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Welcome back to the week. It's already February. Oh my. Here comes Paul Tumey with a look back at the (recent) history of mini-comics, which dovetails nicely with Frank Santoro's recent thoughts on the category. Paul has taken his usual deep dive and surfaced with some wonderments. Take it away, Paul:

During its roughly 45 years of existence, the modest minicomic has nurtured numerous notable creators, including: Peter Bagge, Donna Barr, Lynda Barry, Marc Bell, Chester Brown, Kevin Eastman, Brad Foster, Rick Geary, Justin Green (often credited as the inventor of the minicomic), Roberta Gregory, Bill Griffith, Matt Groening, Wayne “Wayno” Honath, Peter Laird, David Lasky, Bill Loebs, Jason Lutes, John Porcellino, Ronald M. Regé, Jr., Trina Robbins, Art Spiegelman, Colin Upton, Jim Valentino , Joe Zabel, and Dan Zettwoch, to name a few from mostly the first decades of the minicomic’s history. Some of these folks have dabbled in the form; others have made it a core part of their repertoires.

Among the minicomix of visual storytellers and outrageous gagsters like Mark Campos, Max Clotfelter, Clark Dissmeyer, Matt Feazell, Par Holman, David Miller, J. R. Williams, Steve Willis, and Jeff Zenick (to name some personal favorites of mine that aren’t – but should be – widely celebrated), one finds pockets of cloistered coolness that, once absorbed, can expand and transform ideas about comics.

Elsewhere:

The big and almost impossible to believe news this weekend was the fake prize ceremony over at Angouleme. That's right, the tone deaf organizers held an entirely fake awards ceremony, which most in attendance were convinced was entirely real. After giving out the prizes to deserving artists (like Olivier Schrauwen) it was announced it was all a gag and the real awards would now begin. Confusion, hurt feelings and really, really bad publicity ensued. Maybe time for a change in the administration, no? Otherwise, maybe the artists should just not attend Angouleme, period. Google translate over here and you'll get the picture. Most of the reaction has been on Facebook, which I've clipped and placed below:

 

• Paul Gravett

  2 hrs ·

  Angoulême is abuzz again. I have endured some fairly awful Prize Ceremonies at Angoulême over my 30 plus years but last night's sounds like that absolute nadir. To declare winners, making them and their publishers elated, sparking social media tweet storms, etc, and then to announce that they are not the true ones, utterly deflating them, and go on to award someone else, is about as crass, UNamusing and low as any prize ceremony can go. No comedian with any wit would go through with this. No person in charge with any basic common sense and sensitivity would agree to this.
  M. Bondoux (or 'Good Gentle' in French), festival director, explains that the idea for this 'came from the MC, Richard Gaitet. It's in the tradition of clowns like Antoine de Caunes at the Cesar film awards. Everything was very exaggerated and clearly humorous. And the comics world has a big capacity for self-parody." How has at least part of this Festival become so out of touch? Is no one daring to speak up and question these decisions? One can only assume that after the Grand Prix Fiasco, the festival's "professional" directors and PR people have decided that the only publicity worth going after is bad publicity. In all this mess some good books were awarded, thank goodness. 

• Peggy Devlin

  5 hrs · Montreal, QC, Canada ·

  Angouleme has officially jumped the shark. 1) they nominate no women 2) they organize a "women in comics" panel except there are no women on the panel, so they must scramble to invite some 3) and then this, the Faux Fauves, such incredibly bad taste.
• 

  Bart Beaty

  4 hrs ·

  This is simply unbelievable. None of the Angoulême prizes have any legitimacy at all now. The Grand Prix was inexcusable ignorance but this is deliberate cruelty. Shameful.

Update: The actual jury of the actual Fauve prize has issued a statement:

We, the members of the Grand Jury for this year’s Angoulême International Comics Festival, had an amiable meeting during which we chose the winners of the “fauves” in perfect harmony. We were surprised to be left out of the awards ceremony and then alarmed to hear the MC, whom we’ve never met, claim that we’d gone through contentious deliberations. By the end we were stupefied by the cruelty and vulgarity of the ceremony as a whole. The announcement of fake awards, which broke the hearts of numerous authors, publishers, and readers, in addition to the sexist and off-color remarks of the MC are beneath the dignity of a festival that remains an internationally respected flagship event in the world of comics. We are happy to have had the chance to make a contribution by awarding radical, unique works that will mark the history of the Ninth Art.

Antonin Baudry
Laurent Binet
Nicole Brenez
Philippe Collin
Véronique Giuge
Hamé
Matt Madden

Not much can top that... but I would like to congratulate the great Ken Parille on 15 years of his indispensable Daniel Clowes Bibliography. He reflects a bit here.

Today, RJ Casey joins us with an interview about comics and sports with Sloane Leong, the From Under Mountains and Maps to the Suns artist.

This leads to a question that constantly bothers me — why are there no good sports comics? You mentioned a few manga series, but North American comics seems completely devoid of the genre.

I have no idea why. I tweeted last month asking for any Western sports comics people knew of and ended up with Roy of the Rovers, Look Out for Lefty, and Toth’s Hot Wheels comics, all of which are pretty old. The only new sports comic I’m aware of is by Ngozi Ukazu called Check, Please! — it’s very cute and follows a university hockey team. Beside myself, though, there are a few other women comic artists that are planning on storming the new year with sports comics, so I’m stoked about that. The sports genre seems like such a rich place to work in, so it’s strange to me that it’s still so desolate.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—News. The CBC talks to Canadian cartoonists including Julie Doucet, Lynn Johnston, and Julie Delporte about sexism in comics.

"Everything in history has been shaped by men," [Julie Delporte] says. "If everything is chosen by men, and read by men, of course men's works will be more appreciated."

Delporte sees inequality in Canada's comic scene, too. She points to a recent study that shows female visual artists in Canada earn 35 per cent less income than their male counterparts (the overall income gap between men and women, according to the study, is 31 per cent). She also senses resistance within the upper echelons of the comic world.

Speaking of Angoulême, the Belgian cartoonist Hermann was the eventual winner of the Grand Prix.

—Interviews & Profiles. Julia Wertz tells Studio 360 about her discovery of comics.

Wertz grabbed a copy of Julie Doucet’s My New York Diary on a whim during a library visit. And when she opened the graphic novel, the black-and-white drawings seemed immediately familiar. “She’s kind of surrounded by her own squalor,” Wertz says. When she first read it, Wertz realized she was sitting in a room that was almost as messy as the illustrations.

—Reviews. Dominic Umile writes about Hilary Chute's new book on historical and journalistic comics, Disaster Drawn.

"In its succession of replete frames," Chute writes, "comics calls attention to itself, specifically, as evidence." She explicitly connects Spanish painter Francisco Goya (identified as a "foundational artist-reporter") and his spellbinding series of prints "The Disasters of War" to comics, and places both within the "traditions of drawn witnessing." Goya's 19th-century depictions of rape, mutilation, and civilian death are widely understood as a method of war reporting that emphasizes the impact of conflict on individuals.

—Misc. Mike Lynch posts a selection of comic strips from Madeline creator Ludwig Bemelmans.

Didn't expect this: CARtoons is back.

