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Today, as is traditional for Tuesdays, Joe McCulloch is here with his usual guide to the most interesting-sounding new releases in comics stores. His highlights for this week include Aisha Franz's Earthling and a collection of Al Feldstein's 1940s teen humor comics.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Interviews. Bob Temuka interviewed Dylan Horrocks. Alex Dueben talks to Tim Lane. Megan Purdy talks to MariNaomi. Rob Kirby talks to Max Clotfelter. Salon talks to Grant Morrison. Comics Alliance talks to Box Brown.

—Best of Lists. Whit Taylor picks her favorite graphic novels of 2014. Robert Boyd picks his favorite comics of the year. Brian Nicholson picks his top ten online comics of the year.

—News. Seth Kushner has posted a very welcome Facebook status update.

The Wow Cool alternative comics store in Cupertino, California was burglarized.

—Reviews & Commentary. Chris Mautner reviews The Art of the Simon and Kirby Studio. Dana Jennings at the New York Times reviews the same book and the latest volume of the Complete Peanuts. Brigid Alverson reviews the deluxe edition of Tove Jansson's Moomin comics. Carla Kaplan at the New York Times turns in the latest in a long line of reviews of Jill Lepore's Secret History of Wonder Woman.

Cathy G. Johnson has a provocative take on a recent Mike Dawson strip.

Zainab Akhtar wades into the recent contentious debate over Lizz Hickey's online strip about crowdfunding (the eternal subject).

Today on the site we have Katie Haegele profiling Leanne Shapton, an artist who has made multiple picture-story books, worked with tons of cartoonists, and published innumerable illustrations, but somehow remains little known in most comics worlds.

Like good character actors, some artists are everywhere and nowhere, consistently putting out high quality work but not drawing particular attention to themselves. A Canadian artist who lives in New York, Leanne Shapton is one of the more interesting artists working in the U.S. right now, and though you may well have seen her stuff—if you watched Spike Jonze’s exercise in awkwardness, Her, for instance, you’ve seen the artist’s rendering of what two people having armpit sex might look like—you may not yet know her name.

For an artist her age—Shapton is 41—she has already had a large and tremendously varied output. She paints lettering and patterns for book covers by Harper, New Directions, and Vintage Classics, and runs J&L Books, a small art book press, with the photographer Jason Fulford. She has seven books to her credit, some of which are almost purely visual and contain little or no text, while others (well, one, anyway) is a good old-fashioned prose piece with a few paintings thrown in.

Though she’s not really a comics artist herself, Shapton has also had a hand in putting the work of many cartoonists in front of a mainstream audience. As the art director of the Op Ed page at the New York Times from 2008-2009—and before that, for the Avenue section of Canada’s National Post—she hired visual artists with from a variety of backgrounds, from Blexbolex to Jillian Tamaki.

Elsewhere:

James Romberger has a nice review round-up of comics that mostly flew under my radar.

This is me being an old guy, but I really enjoy this kind of trainspotting, thought I understand if you don't.

This is old for the internet, but I hadn't seen this short profile of Jackie Ormes before (via Frank).

Good morning. We have two new pieces for you this morning. First, a previously unpublished interview with Zap contributor and Furry Freak Brothers creator Gilbert Shelton, conducted in 2012 by Patrick Rosenkranz. Here's a brief excerpt from that:

SHELTON:I don’t suppose you have a copy of Zap #1 printed by Charles Plymell, do you?
ROSENKRANZ: No I sure don’t.
SHELTON: You know the underground comix price guide says that’s worth $10,000.
ROSENKRANZ: A friend of mine sold one recently for $12,000 to the CEO of Nike.
SHELTON: That’s amazing.
ROSENKRANZ: One time I was in [Don] Donahue’s office in 1972 and he had a whole box of Plymell Zaps and I asked him how much are you selling those for? He said 10 bucks apiece and I remember thinking at the time, “Who would pay 10 bucks for that?” I should have bought all 30 of them, if I had 300 bucks.
SHELTON: You’d be wealthy today. If you tried to sell all 30 at once, it would probably bring the price down.
ROSENKRANZ: There are some that were damaged in the fire at the Opera House that have also become highly prized collector’s items now.
SHELTON: Because they’re damaged?
ROSENKRANZ: Yeah, because they’re charred.
SHELTON: That was a busy day at Mowry’s Opera House.

And then we also have a review of the new IDW collection of the 1940s Wonder Woman newspaper strip, written by Tim Hanley. Here's a sample of that:

The first week of strips was light on Wonder Woman. They were set in a newspaper office, with an editor keen to get the scoop on the new female phenom. Wonder Woman popped up briefly in each strip, saving a baby from a fire or stopping a runaway car, but most of the space was devoted to the increasingly frazzled editor.

It was an odd beginning to a strip that had a very specific purpose. Before becoming a comic book writer, Marston was a psychologist whose research led him to believe not only that women were superior to men, but that a matriarchal revolution was inevitable. He created Wonder Woman as "psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world." She was a way to get young readers used to the idea of a powerful woman, and thus pave the way for this revolution.

Giving Wonder Woman only two lines in the first week of strips seems like an ineffective way for Marston to further his cause, but week two launched into a detailed account of her origins that was chock full of matriarchal messages. The strips were an almost exact recreation of Wonder Woman #1. At first glance, it appears that Peter had simply reused the art, but almost every panel was actually an entirely new drawing based on, and often superior to, a panel from Wonder Woman #1. After years of drawing Wonder Woman and her world, Peter's comfort with the material showed in his more confident and detailed artwork.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, I hope you like interviews:

—Reviews & Commentary. Adam McGovern takes a look at Marguerite Van Cook & James Romberger's The Late Child and Other Animals.

Novelist Adam Roberts reviews Charles Burns's Sugar Skull.

Ivan Brunetti explains his latest New Yorker cover.

—Best Of lists. The Guardian has their Best of 2014 list. So does the A.V. Club (whose own comics coverage in general has improved dramatically this past year). Frequent TCJ.com contributor Rob Kirby has his top ten minicomics and top ten non-minicomics. Zach Hazard Vaupen offers a top-ten digital comics list.

—Interviews & Profiles. Both Boing Boing and CBR have interviews with Here creator Richard McGuire.

Alex Dueben talks to Olivier Schrauwen.

I always enjoy the Gary Panter episodes of Inkstuds.

The Toronto Star talks to comics scholar Bart Beaty about his new book and Archie comics.

Kevin Huizenga's on Make It Then Tell Everybody.

Off Life speaks to Isabel Greenberg.

The New Republic talks to the Danish editor Flemming Rose about the infamous Mohammad cartoons he published in 2005.

Gilbert Gottfried (!) has Drew Friedman on his latest podcast.

Chris Mautner talks to Zak Sally.

—Video. Here's the trailer for the She Makes Comics documentary:

Back again... Frank has some things he'd like to get off his chest.

