people having loft spaces in SoHo that were actually affordable, that’s the reason that it became like something interesting bubbled up from there. That’s the same reason now there’s more going on in more remote parts of New York, [where] there’s still tons and tons going on, it’s just those loft spaces and spaces where you can have events and printing presses and gallery shows are now far flung and people have to travel pretty far to get to them as opposed to like in the ’50s where all the artists lived within twenty blocks of each other.

TCJ: Did you read Kim Deitch’s autobiographical stuff he wrote on the Comics Journal website?

MT: Yeah, I read them all, they’re amazing.

TCJ: They really are, and it was interesting to hear Kim talking about how the Filmore East was here, I lived right next door to it, and the East Village Other was two blocks away from that, etc. Even up through the ’80s that was still pretty true, where that the Lower East Side and the East Village were still kind of scuzzy, and there were tons of musicians and artists.

MT: It’s hard to imagine people moving around at that time, because I feel like you’re always having to whiz around like on a subway or bike to get to one thing or another, but at that time did people just move very slowly or did they walk down the street very slowly? [Clough laughs] Were they more sedentary in the ’60s in a way?

TCJ: Everything was so localized. I guess everybody walked everywhere, is the first thing I gathered, because you never heard one Kim Deitch subway story.

MT: Yeah, that’s true.

TCJ: [They] just tried to get by as absolutely cheaply as possible, and it sounds like some of those building were just fleabags that very poor people could rent who didn’t mind living in just a shithole as a place to sleep. Kim constantly talked about them being high and drinking, which doesn’t lend itself to moving very quickly (laughs).

MT: (laughs) I guess it was more like people were reclined on their opium dens.

TCJ: Either that or everyone was drawing.

MT: Yeah, and once in a while rousing themselves to go out to the Exploding Plastic Inevitable or something. What’s cool is that if you talk to people, what is left in Manhattan are all these great stories that people have who do still live there, and sometimes you ferret out people who’ve been there for like thirty years with rent control and they do have amazing stories.

TCJ: I’m pretty sure Art Speigelman still lives in the SoHo area.

MT: Yeah, he still lives there, Kim Deitch lives in Manhattan. There’s a handful of artists that I can think of who do still live there.

TCJ: Does Gary Panter live in Manhattan?

MT: He lives in central Brooklyn.

TCJ: Let’s talk about him for a minute. You list him as one of your art heroes, and in terms of his impact on your work, I actually see it as kind of subtle. You don’t really use his ragged line. Is it more his sense of humor, and the fact that he’s not tied down to any particular art form and does everything, is that the big influence?

MT: It would be hard for me to dissect exactly how he’s impacted me, but I think [it's] in his amazing openness, open-mindedness, and constant creation, transformation and growth. The fact that he’s now jamming in a hippie noise band as well as doing visual projects. Maybe people don’t talk as much about his writing, as much as his visual impact, but for me, the writing goes hand in hand with my favorite artists, and I think he’s an incredible writer. The way he creates a universe with its own language, people speaking in it, and it’s utterly convincing, you know, really, really influenced me. Also the way he runs words up against images in the sketch book drawings of his, I saw those really early, in the RAW book, and that fracturing of the words against the image really affected me. I am also bowled over by his drawing, but maybe I’m trying not to be so under his spell (laughs).

TCJ: I’ve seen your list of things that have influenced you, and it’s a really disparate list, and it’s understandable, because it’s hard to pin you down. I look at your work and I don’t see a single dominant influence in any way, shape, or form. Another influence you talked about and I want to go into more detail is Fort Thunder. You talked about seeing Paper Rodeo back in 2000. What strips in particular caught your attention when you saw them,  which artists?

MT: Let me see, when I saw it, it took me a while to identify artists as even being separate from one another.

TCJ: Yes, that’s understandable.

MT: It was kind of like hieroglyphics or the Rosetta stone or something. It was a bunch of marks on this newsprint and you’re just trying to decipher [it]. I’m still, oh, that guy drew that? You know, I’ve found out things ten years later, but the most immediate ones that I reacted to were probably Brian Chippendale’s and Mat Brinkman’s and Leif Goldberg’s and Seth Cooper’s Zissy and Rita, which I think is actually of all the strips that appeared in Paper Rodeo, an incredibly under-discussed, incredible strip.

TCJ: I’ve never seen it discussed, actually.

MT: Oh, it’s so funny, it’ so funny! It’s just like this scratchy, wonderful narrative of these two girls, one’s like a burned out little goth girl, and the other is like a sort of more [of a] Shirley Temple-like normal girl, and they just sort of have adventures. It’s very free form, but it’s a lot more linear than the other stuff, where it really feels like you’re breaking into some cave of coded characters. It took me a lot longer to decipher CF’s stuff and Ben Jones’s stuff as being like separate from the others. And I’d be like, “Oh, it’s that guy”, you know? Chippendale’s [got] that overall textured mark-making, and then I think of the kind of rush of his narrative. Brinkman’s stuff, maybe I was able to figure out from the first. Leif Goldberg always astounds me, he’s really [a] visionary. I don’t know how to describe how he tells stories, it’s like a floating zoo mist.

TCJ: I have trouble holding onto it for that very reason, it’s kind of ethereal, which is not to say that I don’t like looking at it. I just have trouble parsing it sometimes.

MT: Parsing it, yeah, it’s not even parsable. For me, it’s another thing with the language and the image constantly pushing off from each other springboarding off into a different association and that’ll change what he draws, so he definitely uses his own logic tools and the fun is trying to follow it, I think.

A page from 1-800-MICE.

Influences: Gaming

TCJ:  One thing that interested me that you talked about that was being really into gaming and Dungeons & Dragons. It’s almost staggering to me how seemingly almost every [male] cartoonist under 35 played D&D, almost without exception. Was the narrative aspect of gaming something that appealed to you?

MT: When I found out about D&D, I was 7. And I immediately wanted to know about it. It was a magical thing that was being invented for adults and that children picked up on. All my friends picked up on it and it was before video games, or simultaneous with them. I got the box set first, it was these red saddle-stitched books that came in a box with the dice. Later, I got Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I started buying those books at the used book store, and I collected them, and amassed them, and my friends on the island did too. I was into mapping and writing my own modules and adventures, so yeah, I think that gives you an amazing spatial sense of constructing stories and it’s just super fun, if you’re a writer, everybody’s writing at the same time, you know, writing an adventure in real time at the same time.

TCJ: Did you ever play characters, or were you always the Dungeon Master?

MT: Oh, I played characters, yeah. Different people had different styles. My friend Tom would Dungeon Master out of his head. It would become these great extended jokes, where a guy with anthrax was running after you, trying to piss on you or something. Or you discover a truck, and that can’t happen in D&D. I would be too uptight to let that happen in D&D, but other people would be the storyteller, so they’d allow stuff like that to happen. I dunno, I was very caught up in the arcana of it all.

TCJ: You liked the rules.

MT: Yeah, I liked just reading it, all the books, and all the rules & all the scores & all that crap (laughs).

TCJ: You list Erol Otus as an artist that you liked. Those Monster Manual books were really interesting to look at as a kid. What impact did the art in those books have on you? Is that something you really noticed and tried to copy?

MT: It was like a pinnacle of serious art or something (laughs). When I was that age, I wasn’t looking at Michelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci; it was the coolest art that was available to you. Now, I really respect Erol Otus and his totally baffling color schemes. I guess he’s like a miniature figure painter now. I’ve looked him up on the internet, I don’t think he’s that active anymore. They’re almost like regional drawing styles, I don’t know where they plucked these guys out of! The illustrators who did Warhammer, too, had this amazing Bruegel-esque style of drawing.  The people who did the Warlock on Firetop Mountain role-playing books, they had this weird European grotty rat-catcher style. I don’t what they were looking at, but I’d be interested.

TCJ: In retrospect, I always got the impression that the D&D artists were really influenced by underground cartooning.

MT: Like S. Clay Wilson, maybe?

TCJ: Yes.

MT: Yeah, that makes sense. Well, if you look at the names of all those monsters in the book, they’re all drawn from dictionaries of mythology and stuff, they would just repurpose the names to make up their own creatures. So I feel like they were scholarly in their own way, and I think the people who did Warhammer definitely were looking at old prints from Albrecht Dürer for sure. And then, in England at that time, there was this weird, magical subculture that extended into the drawing of Nick Blinko from Rudimentary Peni. It was an anarcho-punk band, and he did this scribbly sort of gothic artwork that’s really beautiful and I guess he’s schizophrenic. So when he stopped taking his medication he created this black and white line artwork that’s intense, just really intense and it draws from that fantasy stuff.

TCJ: Interesting.  Well, I was kind of thinking about the D&D guys for the cartooning influence, because the art in those books is really different from other fantasy art of that period, like it has nothing to do with Frazetta or the Hildebrandt brothers, that super-airbrushed, hyperrealistic style. The line weight is very different–some people have a really wispy line and even some of the illustrations almost have a narrative quality to them, for some of the artists.

MT: Yeah, I think they were working so closely with the writers that they were trying to depict the creatures and the classes of characters very authentically.  They were like “I’m going to draw a 17th level Paladin and you will know what it is from my drawing.”  Maybe it’s a more wussy, more realistic…they were trying to conceive a whole aesthetic universe.

(continued)

That pairing was actually Gabe Fowler’s idea. He matched us up together [and] he proposed the idea and he proposed the movie. I was like, “Oh no, I can’t–I’m gonna hate Transformers. Maybe I can do it on something else.” So I went and saw Super 8 and I was like, “Oh that was pretty good, but it wasn’t so stupid that you could really satirize it.” Then I finally saw Transformers, and I was like, “Holy shit!”

And later, discussing the themes behind 1-800-MICE:

We’re all part of the ecosystem with all the animals and plants and all the man-made stuff. If you try to think of the big picture, it’s overwhelming and scary. I guess that’s why my book is ultimately—underneath all the funny stuff— about being non-didactic, that we’re all part of the ecosystems. Different characters in the book are aware of different aspects of it. Even the people who are trying to control it think they’re doing the right thing. Aunty Lakeford really believes that if she proves that the banjo’s origins are in Africa, then that will help, that’s gonna help.

And elsewhere on the great internet:

Edward Sorel is profiled by local news channel NY1. Sorel: “They wanted me to do a cover about how the press was treating Nixon unfairly. I said that’s too much. I’ll sell out, but there are limits.” (via)

Our columnist Jared Gardner has a new book just out called Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First Century Storytelling. Henry Jenkins has just posted the first installment of a multi-part interview with Gardner here. Another excerpt:

I don’t think this book would have made any sense to write had it not been for what we affectionately call the golden age of comics reprints, a period of publishing that has seen long-lost newspaper comics and comic books returned to print. I am fortunate to have daily access to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum here at Ohio State, but until recently without such privileged access extensive reading in historical comics was virtually impossible. Of the comics I focus on extensively in the early chapters in the book–Happy Hooligan, Mutt & Jeff, Krazy Kat, Superman, Spider-Man, R. Crumb’s underground comix, etc.–almost all are now available in accessible reprint editions. The big exceptions here were Sidney Smith’s The Gumps and Ed Wheelan’s Minute Movies, pioneering serial strips from the 1920s, but I am now working with the Library of American Comics to get one and possibly both into an affordable reprint edition in the near future.

Art Spiegelman appeared on BBC Radio 4 earlier this week.

Someone calling himself Mr. Media has interviewed Bill Griffith. (I know I’ve mentioned Lost & Found several times here already, but it’s good–you should read it!)

And apparently, like so many other literary luminaries, Douglas Adams first saw his words in print after writing a letter to the editor about comics.

To paraphrase the old Levy’s rye bread ad, you don’t have to be Jewish – an observant Jew, anyway – to enjoy Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & the New Land (Harvey Pekar & Paul Buhle, eds.  Abrams ComicArts), an anthology designed to acquaint the un- (or under-) informed with Yiddish culture. I would not have bought this book myself. If my father had given it to me during my adolescence or early adulthood in one of his efforts to increase my appreciation of my heritage, I would have coldly shelved it in favor of reading William Faulkner or Ernest Hemingway. But receiving it from two friends who, like myself, had surprisingly turned overnight into alte cockers, I popped it open. A paragraph or two in, a smile lifted my lips. A chuckle rose from my belly. I warmed.

Let me make clear from where I am coming. I suffered four years Hebrew school and know, maybe, four words of the language. (Only “boy,” “girl,” and “blessed” come to mind.) Memory of my bar mitzvah immediately evoke the modifiers “humiliating” and “hypocritical.” When my wife’s father died, she said, speaking for us both, “That snaps my last link to organized religion – his asking where we are having Passover and me saying ‘Nowhere.’”

While some of, if not all, my grandparents spoke fluent Yiddish, my parents and, I believe, my aunts and uncles knew only the odd phrase or word. I, my brother, and cousins know less. But I have never not thought of myself as Jewish. Even in my four-fifths gentile high school, where I most hoped to assimilate into a football-playing, beer-drinking, regular guy, I always knew I stood apart. I root for – though the number steadily diminishes – Jewish professional athletes. I have proudly outed Tony Curtis and Cyd Charisse, Kirk Douglas and Lauren Bacall. I have not read a book by any of the writers mentioned in Yiddishkeit, but when I can drop the occasional “bupkis” or “mishegas” into my own prose, I am pleased. I feel the ability to say “How ‘bouta schvitz” and not a “steam” links me to an earthier, more muscular time, plopping me down mentally on the hot tiles beside Lepke Buchalter, Longey Zwillman, or other exotics of their broken-knuckled milieu. (Such ruffians, I note, are absent from the editors’ view of Yiddish culture. So, come to think of it, are athletes.) Yiddish is among the matters I wish my parents were still here to discuss, since I now have the capacity and interest. It is one of many connections and formulating experiences never sufficiently explored.

Yiddish appeals because, as Neil Gabler explains in his introduction, it is “raw, egalitarian, vernacular,” even “subversive.” In sum, it represents “an outsider’s way of experiencing (the world).” The usage sets one aside, asserting – and calling attention to – one’s individuality. It is true that most of the words I know – “putz,” “schmuck,” “schlemiel,” “schnorer,” “shvartzer,” “schmeggegie” – assert with a connotation that could bring one a poke in the nose; but all those squeezed together, oddly combined consonants carry a comic, even affectionate tone too.

Humor and aggression. It is fitting that the first Yiddish expression one meets in Yiddishkeit is “Gey kek in yam” (“Go shit in the sea”).

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Gabler makes the point that the inability to accurately describe or define “Yiddishkeit” necessitates the book’s “sprawling, kaleidoscopic, disjointed, eclectic, and just plain messy” nature. It is divided into four sections: “The Emergence of Yiddish Culture”; “Yiddish Theater & Film”; “Yiddish & American Popular Culture”; and “Yiddish Fadeout & Revival,” which make sense and suggest a measured, precise and logical controlling hand at work, such as might govern the coq au vin simmering inside a Michelin four-star French kitchen. But within each section, the mix is more that of an improvised, grab-a-fistful-of-what’s-at-hand Cajun roadhouse bouillabaisse. Ingredients include history lessons, biographies, film and song adaptations, and riffs on Klezmer music and summer camps. Of the more than two dozen contributors, the most prolific are Pekar, whose five stories occupy 53 of the book’s 240 pages, Buhle, who wrote three pieces (15 pages) and shared credit for a fourth (six pages), Joel Schecter and Spain Rodriguez, who teamed for 11 stories (13 pages), and Sharon Rudahl, who illustrated seven stories (30 pages), including two she wrote.

My favorite of them was the play “The Essence” by Allen Lewis Rickman. It told the story of Yiddish theater, from its origins in the 19^th century to the present, via anecdotes, a lullaby, portions of a Yiddish New Testament, scenes from shtetl plays, as well as experimental Soviet drama, and, to illustrate Yiddish’s dramatic possibilities, over three dozen ways to say “imbecile.” Its content ranged from the eyebrow-raising instructive, to the hysterically funny, to the affectionately presented, utter “schund” (crap). And, I could not help noticing, the art was essentially irrelevant.

There were many artists whose work I enjoyed: Peter Kuper’s powerful, swirling expressionistic pages; Neil Kleid’s startling, black and blue compositions and connective faux “film strips.” Neil Thorkelson’s jokey, celebratory pictography; Barry Deutsch’s stripped-down, UPA-like approach; and Rudahl’s delicate, nuanced renderings. I enjoyed experiencing the ways this variety of approaches tickled and engaged. But the texts they accompanied too often seemed sketchy or unbalanced. Even with my limited knowledge of the subject, I was too frequently aware of omissions that concerned me. What else, I mused, was missing? And I was puzzled by how much attention some subjects received and how little others.

How, I wondered, could “Brother, Cay You Spare a Dime?” merit three pages, but Chaim Grade’s entire life only two?  How could the art of the barely known Marvin Friedman command five pages while Abraham Polonsky got six, Zero Mostel four, and Harvey Kurtzman two? How could you overlook Mostel’s performances in Rhinosceros; or, with Kurtzman’s links to Yiddish culture as tenuous as the narrative concedes, forget his elevating “furschlugginer” to public consciousness; and what purpose was served by omitting Polonsky’s semi-triumphant return to Hollywood with Tell Them Willie Boy is Here? Finally, what-in-Jehova’s name justified giving the adaptation of Edward Ulmer’s cliche-ridden, stereotype-populated screenplay “Green Fields” a dozen? Sure, it’s a historical curiosity, but its quality gives schund a bad name.

In only a few instances did I feel art and text worked well together. One was the Joe Zabel/Gary Dunn hyper-realistic treatment of Pekar’s equally hyper-realistic “President’s Day.”  But that story, while piercing in its authenticity and directness, is reprinted from American Splendor # 13 and only secondarily connected to Yiddish culture. Ostensibly, an evaluation by Pekar of I.J. Singer’s Yoshe Kalb novel, it is more revelatory of how an individual’s life influences that individual’s critical judgments. If you are, for instance, as Pekar renders himself, a depressed loner, with frustrated literary ambitions, a dead-end job, and a marriage where you would rather voluntarily walk to work through a snowstorm on a holiday than drive your sick wife to her doctor’s, you are unlikely to joyously celebrate successful, popular authors.

Yiddishkeit’s most successful contributions, in my opinion, were the Spain/Schecter collaborations. Basically, these were a series of illustrated anecdotes, one page devoted to each.  Mark Twain meets Sholem Aleichem (perhaps an apocryphal tale, since it seems suspiciously similar to Mary Pickford’s meeting with Molly Picon, reported elsewhere in the volume). Paul Robeson sings in Yiddish in Moscow to protest Stalin’s murderous anti-Semitism. Menasha Skolnick joins a chicken cutters’ picket line. These works do not attempt to track a life over decades or a movement across a century. Focused on smaller moments, their recountings, though usually black and white, sparkle diamond bright. Schecter clearly, cleanly hits the points his narratives require, and Spain punches them up, varying close-ups and long shots, single panels and doubles, utilizing commanding solid blacks to direct the eye to crucial figures, delivering gags – sight and verbal – to enhance the over-all spirit. My favorites: a powerful close-up of Robeson at his story’s conclusion; setting the Twain/Aleichem meeting at a party whose guests include Huck Finn, the celebrated jumping frog of Caleveras County, Teyve, and his daughters; and, in a tale about a play in which a rabbi attempts to expel a dybbuk, whose cast had included Mae West, having her inquire of the cleric, “Is that an excommunication in your pocket?”

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At its conclusion, Yiddishkeit encourages readers to learn more about its subject. I did, carrying my discontent about its art/text fusings to the only other book I possessed which addressed Yiddish culture, Irving Howe’s National Book Award-winning World of Our Fathers. Howe’s 42-page chapter “The Yiddish Word,” covered the same subject as Yiddishkeit’s Pekar/Dan Archer 45-page chapter “Yiddish Modernists.” Comparing the two intensified my thinking about the role of cartoons/comics/illustrations in primarily informative books.

The balloons and captions in “Modernists” contain about 3,000 words – as opposed to 24,000 in “Word.” Seventeen writers receive a full-page portrait by Archer, and the lives and works of 16 of them are allotted an additional one panel to three pages (Mendele Mochar Sforim receives five) for a total of 151 illustrations. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but I still felt badly short-changed. The panels did a reasonable job conveying circumstances under which people lived, their dress, their housing, their surface emotions, the style of the authors’ beards, but they added little to my understanding of the writers’ influences, drives, desires, or to my appreciation of their artistry. Howe’s entire book – 646 pages, not counting his acknowledgments, reference notes, glossary, biographical notes and index – contained 78 photographs. Whether of shtetl or East Side life, individuals or sweatshops, demonstrations or theatrical presentations, they conveyed a gravity and power – the impact of the “real” – that the artwork in Yiddishkeit lacked. Its art seemed softening, soothing hand, an assurance that any reading will be easy and unlikely to disturb – a G-rated, fit-for-der-kinder schmooze.

Establishing the chapter’s bite was left to Pekar.  But most of his words were devoted to plot summarizations. The biographical information he provided made the backs of baseball cards look like the work of Richard Ellman.  Pekar rarely expanded his judgments beyond an “excessively sentimental” (I.L. Peretz), or “subtle…(and) insightful” (Abraham Riesen), or “an admirable novelist” (Joseph Opatashu).  Such evaluations seem simplistic, reflexive rather than reflected upon, and insufficient to establish Pekar as an authoritative voice.

When Pekar tried to express himself more fully, he seemed regularly cut short. He supported declaring Moishe Nadir “the major Jewish avant garde literary figure” by noting his cape, scarf and gentile “girlfriend,” but he said virtually nothing about the content or quality of Nadir’s work.  Pekar hailed Der Nister’s The Family Mashber as ”one of the finest Yiddish novels” but not a ‘masterpiece’ of world literature.” This may be accurate, but Pekar never explained what was “fine” about Mashber or why it failed to attain this higher standard. He wrote that “details” in David Bergelson’s novella Joseph Schur “are so intelligently chosen and placed that one feels… like he’s in the middle of a movie,” but leaves unexplained why being placed mid-movie is a good thing. Wouldn’t a novella be expected to cement one into the reality of its characters’ lives? He called Kadya Molodowsky “among the best Jewish prose artists” and praises her “great memory” and “great ear.” He does not reveal how he measured Molodowsky’s memory, but a writer’s “ear” usually refers to her ability to create dialogue; and the words Pekar places in the mouths of “Jack” and “Tsilie,” while retelling Molodowsky’s “A Fur Coat,” fail to prove his point. Here is Jack: “How much did that coat cost you?” Here is Tsilie: “Yes Tuesday would be fine” Here they are arguing: “I’m warning you” “I’m warning you.” No rhythm, phrasing or idiosyncratic usage captured by Pekar confirm Molodowky’s talent.

Pekar’s shortcomings are exemplified by his treatment of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the only Yiddish writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pekar dismisses him in 170 words, encompassed within an Abrams portrait and six panels, as “clever” and “over-rated.” (Singer’s Nobel proved to Pekar only “how little it’s worth.”) Pekar offers no reasons to support his conclusions. He provides no aesthetic theory as a source from which his disapproval naturally flows. Later, in “Presidents’ Day,” Pekar expands upon his dislike of Singer. He faults him for filling his work with miracles, demons, sex, thieves, prostitutes, and holy fools, instead of “sober, no-nonsense, hardworking,” “law-abiding good family people.” He accuses Singer of writing about the “colorful” and “sensationalistic” because that’s what readers want. That may be – but taking Pekar at his word in hoping to confine writers to Waltons’ Mountain would deny readers Kafka, Dostoevsky, Miller, Gogol, and much of Latin America literature.

Howe gives Singer 1200 words. He notes – but rejects – criticism of Singer’s use of sexuality and sensationalism as “old-fashioned” and “ungenerous.” (“Ungenerous” seems a fair assessment of Pekar, whose view of the literature that deserves rewards closely resembles the type he writes.) For Howe, Singer’s stories “prey upon the nerves. They leave one unsettled and anxious” and seem “paradigms of the arbitrary injustice at the center of existence, offering instances of pointless suffering, dead-end exhaustion, inexplicable grace.” What Howe recognized as Singer’s “ultimate preoccupation” – and which Pekar unaccountably fails to mention – is the Holocaust. Singer’s stories, Howe writes, are born from “a world destroyed beyond hope of reconstruction” and written with an “inspired madness… as if the world of the past were still radiantly alive… the rabbis still pondering, the children still studying, the poor still suffering, and nothing yet ashes.”

The “ashes” and all they invoke – the showers, the chimneys, the voices that had transformed the words into plays and print and pleas for justice turned into soap and smoke – is brilliant. They represent the extinguished world from which Yiddish culture had emerged and to which its creators could never again return, literally or figuratively, for replenishment and regeneration. Howe’s page, unshared with cartoon or sketch, allowed him the freedom to tap into a greater poetry and passion with which to inform his language. It encouraged him to mine for rarer thoughts than Pekar and Yiddishkeit’s other writers unearthed. The borders of the panels within which they labors constricted them too tightly. They had pictures to prop up and duck behind.

But I have always been a word guy. My judgments are as much a product of my “me” as Pekar’s are his. It carried my writing down this prickly path instead of sticking to admiring the roses in Yiddishkeit’s garden. That delivered many bouquets of delight. It augmented my understanding of Yiddish culture by placing it within historical and social context. It introduced me to much I had not known. It had killer lines and sustained blocks of reading/viewing pleasure. I award it ears and tail of the gefilte fish.

And elsewhere, good people:

Pal and Professor at Washington University Douglas Dowd has begun a new publication called Spartan Holiday, which I enjoyed very much. It’s a picture story travelogue, elegantly blending drawing, type and image in the finest Pushpin Graphic tradition. This issues finds Doug in China, drawing as he goes. Good stuff and great to see this tradition being revived as a regular thing. Speaking of St. Louis, there’s a whole lotta Zettwoch in this photo preview of Dan’s upcoming book Birdseye Bristoe. I bet Dan, being a fellow Dan, likes these Gene Ahern comics, too. Nice to see Paul Tumey inaugurate a new blog.

Oh my goodness, there are no women in this comic book store reality show! Can you believe it? I mean, Kevin Smith’s movies are so much about understanding between genders! I am shocked! And in more heartwarming news, Alan Moore did what sounds like a cool video chat in support of Harvey Pekar.

New today, we have the usual Joe McCulloch Tuesday feature: This Week in Comics!, this time featuring a bit on the top about ’00s Joe Kubert. Joe also made a guest appearance this week over at Douglas Wolk’s Judge Dredd site, in which the two discuss everything from Garth Ennis to comic-book ethics to Before Watchmen. (There’s some overlap.)

We also have Rob Clough’s review of Sharon Lintz’s Pornhounds 2.

Elsewhere, Michael Chabon is mining comic-book history in his fiction again, and has a story in this week’s New Yorker that is partly based on the relationship between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

At the Brooklyn Rail, Bill Kartalopoulos has a typically well-informed and informative review of the new Joost Swarte collection.

And the mysterious Illogical Volume of the Mindless Ones has a complicated response to Grant Morrison’s Batman comics (and his recent dubious statements about Siegel & Shuster). Of course, it’s unclear if complicated responses are what Morrison deserves—though as Joe M. pointed out over at Wolk’s place, Morrison is the only DC creator we know of (besides Kevin Smith, ha ha) to have publicly turned down working on Before Watchmen. So at least there’s that.

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PLEASE NOTE: What follows is not a series of capsule reviews but an annotated selection of items listed by Diamond Comic Distributors for release to comic book retailers in North America on the particular Wednesday, or, in the event of a holiday or occurrence necessitating the close of UPS in a manner that would impact deliveries, Thursday, identified in the column title above. Not every listed item will necessarily arrive at every comic book retailer, in that some items may be delayed and ordered quantities will vary. I have in all likelihood not read any of the comics listed below, in that they are not yet released as of the writing of this column, nor will I necessarily read or purchase every item identified; THIS WEEK IN COMICS! reflects only what I find to be potentially interesting.

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SPOTLIGHT PICKS!

Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes: Being Dark Horse’s latest release from reliably unpredictable UK comics veteran Bryan Talbot, here setting aside his recent (and very entertaining) forays into funny animal mayhem to illustrate a 96-page hardcover album written by his wife, Mary M. Talbot, daughter of a Joycean scholar, who blends her own autobiographical reminisces with scenes from the youth of James Joyce’s own daughter Lucia. Talbot-the-artist appears to be alternating a flat-colored, clear line style (no Grandville shininess) with spot-colored pencil shading as a means of distinguishing between periods, and it looks pretty nice. Preview; $14.99.

Berlin #18: Ah, your comic book pick of the week for sure! Maybe there’s people out there who’ll only go to the comics store for stuff like a new chapter of Jason Lutes’ historical epic, now on part two of its final sequence. From Drawn and Quarterly, of course; $4.95.

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PLUS!

Jinchalo: Meanwhile, here’s D&Q’s book release for the week, its second project with artist Matthew Forsythe following 2009′s Ojingogo, blending Korean folklore with dreamlike wordless cartoon journeying. Preview; $19.95.

Adventure Time #1: This is the new license obtained by Boom! — specifically their kaboom! line of kids’ comics — pertaining to the popular Cartoon Network television show. It’s notable here for the presence of writer Ryan North, in what I believe is his first-ever full-length published comic book after many years with the continuing Dinosaur Comics clip art pursuit. The art is by Shelli Paroline & Braden Lamb, but note that the very good Aaron Renier of Spiral-Bound and The Unsinkable Walker Bean writes and draws a backup story. Samples; $3.99.

Murky World: Richard Corben! You know him, you love him, and here’s a 32-page comic book-format collection of his recent serial from Dark Horse Presents, a b&w fantasy thing all full of discoveries, menace and laid-back humor. Preview; $3.50.

Richie Rich Gems: Valentines Special: Somehow this seems to implicate both the Adventure Time and Murky World sides of the coin, as this Ape Entertainment revival of ye olde Harvey kids’ comics franchise will, at least in this instance, feature some new work by Sid Jacobson & Ernie Colón, along with re-colored reprints. Just so you know; $3.99.

Dicks Color Edition #1: Speaking of new hues! I spent a little time the other day chatting with Douglas Wolk about early comics by Garth Ennis, whom I wound up comparing to Chris Ware at one point, insofar as both men have apparently sought to keep their uncharacteristic debut books out of print – Troubled Souls in Ennis’ case, an Irish-set suspense drama initially published in the politicized 2000 AD offshoot Crisis. Ennis actually managed to regain the rights to that story in the early part of the ’00s by writing some Judge Dredd material, an effort prompted in part to secure the first appearances of two characters that he and artist John McCrea had used as the protagonists of a later, much less serious story titled Dicks (and an interim Crisis serial called For a Few Troubles More). Talk of Troubled Souls always brings to my mind a short essay David Rust wrote for the classic issue #200 of our print edition, praising that early work and lamenting what Ennis had become; Dicks, then, might be seen as one of the tenuous remaining links to Ennis’ ‘literary’ comics side, in the form of a very broad, goofy comedy with a culturally specific outlook most pronounced in these early stories from the late ’90s, which publisher Avatar had previously collected in 2003 via a b&w trade paperback that took the better part of a decade to sell through its first printing, as Ennis has happily noted. Now it’s a comic again, and in color for the first time, and there will eventually be new stories from Ennis & McCrea when the old stuff’s extinguished; $4.99.

The Ninjettes #1: The links here are less tenuous, as this is a straight-on Bad Assassins spinoff of Ennis’ super-killer-as-a-suburban-housewife-themed Jennifer Blood series at Dynamite, the scripting of which has recently been taken over by (ah ha!) Judge Dredd writer Al Ewing in his North American comics debut. Ewing — a funny guy who I can see vanishing forever into Marvel’s Deadpool franchise someday, though hopefully not before his Brendan McCarthy collaboration The Zaucer of Zilk can manifest — is handling this one too, with Ewan Casallos on art. Preview; $3.99.

Conan the Barbarian: Queen of the Black Coast #1: Sword-swinging of a different sort, as Dark Horse’s endless line of licensed barbarian comics here begins a new series by Becky Cloonan, of several nice manga-informed works. Adapted from Robert E. Howard by the artist’s frequent collaborator, writer Brian Wood. Preview; $3.50.

One Model Nation: What’s more fitting for the Golden Age of Reprints (and a comic about ’70s German art rock written by Courtney Taylor-Taylor of the Dandy Warhols) than your classic import-edition-that’s-more-deluxe-than-the-domestic-release? Hence, Titan Books brings an extras-laden 160-page hardcover update to the 2009 Image release for this Jim Rugg-illustrated project; $24.95.