Chellllloooo! Today on the site we have the first of an ongoing series of columns by historian Ron Goulart entitled Connecticut Cartoonists. That's right, a whole raft of posts devoted to those groovy 1950s-70s ink slingers up in beautiful Connecticut. We begin with a colorful account of Alex Raymond and his circle.

Connecticut became state back in January of 1788. By the 20^th Century it was a haven for artists, writers, actors—and cartoonists.

One of the earliest cartoon settlers was Art Young, very liberal fellow, a socialist and an admirer of Eugene Debs. Around 1900, Young who drew political cartoons for the socialist magazine, The Masses,purchased four acres of farmland in Bethel, Ct. His drawings making fun of bankers and Wall Street brokers got him in trouble with the government and charges of sabotage during the World War One years. But he went on to have a long career and sold cartoons to more acceptable magazines like The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post.

By the 1920s, the towns that comprised Fairfield County, the county closest to New York City, which was the East Coast center of book publishing, newspaper syndicates, magazines and the theater. Towns like Westport, Norwalk, Stamford and Fairfield were still relatively cheap to live in, they had rural charm and quiet while yet offering access to the nearby metropolis of Manhattan.

Residents included John Held, Jr., the glorifier of the Twenties flapper, Henry Raleigh and Harold Von Schmidt, magazine illustrators, Perry Barlow (of the brand new The New Yorker.), Garrett Price (The New Yorker) and Robert Lawson, author and illustrator of The Story of Ferdinand.

Elsewhere:

Comics and academia: 2 LEGIT 2 QUIT.

Paul Karasik's adventures in Angouleme.

Charles Hatfield recommends Rosalie Lightning.

Greg Hunter's here today with a review of Suzette Smith's elliptically told minicomic, Ce/Ze.

Suzette Smith’s Ce/Ze, an entry in the Sparkplug Books Minis Series, follows two adolescent girls with a possible psychic link, both convinced they knew one another in a past life and both troubled by flashes of a fateful car crash. The comic’s cover features the girls, Amelia and Honey, on its back and the girls’ earlier incarnations as “Ce” and “Ze” on its front, with the spheres that contain each pair overlapping along the comic’s spine. This quality, or experience, of doubling extends to the reading of Ce/Ze. The book’s most satisfying and most vexing aspects can be explained in similar terms, though the measure of the best parts is likely to stay with readers longer.

Ce/Ze is the type of work that prompts questions about how elliptical a story should get, and what amount of meaning a storyteller can expect her readers to create. Smith’s comic takes a number of leaps and includes a few gaps as it depicts Amelia and Honey’s pursuit of understanding. Near the beginning of the story, Amelia speculates that they might be aliens, but when a later page hints that fairies might have a part in the girls’ backstory, the reader may wonder if he or she has missed a step. The upside of this is the comic’s ability to surprise readers from beginning to end; it’s unpredictable and associative at all times.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Reviews & Commentary. Ursula Lindsey reviews Riad Sattouf's popular memoir, The Arab of the Future, focusing on the political controversies surrounding it.

Asking Sattouf to provide the French public with a corrective vision of Arab culture seems an unfair burden to place on the author of one memoir in comic-book form. This sort of tiresome debate surrounds almost any work with Arab roots that is successful in the West: The very fact that a book or film gains an audience makes it suspect. For example, the Algerian writer Kamel Daoud’s novel The Meursault Investigation, which brilliantly plunders, interrogates, and expands upon Camus’s The Stranger, has been faulted by some for its debts to a colonialist literary legacy. It’s a double bind: Arab authors are burdened with the responsibility of representing entire countries, cultures, and religions, then criticized for not representing them “correctly.”

Paul Mirek reviews Carlos Gonzalez's Test Tube.

...we’re aware from the first page that this isn’t a world that plays by the usual rules. Strange shapes and magazine clippings occupy the universe, seemingly unnoticed by its inhabitants. The effect is somewhat similar to Steve Ditko’s psychedelic interpretation of Dormammu’s Dark Dimension in early episodes of Doctor Strange – one of the many artistic icons brought to mind by Gonzalez’s style and content. In addition to echoes of other ’60s wunderkinds, Test Tube shares DNA with more modern talents such as Gary Panter and Dash Shaw.

—Interviews & Profiles. Carol Tyler appears on the Virtual Memories podcast, talking about Soldier's Heart.

I couldn’t solve my dad’s problems. I couldn’t solve him.

Tom Hart appears on the Comics for Grownups podcast, talking about Rosalie Lightning.

Gilbert Hernandez answers ten questions from the Comics Tavern.

My mom doesn’t look at my stuff but she’s happy that I’ve done something with my life. My stuff is too harsh sometimes for most people. Ok with me.

—News. Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani has been acquitted of "illegitimate relations" for shaking hands with her lawyer, though she still remains imprisoned for her drawings of politicians. The CBLDF has more.

Plans for a Maurice Sendak museum continue to his snags.

The Sendak Foundation,which gives grants to artists and numerous other causes, is now defending itself in probate court in an action brought by the Rosenbach, which contends that some of Mr. Sendak’s rare books promised in his will to the library — by William Blake and Beatrix Potter, editions worth millions of dollars — are being withheld. The foundation has also faced questions from some who worry that Mr. Sendak’s longtime home, which has been preserved almost exactly as he left it, may be too remote to serve as the site where his legacy is honored. “I really don’t know who’s going to go there,” Judy Taylor Hough, Mr. Sendak’s longtime British editor, said in 2014. “It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

Today of course Joe McCulloch brings us a snow-free comics week.

Here's a look inside Julia Wertz's fun-looking apartment. 

Here's a look, via the artist's Twitter, at CF's installation in "Providence" at MIAM in France.

Good lord, it's Rory Hayes' final sketchbook, featuring Pac-Man. 

Paul Tumey returns this morning with an article meaty enough to occupy even our most snowbound readers, about Sunday Press's long-awaited collection of the complete run of Garrett Price's legendary White Boy.

White Boy in Skull Valley, a large, handsome volume published by Sunday Press in December 2015, collects the complete series for the first time. It is now possible to absorb the full span of the White Boy trilogy, and to understand both the brilliance and shortcomings of this extraordinary, exquisitely crafted comic strip.

White Boy in Skull Valley presents the comics in their original sizes and colors. This is a critically important feature. Like any good comic strip artist, Price designed his pages to be seen at a particular size. An accomplished painter, Price also put a great deal of inspiration and craft into designing his strip’s colors. To reprint his strip, as is often done, in a smaller size, and/or re-colored, would be to greatly reduce the artistic and historic value of the reprint project. Savoring these lovely pages in their original sizes is a world of difference. To paraphrase Mark Twain, it is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

Dylan Horrocks is selling original art. If you're a fan, you should jump on that.

Today on the site we're happy to feature an interview with Emily Flake, New Yorker cartoonist and author of Mama Tried and Lulu Eightball, by Richard Gehr.

GEHR: Do you get many editorial notes from The New Yorker?

FLAKE: I get notes every once in awhile. I am often told to make my people less fat.

GEHR: Interesting. I wonder if, say, Zach Kanin gets those.

