Features

Deeper Than the Seafloor Traveled by the Mantis (This Week’s Links)

| August 30, 2019

Flandy Fucking Rockwell here with the links to clear up the late summer stinks!

I'm going to try a slightly different format this time, with reviews, previews and interviews nestled into their own sections. (More 'views than Toronto!) Please do let me know what you think.

 

Like this, like that and like that, like this...

• The release date of Raina Telgemeier's Guts is just over two weeks away, and around that time she'll be embarking on a two month tour of the United States and Canada. Dates and info here. Start planning now, these events are sure to be packed full of our collective nieces and nephews.

 

• Speaking of the Great White North (for the third time, eh) — the TCAF 2020 application period is open.

 

• Dustin Harbin — probably the most warmhearted person in comics, and definitely one of the most talented pure cartoonists around — was featured in The New York Times' op-ed section this week, discussing his recent bike accident, the outpouring of financial support his fund drive received, and how ludicrous the system is that make that type of funding necessary.

 

• Here's a weird one: the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is hiring a "Curator, Comic Art." If the person who gets that job sees it here first, I better get free admission — AT LEAST.

 

• It's exciting to see Pia Guerra recognized for the editorial cartooning she's been galvanized into creating due to the current political climate. No second acts, my foot! Michael Cavna put together a strong piece about Guerra for The Washington Post, including input from Matt Bors, her editor at The Nib.

 

• On the flip side: again with the Marvel, which has cowardly edited a Mark Waid-written Captain America essay for Marvel Comics #1000 in order to make the subject matter less political. And on Jack Kirby's 102nd birthday week, no less. The Beat breaks it down.

 

• Love this drawing Noah Van Sciver posted this week, but the inclusion of the ruler is just showing off. Tsk.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1pZQxxjNxd/

 

• Gentleman Cartoonist Keith Knight is about to become the recipient of a television program based on his life. It's called Woke and will stream on Hulu. That's technically not comics news but hopefully this makes Keith so much loot that he can just draw comics forever without having to worry about living off them. That's how that usually goes, right?

 

• Gentle reminder that the legendary Gahan Wilson is selling original art to help with medical costs. Feel free to re-read Dustin Harbin's NYT comic now.

 

• Kate Lacour, creator of the just-published-by-Fantagraphics and awesome-looking Vivisectionary, gave us a peek behind the curtain for this week's Cartoonist Diary on TCJ.

 

• Mady G. published The Wonderfully Queer World of Moomin on The Nib; it's a fantastic, joyful piece about the personal and romantic life of Tove Jansson, and how her life experiences were reflected in her creations.

 

• Sequential Magazine posted a piece of early Darwyn Cooke art, below, from a 1985 issue of the magazine Music Express. Cool to see his inky flow forming. There's a bunch more at Mystery Hoard.

 

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Reviews! We got reviews!

• Your TCJ squad got into it with Nate McDonough's Blue Lives, George Wyelsol's Internet Crusader and Zack Soto's The Secret Voice: Vol. 1.

• The Beat read and considered Archie Bongiovanni’s Grease Bats, Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Grass, Akiko Higashimura's Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey and new books by Robert Sergel and Karl Stevens.

• Multiversity Comics spent time with the first issue of new Image title Pretty Violent.

• Publisher's Weekly took on Patrick Kyle's The Death of the Master. (Would it kill them to show some interior pages?)

• Pipeline Comics sent some love to 2015's Asterix on the Warpath: A Pop-Up Book. That's right, a pop-up book! No sniffing, this thing has it's own "paper engineer"!

• Fleen seemed to really like Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks' Pumpkin Heads in its not-review review of their new book.

• Panel Patter called Christophe Chabouté's Alone a "masterpiece"! There's no turning back from that word!

• Broken Frontier is building up to the inaugural Hackney Comic and Zine Fair by spotlighting the work of various guests. Let's see what they have to say about Gareth Brookes' Threadbare (made with embroidery!), Matthew Dooley's Catastrophising, and the latest in Luke Pearson's "this better be doing Bone numbers" Hilda series.