Torpedo Vol. 4: A more typical reprint effort here, as IDW continues its presentation of Jordi Bernet-illustrated Spanish crime comics classics; $24.99.

Archie Treasury Edition: The Best Of Dan DeCarlo: Never willing to let a format escape with only one crack, IDW here presents a 64-page sample of DeCarlo works in the 9.25″ x 14.25″ Treasury format last seen with some of Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer material (which appears to be patient zero for several of these experiments, having also kicked off the Artist’s Edition line of color scans for pre-coloring original art); $9.99.

GTO: 14 Days in Shonan Vol. 1 (of 9): I’ll say this about Vertical – they defy expectations. Joining food manga The Drops of God as the publisher’s second present longform project is Toru Fujisawa’s hugely popular Great Teacher Onizuka franchise, a comedy-drama about a bōsōzoku tough guy biker who gets into the education field in an effort to lose his virginity, and winds up helping people. TokyoPop released the 25-volume original in English a few years back, and this is Fujisawa’s 2009-11 follow-up seeing the title character return to his old stomping grounds at the famous Shōnan stretch of beaches. Vertical also plans to release the artist’s Shonan Junai Gumi (aka: GTO: The Early Years), a more gag-driven predecessor series featuring the same character pre-certification, which TokyoPop released about 2/3s of before giving up the ghost; $10.95.

American Splendor: The Life And Times Of Harvey Pekar: Finally, your new-edition-of-something-that’s-been-out-for-a-while-of-the-week – Pantheon’s 320-page collection of Harvey Pekar’s earliest American Splendor stories, including several Robert Crumb pieces. A pretty easy access point to developments in American autobiographical comics, in case you haven’t gotten to it yet; $20.00.

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CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: Of course, there’s no need to get Pekar in your Crumb this week if you so desire, as The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat returns one the artist’s best-known creations to the comprehensive format, now in hardcover; $19.99. Also hard as nails is Young Romance: The Best of Simon and Kirby’s Romance Comics, a 208-page Michel Gagné-edited compilation of turmoil and ecstasy from the pre- and post-Code eras by a pair of genre architects you might recognize; $29.99.

Let’s unpack those for a moment. The cover image by Nic Breutzman (the artist with whom she shares a connection that is honestly reminiscent of the early Pekar-Crumb collaborations) is of a nude woman, sitting back on her legs and wearing high heels. It’s a sexualized pose, yet once it becomes clear that this woman has had a double mastectomy performed it becomes an unsettling image, one where objectification is suddenly muddled with sadness and perhaps shame. At the same time, there’s a bone-dry sense of humor to it, a humor that is present throughout this comic. The back cover (by the great Danny Hellman) is a “visible woman” image of a cancer patient on a stripper’s pedestal, ogled and leered at by various medical professionals. It’s funny and unsettling in a different way, but in a manner that also reflects Lintz’s experience of feeling like meat as a cancer patient.

The comic opens with Lintz revealing that in her former job working at that porn magazine, she was the “ghost writer” for porn star Cytherea. That meant not only penning monthly “publisher’s statements” but also answering mail and reviewing porn DVDs wearing another woman’s identity. Trying on different identities and roles is a repeating motif in Lintz’s work, something that comes with a certain sympathy with the outliers of society. Her story about the letters she received is surprisingly touching (and frequently hilarious), as is the way she responds to people (in Cytherea’s voice) in an effort to make them feel like their voice has been heard.

The comic kicks into high gear with “Daily Office Life” and “Photo Meetings”, the two chapters illustrated by up-and-coming cartoonist Breutzman. He captures both the sleaze and the quotidian dullness of office life as described by Lintz, though porn provides a number of hilarious but incidental laughs. (Lintz’ idea for a porn based on The Crying of Lot 49 made me laugh out loud, but not as much as the bizarre tattoo found on one naked actor in an orgy scene.) Transformation is a motif in this comic, first communicated in the scene where the “dirty diaries” she writes become increasingly bizarre and sci-fi oriented, like one based on Alan Moore’s The Courtyard where the attraction to Ancient Ones results in women getting eight extra vaginas. “Photo Meetings” is a feverish chapter that alternates the boredom and politics of sitting through a meeting looking at photos the magazine might buy with memories of her mother losing her mind in a mental hospital and watching “stag films” with her friends as a teen.

The first chapter about cancer is the most conventional in this comic, due in part to the bland renderings of Nathan Schreiber. Even here, Lintz manages to draw laughs by talking about her obsession with getting a C-cup with her breast reconstruction while at the same time connecting this experience to her father receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. ”Tampa/Reconstruction”, drawn by Joan Reilly, adds a bit of grit and detail to her experiences, with Florida acting as a sort of fever dream backdrop. The mutation and transformation of flesh is once again raised; at one point, Lintz notes feeling “like a cyborg,” referring to the implants that were part of her reconstructive process.

The Ellen Lindner-drawn chapter “Chemo” continues in this vein, as Linder draws Lintz with glowing eyes when Lintz notes that “after chemo, you feel like a heated piece of foil.” The elegance and density of Lindner’s line is a perfect counter to both the rattier line of the Reilly story that precedes it and the thinner, Crumb-influenced line of Ed Piskor in the following story. Lintz reflects on her side career as a teacher, where she assigned works, like Hamlet, that focus on death. After having stared death in the eye, this work struck close to the bone (as it were). In some respects, Lintz reached the “acceptance” phase of the five stages of grief without actually dying, giving her a certain earned serenity.

The final chapter, “And By The Way…What Is Cancer?”, neatly ties together the themes of both halves of the book. Lintz cleverly ties the cellular effects of cancer (it is, in essence, a detrimental cellular mutation) with the theme of transformation and her own science fiction fantasies. She first does this by comparing cancer to horror films, which she notes tie directly into our fear of disease and our own bodies. Then she brings up Videodrome, which is all about the way in which a tumor gives a man visions. Lintz spins that into imagining a future where her tumor was genetically modified into becoming a new kind of sex organ, which made her “the most famous porn star in the universe,” chanting “Long live the new flesh!”

This was an ingenious way to tie in the imaginative and transformational powers of porn into her own imagination as a writer and her experiences literally experiencing the transmutation of her flesh at both a visceral and cellular level.  Lintz went from being a thinker and dreamer who “feels alone in the world” to someone who was forced to connect to her body, her community, and her world. This comic might have had a greater impact if Breutzman had drawn the whole thing, though the Reilly-Lindner-Piskor trio did a fine job of conveying different aspects of her experience with their unique visual style. That said, this comic is an astounding leap of quality from the first issue, which in itself was an assured debut by Lintz as a comics writer. I’m excited to see her branch out into genre work as well as continue to write about her own life in such a humorous, self-effacing and ultimately warm manner.

1.

Reading a comic book once made me sick. Like other Baby Boomer kids, I fell in love with Silver Age Marvel Comics, especially the Kirby/Lee/Sinnott Fantastic Four. I was imprinted by Lee’s narrative voice (simultaneously melodramatic and folksy) and Kirby’s visual imagination: the Marvel aesthetic became my be-all-and-end-all, my standard for quality comics. One day, though, a friend left some comics at my house, and the next morning I casually picked a non-Marvel from his stack to read at breakfast. I started eating and reading: the comic was a weird pre-Code horror anthology, and the first story featured inky, crosshatched illustrations (a lesser artist channeling Creepy-era Reed Crandall, maybe) for a disturbing story about a woman who turns herself into a leopard. I hated it because it wasn’t a Marvel comic. I glanced at panels where the woman, with a human head and leopard’s body, prowled over her unconscious lover. I felt nauseous. I threw the comic and my cereal away.

Why did I get sick? Why was I so invested in Marvel, and why and how did this leopard-woman horror comic upset my tastes so traumatically? What does it mean to read a new comic?

2.

I’ve been thinking about these and other questions, mulling over how my personal responses to comics (nausea or otherwise) inform the criticism and research I write. I’ve realized that the idea of newness is important to me. I read for those moments where I have my preconceptions upended, my notions of what comics do irrevocably altered. The leopard woman jerked me out of Marvel complacency; Crumb’s Homegrown Funnies (1971) introduced me to the Id-fueled underground; Kramers Ergot #4 (2003) uncoupled me from narrative, leading me to attend to the formal qualities (the colors, shapes and forms) of comic art. It sometimes takes a while for my paradigms to shift—it took several re-reads before I saw that Kramers #4 was something more than a collection of self-indulgent doodles—but shift they eventually do, and that shift is, for me, the most exciting result of following an art form closely.

One of the aesthetic theories that best captures that sense of expanding perceptions is Hans Robert Jauss’ idea of the horizon of expectations. Jauss (1921-1997) was a German literary scholar who argued that both readers/spectators and works of art are influenced by material, aesthetic and political contexts. These contexts create a “horizon of expectations,” a baseline against which the art in question stands as conventional, amateurish or innovative. (Kramers #4 was a paradigm-shifter because eight years ago, almost all comics, mainstream and alternative, prioritized narrative.) This emphasis on context may seem obvious, especially in our Po-mo, theoretically savvy culture, but it still informs the criticism I write, especially my belief that critics should go beyond simple “bad/good” evaluations (“This issue of Batman sucks!”) and position the comic against the broader backgrounds of aesthetic and ideological norms.

3.

In his seminal essay “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory” (1967), Jauss develops his arguments about the horizon of expectations by talking about time. He points out that changes in society and the zeitgeist create ever-shifting horizons of reception and analysis. Readers of Kramers #4 in 2003 interpreted the anthology differently than those who read it today, because Kramers #4 was followed by other significant books (later issues of Kramers, as well as Abstract Comics [2009], and Yuichi Yokoyama’s Color Engineering [2011]) that cultivated a wider acceptance of comics that emphasize the qualities of the picture plane. For Jauss, the meaning(s) of a text are in large measure determined by colliding discourses and forces from both the past and present:

The quality and rank of a literary work result neither from the biographic conditions of its origin, nor from its place in the sequence of the development of a genre alone, but rather from the criteria of influence, reception, and posthumous fame.

When studying an older text, the critic should consider both the environment of initial reception (I bought Kramers #4 at the 2003 San Diego Comicon, oddly enough) and how discourses of “influence, reception, and posthumous fame”—including coverage and commentary from the Journal—have molded our reception of the text since. And then our hypothetical critic writes a review or article that becomes part of the cloud of interpretations swirling around the text, influencing future readers and critics.

All this happens on a personal level, especially in our 21^st-century saturated media landscape. Back when I was reading those Kirby/Lee Fantastic Fours, I felt like I was keeping up with most comics, and with the broader currents of comics culture, but I’ve since been humbled. I’m unable to keep pace with the flood of comics and graphic novels currently being published, and I understand that though I’ve been reading comics for over 40 years, I’ve inadvertently ignored hundreds of key creators, genres and companies. The history of comics is deep and vast, and I’m a haphazard disciple, which is why Jauss’ theory of the horizon of expectations, his stress on how past and present discursive contexts create the meaning of a text, is useful for my dives into comics’ oceanic past.

4.

Early in February 2011, I met my friend Toney Frazier for our weekly lunch. Generous about sharing his enthusiasms (offbeat ‘70s music, the horror genre, underground comix), Toney often loans me books and brings me gifts, and this time he gave me a copy of Stephen Sennitt’s Ghastly Terror: The Horrible Story of the Horror Comics (Headpress, 1999) that he’d found at a used bookstore. Ghastly Terror is a lively, opinionated survey of the history of American horror comics, from ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown (1948) to the nine-issue run of Stephen Bissette’s Taboo (1988-1995). Sennitt’s approach isn’t academic: he doesn’t interview writers and artists, or research the business practices of publishers like Warren and Eerie. Rather, his focus is almost exclusively on gut-level aesthetic evaluation, on whether or not particular titles and individual comics deserve to be read. In my opinion, Ghastly Terror is most fun when Sennitt delivers judgments that run contrary to fanboy canons—as in his denunciation of the ECs as “too repetitive and unadventurous” (57)—and when he offers up consumer-guide checklists with titles like “Top Ten Warren Mags” and “The Ten Best Horror-Mood Magazines.”

The title of that last list, about the “Horror-Mood Magazines,” refers to the comics (Nightmare, Psycho, Scream) written and edited by Alan Hewetson and produced by Skywald Publishing between 1971 and 1975. Skywald, founded by Marvel Comics production manager Sol Brodsky and investor Israel Waldman in 1970, began by churning out black-and-white horror magazine in imitation of the Warren titles Creepy and Eerie. Sennitt argues, however, that black magic bubbled forth when Hewetson was hired as associate editor of Skywald in 1971: “Under Hewetson’s editorship the Skywalds would develop into the most unique and disturbing horror comics of all time, generating their own particular, coherent world-view which would at least put them on a ‘philosophical’ par with the ECs and the early Warrens” (151). Hewetson himself called his approach the Horror-Mood, described by Sennitt as “a miasmic evil” (151), a “kind of decaying atmosphere” (153) created by the heady mix of Hewetson’s ornate, pseudo-Lovecraftian prose style, and the unsettling images conjured up by Skywald’s stable of artists, many of whom were foreign artists willing to work cheap.

When I first read Sennitt’s description of Skywald’s Horror-Mood, I was intrigued, because I’d never seen or read a Skywald magazine in my life. I’d only read brief mentions of Skywald in the fan press, though somehow I was familiar with the title of one of the most notorious Horror-Mood stories—Hewetson and Ramon Torrents’ “The Filthy Little House of Voodoo” (Psycho #8, September 1972)—even though I hadn’t read the story itself yet. (I suspect that I saw the title in some Comic Reader or Comics Journal article, and then tucked it into my permanent memory because “Filthy Little House of Voodoo” is a great name for a blues band.) But Sennitt’s high praise (“The most unique and disturbing horror comics of all time”!) made shopping for some Skywald magazines a priority for me.

5.

Cut to June 2011. Armed with various Sennitt checklists from Ghastly Terror–“The Ten Best Horror-Mood Magazines,” sure, but also “Ten Essential Tales by Archaic Al [Hewetson],” and a catalog of the stories in Skywald’s “Saga of the Human Gargoyles”—I walked the aisles of the dealers’ auditorium of Charlotte’s Heroes Con with Toney, sniffing at every magazine longbox for hidden caches of Nightmare and Psycho. There were only a few booths that had any Skywalds, however, and most were, by my tightwad standards, outrageously overpriced. I didn’t buy any, although Toney lucked into a dealer who sold him a small stack at a volume discount. I’m tempted to describe the dealer in comically exaggerated terms, as an eldritch presence resembling EC’s Crypt-Keeper, but that would be false and unkind. The guy had long gray hair, but no hood or cloak.

At our next lunch, Toney had another surprise for me: his stack had included two copies of Scream #5 (April 1974), and he gave me one. I was immediately struck by the lurid vibrancy of its cover:

Even before I opened that cover, though, I thought: This is a comic I know very little about. Could I meta-blog my first experience of reading a Skywald, and chronicle both my immediate responses to the comic and the horizons—of expectations, of interpretations— that I brought to Scream #5?

6.

Scream #5 is approximately 8 ½ x 11 in dimensions and is 68 pages long, counting the front and back covers. The cover pages are in color, and the interior is in black-and-white. On the inside front cover, there’s an ad for “Horror-Mood Characters, ” such as the Human Gargoyles, Frankenstein and the Heap, who appear in stories serialized in Nightmare, Psycho and Scream. The ad promises a “blockbuster character being created expressly for our upcoming fourth magazine…Tomb of Horror…you gotta SEE ‘it’ to BELIEVE ‘it.” But this strikes a poignant note: very few saw “it” because Skywald collapsed before Tomb of Horror was published. Facing this ad, on the first interior page, are panels borrowed from each of Scream #5’s stories, alongside the titles of the stories (including “The Conqueror Worm and the Haunted Palace” and “Shift: Vampire”) in handwritten lettering, and typeset text that lists contributors’ names. The kerning of the typeset words is a bit askew.

On pages 14-15, Hewetson includes “A Corrupt Collection of Lunatic Letters from the Macabre Scream Mailbag,” featuring readers feedback, an ad for a future story (“Coming Up Next in the Monster, Monster Saga”), and a bizarre column by Skywald writer Augustine Funnell, who denounces fanzines and the writers contributing to them. Specifically, Funnell is bothered that fans talk more about other fans than the work of comics professionals:

Now before anyone accuses me of hating fandom (which I don’t!), I’ll make my single point. Any professional, whether his name is Hewetson, O’Neil, Smith, Ditko, or Archie Bunker is more important than any fan! Why? Because it’s the pro who’s doing the entertaining! It’s the pro who deserves the credit—not the fan who only reads what the pro does. If the fan was worthy of the professional’s praise, he’d damn well be a pro!

Fans have forgotten their roots. They’ve forgotten who the true heroes are. In a word, fans have become arrogant. (14)

There’s a curious tension among these texts from Scream #5. In Ghastly Terror, Sennitt mentions that Alan Hewetson began his career as an assistant to Stan Lee at Marvel, so it’s no surprise that Hewetson’s bonhomie in the ads and letters pages mimics Lee’s 1960s hype, right down to the nicknames (Archaic Al Hewetson, Awkward Augustine Funnell, etc.) given to every Skywald staffer and freelancer. With his swingin’ prose style, Lee (deceptively) defined the Marvel Bullpen as a rollicking clubhouse that readers could join simply by buying more Marvel comics, and Hewetson sought to build the same playful (and commercial) rapport with fans. Funnell’s screed against fanzines and fans, however, builds a curiously elitist wall between “arrogant” fans and “important” professionals. Why didn’t Funnell realize that most fan publications, especially Amateur Press Associations, were as much about creating a community as they were about reviews of professional comics? Further, history hasn’t upheld Funnell’s implicit comparison of Hewetson with creators like O’Neil, Smith and Ditko; did Funnell believe that Psycho and Scream should be praised as much as key 1970s comics like O’Neil and Adams’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Thomas and Smith’s Conan? Whatever the motivation, I can’t imagine Funnell’s jeremiad sat well with either hard-core fans or casual readers looking for a fun horror mag.

7.

I’m also not convinced that any demographic slice of readers would find the comics in Scream #5 worth their money either. The biggest problem is that Hewetson is incapable of dreaming up an original plot. “Get Up and Die Again” is a riff on The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)—where a mad scientist named “Ingles” (wink, wink) bluntly exclaims “This is part of a Frankenstein movie plot…I will engage in so [sic] such melodramatics”—while two of the other stories are Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, another is a version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and “Shift: Vampire” combines horror and science fiction in a way reminiscent of (but inferior to) the Archie Goodwin-Gray Morrow tale “Blood of Krylon!” in Creepy #7 (February 1966). Based on Scream #5, Hewetson doesn’t so much write and edit stories as he set-arranges swipes and familiar horror tropes into simulacra that almost pass as stories—until you realize that the catharsis and sense of aesthetic form traditionally associated with storytelling is utterly absent from Hewetson’s “scripting.” (As horror fans know, vampires and zombies lack that essential spark of life that defines the truly alive.)

Hewetson’s work is lousy on the panel-by-panel, caption-by-word-balloon micro level too. He labors under the Lovecraftian misbelief that scary writing should be a pile-up of adjectives, as in this panel from Scream #5’s first story, “The Autobiography of a Vampire (Chapter Two)”:

The vampire has just murdered the woman he loved, but we don’t see his face, and Hewetson and artist Ricardo Villamonte never visually illustrate the character preying “on poor, innocent girls” and sleeping “in filthy crypts.” Everything is described rather than shown. Contrary to Sennitt’s feeling that the Skywalds carry “a decaying atmosphere,” I found Hewetson’s storytelling dull and distant rather than lurid and loathsome.

8.

The art in Scream #5 is all OK, although several of the artists exhibit strange stylistic tics. In his work on the adaptation of Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” Maro Nava cuts his spot blacks with filigreed white lines, and draws faces with googly Marty Feldman eyes.

Artist Ricardo Villamonte begins and ends “The Autobiography of a Vampire” with panels that place the drawn central character against photographic foregrounds and backgrounds.

And in “Get Up and Die Again,” Alphonso Font uses manic crosshatching and sculptured negative space to create a convincing, moody gothic atmosphere:

There’s an illustrative density to this art that reminds me of the Filipino cartoonists (Alex Niño, Alfredo Alcala, Rudy Nebres, Tony DeZuniga, etc.) who drew for DC anthology titles and Marvel magazines at roughly the same time that Skywald was in business. Many of the foreign artists who worked for Skywald and Warren, however, were Spanish, and often associated with the Selecciones Illustradas studio in Barcelona. At the conclusion of his essay on “The Spanish Invasion” in Comic Book Artist 1.4 (Spring 1999), David A. Roach argues that although much of this work was accomplished (“the highest expression of a nation’s artistic tradition”), the “invasion” itself was short-lived and influenced few—if any—contemporary comics artists. Scream #5 is a tomb for the ornate Spanish style, for a forgotten visual approach.

9.

Let’s go back in time again, back to the mid-1970s: what is the state of horror in American popular culture at the time of Scream #5’s release? In film, this was an unstable period, as leering vampires and haunted houses were replaced by a “New Horror” (to use Ron Rosenbaum’s term) of greater psychological and visual verisimilitude. The movies of England’s Hammer Studios, especially the entries in their Dracula and Frankenstein series, were widely distributed in the U.S. and represented the most successful example of old-style horror in 1960s cinema. But by the early 1970s, Hammer bottomed out, turning to unregulated sex and gore, and bizarre genre combinations to juice up box office. Personally, I like the Hammer films of this period—I’m still infatuated with Ingrid Pitt in The Vampire Lovers (1970), and inexplicably fond of the Hammer-Golden Harvest co-production The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974), a woebegone attempt to cash in on the Kung-Fu craze—but the Hammer movie monsters were quickly displaced by rawer, more viscerally unsettling movies like Night of the Living Dead (1968) and The Last House on the Left (1972).

In Shock Value (2011), his recent history of “New Horror,” Jason Zinoman characterizes the emerging post-Hammer aesthetic thusly:

In the late sixties, the film industry was changing. Rules about obscenity and violence were in flux. The “Midnight Movie” was reaching a young audience that embraced underground and cult films. Starting in the second half of 1968, the flesh-eating zombie and the remote serial killer emerged as the new dominant movie monsters, the vampire and werewolf of their day. A new emphasis on realism took hold, vying for attention with the fantastical wing of the genre. Just as important was how the writers of these movies shifted the focus away from narrative and towards a deceptively simpler storytelling with a constantly shifting point of view. Movies were more graphic. The relationship with the audience became increasingly confrontational, and that was a result largely of the new class of directors who were making low-budget monies for drive-in theaters and exploitation houses across the country. (6)

Zinoman then offers up a litany of auteurs who reinvented horror both outside and inside Hollywood: Roman Polanski, George Romero, William Friedkin, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, and others.

10.

Did the “New Horror” infiltrate comics? The color mainstream comics of the era were too constrained by the Comics Code to emulate The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and the Marvel black-and-white magazines always seemed to me a slightly naughtier version of the mainstream stuff, complete with the same continuing characters (Conan, Dracula, the Hulk) and creators (Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, John Buscema). And I don’t see any traces of New Horror in Scream #5, just Poe adaptations and Frankenstein monsters.

The only publisher that dips into New Horror during the 1970s is Warren. Although Warren was the best of the black-and-white publishers, its quality is maddeningly inconsistent; Archie Goodwin’s terrific tenure as editor-in-chief and primary writer of the Warren line (1964-67), for instance, was followed by a lackluster, financially unstable period when Creepy and Eerie were rife with reprints from the Goodwin era. Luckily, the emergence of the filmic New Horror coincided with a renaissance at Warren, as Louise Jones Simonson edited the comics (1974-79) and with art director Kim McQuaite modernized the look of the magazines.

Simonson’s skill as an editor, along with Warren’s status as the premiere horror publisher, kept major talents at Creepy and Eerie, talents more in sync with the innovations of New Horror than Hewetson and the Skywald stable. Bruce Jones and Bernie Wrightson’s classic “Jenifer” (Creepy #63, July 1974) isn’t about vampires and werewolves; Jenifer is a new breed of monster that unsettlingly combines hideousness, cannibalism and overwhelming sex appeal, and the story unfolds in naturalistic locales (day-lit woods, a suburban house, a run-down motel) rather than in gothic castles and haunted houses. Another New Horror Warren tale is Jim Stenstrum and Neal Adams’ “Thrillkill” (Creepy #75, November 1975), which emulates Peter Bogdanovich’s film Targets (1968) in taking inspiration from Charles Whitman’s real-life sniper rampage at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966. It’s stories like these that we remember from the 1970s black-and-white magazines—because they represent peak work by important creators, and because they bring the violent, transgressive, experimental vibe of New Horror into comics—while virtually all the Skywald material is forgotten.

(Continued)

]]> http://www.tcj.com/the-ballad-of-axe-faced-anne-comics-criticism-contexts/feed/ 60 http://www.tcj.com/monday/ http://www.tcj.com/monday/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:00:15 +0000 Dan Nadel http://www.tcj.com/?p=29951 Continue reading →]]> Happy Monday. We’re please to announce that we’ve begun a little partnership with The Rumpus. Thanks to Paul Madonna, The Rumpus will feature a couple of TCJ pieces every month. This doesn’t really affect you if you’re already reading this, but we’re pleased and excited.

On this very site Craig Fischer brings you a beast of a post that takes a Skywald horror comic as its base and expands from there. Love it.

And in more internal news, Fantagraphics OGs Preston White and Mike Catron have returned to the fold. Tom Spurgeon has the lowdown and an interview with Mike. Welcome back, guys!

Ok, now we’ll leave our own orbit and go… elsewhere:

Some “living my life” posts to link to here… Paul Karasik doing it up in Angouleme. Jessica Abel on moving to France and making career choices, Lynda Barry on what we remember, and Kyle Baker on the creative life.

Rub the Blood editors Ian Harker and Pat Aulisio got the Inkstuds treatment. I confess that I don’t really understand the Rob Liefeld nostalgia thing, but one man’s Paul Gulacy is another man’s Rob Liefeld (and yes, it’s only men), so, y’know, I get it in the abstract. Man.

And the pages from Rokuro Taniuchi’s 1948 children’s comic The Magic Underground Castle at 50 Watts is pure joy.

Goin’ back to Cali

Just this last Thursday I was at The Escapist Comic Bookstore in Berkeley – and the other night I did my song and dance at Mission: Comics and Art. Two unbelievable comic book stores that impressed me tons – with enthusiastic crowds to boot – a nice way to start this tour.

I was embarassed at the Escapist cuz I only brought 10 handouts – thinking “no more than ten people are going to show up”. And of course I was caught short when about 25 folks did, ha! Ahem. Doing my Nutty Professor routine distracted them from the bungle.

How can I describe the scene – me behind a folding table with a large sheaf of papers and shuffling them about holding various ones up to make a point, “Here is the size CF draws his originals and here is the size of a Wally Wood page – one is 8.5 x 11 and the other is 12 x 16. What’s the big deal about that? Well, if you want to draw like CF or like Wally Wood – don’t you want to know how big they made their marks? When you go to a museum you aren’t looking at a reduced reproduction of a Picasso drawing. You see the marks actual size.

“Whenever I really want to study a comic book artist I try and find out what size their originals were. I have a Roy Crane original that rearranged my thinking. There is nothing like seeing an original and understanding how the artist made his marks. But of course most of us can’t afford originals so the thing I recommend doing is going down to the photocopy place and enlarging your favorite cartoonist’s comic up to original size. I did that for some Gene Colan comics and it really helped me see his work more clearly and to understand the way the marks were made.”

And then I probably launched into some other riff. I can’t remember. I just wing it and try and gauge what the audience is picking up on. Too much of the geometry talk gets a little abstract – so I keep it lively, keep it lively. But really the folks were super engaged and asking great questions and had me on my toes – so thank you, thank you all for coming prepared and ready to rumble.

Thank you Sophie, Jordan, Ray, Perry, and Jack at The Escapist for letting me do my schtick at this amazing gem of a comic book store. Packed with great stuff from stem to stern – I felt like I was in the hull of a ship lined with every comic book, manga, BD, mini-comic and zine and imaginable.

Thank you Leef at Mission: Comics and Art. Here it is – the new regime – this store felt like a gallery as much as a bookstore – and it works.  The gallery portion really lent itself to my routine where I put a template for a comic up on the wall and it looks like a postage stamp. In the heart of Friday night San Francisco – thrilled to be back in the world. Thanks everybody for coming down to see what I was peddlin’.
—–

big thanks to Jessi Rymill and William Bostick for putting me up – and to Gabby Gamboa for going out for a burrito and for reminiscing about 1994 Bay Area comics scene with me. RIP DYLAN. The nineties were over by ’96. Rip it up.

photo at top from The Escapist by Perry Shirley

Tour Dates – Frank Santoro Signing / Workshop Tour

NEXT WEEK! and BEYOND!

Thursday 2/9
Floating World Comics
Portland, OR

Saturday 2/11
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
Seattle, WA

Thursday 2/16
Lucky’s Comics and Games
Vancouver, BC

———-

Frank Santoro’s Comic Book Layout Workshop

Why do some comics read easier than others? Is it the story, the cartooning or the page design? Frank Santoro will demonstrate how some cartoonists such as Hal Foster andHerge used visual harmonies and structures in their page designs much like classical oil painters. Discover the similarities between visual and musical harmonies and how some of the great cartoonists used dynamic symmetry like a map to organize their stories.

Also, after the talk, Frank will lead an informal FREE workshop focusing on formats available for the comic book maker in 2012. Everyone is welcome. Come see what Frank Santoro’s Correspondence Course is all about – or come on down just to argue with Frank – maybe even buy a book and get it signed.

As are the titles of the upcoming Watchmen prequels. Like Dan, I don’t have much interesting to say about this development. It’s dumb and mean, but not surprising by any stretch. Eric Stephenson from Image said most of what needs saying, in a blog post that has seen much deserved traffic.

This is a good comics Tumblr. Great links pretty much every day.

This find from a Cerebus-related Tumblr is a real treasure. “I have to credit all the research that I did on Oscar Wilde for convincing me that I don’t want to be like that [almost universally acknowledged as the greatest conversationalist of his day]. If I can end my life with a large body of completed works and a reputation as a cantankerous old hermit I’ll consider my time well spent.” It makes you wonder about paths not taken. If Dave Sim hadn’t gotten interested in Wilde, he might have become one of the greatest raconteurs of our age! Actually there are a few things I’d dispute from Sim’s comments. Wilde wrote far more than just “one really good play and one really good short novel”—even if he’d never written anything other than his essays, he’d probably still be read today. Also, I wonder about whether it really makes sense to value the written word over the experienced moment. Obviously the written word is better for us—we can read it. But surely it’s not wise to only produce for posterity. The appropriate example here may be Ozymandias (not the character from Watchmen, which is apparently impossible to escape).

Our own Kristy Valenti writes about Chester Brown and Craig Thompson as purveyors of “Dick Lit” over at Comixology.

And Frank Santoro comic-book layout workshop hits Mission:Comics & Art tonight. A must-see if you’re in the San Francisco area.

The real beat of the sequence though is in the subtle, tossed off line that comes near the end, right before the re-introduction of a scene-stealing character not seen since 2010’s Abyssal Plain mini-series. One of the Russian characters apologizes for the perceived rudeness of his colleagues, claiming that their “small English vocabulary limits them to direct language. That’s all.” It’s a minor note, an idea that would never have crossed my mind, but it’s so gorgeously simple that I can immediately tell I’m going to treat it as a fact about those learning English for the rest of my life. Of course that’s why foreigners are always so rude: they haven’t gotten to the point in class where they learn all the nice words!

That’s the B.P.R.D. in a nutshell, actually: stuff you already know about, done with efficiency. It’s stories that seem to have been gone over more than once, with scripts that don’t read like first drafts. And of course, it’s a team book about monster fighting, and when it’s doing its job well–which is most of the time–the only better example of serialized genre fiction to be found is going to be on television.