FLAKE: I wonder if he does too! I think the justification there is whether or not the drawing is about a fat person. You might also ask whether or not a certain cartoon is about the people in it being non-white. I think sometimes a person in a cartoon can just be fat, or a woman, or black, or whatever! That might speak a little to the pandering question. Simply assuming that the cartoon norm is a thin, affluent white person is a structure that I think deserves to be questioned and altered when and where it can be.

GEHR: Which leads to the question of whether or not we’re living in hypersensitive times, too.

FLAKE: In some ways, yeah. But in other ways I feel like we have to be a little hypersensitive. I do a lot of eye rolling at things. But forty years ago I might have been eye rolling at things that have directly benefited me as a woman. 

GEHR: Such as?

FLAKE: Like the whole feminist movement of the sixties and seventies. So I feel like I have to watch myself if I’m looking at kids on campus agitating for something. Because my knee-jerk reaction is like, “Oh, you fucking babies! Get it together!” You know? But as someone who has directly benefited from cultural agitation, it’s a little more my duty to be like, alright, what are they upset about? I don’t like reactions that limit speech. I find trigger warnings and the like infantilizing, and I think they have a chilling effect on speech and expression, etcetera. There should always be room for people to vigorously disagree. But I am totally OK with buildings not being named after Woodrow Wilson anymore.

And Annie Mok reviews Carol Tyler's Soldier's Heart.

Carol Tyler’s Soldier’s Heart collects her trilogy You’ll Never Know, which tells the story of how her father’s PTSD from serving in WWII reverberated throughout three generations. The narrative jumps between “Dad’s Army Scrapbook and Tour of Duty Highlights” and Carol’s account of the time spent making the books. During the 8-year stretch, she worked as a substitute teacher, was a semi-single mother, and slept on a mat on the floor. She mentioned in a 2012 Comics Reporter interview that she got by during this time with food stamps. (The harsh economics of cartooning makes me wonder whose stories we’re losing to time and resources, especially as deep racial and gender biases remain intact within comics institutions, as the recent Angoulême Grand Prix news illustrates. By the way: fuck the Angoulême Grand Prix.)

Elsewhere:

-Bart Beaty ponders the relative importance of Angouleme itself.

-A reminder that the great Kevin Huizenga's Ganges 6 is available for pre-order, and of course there's more Kevin H available if you follow the link.

Frank Santoro is back this week with a column about Pittsburgh real estate and crowdfunding.

The rite of passage which is moving to a big city and "slumming it" is something we all have heard of or experienced. I did it. I moved to the big city thinking I'd never go back home to Pittsburgh. I never understood why the locals in the Tenderloin of SF or in NYC's Little Italy talked to me the way they talked to me. I was too dumb and young and naive to understand that I was just passing through and they knew it. That rite of passage was important to me because I realized that I didn't belong there. Trouble was, I didn't really belong here at home either. I'd moved away and so no one knew my face and I was treated like locals here treat the transient university population: we ignore them. It wasn't until people on my street saw me with my Mom that they put it together who I was and that I was back. It might sound corny, but it's like my Godfather said, "I had to go travel around for awhile to realize that where I liked it best was right here. But I didn't know it 'til I didn't have it."

And we also have the seventh episode of Greg Hunter's Comic Book Decalogue podcast. This time, he talks to Inés Estrada talks about Amanda Vähämäki, Crumb, and Bryan Lee O'Malley, and then gives a short preview of 2016 in comics.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

The three finalists for the controversial Angoulême Grand Prix have been announced: Alan Moore, Hermann, and Claire Wendling. As Bart Beaty notes, both Moore and Hermann have previously said they will decline the award if they happen to win.

Hi there, today Ryan Holmberg brings us thoughts on the early history of artist interviews in manga, and the first translation of a complete 1969 Garo interview between great Sasaki Maki and Seiichi Hayashi.

The Goal and Purpose of Manga

Sasaki: I had previously published “A Familiar Topic” (“Yoku aru Hanashi,” Garo, November 1966) and “An Unknown Star” (“Mishiranu hoshi,” Garo, February 1967), but I feel with “A Dream in Heaven” (“Tengoku de miru yume,” Garo, November 1967) that I reemerged reborn. That’s why I think of “A Dream in Heaven” as my first work.

Hayashi: I’ve made a living in animation, when all of sudden I wanted to start making manga. Maybe it’s that I wanted to say whatever it was that I had wanted to say. I wasn’t really thinking of what the goal or purpose of manga was. I don’t think that’s changed even now.

Sasaki: When manga is used for satire, manga is being used as a means. Manga isn’t the goal. It’s the means by which to create a tangible effect. Thus, after a certain amount of time has passed, that purpose comes to an end. I respect that kind of manga. At the same time, I also respect manga that is part of the wider field of using images (eizō). Right now, I’ve ended up putting more emphasis on the latter.

Hayashi: In my case, if you ask me why I make manga, it’s simply because there was something I wanted to draw so I drew it. If you force me to explain it, I think I’d say that drawing manga is a kind of “violence.” Giving “birth” to something is violent, right? If you asked me why I gave birth to something, I’m not sure I could answer that.

I'm looking forward to reading more about this smart-sounding exhibition of African American art, comics, illustration, and other printed material. The variety of mediums and genres and the intense amount of historical works are both really intriguing.

The British cartoonist and illustrator who went by the name Andy Dog has passed away, according to Paul Gravett on Facebook.

Forbes looks at the entertainment properties created by Jack Kirby, and gets into the Marvel settlement.

The great Peter Bagge has started a new comic strip over at Vice.

Joe McCulloch is here this morning with the Week in Comics, his indispensable guide to the most interesting-sounding comics in stores. Spotlight picks this week include new titles by Chris Oliveros and Tommi Musturi.

Meanwhile, elsewhere: Kayla E at Nat. Brut asked ten female and non-binary creators, including Carol Tyler, mickey z, Edie Fake, and Lauren Weinstein, to comment on the recent Angoulême Grand Prix controversy.

I created an iconic self portrait in the style of Queen Elizabeth I. It was an oil painting made with the most expensive and luscious pigments on Earth. In the royal balloon above the Queen’s (my) head, it says, “I am married to comics.” Elizabeth I once said that she was “married to England” as a way of creating the identity of Great Britain, which reminded me of my full commitment to the form, like nuns who become Brides of Christ. This painting, with all its symbolism, became my manifesto.

—Interviews & Profiles. Hillary Brown at Paste talks to Tom Hart about Rosalie Lightning, his memoir about the death of his daughter.

I wrote notes incessantly for five weeks after [Rosalie died]. I knew I would have to create a book, to help these emotions find form. I stopped taking notes when they began being repetitive, but also after the final incident detailed in the book. I felt, I had been presented with all the material to heal with. Then I had to go through the work of internalizing that healing. Drawing it took roughly three and a half years. I felt I was experiencing the aftermath again. It was hard, but it was my new reality. I couldn’t deny that reality. The work of drawing it was turning my face to it to acknowledge it.

Sam Thielman at The Guardian talks to Jim Woodring about his new book, Frank in the 3rd Dimension (which is pretty stunningly effective).