Matisse lived in the south of France during the second world war and painted nudes and still life subjects. Maybe it’s best to just ignore the world outside. It’s pretty mellow around here where I live. Well, it depends on where you go, but you aren’t gonna get fucked with too bad. Michael DeForge wanted to go jogging around here when he was in town on tour. I drove him to the park instead of letting him just figure it out. There are these roving packs of scary white "yinzer” teenager boys who hangout across the street in the shopping center. They remind me of the roving packs of wild dogs that patrolled Williamsburg, Brooklyn, back in the early '90s. Often I’d have to run for it on the way to the subway. Once, one of the dogs followed me into the subway and up on the platform and then got on the train when the doors opened and went to Manhattan. I wonder if he ever made it home to Brooklyn. It was like a Disney movie, I thought. The dog gets a whole new life and new friends but he misses his old neighborhood and wanders the waterfront staring at Brooklyn across the river and sniffing the air. Sorry. What was I saying about Matisse? Maybe just be like him and ignore the dogs of war?

Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum's Caitlin McGurk get the local profile treatment.

I gotta admire the sheer stubbornness of whoever is giving the green light to these Dover books, none of which have even the slightest chance of making a dent in the marketplace. I do love Sam Glanzman's work, though, and now his finest war comics are being reissued.

Steve Brower on the new Richard Thompson book.

I always enjoy Metamorpho.

Graphic Design dept.: NY Times Book Review art director Nicholas Blechman (who published and edited the oft-overlooked comics anthology  Nozone) chooses his favorite book cover designs of 2014.

Richard McGuire is launching Here tonight in Brooklyn at Desert Island, along with a cute looking print.

R.C. Harvey is here with another foray into buried comic-strip history, this time with a profile of Napoleon creator Clifford McBride. Reading Harvey is always an education, and a pleasant one. Here's a sample:

Back in those dear, dead days of yesteryear, cartoonists drew comic strips; they didn’t rule them with a straight-edge. And one of the best examples of the truth of this freshly brewed axiom is Clifford McBride’s dog strip, Napoleon. McBride drew with great verve and an exuberant pen, producing such a ferociously kinetic line that even when depicted in repose, his subjects seemed vitally energetic. And the style suited the subject (in fact, given the low-key humor of the strip, the style may have been the subject).

The strip focused on a stout bachelor and his giant pet—Uncle Elby and Napoleon—achieving, as art critic Dennis Wepman once wrote in Ron Goulart’s Encyclopedia of American Comics,, a “beautifully balanced team—the fat man, all stasis and order, and the lean dog, all motion and chaos.” It is Elby’s fate (and the flywheel of the strip’s punchline, daily and Sunday) to be forever dogged (pun intended) by misfortune of a minor dimension: if his own bumbling doesn’t frustrate his plans that day, then the clumsy albeit good-hearted meddling of his affectionate, over-sized hound does.

And then we also have Thad Komorowski's review of the new, much anticipated book from Michael Barrier, Funnybooks, his examination of Dell Comics:

Funnybooks meets Michael Barrier’s exacting critical standards through a compelling narrative on what made Dell Comics tick. A wealth of unknown information is made entirely readable as we learn about important figures as flesh-and-blood active characters. Jeet Heer left a comment on his own review of The Secret History of Wonder Women that I thought was spot on: “Countless comics studies are paper thin in terms of historical research.” With the well of firsthand interviews, personal correspondence and surviving documentation Michael Barrier draws from, no one will ever make that charge against Funnybooks.

In some respects, the book is heartbreaking, as the end notes make it clear there was a profound lack of existing hard data from Western itself. This isn't Barrier's fault. Western's careless disposal of its archives and the fact that no one thought it was important enough to write these things down when the records were still available have created an obstacle for every comics historian.

Yet Barrier was still able to overcome that obstacle with more than enough fresh material, a testament to his skill as a historian. The most illuminating parts of the book deal with the corporate history: how Western negotiated its various licenses with Walt Disney, Looney Tunes producer Leon Schlesinger and Marge Buell; the marketing and printing costs; the life of Oskar Lebeck, the smartest Dell editor who hired the best people and shaped the best books; how the Comic Code that Western never adopted impacted its books regardless. Over a half-century later, none of this has been written about at any serious length or depth until now, and that alone makes Barrier’s book indispensable.

Today Joe McCulloch brings you the week in comics, as usual.

Elsewhere:

Another new comic fest has launched: The Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco.

Inkstuds visits Gary Panter in Brooklyn.

Jed Perl is a great art writer, and here he is on Picasso. Read and learn. I could learn a lot. Perl's new book, Art in America, is a pretty astounding gathering of writing about art that everyone should check out.

I fondly remember these superhero gag cartoons by Kyle Baker, even if they are for hardcore super hero nerds only. Love those colors, too.

Your most important link is naturally to a review of my book, Dorothy and Otis: Designing the American Dream in the New York Times Book Review.

And: This Bill Everett artwork, circa 1940, when the artist was figuring out what his comic book world might look like, is the damndest thing. It popped up on Heritage auctions yesterday, which lately has been auctioning material from the Everett family, most unpublished and easily enough to make a fine little art publication (hint hint, email me if interested, har har) Here is a man in mysterious garb, somewhat SF, somewhat aquatic, halfway mythic. All primary colors. He appear to be controlling some kind of gear-related machine. The woman (in red dress, natch) is holding a helmet as well. It's rendered in the Alex Raymond-influenced style that Everett would refine for the next 30 years, here still loose and sketchy. To me this drawing communicates so much of the invention and excitement these young artists must've felt when giving life to a new form, despite the shitty business conditions, etc. What a clear and ebullient vision he had.

Today, we have two new reviews for you. First, Hazel Cills writes about Inés Estrada's Sindicalismo 89, a short comic documenting the lives of the residents of an apartment complex in Mexico City:

The story focuses on three very different types of city dwellers who inhabit the building. There’s Mecha and her roommate Pau, two young stoner women. Across the way live the loud Lopez family made up of Paco, Yoni, and their impatient mother. And then there’s the little old lady who lives alone with her yippy lap dog companion, just trying to live peacefully among the youthful hustle and bustle that build up outside her blinded windows.

This idea of comfortable, natural chaos reverberates through out the stories of Sindicalismo 89’s characters as they go about their days and deal with problems that range from the inane (“I want mojitos!”) to the more serious (the building is flooding.) Most of the comic centers around Mecha and Pau, the free-wheeling girls who seem to spend more of their time looking for boys to bone, throwing parties, and getting high. The privilege of their carefree fun is laid bare later in the comic when the darker, dangerous realities of Sindicalismo 89’s city setting come to light.