I’m not sure when television took what genre comics used to be able to do and started doing it so much better, although I guess the staple answer people always pull out is that show Wiseguy. But that kind of thing–the 13- to 20-hour movie, packed to the gills with cliffhangers–is all that television dramas do nowadays, it seems like. Comics, the kind published by DC, Marvel, and Dark Horse, haven’t been able to compete, and there are no signs it will be capable of doing so anytime soon. One of the best examples available is Dynamite’s Game of Thrones adaptation–there, you’ll find a series that’s taken six horribly drawn monthly issues to reach the same moment that HBO’s hugely successful (and from the little I saw, gorgeously rendered) television version reached by the conclusion of the first episode. Six months of ugly comics for twenty-four dollars? Or one hour with Sean Bean? Don’t worry: this is a rhetorical question, one that the entire country has already answered for you.

The Mignola-verse, on the other hand, has seemed bulletproof. Over and over, Dark Horse has published comics that are as consistently good-looking as they are compelling, and they’ve basically been out there without any direct competition. Never straight fantasy or science fiction, and only intermittent in their embrace of horror, these comics are resolutely uncool, set amongst the dusty libraries of monster dictionaries and Lovecraft references, yet aiming away from that audience entirely. (I couldn’t prove it, but I would bet you that, like me, the majority of the people who love these comics know next to nothing about “Cthulhu,” a failing we are unlikely to rectify anytime soon.)

It would be foolish not to attribute a hearty share of the B.P.R.D. portion of that regard to former artist Guy Davis. Taking over the books from a revolving door of creators back in 2003 and branding them with an elastic visual style that could see the book through all manner of stories without skipping a beat, Davis’s near decade of work on the title stands as one of the few great artistic runs of the last twenty years. His departure from the series–which has been treated with an unbelievably irritating ambivalence in the editorial notes that clog up the back of the single issues–should, by rights, have sounded the death knell for the series, and based off the first attempt by his replacement, the two-issue Monsters mini-series, that conclusion was one that didn’t seem far off. A meager, disappointing story, Monsters wasn’t poorly drawn–in fact, new artist Tyler Crook acquitted himself well, delivering one of the most upsetting images of the year–but the story itself was the absolute opposite of what writers Arcudi and Mignola seemed to have long prided themselves on doing. It wasn’t just bad, it was even worse: it was unnecessary. A one-note bit of horror that read like it had been constructed off of a voice mail, it was the B.P.R.D. equivalent of that two-hour 24 movie Fox made to fill the gap after the 2007 writers’ strike. It not only failed to introduce readers to their new artist, it stained the franchise with a sense of the same cash-in exploitation that has always been DC and Marvel’s stock-in-trade. The frustration was only compounded by the fact that it so quickly followed another dire B.P.R.D. mini-series, that one written by Scott Allie, the series’s long-time editor.

It’s tempting to proclaim that, following the recent conclusion of Russia, everything is back in its proper place again, and that things look to be on track for another decade of monster-hunting, apocalypse-staving pleasures. For the most part, that does seem to be the case–the seeds of weirdness and terror set up back in the end-of-world predictions of the wonderful King of Fear story seem to have begun to flower, Arcudi and Mignola have yet to lose their flair for mixing the soldier porn of old war comics with bizarre supernatural adversaries, and Tyler Crook’s successes (a panel of a point blank execution, a fantastic car chase, and the delightfully flustered brow of the ever put-upon Kate Corrigan) outnumber his misses. The only fly in the ointment seems to be, again, those pesky letter columns. Issue after issue, Scott Allie promises more–more comics, more artists, more cover options. Want it or not, there’s stuff on the way.

Thanks, but no thanks. “Stuff” is something that comics already has plenty of. What we need is a lot more meat.

In very sad news, the great Mike Kelley died on Tuesday. Mike wrote a phenomenal essay on Gary Panter for the monograph I edited, and most recently we co-curated an exhibition in L.A. He was a brilliant and generous man and one well-versed in everything from Bob Powell to the Art Ensemble of Chicago to Fluxus. This is barely related to comics, I know, but his influence on visual culture was, and will continue to be, massive, and you should know about his work and legacy. His studio and close friends released the following statement, which should be read. Then go out and look at his work.

“Our dear friend the artist Mike Kelley (born 1954 in Detroit) has passed away. Unstintingly passionate, habitually outspoken and immeasurably creative in every genre or material with which he took up—and that was most of them, from performance and sculpture to painting, installation and video, from experimental music to writing in a thousand voices—Mike was an irresistible force in contemporary art and the wider culture. For Mike, history existed only to be reconstructed, memory was selective, faulty and willful and life itself vibrant but often dysfunctional. We can hear him disagreeing with us. We cannot believe he is gone. But we know his legacy will continue to touch and challenge anyone who crosses its path. We will miss him. We will keep him with us.”

-Kelley Studio and Emi Fontana, Kourosh Larizadeh, Paul and Karen McCarthy, Fredrik Nilsen, Anita Pace, Jim Shaw, Mary Clare Stevens, Marnie Weber, John C. Welchman [for all Mike’s many friends near and far]

Elsewhere online, Peggy Burns has a great summation of her experience at Angouleme. Here’s a fine piece on World War III magazine being displayed at MoMA. Oh, and this is an impressive 24-hour comic. Finally, the NY Times probably has the best coverage of the Watchmen debacle. It’s sad and stupid and hardly worth commenting about because what should we expect from such a cynical company? We could expect better, but that’s actually foolish at this point. It’s outrageous but not surprising.

After fifteen years of collecting, research and study, I finally got a chance in 2008 to co-edit and design a monograph on the largely forgotten, but great, Canadian cartoonist Doug Wright. This was a project dear to my heart and I wanted to make it something special. The meat-and-potatoes part of the design job was no worry. I knew what to do with the biographical essay and with the reprinting of his comic strips. That was straightforward and would surely work itself out at the drawing table with thought and thumbnails. What worried me, as the book came together, was that I didn’t have an overarching design concept for it. I was stumped. Even though Wright’s comic strip Nipper was ostensibly a domestic family gag strip, its most defining attribute was actually the quiet, matter-of-fact, slice-of-life nature of the work. Setting was all-important. Wright’s work was quintessentially Canadian so it went without saying that the book should have a Canadian flavour too. The strip practically broadcasts the essence of Canada in the 1950s and 1960s. I puzzled and puzzled. I remember thinking it was all-important to have Nipper on the cover. I drew up a bunch of disappointing thumbnails. One had Nipper among a downpour of falling maple leaves. What was I thinking? I sure didn’t want that! Thank God for serendipity. As the time to begin working on the book approached I happened to read an article in the Globe and Mail on the Vimy Ridge Memorial in France. It didn’t hit me immediately, but later that day some disparate thoughts came together. It had often struck me that the central irony in Wright’s life was that he had been raised fatherless yet had unconsciously (perhaps even unwillingly) picked as his life’s work a comic strip about a father and his sons. It was too perfect to be an accident. This enticing bit of back story had intrigued me but I hadn’t seen any reason to dragit into the design. Not until that Globe article. Wright’s father had been killed in the First World War. He wasn’t killed at Vimy, and he wasn’t even a Canadian (a Brit), but his death in that war left Wright to be raised alone by his mother. I had read a letter that Wright’s father wrote to him from the battlefield shortly before he died. Advice on how to be a man. That had to have had a very powerful effect on the young boy, and probably on the grown man too, as he read it again in the years that followed. I know thismuch, it was still among Wright’s papers after his death. Admittedly, this was a pretty tenuous thread on which to string the design of the book. But, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes intuition is the strongest deciding factor in these matters. Smart or a stretch — the decision was made. The book would be built around the appearanceof the Vimy Memorial. It wouldn’t be overt. No one would ever guess it to look at the finished book but it would give a deeper underlying meaning and a clear visual plan that would allow me to structure the concrete design of the book itself.

Step One: The first thing I needed was to get a good feel for the impressive Walter Allward-designed memorial. It is located in France, and a visit to the site was out of the question. I assumed a good book of photos would solve my problem but, to my surprise, I could find no such book in existence. I’m still dumbstruck, writing this down — but it appears that no one has ever published a good coffee-table book (or even apoor one) on the Vimy Memorial. Is that possible? I certainly couldn’t locate one. If any reader knows of such a book — please, let me know. I’d like to own a copy.

Anyhow, with that avenue closed, I turned to my least-favourite source of visual information — Google Image. Over an afternoon I explored the available photographs online. I found a blueprint of the memorial and by organizing the photos in sequence I was able to mentally visit the site, approach the memorial, walk up the stairs and make my wayaround its towers and sculptures, and exit down the rear stairs againand away. Not the same as actually being there, but as close as I was likely to get before the publication date of the Doug Wright book. I admit, this is turning out to be a rather plodding account of my methods. It feels drained of the creative enthusiasm I felt during theprocess of putting the book together. It wasn’t a dry affair at all.I was very focused — deeply immersed in the work. I’d certainly hate for anyone to think I studied that memorial dispassionately. The site has a remarkable potency — even with the veil of the Internet between the viewer and the monument. That shrouded female figure of sorrowing Canada has to be one of the most moving sculptures I’ve even encountered.

I sometimes wonder if Allward’s masterpiece wouldn’t have had a more central place in our national imagery if it had been built here on Canadian soil. I think most Canadians are largely unfamiliar with it. It is such an impressive work — so rich in national imagery — it should be as iconic to Canadians as the Lincoln Memorial is to Americans. But it isn’t. I’m a cartoonist first and foremost. Design is a secondary pursuit and, because of that, most of my design work probably has a narrative underpinning to it. So, naturally, after mentally making my waythrough the monument I sat down and roughed out a “storyboard” of the “walk”.

This was a first attempt. Sketching my way into the idea. I decided this “walk” would comprise the opening pages of the book. I intended a long section between the half-title and the introduction. Doing some quick calculations based on the page count (240 pages total), minus what I would need for the strip reprints, the portfolio of Wright illustrations and the long biographical section, I determined I could likely carve out nineteen or twenty pages for my self-indulgent “poem” to Wright and Vimy Ridge (the symbolic stand-in for his dad)

Going back to my rough storyboard I refined the “narrative” with the new limitation of ten double-page spreads in mind. I also reduced the imagery to silhouettes so I could start to think of the pages as simple graphic shapes rather than the specifics of the actual monument. It still encapsulated the same movement — from walkway to stairs, through the monument, and out and gone — but it was now abstracted into pure shape.  I’m cutting out a few steps. To go from the storyboard to the final images in the book required a lot of shuffling through Wright’s work, and a certain amount of tedious trial and error to match up ideas with pre-existing images. No one reading the final book would ever recognize my opening sequence as an ode to the lost soldiers of WorldWar I, and it wouldn’t have made much sense if they could — for the reader, these pages had to be a coherent visual sequence about Doug Wright and his main character, Nipper. Allow me to cut this short and not bog down the writing with all the boring details of mix and match that went into crafting that transformation of Vimy to Nipper. Instead, let me simply say that I worked through a handful of ideas and finally settled on a simple narrative sequence (Nipper running wild) interrupted by a few compelling images and artifacts from Wright’s life. I’ll let the following thumbnail speak for itself. I recognize that it isn’t likely to make much sense to anyone who doesn’t know the final book intimately. To bring clarity, allow me to walk you through each spread. To do this properly I’ll need to go back and connect the Vimy storyboard and the above thumbnails to the final book spreads themselves.

One: We approach the Vimy Memorial from a great distance. I thought it was important to open the book with a calm horizontal image that would immediately begin to establish afeeling of place and direction. In my little storyboard it’s nothing but a low horizon.A nice quiet bit of Doug Wright landscape fills that space. I had to do some real searching around for the perfect Wright drawing to both capture quietness and fulfill the proper space consideration. This one did the job.The horizon is low and there is plenty of sky above to allow me to introduce the first part of the title without compromising the horizontal thrust of the page.

Two: Here on the second spread of the book the tone changes. Now we pick up the pace by using Doug Wright’s iconic Nipper both as a character and as a design element.  In the storyboard you can just make out the shape of the memorial on the horizon. I introduce Nipper here as a stand-in for that shape. The horizon beneath him offers a perfect space for the rest of the book title. Lined up low on the page and bleeding off in three directions, it reads as a continuation of the horizon line on the previous landscape. Whereas the previous spread is quiet and still (a reasonable mood for the opening of this sort of book), strong motion is called for hereon the second spread. Motion that will carry the reader through the rest of the opening sequence. On this spread I needed to propel the reader into the book and that dynamic running figure with his strong horizontal motion-line scoots the eye across the double-page spread with great force. We’re off and running.

Three: On the storyboard, the towers of the Vimy Memorial come into focus. Large and looming. To me, this works both in a cinematic manner (as a kind of tracking shot) and as graphic design. Nothing is more basic to a graphic design sensibility than simply varying the size of shapes that are in juxtaposition. Big contrasted with small and vice versa. Horizontal with vertical. And so forth. Since the first two spreads were basically just horizontal bars it seemed a good time to shake that up with some vertical shapes. Nipper’s perplexed parents stand in for the shapes of the towers. Note the white ground line used to  connect with the previous horizons. That keeps the eye moving right as well.

Four: Up the Vimy staircase. While studying the photos of Allward’s monument I couldn’t help observing that the memorial was actually rather complex to walk around. More twists and turns than I could fit into this extended visual metaphor. Even with twenty pages at my command there was no way I would truly get at the real sense of walking about up there. As you will see in the next few spreads, necessity demanded some simplification. The actions shown are mostly up, over, and down again. This spread is a just a basic sleight-of-hand. A case where the obvious works best. The figure of Nipper climbing some stairs simply mirrors the actual climb up the memorial staircase.  Again, I continue the movement from left to right to keep the pages turning. Note the indicia over on the left-hand side of the spread. These indulgent pages still need to fulfill nuts-and-bolts tasks as well.

Five: Now the towers are closer. Here I break my brief Nipper narrative (before it gets too tiresome) and introduce artifacts relating to Wright’s career. This kind of shift in visual tone makes a tremendous difference in how an extended sequence reads. I’m not sure if I could boil my thinking down to a set of solid principles but as I said before, changes in size and scale and rhythm are vitally important in managing to keep this sort of opening sequence visually interesting. The vertical Nipper strip (the very first one published) stands on the left to represent tower one and a great stack of the Standard Magazine (where Nipper appeared weekly) poses as tower two. The heart of the Vimy Memorial. The weeping figure of Mother Canada.

Six: I stop the forward motion here and turn Nipper back in contemplation. He’s actually looking in the opposite direction than the Vimy figure but I wished to create a dead stop here and I needed to turn him to the left to halt the reader’s eye. I also tried to maintain (with this particular Wright landscape) something of that dynamic V-shaped horizon you see in the storyboard sketch. Obviously I’m not hoping to capture any of the profound emotion of Allward’s sculpture on these pages. I’m just dropping Nipper in as a place holder for the graphic shapes. I’m certainly not equating the symbols themselves — Nipper and the memorial — just establishing a symbolic, emotional underpinning for the design. A kind of sympathetic magic between Wright’s lost father and the symbol of Canada’s war dead. An odd choice, perhaps, but one that intuitively worked for me.

Seven: As we walk around a corner of the memorial we see the towers in perspective. This is my one nod to the complexity of the views you would likely see if you were strolling through the monument itself. There are a few perspectives I could have picked for the towers but this one, with the left-hand tower receding, perfectly suited my graphic needs.Its small-vs.-big dynamic suggested some images of Doug Wright himself that I had hoped to squeeze into the book’s front section. Wright’s wartime photograph takes the position of the further tower and the closer tower is replaced by a large self-portrait from the same era. It goes without saying that getting a shot of Wright in uniform into this sequence was a must.

Eight: Down the stairs in both the storyboard and the completed spread. Again, as in the fourth spread shown a few pages back, I’ve just plopped Nipper down on a staircase. Job done. I’d like to imagine that the reader will view this staircase as a different staircase than the one Nipper ascended, but I’m not all that sure if that is the case. I see it that way because I’m thinking of that imaginary trip up, around and down from the Vimy memorial but readers are surely picking up none of that. For all I know they aren’t even taking these spreads collectively as a sequence. It’s tricky to try and guess how other people process images.Especially since most readers likely just flip by this sort of introductory material to get to the meat of the book. Sigh. Note that the empty space of the right-hand page does double duty as the dedication page.

Nine: A final look back at the two towers before leaving. They loom large over the viewer and produce a nice vertical symmetry. Just the right shapes I needed for the title page and its verso frontispiece drawing. The frontispiece is a sketchbook drawing Wright did from the window of his Montreal studio. A strong vertical — especially with the upward thrust of those buildings in the sketch. Even though I wanted to mirror this effect with my hand lettering on the right-hand page, I didn’t want to make it too boring by having the column of lettering exactly the same width as the sketch. Maybe that’s a cheat (since the towers are the same width) but I think the lettering works much better at this narrower gauge and that gap of whitespace in the column really gives the design some breathing room as well. The spread still strongly reads as two vertical towers to my eye.

Ten: Back to the horizon motif again, and we are done and gone. Very little explanation is needed here. A dead-on horizon on the storyboard and the same for the final spread. I included Nipper here because his motion keeps the eye moving right and because it would be a pretty dull graphic design with only a red bar along the bottom. It gives the sequence some closure too. I also thought this would be a good opportunity to feature Nipper’s famous little hot-rod pedal car. I didn’t use it throughout for the very practical reason that it would have been an awkward fit with all those staircases. I couldn’t leave it out entirely, though, because of the fact that if there is any detail from Wright’s long-running strip that people recall (besides the Nipper’s memorable bald head) it is that little pedal car.

The Book Itself: I should say a few words about how the underlying thought process about Vimy affected the look of the physical book as well. To begin with, the book had to be tall for the rather practical reason that the comic strips were originally designed in a vertical format. Sothat was a prerequisite right there. Of course, that played verynicely with my Vimy metaphor. Especially because the Wright book was to be the first volume in an eventual two-volume set. Two tall books– two towers. Voila. Once thatobvious image fell into place I just followed that line of thought toits natural conclusion. If the books were to be monumental, then they needed to be unadorned — slab-like. Of course, they needed to be eye-catching as well. A couple of grey slabs might not be the idealimage for book collections of light-hearted comic strips. They wouldn’t exactly stand out on the shelves of the bookstore either. Always a consideration when designing a book. My solution was to encase the book in the shiniest foil I could locate (which, unsurprisingly, was in Hong Kong). I chose red foil because Wright always used a second colour of red in his strips, and because no colour is more associated with Canada than red. An easy decision. No decision, really. Again, though, a big shiny red slab might not be quite enough to transmit the subject matter of the book. Nipper had to be on the bookcover somewhere. Stubbornly sticking to my sculptural motifs, I decided to die-cut an oval into the front cover that could reveal an uncoloured but embossed image of Nipper inside the book. Like a bas-relief it would suggest sculptural detail but be subtle enough not to detract from the overall monolithic surface of the book itself.

I was happy with the final results. It’s a physically imposing book at 38 by 29 centimetres. A belly band spared me the anguish of cluttering up that stunning foil with type. I kept the case entirely text free. Thank goodness for a forgiving publisher. A few years have passed and we still haven’t produced that second volume. It’s coming, some day. Drawn and Quarterly decided that we should release a few inexpensive Wright books in between the two to help build an audience for his work. In some ways I think the book has been a hard sell. Canadians are a poor audience for their own pop-culture heritage and, God knows, Americans don’t care one whit about us. I’ve started to think I might not design the second volumeas another big slab. The later strips were more horizontal in shapethan vertical. I might just change horses in midstream –design the second volume in a landscape format. It needn’t be a tower. The first book can carry the symbolic weight of both towers. Maybe the second book could be the base of the memorial. Maybe I can come up with some clever slipcase that holds both books. Maybe. I’d like that foil again, though. That would tie them together, no matter what the shape. Maybe gold this time. Or silver? Did my “hidden” design help sell the Wright book in any way? I sincerely doubt it. Did it add any Canadianness to it? That’s a good question. It certainly did for me as the designer … but if the reader cannot detect a hidden theme what possible purpose does it serve? Another good question. As an artist I believe it’s essential to try and communicate some quality of your own life through the work. That can take a lot of forms. Anything from straightforward autobiographical material to work that merely displays your particular sensibilities. Trying to capture some quality of where you live seems like a natural. Sometimes it’s deep, sometimes not so deep. The physical landscape around me makes its way into my stories and into my sketchbook. Inevitably some of it finds its way into my design work. Much of what I’ve talked about in this article is less place-specific — more “Canadian” in the iconic sense. That works for me as well. I love Canada and I’m happy that I am a Canadian. Not in any strident, nationalistic way. I think I love Canada simply because I was born here and I’m familiar with it. It’s part of my memory. Where you grow up shapes your thinking. Even within Canada I’m a regionalist. I love Ontario because I know Ontario. When I go out east, for example, I can recognize that in many ways it’s prettier there. Ontario is progressively growing uglier each decade with its Levittown communities and box stores and four-lane highways. But what can you do? I doubt I’ll ever leave. It’s home. And so, I embrace the images of Canada by association. Whether corny, mundane or profound, they strike some chord in me. Perhaps this form ofthinking is fruitless — just an egocentric whim. Could be. Still, in my humble opinion, a whim is usually worth pursuing.

Charcoal drawing by Anke Feuchtenberger in the Cartoonist/Painting show at the Comics Museum

Yet problems persist and one is tempted to see them exemplified by this year’s Grand Prix winner, Jean-Claude Denis, who will preside over next year’s fortieth anniversary. It is not that the Angoulême academy of past Grand Prix winners, which selected Denis, has all that much say in the planning and execution of festival, but their selection of what is arguably the highest honor formally bestowed on comics makers worldwide is still strongly symbolic, and the president each year has a unique chance to shape its artistic direction and eventually to point the way forward as part of the academy that chooses his or her successors.

From Denis' Luc Leroi book "Toutes les fleurs s'appellent Tiaré" (2000)

But then, the Angoulême academy has always tended to award their peers, mostly those of the seventies and eighties generations who continue to dominate its ranks, which has the further problem of favoring male French creators by a wide margin. In 39 years of existence, and among 44 inductees (certain years have seen more than one person selected), 34 grand prix winners have been French, with even Belgium trailing far behind at four, and the rest of the field consisting of three Americans, one Italian, one Swiss, and one Argentine. Of all 44, only two are women. Although hardly more than moderately popular or critically acclaimed, Denis is a neat fit: he studied, and has frequently collaborated with the artistically congenial Martin Veyron (Grand Prix 2001) and plays in a band with Dupuy and Berberian (Grand Prix 2008) with whom he has also collaborated on a book.

So the Grand Prix this year seems a bit of a step back, but one could hardly have expected this august group to have selected a foreigner two years in a row, and the many younger, already deserving French or France-based Grand Prix prospects — there were rumors about David B., Christophe Blain, and Marjane Satrapi — will surely get it in the future. And in any case, this year’s Spiegelman presidency demonstrated in spades the international potential of the position. It just may happen that once the younger, more internationalized generation that is starting to join get more of a say, we will see a more international, gender-equitable academy.

In any case, there genuinely seemed to be more international guests and visitors at this year than any time in recent memory, and the programming gave international comics a lot of space, with panels and interviews focusing on significant Anglophone creators and editors from the eighties till now — Brian Azzarello, Charles Burns, Eddie Campbell, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Francoise Mouly, Joe Sacco, Spiegelman, Craig Thompson, and others (Chris Ware was supposed to appear but had to cancel). And in a welcome innovation, most of these people were, as far as I could tell, even competently interviewed — otherwise a rarity at the festival.

Add to this wide-ranging programming featuring European cartoonists (Fred, Guy Delisle, Maximilien Le Roy, Francis Masse, Lorenzo Mattotti, José Muñoz, Isabelle Pralong, Joost Swarte, and many more) and exhibition showcases — within and without the festival’s own framework — focusing on such diverse areas of the world as Armenia, Palestine, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and Turkey, as well as others in group shows, and you have a rich international tapestry, even if the individual efforts were highly uneven in quality.

Entering the Mangasie tent

The French edition of Delisle's award winner

In general, however, the awards — or Fauves as they were dubbed when Lewis Trondheim overhauled the system in 2006 — are losing their focus. Trondheim’s much-needed transition into the selection of a handful of essentials from a list of nominees has been modified and tweaked each year, resulting in an increasingly confusing and commercially determined field. Complaints from mainstream publishers that the awards primarily catered to “alternatives” resulted in a special Fauve for “Best series” a few years ago; the following year, each “essential” was given a title that confuses more than it elucidates (see above); and now, in a move of blatant pandering the festival has inaugurated a special award for best crime comic, sponsored by their commercial partner the French railroad company SNCF. Ever a headache for the festival, these constant changes in themselves devalue what remains Europe’s most prestigious comics awards. (And don’t even get me started on the evolution of the audience/SNCF/Fnac award — I wouldn’t be able to finish). It seems high time for someone in the festival’s steering body put their foot down.

As initially suggested, the selection of Denis for the Grand Prix can (somewhat unfairly, but still relevantly) be seen as symptomatic of several of these issues, but above all the ongoing struggle with the past not only of the festival, but of the comics community at large. So much has changed in the last twenty years — commercially as well as artistically — that most institutions are still playing catch up.

Signing at the L'Association booth, open this year!

Check out the Comics Journal/Metabunker photo series from Angoulême here. Apologies to my colleague Erik barkman for stealing his title.

Here’s the problem:

When I was a kid there was all sorts of weird shit hanging around the house in aid of the comic my Dad was illustrating – From Hell. There were reference pictures of disemboweled Victorian prostitutes pinned to his drawing board, a rotting kidney from the local butcher glistening on a handkerchief with a cloud of flies to keep it company, and a bunch of Polaroids of big hairy Alan Moore standing in front of various important buildings. In amongst all this, plus the ancient top hat that smelled weird and the books with bloodied knives on the cover, were copies of Taboo, the Steve Bissette anthology series in which From Hell first appeared. Either I was a nosy kid and made off with the comic myself or Dad saw that it had a cat in it and handed it to me without thinking – both are plausible. What I do remember is becoming completely enthralled by this one story in Taboo 4. It was called The Eyes of the Cat, though I wouldn’t know that until much later because it still has its French title sans translation: Les Yeux du Chat. “Lez Yurks Doo Chat” didn’t mean all that much to me at the age of seven.

It wasn’t like the other comics in the book – it read like a picture book, with full-page illustrations and a line or two of text, no more. It was on the brightest of bright yellow pages. It had a cat in it, and a bird. I saw no problem in filing this picture book next to my Little Golden Books despite the fact said bird kills the cat, yanks its eyeballs out by the root and flies back to his human master with them clenched in his claws wherein the boy slots the stolen eyes into his empty sockets and flails around blindly, pretending he can see. From where I was standing in my socks and pink pajamas it was no worse than the black inky horrors being produced on the household drawing board.

Lord knows how it made its battered return to Dad’s archives, but it must have done. It disappeared from my collection and it wasn’t until three years ago, at 22, that I was reunited with a copy of this thing and actually comprehended what it was I was reading all those years ago. It’s just as strange and wonderful as I remember but also totally horrific and in no way even remotely appropriate to the eyes of a child. Is it Bissette’s fault I turned out the way I did? That I would go on to spend sunny afternoons inside watching terrible films like Necromantik? Partially, maybe. But what a lucky kid I was to have Moebius on my bookshelf. (I recently thanked Steve for the astonishingly good taste I accidentally had back then, and he responded by mailing me the Taboos I was missing.)

What I like about Moebius’ work here is the quiet intensity, the hypnotic almost metronomic quality that lets the horror catch you totally off-guard. It’s dark and atmospheric and has no light in it but the single shard that eventually dooms the poor cat. I read an interview with Moebius somewhere where he called The Eyes an example of the “effective horror story”: one in which the genre is a soaring night-bird of prey stalking the reader in an effort to awaken them and open their eyes. It’s an interesting way of putting it given how I took to clenching my eyes shut near birds of any kind.

Now, here’s my beef:

The story’s inclusion in the 1990 edition of Taboo was its first in English translation, reproduced on yellow pages to match its first appearance as a publisher giveaway in France, in 1978. I don’t know who had the first go at the English translation but his work is not included in the impossibly rare deluxe hardcover edition that is currently taking up a not insubstantial area of my desk.

If you ever had a book read to you when you were little you’ll know that those words become burned onto your brain with a searing clarity you’ll never again be capable of. You knew when a tired reader attempted to skip a page, and you probably called them on it. I read this like any other of my picture books and along with Where The Wild Things Are or The Owl and the Pussycat I could probably recite it verbatim even now. The words were there in somewhat clunky size 14 Arial font and they did, admittedly, look a little classless and temporary next to Moebius’ illustrations. This is where my closeness to the book becomes a problem: I can’t tell if the new translation is better or worse. I don’t like it as much as the previous version, but the words are clearly more poetic, perhaps more suited to the book. But they jar and I have to ignore them. While the artwork is presented beautifully, and it is treat to have actually got my mitts on one of the 750 copies that were printed, I can’t help feeling a bit like the kid who’s been made to sleep at a some other kid’s house where everything is sort of the same but sort of different. Here they have honey on their pancakes instead of maple syrup.

Also, Hayley Campbell reviews Moebius & Jodorowsky’s Eye of the Cat.

Spiegelman arrives at Angoulême:

(via Bhob Stewart)

Over at the Comics Grid, Peter Wilkins responds to our own Craig Fischer’s recent column on Urasawa’s Pluto and doubling.

Tucker Stone has a way with leftovers.

And Alex Cox makes a plea for your support of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Government Issue

When I was a wee lad, one of the favorite books on my shelves was Free Stuff for Kids, a slim, square-shaped paperback full of details about places where, for the cost of postcard postage (remember when people actually mailed postcards?), you could get lots of … well, free junk, including comic books. I was enough of a geek in my youth that the thought of receiving comic books in my mailbox, regardless of quality, was enough to make me giddy, and I would thus cheerfully request copies of Michael Recycle, Sprocketman, or whatever four-color funnies various nonprofit organizations and government agencies had printed up for my benefit.

The thing is, most of those comics were really, really boring, boasting uninspired, stiff artwork draped over exposition-heavy treatises on why you shouldn’t litter, disobey street signs or generally do bad things. Presented at the level of a third-grade textbook, with about the same amount of dynamism, even as a youth I was fully aware that these comics weren’t going to set the world on fire anytime soon, much less inspire youths to some sort of social or community activism.

If nothing else, I can be thankful to Government Issue, a healthy sampling of comics published or otherwise sponsored by the U.S. government and various state offices, for underscoring my initial impressions and showing me I wasn’t missing out on much.

In other words, the bulk of the material contained in this book is deadly dreary and rote, to put it mildly, featuring numerous pages of (notably white and middle class) people framed at waist level, facing each other and droning on about this or that subject. Some of the comics even fail to excel at even a basic competence, exhibiting sub-par art and storytelling skills. The two-page sampling of Abstinence Comix seems to have been drawn by a 13-year-old (which, actually, might explain a lot about the choice of subject matter).

Many of these comics do help break down complex issues, such as inflation, social security and the workings of the federal government, and I suppose judged on that basic level they are a success since that was their main, perhaps only, goal. But the fact remains that, despite editor Richard L. Graham’s efforts to suggest the contrary,  being able to effectively disseminate information does not ipso facto make a work worthy of praise.

The novelty here lies more in the variety of subject matters being discussed than the skill at which they delved into. Look, here’s a comic about syphilis! Here’s one about the zip code! Here’s one about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell! Here’s another on surviving a nuclear explosion! But that enthusiasm quickly fades when one is forced to actively engage the work in question.

There are exceptions of course. Denis Kitchen, Peter Loft, and Pete Poplaski provide some engagingly cartoonish strips on being a smart consumer. Jack Sparling and Malcolm Ater contribute a highly entertaining, literally nightmarish story about bad bicycle behavior. And I would love to have seen more of Al Wiseman’s Dennis the Menace comic about the dangers of household poisons.

Easily the best comic of the bunch is Walt Kelly’s “Pogo Primer for Parents”, a visual lecture on the importance of properly monitoring your child’s television habits that is so charming and funny that it only serves to underscore how drab and lifeless all the other excerpts are by comparison.

Government Issue is a book that will mainly interest scholars and historians. Certainly you can learn a lot about what Americans in various time periods valued and feared by perusing these comics. But beyond that there’s little here to engage or delight the casual reader. There’s a reason most of these comics were originally available for free.

Elsewhere: The Beat brings an Angouleme round-up, and here’s Tom Scioli on French TV. Meanwhile, we have The LA Review of Books on MetaMaus. And a how-to for Mould Map. And congrats to Tom Hart on his Sequential Artists Workshop opening.