There’s just a lot of stuff I’ve decided not to do because either I don’t understand it or I can’t handle it. I don’t have much to do with sex in my work because it seems to me that sex takes everything out of the realm of thought and into the realm of passion and that’s not what I’m trying to depict. And I try to avoid things that are seriously disturbing.

I wrote that passage after I did a realistic charcoal drawing of my father standing at a workbench wearing a blood-spattered apron smashing up babies with a single-jack sledgehammer. I just did it to see if I could do it, and when it was done I showed it to my girlfriend at the time who was generally supportive of me, but when she saw that she just said, basically, “You’ve brought something of such unspeakable ugliness into the world, and I don’t know how you can justify it.” [...] what she said resonated with me and I didn’t want to be the author of something that would make people feel so bad.

—Craft. Comics writer Kieron Gillen created a master post containing all of his advice on scripting comics.

—Charlie Hebdo. Last week began another Charlie Hebdo controversy, this time over a cartoon that many interpreted as racist and anti-immigrant. Tom Spurgeon gathered up some of the original commentary and provided his own. Apparently, the version of the cartoon that was spread on Twitter and social media was missing a headline and partner images that changed the context of the cartoon, though most likely this won't convince everyone. One of the most interesting responses I've seen came from the French media critic Dan Schneidermann, who wrote an open letter to Riss, the cartoonist behind the image, making the point that whatever Riss and Charlie Hebdo's point may have been, in the current situation, with Charlie's heightened profile, and the way its cartoons are now shared and read online, the magazine should adjust their approach if they don't wish to be misunderstood.

Today on the site, Mike Dawson and Alex Robinson talk Jim Starlin's Warlock.

And Aidan Koch finishes up her week with us. Thanks to Aidan!

Elsewhere:

Bill Griffith has been posting photographs related to his book, Invisible Ink, over on his Facebook page. It's really worth a look -- the story deepens -- and if you haven't read the book, the photos themselves are good enough to merit some attention.

Eleanor Davis gets a nice profile in Columbus. 

And either it's new or I never noticed it before, but Tom DeHaven has posted notes on the final novel of his great fictional "Dugan" trilogy about a comic strip/book character.

Today on the site, Frank Santoro remembers Tim Corrigan's 1980s minicomics zine, Small Press Comics Explosion, and the lost world it came from. Looking back over its pages, he also finds an early appearance by a young Scott McCloud.)

According to The Minicomix Revolution 1969-1989 by Bruce Chrislip, Corrigan "soon started distributing SPCE through the direct market chain of comic book shops and the print run quickly increased from 200 copies to 2,000 copies." Chrislip explains that Corrigan would review just about anything. Soon "it became a tabloid [...] and an avalanche of hundreds of small press comix showed up in his mailbox. So much so that it would be impossible to do a complete history of every minicomic published from 1986 on. There were thousands of different issues. Some were fantastic, but many were crude first attempts by fledgling cartoonists." (Emphasis in the original.)

It's true. So much of it looks like dreck, and sounds worse when described in eloquently baroque micro-blocks of text. It was, it seems, the real full flowering of xerox machines becoming widely available, and SPCE documents that perfectly.

And then we also have Day Four of Aidan Koch's week creating A Cartoonist's Diary.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—News. Amid the Angoulême Grand Prix controversy, another political controversy involving the festival seems to have been resolved. Over the past two years, organizers protested the involvement of the Israeli company Sodastream as a sponsor (partly because of a factory located in the occupied territories of Palestine), and gathered public support from artists including Alison Bechdel, Jaime Hernandez, Tardi, Lewis Trondheim, Kate Beaton, and others. This year, Sodastream seems to have ceased its involvement with Angoulême, and the protesters have released a celebratory press release.

In censorship news, Facebook removed a 2009 political cartoon critical of Israel drawn by Brazilian political cartoonist Carlos Latuff and temporarily suspended the account of the Palestinian news site which hosted it.

Two cartoonists involved in a Charlie Hebdo-related exhibition being held in Tel Aviv's French Embassy have alleged that their work for the show has been censored, apparently because of their depictions of Muhammad.

—Interviews & Profiles. Brigid Alverson interviewed former D&Q publisher Chris Oliveros about his new graphic novel, The Envelope Manufacturer.

Why did you decide to self-publish 'The Envelope Manufacturer'?

I thought it would be a conflict of interest if D+Q published it. Even though I am no longer the publisher, there still is that connection that spans decades, and so I felt that if I somehow joined the roster it would only be because I had the special key for the secret side entrance to get in.

And Artinfo interviews Matthew Thurber about his new Artcomic, art comics in general, and art critic Jerry Saltz.

Jerry Saltz is supposedly an art critic, but he has no opinions. In his essays he never takes a side, or really says anything besides “I’m Jerry Saltz, look at me.” His self-absorption makes him kind of useless to others, and useless to a reader. I think a critic should have some sort of logic, some kind of philosophy behind their writing. If you don’t agree with Clement Greenberg about the flatness of the picture plane – that’s okay, at least he has expressed an opinion that you can think about or argue with. With Saltz, it’s just “The new Whitney is great!!! Although maybe it’s not! Did I tell you I used to be a truck driver?”

Hi there,

Today on the site we bring you day 3 of Aidan Koch's diary. 

And Cynthia Rose reports on a major retrospective on the work of Claire Bretécher: 

The new retrospective of Claire Bretécher opened five days after the last Paris attacks. It was a moment when locals were longing to hear from two parts of the populace. One tribe, of course, was philosophers and professional thinkers. But the other group was les dessinateurs – the artists behind popular comics, caricatures and press cartoons.

Bretécher’s work helps explain their expectations. She is a virtuoso and a national treasure, an artist whose work explodes with style, wit – and creative complaining. Although both her visuals and storytelling are exceptional, Bretécher’s humour exceeds the sum of their parts. She is not someone who depicts “slices of life” nor does she create gags just to end in a burst of laughter. What interests her are the common threads of our existence and what she has to say is always present tense.

Elsewhere:

Here's a nice write-up on White Boy over at the New York Review of Books.

Zainab Akhtar interviews Michael DeForge at Inkstuds.

Gil Roth interviews Molly Crabapple.

Today on the site, Joe McCulloch is here with his usual indispensable guide to the most interesting-sounding new comics in stores, and this week, he goes on to write about Hiroya Oku’s Inuyashiki.

Inuyashiki ... hails from Kodansha’s biweekly seinen magazine Evening, home of the lattermost chapters to Yukito Kishiro’s Gunnm (“Battle Angel Alita” if you’re nasty), an MMA serial by Hiroki Endō of Eden: It’s an Endless World! and various prequel installments of the Shima Kōsaku salaryman soap opera. I think the magazine skews a little older in seinen terms, and I think Inuyashiki panders good and hard to that sort of demographic, presenting an aging man, disrespected by all, who is accidentally annihilated by powers from beyond the stars and hastily rebuilt using weapons technology fit to obliterate the Earth. However, the old man is a good man, and sets about defending the helpless from rapacious younger persons by embodying the qualities of courage, sacrifice and honor so often absent from our low and selfish contemporary age.

