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Today, in an excerpt from his new book, The Conscience of a Cartoonist: Instructions, Observations, Criticisms, Enthusiasms, the great cartoonist Jeff Danziger shares his thoughts on the art of political cartooning. Here's how he begins:

Political cartoons are the final word in man’s search for metaphor. Writers, the poor dears, struggle for the right words to make the reader see a situation. A writer might labor with the joke that George Bush swung from trees, proving Darwin was right — we are descended from apes — or refer to the White House as a petting zoo. An economist might dramatize his predictions, saying we are indeed balanced on the knife-edge of a fiscal machete. Political analysts describe verbal pictures to make their concepts clear, to illustrate while they explain. All these metaphors, and their illegitimate spawn, similes, exist to make readers remember a vision drawn from something they have actually seen physically. We hear of corporations and the stock market getting a “haircut” when they give up a portion of their earnings. We hear of real estate being “under water” if more is owed than anyone would pay.

A political drawing dispenses with the search for words. It goes right for the main receptor of metaphor: the eye. A Wall Streeter is missing part of his hair, or suffers a major trepanation from the brow line up. A house is drawn with fish swimming by. If a family is sitting down to dinner inside, the effect is even stronger. The poor suckers obviously don’t know how bad things are.

Art Lorte has our obituary of the great Golden Age cartoonist Fred Kida.

And, of course, Tessa Brunton has the third day of her Cartoonist's Diary. She's finally reached Disneyland.

Elsewhere:

—News. The Eisner Award nominations have been announced. Congratulations to all the nominees, especially TCJ.com columnists Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Paul Tumey, past contributors Marc Sobel and Zainab Akhtar, and our editorial coordinator Kristy Valenti, who was nominated for both the print version of The Comics Journal and The Love & Rockets Companion (co-edited with Sobel). As per tradition, there are fine honorees and odd omissions throughout all the categories, but analysis can come later. (Congrats, too, to all those nominated with us in the "Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism" category.)

—Interviews. Michael Cavna talks to the winner of the latest Pulitzer for cartooning, Kevin Siers.

USA Today interviews Mimi Pond.

The Schulz Library blog talks to professor/cartoonist/CCS graduate Beth Hetland.

—Reviews & Commentary. I initially misread the headline of this Rachel Edidin piece on the Amazon/comiXology deal to mean Amazon has ruined a lot more than just comics.

Gene Luen Yang writes an essay wondering if the pursuit of art is a selfish one. (It dovetails a little with Mike Dawson's recent Cartoonist's Diary on this site.)

J. Caleb Mozzocco compares the film version of Darren Aronofsky's Noah with the earlier produced graphic novel based on an earlier draft of the script.

Adventure Time isn't exactly comics, but so many prominent or up-and-coming cartoonists work for the show that this long piece on it by Maria Bustillos may be of interest to many of you.

Chris Randle chooses the ten "sexiest" anthropomorphic animals in comics.

James Bacon reviews Charley's War, and Bob Heer reviews a slew of comics.

—Funnies. I neglected to link to Chris Ware's new strip in the recent New York Times Book Review. Here are two early Bill Watterson cartoons.

Joe McCulloch is here with your week in comics. And Tessa Brunton presents Day 2 of her diary.

Elsewhere:

First thing's first: This interview of Victor Moscoso by Norman Hathaway is the best in existence. This is your must-watch of the week.

These stamps have made the internet rounds. Best news of the week.

Ng Suat Tong on Margaret Sanger.

Business Insider on Comixology/Amazon.

Alec Longstreth interviewed on Inkstuds.

This morning, we have the first entry from Tessa Brunton's week here at the helm of the Cartoonist's Diary column. Today, she rests up for (and worries about) a trip to Disneyland.

And we also have Paul Tumey's review of the new collection of WWII-era Superman newspaper strips. Here's an excerpt:

The Sunday newspaper comics collected in the handsome new IDW collection, Superman: The Golden Age Sundays 1943-1946, mostly deal with Superman’s involvement in World War Two, and chart not only the war years of the classic newspaper comic, but also the inevitable (and entertaining) trivializing of the Superman concept that would lead to a 1945 comic book cover in which the Man of Steel used his super breath to defrost Lois Lane’s refrigerator.

The problem was that, in the four-color world of the 1943 Sunday newspaper comic, Supes could conclude World War II in a single strip, but the war would still rage on in reality – and the fantasy would be broken. In fact, Superman did end the war in 1940 (fictionally speaking), in a two-page story that appeared in the February 27, 1940 issue of Look Magazine, in which he scooped up Hitler and Stalin and turned them over to the League of Nations. (This feature was created nearly two years before American entered the war and it shows Hitler and Stalin on the same side. Germany violated a pact with Russia in 1941 and Stalin joined the allies.) This Superman story, however, was only a hypothetical fantasy-within-a-fantasy story (the first of many to come) -- and therefore had no lasting impact on the actual Superman universe.

Elsewhere:

—News. Calvin Reid at Publishers Weekly has more on the Amazon/comiXology deal. Rob Salkowitz has more analysis.

Ulli Lust and Gene Luen Yang were the big comics-related winners at this year's Los Angeles Times Book Award.

—Interviews. Book designer Jacob Covey talks about the Popeye books. Comics Alliance talks to editor Spike Trotman about her extremely successful Kickstarter for the porn comics anthology Smut Peddler 2. CBR talks to Gene Luen Yang.

—Reviews & Commentary. Tom Spurgeon recommends ten old comics books that are cheap on eBay. Rob Clough reviews Vehlmann & Kerascoet's Beautiful Darkness.

Sean Michael Robinson details his own abortive attempt to create a graphic novel.

—Spending Opportunities. The Doug Wright Awards have launched a Kickstarter. Conundrum Press has announced its fall lineup. Ron Regé Jr. has a new online store.

On the site:

Rob Steibel on very early Jack Kirby work.