And: A sign the Mayans were right. The collected Amethyst is on its way.

One of the obvious problems with immersing myself in a certain area of comics for a month is that any… oh, columns I might happen to write about the comics I’ve responded to in the past week tend to cover the same topics. Nonetheless, I think there’s some worthwhile variation visible above in this image by the late John Hicklenton, working with colorist Keith Page. It’s from the 2009 Rebellion release of Heavy Metal Dredd, a compilation of especially gross and mean Judge Dredd shorts initially conceived in the early ’90s for the European music magazine Rock Power. Douglas Wolk just recently got to it in his weekly chronological reviews of every Dredd collection, an effort I’m glad to be participating in for next week’s entry.

But for now, I’m in the mood to post about Hicklenton, one of my absolute favorite 2000 AD artists, if never the most prolific or at any time a consensus choice. Heavy Metal Dredd is a good way to pick up a solid chunk of his work — much of his output otherwise was in collaboration with writer Pat Mills, on series like Nemesis the Warlock and Third World War, or even the Dark Horse series ZombieWorld — loaded with tense, writing flesh all but lunging against clothing, seemingly every curved line charged with nasty sex. Rarely has Dredd, embodiment of Law, seemed quite so fetishistic, with seemingly every other mighty splash image somehow honed in on his crotch, his vehicle above like a massive bullet protruding out into a society of righteous targets.

Hicklenton had a sticky, stringy way with gore, with further charges these Dredd strips, one of relatively few areas of the character’s history almost entirely attuned to visuals. Simon Bisley was the initial draw to Heavy Metal Dredd, but his approach was heavy on out-and-out comedy: funny faces and weird textures and bodies being knocked away with slapstick velocity. Brendan McCarthy was involved too, employing much the same glowing lacquer as in Rogan Gosh. Hicklenton, in contrast, allowed the very real potential for bodily rupture to serve as comedy by way of ‘what the hell is he doing?’ See how the exploding heads guide the eye around the table, lit like punks by the phallic guitar neck held by the sweaty, reclining guitar god toward the right. This energy is necessary to supplement the minimal scenarios by John Wagner & Alan Grant, the project’s primary writers, prone to throwing together song lyric scripts and goofy power-of-rock fables vs. the grim banality of country music, and other treats for the Rock Power readership.

I agree with Wolk that Hicklenton is at his best here when paired with writer John Smith (yes, him again), an especially sympathetic mind grown from a big tent taste for horror fiction; even the writer’s 1987 U.S. comics debut in Eclipse’s Tales of Terror #11 was conceived as a grotesque homage to Roger Corman’s X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (speaking of visual media). Smith is ultimately working in a comedic, parodic vein too, mind you, but an image of Dredd bursting out of the skin of an obese woman to take down a fattie terrorist cell is distinctly reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s 1991 film version of Naked Lunch, just as an image of a man suckled to death by snails can only have occurred on “Peter Greenaway Block.” And probably the best piece in the book is its only two-parter, where Dredd takes on a secret society of Mary Whitehouse-ish old lady moral guardians (their top target: “Ennis Potter”) and their psychic primate assassins; there Smith specifically ties the crusade against ‘indecency’ to an implicit war on homosexuality, while Hicklenton indicates some shared, awful sexual potential between the victimized H.G. Lewis character on the left, pants sliding down, and the wriggled bare legs of the attacking old ladies, the page then becoming a panel-free collage of animated violence.

Many of the aritst’s other works are scattered around; he had the odd fortune of his first two published comics being early Future Shocks by Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, both tucked away in a Best of volume, while several of his Mills collaborations are available in collected form. More interestingly, his 2010 solo graphic novel, 100 Months — its final page completed on the day before he died — is apparently coming back into print from Cutting Edge Press this April, now available on Amazon US and maybe heading to North American comics stores. Just a little something else worth remembering.

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PLEASE NOTE: What follows is not a series of capsule reviews but an annotated selection of items listed by Diamond Comic Distributors for release to comic book retailers in North America on the particular Wednesday, or, in the event of a holiday or occurrence necessitating the close of UPS in a manner that would impact deliveries, Thursday, identified in the column title above. Not every listed item will necessarily arrive at every comic book retailer, in that some items may be delayed and ordered quantities will vary. I have in all likelihood not read any of the comics listed below, in that they are not yet released as of the writing of this column, nor will I necessarily read or purchase every item identified; THIS WEEK IN COMICS! reflects only what I find to be potentially interesting.

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SPOTLIGHT PICKS!

Madman 20th Anniversary Monster!: Sure, sure, I know you’re upset about maximal collector’s editions of current and/or landmark comics. Sammy Harkham? History’s monster! Humanoids? Continental thralls to the last! But OH – what will happen when Man of the People Michael D. Allred and the front-of-Previews titans at Image drop an 11″ x 17″, 264-page monstah with a three-digit tag? History will tell, but those present for the moment will know some new comics by Allred, Jaime Hernandez, Craig Thompson, Gilbert Hernandez, Jeff Smith, Mario Hernandez, Peter Bagge, Frank Hernand…er, Quitely, Paul Pope, Dave Cooper, Darwyn Cooke, David Mack, Kyle Baker, Matt Wagner, Bernie Mireault, Erik Larsen, Jay Stephens, Peter Milligan & Philip Bond, Steven T. Seagle & Teddy Kristiansen, Dean Haspiel, Michael Avon Oeming, Eric Powell, Pat McKeown and Joe Quinones & Maris Wicks. The solicitation also promises “almost every Madman illustration collected over the past 20 years,” which makes me suspect about half the book is likely to be a jumbo-sized reprint of the old Madman Picture Exhibition pin-up series from the early ’00s, aka the only place to find Chris Ware, Alex Toth and Todd McFarlane all in one place. Samples; $100.00.

John Romita’s The Amazing Spider-Man: Artist’s Edition: SPIDEY AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN HIM, STRIPPED BARE NAKED – by which I mean this 152-page third installment of IDW’s utterly insane Artist’s Edition series is devoted to presenting John Sr.’s complete uncolored original art for six vintage issues of The Amazing Spider-Man reproduced in color at their actual size, with all notations and smudges and signs of pre-print life preserved for your goggled pleasure. Hey, if you’re dropping one Franklin this week, why stop? I believe Wally Wood’s EC stuff(!!) is next in line; $100.00.

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PLUS!

Xombi: This was one of the more widely-admired series from a major superhero publisher (DC) last year; indeed, I recall Matt Seneca praising the first issue on this very site. A revival of writer/co-creator John Rozum’s Milestone series of the mid-’90s — concerning a nano-tech semi-immortal caught up in supernatural doings — it only managed to run for six issues before getting swept away. The artist is the ever-interesting Frazer Irving, and now’s your chance to get acquainted; $14.99.

Dark Horse Presents #8: Ha ha, thought you were rid of Duncan Fegredo? No, the most excellent, mostly-departed Hellboy artist is here in Dark Horse’s house anthology for a quick victory lap with writers Mike Mignola & John Arcudi, following up on recent plot developments from the B.P.R.D. cast’s perspective. Also of note is the conclusion of Howard Chaykin’s The Marked Man; I generally like these recent Chaykin solo series, a batch of slightly dense, chatty action pieces that nonetheless cruise on lived-in charm, which is a sensation I can usually only find in seinen manga aimed at older (as in thirty-and-up) readers. It’s like a glimpse into an alternate mainstream’s aging. The feature’s replacement serial also debuts: The Massive by Brian Wood & Kristian Donaldson, a three-part story of environmental disaster. There’s also some Tarzan stuff with Thomas Yeates, plus Andi Watson, Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson, Neal Adams and others. Samples; $7.99.

Fatale #2 (of 12): No, I really do try not to list comic book series I happen to be following, but this week’s light enough that I’ll give a special mention to this Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips horror-crime series from Image, since I enjoyed the first issue a good deal, and it looks to be a regular sight throughout the year; $3.50.

Archie Archives Vol. 4: Golden Age of Reprints/Archie choice of the week, as Dark Horse presents another 232 pages of hardcovered teen comics from way back in the day, covering Pep Comics #51-53 and Archie Comics #11-14. Samples; $49.99.

Cross Game Vol. 6 (of 8): Manga choice of the week, as the great Mitsuru Adachi continues his fine-tuned observations of youth and baseball in another 376-page chunk from Viz; $14.99.

Heavy Metal Vol. 36 No. 1 (Mar. 2012):: And finally – yes, austerity measures have reached even this mighty bulwark of newsstand comics; there’s only six issues per year now, with no specials, which places this particular edition in the odd position of serving as de facto 35th anniversary special; the celebrations consist of 13 potentially cost-saving pages of classic cover reprints, unless they’ve got something planned for April. Still, do recall that Heavy Metal is in the middle of serializing Enki Bilal’s 2009 Animal’z, which becomes alternately oblique and chatty enough in excerpted form it reads like the most old school thing the magazine’s done in ages. The feature album this month is good too: the 10th and most recent installment of Requiem, an absolutely gonzo Hell-set action comic from aforementioned 2000 AD godhead Pat Mills and frame-crazy painter Olivier Ledroit. This chapter, for example, begins with a disgruntled Japanese soldier wandering the ruins of Hiroshima for two pages before breaking out a samurai sword and slashing his way through America’s leadership before reincarnating in the underworld as an Ogami Ittō-type wandering vampire ronin with a baby cart holding his talkative sensei, on a mission to destroy former U.S. President Harry S. Truman who has fused into a three-faced oni representing the military-industrial-political complex. He then gets into a Silver Age superhero fight with Requiem, the title vampire, who also has a baby nosferatu master who taught him the secrets of martial arts on the Moon; they all become friends during feeding and nap time. This is one of about half a dozen plot strands spread among twenty or so named characters, and it delivers such a dizzy whirl of gore and dubious comedy you’ll hardly notice that Heavy Metal is still editing out the goddamned frontal nudity until the tears swell. Huge preview; $6.95.

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CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: Oh, and Kramers Ergot 8 is also out; $29.95. Meanwhile, Fantagraphics brings Action! Mystery! Thrills!: Comic Book Covers of the Golden Age 1933-1945, the latest Greg Sadowski joint, this time a 208-page collection of vintage comic book covers and historical notes on the various publishers and artists populating the scene; $29.99.

One of the commonly accepted tatters of cartooning lore is that Mary Worth began syndicated life as Apple Mary. At first blush, this seems an unlikely evolution. Mary Worth is a fashionably-attired little old gray-haired lady who is forever becoming involved in the romances of young men and women she meets as she rambles on through life. Apple Mary is a somewhat raggedy little old gray-haired lady who sells apples from a cart on a Chicago street corner during the early days of the Depression in the 1930s. She fusses around in other people’s lives, too, but is mostly absorbed with mere survival for her grandson Denny, who is crippled, and a cantankerous middle-aged hanger-on named Bill Biff.

The version of history that inspires this diatribe claims that Martha Orr, a niece of Chicago Tribune editorial cartoonist Carey Orr, started the comic strip that has always been dubbed the first soap opera strip. But she didn’t start it as a soaper; and it isn’t the first anyhow. Orr’s strip is the aforementioned Apple Mary, and it was launched in October 1934 and owed its being, doubtless, to a 1933 Frank Capra movie, Lady for a Day, which also starred a little old gray-haired lady who eked out a living during those hard times by selling apples from a cart she wheeled down the streets, broad and narrow. In her spare time, she helped everyone who stumbled into her path.

Orr had been born and raised, the third of six children, in Hillyard, Washington, where her father was a broker in lumber. Her uncle, recognizing her talent, brought her to Chicago and paid her way through the Art Institute. Soon thereafter, the Depression descended upon the nation, and Orr, after a decent interval, launched the apple-cart lady.

Martha Orr was not the first woman to draw a syndicated comic strip, but Apple Mary may have been the first comic strip with an all-girl orchestra. It was written and inked by Orr, pencilled by Dale Conner, and lettered by Ruth Belew, a retired ballet dancer. Orr eventually married a man named Hassel, and in 1939, she decided to give up the strip to devote her energies full-time to raising her family. Conner took over the drawing chores, and the syndicate recruited a new writer for the strip, a columnist on Ohio’s Toledo News-Bee named Allen Saunders, who, in his off-hours, was writing Big Chief Wahoo (eventually re-titled Steve Roper), and Saunders turned the strip into Mary Worth. In the fall of 1942, Conner left and Ken Ernst came on board to do the drawing, which he continued to do until he died in August 1985.

That’s the way the history books have it, but when Martha Orr died at the age of 92 on July 27, 2001, she unintentionally launched a minor ripple of controversy in the backwater of investigative comics research. In preparing Orr’s obituary, the Chicago Tribune reporter who wrote it had the presence of mind to phone King Features, the syndicate currently distributing the strip, where he talked to an unnamed official who denied, oddly, that the two strips were at all related. Mary Worth, so this personage claimed, was a replacement strip that was offered to client newspapers when Mrs. Hassel retired in 1939. This bland denial immediately got comics scholars’ wattles into an uproar: Apple Mary not Mary Worth? Who sez?

Well, we don’t know who said. Rick Hepp, the Tribune reporter, was somewhat puzzled by the syndicate assertion: he took pains to point out in his Orr obit that “several sources, including The Encyclopedia of American Comics” by Ron Goulart, record that Orr’s strip was Mary Worth’s precursor. Later, in the tiny flurry that resulted from the King Features’ claim, the truth, in all its various guises, emerged. And it is with the object of nailing that truth firmly to the wall for all to see that I take up the issue, again, here.

Allen Saunders never had any doubts about the matter: the two Marys are the same person. And he, if anyone, should know. His autobiography was published serially in Nemo magazine several years ago, and in No. 9 of that periodical, Saunders rehearses the details of his inheriting Apple Mary. When the syndicate (then Publishers, which distributed Big Chief Wahoo) asked Saunders to take on the writing task, he was nonplussed. “I can’t even read it,” Saunders responded, “let alone write it.” But since the Toledo News-Bee had recently sunk, taking Saunders’ writing berth with it, he had no regular newspaper gig anymore, so he agreed to take on the scripting.

“Laboring over the continuity,” he wrote, “I chanced upon a happy idea one day. Instead of treacly melodrama, why not do stories of the sort that were used in popular magazines for women? No current story strip dealt with romance and psychological drama instead of action. … To test the idea of a story with which women readers could better identify, I wrote a sequence in which a passenger plane made a forced landing in a meadow. Conveniently, [Apple] Mary Worth lived nearby. One of the passengers to whom kindly Mary gave shelter was Leona Stockpool, the daughter, naturally, of a Wall Street stockbroker.” The father hires Mary to help him cope with the headstrong Leona.

After some weeks of this sort of thing, the syndicate urged Saunders to keep on with it, and Leona marries a candidate for governor named John Blackston, which permitted Saunders to dabble in politics. The rest, as they say, is history (whether the unnamed King official likes it or not). But here’s the crucial passage from Saunders’ autobiography:

Soon after our team took over, we changed the name of the strip to Mary Worth’s Family. Later, it took on its present title, Mary Worth. In her new role, the old street merchant [Apple Mary] obviously was not usable. So Ken Ernst gave her a beauty treatment, some weight loss and a more appropriate wardrobe…. We put her applecart in storage, where it will remain, even in the event of another economic slump. Our Mary has more timely things to do than peddle pippins.

No one ever expects to get any closer to the horse’s mouth than this. Apple Mary is Mary Worth. And when I phoned the late Jay Kennedy, then King’s editor-in-chief, he was as dumbfounded by the obit’s claim to the contrary as I and all the rest of us dusty-shouldered delvers into comics history had been. Every history he’s ever read, he said, has Mary Worth morphing out of Apple Mary. So somebody in the King shop just goofed. It happens. And now that everything is sorted out satisfactorily, all is forgiven.

Still, a few doubters lingered at the fringes of this archival expedition. And then, happily, we got inside the horse’s mouth, right there amongst the molars and bicuspidors. At the New York Daily News, Jay Maeder, writer of Annie in her last days, was rummaging in his personal stash of old comic strip clippings and found some Apple Marys from 1935 and sent me copies, which are on display in this vicinity. From these strips, dated February, it is clear beyond quibble that Apple Mary is Mary Worth—and was from the very beginning. These February strips, appearing within four months of the strip’s debut, set the conditions of Mary Worth’s apple-peddling occupation before us. Maeder wrote me: “I [always] thought Apple Mary was some standard-issue Depression bag lady who subsequently came into a little money and improved herself. Turns out she was a woman of refinement and breeding the whole time, a once-wealthy individual who had been cheated out of her properties and reduced to apple-selling to keep together body and soul. Apparently, at least early on, her efforts to restore herself to her accustomed station in life provided much of the heart-tugging drama of the thing. You live, you learn.”

As have we all.

You may have noticed that the “team” Saunders refers to when they changed the strip’s name the first time evidently didn’t include Dale Conner. In the history of the feature, it did; but in Saunders recollection, she wasn’t there. Probably he knew that she didn’t want to be there.

Everyone seemed happy with Saunders’ transformation of Apple Mary into Mary Worth—with the restoration of the protagonist to her former station in life, that is—except Conner, who was then drawing the strip with a liquid line that sharply defined the milieu and the characters. She didn’t like Saunders’ changes to the strip. Writing to Milton Caniff, she said: “I’m so heart-sick over what Apple Mary has turned out to be. Working on it has become a chore. There’s no action to draw, only dull and childish conversation, and the plot is so inane that I gag as I try to make something of it. I dread seeing the proofs each week for my feeling shows in them.”

Conner preferred adventure stories—like Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. By 1942 she was married and had endured Saunders’ scripts enough: her husband, Herb Ulrey, teamed with her to write a new strip that she drew, Hugh Striver, a epic about a high school athlete. It lasted until February 1945 whereupon the team concocted an airplane strip, Ayer Lane, which lasted only a little longer than their other effort.

Meanwhile, back for another Saunders’ Worth, we can report that the strip is still lunging along. It is so often published adjacent to Judge Parker and Rex Morgan on the funnies page that I am tempted to think the three come as a matched set. I half expect to open the paper someday and find Mary leaning over the windowsill panel border of her strip to give Rex or the Judge down below the benefit of her advice.

Mary, by the way, never married during the run of the strip. She came close once, though. In 1949 she meets a charming old coot named Drum Greenwood, who has piled up a fortune with his successful bubble-gum business. When he promises to endow in her name a slum clearance project, she agrees to the nuptials. But on her way to the church, the taxi gets in an accident, and Mary suffers amnesia. She is still, apparently, under its influence because she has never married old Greenwood.

Her grandson Denny, on the other hand, advanced in life. He lost his crutches along the way and earned himself a respected slot in a Neiman-Marcus sort of establishment, where he eventually married the fashion designer named September Smith. Lovely name.

Oh—when I said Mary Worth wasn’t, actually, the first soap opera, I was thinking of an earlier strip that oozed heartthrob and psychic agony: Sidney Smith’s The Gumps, which began its sudsy strain in the early 1920s. The strip started February 12, 1917, but it didn’t get genuinely soapy until four years later when Andy Gump’s rich Uncle Bim almost falls into the matrimonial clutches of the avaricious Widow Zander. But that’s another story for another day.

Frank Santoro’s going on tour, and is drawing the comics to prove it. (Plus, a bonus autobiographical strip at the end.)

And Matthias Wivel is reporting from Angoulême for us. You can read his thoughts on the Art Spiegelman retrospective here, and on a comics art exhibit Spiegelman curated (and that Matthias believes to be one of the best of its kind he’s ever seen) here. And there’s more on the way.

Award winners at the festival have been announced, including Guy Delisle, Jim Woodring, and Jean-Claude Denis.

Speaking of Matthias, if you’re at interested in the ongoing debate about best practices in archival comics reproduction, you’ll want to see the comments thread spawned by his recent review of Carl Barks. Gary Groth, Kim Thompson, R. Fiore, Jeet Heer, Michael Grabowski, and Domingos Isabelhino all make appearances, among others.

From the Spiegelman history show, mounted in the museum's main hall

It starts in the 1830s with Töpffer and early European comics before it hits a motherlode of original American comic strip pages — the heart of the exhibition. Knowing Spiegelman’s taste, it is unsurprising that he predictably leaves out several of the great illustrators — most notably Raymond and Foster — but there is so much great material that one quickly forgives him: from McCay and Herriman over McManus, King, Gould and Gray, to Schulz, Watterson, and Thompson, as well as several lesser known and underrated figures such as Milt Gross and Garrett Price.

Then comes the comic books including a broad selection of classics, which — though naturally underplaying the heroic genres — presents much of the cream, with the focus predictably on Mad and EC. Spiegelman not only presents these comics comprehensively, but often with key, iconic pages — Kurtzman’s “Corpse on the Imjin”, Wolverton’s Lena the Hyena cover for Mad, Kurtzman and Elder’s splash page to “Restaurant” from the same magazine, and eye-popping pages from Ingels, Davis, Craig, and the rest of the Usual Gang.

The underground section continues along the same lines, focusing initially and naturally on the Zap artists (though downplaying Crumb) and then switching to a generous selection of Rory Hayes pages as well as Bill Griffith’s recent elegy to the artist. And in an adjoining room hangs the entirety of Justin Green’s “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary” in the original. Only when the exhibition hits the eighties does it lose height, seeming random in its selection (although you can’t front on Dan Clowes’ “Needledick the Bugfucker”).

As a comics history the exhibition is somewhat idiosyncratic, but as Spiegelman notes in one of the excellent accompanying videos, every cartoonist constructs his own past, and this one’s a particularly cogent and inspiring one — one that locates in humor and subversion the life of the mind.

Frank Santoro’s Comic Book Layout Workshop

Why do some comics read easier than others? Is it the story, the cartooning or the page design? Frank Santoro will demonstrate how some cartoonists such as Hal Foster and Herge used visual harmonies and structures in their page designs much like classical oil painters. Discover the similarities between visual and musical harmonies and how some of the great cartoonists used dynamic symmetry like a map to organize their stories.

Also, after the talk, Frank will lead an informal FREE workshop focusing on formats available for the comic book maker in 2012. Everyone is welcome. Come see what Frank Santoro’s Correspondence Course is all about – or come on down just to argue with Frank – maybe even buy a book and get it signed.

Tour Dates – Frank Santoro Signing / Workshop Tour

Thursday 2/2

Maus on the walls

It’s cold, but sunny in Angoulême. Friday was uncrowded, making it pleasant to cruise the exhibitor’s tents. It hasn’t been a banner year for new comics in French-speaking Europe, but there’s still plenty of work to peruse at the alternative booths, with new books by Aurélie William Leveaux, Isabelle Pralong, Brecht Evens, Olivier Schrauwen, and Alex Barbier having caught the eyes of this visitor as particularly exciting.

Having spent most of my time in the tents in order to avoid the crowds tomorrow, I have yet to visit most of the exhibitions, but let me say this immediately: the Spiegelman retrospective in the Castro building is amazing. Everything you could wish for is there, most of it in the original: a sampling of early East Village Other strips, a generous selection from Breakdowns, including original pages from all the classics: “Malpractice Suite”, “Ace Hole”, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”, “Prisoner on Hell Planet”, etc., as well as the original “Maus” short story and several of the iconic auxiliary illustrations to that work.

The Making of a Raw cover

Another wall presents an eye-opening selection of the greeting cards and Garbage Pail Kids collector’s cards that secured him his daily bread as a young cartoonist — a little-seen but essential part of his oeuvre. Two other walls are dedicated to RAW Magazine, the seminal anthology Spiegelman edited with his wife Francoise through the eighties. The preparatory stages of the collage cover of issue 7 are exhibited along one wall, uniting several of the key contributors to the anthology, while another presents their work on video screens in front of a display case with the entire run of issues.

Photostats of the entirety of Maus are mounted in a separate room, accompanied by sketches, reference material, and other items helping elucidate Spiegelman’s work process on his masterpiece without impeding the visitor’s reading experience. A separate display case holds the original photo of Spiegelman’s lost brother Richeu, reproduced in the book, his father Vladek’s immigration form, and a photograph of little Art and his mother Anja in front of their home in Rego Park. There is something incredibly touching about these objects, which bring the crushing reality of the story told in the comics pages home with simplicity.

Objects from life

The rest of the show is devoted to Spiegelman’s generally over-conceived post-Maus work, which pales in comparison. With the exception of his great comics essays — on Sendak, Schulz, Kurtzman, and others — and his charming children’s books, his mature line is clunky, his cleverness running away with his focus, resulting is work that is at best earnest but messy (“The Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*!”) or inspired but inarticulate (most of the New Yorker covers), and hermetically postmodern and didactic at worst (“In the Shadow of No Towers”).

But this matters less when the body of the work as a whole shows such intelligence, curiosity, and ambition, something this show makes beautifully apparent.

And online… Tim is too modest to mention this, but luckily I am not: Lauren Weinstein’s wonderful comics about pregnancy and motherhood were recently profiled on Babble.com. This is really insightful and touching work — check it out. No good transition here, but an interview with Jim Woodring is always a good thing, and here’s one over at The Believer. In less “fun” linkage news, Tom Spurgeon has a sensible take on the recent kerfuffle around piracy, comics and consumer attitudes. Eric Stephenson of Image Comics, also chimes in on sales and stores and such things. And finally, we scamper down the rabbit hole into super hero stuff for a second: Publishers Weekly has a new super hero-focused column by Matt White.

As an aside, the other day, out of nowhere, I received Katz, which appears to be a compete republication of Maus (in French) only with all the mice heads replaced by cat heads. I assume it’s the same dialogue because the whole project is too lazy for it not to be. In any case, as a conceptual prank it’s incredibly lame (I mean, everything from the appropriation to the switcheroo. I get it. It’s just dumb) and that’s kind of it. Not much more to say beyond that, since it’s so transparent. I suspect the historical politics of it were of less interest to the author than the prankish, look-what-I-can-do aspect, but either way it’s pretty gross. I’m all for giving the canon the occasional punch on the arm, but this is just silly. There’s an ISBN (2-930356-84-7) and a web site. Otherwise it’s anonymous.

It’s appropriate, then, that Sediment showcases the pure form of CF’s vision, set free from narrative content. A multi-media compilation of work done for gallery exhibitions, commercial illustrations, sketchbook pages, and miscellany, it manages to give an impressively well-rounded overview of the various facets of its artist’s creativity, the things that make CF both unique and valuable. This isn’t a comic as such — except for the reprint of a short Bookforum strip that closes things out, the imagery collected here is not sequential — but it also can’t quite be called an art book, given its pocket size and total lack of explanatory text. The most accurate description for it is simply “a book,” one consisting entirely of pictures. A space that belongs entirely to the images, free of even character and plot’s distractions, where the audience can come to see just how much CF’s hands are able to do to their eyes.

Loosely organized into sections, the book has the feel of a deftly sequenced music album; shifting from penciled tableaux into vividly painted portraits and back before giving way to sketches and more abstract paintings, its scope feels both vast and tightly narrowed. Each individual image is a look into something notably distinct from both the next and the last, but shapes and colors and compositional methods reprise themselves again and again, pulling a far-flung catalog of pictures produced at different times for different purposes together into a seamlessly unified body of work. The book’s publication design, executed by the artist himself, is perfectly of a piece with its content, both sparse and decadent. Intricate networks of simple, bold shapes edge the French-folded pages, the paper stock switches from matte for single-tone drawings to glossy for the color paintings, and psychedelic endpapers herald the reader’s entry into a different world. Sediment’s small size, perhaps the most immediate thing about it, foregrounds the physical aspect of CF’s imagery, forcing readers into and intimate engagement with it. There’s no way to read but to come in close and consider the graphite dust and paint crust that the pictures are made of, the wrinkled paper they’re set down on, rather than stepping back and taking every component in at once.

These are drawings to be lived with, to spend time engaged in. The paintings showcase far-flung ideas about fashion and culture, alternating between simple pinup style shots and more topical scenes featuring what look like alternate-world versions of art galleries and sporting events, while the black-and-white illustrations give views into places both crowded and quiet, where unfathomable machines and futuristic architectural creations find a place in expanses of empty space or nature. CF addresses where he’s coming from at a few points — most notably in the short strip that closes the book by questioning the utilitarian importance of comics, but also in sketchbook drawings that appear to be copied from the sublimely bizarre erotic comics of Frank Thorne and portraits that lead right back to the alien ideas about costuming introduced by Steve Ditko. And for those who’ve been waiting breathlessly to see CF’s take on ’80s action cartoonist Matt Wagner’s shadowy avenger Grendel, well, he’s in here too. There’s no need for words to create a context here if one’s attuned to the right signifiers.

But mostly, the book chases down things as yet unseen with an unescapable intensity. Not one of the characters or landscapes put on display here feels anything less than fully formed, drawn with the same high focus it’s been glimpsed at. The hallmark image of the book is one of its simplest, a painting of a puce-faced man in a tight, hooded black outfit staring at a formless blob of pink paint on a pedestal, immersed in contemplation. What looks like a futuristic piece of sculpture is no more — no less — than a smear of pure medium on paper. Sediment puts us in the place of the painting’s strange-looking subject, both marveling at and actively thinking about the power of the pure substances that make up the pictures we look into. The book’s conceptual glue may be CF’s wonderful drawing style, but its real asset is the way it enables us to get past that dazzling surface and into conversation with the crude materials underlying it.  Sometimes a title says it all.

The Someday Funnies

So Michel Choquette’s The Someday Funnies now joins Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America Part 2, Brian Wilson’s Smile, Harvey Kurtzman’s From Arrgh to Zap, and a complete version of Metropolis on the list of Things That Have Come Out Before The Last Dangerous Visions. There is more to this reference than an uncalled-for attempt to needle a person not present, as there are several interesting parallels between the first and last named ill-fated projects. To be sure, before Bob Levin started the Hell freezing over process Someday Funnies didn’t have nearly the same notoriety in its sphere, not least because its editor didn’t have the habit of periodically announcing its imminent release. Rather, Choquette treated it like Lyndon Johnson’s proverbial one-eyed aunt, who you don’t keep in the front parlor. I expect I was more aware of it than most, and my reaction was, “Oh, yeah, I heard of that once.” Like The Last Dangerous Visions, The Someday Funnies started with workable proportions. Just as Harlan Ellison got bitten by the bug of enlisting every significant voice in its genre that hadn’t been heard in the first two Dangerous Visions anthologies, Choquette was seized by the ambition to bring the entire world of comics (aside from that which appeared in American newspapers) to bear on his subject. As each editor’s eyes grew bigger than his stomach, the respective anthologies came to burst the bounds of feasibility. For Ellison, from what I gather, the main problem was in having committed himself to a constantly inflating body of uncompensated editorial work, as his format required that he not only write a personal introduction to each story, but obtain and assemble afterwords from each author. Choquette was like a comic book hero whose super power was opening doors, as the roster of talent enlisted attests. This quality carried with it a temptation to overreach, and he became instead like the hero of the movie The Longest Yard, who had his shit together but couldn’t lift it. As the prospects of keeping his promises grew dimmer he came to look at his contributors the way a bankrupt man looks at process servers. (A difference worth noting is that whereas Ellison had paid his contributors, Choquette couldn’t.)

Now Choquette finds himself a Quixote standing over a dead windmill. What he has discovered and what Ellison may have the opportunity to discover (he still has a chance of beating The Other Side of the Wind if he gets cracking) is that when you let these things lie long enough your project passes through a phase where it can be nothing but a disappointment into another where it loses the power to disappoint. The contributors Choquette was once afraid to look in the eye were so wonderstruck to see it finally come out that all anger had dissipated. The major problem arises from the subject matter. In Normandy Revisited A.J. Liebling, who as a war correspondent covered the D-Day invasion, tells a story about revisiting the beach at Normandy (for his book is indeed accurately named). He spies a family group examining an abandoned landing ship and begins ambling over with a mind towards favoring them with his reminiscences of the great day. As soon as they spy him they start ambling away, and being downwind he overhears the paterfamilias say, “It was a near thing. If I hadn’t spotted him we would have been for it. He would have said hello and then told us for the next half hour how he and his pals came ashore on this very spot.” This is essentially the attitude of most modern day people about the prospect of listening to members of the Love Generation reminiscing about The Sixties. It is a subject that activates an automatic eye-rolling reflex. They have heard all about it they care to for a long, long while.