This is classic reactionary superhero stuff, but the way its mounted suggests a very particular association for English superhero readers. Avoiding any suggestion of costume or genre glamour in favor of an icily sensational ‘cinematic’ approach booming with wide splashes, Oku’s approach is remarkably close to that of the millennial Marvel comics associated with the executive tenure of Bill Jemas.

Also, we are proud to present Day Two of Aidan Koch's week-long tenure producing our Cartoonist's Diary feature. (If you missed it, don't forget to start with Day One.)

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Interviews & Profiles. The Montreal Gazette profiles former D&Q publisher Chris Oliveros, and also publishes a short preview of his self-published graphic novel, The Envelope Manufacturer.

Mind you, this is no typical self-publishing scenario. The author’s name is so strongly associated with D & Q that having it on the cover is practically its own imprimatur. It’s a connection Oliveros is clearly comfortable with, having maintained close ties since handing the company reins over to Peggy Burns and Tom Devlin.

“I still go the office about once a week, and that’s good, because a clean break after 25 years would have felt really strange.”

Alex Dueben talks to the legendary cartoonist and animator R.O. Blechman, who has a new book coming out this month.

I have an ongoing argument with Gene Deitch, the director [of The Juggler]. He thought that he had proposed Boris Karloff as the voiceover but I know that it was my idea because it was not my idea, it was the idea of William Goldman, my former classmate. He said, what about Boris Karloff doing the voiceover. Sorry, Gene Deitch. We differ there. But we’re going back more than a half century, so it’s understandable.

—A/V. The Comics Alternative podcast talks to Rosalie Lightning creator Tom Hart.

Françoise Mouly appeared on PRI to discuss The New Yorker's post-Charlie Hebdo cover.

On C-SPAN, Ann Telnaes and Signe Wilkinson also discuss that magazine and the anniversary of the attacks on it.

R. Crumb made an appearance on the American Routes radio show, in which he talks about some of his favorite music.

—Reviews & Commentary. For the Los Angeles Review of Books, Nick Francis Potter reviews Sam Alden's New Construction in comics form.

For Vice, Nick Gazin published his top ten comics of 2015.

—David Bowie. He didn't make comics, but comics meant a lot to him (Raw, Beano, and Viz all made his list of 100 favorite books), and he meant a lot to many cartoonists and comics readers, with his records making prominent cameo appearances in books from major artists like Charles Burns and Chester Brown, among others (Sean T. Collins asked cartoonists to sketch David Bowie at conventions several years ago, and posted the results on Flickr). I've seen it written that Bowie was one of our time's "least relatable" stars, but the outpouring of grief over the last few days seems to disprove that. Bowie constantly took risks, but he didn't made it look easy. He was inspirational for many reasons, but for me, that may be the most important.

Hi there,

Today Bob Levin joins us for a look at the Texas history comics of seminal underground cartoonist Jack Jackson. This is about as much as you're likely to read about Jack Jackson anytime soon, so read on!

Jack Jackson, aka “Jaxon, was a first-generation underground cartoonist. (In fact, with “God Nose,” which he self-published in 1964, he may have been the first UG cartoonist.) He was a fifth-generation Texan, born May 15, 1941, in Pandora (est. pop. 125). He died from a self-inflicted gunshot, on June 8, 2006, atop his parents’ grave in Stockdale (est. pop. 1519). He had diabetes, prostate cancer, and a neural disease which had left his hands too shaky to draw.

In 1966 Jaxon had come to San Francisco. He spent two years overseeing the posters for  rock concerts promoted by the ex-Texan Chelt Helms, and then founded, with two other Lone Star ex-pats, the UG publisher Rip Off Press. After returning to his home state in the early ‘70s, Jackson began a chronicling of its past in comic form that would win him acclaim as a Lifetime Fellow of the Texas Historical Society and member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Posthumously, he was inducted into the comic industry’s Hall of Fame.

In 2012 Fantagraphics published in one volume “Los Tejanos/The Lost Cause,” two of Jaxon’s previously published graphic histories. Recently, with the presence of those Texans wrestling in the mud of the Republican presidential nomination process in my thoughts – and not unmindful of what what other Texans had done for the nation in the last 50 years — I read it.

And Aidan Koch is beginning a week-long Cartoonist's Diary with us. Today finds her in Key West.

Elsewhere:

The Angouleme debacle has simmered down a bit, but The Guardian has a well-sourced article by Laurenn McCubbin on the history of the history of women in comics.

Here's a new interview with Seth, which delves into his own feelings on cons and the youngs.

Just Indie Comics has a nice list up of good 2015 comics, most of which I even agree with.

Today on the site, Luke Geddes reviews the first collection of Tom Neely and Keenan Michael Keller's The Humans.

Keller mines a similar pop cultural detritus as contemporaries like Ben Marra and Johnny Ryan, whose comics revel in seemingly dumb, confrontationally unironic set pieces of hyper-violence and vulgarity. (One member of The Humans is even named after Marra, and both Marra and Ryan provide pinups in the book’s supplementary pages.) However, this is not to undermine Keller’s craft. His approach to this milieu is tonally intricate. Narratively Johnny’s post-war trauma is played with a straight face, the depiction of Vietnam-era societal turbulence as harrowing as the kind of thing you’d find in an old issue of Inner City Romance, but it’s all painted with the same gleeful, candy-colored exhibitionism the book applies to biker movies clichés. Sure, the Viet Cong are portrayed as snub-nosed monkeys and the American troops as chimps, but a spiritual successor to Maus this is not.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—News. As Dan mentioned in an update to the blog yesterday, in response to the growing boycott of the Grand Prix, the Angoulême festival has decided to withdraw its list of nominees and leave the Grand Prix award to be freely chosen by festival attendees. Brigid Alverson has a good explanation and the relevant links.

Bart Beaty wrote about all of this for his new group blog, The Greatest Comic Book of All Time, and goes into some of the history of how the award nominees have historically been chosen.

The Grand Prix at FIBD is generally considered the most prestigious prize in all of comics. It is a lifetime achievement award. The Grand Prix winner is announced in a place of honor (this has varied over time – some years it was announced at midnight on the Saturday from the balcony at town hall, more recently it has become the final prize awarded during the closing ceremonies on Sunday) and the recipient becomes the honorary President of the FIBD the following year, with an exhibition consecrated to his or her work. The President also chairs the prize jury.

Note that I said “his or her” work is exhibited. This is technically true, but only barely. The prize has been awarded forty-two times since Angoulême began in the 1970s, and it has gone to forty-two men (Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian shared the award in 2008) and one woman (Florence Cestac).

Cartoonist Liza Donnelly weighed in about the controversy for the Washington Post.

It takes effort to find good work that is being created, and it is not always the obvious artists who are doing the best work, but are instead the names already on everyone’s lips. Then we, as a society, repeat the same biases, over and over again. It’s time to interrupt that trend.

John Porcellino, the indispensable creator of King-Cat Comics and Spit and a Half distribution, has launched a Patreon.

—Reviews & Commentary. Longtime Comics Journal contributor Chris Mautner has launched a column at The Smart Set, and his debut review is of Dark Knight III: The Master Race.

