Joe McCulloch is here with his weekly guide to the most interesting-sounding comics new to stores. This week, he spotlights new books by Robert Triptow and Anna Ehrlemark.
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
—Heidi MacDonald writes at Slate on the increasing number of comics artists taking animation gigs at Nickelodeon and Adult Swim.
At one point, she writes, "If anything, walking around shows like SPX, I’ve noticed something of an Adventure Time track among many of the small press comics now coming out: Where once young cartoonists overwhelmingly produced gloomy masculine self-absorption and misanthropy in the tradition of Daniel Clowes or Chris Ware, these days many booths feature fantasy epics with colorful characters and invented worlds heavy on the talking animals. It shouldn’t be surprising that up-and-coming cartoonists are absorbing the Adventure Time aesthetic. A 20-year-old making comics now could have been watching the show since she was 15, after all."
While I have no doubt that some of this is due to simple artistic influence, I think a more obvious, simple, and powerful explanation for the change in emphasis is that fun/cute/cuddly fantasy is where the money is (or appears to be).
—Laura Sneddon profiles Kate Beaton for The Independent.
—Vice cartoonists including Peter Bagge and Leslie Stein remember their worst Halloween costumes.
—Françoise Mouly is a guest on the Virtual Memories podcast.
—Laura Fraser tells the story of Conundrum Press.