Those who have retained their appetite for the subject will find a post mortem done while the body was still warm. Created too late to still feel the passions and too early to be nostalgic, the general tone is of rue, chagrin and regret. This sort of thing doesn’t have to be good to be interesting. Under the circumstances, this was just as well. At one to two pages apiece, the contributors who have something original to say get no more space than the ones that don’t, and encompassing such a wide range and variety of talent and styles, there was no possibility of coherence. The desire to conjure coherence led Choquette to his one huge and irredeemable mistake: Having each contributor leave a blank panel somewhere in each strip, which was to be filled by an ongoing strip that would create a narrative thread through the book. If you are going to have a bright idea like this you ought to have some idea what the narrative thread was going to be beyond trusting in fate. The solution concocted these many years later, having the blanks filled with cartoon anecdotes of Choquette’s adventures gathering the material, serves only to compound the problem by inserting the editor into every page. I came to think of this character as Douchey Tie-Dyed Guy, and he is a distraction throughout. The other major difficulty is that he didn’t have the resources to have the foreign language comics appropriately re-lettered in English. The solution employed was an appendix of translations next to thumbnail versions of the pages. What this ultimately meant for me was that I wound up reading all the foreign material from the thumbnails, occasionally peeking back when things became unclear.

Nevertheless, for my part the sheer mass and wonder of the thing carried it along. Even though the talent is not always at its best it is seldom objectively bad, and there’s so much of it that the cumulative effect serves to impress. My mind organized the contributors in categories, some of which overlapped, particularly when the writers and cartoonists were mixed.

Celebrities: Federico Fellini, Tom Wolfe, Frank Zappa, Pierre Berton (in a Canadian sort of way), Tuli Kupferberg, William S. Burroughs, the aforementioned Ellison — these are the kind of names that when you heard them connected with the project had you thinking, “that must be incredible,” and for the most part turn out to be the biggest disappointments. The biggest name, Fellini, turns out what might be the very worst, but if I was going to pick the best thing in the book it would be Wolfe’s “The Man Who Peaked Too Soon”, which makes the point that you could have looked a complete fool by being a couple of years ahead of the times. Burroughs turns in a characteristically acid anecdote — acid in the sense of corrosive.

Newspaper Comic Cartoonists: As far as I can tell, completely unrepresented. Other than that the ones that would have been most wanted, Walt Kelly and Al Capp, were already dead, I don’t know what accounts for this gap.

U.S. Comic Book Old School: Surprisingly vital. This was not the first time Will Eisner had been asked to resurrect the Spirit, but it was before the full blown Eisner revival got underway. Nevertheless he was prepared to come through with an original explanation for some of the notable crimes of the decade. Jack Kirby is the real shocker, though, waxing both lyrical and comical. The point you might have made against Kirby was that he seemed to lack a sense of humor, but apparently he was holding out. Harvey Kurtzman laughs the premise off; Wally Wood applies his own sense of perversity to a rote recounting of the sexual revolution; and C.C. Beck (with Denny O’Neil) is given the final word (spoiler: “Shazam”), I suspect because theirs is the only contribution that ends on a hopeful note. Not, however, one that could have been terribly convincing at the time, or that panned out in the end.

U.S. Comic Book Then-Contemporary: What’s particularly striking about Someday, and what probably wouldn’t be repeated today, is the role mainstream creators play in it. Potentially you could get something very interesting from the Garth Ennis/Grant Morrison/Warren Ellis generation of big company talents working off the reservation, but I doubt it would have the same attraction. The major difference is the absence of the Comics Code. The 1960s/1970s people clearly envy the freedom the underground cartoonists have, and jump at the chance to exercise it. Their modern counterparts would be much likelier to feel they’ve been able to express everything they wish to express in their normal line of work, and to suggest to them that they could be working on a broader horizon would no doubt have them smelling condescension. I think there’s a harder schism between the commercial and art comics world these days, fed no little by the URL UR at right now. The contributions from the mainstream world are some of the most militant and radical in the book (other than from the foreigners, for whom Marx is definitely not Groucho), and they are better prepared to do work to order than the undergrounders.

Foreigners: If Choquette missed out on Zap, Pilote is pretty well represented, and curiously fixated on cowboys. Asterix and Obelix feel like visiting celebrities. Barbarella seems lost. If there’s one thing that Someday Funnies does to broaden our understanding of the era it’s to remind you that the 1960s were not something that happened just in America, England and Vietnam. You get to feeling like Ronald Reagan learning that Central America was all different countries. The English not named Ralph Steadman make a rather weak showing, and the Dutch, who were savvy enough to do their work in English, a particularly strong one.

The Underground: The Zap cohort are conspicuously absent, and not having Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton is like not having the Beatles and the Stones. What the hell, let’s go through the rest: Spain was the Who (though Pete Townshend himself is present, in a sense). Robert Williams was Frank Zappa (though Zappa himself is present). S. Clay Wilson was Captain Beefheart. Rick Griffin was Pink Floyd. Victor Moscoso was also Pink Floyd. There was no Bob Dylan of underground comics. These people were suspicious-cum-paranoid about anyone connected with mainstream publishing, which would include Rolling Stone and National Lampoon in their mind, and that they were going to be asked to do work to order was probably the nail in the coffin. One imagines the discussion with Crumb: “So, what’s the subject?” “The Sixties.” “What do you think I’ve been doing for the last five years?” This points out a problem that also extends to an overlapping cohort, the Lampoon Guys, who included a number of Air Pirates. For the mainstream comics people Someday Funnies was the chance of a lifetime. For the underground comics and Lampoon people it’s another day at the office. The Sixties were essentially what underground comics were about, and the collapse and betrayal of counterculture ideals was a running theme of National Lampoon. Which is not to say that a day at the office can’t be a good day. After a mind-numbing recitation of cliché in the text introduction by Robert Greenfield (exactly the sort of person who would be selected to write the Sixties miniseries for network television), Bill Griffith’s Zippy, then at the peak of freshness, turns cliché on its ear. Shary Flenniken gets under the surface of things as few contributors do. The Mad Peck, who really shouldn’t be forgotten to the extent he is, tackles the times though the lens of television like someone who lived inside a television set. While it is natural that the answer to the question “Where was Kim Deitch’s Waldo when Kennedy was shot?” would be “Tormenting and enabling some rummy,” you sort of wish it was “In the Book Depository with Oswald” or “On the grassy knoll.” Too soon then, perhaps. The late blooming Art Spiegelman had not at that point yet bloomed. Arnold Roth transcends time period. Chris Miller (with Gray Morrow) presents a wish-fulfillment Sixties that should have happened that could induce salivation.

Fancy Meeting You Here: Choquette has the good fortune here and there to come up with something truly surprising, such as a bit of Don Martin sickness that would definitely not have gotten into Mad, Sergio Aragones waxes unexpectedly serious on the Mexico City Olympics, and a flashback sequence in the Doug Kenney strip gets done in Archie style by genuine Archie guy Stan Goldberg.

Of the Great Lost Projects that have finally come to light I think the one Someday Funnies most resembles is Smile. Both are wonderful in part but ultimately are incapable of fulfilling the large promises they made. Based on the Smile session tapes I have heard and the version that was finally released, the conclusion I draw was that the album was in fact close to completion, and the reason Wilson couldn’t complete it was that it wasn’t going to match his ambition. There was simply no string he could pull that that would bring about the celestial musical experience he thought was in his reach, and I suspect this was a major reason for his breakdown. (I have a pet theory that Sly Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On is a Smile that got released – three fully realized tracks and a lot of big ideas that never come to fruition.) On the other hand, like Smile, there are selections in Someday Funnies that do live up to the project’s ambitions. I’m thinking particularly of Griffith, Wolfe, Eisner, Don Martin, Kirby, Steve Skeates with Alan Weiss, Uderzo and Goscinny, and Flenniken. Most of the contributions are at least entertaining, and relatively few truly self-indulgent or dire. Going back to the example of the Dangerous Visions anthologies, what Choquette could have used as an editor is Harlan Ellison’s knack for getting his contributors to sign on to his agenda. For every contributor who comes up with something original to say there’s another who descends into mere journalism. One must at least give Someday Funnies credit for conveying the message the Sixties have for posterity: If you ever get another chance like this, don’t blow it.

What’s particularly striking about Someday, and what probably wouldn’t be repeated today, is the role mainstream creators play in it. Potentially you could get something very interesting from the Garth Ennis/Grant Morrison/Warren Ellis generation of big company talents working off the reservation, but I doubt it would have the same attraction. The major difference is the absence of the Comics Code. The 1960s/1970s people clearly envy the freedom the underground cartoonists have, and jump at the chance to exercise it. [...] The contributions from the mainstream world are some of the most militant and radical in the book (other than from the foreigners, for whom Marx is definitely not Groucho), and they are better prepared to do work to order than the undergrounders.

It feels like I’ve linked to about a million Maurice Sendak interviews during the short life of this blog, but he keeps giving them, and he’s amazing at them, so I’m not going to stop now. If you didn’t see his appearance on Stephen Colbert, drop everything and watch it now:

[UPDATE: Part two is up now:]

There are a lot of big-time arguments and discussions going on in the comics internet world these days, most of which we’ve basically ignored here due to either lack of interest or out of a possibly ill-considered disinterest in peddling gossip as news. But it isn’t all petty squabbling. Jason Thompson knows his stuff, for example, and his recent essay on the dire straits facing manga publishers not only in the States but in Japan deserves attention.

There’s also been a lot of argument online recently about the economic uncertainties of Western cartooning, and the impact of online piracy upon it. Heidi MacDonald has perhaps done a service by gathering a whole host of recent controversial posts on this topic, though some of the linked-to posts aren’t nearly as informed or well-reasoned as Thompson’s, and the comments thread that follows is a good place to avoid if you’ve been feeling depressed lately. The subject at hand (and the arguments on both sides) deserve fuller attention than I can devote to them this morning. That being said, people seem to enjoy a ritual flame-war teeth-gnashing effigy-burning pity-party every now and again, and maybe they should, if only for catharsis. [UPDATE: Tom Spurgeon responds to Heidi's post here.]

In contributor news: Did you know that Frank Santoro is going on tour to preach his comics gospel? Well he is! Here’s the info:

Frank Santoro’s Comic Book Layout Workshop

Why do some comics read easier than others? Is it the story, the cartooning or the page design? Frank Santoro will demonstrate how some cartoonists such as Hal Foster and Herge used visual harmonies and structures in their page designs much like classical oil painters. Discover the similarities between visual and musical harmonies and how some of the great cartoonists used dynamic symmetry like a map to organize their stories.

Also, after the talk, Frank will lead an informal FREE workshop focusing on formats available for the comic book maker in 2012. Everyone is welcome. Come see what Frank Santoro’s Correspondence Course is all about – or come on down just to argue with Frank – maybe even buy a book and get it signed.

Tour Dates – Frank Santoro Signing / Workshop Tour

Thursday 2/2

If I lived in the fabled West I’d travel a great distance to experience this.

On the internets things are a little slow, though Tom Spurgeon has some exciting D&Q news. And here are some old comics: H.G. Peters’ last Wonder Woman story; Anyone want some Wardell? Anyone?

Raised an only child in Concord, New Hampshire (she now has a thirteen-year-old sister, as well as a child of her own), the 29-year-old Portland-based artist studied illustration at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts before graduating with a double major in printmaking and painting. I found her to be an enormously thoughtful interview subject — days would pass between responses, and inquiries were usually greeted with an apology and the explanation that she was still thinking over the questions and how best to respond to them. It intimidated me into wanting to be a better interviewer, in much the same way that her work itself nearly intimidated me out of interviewing her at all.

"Theodicy" (2010)

Collins: I’ve spent the last couple of hours doing research, reading older interviews of yours, bouncing around your Flickr and Facebook, browsing the illustrations on your website … and in all honesty, I think it’s avoidance. I find your work very, very, very, very, very, very, very dark. Profoundly dark, I suppose. And this is an intimidating head space to attempt to inhabit for the purposes of an interview. I feel that by titling one of your comics Too Dark to See you may have already answered this question, but I’m wondering if you see your work that way as well — as dark.

Gfrörer: Yes, I know it’s dark. It’s on purpose. I’m most interested in making art about feelings and experiences that are hidden or obscure, uncomfortable to talk about, frightening to even think of. It should be challenging for me to create, and for you to consume. I guess that it often comes off as overwrought and melodramatic, but like the song says, I can’t come through half-stepping. I can’t expect other people to take my work seriously unless I’m willing to take it even more seriously.

But having said that, I want to point out that I’m reading the fourth Song of Ice and Fire book as I write this, and those are mainstream popular and so much more dark than anything I’ve ever written. I mean, have you heard “Love the Way You Lie”? It was number one on the Billboard chart for seven weeks last year and it’s about murdering your battered girlfriend when she tries to leave you. So in that context my work’s not really that dark. Maybe I am half-stepping.

Collins: Ha, by bringing up A Song of Ice and Fire you have triggered one of my nerd buttons. I guess I would argue in the case of both George R. R. Martin and Eminem that the mainstream popularity and the darkness are basically separate phenomena — Eminem was the funny white rapper before he realized that his abusive treatment of his wife was his muse, and the hundreds of thousands of people who flocked to the books after watching Game of Thrones on HBO probably have no idea what’s in store for them beyond your basic grim HBO violence. In other words, don’t sell yourself short.

Gfrörer: I get what you’re saying here — I definitely dwell on the dark elements in my work in a more personal way, it’s more intimate and visceral than the violence in Game of Thrones, and more serious than Eminem, who mostly mines his darkness for humor. But I think people are perceptive of the grim aspects in the above and that’s part of the attraction, people have a need for artists to discuss those subjects.

The title of Too Dark to See is from “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and is not intended as a mission statement.

Collins: I’m actually glad to hear this, because I had the original Dylan version going through my head every time I came across that comic.

I wanted to talk to you in particular about the drawing of Dylan Williams you made after his death. You’ve surrounded him with the hands of a skeleton. I found this so troubling and so moving. In a show I’ve been watching recently, a character angrily accused other characters of ignoring the reality of a loved one’s death: “He’s gone,” she said, “He’s gone and he’s never coming back.” I feel like many tributes to Dylan, even my own, kind of shied away from that loss, focusing on his legacy. Which is a good thing, but not the whole story. Why did you choose to depict him this way?

Gfrörer: I drew that portrait on the morning of Dylan’s funeral. I was trying to force myself to understand that he was gone, and the drawing helped, but it wasn’t until I saw and touched his coffin that I fully believed it and broke down. I wish I could tell you how important Dylan was to me, the impact of his mentorship on my life, the depth of my sadness at his loss, but it would be crass to talk about that, I don’t want to make his death about my feelings. It was nice that so many people wrote beautiful things about him when he died. I wanted to but I felt so inept, and like it wasn’t my place. All I could do was this stupid drawing.

Collins: Tom Spurgeon made a similar argument, although in much less emotional terms. He was dismayed at the tendency for remembrances of comics people by comics people to run along the lines of “I had drinks with him one time” rather than talking about their work and impact. But his impact is, essentially, exactly what you’re talking about.

I detect a similar refusal to pull punches in your treatment of sexuality. I’ve found the recent willingness of alternative comics creators to directly, explicitly address sex really bracing and encouraging, but I think you could fit most of them safely under the umbrella of sex-positivity. Those instances you can’t are usually addressing something separate from traditional consensual recreational sex or masturbation, like rape or prostitution. But in both Flesh and Bone and Too Dark to See, you’ve depicted sexuality’s potential sadness, destructiveness, and perhaps ironically, isolation. I think these are all qualities that can be present in human sexuality, but it’s been a long time since I read a comic that graphically depicted sexual activity in this light. Have you seen any other work you feel goes where you’ve gone?

Gfrörer: I think I’m completely unqualified to say what other artists treat sexuality in the same way as me, so the answer to that question is probably “no.”

Collins: Whether or not you have, I was wondering if you feel depicting sex this way is more or less of a risk than the other approaches that are out there.

Gfrörer: Can you explain what you mean by “risk”? A risk of what?

Collins: You’re right, that was a weird way to put it. I think what I meant by “risk” was the risk inherent in all the things one might usually associate with directly addressing sex and sexuality: self-exposure, putting your feelings and fetishes and desires and experiences out there in some way, making the audience uncomfortable, and so on.

Gfrörer: Okay, these are risks that I make a conscious choice not to consider when I write. Maybe the fact that I didn’t understand your question at first is a sign that I’ve managed to convince myself those risks don’t exist.

My audience’s comfort level is really none of my concern, because I have no context to predict whether comfort or discomfort will occur in my audience as a result of my work. I said above that discomfort is part of my goal in making art, both for myself and for the reader, but I’m not, like, a guy trying to sell you a burger and saying, “Oh, people will relate more to this burger if we display it on a red surface, maybe with the sound of barking dogs in the background, that will help the audience to feel comfortable with the burger.” I don’t know. It would be a waste of energy to think about this for me.

As for my own vulnerability, I don’t know how much you can really infer about me personally based on my comics. Every sex scene I write is based on an erotic spark that’s compelling to me, certainly they contain elements of things that have actually happened to me, but there are layers of fiction obscuring them to the point where I’m not sure they’re recognizable as descended from the source material. And anyway, I think it’s important to have some earnest dialogue about negative emotions and sexuality, and if we’re going to do that people are going to have to cop to thinking about it in the first place. So I’ll gladly step forward to do that, whether it’s risky or no.

A page from Too Dark to See

Collins: I realized after I asked the question, and again after I explained it, that I was probably overselling the idea that the sex scenes are some kind of peek directly into your libido, and that therein lies the risk. That’s not what I meant.  I didn’t really mean that by depicting this material so frankly that you were revealing personal information — more that, as you say, these are freighted topics to begin with, and you’re going about depicting them in an extra freighted way, and that’s sort of a livewire to try to grab ahold of.

Gfrörer: Well, I like your characterization of something I do in my lap, listening to Rachel’s, after my kid goes to bed as dangerous and exciting.

Collins: Glad I could help. I should also note that whatever their unpleasant emotional content, your sex scenes are in fact very sexy. The blunt, transactional nature of the handsome man masturbating on his late beloved’s grave, the witch plucking the mandrake from the ground and inserting it into her vagina, and the shadow being telling the half-asleep young man “I just need your cum” all speak to the singlemindedness of the sex drive, a turning off of other concerns in the drive to get off that itself can be quite pleasurable. Maybe this is just gushing, but I was glad to see this kind of desire and arousal portrayed in a comic — a willingness to acknowledge the separation of sex from external concerns.

Gfrörer: I’m surprised you get that from my work, because I’m often trying to write a freestanding sex scene and it’s as if I’ve set a wet glass down on a piece of paper, and this puddle of context starts spreading out from it on all sides, before I know it the sex scene is padded with all this story that explains why it happened and what the fallout was. But I think maybe what you’re responding to is that there’s not a lot of guilt or justification around the sex in my books, I try to keep it morally neutral, or even ambivalent if possible. I don’t particularly try to make my drawings seductive, except in the sense that something disturbing or repellent can also become alluring. The scene in Flesh and Bone where the man masturbates on the grave demonstrates this principle pretty well, I think. Is it romantic, is it disgusting? Kind of both, I guess? But I don’t think he’s driven by the simple desire to get off — that scene is more analogous to the scene where the woman scratches her arm with a safety pin in Too Dark to See than anything. Like their emotions are so overwhelming that the mind dissociates, the physical act that reclaims the body is almost automatic. That moment where the mind and body are peeling apart is pretty compelling to me. Maybe that’s what you’re referring to.

Collins: It is. I suppose it’s also worth bringing up that these sex scenes are taking place in what amount to horror stories. Sex and horror are frequently paired off like that; my favorite approach is probably the young Clive Barker’s, because it was so utilitarian — he needed an excuse to convincingly involve his characters in the “Jesus, what are you, crazy? Get the fuck away from that thing!”-type misadventures his stories required, and the stupid and/or amoral shit super-horny people frequently do fit the bill. You mentioned that frequently your stories evolve out of your sex scenes rather than the other way around, but regardless, do you feel they serve a concrete plot function in that kind of way?

Gfrörer: Well, every story has a thing that it’s about (a guy being raped by a succubus, for example), and then a thing that it’s really about (the entropy of love). Sexuality is important to show because it’s a place where those two worlds, the subconscious and conscious worlds, come close and almost touch. We access normally hidden places within ourselves when we express our sexuality and it helps the story to cohere when we see the characters drift into the realm between light and shadow where sex occurs. I guess that’s not so concrete but it is a valuable element of storytelling for me.

Collins: I’m really curious as to why you return to the supernatural as often as you have. It seems to me that you could quite easily strip away many of the supernatural elements from your stories and, after a little reshuffling, have perfectly good literary fiction — literary fiction as a genre — on your hands.

Gfrörer: It’s interesting that you say that, because I try to write the supernatural events in my stories in such a way that if you removed them, the story would still make sense and could unfold in the same way. I mean, the mythology I’m drawing on developed to explain things for which there was no known explanation, but which had nonetheless occurred, and often that’s the role magic plays in my work, when something inexplicable happens, the supernatural is there to take the credit.

But it wouldn’t make such a good story if the supernatural elements were removed altogether. In Too Dark to See, what makes the argument between Lauren and Jamie so excruciating is that Lauren’s fears are completely justified–he has been unfaithful to her, with devastating ramifications for them both, and neither of them knows it, we see them struggle to convince themselves it’s not true, but we know it is true.

I think it would be a mistake to aggressively pursue phenomenal realism in fiction at the expense of emotional truth. Besides, it would be very boring for me to draw.

A page from Flesh and Bone

Collins: Hmmm. That’s a really interesting way to put it. I’m often surprised by how emotionally natural a sudden burst of unreality can feel in a story otherwise concerned with realistic emotions and events. Without even going any farther afield for examples than comics that involve witchcraft and demons, you don’t need to look any further than the witchy stuff that pops up in both Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez’s work from time to time. I’m wondering if there’s…I don’t know, a mystery element to why we feel certain things so strongly that enables an artist to slip the supernatural into a realistic story and get away with it. Actually, bringing up Los Bros’ horror stuff makes me wonder: Do you consider yourself a horror cartoonist? I do, although I’ll admit to very broad standards for genre inclusion.

Gfrörer: Yes, I would like to be. It’s my favorite genre. There are so many valuable intense experiences that only seem to be talked about in the context of horror stories. I try to make my books scary.

Collins: I was surprised to discover that you’re a parent. Of course, I’m always surprised when people younger than I am are parents, though I shouldn’t be because I know tons of them. But it seems like having a baby would hit you right in your creative wheelhouse, based on the images and ideas present in some of your comics. I know that for me, while I’m endlessly delighted by my baby herself, having her has made me even more pessimistic about living in the world. I look at her and see nothing but a happy little person with endless potential, then look around and am constantly reminded of how human behavior, the realities of illness and mortality, and simple bad luck is ready to crumple her up into a wad and toss her into a corner someplace. You told J.T. Dockery that motherhood made you more empathetic — has it changed your concerns and goals as an artist in any other way?

Gfrörer: Well, maybe I should clarify that I was referring to the oxytocin high and resulting super-empathy that occurs during childbirth specifically, and it did wear off after awhile, which is how I was eventually able to watch those movies I talked about avoiding when my son was first born. But I’ve always been a pathetically emotionally sensitive person and that hasn’t changed, and yes, it does inform my work. I’ve had the opportunity to experience a variety of new emotional extremes through parenting and that’s all grist for the mill. I will avow that parenthood is functionally identical to having a Harkonnen heart plug installed.

"Conqueror Worm" (2011)

Collins: Does your emotional sensitivity provide an alarm system for you, in the sense that when you hit upon something that upsets you personally, you realize it’s worth pursuing artistically?

Gfrörer: That’s a very accurate description of my process, yeah. The ideas that make me uncomfortable and upset, but that I keep returning to like I’m picking a scab, are the ideas that I know are worth developing into stories. I recently bookmarked this Metafilter comment on the subject of Piss Christ which gets at something I think about all the time: “With good art, that irritation you feel is the experience of being challenged — of having a piece of art force you to confront your assumptions about art, or, as with Serrano’s piece, puts a finger on societal fracture points — areas where there is no consensus, and there are strong, unexamined feelings.” I mean, I’m positively not capable of making a work of art as brilliant as Piss Christ, but those things to which I have an intense reaction that I can’t definitively categorize or name, are the things I want to pursue.

Collins: Though the horror imagery you work with is striking and strong and imaginative — the lion demon, the bird clawing out the child’s eyes, the flayed little boy, the shadow people — the most chilling elements to me were verbal. The demon telling the witch that love is just a meaningless diversion imposed on humanity by higher beings, that it’s holding them back instead of elevating them, knocked me on my ass. So did the succubi not just taking advantage of the young couple, but mocking them, with a really catty and dead-on riff on young people using old-fashioned baby names, “hipster grandpa names.” It was almost sickening, the cruelty of it. A lot of contemporary horror is effectively mute — unstoppable slashers, mindless zombies, cryptic J-horror or Paranormal Activity ghosts and demons, huge semi-insectoid aliens gone amok. Even David Lynch tends to let the image do the talking. An articulate monster that mocks the horror it causes…that’s a hard pill to swallow. What did you gain from their verbosity?

Gfrörer: The supernatural creatures in my stories aren’t necessarily monsters. They don’t always even function as antagonists. They’re more like the Cenobites from Hellraiser than, say, the serial killer from Saw. I think it’s essential that the audience has an opportunity to relate to these characters. Do you know the George Macdonald story “The Shadows”? The shadow people in that story consider it their responsibility to frighten people by acting out their sins on the dark walls, nudging them into better behavior. Then the shadows get together at the north pole and compare notes. And they sing a little song that goes, in part,

Dancing now like demons;
Lying like the dead;
Gladly would we stop it,
And go down to bed!
But our work we still must do,
Shadow men, as well as you.

So they’re explaining that though they may be ruthless or cruel, they’re not malicious, they’re just doing their jobs. That’s what I’m trying to show when they talk. To paraphrase Ben Bova, there are no villains, only people doing their best to solve their problems.

Collins: Total gearshift: I love the way you draw people. You seem to have honed in on a skinny physicality in your figure work that favors your wiry line, and your body language is as interesting to me in its angularity as Tim Hensley’s. As a non-artist I have a hard time articulating a question based on this — I guess I want to know what appeals to you about these kinds of human forms.

Gfrörer: Honestly, I don’t do that on purpose and it’s not a conscious formal decision. I can tell you that my very favorite-of-favorite artists are Kathe Kollwitz, Chloe Piene, Alice Neel, and Harry Clarke, and lanky vulnerable figures appear in their work as well, so I guess it must derive from them. I’m not really pleased that my work mostly depicts thin young straight white people, who already unfairly dominate the cultural dialogue, but that’s the demographic to which I myself belong, so I have to admit it’s my default. I’m working on it.

Collins: What tools do you use?

Gfrörer: I use a Pentel GraphGear 0.9mm mechanical pencil and a 0/.35mm Rapidograph technical pen, which is my magic feather. I also use watercolors, gouache, and Prismacolor pencils occasionally. I used to work at a paper store, so I tried out a lot of different kinds of card stock for drawing on and found that I like the results I get with matte or vellum finish inkjet printer photo card stock, so I buy that by the ream. When I’m working on a story I usually keep the pages in one of those 9″x12″ portfolios with the clear sleeves, so I can flip through it and see how it flows.

A page from Ariadne auf Naxos

Collins: I’ve only seen glimpses of your Ariadne auf Naxos series here and there, but it seems like there was a pretty substantial break between the more lighthearted literary gag strips of those comics and the really personal and unforgiving horror of Flesh and Bone and Too Dark to See. Am I getting that right? What changed? Or are you simply carving out separate outlets for different tones you want to strike?

Gfrörer: Ariadne auf Naxos is pretty dark, actually, but the drawings are simplified and the timing is controlled to emphasize the ridiculous parts, so it is more funny than my longer horror comics. My previous minicomics, The Anthology of Doubt, How Life Became Unbearable, and Venus in Blue Jeans/Venus in Furs, are characterized by the same gallows humor, self-inclusion, and scribbly kamikaze-style drawings. For most of my life I was ashamed that my personality is largely melancholy, masochistic, and severe. People are always telling me to lighten up and get over myself, and I know that sometimes I need to, which is why I do some funny comics. But as I get older I’ve gained the confidence to tell those jackasses to go fuck themselves when necessary, which is how I’ve managed to do some more serious work as well. The Ariadne auf Naxos series is still in progress, Tim of Teenage Dinosaur and I are working on publishing volume four within the next month or two.

Sorry about how you keep asking me questions about my work and I keep just talking about my inner life. Maybe later I can tell you about some dreams I had and how I feel about all the things. Oh, too late.

Collins: [Laughs] Oh dear, we certainly wouldn’t want an interview about your work to deal with your inner life! I’m actually surprised you’d consider them separate things to begin with.

Gfrörer: Well, you don’t really need your taxi driver to be lecturing you about his dreams when he drives his taxi. Maybe you just want to get to the airport or whatever. I mean, I put a lot of myself into my art, but it is a product that I’m producing because I’m a craftsperson, it is a separate entity from my essential self. But you’re right that it’s not always easy to make that distinction.

In 1948, Carl Barks’s domestic life was a mess. His second wife Clara was drinking hard, coming apart at the seams. By his account, she was increasingly violent, tearing up his comics and throwing his original artwork out the window, threatening to rip it up. In 1950 she developed cancer and surgery left her leg amputated at the knee. Barks built her a prosthesis. Having no insurance, he paid the medical bills out of the page rate he was receiving from Western Publishing for his duck comics. The alimony he would pay to her for thirteen years after their divorce the following year too.

These comics were the best of his career. Work was an escape for him: “When the dishes would stop flying, the bottles breaking, why, I could sit down and the ideas would just flow in on me,” he recalled in 1973. And indeed, his work of c. 1948–54 ranks amongst the most consistently inspired, inventive, touching, and plain fun in the history of comics.

Fantagraphics’ inaugural volume in their complete edition of Barks’s Disney comics drops the reader in right at the onset of this creative surge, covering the years 1948–49. In addition to containing the standout story, “Lost in the Andes”, after which it is named, the book contains several of Barks’s long- and short-form masterpieces, in the latter category including such career highlights as the acerbic and wickedly funny media satire, “The Crazy Quiz Show” (1948), and the loopy psychosexual comedy “Donald’s Worst Nightmare” (1949).

“Lost in the Andes” (1949), which Barks often singled out amongst his favorites, is justly one of the most famous of his oeuvre. The author, who only left North America once (and late) in his life, was a real armchair Marco Polo; his long-form stories more often than not involved globetrotting adventures. He would invariably ground these stories in realism, drawing upon his collection of National Geographic magazines and other sources in rendering a particular locale convincingly, which accounts for a lot of their allure.

Occasionally, however, he would tweak these scenarios into the surreal, and nowhere did he do this as memorably as in “Lost in the Andes”. The premise is delightfully ludicrous: third assistant museum janitor Donald accidentally discovers that what was thought to be a pile of cubic rocks from the Andes is, in reality, eggs. Barks extrapolates wildly but eloquently from this: scientific and especially commercial interest in Donald’s find results in an expedition to the Andes in search of its source. Ever the subject of hierarchic fiat, Donald and Huey, Dewey and Louie end up heading into the mountains alone, after everyone else has lost interest after having eaten an omelet made by the kids from square eggs decades past their sell-by date.

In a forgotten valley—Plain Awful—the ducks discover a square city inhabited by square people, who speak in a Dixie drawl (adopted from an earlier visitor from “Bummin’ham, Alabama”) and subsist entirely on square eggs that grow from square rocks. The ducks discover the secret of these “rocks” and return triumphantly to civilization, but because of a crucial mistake the mission nevertheless—and naturally—ends up a big fiasco.

The manner in which Barks integrates the square society into a naturalistic mountain environment makes its absurdity especially delightful. The ‘lost civilization’ trope is unmoored from both its colonialist and romantic foundations to function on a more symbolic level. It becomes a reflection of colonialist desire, organized according to an eminently exploitable, constructive logic, populated by hicks (who have discarded their own language in favor of a homey American dialect) and promising an endless supply of eggs that are “easily stored” and “stackable like bricks.” The Lost Horizon of capitalist desire, it turns out, is not only grotesque, it is Plain Awful.