Years ago Greg put out a CD that had a PDF file featuring some of Jack’s very early comics work. Recently it looks like Greg has put out a 160-page book featuring much of that material called Comic Strip Kirbyfeaturing 375 examples of Jack’s newspaper syndicate work from 1937-39. I need to pick up a copy of that, but for today, let’s go old school: I thought it might be fun to look at a few of the comic strips collected on the Theakson Comic Strip Kirby CD which is an 80-page PDF file. I want to give you a taste of Jack’s early work, so if you want a more comprehensive look at it, I encourage you to pick up Greg’s books. In the introduction of the PDF, Greg writes:

These are Jack Kirby’s earliest published works. Most were taken from a scrapbook kept by Ma Kirby. While far from complete, this is the most comprehensive collection of his strip work ever produced. I’ve looked around for years, and these are the only copies I’ve ever seen, and now you can see them too!

If this scrapbook still exists (which I obviously hope still does) I hope at some point someone can take photographs or make scans of each page so we can see what the original faded piece of newsprint looks like. I hope someone has this scrapbook, and I hope it’s in a nice cool place for safe storage. It’s difficult to decide which comics to choose to highlight here, I’ll go ahead and pick about twenty that I think will give you a nice overview of Jack’s early work. Greg has a lot of Socko the Sea Dog strips in this collection as well, but I won’t look at those for now, maybe in the future I’ll do an article on that material.

Elsewhere:

Well, the big news is that Amazon has acquired Comixology. This means Amazon is now the biggest player in digital comics and gives them yet more leverage over the relevant publishers. I'm sure we'll have links to commentary as it comes.

On the other hand, here's an interview with Dame Darcy on Comixology. Two strange things in one day. One bad, one good.

Katie Skelly interviewed about her new project over at Robot 6.

Hey, Richard Sala is serializing a new story on Tumblr. Thanks for the reminder, Tom Spurgeon.

The panel excerpted here reminds me of Mike Judge's Silicon Valley.

Frank Santoro is on a brief hiatus, so instead of your usual Thursday Riff Raff column, we've got two reviews for you. First, Brandon Soderberg tackles Robin Bougie's Sleazy Slice #7. Very little of that review is safely quotable on this family-friendly blog portion of the site, so don't read this if you're one of the youngest members of your family:

It probably doesn't matter much to Sleazy Slice artist/editor Robin Bougie, who proudly categorizes his nervy work as "filth," but his seven years-running porno comics anthology hasn't ever really received the credit it deserves.

See, long before art-porn that's as much porn as it is art got absorbed into the post-Tumblr alt-comix scene, Bougie had already handed pages of his anthology over to Josh Simmons (including The Furry Trap standout "Cockbone"), published rarely translated oddities from artist Shintaro Kago, and investigated bizarre fuckbook ephemera like a deeply offensive sixties curiosity titled, "Squaw Cunt." Certainly, something like Thickness could not have made the game-changing entrance it did without the obnoxiously un-P.C. and oft-troubling groundwork already laid down by Sleazy Slice.

Our other review is from new contributor, the cartoonist Whit Taylor, who offers her thoughts on Simon Hanselmann's "Life Zone":

“Life Zone” revolves around four main characters: Meg, Mogg, Werewolf Jones, and Owl. Meg, a witch, and the only female in the group, is an insecure, self-conscious, and self-medicating witch who is unknowingly the object of the other three’s affection. She is one of those people who does not realize her true value. Mogg, her cat partner, is your “typical” stoner who puts minimal effort into everyday activities. He is nonchalant, easy-going, and self-assured. Werewolf Jones, their raucous neighbor, is in constant party mode, instigating debaucheries wherever he goes. He’s also an aggressive bully at times. The most markedly different character is housemate Owl, a neurotic, yet impressionable character who is easily persuaded to go along with the rest of the characters’ intoxicated escapades. One of the reoccurring comedic gags throughout the story is him being beat up in various situations, usually due to his misjudgment, self-righteousness, and bad luck.

Elsewhere:

—News. RIP Fred Kida. More on the site soon.

—Interviews & Profiles. Margaret Wappler at the Los Angeles Times has a profile of Mimi Pond. ["{Tom} Devlin speculates that Pond isn't as well known as she should be because her former works — illustrated books on style, and cartoons for magazines — didn't play into the collector mentality."]

Erstwhile TCJ podcaster Mike Dawson appeared on Make It Then Tell Everybody, and Tom Hart, the closest thing we have to a comics saint, appeared on Inkstuds.

—Reviews & Commentary. Brian Cremins has a valuable response to the controversial Walt Kelly portion of R. Fiore's most recent column. ["As I read these remarks, I began to wonder, what would a 'context-conscious reading' of this sequence look like? And is Fiore correct? Would it reach a different conclusion than the one in Andrae’s introduction?"] Then Jeet Heer, who left insightful comments under both the Fiore and Cremins pieces, composed an essay-via-Twitter on it all. ["There's a good argument to be made that Kelly's intent in those early Pogo comics were progressive, but they smack of blackface now."]

Rob Clough reviews Jon Vermilyea's Fata Morgana. ["Anthropomorphic slices of pizza drip cheese in a menacing and disturbing fashion, while anthropomorphic breakfast foods get into brutal fights."]

—Misc. Osamu Tezuka gets a Google exhibit.

—Funnies. Julia Wertz on dreams.

Today on the site Rob Clough looks at the work of Jeremy Baum.

Jeremy Baum’s work to date represents that of an artist with a distinct visual style who is still finding his way as a storyteller. His comics and illustrations all revolve around the same set of subverted genre themes, as fantasy, conspiracy, and science fiction tropes are blended with his particular pet images. Specifically, Baum likes to draw variations on a particular female figure, one with bulbous, fleshy qualities. His women have pendulous breasts, long faces, big eyes, and huge teeth. Their fingers are long and spidery. Their bodies are frequently made into figures from the Tarot or Hindu mythology. His women are fairies, dryads, aliens, and goddesses, and their motivations are frequently hard to fathom. His work is deliberately enigmatic, inviting the reader to dwell on the image without spelling out its meaning.