Then we have the return of Matt Seneca, whose encounter with the graphic-novel-length expanded version of Richard McGuire's Here has forced him out of retirement. Here's Matt:

I never really rated the original “Here”, having seen it alongside the more advanced work that Ware, along with Frank Quitely and Olivier Schrauwen (among others) produced after being shown the way by McGuire’s example. For me, anyway, “Here” the anthology short belongs with things like “A Trip to the Moon” and Naked Lunch - formally audacious, narratively light works of serious historical import that were inevitably superseded as the new ideas they brought to the table were absorbed into the mainstream. So when I learned a few years ago that Here the book was in the offing, I was pretty skeptical. It sounded like a cash-in, or maybe a failure of imagination - 300 pages of that old thing? Especially given that McGuire had made far more interesting work since 1989, it seemed a waste, so I wrote it off.

It took one look at a single spread from the new book to convince me I might have made a mistake - in the past twenty-five years, McGuire’s presentation of his concept has managed to expand as much as the comics form itself has.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Reviews & Commentary. Qiana Whitted looks at the ways in which political cartoonists have reacted to the killing of Michael Brown and subsequent public outrage in Ferguson, Missouri.

Douglas Wolk reviews recent books (Stephen Collins, Michael Cho, Eleanor Davis, etc.) for the New York Times.

—Interviews. Alex Dueben talks to Lewis Trondheim about the end of Donjon.

The National Writers Union talks to New Yorker cartoonist Carolita Johnson.

—News. The prominent retailer organization ComicsPRO has announced it is investigating possible embezzlement of funds by one of its members. ICv2 is reporting that the director Gary Dills has been removed from his position with the group.

Brumsic Brandon, Jr., creator of the comic strip Luther, has passed away. The Times has an obituary.

Tom Spurgeon muses publicly about his new role as a convention organizer, and hints at potential changes at his Comics Reporter site.

Gilbert Hernandez has a new regular strip at Vice.

Ahoy there. Today we have Shaenon Garrity on Zen Pencils and other self-improvement webcomics.

There’s no question that webcomics can change your life for the better. For example, you can read my webcomic and have your life filled with brilliance and joy. Or you could turn to the small but increasing number of webcomics dedicated to self-improvement. Because who knows how to live better than a webcartoonist?

Given that the current trend in online comics—or, hell, online anything—is toward bite-size viral material designed for sharing on social media, I’m surprised there aren’t more webcomics built around daily (or weekly) affirmations and inspiring messages. Nobody has page-a-day desktop calenders anymore, and something has to fill the void. But the inspirational webcomic market seems currently sewn up by Gavin Aung Than’s enormously popular Zen Pencils, which illustrates inspirational quotations in comics form. It’s a clever idea that gives Than a surprising amount of creative flexibility; as long as people keep writing and saying stuff, he could conceivably draw Zen Pencils forever.

And Simon Hanselmann closes out our week together in a deep haze...

Elsewhere:

This is a wonderful short piece on Jerry Moriarty by Kevin Huizenga.

I had no idea that the great and gnarly underground comic book Inner City Romance was being reprinted by parent company Fantagraphics. That's good news.

Finally, drop what you're doing and plan to be at Tomato House in Brooklyn for a rare screening of films by the great Leif Goldberg! Not to be missed, friends.

Frank Santoro is here with a column about his recent convention appearance at Cleveland's Genghis Con, in which he tabled next to John Porcellino, sells a bunch of old comics, and thinks about the rise of ultra-small-press-run art-object comics:

I asked Bill Boichel (owner of Copacetic Comics and all around comics guru) about it and he said: "As the market for high-quality small-press and self-published comics grows and matures, it is worth noting that there is a good chance that it will come to resemble in some respects the slowly eroding market of corporate-published comics that it is replacing— for example, with the small-press comics shows like Genghis Con and many others, which are starting to have the look and feel of the original old-school comic shows of forty or so years back. Creators should be paying attention to what is going on around them and balance their own needs and the needs of the medium that they are simultaneously nurturing and being nurtured by. [...]"

We also have Day 4 of Simon Hanselmann's week as our Cartoonist Diarist. This entry records Thanksgiving at Gary Groth's house.

In addition, Brian Nicholson reviews Lala Albert's Janus. Here's a snippet of that:

Lala turns her eye often to liquid. Almost always there is water, be it in waves, rivers, or tide pools, but the symbolic meaning of the liquid changes with each new strip, reshaping to fit the unstandardized dimensions of each new container. She seems consistently interested in porous boundaries, such as the way the division between figure and landscape becomes blurred when both are drawn by the same hand. 2012's In the Up Part of the Wave does away with panel borders in favor of large format drawing; the river that runs through it both defines the sense of flowing time by which one reads it, and occasionally divides the page, as the book's central figure climbs in and floats meditatively as water washes over her. Inside water, the sight of a figure distorts, and the body submerged emerges dripping. The gelatinous quaver of Lala's spindly line gives her figures a spinelessness, making them resemble human-shaped bags, that if punctured, would relax and let loose puddles either of blood or some sort of ectoplasmic tulpa of true self. In this light the very function of a word balloon is reconfigured, not sitting outside the image as an analog of sound, but instead acting as a viewable representation of a form made of thought emerging. Lala's handwriting carries the same sloppy line that makes her figure drawings seem so vulnerable.

And ICYMI, yesterday we ran a review by Luke Geddes of Joe Casey & Piotr Kowalski's Sex.

Sex is an ongoing Image series written by Joe Casey and illustrated by Piotr Kowalski that examines the aftermath of the midlife crisis and subsequent retirement of a Batman-esque vigilante called The Armored Knight and the resulting effects on a supporting cast of thinly-veiled analogues whose resemblance to their Time Warner-owned source characters is as obvious as can be without inciting litigation. As the title suggests, there is a special focus on their sex lives. All the gang is here: repressed millionaire Cooke, still reeling from death of Alfred stand-in Quinn; his young ex-sidekick Keenan Wade; his on-again-off-again rival, the catty woman Annabelle Lagravenese; jokester the Prank Addict; and a deformed Penguin-esque kingpin known as The Old Man. By focusing in on the already-there lurid undertones of these blatant stand-ins, Casey and Kowalski position Sex as a commentary on the state of the mainstream comics industry, its readers, and its most prevalent genre. Exactly what they have to say however, if they have anything to say at all, is impossible to tell. Sex’s content is as gratuitously and dumbly provocative as its title—but damned if I don’t mean this in the pejorative sense. It’s the weirdest manifestation of a writer’s midcareer crisis that the comics medium has seen for some time, an M-for-Mature masks-and-capes porno with a predilection for existential monologues, grandiose posturing, and strikingly candid self-reflection.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—News. The New York Times has an interesting profile of Lynn Caponera, Maurice Sendak's former caretaker and current executor of his estate, which chronicles some of the disputes between Sendak's estate and the Rosenbach Museum.

I like that the Times is now apparently doing comics-related panel reports, too. This one on a conversation between Art Spiegelman, Jules Feiffer, and artist Alexander Melamid is fun, if super short.

Erik Wemple wrote for the Washington Post about the similarities between Bob Staake's recent Ferguson-themed New Yorker cover and an earlier cartoon by R. J. Matson.

