Busy day here today:
Rob Steibel is here with his final Kirby column for TCJ.
Jack did not need to put that much detail into a piece like this. A few very simple lines would have given his inker Vince Colletta enough to go on. So why did Kirby pack so much detail into an image like this, using thousands of pencil lines to provide shading for the illustration, especially considering he worked under such crushing deadlines cranking out an average of three entire comic books a month? I suspect that Jack Kirby was very passionate about his work. I think he was a perfectionist, and I think he enjoyed illustrating a page like this. He was finding the image throughout the illustration process, experimenting, and interestingly that quest for perfection is similar to the journey Jack talks about in his directions for Stan Lee on this page: the “trail may lead to ends of infinity – but he can only redeem himself through this assignment.” And that’s what many artists do, yes they make a living if they are lucky plying their craft, but the process of creating imagery on a blank page can be an adventure into your own imagination and a great excuse to study history and art.
And Richard Gehr reviews Roz Chast's new graphic novel.
Like much of Chast’s work, Can’t We Talk is a formal triumph that at first glance looks somewhat a mess.The New Yorker‘s most stylistically experimental cartoonist, Chast draws single-panel cartoons and multipage nonfiction narratives for the magazine in addition to creating monumental lists, typologies, calendars, archaeologies, fake publications, and real children’s books. Chast rarely makes do with a single gag. Her cartoons are often mini-multiples. From the rocky collection of “little things” (“chent,” spak,” “kabe,” etc.) that comprised her first TNY cartoon, she has been the magazine’s preeminent underpromiser/overdeliverer. She also happens to be one of the magazine’s best writers, and the book gives her the space to expand on funny, anxious, and often infuriating things that happen in her cartoons when she wants to convey the full weight of the Chast clan’s considerable neurotic karma.
Elsewhere:
The great New Yorker cartoonist Charles Barsotti has died. Richard Gehr interviewed him for this site just last year.
Cartoonist Matthew Thurber's excellent play Mining the Moon, which I saw and loved, gets a very nice review over here.
And I'm always happy to see more Blobby Boys.