Elsewhere:

The best news of the week is that Ron Rege Jr. is offering a new mini comic, this one a "cover" of a 1940s Wonder Woman story. I've seen glimpses of this on Instagram and it looks just phenomenal. Don't miss it.

If you're in San Francisco and REALLY into typography, go see Norman Hathaway interview Victor Moscoso about Moscoso's radical typographic work.

Cartoonist Leah Wishnia, interviewed.

I've never seen this letter from Art Spiegelman about the lettering for foreign editions of Maus.

Speaking of documents, Sean Howe points us to a recent internet discovery of a Spider-Man-like predecessor.

Kate Beaton has finished her most recent comic. It's typically excellent.

Fast Company profiles the new regime at Archie.

Joe McCulloch would like to tell you about the highlights from this week's newly available comics, including new work by Hayao Miyazaki and Dash Shaw, as well as a long, odd (in a good way) essay on a long, odd (in many ways) magazine full of Japanese-language golf comics he picked up this weekend in New York City.

Golf Comic itself purportedly dates back to 1985, or I’ve disinterred from the internet; if accurate, this would place its genesis in the midst of bubble economy extravagance, where it might have seemed a safe haven for sports manga specialists; while not quite the equivalent of a life sentence, drawing sports manga does build a certain skill set that can make an artist especially assignable to different sports serials, leading to a certain substrata of mangaka whose personal catalogs are highlighted by baseball, soccer – or sometimes mainly golf.

As you can imagine, this is a world far away from most American eyes in even the most ravenous periods of manga consumption. Years ago, however, ComiPress posted a rare English-language interview with one such practitioner: Seiichi Ikeuchi, a former assistant to the great ninja comics master Sanpei Shirato, and a true-blue golfing hobbyist who built himself over two decades’ worth of golf comics output. He cannily acknowledges that this is a connoisseur’s field; that most everyone reading — presumably even the newbies who’d make use of whatever entry-level instruction a magazine’s editors deem necessary — can tell if an artist is bullshitting them, and so the most challenging aspect of the craft is “communicating the techniques to the readers through the manga.”

He is, nonetheless, a stylist, as his present Golf Comic series attests.

Elsewhere:

—MoCCA Fest. The winners of the MoCCA Awards of Excellence included Alexandra Beguez, David Plunkert, Greg Kletsel, Luke Healy, and Jess Ruliffson. Lots of reports out there, of which I'll just link to two: Joe McCulloch at the Comics Reporter, and Robyn Chapman at her own Tiny Report.

—Interviews & Talk. Tom Spurgeon talked to Zack Soto. Françoise Mouly checked in with Joost Swarte. Evan Dorkin gave two interviews, one to Jonah Weiland, and another to Comics Tavern. Alan Moore talked about Robert Anton Wilson.

—Reviews. Richard Bruton writes about Luke Pearson's latest Hilda book, and Illogical Volume reviews Stray Bullets.

Today on the site:

Ryan Holmberg brings it with this eye-opening examination of the work of Matsumoto Katsuji a pioneer of shōjo manga. Over the last half-decade Ryan has single-handedly upended the standard historical narrative of comics. I hope this achievement gets the recognition it and Ryan deserves.

First, some background. The subtitle of a catalogue of Matsumoto’s work from 2006, published to coincide with the first Yayoi show, sums up the artist’s reputation: The Illustrator who Invented Shōwa Cuteness. A more accurate tag might be: The Artist who Domesticated North American Cuteness in Japan. This is easy to see in Matsumoto’s most famous character, Kurukuru kurumi chan, which means something like: Little Dizzy Wizzy Chestnut. While better known through related merchandising (postcards, stickers, water decals, bookmarks, posters, postcards, figurines, stationery, paper dolls), Kurumi chan was the star of her own manga for thirty-five years, commencing in Shōjo no tomo in 1938. Her image metamorphosed dramatically over the years and across media, to the point where it is sometimes hard to recognize the various Kurumi chans as the same character or by the same artist.

Elsewhere:

It was MoCCA weekend for many, but not for me. I wish I coulda been there. I actually wanted to be there, but parental duties take priority. I'm sure Joe McCulloch will cover some highlights. So around the internet we go...

Edie Fake's new work, explored.

Mimi Pond's Culture Diary for The Paris Review.

Robert Andrew Parker is an unsung illustration ruler.

And Joost Swarte explains the Three Blind Mice.

Today, Brian Nicholson reviews Brandon Graham's Multiple Warheads collection. Here's a sample:

In other scenes, the narration works to relay the science-fiction ideas and worldbuilding, which, while they may be of interest to Graham as a writer, would be difficult for him to convey visually. The grander the scope of the idea, the more easily it falls into the background. It is mentioned there are spaceships filled with people gone to fight a war with wolves; they explode in the atmosphere. What's foregrounded, as the thread of a larger narrative is either lost or ignored, is not specifically sex, but being in love, driving around, taking in the sights, taking in meals. It's a book about moving forward in time, moving through space, being a body. There are action sequences that focus on movement, orientations of people getting decapitated, where dead bodies and the recognizability of faces are used as markers to orient the characters, as they jump on top of cars stuck in traffic. There are also two-page spreads of fantastical landscapes, wide vistas. These emphasized aspects, of the sensory input of places, moving through them, is highlighted both as a pleasure of comics and as a pleasure of being alive. This approach lowers the stakes in terms of storytelling drama in order to more straightforwardly just be a comic that exists for the sake of sensory pleasure.

And today is the final day of Danica Novgorodoff and her Cartoonist's Diary.

Elsewhere:

—Mike Lynch disputes a few of Ted Rall's statements in that anti-New Yorker rant from earlier in the week. ["The challenge here is: do you use a Mankoff, a Rall or your own self as a tastemaker? Humor, they say, is in the eye of the beholder."]