—Interviews. The latest episode of Virtual Memories features Wayne White and Mimi Pond.

Douglas Wolk interviews Mike Mignola for Playboy.

At Paste, Hillary Brown spoke to Olivier Schrauwen.

The Paris Review ran an interview with Julia Wertz.

—Reviews & Commentary. Jeet Heer took to his natural habitat, Twitter, to talk about the ways in which Maus can be interpreted as a hard-boiled detective novel.

Today we have an interview with Gary Groth about Zap conducted by yours truly.

Dan Nadel: Tell me a bit how you see the importance of Zap as a publishing model (as the launch of the underground comic book business, (such as it was), and then as an ongoing publishing entity through various houses.

Gary Groth: It wasn’t just Zap as a model, but the entire underground comix publishing ethos, of whichZap was probably the most prominent example. For the first time in the history of comics, there was a community, a movement, a collective —however you want to characterize it— of artists who took it for granted that they would own their own work, function as autonomous creative artists, and wrote and drew comix as a form of personal expression. And there were publishers who sprung up who instinctively honored this principle (Last Gasp, Rip-Off, Print Mint).

I see Zap as part of the lineage of historically important and aesthetically ground breaking comics anthologies, the first in this lineage, of course, being Mad, which influenced all the Zap artists; next,Humbug, then witzend, then Zap. (Mid-way through Zap’s run, there was Weirdo and Raw, of course.) Each one of these comics anthologies were created by the artists themselves in opposition to the prevailing economic and creative standards of the comics industry; each one of them was created in order to give artists greater freedom to create the work they wanted to create, without the editorial restrictions placed on them by commercial dictates;  and the publishing rights and original art featured in each of them (with the exception of Mad, which was at least published by the most enlightened publisher in the history of comics to that time), was owned by the artists —collectively, they represent the long fight for cartoonists to take control of their own destinies. They are the Humbug co-op (composed of Harvey Kurtzman, Arnold Roth, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, and Will Elder) wanted the freedom to edit, write, and draw a humor magazine suitable for grown-ups; Wally Wood hated mainstream publishers, may have hated editors even more, and created witzend as a place where mainstream cartoonists (and a few young underground artists like Art Spiegelman) could do whatever they wanted, free of the suffocating editorial demands imposed on them by mainstream comics editors; and Zap, of course, created by Crumb, became a collective where the artists could do whatever they wanted. As a model of artists taking their “careers” into their own hands, it can’t be beat.

And Simon Hanselmann is here with Day 3 of his diary, in which he returns to the office. I want to go to the office!

Also, Luke Geddes reviews Sex books 1 and 2.

Elsewhere:

Brumsic Brandon Jr., the creator of the comic strip "Luther", one of the first and few comics strips to focus on an African American cast, has passed away.

Lots of interviews: Here's Bill Kartalopolous on Inkstuds.

And Alex Dueben interviews Bobby London about his new Popeye book, as well as Hillary Chute and Patrick Jagoda about their issue of Critical Inquiry.

I'm excited about this Sadistik book, which I only just heard about. That's an under-published area of comics, even in this reprint-glut age.

And in self-promotion news: Hey, read some more about my new book, Dorothy and Otis: Designing the American Dream! There is a comics connection, even: Otis Shepard apprenticed with Bud Fisher in San Francisco. So there you have it.

Today we have a double dose of Joe McCulloch for you. First, his usual and regular weekly column on the best-sounding comics newly available for purchase in stores (spotlights picks include a gay erotic comics anthology and a volume of Dupuy & Berberian). Second, he has an extensive review of Zak Sally's sui generis Recidivist IV. Here's a sample of that:

... Recidivist is a lot more aggressive, and a little more complex. Four stories are included, along with several standalone recurring narrative images, and also a CD.

There are just over 21 minutes' worth of sound on the disc, which my VLC player helpfully identifies as the 2005 CD-R release Buried by Fog from the Detroit noise outfit Wolf Eyes. The sound, however, is not that of Buried by Fog, which might be described as finding yourself strapped to a misfiring centrifuge on a busy airport runway, the force of gravity causing the heavens to occasionally explode into cosmic roars while the ground crew marshals buzz-saws to free you, with little success. What Sally has “recorded” (as his credit reads) is instead high and whining, as if a thin plank of metal is being honed, eternally, on a crystal wheel. It is both divine and painful at first - ripped through with drill screams of feedback, as if you'd wandered into a cold, tall spacecraft only to discover that the aliens had already set up their dissection table, and then the walls fall down and the lights turn red and the whine becomes dull – but maybe you've simply gotten used to it by then, as a character in this story.

I'm making reference to story, because the disc Sally has recorded is semi-diegetic, which is to say that maybe it can be heard inside Recidivist, and maybe not, but the appearance of the CD itself recurs within the comic as an icon of gnawing, ambient worry.

We also have the second day of newlywed Simon Hanselmann's week contributing our Cartoonist's Diary. That's some breakfast drink.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, lots to catch up on:

—Reviews & Commentary. Illogical Volume is posting preview excerpts of his book on Grant Morrison and Chris Weston's The Filth.

Rob McMonigal reviews the Screw Job wrestling anthology.

Via Martin Wisse, I found this memoir post by Sigrid Ellis about her slow recognition of the lesbian subtext Chris Claremont included in many of his X-Men comics.

Adam Roberts reviews Emily Carroll's Through the Woods.

—News. The Women's Caucus of Art is giving Sue Coe (and Kiki Smith and Martha Wilson) a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Laura Miller at Salon picks her top ten graphic novels of 2014 (and does a much more respectable job than the New York Times).

—Misc. Hogan's Alley presents some forty years of Christmas cards from Harold Gray.

Dangerous Minds has a collection of strips Art Spiegelman drew for Playboy.

—Crowdfunding. New York's comics convention scene is pretty crowded, but a LGBTQ-themed show fills a legitimate need.

Digital Manga has revamped its unsuccessful Tezuka Kickstarter at a more reasonable level.

—Interviews & Profiles. Alex Dueben talks to Jim Woodring.

