I imagine that comics won't be foremost in most people's lives today, but that won't stop us. The invaluable R.C. Harvey is back with a column on H.T. Webster, once known as "the Mark Twain of the drawing board." Here's a snippet:
Webster participated enthusiastically in the social life of his professional milieu, joining other cartoonists (including [Clare] Briggs, once the latter arrived in the city) and writers, actors, and illustrators in the after-hours convivialities that commenced near the offices of the New York World and continued at the Players or Dutch Treat clubhouses. He went angling whenever he could get away and never passed up an annual invitation to join a banker friend fly fishing in his private Canadian stream. And on weekends, he regularly convened with friends in a hotel room at the old Waldorf-Astoria for a ferociously dedicated poker game that began on Friday evening and didn’t end until Sunday morning. The concentration at these contests was so intense that on one occasion when Webster chomped on broken glass in the lettuce on the food tray that had been sent up, he spit out the shards without comment rather than disrupt the game.
Elsewhere, there are a few comics-related things you might want to distract yourself with, including:
—Chris Ware, with a lengthy audio interview conducted by Ed Champion at the Bat Segundo Show.
—Did Dan link to this piece by Adrian Tomine on creating his first New Yorker cover last week? Either way, it's worth drawing attention to again.
—Mark Dery reviews a few new(ish) Edward Gorey publications.
—Political reporter Dave Weigel reviews the Sean Howe Marvel book.
—Philip Nel writes about a stage adaptation of Barnaby.
—The Art of Reading has a nice short post on queer theory and Bechdel's Fun Home.
—Christopher Stigliano previews the upcoming Al Capp biography. (Stigliano shares Capp's politics more or less, so it's an interesting perspective.)
—And Pappy shares a couple of very late ACG stories most likely written by one of my top five favorite commercial-comics writers, Richard E. Hughes.