—Gary Panter briefly profiles Shigeru Sugiura. ["As the Fifties ended, Sugiura abandoned kids’ comics for more peculiar ones — melding different styles and genres of cartoons, movies, and science fiction imagery into a potent new, confusing, even psychedelic brew."]

—The philosopher John Gray reviews Mark D. White's The Virtues of Captain America. ["Sadly, the suggestion that Captain America embodies Aristotelian virtues verges on the absurd. That Aristotle assumed his account of the human good could be realised only by middle-aged, property-owning males is well known. What is more important, from the standpoint of White’s argument, is the absence in Aristotle’s thinking of any of the modern liberal ideals that Captain America embodies. Consider an idea such as personal autonomy. Certainly Aristotle believed that individuals are responsible for their actions; but there is nothing in him of the idea that they are the authors of their lives. Even the favoured few, in Aristotle’s account, model themselves on the same conception of human excellence."]

—Sarah Horrocks reviews Katie Skelly's Operation Margarine.

—Jack Kirby's heirs have appealed this summer's Marvel ruling and attempting to take their case to the Supreme Court.

Today on the site:

R. Fiore returns with thoughts on Walt Kelly, racial caricatures, M.K. Brown, George Wunder and George Carlson. It's a doozy. Here's where it begins:

It’s my general policy not to comment on the textual front and back matter of comic strip collections, though it often irritates me. In the first place, next to nobody reads it. In the second place, for those few who do read it, it has next to no potential to spoil the book. You’re reading the book for comics. The supplemental material might slightly enhance the experience, but if not it’s merely forgotten. It is at most an appetizer, and most of the time I leave it for last lest it spoil my appetite. However, I found Thomas Andrae’s hors d’oeuvre to Walt Kelly’s Pogo The Complete Dell Comics: Volume One (Hermes Press) went down so poorly that I feel the need for a belch.

And Danica Novgorodoff presents day 4 of her diary.

Elsewhere:

TCJ-contributor Bill Kartalopolous wrote in to remind his forgetful editors to mention a ton of amazing events related to this week's MoCCA fest. Here are his highlights:

Swarte + Speigelman in conversation, first US appearances by Frederic Coche, Brecht Vandenbroucke and Marion Fayolles, a talk on cartoonists' participation in the 1913 Armory Show at the site of the 1913 Armory Show, Robert Williams interviewed by Carlo McCormick, Alison Bechdel, Drew Friedman, and more. Reserved seating for the Spiegelman/Swarte was snapped up in 18 hours, remaining seats are first come first served. Bechdel/Cruse tix went almost as quickly. Plus concurrent exhibits of Friedman, Swarte and Jeffrey Catherine Jones at the Society of Illustrators.

That sounds pretty great to me. Especially the Swarte, Williams and Coche parts. If I still had a social life I'd camp out and gorge myself on all of this. I'm thrilled that MoCCA has roared back to life wonderfully with Bill so engaged in programming and European guests and a very supportive Society of Illustrators. All the info is here and here's photograph proof that Joost Swarte is indeed in NYC. That's just good news, period.

Elsewhere:

Today we are publishing Rob Kirby's review of the AK Summers memoir, Pregnant Butch. Here's an excerpt:

Summers began drawing Pregnant Butch in 2005, two years after the birth of her son, and serialized it on the webcomics site ACT-I-VATE starting in 2012. She presents herself as Teek Thomasson, often drawing Teek to look like Hergé’s Tintin (because let’s face it, Tintin is one cool look for a butch lesbian). It’s not explained in great detail why Teek and her no-nonsense femme girlfriend, Vee, decide to get pregnant, but just about every other aspect of the experience is examined in intimate detail, all from the refreshingly unique perspective of “a neurotic bulldagger.”

Teek admits the word “pregnancy” has always made her feel squeamish and offers up alternatives: “Fetal Corpulence,” “Uterine Glut.” Her fantasies of that fetal corpulence endowing her with the “broad shoulders, slender hips and titlessness required to look good in suspenders” (suspenders being part of a “dramatic masculine costume” she covets) are quickly dashed. Worse still, the billowing trousers her expanded stomach require immediately become “clown pants.” Pregnancy is neither pretty nor handsome, though Teek is routinely mistaken for a guy throughout most of her term – a fat guy. She endures indignities other pregnant women of any stripe experience: being refused employee-only restroom facilities by a compassionless bookstore manager, shopping for a midwife among an extremely variable group of candidates, and putting up with a super-enthusiastic, super-annoying childbirth instructor/performance artist. "I just couldn't stand this woman," Teek tells us, and we fully understand.

And we have day three of Danica Novgorodoff's week in the Cartoonist's Diary chair. Today she ponders the appeal of leaving New York.

Elsewhere:

—Reviews & Commentary. Ted Rall thinks the cartoons in The New Yorker are bad for everybody. [“'For nearly 90 years, the place to go for sophisticated, often cutting-edge humor has been The New Yorker magazine,' says Morley Safer.

"As is often the case, what everyone knows is not true."]

Rob Clough reviews R. Crumb: The Weirdo Years. ["If a reader unfamiliar with Robert Crumb's work were to ask for a single volume in order to get a sense of his best work, the new collection from Last Gasp, R.Crumb: The Weirdo Years would be my pick."]

Tom Spurgeon reviews Amanda Waller #1. ["Looking at it on my desk, I could not figure out why other than to test the market for a certain kind of pricing on a certain level of protagonist that a $4.95 one-shot starring this very bland character from DC's 2011 recent line-wide reboot would be a good idea."]

J. Caleb Mozzocco questions the cover credits used on the new Harlem Heavyweights book.

Paul Di Filippo reviews Darwyn Cooke's latest Parker adaptation.

Ten years on, Andrew Hickey really likes Cerebus.