Mark Frauenfelder talks to Ed Piskor:

Today Jeet Heer pay us a visit to look at some issues surrounding Jill Lepore's much-discussed book about Wonder Woman. Here's a bit:

The major problem with the book is it’s unwillingness to engage the rich existing literature on Wonder Woman (in particular) and comic book history (in general). Lepore has written a narrative history, which means her extensive footnotes are largely devoted to giving the sources for her facts. She doesn’t feel the need to argue with earlier scholarly excavations and interpretations. This has the distorting effect of making it seem like she’s the first person to tell this story. Many innocent readers will think that everything in the book is Lepore’s discovery. Yet the broad outlines of Marston’s life – his work inventing the prototype of the lie detector, his polyamorous relationship with Elizabeth Holloway and Olive Byrne, his ties through his lovers to the feminist and birth control movement – have been known for at least two decades or more. In a very real sense, Lepore is working on the foundations built by scholars like Geoffrey Crinson Bunn, Lillian Robinson, and Francine Valcour. (Bunn and Valcour wrote important doctoral theses which are as yet unpublished. The late Lillian Robinson was the author of the 2004 book Wonder Women: Feminisms and Superheroes) All of these scholars go unmentioned, which is a troubling omission. Particularly objectionable is the erasure of Bunn (whose scholarship was pioneering) and Robinson (whose theoretical approach would have enriched Lepore’s book). Other, more recent books that take up Wonder Woman – notably Ben Saunders Do the Gods Wear Capes? (2011) – are also ignored. Ignoring these scholars is especially troublesome because of the power dynamics at work. Lepore has a lot of institutional strength: she teaches at Harvard, her book is published by Knopf, and was excerpted by The New Yorker. By contrast, Lillian Robinson was for much of her career a nomadic scholar, moving from one adjunct job to the next. Despite her precarious status in academia, Robinson wrote many important books. It seems churlish of Lepore to write Robinson out of history.

Jeet's is the third and, I think, final piece we'll run on the book. Here's Ron Rege, Jr.'s interview with Lepore and Sarah Boxer's review.

And we are pleased to have Simon Hanselmann is joining us for the week with a Cartoonist's Diary. Here's day 1.

Elsewhere:

Zoe Taylor interviews Seiichi Hayashi.

Tom Spurgeon interviews Zak Sally.

I always enjoy "behind the cover" features about the New Yorker, and this one's no different.

TCJ-contributor Sean Rogers recommends three recent graphic novels. Roberta Smith recommends my very own What Nerve! in the NY Times. The same "gift suggestions" section of the Times includes the usual deplorable suggestions from Captain Fanboy George Gene Gustines (I refuse to link to it), who manages to make one of the best eras in comics mostly about complete junk. It's as if the Times film coverage was devoted exclusively to Michael Bay pictures. Weird, depressing and embarrassing. Grow up, George! And Dana Jennings is ecstatic over the new giant Marvel book from Taschen. I have spent some time with the book, and it does feature a ton of great art -- no real discoveries or anything you haven't seen, but it's nicely reproduced, and certainly treats the art better than Marvel itself ever has. But ultimately it's a very expensive corporate brand book. It faithfully sticks to the script regarding the company's "fun" and "greatness", which I'm sure was the mandate. Of course the company's deplorable treatment of its artists is nowhere to be found, and no real history is done here. That's not what this book is about. The artists are mentioned and given short profiles, but they are always secondary to the product. Why would Marvel do anything else? So, you get what you pay for here -- it makes perfect publishing sense (i.e. a gift book about a "beloved" company) but little moral or aesthetic sense. There are plenty of other books out there that cover the artists, but it is sad that writers and researchers like Roy Thomas and Michael Vassallo, among others, would participate in this kind of whitewash, or the idea that Marvel is "beloved" or a "myth maker" or in the business of anything other than making money.

Before we head out for the Thanksgiving holiday, we have a few last things for you. First, R. Fiore is here with the latest installment of his Funnybook Roulette column. This time, he tackles Joe Sacco's return to underground comix-style satire, Bumf, and comes to terms with his political nemesis, Ted Rall. Here he is on the Sacco:

If Bumf doesn't garner the sort of broad attention and acclaim that Sacco's previous works have it won't be because of any lack of passion, imagination, or artistry, but because it's expressing something that's genuinely painful.

And Sarah Boxer has our review of Jill Lepore's Secret History of Wonder Woman:

Lepore makes the case that Wonder Woman, which began in the early 1940s, is feminism's “missing link,” a vital connector in a “chain of events that begins with the woman suffrage campaigns of the 1910s and ends with the troubled place of feminism fully a century later” (yes, there's still no Equal Rights Amendment!). But what really sticks in the mind is how tightly bound this feminist superhero and her creator were with the art of bondage and submission. Marston, a walking talking contradiction, battled for women's liberation while conducting scientific studies to prove that women enjoyed bondage and beating other women with sticks. He declared that any woman could have it all, but it was he who had two or three women at the same time – one to support him and his family (Sadie Holloway), one to raise his children and write gushing reviews of his psychological work (Olive Byrne), and one to take care of the incense burning and the “love binding” in the attic (Marjorie Huntley).

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Reviews & Commentary. Johanna Draper Carlson writes about that massive (and massively unsuccessful) Tezuka Kickstarter from a few weeks back.

Marc Singer has broken his internet silence to review Grant Morrison and Fran Quitely's Pax Americana.

Ben Towle reviews recent books about comics.

—News. Stan Sakai's wife Sharon has passed away, as Sakai revealed on his Facebook page. Like her husband, she was a beloved figure, and in recent years, many in the comics community had rallied to her support through various efforts.

Tom Hart and Leela Corman's SAW is having its annual fundraiser.

A Hugo Pratt watercolor has been auctioned off for a record price.

Interviews. Gil Roth talks to Mary Fleener.

Whit Taylor talks to Dog City Press.

Today Joe McCulloch fills your belly with the next best thing to turkey: comic books!

The big news is that Tom Spurgeon is moving to what has become the comics capital of North America, Columbus, Ohio, to become Festival Director of a brand new comics fest called Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, which is linked both to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and the Columbus Cultural Arts Center. This is great news all the way around: Incredibly smart people (Spurgeon, Lucy Caswell, Jeff Smith, Vijaya Iyer) linked to a major institution taking this kind of initiative is very heartening. I can't wait to see what they do.

Comics writer, historian and former TCJ editor Frank Young has announced the release of a three-volume John Stanley bibliography, thus shedding definitive light on the career of the one of the best and most hidden (in plain sight) cartoonists of the 20th century.

Here's a fine review of an exhibition every cartoonist in New York should see: Gladys Nilsson. And here is our own Nicole Rudick interviewing the artist herself.

Paul Gravett interviews the excellent Spanish cartoonist Max, who has a beautiful new book out called Vapor.

And here's a photo set of Pakito Bolino's Heta Uma exhibition in France. I have a more narrow vision of Heta Uma than Pakito, but I'm glad to see King Terry, Ebisu and Nemoto in there.

To commemorate the release of the new Comics Journal Library volume collecting Zap interviews, and the release of The Complete Zap, we are posting a lengthy, previously unpublished interview with late Spain Rodriguez, conducted by Patrick Rosenkranz in 1998. (It doesn't appear in the Zap Interviews book.) Spain had some stories:

ROSENKRANZ: When did you realize there was such a thing as an underground press?

SPAIN: It was The Militant, which was a Trotskyite newspaper, which had been around. You could also pick up The Weekly People, which was on a lot of the corner sidewalk newsstands, which is the newspaper of the Socialist Labor Party, a real old party, a pre-Marxist Party that comes out of the 1800s. The layout of the newspaper was always great, because you could always get into an argument with somebody. The newspaper was about this big and with those big block letters and the arm and hammer, which is some association with Armand Hammer’s father, who was a socialist. There was a connection between that Arm & Hammer logo and the Socialist Labor Party, which is from the turn of the century. They had this great logo. You’d just sit over there with the newspaper and somebody would give you an argument about it.

