Oboy, R.C. Harvey on the late, great Edward Gorey! This should be fun:
Gorey’s 200-year-old house at 8 Strawberry Lane in Yarmouthport was built by a sea captain, Nathaniel Howes. A conventional two-story structure originally, it was modified by extensive alterations in Victorian times and gradually assumed a distinctive aspect all its own. Subsequent developments have only added to its unique appearance. With its flaking exterior paint and a vine that had invaded the premises through a crack in the wall, the place embodied its bachelor occupant’s eclectic enthusiasms and eccentricities. Its walls were festooned with bookshelves, which were jammed with books, videotapes, CDS, and cassettes; and the floors were littered with stacks of the same as well as finials of all description, occasional lobster floats, cat-clawed furniture, an old toilet with a tabletop, and a small commune of cats.
A compulsive collector and consumer of every aspect of the culture in which he was immersed, Gorey was a man of enormous erudition whose tastes and interests ranged from cultivated esoterica to trashy television, all passionately studied in an effort, he told [Stephen] Schiff, to “keep real life at bay.” In her book about Gorey, Karen Wilkin asserted that “he appears to have read everything and to have equal enthusiasm for classic Japanese novels, British satire, television reruns, animated cartoons, and movies both past and present, good and not so good.”
And Day Three of Kayla E.'s week making the Cartoonist's Diary. Hers are like no other Diaries we've run so far.
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
—Misc. In 1947, Life magazine asked ten cartoonists (including Frank King, Chic Young, Milton Caniff, and Chester Gould) to close their eyes before drawing their own characters.
In the wake of the Spider-Woman controversy, Marvel has apparently decided to cancel several upcoming Milo Manara covers.
The winners of the 2014 Comics Workbook Composition Competition have been announced.
Ryan Sands has another strong SPX report.
—Interviews. Mark Voger at NJ.com talks to Drew Friedman about his comics history/portraits book, Heroes of the Comics.
For Banned Books Week, Print's Michael Dooley talks to Keith Knight about his own experiences with censorship
Brian Cremins talks to Marnie Galloway.
Jillian Tamaki is a guest on Make It Then Tell Everybody.
—Reviews & Commentary. Ng Suat Tong writes about Luke Pearson's Hilda comics.