—Spending Opportunities. Study Group Books has started crowdfunding/pre-ordering for its spring list.

—Interviews. The Wall Street Journal interviews the ubiquitous Bob Mankoff:

Today on the site:

Joe McCulloch brings us the week in comics.

And Danica Novgorodoff is here for the second day of her Cartoonist's Diary.

Elsewhere:

Tom Spurgeon has a good obituary of the great and influential fantasy artist David Trampier.

Ben Katchor, interviewed.

The New Yorker blog features Michael DeForge.

New York Magazine looks at some of the "weirdest" Batman covers.

And here's Fantagraphics on video at the Emerald City Comic-Con.

Today, Joe McCulloch reviews the latest Alejandro Jodorowsky comic, a collaboration with Das Pastoras, Metabarons Genesis: Castaka:

An alterationist of myth and pulp alike, Jodorowsky is undoubtedly familiar with the seams binding the jidaigeki and the American western. As such, planet and narrative are soon literally invaded by representatives from Jodorowsky's shared universe, the missionary/conqueror Techno-Technos, whose metaphorical opening of “Japan” to the “west” turns on a dime into the disease-spreading influence of European colonists on natives of the Americas, who are soon decimated: recall the froggy conquistadors from The Holy Mountain.

Afterward, the true character of Castaka is revealed: it's another Jodorowsky western, with the grown stud, his warrior wife, and their two borderline-feral daughters becoming intergalactic Indian desperadoes, sacking wagon trains along the trail of stars for profit and revenge. It's hugely energetic stuff, writer and artist now working in perfect synch to render their protagonist as a veritable screaming-mad Klaus Kinski, his features permanently wrought with hot rage, eyes wild and dialogue tending toward “LAMENTABLE TRAITOR!” and other top-of-the-lungs exhortations whilst his growing girls exhibit departures from their writer's offhanded mytho-poetic gender essentialism: one becomes buxom like her mother, while the other is drawn as, basically, a slighter variant on Marvel Comics' Wolverine (on whom Das Pastoras has also worked), though both remain superior fighters, and ultimately conjoin their very bodies(!) to dissolve any distinction between "masculine" and "feminine" personality traits – which, given the eternally boyish outlook of the project's genre apparatus, means they capture a man's sperm before besting him in combat, and there is so much respect when he dies.

And we have another week of Cartoonist's Diary entries, this time from guest artist Danica Novgorodoff.

Elsewhere:

—Reviews and Commentary. Trina Robbins has posted a free PDF of her biography of golden age cartoonist Lily Renée.

Frank Young writes about rare Harvey Kurtzman and Basil Wolverton comics now available online.

Rob Clough has finished up his marathon of 31 reviews in 31 days.

—Interviews. Tom Spurgeon interviewed journalist Chris Arrant and cartoonist Cliff Chiang.

—News. Finalists for the Doug Wright Awards have been announced.

Saudi Arabia has banned The 99, leading to Op-Ed coverage at the Daily Beast.

Dave Sim says he is looking for writers and artists to recreate the original 25 issues of Cerebus for an "Ultimate" version of the series.

—Funnies. Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes collaborated on a new wordless comic up at the BBC News Magazine site. (There's a brief interview about the story here.)

Today on the site:

Mike Dawson closes out his excellent Cartoonist's Diary.

And Austin English reviews Miss Hennipin by Andy Douglas Day.

Andy Douglas Day is a great director of his characters gestures and facial expressions. His narratives are essentially two-person comedy bits, and like Rick Altergott’s masterful humor comics, the climax of the joke is often in a throwaway detail paced panels before the ‘punchline.’ A shrug, a glance.

And yet stylistically Day couldn’t be farther away from Altergott. In fact, devotees of Altergott’s neo-Wally Wood renderings might be offended by the very comparison. You would have to be a philistine to call Day’s drawings crude, but I know there will be many philisitines saying exactly that when they encounter this tome.

Elsewhere:

Art Spiegelman's stained glass project for his high school alma mater will be open to the public for a one-time viewing on MoCCA-weekend. Tickets are here.

Dean Mullaney has announced that the second volume of Bobby London's Popeye works will include unpublished strips.

Tom Hart is the latest guest on Inkstuds.

Good lord, Now You're Logging has been reissued! Read Brad MacKay's piece about the book on this very site.

Beautiful Joseph Remnant strip here.

Melville House responds to the much-linked-to NY Times article on indie bookstores.

Today on the site, Frank Santoro is here with an old-school riff on Chester Brown’s Yummy Fur, inspired by a recent visit to CCS and discussion with some students there. Here’s a sample:

I think what’s interesting to consider is what Chester may have learned during those grid years and how he applied the skill of balancing the grid to his more organic approach. Ed the Happy Clown was a heroic, action-adventure story and it read like a Kirby monster comic, like a '70s Kirby grid. Quick, like a storyboard almost, but depicting moments a movie would not – it’s all timing – the way all the pieces, moments fit together. The grid accommodates the heroic and the banal moments all the same. It’s like a metronome.

Then, with issue 19 of YF, Chester switches to autobio and he now has the spacing to make the everyday seem heroic – look at the distortion in The Playboy! – it’s like KIRBY - yet Chester manages to be so spare and clear in tone. Chester’s work reduces so beautifully - The Little Man collection is smaller than the original comics but it looks fine (imagine reducing a current Marvel comic to book size) – so while mainstream work has gotten more clogged because of the format, Chester’s 5-inch by 5-inch squares are perfectly phrased notes, simple melodies strung together on a metronome that sound just right at any volume, any size.

And we also have Day 4 of Mike Dawson and his Cartoonist’s Diary. Today, Mike wonders exactly why he’s doing what he’s doing.

Elsewhere:

—News. It has been announced that Robert Kanigher, Bill Mantlo, Jack Mendelsohn will receive the 2014 Bill Finger Award.