ROSENKRANZ: Did you consider that an underground paper?

SPAIN: It was an alternative paper. It wasn’t really underground. The first underground newspaper in Buffalo, we did. We put out something called Pith. The guy who really got it together worked at some silkscreen place. It was a silkscreen newspaper that we put out that had all this wacky stuff in it. I don’t know where he got the title. It was a pithy title. He was a strange guy. A story that says everything about him is: One time he was going to New York. He was a strange-looking guy, even by today’s standards. He looked a little like Orson Welles. He had a beard and had loud rose-colored glasses and would wear this hat. It was a New Year’s hat and it was spray-painted black, with an Italian flag sticking up. He wasn’t Italian. He was a big guy. He had this sweater that hadn’t been washed in a long time and it had these little beads on it: these pants that came up to here and sandals.

Some guy like that, especially in 1965, would attract a lot of cop attention. It was about four o’clock in the morning we’re going through or around Schenectady, where the cops were known for being nasty. The cop pulls us over and sees him and … Hey, man! The head guys from every police department around there. Here would come the state cops and different cops. He had this way of talking. He would say this strange stuff but in a conversational tone. They started talking to him and he was saying all this weird stuff and after a while they just start walking away. He was the editor of Pith. His name was Gary Stevens. Unfortunately, he committed suicide. They entrapped him in some drug bust and he was facing time. The sad thing, in Buffalo — I wasn’t there at the time — I think if they had gotten enough community support behind him, they might have helped him to stave off that kind of depression about the jail time. Or brought him out here. He killed himself. He was a real strange guy.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Reviews & Commentary. Paul Morton at the literary site The Millions has an interesting, ambivalent take on the Scott McCloud volume of Best American Comics, saying that comics have divorced themselves from irony.

Inés Estrada presents her idiosyncratic take on the year in comics.

Richard Metzger enthuses over The Complete Zap.

Robert Boyd reviews a bunch of minicomics he picked up at this year's CAB.

Tim Callahan is excited about Frank Quitely and Grant Morrison's Pax Americana.

—Interviews. Frank Quitely himself gives his views on that comic in an interview with Newsarama. (Colorist Nathan Fairbairn discussed the comic, too, at his own blog.)

Chris Arrant talks to Derf Backderf.

—Misc. Frank Young shares a bunch of one-page pantomime Little Lulu strips from John Stanley.

The PEN American Center is auctioning off classic or important books that have been annotated by the authors. One volume that may be of interest to our readers is a copy of David Mazzucchelli and Paul Karasik's City of Glass.

Happy Friday. Today we have Jeff Trexler weighing in on the Kirby settlement.

On Veterans Day Marvel celebrated Jack Kirby’s military service with photos and recollections from Kirby’s son Neal. Does this collaboration prove that the Kirby heirs triumphed in their fight for justice, or did their settlement betray creator’s rights?

A little over a month ago, the Supreme Court was on the verge of giving new life - or dealing the final blow - to the attempt by Jack Kirby’s son Neal and daughters Barbara, Lisa and Susan to claim the copyright such iconic characters as Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, X-Men and the Avengers. What the Court would have decided we may never know for sure, since the company and the family settled just days before the scheduled date for the Court to decide whether to take the case.

Elsewhere:

Here's one-time  underground cartoonist and founding Screw art director Steve Heller on Zap.

TCJ-diary contributor Kayla E. has launched a Kickstarter for the anthology she co-edits, Nat Brut, and she's such a good thinker and the new issue certainly sounds promising enough for me to briefly set aside my aversion to Kickstarter.

Hey, I was on NPR on Wednesday talking (with Norman Hathaway) about my new book, Dorothy and Otis: Designing the American Dream.

Book industry: Ursula K. Le Guin is awesome (I mean, I knew that already, but this is extra).

Frank Santoro has a new column for us following up on his experience at CAB, but this time he focuses on how the market for the back issues he sells has changed.

The most interesting thing to me is how sets of the original issues (of a series) are nearly impossible to sell. For years I had a set of the original Black Hole issues for sale. It never sold. Charles Burns himself would stop by the table, at different shows in different cities to see if it sold. I just couldn’t move it. At cover price alone (for all the issues together) it was more than double the cost of the collection. I finally took it out of circulation because Mr. Burns’s stare was too much. (I had a set of the original appearances of The Rocketeer in Starslayer but Chris Oliveros broke up the set 'cause he was only interested in one of the issues that had a Steve Ditko Missing Man back up and asked me to cut him a deal.)

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—News. Consortium has begun distributing for Secret Acres and Alternative Comics.

Jillian Tamaki has won the Governor General Literary Prize.

—Interviews. Virtual Memories talks to Jules Feiffer.

—Commentary. Jared Gardner looks at recent developments in funny animal comics.

—Misc. Zainab Akhtar has a report from this year's Thought Bubble.

Master letterer Todd Klein is six entries in to a history of digital lettering.

David Brothers has ended his popular decade-old group blog, 4thletter!

—Video. There's a short documentary online for the new Art of Richard Thompson book:

The Art of Richard Thompson from GVI on Vimeo.

Today we have Gary Groth's 1991 interview with Robert Crumb, part of our ongoing spotlight on Zap.

GROTH: Don’t you think that representations of sex in the media can affect people, just like 40 years of being indoctrinated by Playboy can affect people?

CRUMB: I think anything that is propaganda or panders to people is definitely not good for them. They’re just pandering to people’s weaknesses, and trying to undercut the next guy in the competitive marketplace. But that’s anything; you can say the same thing about breakfast cereals with a lot of sugar in them.

GROTH: Yes, but misogynistic work could be pandering to the misogynistic impulses of misogynists.

CRUMB: But pandering cannot be truthful. There’s a dif­ference. You’re trying to appeal to a market in order to sell something.

GROTH: So in assessing a work you’re really relying heavily upon the motives of the artist.

CRUMB: Absolutely.

GROTH: But most of the time you really don’t know what those motives are.

CRUMB: But honesty rings true. Of course it takes somewhat of an educated taste, or a certain cultivation, to see what’s true and what isn’t — which means you have to look at a lot of work and make comparisons over a period of time. As a kid you don’t perceive those things quite so much. Kids can’t be expected to see what’s truth and what’s pandering. Kids are much more susceptible to victimization by marketing schemes and aggressive sales.

And Greg Hunter on Fukitor:

Fukitor is a collection of rebellious gestures performed on repeat. The book, a bellwether title for Fantagraphics’ F.U. Press imprint, brings together entries from cartoonist Jason Karns’s series of the same name. The individual stories are genre pastiches of about five-to-ten pages in length. They typically feature murderous ghouls or hyperviolent men of action or both. They are designed to accommodate as many instances of bloodshed and rape as possible. Much of the advance buzz surrounding Fukitor took the form of a debate concerning Karns’s depictions of sexual violence and his use of ethnic caricature. Some aspects of this conversation are larger than Fukitor, and if the book represents failures of empathy within the comics community, people besides Karns share responsibility for those lapses. But Karns alone is responsible for his book’s failures of imagination.

