Doucetian Claremontism
Austin English is back, bouncing around comics history and investigating the personal and metaphysical qualities of drawing.
10 Cent Museum
Funny Book Round Up
Congratulations, you’re in for a lucky-number-seven capsule reviews of all sorts of comics. Recent, good superhero comics! Small-press erotic comics! Decades-old alternative comics! Extremely unhappy commercial Japanese comics! Austin English brings you everything under the sun, and you should thank him.
Mort Weisinger’s Puzzle Comics
In this installment of the 10 Cent Museum, Austin English looks back at some of the most popular comics for children ever published: the Superman stories associated with Mort Weisinger!
Caniff in the 21st Century
A look at the work that the audience does mentally when reading a comics page, with Caniff, Herriman and more up for example.
Turning Away From Reality: Seth’s Clyde Fans
“Seth’s skill and talent is not up for debate any longer. We must instead move on to the implication of what he is trying to say, the only way to engage with an artist of consequence.” In the latest installment of 10 Cent Museum, Austin English examines Clyde Fans.
Twenty Questions with Cartoonists
Nine artists answer the same twenty questions, about their methods, their philosophies, their materials, and their working spaces.
The Strange Case of Stan Lee
When Lee passed away last week, non-comics world friends reached out to me to express condolences. They knew I loved comics and that I’m interested in the history of the medium… Clearly, this was a loss, right?
Against Clarity
How the cult of simplicity limits our understanding of comics’ potential
Fall into Degradation
In this week’s column, an Arcades Project-style history of cartoonists and their relationships with editors, publishers, and so-called fans.
Simplify, Stupid
Does Will Eisner really deserve so much more respect than Don Martin and Dave Berg?
Notes Toward a Future Understanding of Wally Wood
Why is the art of Wally Wood so hard to describe, so hard to get at? Why am I so interested in his art, while the similarly painstaking craftsmanship of a Joe Kubert or Will Eisner leaves me cold?
At the Mountains of Madness
Within the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, we come across Sherrie Levine’s 1989 art work Untitled (Mr. Austridge: 2). It is not currently on view, but was up in the galleries from June 30, 2010 through September 12, 2011. It is an exact replica, save the grain of the… Read more »
Where I’m Coming From (Part 2)
Zines disappear arbitrarily and without warning. For the final installment in this series, I’ve tried to write about a great many, in the hopes that works that have moved me might open up forgotten corners of what is possible in cartooning.
Where I’m Coming From (Part 1)
The minicomics and zines that shaped the columnist’s aesthetics.
Anything But Reality
How both George Herriman’s final Krazy Kat strips and the overpacked silliness of Mort Weisinger’s Silver Age Superman illustrate the true power of cartoon storytelling.
Feininger’s Grandkids
What if comics held up Lyonel Feininger as a model rather than Jack Kirby?