Michael Cavna wrote a really nice piece about the Bill Watterson/Richard Thompson exhibits at the Billy Ireland library, with quotes from the artists, one of the curators, and others.

Then Cavna did it again with a story on the changing role of Universal Uclick editor Lee Salem, which includes input from Watterson, Thompson, Garry Trudeau, and Lynn Johnston.

—Misc. Unfinished pages from Jack Kirby’s aborted adaptation of The Prisoner are now online.

The online New Yorker has apparently begun running comic strips. The first one’s from Eleanor Davis.

—Interviews & Profiles. The New Straits Times briefly profiles Lat.

Richmond.com talks to Pearls Before Swine cartoonist Stephan Pastis.

At The Beat, Padraig O Mealoid remembers the late Steve Moore.

Via Mike Lynch, here’s an hour-long Bob Andelman interview with Shannon Wheeler (that I haven’t watched yet myself):

—Reviews. Tom Spurgeon reviews Sascha Hommer’s Frontier #3. Matt Lamothe reviews Patrick Kyle’s Distance Mover.

Today on the site:

Mike Dawson rolls in with Day 3 of his diary.

Elsewhere:

Gabe Fowler has announced that the next Comic Arts Brooklyn festival is on November 8th, 2014 at Mt. Carmel Church and a few satellite locations. The application is here.

And, bonus, here is the video from last year's City of Glass panel with Art Spiegelman, Paul Karasik, Paul Auster and David Mazzucchelli, moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos.

Also on the festival train is Secret Acres, with a fine news post.

And here are some fine cartoons by Charles Addams.

Today, Joe McCulloch has your guide to the Week in Comics, with spotlight picks from Bobby London and Alejandro Jodorowsky.

It is also day two of Mike Dawson's tenure at the Cartoonist's Diary column. This time, he tries to go outside.

Elsewhere:

—Commentary. Brigid Alverson noticed something odd about that New York Times story on comics apps that Dan linked to yesterday—it included a strong recommendation of an app that runs on pirated manga. ["There are more digital manga services on the horizon, but as long as serious outlets like The New York Times can’t (or won’t) make the distinction between a legitimate manga app and a bootleg app like Manga Rock, the publishers will continue to have an uphill climb."]

When retailer Brian Hibbs bought a second store, it came with around 75,000 back issues. Now he's making a go at selling them. ["So, my first job was to 'part the Red Sea,' and separate the wheat from the chaff, which meant physically going through all (approximately) 300 long boxes and seeing what was in each one."]

Ben Towle reports from the Bill Watterson/Richard Thompson ehxibition at the Billy Ireland library. ["One of the most interesting displays showed Watterson’s early strips he did for his college newspaper as well as some submissions to newspaper syndicates. Including a rejection letter was a nice touch. I was really, really curious about the middle strip here which appears to have been deliberately obscured with an overlaying piece of bristol board. Did Watterson not want it shown for some reason?"]

—Interviews. CBR talks to Mike Mignola on the 20th anniversary of Hellboy. ["With China, yeah, there's photo reference. But in between those photos, what happens? What goes on? There's nothing worse, for me anyway, than being a slave to photo reference. I did one story set in Japan and I had photo reference for the exterior of a house and for a great little cemetery and things like that, but I didn't know things like how the doors worked. I could've gotten this out of Akira Kurosawa movies. I could've studied the interiors from various films, but that seems like an awful lot of work. I always felt that if I'm drawing the real world, I need to get it right."]

The same site also talks to former DC publisher Paul Levitz. ["Years ago I wrote an article for The Comics Journal titled 'Call for Higher Criticism', and looking back at it I think it was very naïve and immature in many ways. The argument was that there’s more to talk about than if the Thing can beat the Hulk, but there was broader things to talk about. I’ve seen it evolve over the years, with an army of professors now bringing scholarly knowledge and wisdom to the field."]

Kurt Andersen has Gene Luen Yang on as a guest on Studio 360.

—Reviews. Andrew Wilmot reviews Diane Obomsawin's On Loving Women. ["The collected stories feel strangely complete and incomplete at the same time; they’re first paragraphs to larger narratives the author has decided to leave off the table, choosing instead to focus on the discombobulating first steps of girls exploring their sexuality."]

J. Caleb Mozzocco reviews Sam Henderson's Scene But Not Heard. ["Most of the gags revolve around the rule-less physics of comic strips and cartoons, and, read all at once, this book seems like a grand symphonic performance of the unique possibilities for jokes in the comics medium."]

—Misc. This Susie Cagle story is more about freelancing than cartooning, but there's a reason everyone is linking to it. ["Almost eight years ago, a week after my 22nd birthday, I graduated with a master’s degree from Columbia’s journalism school. I didn’t know what having an Ivy League master’s degree in journalism meant, besides an overinflated sense of young self-worth and a collection of very expensive bills. I was about to find out: nothing."]

Comic book club!

—Video. On this weekend's 60 Minutes, Morley Safer profiled The New Yorker's cartoon editor, Bob Mankoff, who has a new book out. A slew of the magazine's cartoonists (Gross, Chast, etc.) are also briefly featured.

Today on the site we're joined by Mike Dawson, this week's contributor to our Cartoonist's Diary feature, and the author of Troop 142, Freddie & Me, among other books. Mike was also the man behind TCJ Talkies, and the co-host of the late, great, Ink Panthers.

Ken Parille is also here to discuss innovation at DC Comics. in 1972.

Elsewhere:

TCJ-contributor Nicole Rudick on Matt Kish's illustrated Heart of Darkness.

Tom Spurgeon interviews Mimi Pond.

The NY Times has a fascinating story about the archives of the Famous Artists School.

The Times also covered comics apps.

Bob Andleman talks to Mort Walker.

Gil Roth talks to co-authors Nathan Fox and Sheila Keenan about their graphic novel Dogs of War.

Leon Sadler reminds us of an old way of life.