This all comes alive through Barks’ eloquent cartooning. The gum bubbles incessantly blown by Huey, Dewey, and Louie not only afford him a hilarious running gag—as a visual comedian in comics, Barks is rivaled perhaps only by E. C. Segar and André Franquin—but also a potent metaphor for the ideological foundation of the ducks’ endeavor: sweet, sticky, calorically empty, volatile and precariously inflated (Donald repeatedly threatens to “start a war” if things do not go his way, and in classic comic book-ending style ends up blowing his top quite locally).

The round, expansive nature of the bubbles however simultaneously points to the initiative and resourcefulness of the ducks, leading to their discovery of where the square eggs come from. Unsurprisingly—and in a stroke of Barksian genius—anything round turns out to be anathema to the Plain Awfultonians, forcing the kids to negotiate a delightful paradox to save the day, a paradox that one senses reflects the culture that made them.

The book simultaneously contains two other, somewhat more naturalistically founded colonialist adventures, which deepens the insight it offers of Barks as a cartoonist who eludes ideological pigeonholing. Socially conservative and clearly informed by the cultural prejudices of his time, he was at the same time blessed with a healthy skepticism and an equal-opportunity sense of the absurd.

The beautifully rendered “Race to the South Seas” (1949), for example, is a slapstick replay of Heart of Darkness, in which Donald and his nephews compete with their insufferably lucky cousin Gladstone Gander to find and save their outlandishly rich Uncle Scrooge, thought lost in the wild, only to realize that he prefers living out his colonialist fantasy to himself, cannibals worshiping his spats.

From "South Seas."

From "Voodoo Hoodoo"

The story is essentially about power: Donald travels to Africa to cure himself of the curse that was meant for his unsympathetic uncle. There he meets the voodoo priest, who in spite of this mixup decides to take out his anger on Donald, because he is powerless to avenge himself on the real culprit. And in the middle we find Bombie, the powerless dupe who ends up exploited by every other character in the story, including Donald and the kids, who end up walking away uncaringly, having gained no particular insight. Although a highly moral artist, the Barks’ world is more complicated than whatever principles he sets up to guide his imperfect characters; its absurdity is writ in humor.

These two stories exemplify the meticulous approach taken to the material in this series. For the first time since its original printing, “South Seas” is here published in a version derived from the recently discovered, original artwork, whereas all previous reprints were based on a reconstruction with Dutch master chameleon Daan Jippes cleaning up the inferior printed material available. While comparison cannot but heighten one’s estimation for Jippes’s work, Barks’s original line is just that much more nimble and clear. Beautiful. (Let’s hope a solution is also found for the stories “Santa’s Stormy Visit” (1946), “Darkest Africa” (1948) and “Donald Duck Tells About Kites” (1954), which have so far only been reprinted in feebly restored Dutch versions).

The Dutch restoration by Daan Jippes

The newly restored "South Seas" from the present volume

As for “Voodoo”, it is here published uncensored. To my knowledge, all other reprints, except the recent Barks collection published by Egmont in Northern Europe (2005–2008), featured a doctored version in which the racial caricatures of the African natives were toned down somewhat. Here this partial whitewashing is dispensed with, leaving us with a more historically truthful product.

Easily the most controversial issue raised by this book, however, is the new coloring of the comics, executed by Rich Tommaso. Editor Gary Groth has stated that the principle is to reproduce as closely as possible the coloring of the original comic books with changes made to the work only in case of obvious errors, as well as “when we thought we could improve it (or for the sake of consistency) and when we know Barks disliked the coloring.”

The original version of "Truant Officer Donald" from Walt Disney's Comics & Stories #100 (1949)

Compare this example of Tommaso's coloring, from "Truant Officer Donald," with the original above. Note the lighter, more muted color range and the change in the color of the headphones and the periscope. Note also the strong yellow (and how it has been removed from panels one and three)

Aficionados will question the choice to color the strips at all, rather than leaving them as Barks drew them, in black and white—as was done beautifully in the first comprehensive archival edition, Another Rainbow’s Carl Barks Library (1983–90)—while purists will question the choice to recolor instead of restoring the original printed colors—as achieved so successfully in other archival projects such as Fantagraphics’ own Krazy Kat, Popeye, and Prince Valiant series. A third objection is that the original colors were not good enough and should be jettisoned in favor of entirely new coloring.

Regarding the first reservation, it is important to keep in mind that the strips were drawn with colors in mind—colors were part of the finished work, and to eliminate them is to change the work into something else, an object of study rather than living history. Similarly, the second position favors archival authenticity over the crisper, more current quality achieved by recoloring. Such an approach, however, would risk lessening the appeal to a large part of the intended, youthful readership of these comics, and would arguably deny them a different kind of authenticity, namely the crackling visual experience that the original readership must have experienced when holding a freshly minted duck comic.

The third objection, while fair to an extent—those comics were not always equally well colored—is ultimately less helpful, in that it presupposes a new, better coloring without needing to define it. Earlier attempts at recoloring have been uniformly terrible, and while one could easily imagine them being improved upon (the bar is depressingly low), it is hard to imagine a new color job that would not be controversial. The fundamentalist choice adopted here at least has the virtue of staying true to the original comics as they were read and appreciated by hundreds of thousands of readers.

Naturalistically based coloring from "South Seas"

Besides, the original coloring is generally quite good, striking a fine balance between naturalism and graphic effect and pretty consistently enabling the storytelling. The coral atolls of “South Sea” come to life through a simple combination of blue, yellow, and green, evocatively distilled from nature, but if an image pops better with a pink brick wall, then the brick wall is pink. And in defiance of naturalism, backgrounds often change color between panels enlivening the storytelling in a way uniformly colored neutrality would not. Of course one need look no further than to two of Barks’s sources of inspiration, Prince Valiant and the Terry and the Pirates Sunday pages, to acknowledge that things could have been better, but taking into consideration that this coloring originated with underpaid coolies in the Western sweatshop, it is a remarkably good job.

Pop coloring

Worse, however, is the decision not to present the stories in chronological order, but rather to mix them up according to no immediately discernible logic beyond the evident wish to lead with the title story. There is some sense in separating out the longform adventures from the ten-pagers and one-pagers as is done here, but why not at least arrange each section according to original publication date? That the editors prefer this nebulous concoction when they have otherwise decided to package the individual volumes chronologically is strangely inconsistent. It leaves the reader with an unnecessary jumble where chronological insight into Barks development month for month would have been easily achievable—as indeed it was more or less in all earlier complete editions, and is in Fantagraphics’ own concurrent series compiling the Mickey Mouse comics of Barks’s contemporary Floyd Gottfredson. Here’s hoping the editors will reconsider this choice for the rest of the series.

The comics are bookended by various editorial material, ably helmed by distinguished Barks/Blake scholar Donald Ault, a leading authority and the most insightful analyst of the Duck Man’s life and work for more than four decades. He opens the present volume with an informative introduction to Barks that negotiates admirably the balance between facts and their interpretation (even if it takes for granted perhaps a little too readily the factuality of Barks’ own, retrospective accounts of his life), and additionally contributes a couple of brilliant short analyses of individual stories in the closing “story notes” section.

A number of other comics critics and scholars also contribute short essays to this section of varying, but generally good and sometimes excellent quality. It would be great if some of these writers were given the opportunity to write more substantial essays for future volumes. When compared to the Mickey Mouse series’ near-excess, the extra material is generally rather light here. While I would not propose going all-out museum as is done in those books, it would serve this series well if a wider range of supplements, including sketches, interviews and the like, were considered.

These criticisms notwithstanding, this is a series that finally promises Barks done right, promising a major revival of one of our greatest cartoonists.

As much as I hate to follow up a day’s topic with the same thing, I enjoyed yesterday’s Jason Karns interview enough to want to scan in a close-up image from straight out of his odd, faded publications, here specifically the horror showcase Satanic Terror, which kicks off with a seven-page homage to classic Atlas-type Kirby monster comics, The Thing With Too Many Damn Eyes. Karns’ squat legions of clench-toothed soldiers bring to mind the old Metal Slug video games, and probably the funniest bit of chicken fat business can be seen above, with one of the grunts taking time out to lay hands on one of Morkok’s ocular tendrils and firmly declare “FUCK YOU,” as if this appeal to communication is what’ll really win the battle. As mentioned at the link, the artist declines to identify himself in the comic any more than any given soldier; there is no legal indicia, no signatures anywhere, no credits, not even issue numbers on any of the installments of Fukitor I have, thus preventing the inattentive reader — maybe encountering this stuff away from a handy website — from even knowing what order the comics were made in, or should be read in. It doesn’t matter, any more so than any one grunt might matter before he has proven himself and become memorable; the idea of tracking authorial development is collapsed into pure activity, if mostly as a flourish, since you’re unlikely to find this stuff anywhere other than lined up in order, ready for deployment.

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PLEASE NOTE: What follows is not a series of capsule reviews but an annotated selection of items listed by Diamond Comic Distributors for release to comic book retailers in North America on the particular Wednesday, or, in the event of a holiday or occurrence necessitating the close of UPS in a manner that would impact deliveries, Thursday, identified in the column title above. Not every listed item will necessarily arrive at every comic book retailer, in that some items may be delayed and ordered quantities will vary. I have in all likelihood not read any of the comics listed below, in that they are not yet released as of the writing of this column, nor will I necessarily read or purchase every item identified; THIS WEEK IN COMICS! reflects only what I find to be potentially interesting.

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SPOTLIGHT PICKS!

The Silence of Our Friends: From perhaps exactly the opposite side of the comics world comes your graphic novel pick from a large book publisher, worthy topic and all: civil rights struggles in late ’60s Texas, drawn from experiences of co-writer Mark Long, scripting with Jim Demonakos. The most intriguing factor of these 208 pages, however, will perhaps be artist Nate Powell, quickly following last year’s release of Any Empire. From First Second. Preview; $16.99.

The Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred #1 (of 6): Also in follow-ups, here’s the launch of David Hine’s & Shaky Kane’s new Image sequel to their wry 2010 ode to funnybook conservatism and absorbing fandom, now apparently focused on the series’ superhero characters in a series of showcases, some of them issue-length, some of them anthologizing small stories, and at least one of them (#4) scheduled to devote every one of its panels to a seemingly discreet scene. Likely the most interesting comic book launch you’ll find on Wednesday. Preview; $3.99.

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PLUS!

Fantastic Life: Sean T. Collins introduced this Xeric-winning 128-page Kevin Mutch production as “the story of a drunken, drugged-up art-school malcontent stumbling his way through awful parties, lousy punk shows, mortifying painting-class critiques, and portentous encounters with the woman of his (wet) dreams, with some ‘is it a hallucination/is it a dream/is it a warp in the space-time continuum?’ weirdness ladled on top toward the end” in his very positive review last year, and interested parties will want to know it’s now been distributed to comics stores through Diamond, I think for the first time. Big sample; $9.95.

A.D.D.: Adolescent Demo Division: Definitely available for the first time, given the circumstances, is one of Vertigo’s continuing, irregular hardcover graphic novel releases, this time a 152-page project from writer Douglas Rushkoff, of several cross-platform pursuits and the 2006-08 Vertigo comic Testament. Here he’s teamed with Goran Sudžuka & José Marzán Jr. (of various bits of Y: The Last Man) for a rather Jodorowskian concept of youths raised from infancy to become the ultimate samplers and navigators of big media entertainment; $24.99.

The Manara Library Vol. 2 (of 6, but really 9): El Gaucho and Other Stories: YOU’VE READ ABOUT IT ALL ONLINE, now come and get the second of Milo Manara’s two collaborations with writer Hugo Pratt, a 1991-92 seafaring opus paired in these 280 pages with Trial by Jury, a 1975-76 series of vignettes from world history scripted by Mino Milani. Note that the Manara Library series is still nine volumes long, though publisher Dark Horse has opted to corral the really spicy stuff under a separate Manara Erotica banner (kicking off in May), of which there will be three volumes to the main line’s six, unless I’m missing something; $59.99.

Brenda Starr, Reporter: The Collected Daily and Sunday Strips Vol. 1: Moving into more traditional Golden Age of Reprints content, we find a 10″ x 13″, 288-page Hermes Press color showcase for Dale Messick, specifically through her well-known newspaper strip drama, which started out in 1940 as a Sunday supplement. The solicitation indicates that this book will include both Sunday and daily content, which began in ’45; $60.00.

Li’l Abner Vol. 4: 1941-1942: And from around the same time, IDW brings another 272-page stack of Al Capp, for the present generation; $49.99.

Creepy Archives Vol. 12: Elsewhere in newsprint but away from all that damned news, Dark Horse brings another 240 pages of vintage horror magazine stuff (that’s issues #55-59). With art by Richard Corben (quite a lot of him this time, including a nice killer Santa holiday tale), Reed Crandall, Paul Neary, Tom Sutton, Rafael Auraleón, Jose Bea, Ramon Torrents and others, and scripts by Doug Moench, Don McGregor, Gardner Fox, editor Bill DuBay ‘n more. Plus: assorted cut-out games, and the Warren horror comics photo debut of 14-year old Vampirella cosplayer Heidi Saha, subject of the oddest Warren pub of them all, 1973′s An Illustrated History of Heidi Saha, a photo magazine chronicling the cradle-to-junior-high dress-up exploits of the title lass, captioned by Forrest J. Ackerman and apparently spearheaded by the girl’s parents in hopes of launching a movie career. One imagines a 40th anniversary facsimile edition is not forthcoming from Dark Horse. Samples; $49.99

Sam & Twitch: The Complete Collection Vol. 2: Different time, different horror. This is millennial stuff from the Spawn franchise, which provided something of a base at the time for writer Brian Michael Bendis, fusing crime and vague superheroic background in a way that would get very popular at Marvel very quickly. Frequent collaborator Alex Maleev provides a good chunk of art for these issues (#14-26), though Bendis decamped after #19; $29.99.

Atmospherics: Prior to that, Bendis was publishing crime comics he wrote and drew with Caliber Comics, which also provided a home (via its Calibrations anthology) for this 1996 serial from writer Warren Ellis, at that time only a two- or three-year veteran of U.S. publishing. It’s a police interrogation/potential space alien influence piece, previously collected by Avatar in 2002 and now hand-painted into full color by artist Ken Meyer Jr. for a new 48-page edition from the same publisher; $7.99 ($24.99 in hardcover).

Judge Anderson: The Psychic Crime Files Vol. 1: Journal contributor Bart Croonenborghs indicates over at Broken Frontier that this new 192-page Simon & Schuster release of 2000 AD material is one of the publisher’s custom blends, mixing stories in a manner different from Rebellion’s UK collections, a la the Mega City Masters series of miscellaneous Judge Dredd shorts, albeit with only one writer in charge for this one, psychic law enforcement specialist Alan Grant. The artists are Dredd co-creator Carlos Ezquerra, Boo Cook, Trevor Hairsine and Patrick Goddard (who’s done some very nice, inky stuff on Pat Mills’ Savage), so the emphasis appears to be on newer artists and super-established 2000 AD figures; $20.99.

You Are a Cat!: Finally, your not-really-a-comic of the week, I suppose – a nonetheless cute-looking Conundrum Press release for writer/artist Sherwin Tjia, who looks to be working a nice cartoon style for a parody of classic Choose Your Own Adventure books invoking all of the difficult choices in the daily life of a house cat; $17.00.

Speaking of Angoulême, Sarah Glidden will be living in the area for seven months, and recently posted a photo tour of the area.

Tom Spurgeon’s got a good interview with Tom Gauld.

Milo George reviewed the Russ Cochran Sunday Funnies project that was mentioned in the comments of last Friday’s post.

I am the furthest thing from an expert on issues related to SOPA and online piracy, but I found this article in the Register last week to be very helpful, in the sense that it wasn’t just screeching and explained some of the complexities that have been ignored in the general clamor I’ve seen so far.

Not comics (or barely so): Steven Heller digs up a 1932 children’s book full of very stark, black and white photographs of everyday objects, one that claims that a “baby needs to learn about things as they are, and simple, accurate pictures to help him.” I don’t want to come off like the dumb iPad enthusiast of yesteryear by extrapolating too far from my own experience, but I’ve personally been amazed to discover just how readily very young children do recognize objects from drawn and even caricatured versions of them. There’s a reason Richard Scarry’s still in print, and this one isn’t.

And we have a guest blog from the great Drew Friedman, who just finished this phenomenal portrait of Harvey Kurtzman, and had this to say about the man himself:

The legendary Harvey Kurtzman (1924-1993) needs no introduction. So here’s one anyway. Cartoonist, writer and editor, he was the founder and creator of Mad, Trump, Humbug, Help, etc. Along with his long time partner, cartoonist Will Elder, he spent 20 years producing the lushly painted comic strip “Little Annie Fanny” for Playboy.

Beginning in 1975, Harvey Kurtzman was also a teacher at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York, which is where I eventually met him. In fact, the main reason I chose SVA as an art school was because Harvey Kurtzman was listed as an instructor in their catalog. Growing up as the son of a renowned writer (Bruce Jay Friedman), encountering and meeting various celebrities, authors and performers was common for me, but I always held cartoonists on a higher level. The fact that my dad was actually friends with  Maurice Sendak and Jules Feiffer (author of…The Great Comic Book Heroes!!) was just astounding to me, as my goal from an early age was to become a cartoonist, and in addition, I already knew my comics history. Attending a Playboy authors convention in the early seventies, my father posed for a giant group photo (taken by Alfred Eisenstadt) along with about a hundred other Playboy contributors. Hugh Hefner was prominently up front, with many celebrated authors and artists scattered throughout. When I saw the photo in Playboy, what impressed me the most was that my dad was standing right next to one of my Cartoon Heroes: none other than Harvey Kurtzman! I have no idea if they even spoke to each other but it was still such a point of pride for me.

As a teenager in the early seventies, I attended many comic book conventions in NYC, where Harvey Kurtzman was a frequent guest, but I never dared approach him, terrified he’d dismiss me as just another geeky fanboy. Seeing his name listed in the SVA catalog a couple of years later would finally grant me access into his world, or so I hoped.

I eventually signed up for Kurtzman’s course in late 1978. When the first class was ending, and wanting to impress him with my opening line, I made my approach. He was sitting at his desk doing some class paperwork and I leaned in and awkwardly stated: “You know my father!” He lowered his glasses and looked up at me with tired, weary eyes, “Who’s your father?”, he asked.  I answered “Bruce Jay Friedman”. Seemingly unimpressed, he murmured, “Oh, the author” and returned to his paperwork. But he quietly did take note, and would always introduce me to visiting class guests by sarcastically announcing “and this is the son of the author Bruce Jay Friedman”.

Harvey has been criticized by some for not being a great teacher, but never by me (after all, I wasn’t a great student). It actually wasn’t important that he wasn’t a “great teacher” — just being in his presence was enough. For some still unknown reason, Harvey chose to teach “gag cartoons” in his class, preparing his students for a career as, say, a New Yorker or Playboy gag cartoonist. Rarely did he bring up the subject of comics, but if a student ever did, particularly referring to his early Mad or war comics for EC, he clearly (to me anyway) took great pride that anyone still cared and was interested in that work. But most of his students just thought of him as their amiable cartoon instructor “Mr. Kurtzman,” some perhaps knowing he had some vague connection to Mad and that he wrote that sexy comic strip in the back of Playboy (During one of Gary Groth’s extensive interviews with Kurtzman for TCJ, he asked Harvey about teaching at SVA and what the students were like, “They don’t know nuthin’!” was Harvey’s dismissive reply, which sadly, was basically true). But to me and many others, he was the droopy, turtle-faced Living Legend in our midst, and once a week for 3 hours it was our ground zero, the main meeting place for like-minded young cartoonists, future humorists, comics writers and editors, plus you never knew who might drop in. A constant stream of guest cartoonists could show up at any given time, among them were Robert Grossman, Rick Meyerowitz, Neal Adams, Jack Ziegler, et al. The first time I ever encountered Robert Crumb was when he appeared at the class unannounced. Just as I had avoided approaching Kurtzman at the comic cons, I didn’t dare approach Crumb.

Harvey encouraged chaos in his class. At the beginning of his course, he’d hand out balloons and ask everyone to blow them up till they exploded, simulating the “surprise” you should get from a cartoon punchline and leading to inevitable hysterical laughter from all. I’ve often referred to his class (and SVA in general) as “The 13th grade” or “Clown College.”  As the cartoonist Kaz has mentioned, “Drew went into SVA knowing what he wanted to do and left SVA the same way”; meaning, I was hard if not impossible to “teach.” As far as classroom insanity, Harvey usually enjoyed and encouraged the Three Stooges noises and the endless insanity, often instigated by me. He once even quietly took me aside during class to “thank me” for keeping things so lively. But Harvey was also very sensitive and fragile, and sometimes prone to tears, especially at that point in his life when things perhaps hadn’t worked out as he had hoped, and Little Annie Fanny was his main bread and butter. Some days he’d arrive at class and was clearly not in the mood for the hi-jinx that would surely ensue. Oh, and let me go on record and address one particular false rumor that has plagued me for years. I did not hurl a desk out the window during a class! It was a fellow student I hurled.

I’d like to think Harvey and I were friends, or at least as friendly as a wise-ass student could be with his teacher. I was frequently asked to join him along with class guests and certain chosen students (among them, Mark Newgarden, Dave Dubnanski, Phil Felix and Mike Carlin) at the after class get togethers at his favorite Irish bar, The Glocca Morra, around the corner on East 23rd St,  where he could finally unwind and reminisce about the old days at EC, Bill Gaines, Will Elder’s practical jokes, his theories about coke bottle design, politics (he admired Ronald Reagan!) and women.

I was proud that Harvey always seemed to “get” my work or at least appreciate what I was doing and the painstaking detail I was putting into it (he referred to me once as the “new Wally Wood”… Yikes!). He seemed to take pride in the fact that after I graduated I was getting attention and being printed in mainstream publications like Heavy Metal, National Lampoon and Spy. He even wrote a foreword to one of my books. After SVA, I saw Harvey only a few more times. One summer he called me out of the blue and asked if I’d like to edit a humor magazine for him. I was floored by the offer and said “Of course!!”, which is when he earned one of his nicknames, “Harvey the Vague.” That’s the last I ever heard anything about editing a magazine for him. Harvey died in 1993 after suffering for several years from the ravages of Parkinson’s disease, but his legend has by no means diminished, in fact it continues to grow. Aside from the recent coffee table book about his career from Abrams and the deluxe Humbug box set from Fantagraphics, a massive biography is in the works, which will cover in detail his SVA years, as well as a film documentary. During my recent interview (along with Gary Groth) with Jack Davis at the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, Jack continually brought up Harvey as the best editor he ever worked for,  giving him full credit for pushing him in artistic directions that would eventually make him one of the top commercial illustrators ever.

It was after our talk with Jack that I was inspired to create this portrait (based on a mid-seventies photo by E. B. Boatner) of Harvey Kurtzman, posed in his attic studio at his home in Mount Vernon, NY.

Benjamin Marra introduced me to Fukitor, Jason Karns’s flagship title. So when I started putting this interview together, I emailed Marra to see how he discovered Karns’s work.

BENJAMIN MARRA: Comic books, zines, and art books are like magic items to me and I try to surround myself with as many as I can find. By opening and looking through their pages within I get a psychic high from visually absorbing their power. Some have higher psychic value and better highs than others. It all depends on my ever-fluctuating tastes. But I am constantly searching for a new and better high, much like an addict and not so much like a collector. Or I’m like a Forty-Niner, the Internet is my land claim, streams of new blog posts are like an ever-flowing river on my property through which I pan for tiny pieces of gold, or underground comic books, pamphlets, zines or out-of-print books. I am deliberate in my acquisitions and have a highly concentrated horde of magic-item books.

I’ve known Keenan Marshall Keller from when I first started publishing my own work. We live on opposite ends of the country but have a virtual connection through the Internet. I have all his issues of Galactic Breakdown which deliver a very choice high, and from time to time I happen upon his blog or Flickr site to see what’s new in his Internet-world. It was on the his Flickr account that I happened on the issues of FUKITOR Keller had recently acquired. I checked out the FUKITOR blog, which had an adults only disclaimer (good sign), and instantly after sampling the visuals found there needed the raw, tangible, material, printed issues myself. I emailed the address on the blog and asked if the individual (I’m not sure if I knew it was Jason Karns at this point yet) if he wanted to trade his books for my own. (I joke to myself that I just make comics to turn them into other comics by other people). Karns replied and declined my trade offer. I thought about the possibility of not buying the issues for a few seconds before deciding it was impossible not to order all of the available issues. The images I found through the screen of my computer had already seared onto my brain. I find art I can’t forget to be the stuff I prefer.

When they arrived in the mail I stood in my studio and ran my eyes over all the pages devouring all the drawings and information hungrily. Horror, nudity, gore, blood, oozing fluids, giant Nazi insect scientists experimenting on screaming virgins strapped to steel tables as devoted druids stand in attendance, all rendered with Black Hole black ink and bubble-gum markers, printed on cheap color-printer paper (I guess). The high was instant and heavily satisfying. The issues, sitting together in their plastic bag, stuffed in one of my many comic short boxes, were a strong addition to my horde of magic items.

With an endorsement from Marra, whose work I enjoy and opinion I trust, I tracked down a couple issues of Fukitor from Jason Karns’ blog. Rare is the comic that exceeds high expectations. The samples on Karns’ site suggested outrageous, insane comics the way old exploitation trailers and posters suggested extreme movie viewing experiences. Unlike those trailers, Fukitor delivered the goods. These comics were gorgeously drawn, lettered, colored, and even printed on newsprint! They reminded me of EC comics (but imagine EC comics being shock-adjusted to be offensive by today’s standards), Richard Corben, Tim Vigil’s Faust, Ben Marra, Cracked magazine, undergrounds, ’70s grindhouse stuff, ’80s straight-to-video movies…I couldn’t believe my eyes, and he has like 7 issues available!?! How had I not heard of these things before? I took my copies of Fukitor to PIX (Pittsburgh Indy Comics Expo) and showed them to everybody – other cartoonists, retailers, friends…no one had heard of these comics. I said, “this is bullshit”, and decided two things: 1. I had to learn more about them and the cartoonist who made them; 2. I didn’t want to live in a comics world where Karns’s work isn’t widely known and celebrated.

I emailed Jason Karns to get some answers. He patiently walked me through his background and process. I hope if you find this interview and the accompanying artwork intriguing you will consider ordering an issue (I highly recommend issues 5 and 6, but they’re all amazing). And please share this interview or his blog with your comix friends.

BACKGROUND/ORIGIN/HISTORY:

RUGG: How old are you?

JASON KARNS: I turned 40 just this past summer.

RUGG: What is your background (did you go to art school or prison or something that seems especially formative)?

KARNS: I’m self-taught. My only background would be that I started reading comic books at a very early age. I was in jail for 24 hours once. That was enough to tell me that I don’t want to go there again. Oh, and I did some art classes at a junior college after high school. I didn’t learn much. I knew it was time to quit school and get a job when I found myself sitting on the toilet skipping class so I could finish a beer from lunch break.

RUGG: What do you do now, like day job, recreation, etc. – what’s a typical week like for you?

KARNS: I work at the bar that I live above. My typical week is slinging booze and waiting tables in between hanging out with friends, drawing, watching a few old movies, and listening to music. I live in a small town in Illinois. It’s relatively quiet here and most folks get along. It’s kinda like Mayberry with more booze, with a hint of David Lynch.

RUGG: What is your history with comics (including reading them as a child, how you started making them, how long you’ve been making them, everything, all the way up to Fukitor production)?

KARNS: As far back as 6 or 7 I was looking off of comic books and tying to draw it. I’d go with my mom to the store and spend the whole time at the book racks reading comic books, horror mags, and even Cracked and Mad. Keep in mind, this is the mid to late ’70s, a fucking great time to peruse the magazine aisle. When we could afford it I would get to bring some home. I would spread paper all around the living room with pencil in hand trying to copy scenes from Spider-Man comics while watching a Godzilla movie or any of the old Universal monster flicks (back in the good ol’ days when that shit seemed to always be on TV). I remember being fascinated with not just the art but also the physical design of a comic book. I would study the logos, sound effects, cover designs, where the staples went, the styles of paper, the differences between Atlas, Marvel, DC, Charlton, and Gold Key, etc…I memorized the names of all the artists. To this day I’m still pretty good at guessing the artist in an old comic right at first glance. And like most I quickly became a huge fan of Jack Kirby.

At age 8 or 9 I started folding pieces of paper together, stapling them and making my own little homemade comics. I would do the obvious superhero crap, but it wasn’t very long afterwards that I discovered Conan and began drawing barbarian stuff. I created a character named “Kron”, a lone barbarian warrior that was constantly being hassled by soldiers, wizards, and monsters. Before I had even seen a gory movie I was drawing blood and guts. For some reason the gore appealed to me. Kron was repeatedly, page after page, hacking up everybody and everything. Severed limbs, arterial spray, beheadings, and piles of intestines filled the pages. In the earlier issues I even made him a cannibal, I’m guessing as an excuse to show more gore. Eventually I toyed around with the superhero stuff again and would even haul these homemade rags to school and pass them around class for others to read. I don’t think the teachers even noticed or just didn’t care. I never got in trouble until freshman year when a teacher saw what I was drawing at my desk. At the time I was experimenting in drawing with Bic pens, no pencils, just straight to inks, and I was using a red pen for all the blood scenes. I was pretty proud of this particular scene where half a dude’s head was getting blasted off by gunfire. I’m sure that stuck out like a motherfucker when the teacher walked by. Anyway, I was sent to the principal’s office to get lectured on why I shouldn’t draw stuff like that. A little traumatizing to get scolded for drawing cartoons, but looking back on it, I was probably strengthened by it. It was my first experience in life where I realized some people are just too uptight and ignorant about art. I knew I wasn’t fucked in the head. My childhood was so normal it could almost be labeled boring.

So, after high school and into the ’90s I kept drawing, sometimes comics, other times just artwork. I was also partying, chasing girls, and just doing what young twenty-somethings do. I dicked around with doing flyers for local shows and some cover art for some buddies that had a thrash band. By the late 90s I was starting to really question what the fuck I was gonna do with my drawing. I was getting a little uninspired. Then one day while working at a liquor store one of my regular customers noticed my doodlings laying on the far side of the checkout counter. I don’t remember what it was, probably monsters, skulls, and stuff. He said “wow, man…you draw that?” And I said “yeah…it’s just something I do on the side…” And he asked if I had ever read any Zap comix. I had heard of them and had already seen some Crumb stuff. We shot the shit for a bit and he said he owned all the original Zap issues and would bring them in for me to borrow. I kinda blew it off, not expecting him to follow through, but sure enough a few days later he comes in and slaps down all the issues of Zap and tells me to borrow ‘em for as long as I want. And that’s when I discovered S. Clay Wilson. His art and style was the jolt I needed. It reminded me to just have fun with my art, and yeah, throwing in plenty of blood, boobs, and bad words wouldn’t hurt either. Not long after I also got turned on to Joe Coleman’s work*. His attention to detail along with graphic imagery was another kick in the ass I needed.

About the same time the internet was starting up and through a friend I was able to put up a website showing some of my stuff. I became email buddies with some of the folks in the underground metal music scene. Billy from Razorback Records would encourage me from time to time. One day he was emailing me about how lame the current trendy metal scene was. We were just kinda making fun of all the hipster shit, baggy pants, nu-metal junk that was going on and he suggested I draw a comic where nu-metal kids get killed by zombies. Usually when someone says “Hey, you should draw this, or that…” I quickly say NO, but being another disgruntled metal kid from the ’80s, Billy’s idea hit home. And so, “Poseur Holocaust” was born. By the first few panels I knew I had hit a nerve. This is what I want to do. Little homemade, full color comix that don’t hold anything back. Lots of gore and craziness, all mixed in with some dark humor. I called the early stuff “Tales From Uranus” and started out just giving them away for free, then later started charging a little bit because the ink costs were kind of brutal. My underground metal buddies spread my flyers around with their mailings and CD orders. Pretty soon word of mouth was getting as far as Europe and people were ordering them from me via snail-mail.

