Today on the site, Cynthia Rose has our official obituary for Ted Benoit.
La ligne claire has not made this much news in Europe for decades. On Wednesday, the Grand Palais opened an epic Hergé expo, which has received only raves from critics and the art world. Its curator, Jérome Neutres, calls it an ambition fulfilled. "Our whole aim is to show that Tintin's creator was, quite simply, a truly great artist. We want to put him on the same footing as a Vélasquez, a Helmut Newton or a Fantin-Latour."
Then two days after the opening, France discovered that Thierry "Ted" Benoit had died. Benoit, 69, may not have been the ligne claire's purest inheritor. But he was certainly one of its great innovators. As the obituaries and tributes to him proliferate, many have begun with similar sentiments. Benoit, they note, was more than just a wonderful draftsman. He was – quite simply – a truly great artist.
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
—Interviews & Profiles. Rachel Cooke profiles Sarah Glidden.
Glidden, the daughter of two doctors, studied painting at Boston University. “But then 9/11 happened. I was only 21 and I started to be interested in journalism. My reaction to it, besides feeling a sense of horror, was that if a war was going to happen immediately, there must be more to the story than I knew. So I started reading everything. I was drawn to photojournalism. I think I wanted to be Tyler Hicks [the Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times staff photographer], but I was also very shy. I didn’t have what it took to talk to people and take those kinds of pictures and nor did I have any training.”
Angelique Chrisafis talks to Riad Sattouf.
Sitting in his Paris publisher’s office, as the second volume of The Arab of the Future is released in English and the third volume comes out in French, Sattouf is hesitant about being seen as a voice of the Middle East. He views himself as stuck somewhere, neutrally, in the middle of his mixed French and Syrian roots and hates any kind of flag-waving or identity politics.
“I waited so long to tell this story partly because when I started to make comics I didn’t want to be the guy of Arab origin who makes comics about Arab people,” he says. “I didn’t want to be the official Arab comics artist. So I made a lot of comics in France which weren’t related to this part of me. I made a movie. But even during all that other work, I was thinking I have this good story, how could I tell it?”
The RIYL podcast talks to Matt Furie.
—Reviews & Commentary. Speaking of Furie, Chris Mautner explains what's happened to Pepe the Frog.
The character has been deemed an "online hate symbol" by the Anti-Defamation League.
How could a goofy-looking cartoon character be considered a symbol of anti-semitism? To explain that we'll have to take a quick spin through Pepe's brief history.
Pepe was created by cartoonist Matt Furie around 2005 as one of the characters in his comic book series Boys' Club, a surreal stoner comedy about a group of anthropomorphic buddies sharing an apartment. Most of the jokes involved bathroom humor, body fluids, or just plain goofy absurdism. It was about as far from political (or even topical) humor as you could get.
Christine Smallwood reviews Sarah Glidden's Rolling Blackouts for Harper's.
The book comes alive when the Americans recede from the frame. Glidden draws excellent grimaces, arched eyebrows, and narrowed eyes; her smiles are good, too, but she has less cause to use them.
For PEN America, Meg Lemke writes about Jillian and Mariko Tamaki's This One Summer.
This One Summer has been removed from schools and (K-12) school libraries, on the basis of “use of profanity,” and the sweeping charge of “vulgarity,” which covers allusions to a potential abortion—and a miscarriage—and one suspects the possible queerness of one of the main characters. It was also removed from shelves at some elementary schools where perhaps, as the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund wondered, teachers added any Caldecott short-listed title without researching its recommended age group (12+, in this case). In news footage that I admit cracked me up (with the kind of laughing that leads to tears), a coiffed local newscaster in Florida reports on the plea of the alarm-raising parent who just wanted other concerned mothers to “be aware of this ‘illustrated book,’ described as a graphic novel…” as she flips fast through the lushly drawn pages. A GRAPHIC graphic novel: Be afraid, be very afraid.=