This Dr. Seuss film adaptation just popped up online:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1gnuyl_the-500-hats-of-bartholomew-cubbins_shortfilms

And this Heinz (Yellow Submarine) Edelmann short remains completely amazing.

Today, Daniel Kalder is here with a review of Nicolas de Crécy and Alexios Tjoyas's Foligatto. A sample:

The story is set in the city of Eccenihilo, which my half-remembered Latin classes of long ago lead me to roughly translate as “Beholdnothing” (though my grammar is probably ropey). Tjoyas and de Crécy set the mood with a striking wordless sequence in an old cathedral, where a strange trio build a harp from the bones of dead animals, only to flee and hide when a mob arrives to hold a cockfight in the building. A dispute leads to one grotesque little fat man getting his head hacked off. The cops arrive and arrest everybody. Then the mutilated guy picks up his severed head and walks off.

It is about as clear a statement of intent as you can get.

Elsewhere:

—Interviews. In conjunction with new exhibitions of their work, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library site has posted interviews with cartoonists Bill Watterson and Richard Thompson. (Watterson: "There’s so much other content available—instantly and all for free—that there’s no reason to stick around if you’re not immediately enthralled. We consume everything like potato chips now. In this environment, I suspect the cartoonist’s connection with readers is likely to be superficial and fleeting, unless he taps into some fervent special interest niche.")

Vulture interviews Ms. Marvel writer G. Willow Wilson. ("Well, I have never, ever before written any comic book where there was fan art before the book was even released. That has never happened to me. That really — that really floored me.")

Brian Cremins talks to academic Shiamin Kwa about Kevin Huizenga's recent visit to Bryn Mawr. ("The question about when did you become interested in comics bothers me, because I do sense that there is sometimes a weird distinction being made about liking comics—like it’s a kind of secret handshake that is indexed by memories of carrying a certain colored bag on Wednesday afternoons.")

The Linework NW Tumblr has recently put up many short interviews with creators, including Ben Marra, Sam Alden, and Farel Dalrymple.

—News. Keiji Nakazawa's four-decade-old Barefoot Gen continues to generate controversy, as the mayor of Izumisano asked for all copies to be removed from elementary and junior-high-school libraries. ("'I regret having cooperated with the collecting of the manga even if it was because of an instruction from the head of the education board,' one principal said. 'Why was only Gen targeted when there are other works that also contain discriminatory terms? I can only believe they were deliberately setting their sights on Gen.'")

—Reviews & Commentary. Craig Fischer reviews Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky's Sex Criminals. ("In 1970s fandom, we used the term 'groundlevels' to describe comics that combined fan genres like science fiction and fantasy with adult visuals and subject matter(s). 'Groundlevel' refers to the middle position these comics occupied between the DC-Marvel 'mainstream' and the excesses of Crumbian undergrounds. Dave Sim’s Cerebus was one early groundlevel comic, Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest another, and nowadays, when I look at the artistic and commercial renaissance at Image Comics, I see the rebirth of the groundlevel aesthetic.")

Edie Fake reviews Emelie Östergren's Runaway Dog. ("...an unexpectedly elegant, sparse narrative with drawings that shimmer with silliness and surrealism.")

Farel Dalrymple shares his recent comics reading. ("I don’t read many mainstream comic series. I usually wait until I hear about something that is good and read the trade when the library gets it.")

—Funnies. Bob Sikoryak mashes up the Hellboy universe with various comic strips, including Thimble Theater, Garfield, and Dilbert.

—Video. And we don't usually promote comic movies very often, at least since the glory days of Dapper Dan's Super-Reviews, but here are two for which I'll break my self-imposed rule. First, Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune, which is of comics interest because many of the proposed concepts for the film later made their way into Jodorowsky's Incal-verse books.

And then Dark Dungeons, as far as I am aware the first straight cinematic adaptation of one of the works of Jack T. Chick.

Today on the site, Frank's back from various visits to comics institutions.

Elsewhere:

The comic book writer Steve Moore has passed away.

Glenn Bray interviewed about his new book by Doug Harvey.

New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff's new book is reviewed in the New York Times.

Playboy interviewed Stan Lee, and got some interested blurbs out of him.

Today, Robert Kirby reviews the new collection of MK Brown comics, Stranger Than Life. An excerpt:

Brown reveals a more serious side to White Girl in the masterful twelve-page “White Girl Dreams”, where White Girl has bizarre flights of fancy, imagining among other things, “soaring with others in the night, dancing though my face is someone else’s.” In it, Brown blends middle class ennui with surrealist tropes to create an ultimately rather poignant, fragmented portrait of a day-to-day existence suffocated by rules, traditions, and obligations, where the good, pleasurable flights of fancy are shunted off to some forgotten, subterranean part of the brain. White Girl yearns for those good dreams, telling us, “I always get the other kind.” The other kind are the ones in which an annoying “perfect stranger” comes home and regales her with endless obnoxious, husband-to-subservient-wife questions (“What’s for dinner? When do we? Why aren’t there any?” and so forth). She also tells us, understandably, "I hate this dream.” Without making any fuss, a feminist viewpoint clearly surfaces throughout the swirl of fantastical, kaleidoscopic imagery. It may indeed be that the dream White Girl hates is her actual life, a take that gives the piece its particular edge. Exploring the very nature of dreams vs. reality and what one makes of the difference, the story rewards multiple readings.

Elsewhere:

—Interviews & Profiles. Alex Dueben talks to Diane Obomsawin. ("When was it -- before I even knew I was attracted to women -- that I knew, unconsciously. It goes back very far, to the age of six or seven. Also I was curious about my friends and their stories. That was my question for them: What was your very first attraction?")

13th Dimension has a two-part interview with Mike Mignola. ("I was listening to the 8 billionth comment about H.P. Lovecraft and I said, 'Yeah, that stuff is in there, but I think that the bigger, fundamental structure of the Hellboy stuff came from pulp magazine guys like Robert E. Howard and Manly Wade Wellman.'")