Despite his recent perceived failures, the possibility of another Dark Knight sequel had many Batman and [Frank] Miller fans buzzing. That initial excitement was muted considerably when it turned out that Miller would be collaborating with writer Brian Azzarello — who, apart from the crime series 100 Bullets, is perhaps best known for helping pen the completely unnecessary and utterly dispiriting Before Watchmen prologue — and artist Andy Kubert. Further interviews revealed that Miller’s contributions would be minimal at best.

The resulting comic is depressingly average and dull.

—Charlie Hebdo One Year Later. Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the mass-murder of eight Charlie Hebdo staff members in Paris.

Literary Hub has published Adam Gopnik's foreword to Charlie editor Stéphane Charbonnier's posthumous Open Letter.

The crucial distinction we must defend is that between acts of imagination and acts of violence. The imagination sees and draws and describes many things—pornographic, erotic, satiric, and blasphemous—that are uncomfortable or ugly. But they are not actually happening. The imagination is a place where hypotheses and conditionals rule, and where part of the fun, and most of the point, lies in saying the unsayable in order to test the truths of what’s most often said. An assault on an ideology is not merely different from a threat made to a person; it is the opposite of a threat made to a person. The whole end of liberal civilization is to substitute the criticism of ideas for assaults on people.

Kenan Malick has also written a long essay on the anniversary.

The charge of ‘hate speech’ or of ‘punching down’ or in Garry Trudeau’s words, of ‘attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority’, has constantly been used as a way of silencing artists whose work challenges what some regard as unviolable ideas or beliefs. Critics of Salman Rushdie branded The Satanic Verses as ‘hate speech’. So did Sikh critics of Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti. As did many Jewish critics of Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children. (Trudeau himself was accused of anti-Semitism and of ‘maligning Judaism’ by the Anti-Defamation League for one of his Doonesbury cartoons, which makes his condemnation of Charlie Hebdo both ironic and troubling).

The cover of the anniversary issue of Charlie Hebdo depicts a blood-stained picture of God with a Kalashnikov on His back, captioned “One year on: The murderer is still out there.” And the Vatican newspaper has decried it as unfair and prejudiced against religion.

—Misc. Finally, this is the first and probably last time I most a gif that's going around, but this seemed like one almost everyone in comics will be able to appreciate:

Hi there,

Frank's back with a good think piece about Herriman and history, with a grumpy cameo by yours truly.

Many links today. At the top of it all is the ongoing controversy around the Angouleme Festival's all-male Grand Prix nomination list. Bart Beaty has a good summation and following Jessica Abel's feeds on Twitter and Facebook is a good way to get updates. Not much for me to say in the way of commentary other than being glad that so many cartoonists have boycotted the prize. It looks like the festival will add female names to the list now, but somewhat grudgingly. It's a bit too little too late.

UPDATE: Now there's no nomination list at all.  Paul Gravett writes:

Tom Hart speaks to New York Magazine about Rosalie Lightning.

Charlie Hebdo marked a year since the attacks and the NY Times reports.

That Kirby essay I gave love to on Tuesday is now online.  I've seen some responses around Facebook and from Kirby "biographer" Mark Evanier, which are mostly of the "wait, what about me?" variety. Evanier's quibbles, with one exception, come down to a matter of interpretation (it's possible that the artist was influenced by his own 3-D work, just as it's possible he didn't anticipate the extent of his immortality -- no one really knows). I have sometimes found Evanier to be a useful resource over the years and he's undoubtedly been a champion of the work itself, but ironically he seems to have no real insight into Kirby's work, only anecdotes and oddly firm opinions about what Kirby would and wouldn't think (which should be an alarm bell for any reader of a biography). I also found it grimly humorous that Evanier ends his cutesy commentary with a "I welcome other voices" type thing, since he refuses access to Kirby's papers (which should really be in a proper archive) to every researcher I've ever spoken to (myself included) in the name of writing, Joe Gould-style, a prose biography. His one and only book on Kirby was a rehash of blurbs in nice large type that featured a centerfold by Alex Ross and that champion of good cartooning Neil Gaiman. Huh.

The NYPL has made a huge amount of images available online for all. 

Finally, here's a comics-adjacent interview with Carroll Dunham.

Rob Clough is here with his thoughts on Raina Telgemeier's blockbuster Sisters (and her earlier career).

[Smile], an autobiographical account of Telgemeier's painful and complicated history of dental problems along with other personal anecdotes, touched a nerve with a number of younger readers, and especially girls. Telgemeier's understanding that the more specific one gets in telling one's story, the more relatable it becomes gave the work an authenticity that struck a chord. When one throws in a smooth, pleasant drawing style that's equal parts Bill Watterson, Keiji Nakazawa, Bill Amend, and Lynn Johnston, you've got an artist who knows how to appeal to a wide audience without specifically adhering to a particular visual aesthetic. That said, if this was another era, Telgemeier would have no doubt been a successful syndicated cartoonist.

Instead, in this era, she merely has six of the top ten books on the New York Times' Paperback Graphic Books list.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—News. The biggest news of the week so far came shortly after the announcement of the nominees for the Angoulême Grand Prix, perhaps the most prestigious award in comics. All thirty of those named were men. In response, the Collectif des créatrices de bande dessinée contre le sexisme has called for an official boycott. (Jessica Abel has translated their announcement into English.)

At the time of this writing, three of the Grand Prix nominees—Daniel Clowes, Riad Sattouf, and Joann Sfar—have asked to be withdrawn from award consideration, in support of the boycott. [UPDATE: Milo Manara, Etienne Davodeau, Charles Burns, Christophe Blain, Pierre Christin, Chris Ware, and Brian Michael Bendis have also withdrawn their names from consideration.]

[FURTHER UPDATE: Angoulême has made an announcement agreeing to add women to the list of nominees, but their statement is remarkably tone-deaf and unlikely to soothe anger, to say the least.]

In happier and unrelated news, the cartoonist and TCJ columnist Julia Gfrörer's Twitter suspension, reported here on Monday, was lifted later that day.

—Interviews & Profiles. Heidi MacDonald talks to Jason Shiga about Demon, possibly the most out-of-character First Second project yet.

I penciled all 750 pages of it before inking the first panel. I know this sounds completely overboard but once you read “Demon” you’ll understand why. There’s no other way it could have been constructed! It’s basically a 3 player chess match that pivots into a series of 7 concentric escape puzzles, briefly turns into a meditation on existence before pivoting back to the chess match which itself is contained in 2 more layers of puzzles.

Alex Dueben talks to Richard Sala about his new Violenzia collection.

The direct inspiration was a 1968 Gil Kane comic called "His Name Is Savage," which was ridiculously violent for its day. In fact my original title was "Her Name Is Violence." But I was also thinking a lot about Golden Age comics like, say, Plastic Man, as well as the many lesser, more primitive ones. I like that energy. It's the same kind of delirious energy you find in the original Spider pulps, or Republic serials, or even Westerns, where whatever plot there is just acts as a bridge between outbursts of sudden violence, but violence that is stylized and choreographed and a million miles from any actual horrific real life violence.

NPR talked to New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik about the posthumous manifesto of slain Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier.

