Good morning, friends. Tucker Stone got too toasted during all the NYC-based comics parties revolving around BCGF to write his column this week. But Rob Clough steps up to the plate with a review of the intriguing Solipsistic Pop #4. Here's a clip:
Editor and artist Tom Humberstone has made each new volume of his anthology Solipsistic Pop ever more complex, beautiful, and formally interesting. It is a formalist's funhouse in the vein of a Chris Ware, Jordan Crane, or Richard McGuire. To be sure, there's plenty of narrative and emotional content to be found here as well (as there also is in the work of Ware, Crane, and McGuire, of course), but the artists in this anthology run with this issue's theme ("Maps") and take it all the way. Funded by an Indiegogo campaign, Humberstone spared no expense in making the whole package look just right.
I say "package" quite literally, because there are any number of intricate parts that make up this anthology. SP4 comes in a blue folder with comics on the front, back, and inside, depicting the prologue, key, and epilogue to John Miers' story, "It Is Always Too Late To Save Krypton".
Elsewhere:
—Over at CBR, our own Chris Mautner talks to Sammy Harkham about his recent collection, Everything Together.
—Paging Matthias Wivel: New Yorker cartoonist Bruce Edward Kaplan talks to Fast Company about how he got started at the magazine and how he makes the actual cartoons.
—Michael Silverblatt at KCRW's Bookworm is an excellent interviewer, so his discussion with Chris Ware is probably worth listening to even if you have overdosed on Building Stories hype.
—Jon Lewis, whose hardcover collection of True Swamp is debuting this weekend, just reposted an interview with him from last year that ran in Decibel magazine.
—Paul Gravett writes about the German cartoonist Line Hoven, who Blank Slate will be bringing out in English translation soon.