And elsewhere:

A piece on a new Richard Thompson documentary, and the trailer here:

And here's a Jillian Tamaki interview:

Good news: Sean Howe has a new book on the go, and it's comics-adjacent. Check out the news here.

Here's a Nate Powell interview in comics form.

And here's an interview with manga artist Hiroaki Samura.

Joe McCulloch has your weekly guide to the best-sounding new comics out in stores this week (spotlight picks from Lynda Barry and Régis Loisel), but starts things off by looking at a fairly obscure collection from Blutch:

This too is part of the character of the work - I'd argue more prominently so than Blutch's carefully parceled marshaling of sonic lines. No, the Jazzman strips are often jokes, and this is an old-but-good one: the too-cool yé-yé singer is unmoved by booze, smoke and sex, but throw on some Duke Ellington and he is open-mouthed and post-coitally limp. It's like a Carl Barks gag page, though Blutch takes different strips in different tonal directions. A horn player is seen beating a woman bloody, then rolling out to the club to reduce the audience to tears. A black superstar basks in the public adulation of Paris, only to spy provincial women grimacing at him behind his back. A promoter lazes through a parade of sub-par players, only to perk up at the sound of truly great playing, then scowl and storm away upon discovering the musician is a woman. Lee Morgan is shot dead by his lover, prompting a bassist to kiss his long-suffering wife. A harried woman in a nightgown, cleaning up after her unconscious husband, stares at a shirtless man practicing in a window across the way, and she lays down satisfied.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Interviews & Profiles. Michael Cavna talks to Flemming Rose, the Danish newspaper editor who commissioned the most controversial cartoons about Islam of all time. Rose has a new book coming out.

Andrice Arp has ten questions for Simon Hanselmann.

—News. The third annual British Comics Awards were announced, with Isabel Greenberg taking Best Book, and Posy Simmonds making it into the Hall of Fame.

—Misc. Richard McGuire did the cover for the latest New Yorker in the style of Here.

Add W. C. Fields to the list of wannabe cartoonists.

Also, The New Yorker has its special "Cartoons of the Year" issue out now. Looks like it might be worth picking up for the two-page Paul Karasik article on a Charles Addams gag alone.

Today Julia Gfrorer, who just released an excellent and terrifying new comic with fellow TCJ-contributor Sean T. Collins, brings us a column about Aidan Koch's recent work, first serialized over at Comics Workbook. Aidan has also just released a new book I'm quite fond of entitled Impressions.

Some languages depend more heavily than others on sequence to convey meaning. Word order in Latin is fungible because each word in a sentence is inflected to denote its role: “Agricolam amat puella” and “puella amat agricolam” are the same, since the accusative “-am” ending indicates the recipient of the verb’s action. In English, word order is more important: “the girl loves the farmer” and “the farmer loves the girl” describe different matters entirely. The syntax of comics is expressed through order, proximity, and repetition: we learn what an image is doing on the page almost entirely by examining its position among its neighbors. Not all cartoonists draw attention to this–in fact many labor to make the psychological interval between each panel as unobtrusive as possible. In Aidan Koch’s “Configurations”the interval is central, impossible for the reader to ignore, and in a sense that’s what this comic is actually about: the struggle to glean narrative significance amid disparate objects and incidents, the search for a meaningful story arc within seemingly random events.

Ok, what else?

If you're in NYC tonight, come see me and Norman Hathaway at 7 pm at The Strand. We will chat about our new book Dorothy and Otis: Designing the American Dream, in which we document the life stories of two fantastic modernist designers responsible for everything from The Cubs uniforms to Wrigley's Gum packaging to Catalina Island. Dorothy Shepard was the first major female modernist designer in North America. Experience the love! Need more convincing? Here's the best piece I've read about what we were trying to do with the book, courtesy of our pals over at The Paris Review.

More Paris Review: TCJ-contributor Nicole Rudick on Megahex.

Nice interview and article on Zap over at the Chicago Tribune.

I like this series on digital lettering by lettering maestro Todd Klein.

And here's a fine interview by Tom Spurgeon with the perennially underrated cartoonist Eric Haven, who has a new book out from Adhouse.

Jill Lepore has gotten a lot of attention and given many interviews for her new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, but I don't think anyone has asked her the kind of questions that occurred to cartoonist, Wonder Woman enthusiast, and occultist Ron Regé, Jr. Here's a sample of their discussion:

Can you tell us anything about Marjorie Wilkes Huntley that might not have made it into your book? Her presence in this story is a bit mysterious, and seems almost secretly pivotal. She enters Marston's life at such an early stage, and remains involved with the family until the very end. She was an early suffragist, and visited Ethyl Byrne. Did she first introduce this idea of plural relationships? I was halfway through preparing this interview when I noticed your footnote that explained that Elizabeth Marston told her children that "everything was explained in a box of documents that were in a closet in Huntley's home" and that Huntley had later burned the box saying that "the world isn't ready for this, I have to destroy it." For all the "incense burning" feminist fans of Wonder Woman, what more can you tell us about her? I'd like to note that as a cartoonist, as well as a magical thinker, the fact that Huntley actually helped ink and letter the comics is pretty significant!

I am frustrated that I was able to discover so little about Huntley. She died alone, in a nursing home, and she had no children. So far as I can tell, she left no papers, and, as you point out, I did come across evidence that she may have destroyed them. I was thrilled to find some correspondence from her in Gloria Steinem’s papers at Smith. And there were other treasures, here and there. I was especially intrigued by a photograph that I found—it’s reproduced in the book--of all three women, sitting on a garden bench: Olive Byrne and Elizabeth Holloway Marston each hold an infant; Huntley holds a baby doll. For the record, I am unconvinced that Huntley actually burned her papers, and I would not be at all surprised if, one day, they turned up.

We also have Rob Kirby's review of Spankies, a collection of internet-addicted art school grad humor comics from Nick Sumida. Here's how Rob begins:

In the prologue to his debut book, Nick Sumida receives an online game called Snackies. He describes it to his roommate: "You play this narcissistic millennial with an art school degree and an addiction to outside validation." Various parts of the gameplay involve putting cookies over your eyes to avoid seeing a deluge of student loan bills, and experiencing a nervous breakdown in a café while thinking about death. Sumida apologizes that it's not multiplayer while his roommate remains unimpressed: "What a weirdly specific and boring game." Welcome to the Snackies universe.

In Sumida’s world it is imperative to hide your slightest flaws and insecurities from the world, lest you be made vulnerable. Your suspicion that the future might be a bleak, existential black hole may well be true, and pretending you have even a chance at a fulfilling relationship is a big fat cosmic joke – at your expense. But Snackies is no nihilist vision; the book is the work of a delightfully demented, wonderfully imaginative humorist and satirist.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Interviews & Profiles. I think we missed this interview with Seth from the London Yodeller last week. He's having some year.