Noam Cohen at the New York Times has a brief profile of xkcd's Randall Munroe. ("Though the book won’t appear for six months, What If? quickly reached No. 2 on Amazon’s best-seller list on the strength of pre-orders, trailing only a history book from Rush Limbaugh.")

Whit Taylor interviewed Mike Dawson. ("This was the first time I've ever gone into writing a story with a publisher already in mind. [...] There were pros and cons to it.")

—Reviews & Commentary. Old TCJ hand Jared Gardner reviews Julia Gfrörer, Isabel Greenberg, and Cole Closser. ("Here I want to focus on the recent debut work of three young cartoonists that are inspired not by the inward gaze but instead by myth, legend, and a pure, unadulterated love of visual storytelling as an end in itself.")

Jacob Covey discusses how his views on S. Clay Wilson changed while he helped design Patrick Rosenkranz's new book on the artist. ("His is not the art of an innocent kindergartner who draws fanciful anatomy in a surreal landscape but that of the self-realizing, hormone-raging, unclean middle-beast that is boys who are becoming men. He still draws like a kid, just not the kid we romanticize about. At a time when most of us become self-conscious and begin self-censoring Wilson did not.")

Illogical Volume reviews Über, Pretty Deadly, Three, and Zero. ("There’s a certain punitive/educational value in amplifying and expanding on the staggering brutality of our recent past, but the danger of reducing it to gory spectacle haunts every page of this comic.")

Richard Bruton reviews Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse's The Bojeffries Saga. ("Funnier than the hilarious D.R. & Quinch? Definitely. Better than Watchmen? Oh yes. Better than V For Vendetta? Yep. Better than Miracleman? Without question. Better than From Hell? Hmm… depends on my mood, but right up there.")

While writing about the film criticism of Manny Farber, David Bordwell discusses Farber's work on comic strips, too. ("Silly Milly is drawn in typical McGovern style, as though by a wind current, and has a prehistoric animal for a hair-do, a very expressive, giant-size eye, and a perfectly oval profile. It is one of those comics with animated décor, like Smoky Stover, with adjoining family portraits shaking hands, and one that tries for laughs in every part of the box.")

—News. Rich Warren at the Chicago Tribune profiles the Billy Ireland library. ("Veneration isn't stretching it as a term to describe what visitors might feel in these galleries. When they first step inside, most visitors are stunned at the sheer size of the illustrations, which are matted, framed and hung like paintings — like the works of art they are.") Incidentally, I am looking forward to Frank's column this week.

—Funnies. Roz Chast previews her upcoming book in The New Yorker.

—Video. Via Robert Boyd, here's the trailer for a new documentary on the Hairy Who.

It's Tuesday so you know Joe McCulloch, esq. is here to plead his case.

Elsewhere:

A reaction to the Art Spiegelman exhibition at Hyperallergic.

David B. reviewed by Ng Suat Tong.

Kate Beaton's latest interview.

Hey, sounds like Shaky Kane has a new comic book coming out. That's always nice.

It's National Avoid the Vomit in Midtown Day, which I am planning to celebrate by staying in and reading Paul Tumey's review of the new George Carlson retrospective, Perfect Nonsense. Here's a sample:

Of all the significant comic book artists of the twentieth century, George Carlson has been among the most magical and yet the most mysterious. Accomplished critics and historians including Harlan Ellison, Franklin Rosemont, Bill Blackbeard, Martin Williams, Ron Goulart, Martin Gardner, Gary Groth, Art Spiegelman, and Dan Nadel have championed George Carlson’s comic book stories. He’s been widely regarded as a master of Golden Age comic book art and graphic storytelling.

His imaginative, trippy work has been associated with various art and literary movements, including Surrealism, Dada, Art Deco, and Absurdist. Carlson’s stories have been compared to the works of literary masters Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco. Miscellaneous reprints, all drawn from the 39 extraordinary comic book stories that originally appeared in Jingle Jangle Comics between 1942 and 1949 have kept the flame of interest in Carlson’s work alive over the last three decades.

Despite all this, information about the life and work of George Carlson, as well as any additional art beyond the Jingle Jangle stories, has been frustratingly skimpy.

Elsewhere:

—Lynn Johnston has donated a significant amount of her artwork to the Library and Archives of Canada.

—Andrew White interviews former TCJ podcaster Mike Dawson on the practicalities of being a cartoonist.

—Percy Crosby's 1918 collection, That Rookie from the 13th Squad.

—And Timely-Atlas historian Dr. Michael J. Vassallo on Menace.

Today:

The tables are turned as Dominic Umile reviews Sam Henderson's most recent book.

Even as Scene But Not Heard is confined to rigid set of what’s usually 16 panels per page in this 6” X 9” book, Sam Henderson’s hilarious strip swirls and sputters uncontrollably, percolating with riotous energy and wordless pandemonium. The 128-page collection mines back issues ofNickelodeon Magazine, to which the New York-based cartoonist began contributing in 1993 under comics editor Anne Bernstein. Henderson’s work ran in the magazine until 2009, when the nationally distributed Viacom-owned kids publication abruptly folded. While he freelanced for Bernstein and subsequently for co-editors Chris Duffy and Dave Roman, the Scene But Not Heardcreator also snagged a full-time day job as a writer and storyboard director on the immensely popular television seriesSpongeBob SquarePants beginning in 2001 (Duffy would go on to helm the print comic property), and earned an Emmy nomination for his efforts. Sandwiched between contributions from Craig Thompson, Art Spiegelman, Ellen Forney, and more, Henderson’s Scene But Not Heard was the longest-running strip in Nickelodeon Magazine’s 159 issues.

Tove Jansson is the subject of a very good BBC profile.

If you're in Toronto this weekend this Seth/DeForge/Smyth/Heer event looks good.

FirstSecond has some advice on submitting manuscripts.

Nobrow, previewed.