Over the years I made some format changes and wrestled with costs. It was a constant learning process, the whole DIY experience. Finally I was able to get newsprint paper for the inside pages and a nice slick, fullbleed cover. I became bored with the title and really wanted ONE word to sum up everything. “Fukitor” was actually an alien monster character in an earlier comic that hasn’t been reprinted since. I was going through my older stuff one day back in 2005 or 6 and saw that word FUKITOR again, and then I knew that was gonna be it. That one obnoxious word says it all to me. It doesn’t say any particular genre. It means I can throw in anything I want and it’s all the same animal. Meanwhile, it’s all just one big sick, twisted, lowbrow homage to those old comics and movies I grew up with and still enjoy today. Now if I could just get them to even smell like a ’70s comic, I’d be set.

CREATIVE PROCESS:

RUGG: How do you produce an issue (soup to nuts, everything, how do you staple it? How do you color it? Are you printing the interior pages on an inkjet printer yourself? What do you draw with? Do you write the story first or write as you draw each page? I could list a million more of these tech questions, so just give us your process from a blank sheet of paper or rough idea to dropping a finished copy in the mail)?

KARNS: It always starts with thumbnails and little notes. Sometimes a title alone will get the ball rolling. Most of the time it’s an image or a scene I see in my head and I’ll do little doodles to figure out placement, perspective, and character design. I don’t keep a sketchbook, just lots of paper filled with thumbnails, goofy bits of dialogue ideas, and razor thin plot summaries jotted down around a bunch of seedy looking visuals. I always doodle with a Sharpie Ultra Fine point pen.

Once I feel like I’m onto something I grab a piece of regular white copy paper, fold it in half and start the rough pencil layouts. Sometimes it’ll flow, sometimes it takes a little more effort. Once I’m happy with the title design and panel layout I get real good and tight on the pencils. I don’t like to ink until I’m sure of everything as far as placement, action, shadows, perspective, and even word balloons. Then I ink with a black Papermate Flair pen. I like the tips on those. I’m able to get a good brush stroke effect from those and they’re cheap. I’m a detail freak and I hate dead space so I even get in there with a Micron pen before it’s all done. The lettering is all done twice. First I lightly ink the letters with the Flair then go back over them in detail with the Micron. I erase all pencil marks and make a black and white copy. It has to be on a photocopier, not an inkjet. That way the blacks are set into the paper and don’t smear. I make an extra copy every time just in case I fuck up or change my mind on some colors. Coloring is done with Prismacolor markers. I’ve been using these for years and have found nothing else as good. If you know how to use them you can get some really good solid results with minimal tracks or bleeds. Once the coloring is done I trim the outer edges a bit to prevent anything getting cut off during the printing stage.

Once the comic is done I arrange the pages in the order I will need them to be for printing. I use an old HP inkjet copier. I feed each individual sheet of 81/2 x 11 newsprint manually, otherwise it’ll jam. Once I’ve made the amount of copies I need, I change the art and do the reverse sides. Every issue is 20 pages which means it’s 5 sheets of paper printed on both sides. I use the lower setting on the ink output. This saves a little ink but it also gives the art a little washed out look that reminds me of an old comic, so that works out good. Once it’s done I divide the sheets up into 5 separate piles and one by one pull from each pile, fold all 5 sheets together, being careful to make sure they’re folding neatly and evenly with a nice crease for the spine. I do that until they are all done and that’s it for the insides. Then I make the color covers on a laser machine using slick 11×17 paper. I use a papercutter to trim off all the access. This allows me to have fullbleed cover art. Run those through on the reverse side for the inside cover art, fold them, then individually stuff each one with inside comix. Finally I take a long Bostitch stapler, slip the comic in open and flat and carefully put 2 staples centered in the spine, roughly 2 inches in from the edges, so that the book will open smoothly.

Then I post the info on my blog, setup the PayPal button, and wait for emails saying I have orders. When I get an order I always write it down, lots of times straight onto a blank envelope, make a note on the flap of what issues they ordered (just in case the internet goes down), then stick the comic(s) in a plastic bag sealed with magic tape, seal the envelope, and head over to the post office in the next day or so.

RUGG: Who and what are your influences? What have you been enjoying lately (feel free to name movies, tv shows, books, comics, video games, comedians, etc.)?

KARNS: My main influences are and always will be older comic books and older movies. I could probably be labeled as someone who “lives in the past”. That wouldn’t bother me a bit, because it’s not my fault the present sucks so much. I like reading old, trashy paperbacks too, anything from porno westerns to macho action shit to fantasy and sci-fi. I have a small collection of about 200 old horror movies that I enjoy re-watching over and over. I don’t watch tv. I have a tv obviously for my DVDs and VHS, but no cable. The only television programs I ever see would be at the bar, mainly football. So, I’m still heavily influenced by the same stuff for the past couple of decades. Old Mexican horror movies, 60s 70s horror films from here and Europe, Eerie Publications, my small pile of old comics and mags, and a big book of those old Men’s Adventure magazine covers are the only things I need to get my juices going. Well, that and cold beer.

RUGG: You want to mention or discuss any favorite old horror movies?

KARNS: Ones I can’t seem to live without and watch at least once or twice a month: Mask of Satan; Horror Hotel; Dawn of the Dead (orig. of course); Day of the Dead; The Awful Dr. Orlof; Fistful of Dollars/For a Few Dollars More; She Demons; Nude For Satan; I Drink Your Blood; Fiend Without a Face; Werewolves On Wheels; Mark of the Devil; Diabolical Dr. Z; Django; The Sadist; Planet of the Vampires; Any Santo movie; The Bloody Vampire; Bloody Pit of Horror (just had this eaten recently, but I’m sure I’ll get a DVD sometime so I can watch it a million more times)

And a slew of other stuff from Europe and Mexico. Oh, and there’s also the original Space Ghost, Herculoids, and Thundarr cartoons when I really wanna nerd out.

RUGG: You mentioned that you don’t mind being labeled as “living in the past”. I love the history of comics and exploitation movies…but I actually believe we are living in a golden age of entertainment/creativity (granted a lot of that position is based on the fact that we have access to archives of all the great comics/movies/music/books/etc that were ever created). I wonder if you could elaborate on this position that “the present sucks so much.” Is there anyone contemporary besides Ben Marra that you like? Do you ever interact with the comics industry (like at a comics shop)?

KARNS: Yeah, part of it is the fact I don’t really pay attention too much to the current stuff. There’s a comic shop here, but I never go there. I was in a bigger shop in the burbs outside Chicago about 5 years ago and couldn’t stand any of the newer shit. All the computer coloring and fonts flying around, everybody drawing like Jim Lee…I think it looks like shit. But that’s just me. I’m kind of a butthole like that. 90% of the reason I do Fukitor is because it’s the kind of stuff I was looking for all those years buying comics. I never really found stuff like that, so just ended up making the things myself.

RUGG: Do you have other creative outlets besides comics, like music? Do you have a group of other artists, cartoonists, writers, that you meet with or share work with, bounce ideas off of? If so, who and how important do you think that is to your work?

KARNS: I can play the electric guitar a little. Other than that it’s just drawing for me. Most of my friends are aware of my comics but I don’t chat about it too much with anyone.

MARKETING/SALES/PROMO BUSINESS:

RUGG: How many copies of an issue do you print? I’m under the impression that you do not do wholesale pricing, so are you the only person distributing this work? If so, how is that going? Do you do anything to promote the work like going to comic book shows or zine shows or sending copies to people whose work you admire…stuff like that?

KARNS: I don’t keep track. I just keep restocking every issue when I need to. I’ve had some buddies buy up extras before and endorse them occasionally at a convention and I just recently got some issues sitting up at Quimby’s in Chicago. I need to get into more indy stores but money is always a pain in the ass when it comes to stocking up lots of extra copies. I recently traded with Benjamin Marra. His stuff is great. I like good sleazy, escapist, violent action stuff and his stuff fits the bill. Plus, his style is cool. He puts in the right amount of grit and detail but doesn’t try to draw like anyone else. I’ve only been to one comic convention, around 2006, just to see what was up. I didn’t have a table, was just there wandering around. I saw a lot of fuckers drawing cutesy, manga looking shit and other stuff that was either just way too pretentious or didn’t deserve to be even given away for free. I didn’t have any fun until I found this dude in the middle area that was selling piles of old horror comic mags. He barely spoke english and was about to kill these hipster kids that were bugging him about every single title they’d pull out of the box, haggling about conditions of the comic, a better price, all that shit. I quietly started to pull out mags that I wanted and my pile became taller by the minute, not asking anything, not trying to pull them out of the bags. He notices me, just kinda smiles, leans over away from the kids and says “3 bucks each”. I smiled back and continued to pile up the old Skywalds, Eerie publications, and some Marvel mags until I was close to the 150 bucks I had in my pocket to burn that day. Meanwhile he continued to bark at the asshole kids in broken english “No! 25 dollars! What? No, that is price! “What? Then buy from there! NO!” Then I found the porn mag booth. That was amazing to see that much sleaze and old porn piled up in one room. It was overwhelming and we were getting ready to leave. So, I quickly scanned the paperbacks and grabbed one called Violent Stories of Ghetto Sex. I haven’t stepped foot into a convention since.

RUGG: This might sound weird because I think a lot of people assume everyone wants an audience to be as big as possible, but are you happy with your readership’s size and development?

KARNS: Anything is good. I have no delusions about it ever getting out of control or anything, but the more people come along the more it helps with my bills. The kind of material I do is more for a limited audience, but it wouldn’t break my heart if a thousand people out of the entire earth started giving a shit and ordered regularly every year.

RUGG: Are you interested in working with a publisher? You work seems very mature to me (in terms of your level of refinement as an artist). So I guess what I’m curious about is where you are as an artist and where you’d like to be or if you are already there. It seems like you are in a position to create work without any editorial limitations and to bring that work to an audience in a beautiful package. As a fan of design and format, Fukitor’s printing/package/design blow me away. So I guess a small, indie comics/zine publisher could offer you wider distribution and potentially a larger readership but perhaps they would want some editorial control. I think it’s safe to say that if your comics were movies, they’d receive NC-17 ratings. Does that effect you in terms of distribution, publishing, or content? I mean, it’s curious to me that your name isn’t even on the comics. Is that an artistic choice or something else?

KARNS: Oh, I quit signing stuff a while back. I figured the art speaks for itself. On the subject of “where I’m at as an artist,” I’m pretty happy with the shit I got going. There’s always little improvement tweaks that can happen, new shadow ideas, or different perspectives, but overall this is the stuff I see in my head and it’s turning out pretty much the way I want. As far as other publishers go, I enjoy self-publishing. If I had to wait on someone else for printing, had to put in an ad, or had to listen to opinions about what I should or shouldn’t put in my comics, I’d fucking snap. If ever someone wants to distribute my comics and gives me total artistic control, I’d be interested in that. Otherwise, I’m pretty content with doing it myself.

RUGG: Thanks to Jason for taking time to answer these questions. As for the rest of you – go check out his blog. He’s very prolific and posts tons of artwork.

* RUGG: I like Coleman’s work a lot. His name doesn’t come up as much as it should. The Mystery of Wolverine Woo-Bait is incredible.

———-

Hey, I’m going to be telling everyone about the small town of Northampton, MA. We’re about an hour east of the New York state line and an hour and a half west of Boston. We’re pretty close to the center of the state, but we’re branded as Western Massachusetts. We’re riddled with fancy colleges, including Smith, Hampshire and Mount Holyoke, which gives the area a strong NPR vibe.

HISTORY
Most comics people probably know Northampton for its historical significance. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird moved here and started Mirage Studios shortly after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 was released. In the ensuing years, the tidal wave of activity that followed their unprecedented levels of success in the comics world and beyond caused a number of historic events to occur here. You can read a lot about it in this recently posted Comics Journal interview with Kevin Eastman from 1998. Suffice it to say that in addition to Mirage Studios itself, the Creator’s Bill of Rights summit was held here and Eastman opened the Words and Pictures comic book art museum downtown, and planted the home offices of his infamous comic book publishing company Tundra right across the street. Main Street, that is. Here’s the building where the Words and Pictures Museum was located:

It’s seen better days. Ex-Mirage artist Jim Laswon recently told me that there used to be a giant gargoyle at the top of it that not all the locals were thrilled with (although in general there was a lot of local support for the museum). That gargoyle is gone, but some smaller, distinctly Ninja Turtle-esque ones remain:

The block directly across the street used to house the Tundra offices, and the original Mirage Studios before that. (Just the business offices though, Lawson told me the the artists worked in a warehouse space outside of town.) Mirage is now located just off of Main Street, and some of the old staff artists still have studio space there. I’ve been, it’s amazing. Jammed full of three of every Ninja Turtle product ever made, occasionally topped with a random piece of fifteen year old original comic book art. There aren’t many public facing remnants of that time left in town, but these two pieces of local street art show that the shadow of the Turtles still looms large in the area’s consciousness (in fact every long-time local resident has a Ninja Turtles story if you raise the subject):

Kitchen Sink Press moved here after they absorbed Tundra, and Denis Kitchen still lives nearby. He also co-founded the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which was based in Northampton until just a few years ago. To top it all off Disney Adventures, which featured many indie cartoonists in its pages, was also based in Northampton until it folded in 2007.

HOT SPOTS
The big store in town is Modern Myths. They make a great effort toward catering to every type of person who might go into a comic book store, having distinct sections for superhero floppies, graphic novels, manga and role playing games. In the time that I’ve been here they’ve hosted events with Evan Dorkin, Howard Cruse and the late Harvey Pekar. And they put up with me constantly emailing them at 3am with requests for oddities from the back of Previews, so they’re a very good shop:

There’s also Bob’s II Comics N’More, a 90′s throwback store with endless back issue bins. Non-comics stores FOE Gallery and Feeding Tube Records also dedicate some shelf space to comics.

As far as events go, last year saw the first comics and illustration themed Paint and Pixel Festival, and we have a monthly Dr Sketchy’s.

FOLKS
Northampton is a very small town, but we’ve got a few artists kicking around. I mostly draw with a guy named Mark Velard. We table at shows together and post our work online under the name Mysterious Transmissions. Here are a couple panels from Mark’s latest page:

I recognised the nice guy with the goofy glasses strap who works at the local art store in one of Tom Spurgeon’s recent “Who Are These People?” posts. Turns out he’s Sam Gaskin, a CCS graduate. He’s got a few different books out, including a mini he did with Matt Furie called Hot Topic. When I told him what my favorite gag in Hot Topic was, he told me it was his favorite too and it’s what he wants to be remembered for when he dies. I assured him I’d let the people know, but you’re going to have to wait to find out which one it is. Here are his book covers:

You’ll see the old Mirage artists Michael Dooney, Dan Berger and Jim Lawson around. I love Jim’s work. He made incredible strides in developing a very distinct style, somewhere between Jack Kirby and Paul Pope, during his twenty plus years as a staff artist. I’m helping him put his dinosaur comic Paleo online as a webcomic this year. He’s a comics drawing machine:

Bryant Paul Johnson is a nice local face who helped me fact check this article and has been working on a graphic novel in his web-savvy style. Here’s the cover:

Colin Tetford occasionally brings his community focused approach to comics making to town, and often sends me a bulleted list of his itinerary when he does. It’s adorable. Local graphic designer Tom Pappalardo has a strip in the local weekly. Hans Rickheit also lives somewhere nearby, but every time I ask him where he just tells me it’s not on any maps. Mark and I had a successful art show in nearby Greenfield with him last year. (Successful in that lots of mentally unstable people wandered in from the street.) Hans is great, Fantagraphics puts his stuff out. Here’s a crazy panel he drew last year:

NEIGHBORS
The Center For Cartoon Studies is an hour and half north, but you guys already heard all about that. Easthampton, the unassuming next town over, is somehow the webcomics capital of the country. R Stevens of Deisel Sweeties, Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content and Jeffrey Rowland of Overcompensating (plus more, I’m sure) all live in and around there. Rowland runs TopatoCo, an online store that represents all the biggest names in webcomics from Kate Beaton to Ryan North, out of the old Eastworks building. I tried to walk in there and buy something in person once and they looked at me dirty, but they’re super nice folks. Kevin Eastman has an office full of God knows what in the same building (I’ve seen walls of original art from the museum and a full Predator suit when I peeked in), and between those two institutions is legendary back issue warehouse Gary Dolgoff Comics.



One of the comics Parille discusses is Adrian Tomine’s Optic Nerve 12, which I happened to finally read just a few days ago, though I purchased it the day of its release. (Not until this past year, after making a sincere effort to read as many comics of interest as possible, have I realized just how many solid comics there actually are being published, and how easy it is to fall behind. I read comics every day, and still haven’t gotten to several of the books on Parille’s list, for example.) Anyway, this is a very strong issue of Optic Nerve, which I enjoyed enough that it makes me want to go back and re-examine some of his earlier work—his earliest minicomics were raw and very funny, but somewhere along the way, his comics stopped clicking with me on a regular basis. Despite Tomine’s obvious artistic command, his characters, plots, and situations seemed so low-stakes, yet were apparently taken so seriously, that I found it hard to relate to what was going on. I wonder now, after enjoying this last issue so much, as well as large portions of Shortcomings, if I was simply misreading him—the story I like best here, “Hortisculpture”, is also sort of slight, but the character interplay and dramatic situations are handled so lightly, and his storytelling displays a subtlety so far beyond most of what’s being published at the current moment, that the parts end up seeming strong enough to redeem the whole. (Of course, I’ve only read it once so far, and new facets may reveal themselves on a second or third go-round.)

Parille makes it a point in his column to focus on the key formal aspect of “Hortisculpture”: the way its scenes are planned to resemble individual episodes of a daily newspaper strip. This is becoming an increasingly popular strategy — Clowes did something similar in Wilson, Tim Hensley in Wally Gropius, Seth, Ivan Brunetti, David Heatley, etc. — and it produces an interesting effect. In Wilson, portraying the title character’s life in discreet strips not only allowed Clowes a formal excuse to experiment with different drawing styles at appropriate moments, but also served to recast the often disturbing incidents of Wilson’s life as temporary and humorous situations. A character being sentenced to prison reads differently in the context of a long-running comic strip than it does as the middle section of a more traditional graphic novel. (Is it too early to apply the term “traditional” to graphic novels?) In Wally Gropius, it makes the often perverse goings-on even more unsettling. And in “Hortisculpture” it somehow manages to add a melancholy tone to what is an essential comedic storyline — exploiting not only the reader’s natural inclination to fill in the narrative gaps “between the gutters,” but also his or her tendency (trained by exposure to so many decades-long strips) to imaginatively extend a comic strip’s storyline in all directions. A more traditionally organized story would seem more settled, more complete.

These effects are everywhere in comics these days, and not always created consciously. In their most recent collected editions, Prince Valiant and Gasoline Alley and Little Nemo read differently than they used to–and we see their creators differently because of it. Frank King is revealed as an early graphic novelist; for the first time in decades, readers can begin to experience the wonders inspired by properly printed strips from Foster and McCay, published at or close to their originally intended size.

Of course, we are still not reading these strips as the original readers did. Simply being collected into books changes the strips’ context dramatically. When Fantagraphics divides the constantly reprinted EC stories into artist-specific books later this year, it will undoubtedly similarly change our understanding of the work, whether we notice it consciously or not. Sometimes reading the lavish new collections of Terry and the Pirates or Popeye or Dick Tracy or Little Orphan Annie, I wonder what it would have been like to experience these strips as they were published, one daily installment at a time. All of these great proclaimed masterpieces were not intended to be read in large gulps, but in daily sips over decades. Barring accident or disease, I’ve probably got five or so decades of good vision left, so if I want to try out one of our classics the “real way,” I need to get started soon.

The 672 pages of Craig Thompson’s Habibi boldly announce a graphic novel with high ambitions. Resembling a leather-bound holy text with gold leaf gilding, the book’s design adds to its gravitas. Then there’s its imposing mission:  to reconcile Christianity and Islam, the Masculine and the Feminine, along with other fundamental binaries. (Thompson also dabbles in “sequential art” theory, divining a mystical unity between the 3×3 comic book grid and the ancient Lo Shu 3×3 magic square.) By all accounts, Habibi set a benchmark for judging 2011’s graphic novels. What comic could possibly be more ambitious?

Yet, in many ways, Thompson’s project is one we’ve seen before. Habibi offers a traditional lesson in comparative religion and mythology. Echoing any number of attempts to reveal parallels among different cultural traditions, it discloses the underlying unity between ostensibly conflicting ideologies, showing us that, despite surface differences, we all share the same meaning-making stories. Traveling this familiar territory (maps and spatial metaphors abound), Habibi really isn’t all that ambitious. One way to understand the comic’s lack of ambition is to think about the faith it lacks in readers: a more ambitious work might imagine a more actively engaged audience. Before we get a chance to discover for ourselves the organized world Thompson is unfolding, seemingly every image or concept is explained and immediately connected to one that appeared before it: drawn lines turn into sentences, which turn into rivers, which turn into names whose etymological origin derives from words for water. Driven by a simple engine—“this connects to that”—Habibi is programmatic rather than intellectually or narratively ambitious. Much of its structure  emerges from the comic’s central image of boat in a desert, which unites water and sand, natural and manufactured, culture and no-culture, etc . . .  (Its obsession with binaries and parallels evokes David Mazzucchelli’s hyper-organized Asterios Polyp, a comic as programmatic as Habibi but much less didactic.)

Lacking confidence in its audience, Habibi recalls a graphic novel that appeared on many 2009 “Best Of” lists: Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth. (Publishers Weekly celebrated it as “ambitious.”) The authors of this Bertrand Russell biography tell us that not all comics are about superheroes, but that, if it helps, we can think of Russell as a superhero of the mind. They frequently pop up to explain things that don’t need explaining, as though addressing a readership of unperceptive 12-year-olds. Perhaps it’s Thompson’s similar lack of faith that leads some to view him as a “Young Adult” author. For me, Thompson’s best work is his least ambitious—the 2004 travelogue Carnet de Voyage, which documents the research he did for Habibi. It’s free from the programmatic execution of the later comic and the purple prose of his earlier Blankets. In Carnet de Voyage’s opening “Disclaimer,” Thompson repeatedly apologizes for his limited ambition: “This is not the ‘Next Book.’” In other words, if you want another Blankets, you’ll have to wait for Habibi. But there’s no need for apologies. Carnet de Voyage succeeds.

***

While reading the first few pages of Matthew Thurber’s 1-800-MICE, we might think that Thurber’s world, like Habibi’s comparative religion framework, is one we’ve also seen: an absurdist fantasy starring kooky characters and missing a plot. But any such assumption quickly evaporates. The cartoonist controls a vast number of characters as they move through a series of carefully interlocking narratives, a tricky combination that has defeated many authors. All the plots—Peace Punk’s search for Valhalla, a trio of murderous sushi chefs’ search for Peace Punk, a galactic banjo contest, a human/tree marriage, and more!—slowly come together. While Habibi reads like the labor of considerable research, 1-800-MICE reads like the invention of a synthetic imagination that discovers itself on the page. Thurber reinvigorates a vast visual-verbal vocabulary of contemporary and antiquated images and phrases. It’s a surrealist thriller, and a beautifully organized farrago.

Part of Thurber’s success stems from his line work and character design. While Thompson’s lyrical brush line often erases, or at least smooths out much of the drama, Thurber’s constantly shifting yet always scratchy pen line animates his farcical and occasionally disturbing proceedings: he draws the beautiful, the grotesque, and the comical with equal ease.

Habibi has some funny jokes, but there’s a little too much Will Eisner-esque earnestness and facial/gestural overacting, which stifles the comedy and drama. Nearly all of Thurber’s drawings are funny, and (if you ask me), funny is harder to do than lyrical.

***

The religious traditions that Habibi joins together, Frank Miller tears asunder. There’s no mystical union in Holy Terror, only the Fixer’s “postmodern diplomacy”: a barrage of all-American hot lead.

Before the comic’s release, Miller proclaimed his ambition: he planned to “piss people off” with a work of pure “propaganda.” If we judge the book according to this standard, it’s a spectacular failure. Holy Terror yearns to be a seething provocation, a call-to-arms against Obama and Chamberlain-like appeasers who fail to enlist in the Holy War on Terror. The aggressively reactionary political messages are there (Islam is evil, torture is good, gratuitous torture is really good), but on nearly every page Miller’s genre allegiances tread on his political commitments. It’s a fascinating hard-boiled love story, an attractively designed romance set against the backdrop of a post-9/11 America in which love is a disease.

In this world gone wrong, all the Fixer and the Cat Burglar have is each other. They begin as a classic romantic comedy mismatch: he’s on the right side of the law, she’s a sexy lawbreaker. But there’s plenty of heat, hate, and sickness to bring them together. Miller’s desire for clear-cut polemic is thwarted by his love of and long-time reliance on soft porn. Dressed in figure-revealing bondage gear and fishnets, the Cat Burglar is the central focus of Miller’s audience (he writes exclusively for hetero white males).

“Uh, were you saying something about religion or whatever?” He doesn’t recognize that, in his dystopia, the time for propaganda is past. It’s a grotesque, fallen world.

While 2011’s universe-resetting Justice League #1 [see here] stuffs an eye-straining excess of detail into its panels and pages, Miller knows how to use space. His horizontal widescreen approach features full-page panels with splattered paint and ink blotches, some of which look like they could be the artist’s fingerprints:

Just as he’s not afraid to go artsy, he’s not afraid to go minimal:

On his blog, Miller aligns Holy Terror with WWII-era comic books, in which Captain America and other heroes demolished national threats. Miller forgets that these comics derive part of their polemical force from character design: the good guys are attractive and the bad guys are ugly. In Holy Terror, everyone becomes unsightly when rendered by Miller’s pen. Despite his pretense to partisanship, Miller spreads the hate to both sides.

Our Puritan forebears, no strangers to religious propaganda, believed that art must employ “the playne style.” Adornment was anathema. Ornamentation didn’t just distract readers from religious content, it negated it. Perhaps no religious-political graphic novel is less plain than Miller’s. It’s far too seductive and strange to be propaganda, as he so fervently hoped. Holy Terror’s artistry triumphs over its political will.

***

At the end of Optic Nerve #12, Adrian Tomine includes a two-page autobiographical strip that he refers to as “filler—the kind of strip an artist dashes off to get an issue finished or meet a deadline.” Tomine reflects on his current ambitions in an era dominated by The Long Graphic Novel. Though feeling the pressure of the moment—every cartoonist is going Habibi big—he decides to go small, releasing a trend-bucking, old-fashioned stapled comic book featuring two self-contained short stories. He models the construction of one of these, “A Brief History of the Art Form Known as ‘Hortisculpture’”, on a genre with even less cultural cachet than the comic book: the newspaper strip.

The organization of “A Brief History” imitates the week-long cycle of a daily newspaper comic. It opens with six four-panel strips (i.e., the Monday through Saturday episodes) followed by a large color comic (i.e., the Sunday episode). Tomine alludes to Charles Schulz’s Peanuts; the strip was often printed in newspapers as four consecutive panels, though “A Brief History” follows the less common 2×2 stacked arrangement:

This organizational device carries with it none of the overwrought repetition of Habibi’s mystical everything-is-connected-to-everything format. It frames Tomine’s narrative and modulates its rhythm—every “strip” works as a light but touching gag. Without explicitly linking its thematic concerns to Peanuts, his strip conveys the comfort of familiarity yet avoids any the indulgence of nostalgia. Tomine’s choices are compelling, not because he rejects the graphic novel and champions a literary lost cause—the comic book—but because he’s one of the few top-tier cartoonists still producing high-quality short stories.

***

After Daniel Clowes finished Ice Haven, he tossed around ideas for his next book, asking himself, “What’s the dumbest possible thing you could do? Like, what’s the worst idea to ever pursue in comics?” His answer: “a realistic superhero story.” A lesser cartoonist would fear his worst idea. Attempting to transform dumb into great is an act of pure ambition, one with a high likelihood of failure. Though the superhero story is inherently no better or worse than any other genre, seventy years of crap (mingled with a few gems) might lead one to think (wrongly) that the genre is cursed. More often than not, creators simply defeat themselves by relying on past formulas. But Clowes turns all superhero conventions inside-out, as he simultaneously follows and violates nearly every genre expectation. As I explain here, The Death-Ray (first released as a stapled comic in 2004) pulls off the impossible. Clowes has the “realistic superhero” genre all to himself.

***

When a cartoonist collects and revises a serialized story, it rarely reads like an entirely new work. Clowes’s Mister Wonderful is one of those rarities. For the 2011 hardcover version, Clowes redesigned the narrative and its format, offering a new sense of pacing and visual scope. His adult romance ignores unwritten rules of comic book page design, taking inspiration from children’s picture books:

…in older children’s books . . . [y]ou’ll see the standard one big illustration per page with minimal text, and then all of a sudden there’ll be a few images on a page to further the story along. Maurice Sendak does it occasionally. Having read thousands of children’s books to my son, it seeped into my consciousness as I was working on this. That’s really where that came from. It’s one of those things: It seems against the rules to combine big single images with comics. For some reason, it seems like something you can’t do. Children’s books . . . don’t worry about that kind of stuff.

[Interview by Sean Collins.]

Mister Wonderful‘s endpages

use the montage approach familiar from many kid’s books, such as Disney’s The Ugly Stepsisters:

Like his friend Chris Ware, Clowes has an expansive notion of storytelling that takes into account book design, size, and even orientation (i.e. “portrait” or “landscape”), reinforcing the union of form and content. And nothing about the appearance of a Clowes book suggests a look-at-my-lofty-aspirations vibe.

[Size Flatters: Clowes comes near the large dimensions of the 1970s Marvel Treasury format, the size best suited to portray super-adventures. When compared to The Death-Ray, 2011's Justice League #1 seems to fight against its space limitations . . .]

***

One of 2011’s least pretentious comics, and one of my favorites, is another superhero story, “The Red Torpedo: Life at Sea”, a five-page tale from Image’s Crack Comics #63, part of  the publisher’s Next Issue Project line of Golden Age-inspired comics. A dialogue and narration-free adventure, “Life at Sea” looks to 1940s adventure narratives, but rejects derivative parody and fanboy homage. Moore, Fosco, and Larsen create light entertainment, a tale attractively inked in ways precise, loose, and blotchy—and nicely colored with a limited flat palette.

Although the Red Torpedo reads Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea in the story’s final sequence, “Life at Sea” never strives to recreate Hemingway’s Melvillean plot of Man v. Fish. (The main parallel: an old man fishes). The reference is mostly a punch-line. The tale may get a little extra literary resonance from the hero’s resemblance to Chris Ware’s God character:

“Life at Sea” alludes to Golden Age comics, a literary classic, and perhaps Ware, but eschews grand aspirations. It does, however, possess emotional depth—a gentle and understated pathos. The comic’s solitary hero saves a yacht of party-goers from pirates, only to end up alone as the story closes. When compared to comics like Justice League #1, “Life at Sea” is especially welcome as an underplayed approach to superheroics. Without JL’s burden to introduce DC Comics’ new corporate direction for 2011, “Life at Sea” succeeds as a well-executed, fun, and subtly poignant story. I wish there were more mainstream comics like this.

***

Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin described the novel as an omnivorous genre. In fact, he conceptualized it as “a supergenre, whose power consists in its ability to engulf and ingest all other genres (the different and separate languages peculiar to each), together with other stylized but nonliterary forms of language.” [Michael Holquist: The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays]

Kevin Huizenga demonstrates that the supergenre of the 21^st century is the graphic novel. His stunning 2011 issue of Ganges (part of on ongoing long narrative) engulfs and ingests science text books, instructional diagrams, architectural plans and models, video games, natural history, continental philosophy, religious tracts, maps, calendars, adventure comic books, European folk tales, early 20^th century American newspaper comics, all manner of infographics, song lyrics, and more! Huizenga doesn’t merely allude to these forms; he integrates them within the visual and verbal discourse system that is his innovative brand of comics-making.

Often described as Huizenga’s “Everyman,” Glenn Ganges is equally a no-man—a series of blank panels eagerly awaiting content. The sleep-deprived Ganges absorbs seemingly every visual, verbal, and hybrid image-text information system he sees, transforming himself into a new character/new way of seeing on nearly every page. In one, his mind functions as a video game’s first-person shooter; in another, as an interactive calendar; in another, as a building’s floor plan, etc. Huizenga/Ganges is the Walter Mitty of comic book narrative technologies.

It’s hard to imagine a comic that’s more ambitious and less pretentious; it’s reader-immersive and reader-friendly. Huizenga’s style recalls the “big nose” school of cartooning—Glenn Gange’s schnoz is one of the comic’s stars. This unaffected old-timey style lends the narrative a sense of charm and elegance, much in the way that Tomine’s “A Brief History” benefits from its Peanuts-inflected form. Unlike Habibi, Ganges never feels like the result of calculated study. Like 1-800-MICE, it reveals a highly flexible and omnivorous mind at work—and at play. Perhaps we should judge 2012’s comics according the standard set by Ganges #4.

