Richard Gehr is here with an obituary of New Yorker cartoonist Charles Barsotti.
Charles Barsotti – or “Charley,” as nearly everyone called him – was born September 28, 1933, in San Marcos, Texas. “Everything down there either had thorns on it or bit,” he said of his hometown when I interviewed him in January 2013, “and that includes the adults.” Howard, his father, sold furniture in San Antonio, where Charley was raised. His mother, the delightfully named Dicey Belle Branum, was a schoolteacher. Barsotti credited his hard-working parents with inspiring his own determined work ethic. “That, and fear,” he added.
And John Seven reviews Gabrielle Bell's new book.
Bell’s encounter with Dominique Goblet at Fumetto-Internationales Comix Festival in Switzerland gives insight to what Bell sees beneath the surface of her autobiographical work. Through lectures and conversations, Goblet unveils an autobiographical goal for Bell, an understanding that “there is no trueness,” in Goblet’s words, “just facts and the links that connect the facts.”
It gets to the heart of what Bell has done naturally in her autobiographical work before and strives to do more purposefully as she continues. Why does she challenge herself to these diaries when she also often mentions how dissatisfied she is by the prospect of doing them? What is she trying to attain by sharing these works that could easily function as private, daily exercises in cartooning of no interest to anyone else but the cartoonist? Is this part of Bell’s pursuit of a phantom called objective truth? Or is it her acknowledgement that we fashion our own truth, and her way of doing so is within panels on paper?
Elsewhere:
There's been a major development in the Kirby vs. Marvel legal case.
The Society of Illustrators is holding its Hall of Fame induction ceremony this weekend. Nice to see Ed Sorel and Al Jaffee on the list. Sorel is one of the all-time great illustrators, and one whose work is always worth a second and third look.
An interview with the authors of a new play about Jack Kirby.
And here's an author-centric look at the current Amazon wars.