I don't think there's any question journalists have become targets, but then I think that - that anyone who tries to practice liberty becomes a target of fanatics. And it's not Islamic fanatics alone, though it certainly includes Islamic fanatics. We've had mass shootings in the United States in the part of violent antiabortion protesters, in the part of violent pro-ISIS militants. The trick and the trap and the horror is not faith, Scott. I think the trap and the horror is fanaticism. And fanaticism comes in as many flavors as there are human beings. And I think the worst thing we can do is to concede to fanaticism its devotion, say, 'Well, you have to understand, these people are really fanatics, so we should back down from them.' I think if journalists start doing that then they won't be practicing journalism. If satirists start doing that then they won't be practicing satire.

For Bitch Media, Amy Lam speaks to Sparkplug artist Ebin Lee.

In dealing with this tension and weirdness and I decided, "Fuck it, I'm just going to do it because it's never going to go away. Why not? This is what I'm dealing with. This is what I feel more passionately about." I think a lot of white people think people of color just cop out with race art because it's "easy" and people are going to feel bad. That is racism right there. They don't understand how much of a day-to-day experience it is. It's not like, from 3-5pm, all people of color and Black people experience racism. It's from morning till night, it's every single thing. You can develop entire pathologies of the mind that don't go away due to this. I don't understand why it's a "cop-out," it's actually really hard.

The most recent guest on Gil Roth's Virtual Memories podcast is Keith Knight.

The comics industry needs to catch up to its audience, because the creative side is not as diverse as their readers.

—Reviews & Commentary. Zunar wrote an editorial about political censorship in Malaysia for the Washington Post.

I’m a cartoonist in a country where cartooning can be a crime. Under my pen name, Zunar, I expose corruption and abuses of power by the Malaysian government. As it happens, I have a good deal of material to work with. For instance, Prime Minister Najib Razak is currently facing questions about a $700 million “donation” made to his personal bank account.

Last February, police raided my home in the middle of the night and hauled me off to jail. I was handcuffed for eight hours and thrown into a cell with all the other criminal suspects. I managed to avoid telling my cellmates what I was in for: using Twitter.

Today on the site:

Joe McCulloch kicks of 2016 as anyone should: With comics!

The Guardian has a good new summation of the way in which Charlie Hebdo has been misrepresented.

Here's an overview of Tunisian comics. 

Via Robert Boyd, here's an excellent and early article on comics as a medium from the great literary critic Leslie Fielder.

Jonathan Chandler on Inkstuds.

Art in America's new issue is comics-themed, with a piece by our own Ryan Holmberg and, I gotta say, having read it in draft form, the best formal analysis, in terms of contemporary and modern art, of Jack Kirby I've ever read, by the great Alexi Worth. In fact I'd say it's the first serious analysis of Kirby-the-artist that I've read. No surprise that strong writing on Kirby would come from outside of comics. I could say more, but in 2016 I'm trying to figure out (well, Tim and I both) the balance between just ignoring things rather than commenting and burning bridges (people are awfully sensitive) and just saying whatever is on my mind. Still can't decide which way to go.

Welcome to 2016 at TCJ.com. Before we get to all-new comics news all the time, we've got a few pieces lined up on the year past. Today, columnist Paul Tumey offers his personal favorites from 2015.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—News. The cartoonist and TCJ.com columnist Julia Gfrörer has had her account on Twitter (@thorazos) suspended, for extremely dubious and infuriating reasons. Meghan Turbitt posted a brief IM conversation including Julia's explanation. If you want to help, contact Twitter support and ask that her account be reinstated.

The Library of Congress has named Gene Luen Yang as the new national ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

This literary ambassador program was created in 2008 “to raise national awareness of the importance of young people’s literature as it relates to literacy, education and the betterment of the lives of young people,” according to its organizing bodies. With that in mind, Yang tells The Post’s Comic Riffs, “One of the things I’m supposed to do as ambassador is promote great books, and because I’m from the world of graphic novels … I have to give them a little bit of an extra push.”

—Reviews & Commentary. At Comics Alliance, Jennifer de Guzman writes about harassment issues in comics.

Harassment and assault have long been a specter in the comics industry. Reports of groping, inappropriate emails, aggressive drunks, sexual propositions, unsolicited pornographic text messages, meetings held in strip clubs, and abuses by management are shared by word of mouth or in private forums and groups. Sometimes dependent on hearsay and short on specifics, anecdotal warnings are still very much necessary to help newcomers and veterans alike navigate an industry in which personal and professional lines often blur, and networking often takes place in hotel bars at the end of convention days.

Occasional TCJ contributor Brian Nicholson writes about his favorite comics of the year. Sarah Horrocks, who wrote for us last year (and I hope we can convince to do so again) posted her list of favorite comics too.

The Comics Studies Society has published its first newsletter.

Shawn Starr reviews comics by Maggie Umber, Aidan Koch, and Lala Albert.

For The Guardian, Noah Berlatsky writes about the recent controversy over Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette's revival of Wonder Woman, defending the bondage scenes in it as faithful to the original comics created by William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter.

Wonder Woman was Marston’s vision of a perfect love leader. Her magic lasso – originally a lasso of command, not of truth – was, in his own words, “a symbol of female charm, allure, oomph attraction” and of the power that “every woman has …over people of both sexes.” In fact, the bondage games in Wonder Woman, a comic for children published in the 1940s, are in many ways more explicit, and more startling, than those in Morrison and Paquette’s 2016 reboot for grownups. In one sequence from the original comics, Wonder Woman’s Amazon sisters on Paradise Island engage in a game where some dress as deer, and the others pretend to hunt them, tie them up by their feet and then eat them. In another memorable bit, Wonder Woman is trapped in a gimp mask and breaks free while providing some historical info about bondage. “The French girls who wore this contraption must have had weak teeth,” she muses.

—Interviews & Profiles. Alex Dueben talks to Lee Marrs, one of the founding members of the Wimmen's Comix collective.

When I was in college, Herblock [Herbert Lawrence Block] -- who was the Washington Post cartoonist, a famous guy then -- had already seen my work. I went to college at American University in Washington, DC. He had said to the editor of the school newspaper, have this guy see me when he graduates.

Having Lee as a first name became useful. [Laughs] So I went to see him, and he was very shocked that I was a girl. We had lunch and he looked over my stuff. He said, what you should do is go back to your hometown and get work on the paper and then do cartoons on the side until they see how good the cartoons are. That's the way most people do it. I said, well, my hometown is Montgomery, Alabama. Herb was shocked and said, don't go back to your hometown! [Laughs]

For HiLobrow, Adam McGovern interviews Michael Allred about his latest title, Art Ops, the meaning of fiction, and religious scripture.

Now, let’s jump ahead to the recent century and take a look at The Da Vinci Code. There are people who think that work of fiction is packed with well-researched fact. Scientology? L. Ron Hubbard wrote science-fiction. Fiction that created a recognized tax-exempt religion. Let’s go back just a couple centuries with The Book of Mormon? I love it! Inspired a great musical! If true, then a lost record of a thousand-year period between 600 BC and 400 AD revealed to the world proving that Christ came to the Americas as a resurrected being. If fiction, then some powerful storytelling there by a great artist. Some would say “con” artist.