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More happenings out comics way:

• The Guardian published Body of work: how the graphic novel became an outlet for female shame — the title of the piece doing more justice to its content than any summary I could compose. It's a powerful article exploring the power of this art form. Please be aware there is at least one depiction of sexual violence. The piece can be found here.

 

• The American Library Association is promoting Library Card Sign-up Month throughout September by showing a different comic creator posing with their library card each and every day. Could you — yes, YOU — be one of those creators? I have no idea, but the whole thing is worth checking out!

 

• Time for a moment of Joe Quinones appreciation. Quinones has been channeling a number of other comic book artists across the first six issue of his and Sam Humphries' Dial H for Hero title from DC. Did Joe learn it all when he interned in the MAD Magazine art department with me back in 2002? Almost definitely. Below you see his brilliant takes on Alex Ross and Michael Allred.

 

• Interesting article about an interesting project by UK-based Comics Youth, which is launching the "first publishing house led by 8 to 25-year-olds." As seen on It's Nice That.

 

• Tommi Parrish has been named as the Center for Cartoon Studies' fourth annual Cornish CCS Residency Fellow.

 

• Casanova Frankenstein is one of the more interesting people around. Bob Levin wrote about the artist and his new book In the Wilderness for TCJ, in the excellently-titled essay "The Purpose of Shittiness." If that phrase is from Levin or Frankenstein, I don't know, but it's a keeper.

 

• There was some big beef on Comics Twitter about what's wrong with the business of comics. Bleeding Cool compiled it all. I'd say "get your popcorn" but it tastes gross here.

 

• Lille Carré has a mini kuš! book coming out and any new Lille Carré publication is cause for much celebration. Small Press Previews has a few pages from her book and the other mini kuš! releases we can expect to see soon.

 

••••••••

Interviews! We got interviews!

• TCJ spoke with Simon Roussin.

• Comics Workbook chatted with Alabaster Pizzo about Mimi and the Wolves.

• The Beat chewed the apple with Cecil Castellucci about Snow White.

• The Word Balloon podcast had Jim Starlin stop by.

• Remember the Hackney Comic and Zine Fair, up there in "Reviews"? Broken Frontier talked to its organizer, Joe Stone.

• Smash Pages got to the bttm of things with Ezra Claytan Daniels. (Sorry, I couldn't help it.)

• And none other than Steve Englehart was on the Wait, What? podcast.

••••••••

 

Back to it, then, lads!

• The preview pages from A Year Without Cthulhu are a real treat for the ol' orbs.

 

• B.C. is giving proper names to long-running characters "Cute Chick" and "Fat Broad." It actually sent skeeves up my ulna typing that sentence, but better late than never, I suppose.

 

• The Daily Cartoonist presented an outstanding group of autobiographical cartoon pages by a who's who of comic strip legends circa 1957. Milton Caniff, Chic Young, Mort Walker...enough with me listing them, go take a gander.

 

• You know Florida Man, yeah? Well, after all the crap Florida Man has pulled, he's going to have trouble reading comics and manga in prison: they're being banned.

 

• Ink Spill shares a story relating to Sam Gross' 50th anniversary at The New Yorker. 

 

• Missing Wonder Woman comic strips found!

 

••••••••

Previews! We got previews!

• Actually, we got one. I guess I kinda previewed some stuff up above unintentionally. Huh.

• Well, the one we got is as good as you can get: Keiler Robert's Rat Time, coming soon from Koyama Press, right here on TCJ. That's the triple truth.

••••••••

 

So, what do you say? I think that worked overall. Did the little dots before and after the dedicated sections make sense? (I hate "designing" in WordPress.) So, yeah, I think this went okay, aside from the "Previews" kerfuffle. Well, "kerfuffle" is a strong word. I mean, how much do you think I PLAN these things out? The fun is in the journey. 

 

• And one last moment of appreciation, this one for Ben Sears. Good golly. If you can find these colors on planet Earth, I'd like you to show me.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1jUiA3jOto/