Today on the site: Rob Clough reports on the MCAD and the Minneapolis comics scene.
I was excited to attend Autoptic this year in part because it gave me a chance to meet and sample the work of a number of cartoonists in the burgeoning Minneapolis scene. Certainly, I was already well aware of the work of cartoonists like Zak Sally, Anders Nilsen, Rob Kirby, JP Coovert, Max Mose, Tom Kaczynski, and Will Dinski. I’m also quite familiar with small publishers like 2D Cloud (helmed by Raighne Hogan and Justin Skarhus) and Grimalkin Press (run by Jordan Shiveley). It’s not a coincidence that most of these cartoonists were part of the show’s steering committee. I was most curious to delve into the work of lesser-known local artists, particular current and former students from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). Sally and Nilsen both teach at the school, which boasts about fifty students majoring in cartooning out of about seven hundred undergraduates.
And Sean Rogers reviews Rage of Poseiden by Anders Nilsen, also from Minneapolis.
To be curious about human life, but to abjure human actors: Nilsen revisits this technique in his latest book, Rage of Poseidon. Rather than birds, however, this time out the artist uses mythic figures to inquire into the peculiarities of human behavior. Nilsen culls his cast of characters from Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions, but he endows these deities and patriarchs with all-too-human failings, and thrusts them into the contemporary world. So in these stories, Poseidon rages, God sulks, and Athena goes on a bender, while Jesus drives a pick-up and Bacchus holds court in Vegas. Where Nilsen’s birds were trivial creatures with weighty concerns, his gods are ponderous beings with trifling cares.
Elsewhere online:
The Atlantic talks to Alison Bechdel about the transformation of her book, Fun Home, into a musical.
Robert Boyd on some recent books from Drawn & Quarterly.
Publisher Ryan Sands talks to illustrator Sam Weber.
Here's a nice interview with cartoonist/artist Leif Goldberg.
PW has a photo gallery from last weekend's CAB, weirdly serious picture of me included.
It's Paul Karasik's current comics reading. In Italian.
The great Hayao Miyazaki is apparently drawing a samurai manga.
The Beat reports on the latest comic-related graphics on Uniqlo garments.
And finally, there's another major comics show in Manhattan, this one of cartoons by the artist Ad Reinhardt. Here's a walkthrough with the curator and teacher Robert Storr.