I feel that anyone who doesn’t open their mind to the possibility that all scriptures of every faith are imperfect, if not outright fictional, are doing themselves a disservice. IF you take the leap of faith that something is true and worthy of your devotion, then it should also be able to take the “stress test.” If God exists and gave us brains to utilize intelligence then we absolutely should use that intelligence to its fullest and always question what is true, what is art, and can something true also be art? The [concept] of “what is art” is almost too broad to be defined.

Today we break with tradition, as Joe McCulloch is moving house and cannot file his usual report. Good luck, Joe! Instead we bring you a special holiday feature by John Kelly: A look at Seattle alt-weekly The Rocket's tradition of holiday covers, featuring everyone from Lynda Barry to Ed Roth to Milton Glaser.

In the spirit of the New Year, and in an effort to further explore some historical connections between comics and other forms of popular culture, today we will be focusing on some of the Christmas-time covers done by an extraordinary group of cartoonists and illustrators for Seattle’s The Rocket, a magazine that helped launch the the careers of many rock musicians, cartoonists and graphic designers.

The Rocket was an extremely influential music/art/political alternative monthly (later, bi-monthly) magazine/newspaper that happened to be located in Seattle during a key moment of that city’s comics, and pop culture generally, history.  The Rocket existed from 1979 to 2000, a period in which Seattle became the home of Fantagraphics, Peter Bagge moved to town and became editor of Robert Crumb’sWeirdo, and the whole “grunge music” thing happened.

“For a lot of people, the only place you could get any attention or any action or get published was in The Rocket,” said Art Chantry, whose latest book is Art Chantry Speaks: A Heretic’s History of 20th Century Graphic Design.  “So it served a the hub of a wheel.  It was a very important magazine for a lot of things.  Sub Pop Records actually started as a column in The Rocket.  Bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden actually met each other through the classified ads in The Rocket.  It was that kind of a hub to what was happening there.  And of course, it pissed people off all the time so it’s been kind of erased from the history books.  But as a place for the illustrators and cartoonists, it was a place for people to start doing their work and developing their voice.  It was interesting and fun to work with a lot of these people and watch them develop very rapidly into what they became.”

Elsewhere:

The Panelological Pantheon has returned -- a favorite old comics blog of mine, and should of yours, too!

I'm not sure why these photos of Buster Keaton and George McManus delight me so much, but they really do.

Raymond Briggs is a lovable curmudgeon.

Today, we have Rob Kirby's last TCJ review of the year, a piece on Glenn Head's graphic memoir Chicago:

Chicago is also an intricate, literary story, with a protagonist whose motivations are often opaque and with outcomes that are anything but expected.

As Phoebe Gloeckner points out in her eloquent introduction, the story begins and ends in a graveyard. The specter of death haunts the edges of this tale, unusual in a coming-of-age memoir. Throughout, Glenn Head’s protagonist “Glen” (one ‘n’ missing, likely allowing for some artistic license regarding “truth”), skirts the limits of mortality, stepping deliberately into dangerous situations for reasons that remain hazy, even to himself.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Interviews & Profiles. Paul Gravett interviews Miriam Katin.

I truly did not think about catharsis as I even hate the very word being waved around at the present time. But actually, before the book, if someone asked me how we survived, I would choke up and not be able to talk. I would make an excuse for some other time. After the book I noticed that I can deal with the subject. On the other hand I created Letting It Go with the enormous need to deal with my trauma of my son moving to Berlin. The process was very difficult but most helpful. I poured my anger and fears into the story.

Sean T. Collins talks to Heather Benjamin for Adult magazine.

Now I’m making less explicit, less fully pornographic work, because it’s not the dynamics of fucking that I'm grappling with on a daily basis. I’m less interested in how other people made me feel as a result of being involved with them——unlike in Sad Sex, when I was using text in some pieces, like “you make me feel special” or “I masturbate thinking about your boyfriend,” making really blatant statements about how relations between myself and various people affected my self-perception and my experience. I’m now more interested in my own singular experiences with, and within, myself, not those that are explicitly being generated by other people in the present. It’s more introspective and nostalgic, and less about depicting something generating panic and emotion in the moment. This obviously still has a lot to do with sexuality and physicality, but less to do with sexual acts, unless they’re being performed on oneself, or are being looked back on in reflection and anxiety.

—Reviews & Commentary. I don't know why I link to things like this guide to "getting into highbrow comics" at The Guardian. Presumably everyone reading already knows most of this material... I suppose it's a way to gauge how the larger world evaluates the form.

—Misc. Finally, if you're a free-jazz musician, don't expect R. Crumb to get it:

I finally gave a listen to those LPs and the CD you sent me, of your own saxophone playing and some Swedish modern jazz. I gotta tell you, on the cover of the CD of your sax playing, which is black and has no text on it, I wrote in large block letters, in silver ink, “Torturing The saxophone—Mats Gustafsson.” I just totally fail to find anything enjoyable about this, or to see what this has to do with music as I understand it, or what in God´s name is going on in your head that you want to make such noises on a musical instrument. Quite frankly, I was kind of shocked at what a negative, unpleasant experience it was, listening to it.

Today on the site:

Alex Dueben speaks to the artists behind the Lebanese anthology Samandal, a project for which they were punished by their government.

I’m sure some readers know of Samandal, but I wondered if you could say a little about how it began and what you were trying to create?

Omar Khouri: When I first came up with the idea for Samandal in 2006, the political climate of Lebanon was extremely polarized. I felt that each publishing house that I might work with would pigeon-hole me into the political allegiance of that publisher. I had a comic book I wanted to serialize called Salon Tareq el Khurafi, which was quite political in nature, but dealt with more general themes than the local discourse was willing to accept at the moment. I was also craving a regular, periodic local comics production, and couldn't believe that it didn't exist here. I figured the best course would be self-publishing, but always preferred the Japanese manga magazine format to the single-issue Western one. I also wanted to include work from all over the world because I felt that being able to interact with international artist from countries that have stronger comics traditions would be beneficial to the development of the local comics scene. I was sure that there were other hidden writers and artists out there that felt the same frustrations I did, so I reached out to some friends (Tarek Nabaa, Hatem, Lena and Fdz) and they were very excited, so we went for it. Though Samandal has evolved so much in the past 9 years, and our team has grown, it still retains the spirit of everything we wanted to do at the start.

fdz: Samandal grew out of a the desire of a bunch of people (Omar, Lena, Hatem & Fadi) who were raised on comics and wanted to publish their own spin on the medium. We didn't really think it was something that would catch on because we didn't really think there many people out there like us. The smartest thing we did was open up the publication to submissions from other contributors because pretty soon we discovered that everyone wanted to take Samandal out for a spin.

Could explain exactly what you were convicted of?

fdz: a) Inciting sectarian strife b) denigrating religion c) publishing false news and d) defamation and slander.

Defamation and slander have become the standard accusation with the recent rise of legislation in Lebanon, where the accusing party enjoys some kind of political power and uses the legal system to exercise it. In the recent protests of the summer in Lebanon, the country saw a surge in various slander and libel cases issued by political personalities and parties against individuals.

Elsewhere:

The aforementioned Alex Dueben also has an interview up with Riad Sattouf.

Hyperallergic on Archie Rand's picture story of the 613 Jewish commandments.

Steve Heller has a well-timed look at Arthur Szyk.