***

Chris Ware has said that literary cartoonists engage in a constant struggle: to tell complex emotional narratives in a medium developed to deliver bawdy jokes. Seen this way, the contemporary cartoonist appears almost absurdly ambitious—and perhaps a little foolish. But Thurber, Tomine, Clowes, and Huizenga look to the comic in comic book to keep themselves honest. All of them are innovative authors, to be sure, and they have created the year’s most intelligent works. But infused with each cartoonist’s distinctive sense of humor, these comics never collapse under ambition’s often cruel weight.

_____________________
I. Comics mentioned, in order with letter grade:

Habibi: B+
Asterios Polyp: A-
Logicomix: “D+” (I was so annoyed I couldn’t finish it.)
Carnet de Voyage: A-
Blankets: C+
1-800-MICE: A+
Holy Terror: A
Justice League #1: D+
Optic Nerve #12: A+
The Death-Ray: A+
Mister Wonderful: A+
“The Red Torpedo: Life at Sea”: A
Ganges #4: A+

II. 2011 books and cartoonists not mentioned, in alphabetical order with letter grade:
Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant: A-/B+
The Believer’s comic section: A
Chester Brown’s Paying for It: A (See here for my imaginary three-person discussion.)
Michael DeForge: A
Tom Gauld’s New York Times Magazine illustrations/comics: A
Lisa Hanawalt: A
Shigeru Mizuki’s Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths: A (Fun Fact: lettering designed by Kevin Huizenga.)

III. This essay and the above grades should not be read as any kind of comprehensive “best of/worst of” commentary. Works truly great and truly awful have been omitted.

My mom is friends with Neil Young. She’s living in a hotel and has sent him to pick us up and bring us to the hotel where she is living. My brother and I both get in the backseat of his SUV, and stare at the back of his head while he drives, blasting “Like A Child” and “Homegrown”. I’m wearing a shirt with the cover of Eye of the Majestic Creature #2 silkscreened on it.

They drop us off at the hotel, which is now a house. I live in the attic, and I only have a few items of furniture, but a pile of oversized rock posters is on the floor in the center of the room. I look through the posters. Blondie, Pearl Jam, the Fall… what the fuck? I don’t even like Blondie! And what the hell is that Megadeth poster doing over my bed? When the hell did I buy these?

Finally I reach a Neil Young poster, which is really ugly, but on the back, in simple type, is the guitar tabs for “Homegrown” (but also weirdly mixed with the lyrics from Jimmy Campbell’s “Half-Baked”. Great album! Totally weird.) I take down the Megadeth poster and put this up. I decide I’ll play this every night before I go to sleep.

I wake up and make juice. Did I mention I’m drink a ton of Valerian tea every night to help me fall asleep? I finished Comanche Moon and started listening to Helter Skelter, which I’m told by my librarian friend is the wrong Manson book to listen to, but whatever.

I actually get six hours of drawing done and run three miles before I go to work at 7. I’m in a great mood. A lot of famous actors come in to my restaurant, and for the most part they are all very nice, nicer than ordinary non-famous people in fact. Tonight one of these regulars comes in and I make him tell me what he thinks of all the new movies this season.

I look very happy in this illustration but I secretly hate these people. I could bore you with an angry waitress scenario, but I’ll save that for a future issue of Eye of the Majestic Creature.

It’s really busy, and I get out at 1 am and walk home.

Thanks for listening.

Leslie Stein is a cartoonist living in Brooklyn, New York. She writes and draws the autobiographical comic book series Eye of the Majestic Creature.

It’s Day 4 of Leslie Stein’s Diary, in which we learn about happy family time. And, hey, Joe McCulloch snuck in a full scale review of the much-discussed new comic book from Brandon Graham, Prophet #21. No fair Joe, you’re making us look like slackers. Even more than you usually do! And Kristian Williams contributes a review of a recent edition of “Conversations” series: Alan Moore.

Elsewhere all around the web — Kim Thompson sent me this email with the following text, so like a good soldier, here ya go: “Kim Thompson forwarded this oldish link to an excellent interview with Asterix translator Anthea Bell: ’I was toying with the idea of asking her for an interview someday,’ Kim notes, ‘but this little piece does the job beautifully. She’s been my comics-translating idol since 1976, when my dad, who worked as a professional translator, brought home a translator’s newsletter that compared Asterix translations and specifically cited her and her co-translator’s work as outstanding.’

I love when someone else does my job for me. Let’s see, Michel Fiffe has a phantasmagoric blog post from Michel Fiffe, taking in many a topic and vision. Here’s a fine post about the great classic illustrator Howard Pyle and his students. Pyle being the foundation of the modern adventure illustration genre of drawing. That’s a mouthful. This post about a new Seth project is incredibly enticing. Order placed.

And I leave you with this blatant conflict of interest: A really awesome video by Black Pus, which is Brian Chippendale’s one-man-band mode. Warning: may cause motion sickness and lazy interpretations.

Here’s where Alan Moore gets his ideas:  drugs, magic, dreams, history, literature, hanging around Northampton, and occasional chit-chat among friends — but not necessarily in that order. 

In fact, Moore refuses to acknowledge any fundamental difference between these various categories of experience:  Northampton is, in large part, its history, and history is literature and sometimes also chit-chat, and literature is magic, and drug use is magic, and dreams are magic — and so is everything else, apparently. 

These interviews, spanning nearly thirty years, from 1981 to 2009, give us a chance to watch Moore slowly work out and come to articulate his ideas over the course of time. What were vague suspicions in 1981 become a detailed metaphysical theory by 2009. Part of the impetus for his mysticism seems to be demolishing boundaries: time, space, and individuality all being different aspects of a single all-encompassing consciousness — “God, talking to himself.” Perhaps the monist worldview seems less surprising if we remember how much of Moore’s work has been about tearing down other kinds of boundaries — boundaries of genre, boundaries between fictional narratives, political boundaries, moral boundaries, boundaries of identity.

Still, all the metaphysical speculation, along with the worship of a snake-puppet, sounds a bit insane, and Moore cheerfully admits as much. On the other hand, ideas do not have to be sane to be true, and they certainly don’t have to be sane to be interesting. And Conversations is dense with interesting, disorienting, provocative ideas. Moore pontificates on everything from the science of time travel to the psychology of Edward Hyde, to the “evil” nature of the movie industry, to the causes of the Great War. His ideas are not always right, but then, one gets the distinct impression that he’d sooner be fascinating and mistaken then dull and correct. 

The sheer force of his talk is enough to carry one quickly, if dizzily, through the book. The sharpness of his mind, the bold digressions, the quick wit, and his seemingly bottomless store of good humor pull one in, like an undertow. And in that sense, the title of this collection is a glaring misnomer. Whatever these are, they are not, with one or two early exceptions, conversations, any more than George Carlin’s monologues, or the Socratic dialogues, were conversations. What they are instead are long, spiraling, brilliant, sometimes illuminating rants, punctuated by the occasional, practically irrelevant question. Moore’s interviews are performances, pieces of theatre in which, whatever the subject, the real drama is the mind of Alan Moore.

Some of Moore’s ideas are big and crazy, but in interviews he’s at his best when discussing some practical detail of his work, when he tells us, for example, how Lost Girls came together, or when he describes, not the plot, but the narrative mechanics of Watchmen, and, in general, whenever he returns to the theme of things that comics can do that no other medium can. There are a lot of insights here, in terms of how he does what he does, and why he does what he does. And while a writer certainly can’t dictate the meaning people find in his work — especially in a collaborative medium like comics — he does, nevertheless, have a unique and interesting vantage point. He cannot tell us how to read his work, but he can tell us how he wrote it.

People who study or write about Alan Moore will find this book useful. And his more obsessive fans might consider it fun. But it is not as fun, and ultimately not as useful, as the body of his work. Moore’s comics continue to surpass any comment one might make on them, even when the source of the comment is Moore himself.

Only a snippet of a dream from last night. I run into a guy on the street who I met on tour. He invites me back to his house to hang out with him and his girlfriend, who has bleach blonde hair. I am excited when she takes out a pipe that she made out of a Toblerone chocolates package. How inventive!

My little brother is in town visiting. Like any other artist, my family thinks I’m totally insane. I make him leave the house for five hours while I draw, consequently making me feel guilty.

The comic I’m working on is about a visit I had with a boyfriend’s father, a verbally abusive alcoholic who also happens to be very, very funny. We had to take breaks from being in his home and would walk over to the local bar and come back. He locked us out, we crawled through the window, I had a allergic reaction to the cat, and woke up the next day surprised to see a social worker sitting on the couch.

When my brother gets back I thank him for giving me the time to work on my comic… and he takes a nap while I go running. When I get back we decide to go for an indulgent dinner.

Growing up my father used to take us on what he coined “death marches.” He’d walk us all over Chicago and tire us out, and afterwards he’d give us some spare change as a reward. He still does this when we go on vacation but now rewards us with extravagant dinners. I think I have copied this reward system in the way I set up my days. I barely eat anything and work as hard as I can, then I exercise like crazy, then finally eat food, then I go drinking. Probably not unusual.

When we get to the restaurant we decide to have four courses, we start with raw oysters, then share a kale salad, for the third course he gets foie gras, and I get steamed mussels. Then he has fried chicken and waffles and I have linguine with seasonal vegetables. We eat some ice cream when we get home. Oof!

Lately I’ve been looking at Lynd Ward’s woodcuts before I go to sleep. I say “looking” because it’s almost impossible for me not to look at every page for minutes, therefore halting the narrative flow. These images are so beautiful and mystical. I took etching and lithography classes in college but never woodcut printing. I can’t help but think about what tools he used, what kind of wood,  how he figured out so much about contrast and mood at an early age. His essays on his work are lovely. He shares his ideas about the way a persevering reader will come to their own conclusions about the work at hand when reading a visual narrative.

Leslie Stein is a cartoonist living in Brooklyn, New York. She writes and draws the autobiographical comic book series Eye of the Majestic Creature.

Even folks of my generation (and older) might need a bit of prodding before going, “Oh yeah, that guy.” Barney was always the lesser cousin to Tom, Jerry, Droopy, and the other characters in the MGM animation stable. Clumsy, pear-shaped, and forever bearing a bleary-eyed, hang-dog expression that suggested he was either perpetually stoned or a little … slow, Barney Bear’s slapstick antics were never that memorable and never quite caught on with the movie-going public of the post-war years. These days he’s been largely relegated to obscurity, except among hardcore animation fans and comic scholars. The catch is that the latter group largely takes note of him not because the character is inherently fascinating, but only because his initial spin-off comic book stories were written and drawn by Carl Barks, a few shortly before Disney asked him to do something with that Donald Duck character.

Now these Barney tales, or at least the bulk of them, have been collected by Craig Yoe in an attractive, storybook-sized hardcover collection. As you might expect, it’s a fitfully entertaining book, amusing in parts, but nowhere near Barks’s best work and one more appreciated by fans than the casual reader.

Sensing the need for a foil, Barks pairs Barney up with Benny Burro, an even more obscure MGM character. The cool-headed Goliath to Barney’s impulsive Davey, Benny’s role mostly involves suggesting to Barney that perhaps his latest course of action is not necessarily the wisest (Barks does get some mileage out of inverting this relationship on occasion by making Benny the inadvertent cause of Barney’s misery via his normally common sense advice).

Most of the early stories –- say the first half of the book — follow a set pattern: Barney decides to take up a new hobby or profession, like bullfighting, hunting or becoming a painter. Burro expresses reasonable doubts. Barney forges ahead anyway and ends up making a terrible mess of things, with both characters becoming injured or just generally the worse for wear. Occasionally they come out on top (the critics deem Barney’s mess of a painting an abstract masterpiece) but more often than not someone ends up in the hospital.

But by about the halfway point, Barks starts to liven up the formula by bringing in other supporting characters, like Barney’s grouchy uncle, an astonishingly cheap golf course owner, or Mooseface McElk, Barney’s ever belligerent neighbor. Expanding his cast ever so slightly helps Barks come up with new plot lines and gives the pair someone else to play off against instead of each other.

Barksologists will no doubt attempt to draw similarities between the Barney stories and the later duck tales. The aforementioned uncle naturally draws comparisons to Uncle Scrooge, while the belligerent McElk is a predecessor of Donald’s equally surly Neighbor Jones. Even some of the plots foretell themes Barks would eventually explore in greater depth. At one point Barney discovers he’s inherited land in the desert. Overcome with thirst, he and Benny incongruously pass up oil wells, gold, and diamonds (Benny, apparently, is a bit of an innocent simpleton, completely dismissing the diamonds as “glass rocks”) in exchange for a canteen of water. It’s a scenario that Barks would repeat in “The Magic Hourglass”, only to much better effect and with more thought put into the general riches equaling happiness.

Unfortunately, the characters’ limited personalities keep Barks tethered to the ground, or at least to Barney’s general neighborhood. Apart from a trip or two to Spain there’s little of the globetrotting and imaginative adventures that typify Barks’s later work. There’s only so much Barks can do with a slow-witted bear and his well-meaning donkey friend. The Big Book of Barney Bear has a few moments of inspiration that point to the sort of stellar work Barks would eventually produce, but for the most part it’s content to remain only mildly amusing. Kids and fans will be happy to consume it, but it won’t light a fire under them the way, say, “Lost in the Andes” or “The Golden Helmet” will.

I’m tracking my progress. I put this heart up across from my bed so it’s the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing I see at night. I’m not a dramatic person, and I’m sure this seems silly, but it helps. I feel good, and whaddya know? I’m getting a ton of work done!

Vegetable juice. Four hours of drawing.

I practice guitar a bit. Then I head to Williamsburg where my friends are having a party/show for their recording label. My band is scheduled to play three songs. And we do.

Sarah Dooley did a lounge version of “California Gurls” by Katy Perry, it was totally charming.

Chad, Bruno, and I … Prince Rupert’s Drops. After the show some guy told me we sound like Fairport Convention and Lynyrd Skynyrd combined, on acid. I, personally, played terribly.

Musician and illustrator Marcellus Hall.

Tigers and Monkeys. Shonali Bowmik (sparkly!) has a voice like a hurricane and a heart like a rainbow.

Justice of the Unicorns. Rusty and Jason. I  served these guys a lot of Radeberger when I was a bartender in Williamsburg.

The Crowd.

There’s a lot of catered food and I dig in, eating roast beef, grilled veggies, and a section of a six-foot sub. Also, a cup of tea.

SPREAD!

A very nice evening.

Leslie Stein is a cartoonist living in Brooklyn, New York. She writes and draws the autobiographical comic book series Eye of the Majestic Creature.

Elsewhere, it’s SOPA Blackout Day, as many of you may be vaguely aware. Here’s a basic link explaining some of what’s going on.

Cartoonist Zack Soto and former TCJ editor Milo George just took their new Study Group magazine online, and it looks very promising.

Evie Nagy reviews Tarpé Mills’s Miss Fury at the L.A. Review of Books.

Annie Nocenti gets the HiLobrow tribute treatment.

Judge Dredd artist Brett Ewins has reportedly been injured and arrested after an encounter with police. (via)

The BBC Channel 4 followed Alan Moore to Occupy London to meet protestors wearing the V for Vendetta mask:

And Inkstuds has posted its newest video interview, this time with David Lasky:

In addition to being a cartoonist, Zak is also notably a musician, though we don’t talk about that too much. Music is, unfortunately, a weak spot of mine. My taste is terrible, and I can’t speak on the topic with any authority at all. Zak brings up the band Fugazi in the interview, and even though I am aware of them, and even had a lot of friends who talked about them all the time while I was in college during the appropriate years, I’m really not very familiar. I knew people who listened to them, and those people also often discussed DIY values and ‘zine culture, so I understand the two are connected. But the sad truth is that while my classmates were listening to punk and underground bands, I was listening to George Michael’s Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, and this was something I didn’t want to admit to Zak Sally. So I’ll just admit it here.

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I suppose it’s true that if the biggest break from a prevailing editorial vision comes in the form of comics reprinted from ’70s Penthouse issues, and in an introduction provided by a punk-rock public intellectual, rather than in any of the comics created with the volume in mind, then mission mostly accomplished. But it is indeed tough to square the airbrushed antics of Ron Embleton & Frederic Mullalley’s pneumatic antiheroine, or genre-hopping musician and essayist Ian Svenonius’s knowingly (?) silly essay on the connection between comics and camp, with the material they bookend.

Oh, Wicked Wanda! does at least share its (surprisingly non-explicit) smuttiness with the erotic comics contributed by C.F. and Chris Cilla, its harmless and dated Nazisploitation in particular coming across like a training-wheels version of the genuine S&M kink served up by the increasingly decadent Christopher Forgues. Moreover, its airbrush colors and spherical female forms, both of which are luridly overripe, luxuriate on the slick, thick paper stock Harkham selected for the book’s most vibrant material in much the same way that Robert Beatty’s ’70s-sci-chedelic abstractions and Takeshi Murata’s trash-culture still-lifes do. And perhaps this is the point of the reprints’ inclusion: Wedging them in between those brown cloth covers along with the cream of today’s alt/art comics crop all but dares the reader’s brain to start seeing commonalities, surely one of the great pleasures of any anthologist. But what the eye and mind invent, the material itself subverts: The strip is a shallow Kurtzman/Elder riff/rip whose unceasing double-entendres, porny puns, and half-hearted eyeball kicks (the same Chappaquiddick-referencing image of Ted Kennedy running for president while half-submerged in a body of water appears three or four times; it’s like Andrew “Dice” Clay’s infamous “hour…back! Get it?” routine in background-celebrity-cameo form) manage somehow to be both frantic and flat.

As for Svenonius’s introductory essay, its cheeky title, “Notes on Camp, Part 2″, indicates that he’s in on the joke. But that joke — a lengthy disquisition on pop art, Christianity, homosexuality, camp, CIA subversion of the mid-20th-century European high-art community, and the link between all these things and underground comics — has basically nothing to do with actual underground comics as practiced by any of this book’s contributors save possibly Johnny Ryan. It’s like reading a foreword that concludes with the sentence “You’ll love these cupcake recipes!” and turning the page to discover you’ve purchased a biography of Adlai Stevenson. What’s more, the joke itself is kind of lazily executed. Every interesting idea (prehistoric society’s proximity to the beasts fucking in the field and lack of leisure-time entertainment other than sexual intercourse gave rise to its many mythological hybrid monsters and gods) is offset by a dopey one (Christianity’s intolerance is attributed to its worship of a god who “had no face, name, characteristics, or identity,” despite the religion being entirely predicated on the idea that God incarnated Himself as a guy who worked as a carpenter that you could invite to your weddings and shit). Every funny turn of phrase (“To answer that question, we must briefly trace the history of homosexuality”) is answered by a clumsy one (the essay fucking ends with “ZAP! BLAM! POW!”).

So to restore the sense of focus touted by Harkham and Nadel, to tighten things up, to locate that “unified aesthetic,” it’s best to consider the original visual-art contributions alone. And that’s where the oddest thing of all emerges: Somehow, this anthology manages to be one of the year’s saddest and sexiest comics. The warm space-scapes and shape-scapes of painter Robert Beatty play us in, as it were, with a selection of images appropriately entitled “Overture”; think of the visual equivalent of the opening synth-washes on Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children or Van Halen’s 1984 and you’ve just about got it. Are they images of cosmic isolation or of sensuality? The next two contributions essentially suggest that the book is refusing to choose. Suffused with a sense of loss and wasted potential, Gary Panter’s opening “Jimbo” strip sees the title character and his friends come into the possession of technological orbs the near-miraculous powers of which they squander by using them to watch their favorite movies simultaneously; the comedy goes from “buddy” to “black” in the space of the final panel. This is followed by C.F.’s kinky contribution, which challenges reader preconceptions by leaving everyone involved in a seemingly predatory, sadomasochistic teacher-student liaison happy and fulfilled; the furniture, the ingenue’s doe eyes, the seducer’s Thin White Duke comportment, the final images of a satisfied smoke at the end of the day, are all calibrated for maximum visual pleasure.

The rest of the collection continues to challenge the reader with disorienting alternating blasts of pain and pleasure. Kevin Huizenga offers up a cover version of a Golden Age science fiction comic by artists Bill Molno and Sal Trapani and an anonymous writer, in which a trio of emotionally or physically damaged scientist-explorers discover a hollow-earth kingdom of sorcerers who provide them with a restoration of what they’ve lost to which they cling despite its potentially illusory nature. Quite simply, this is the most profoundly sad comic I read all year, with Huizenga’s simple and endearing cartoon figures teasing irreparable devastation out of the hoary twist-ending structure. Frequent collaborators Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw return to the gauzy, lovely cotton-candy hues of Santoro’s Cold Heat, but they do so in service of a To Catch a Predator-style story of a young man enticed/entrapped over the Internet into a life-destroying rendezvous with an undercover operative posing as an underage girl; it’s all cameras and boom mics trained on a man who’s mounting terror and shame eventually cause him to vomit in a pretty purple gush.

For his part, though, Johnny Ryan dispenses with the pleasantries and presents the starkest and ickiest of his straightforward horror comics to date. Using an astronaut’s search for his missing wife and fellow spacefarer as a kind of bait, he subjects us to hard-to-shake imagery (an S.O.S. message spelled out with used tampons on a lunar surface; a vagina-dentata orifice in the shape of a swastika) and dialogue (“Hurry…I can see his penis…” warns the mutilated wife as her husband rushes down a tunnel to save her from the unknown, massive, monstrous assailant approaching them cock-first) that recast the relationship between spouses as pathetically codependent and doomed to death and failure. See also editor Harkham’s “A Husband and a Wife,” which could fit right alongside Emily Carroll’s nearly identically plotted webcomic “The Room” in some concept album about spouses gone monstrous but which substitutes Carroll’s lush coloring with a bravura display of blood-spatter-as-black-spotting. The fauxtobiographical strip from Gabrielle Bell (her best yet of this sort, which is saying something) and Leon Sadler’s loosey-goosey elves-and-insects romps are lighter in tone but no less fixated on the idea of love as something shot through with death. (Look around the altcomix landscape and you’ll see a plethora of new-ish anthologies moving very much in the wake of Kramers; many of them, and many other cartoonists and comics besides, are mining much the same sex-horror vein. Kramers now feels like a “break out the good china” prestige anthology compared to the Armory Show-style upstart it was circa Summer 2003, but it’s still tapped directly into the zeitgeist of the best and edgiest young cartoonists, even if it’s mostly using more established talents at this point.)

There are less grim moments to be found here, though. Tim Hensley’s splash-page gag comic features a performance-art-hating sniper erroneously training his rifle on a gesticulating traffic cop — black comedy to be sure, but too silly, and too beautifully drawn in Hensley’s classical style, to be anything but funny. Ben Jones offers up a shaggy-dog (get it?) joke about a caveman’s triumphant self-presentation to the tribe after discovering doggy-style (get it??) sex, couched in a sci-fi comedy about a couple of dudes with giant dog heads for torsos (get it???). Relative up-and-comer Anya Davidson’s “Barbarian Bitch” is as combat-driven as you’d expect from a comic with that title, but it’s ultimately more about the pleasures of proficiency, the quest to possess power that doesn’t stem from asserting one’s superiority over others. Heck, Davidson’s own cartooning is a case in point: Loose and kinetic, it bounces between multiple simultaneous story lines from panel to panel without warning, evoking Jaime Hernandez’s delicious density of narrative information without aping his tightness of layout and line. Even C.F.’s defiantly sleazy story is a happy one, when you think of it; its baggage is yours, not his.

But that’s where that pesky “unified aesthetic space” comes in and messes with you. Trim away the outliers from the outsiders, and the disparate halves of what you’re left with can’t help but be viewed in concert. This effect is embodied in Chris Cilla’s “Secret Tourist,” in which a visitor to a kitschy roadside attraction first reminisces about losing his virginity in a similar location, then takes advantage of the attractive tour guide’s down time to have a quickie with her when (he thinks) no one’s looking. The sex stuff here has real heat, an always welcome focus on the moments when the potential of desire is actualized by mutual consent into the reality of sexual pleasure. But it curdles like spoiled milk with the surprise ending, when the copulating couple is spotted by a stray kid from the tour group, who tells them to go ahead and finish, he won’t tell anyone. The sexy becomes creepy, and there’s a dispiriting sense that some opportunity to shake free of the ugliness, if only for a moment, has been lost. That’s an odd effect for a comic to go for, but a fascinating one; a true one.

Not a lot to say this week; not an enormous amount of stuff due out that catches my eye (emphasis on catches my eye, as Marvel alone has over three dozen items readied, not counting posters or variant covers or reprints). Mostly I’ve trained my eye on the above image, a not inconsiderable percentage of the very brief comics career of one Mr. Chris Halls, who would later become known under his familial name of Cunningham as a director of music videos for Aphex Twin, Björk and others, among various video installation, music composition and feature movie pursuits. In severe contrast to these high-profile works, the majority of Cunningham’s output as an artist of comic book interiors comes from a single fill-in episode for the early ’90s Judge Dredd crossover Judgement Day, which was a forum for quite a lot of throbbing painted cartooning that followed the influential example of Simon Bisley. Nonetheless, there’s something rather Bilal-like about what’s displayed here, maybe the product of a relatively untested comics artist wearing his influences on his sleeve for a rare published outing. Cunningham would eventually know more about struggling to be vivid in a hard landscape, as his fx work on the notorious 1995 Judge Dredd movie would bring him some attention and direct him well away from comics.

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PLEASE NOTE: What follows is not a series of capsule reviews but an annotated selection of items listed by Diamond Comic Distributors for release to comic book retailers in North America on the particular Wednesday, or, in the event of a holiday or occurrence necessitating the close of UPS in a manner that would impact deliveries, Thursday, identified in the column title above. Not every listed item will necessarily arrive at every comic book retailer, in that some items may be delayed and ordered quantities will vary. I have in all likelihood not read any of the comics listed below, in that they are not yet released as of the writing of this column, nor will I necessarily read or purchase every item identified; THIS WEEK IN COMICS! reflects only what I find to be potentially interesting.

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SPOTLIGHT PICKS!

Prophet #21: AW YEAH, ROB LIEFELD PROPERTY IN THE SPOTLIGHT PICKS! Despite the advanced numbering, however, this comic marks the beginning of an extensive revising of Liefeld’s line of Extreme creations for Image Comics with some interesting talents, among them Wet Moon creator Ross Campbell as artist for superheroine Glory and Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen overseeing completion of unused Alan Moore scripting for Supreme, with later work to spring off from that. Still, Prophet might be the spiritual front of the line, both from coming first and from featuring scripts by King City creator Brandon Graham, as fascinating a choice as I can think of for this man-struggling-roughly-through-the-bad-future concept. The interior art is by Simon Roy (the above cover’s by Marian Churchland), whom I recognize as writer/artist of Jan’s Atomic Heart, an effective little sci-fi comic from a few years back. Hopefully this all serves to push some of Image’s more… period-specific titles toward the often lively visual attitudes exhibited by less burdened contemporary series with the publisher. Preview; $2.99.

Steve Canyon Vol. 01: 1947-1948: This is a new IDW edition of vintage newspaper adventure strip material from Milton Caniff, most recently published by Checker in trade paperback format around the mid-’00s. Now we see the full Golden Age of Reprints treatment, chronologically from the start as a 336-page landscape format hardcover shot from the artist’s syndicate proofs. Basically, it’s set to match the publisher’s six volumes of Terry and the Pirates, which Caniff left to start Steve Canyon in the interests of creator ownership; $49.99.

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PLUS!

Steed and Mrs. Peel #1 (of 6): Deep cuts from the Grant Morrison catalog here, as Boom! reprints a 1990-92 Eclipse Books/Acme Press miniseries derived from The Avengers (not the one with Hawkeye, that was M*A*S*H). It’s pleasant enough stuff, with a special emphasis on British games of chance as an organizing factor, though Morrison’s voice is probably less evident in the material than usual. Note that the three original Eclipse/Acme issues were a 48-page Prestige Format-y deal, despite being rather evidently structured for a six-unit release; Boom! has presumably bisected the originals along the dotted line to form six plain vanilla unprestigious comic books. Also, be aware that Morrison’s story only runs to four chapters, with the remaining two segments comprising a totally different scenario by writer Anne Caulfield. Art throughout by longtime 2000 AD contributor Ian Gibson, of The Ballad of Halo Jones. Preview; $3.99.

Mazeworld: Speaking of 2000 AD, here’s the newest import item from Rebellion, a 192-page complete collection of a 1996-99 serial from heavy realist artist Arthur Ranson, originally conceived in 1991 for publication in an ill-fated rival anthology, Toxic!, along with Ranson’s similarly displaced mercenary action series Button Man, scripted by John Wagner. The writer here is longtime Judge Dredd and Batman contributor Alan Grant, who formulated the condemned-man-whisked-away-to-a-world-of-likely-maze-related-mystery scenario on Ranson’s request to do a ‘serious’ fantasy comic, later opining that “the story didn’t take off.” (Per ex-2kAD editor David Bishop’s 2009 history Thrill-Power Overload.) Nonetheless, I’m an easy mark for a comprehensive packaging of obscure thrills, particularly one with a title like “Mazeworld.” Samples; $29.99.

Strange Worlds of Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Comics of Wally Wood: A new 208-page collection of vintage Wood from Vanguard Productions, presenting various genre pieces the artist produced in the ’50s for publishers like Avon and Youthful, offered in evident counterpoint to his better-known work at EC. Note that a softcover edition is expected for next month; $39.95.

Twin Spica Vol. 11 (of 12): Your manga pick, 360 pages closing in on the conclusion for Kou Yaginuma’s delicate study of youthful attitudes toward the prospect of space travel. If you’d have told me a couple years ago that Vertical would be polishing off these long series with seeming ease, I’d have probably asked who you are. I only know you on the internet; $13.95.

Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby: Finally, your book-on-comics of… last week, sort of, but since I still feel silly having omitted this 304-page University Press of Mississippi production from the Journal’s Charles Hatfield in my 1/11/12 rundown, know that the publisher will have a hardcover edition available through Diamond this Wednesday. “A critical exploration of cartooning, of superheroes, science fiction, and the technological sublime, Hand of Fire is the first academic monograph in English about Kirby’s work…. it’s a book about why Kirby blew off the top of so many readers’ heads, and why he still does,” sez the official site; $65.00 ($25.00 in softcover).

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CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: I remember reading a Bill Griffith strip about Rory Hayes in the ’08 Hayes compilation Where Demented Wented and being really impressed by Griffith’s graphic style, something I’d only really had much exposure to in newspaper strip form via Zippy. Among its 392 pages, Bill Griffith: Lost And Found – Comics 1970-1994 aims to present many various comics, underground and otherwise, along with reflections from the artist and some added Zippy stuff, including an unfinished comics adaptation of Griffith’s screenplay to the never-produced movie of the character; $39.99. Also, Midtown Comics in NYC (at least) appears to be getting Kramers Ergot 8, but Diamond doesn’t have it listed. Stay alert, should you desire.

I get in line for a roller coaster and when I get to the top I realize it’s just going to be me, alone, shooting down a tube. I’m scared, but then realize I’m supposed to be scared, so I shouldn’t be scared at all. I zen out and fall down the shoot, letting my mind go.

Elsewhere in the park there’s a a meeting to decide who will be the creative director for the new Pogo animated cartoon. It’s me up against two men. We have to draw an image for the network execs on the spot, so we begin. The two other men are technically great, and draw Pogo on top of intricate machines, with shading and perspective. Since this is no option for me, I go a different route and exclude Pogo all together. I draw a squiggly sketch of a woman with some sentence that makes no sense next to Dorothy’s slipper from The Wizard of Oz. I figure I’m screwed, but they like mine the best. They say they want to take the cartoon in a “hipper” direction.

I wake up late, but I have the day off so it doesn’t matter. I draw for a few hours and then take a break to run around Prospect Park, about four miles.

I resume drawing and then shower, get some food and walk over to BAM, which is showing  John Candy’s Uncle Buck for some reason.

Leslie Stein is a cartoonist living in Brooklyn, New York. She writes and draws the autobiographical comic book series Eye of the Majestic Creature.