Alex Dueben talked to Aisha Franz for Comic Book Resources.

—News. A sedition investigation has been opened against the Malaysian political cartoonist Zunar. Three people were arrested for selling his books last week.

—Reviews & Commentary. Hillary Brown reviews Walter Scott's Wendy strips. That's some funny stuff.

Rob Clough is about halfway through a month-long look at the Center for Cartoon Studies.

Zainab Akhtar looks at Darryl Seitchik's Missy.

Dominic Umile has what I believe is the first review I've seen of Richard McGuire's expanded Here, which I'm guessing may cause a bit of a stir upon release.

—Misc. I know it's harmless, but something about the fact that they've begun selling adult Underoos makes me sad.

Hey, it's Thursday! Today we have Frank Santoro, with whom I spent a quiet Sunday evening discussing the finer points of "liking" vs. "really liking" things. It was a warm autumn evening and we were hippies. Anyhow, here he is on CAB, the comic book convention held last weekend here in Brooklyn.

I had fun. Good sales. Same as last year. Which was great. It felt less crowded however maybe that was good? It was so packed the last couple years that often you couldn’t see anything so I dunno when I came up with the same numbers as last year I was fine with it being less crowded. You could actually walk around. Anywhere else it would be a blockbuster but in Brooklyn it felt like we were all talking about how “slow” it was. So that’s something to chew on.

Lala Albert’s Janus has to be the book of the show. At least for me. Lala can fucking draw. And this new story is a killer “identity” riff that feels so timely and NOW. Exciting stuff. Check it out!

Elsewhere:

Here's The Japan Times on a film called Tatsumi, which animates the titular author's works.

Hey it's Jim Drain, sometime-cartoonist, all-the-time artist, on his week in culture.

As a kid I was fascinated and thought this scene was pretty much the coolest thing in the world.

Oh the glory of Drag Cartoons!

First, Ken Parille is here with a new Grid column, and he's tackling a subject that I'm sure everyone is happy to keep reading about, James Sturm's "The Sponsor". But Parille being Parille, he brings something new to the table, examining the strip from 14 different perspectives, at least one of which will probably appeal to you:

Online tweets/posts/etc. about comics (or any subject, really) often seem like futile skirmishes in an unwinnable war. Each critic takes a narrow position and holds that territory, refusing to grant any validity to divergent arguments. Isn’t it possible, especially when talking about art, that different and even contradictory interpretations can be equally valid, that a short comic strip, for example, can communicate its meanings (if that’s ever the right word to use when talking about art) in opposing ways? In other words, isn't it possible that a comic can simultaneously express X and Not X, with both interpretive camps being right? I think so.

Recently, James Sturm’s online strip “The Sponsor” (read it here) has generated a lot of commentary that takes the form of “It clearly can mean only X.” Making no effort to look for evidence that complicates or undermines their claims, these writers lack "interpretive sympathy": they fail to identify with readers whose experiences lead them to very different conclusions. They also overlook a fact about reading comics: one element — a line of dialogue, a facial expression, a subtitle — can simultaneously suggest different interpretations.

Below are fourteen responses to “The Sponsor”. While writing each, I tried to imagine what it was about the comic that would lead a critic to view this reading as the “correct” one. When I first read the strip, it seemed fairly transparent in its “message” (which is never the right word to use when talking about art). But now I’m unsure that my initial response was anything like “true” or “accurate.” (Doubt can be a positive interpretive approach.) As of today, I don’t agree with all — or even most of the claims — I make below. But trying to understand each as I was writing it — to act for a moment as if it were true — was instructive. To me at least.

And then we have Sean T. Collins's review of Aisha Franz's Earthling. Here's how he opens:

Aisha Franz's faces are an architectural marvel. Their features bunch up in the center of great round white circle heads crowned with hair that looks sculpted from clay. They're bookended by apple cheeks drawn with a perpetual blush rendered as circular gray scribbles, as though a physical ordeal or an uncomfortable emotion were always only scant seconds in their past. Eyebrows, wrinkles, creases, and smile lines push the eye toward the beady eyes and pug noses they ring. (The look is very Cabbage Patch Kids, but there's a reason those weird-looking things made millions.) They broadcast emotion from the center of the head like a spotlight focused down into a laser -- curiosity and confusion, peevishness and puckishness, boredom and loneliness and anger and, very occasionally, satisfaction and delight. In a book where Franz's all-pencil style -- the lack of inks and the deliberately boxy and rudimentary props and backgrounds suggesting a casual, tossed-off approach completely belied by Franz's obvious control of this aesthetic -- works very well, those faces work best of all.

The story is another matter.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

—Interviews & Profiles. The National Book Foundation hosts an interview of NBA nominee Roz Chast.

Smoky Man talks to the contributors to the Italian anthology U.D.W.F.G., including Mat Brinkman.

Drew Friedman answers five questions for Book Soup.

Hannah Berry, Kevin Huizenga, and James Lloyd talk about their participation in the WWI-themed anthology, Above the Dreamless Dead.

Newsday checks in with Jules Feiffer.

Tim O'Shea talks to Eric Haven.

As part of a longer interview about his writing in general, novelist Will Self talks about his start as a cartoonist.

—Reviews & Commentary. The A.V. Club reviews new titles by Jeff Smith, Mickey Zachilli, and others.

Gary Panter appreciates Richard Lindner.

Adrian Hill has published the next two parts of his examination of the William S. Burroughs/Malcolm Mc Neill collaboration, Ah Pook is Here.

—News. The Rosenbach Museum is suing Maurice Sendak's estate for allegedly refusing to turn over rare books as dictated in Sendak's will. Among other books, the dispute involves several Beatrix Potter titles, which the estate apparently considers to be "children's books" rather than "rare books."

Heidi MacDonald has a photo report from last weekend's CAB.

Amazon has released its list of the best comics of 2014.

—Funnies. A few people sent me this collaboration between Zack Soto and Connor Willumsen.

Today on the site: Joe McCulloch's latest news about life in comics.

I raced through CAB on Saturday with just 2.5 hours of free childcare courtesy of my mom.  My faves were Lale Westvind's latest publications, Breakdown Press (New Ines Estrada, Lala Albert, Conor Stechschulte, Connor Willumsen), Noel Freibert and the unstoppable Leon Sadler, briefly ported over from England and having the great American adventure.

And there are some art/comics articles on the internet worth checking out:

James Ensor looks like CAB, or CAB looks like James Ensor.

Via Bill K., A Finnish animation.

Jeet Heer wrote a great Twitter essay on Steve Ditko, Ayn Rand and Spider-Man.

And here's a good evaluation of the problematics and politics around the acceptance of the work of comics-influenced artist Allen Jones.

Now watch this, all of you, and despair...