Trying To Ice-Skate Uphill – This Week’s Links
One time I messed up a comics trivia event because I forgot the name of Buster Brown’s dog. He ought to apologize to me.
Article Archive
“This Is Where We Make Things Right”: A Report from SPX 2023
Last weekend was the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD, and Jason Bergman brings back a survey of the people and events that populated this year’s installment.
Misty: 45 Years of Fear
A word about density, perhaps? I’m always struck anew by questions of density when I dip into the British Bronze Age. It’s not perhaps the same kind of density you might expect from a particularly wordy American comic book. We Yanks quite loved our purple prose in the 1970s, but it wasn’t so big in… Read more »
Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story
I first discovered Julia Wertz in 2018 when I was living in San Francisco, working at California College of the Arts as the admin for their grad comics program. Looking back now, those were heady days that exposed me to a lot of different comic-makers I had no clue about, some of whom I now… Read more »
Box Brown and The He-Man Effect
Matt Petras profiles artist Brian “Box” Brown, veteran indie cartoonist and a recent specialist in nonfiction graphic novels and journalistic weekly strips.
Arrivals and Departures – September 2023
Wow! RJ Casey’s new column all about minicomics and the contemporary small press starts here!
Roaming
Connection. We all crave it. To people, places and things. When we have it, it’s magic. When we don’t, it’s misery. How these connections are made, sustained and nourished is explored by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s latest collaborative graphic novel, Roaming. The book’s title suggests both the wandering spirit of the three young travelers traversing… Read more »
“I Kind Of Have My Next Three Years Fully Planned”: An Interview with Caroline Cash
Jason Bergman sits down with Caroline Cash, the Ignatz-winning creator of the ongoing solo anthology series PeePee PooPoo, and bigger projects to come.
Den Vol. 1: Neverwhere
Welcome to uncertain ground. When Richard Corben sidled into American comics’ mainstream after decades of Adults Only work and self-publication, he was greeted as a conquering hero: ushered into prime position on a prestige Batman project, garlanded with fulsome Alan Moore introductions, catered to by star writers intently providing vehicles for his talent. This country’s… Read more »
Murderers’ Row: Marc Silvestri
Perhaps forever to be known as one of the founders of Image Comics, Marc Silvestri’s career nonetheless stretches from the glory days of Conan the Barbarian to a brand-new Batman / Joker team-up project. And Tegan’s here to tell you all about it.
Mr. Boop
This deluxe hardback collects Alec Robbins’ webcomic, published online in 2020, with a video finale released on the first day of 2021. Typically referred to as a satire, it’s not “satirical” in the way one might think of a 21st century comic featuring Betty Boop. Because it is taking a character who in the first… Read more »
Soldier Dream: Saint Seiya
Revered in some of the world, obscure elsewhere, Masami Kurumada’s Saint Seiya was among the most unwavering martial fantasies of 1980s Japanese boys’ comics. This is a story about loving that burning saga as a youth, and watching it flicker from afar in the long night of adulthood.
Bill Griffith on Love, Loss and the Lives of Ernie Bushmiller and Diane Noomin
Veteran cartoonist Bill Griffith speaks candidly about his new graphic novel on the life of Nancy creator Ernie Bushmiller, and his new comic book tribute to his late wife, Diane Noomin.
Eden II
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Dark Souls, or Elden Ring, or any number of terribly immersive RPGs that seem to be made of nerd catnip. I’ve never played one but I’ve certainly seen people talking about them, which I’m certain is very close to the same thing. Don’t worry about… Read more »
The Artists and Cartoonists Who Designed Pee-wee Herman’s World – Part One
Part 1 of a huge two-part feature! John Kelly speaks with the artists who built the Playhouse: Pee-wee’s Playhouse, with all its puppets, gadgets and merchandise. Many unseen images await!
The Dying of the Light: My Grandmother, Dementia, Time in the Comic Strip, and Roses in December by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers
A personal account of time in the comic strips and aging in our real world; living with illness, one day at a time, like in the funnies.
Cartoonshow
Derek Ballard has, as the bio in this new book reminds us, has worked on a few popular and/or acclaimed animated shows, most notably Adventure Time and The Midnight Gospel. You would think having that sort of resume would result in steady work – not anything that would necessarily have him donning a top hat… Read more »
“A Close Approximation To The Way That They’re Thinking”: Talking Lettering with Dean Sudarsky
Spotlight on lettering, as RJ Casey chats with Dean Sudarsky, cartoonist and English letterer for prominent French and Japanese cartoonists published in translation by New York Review Comics.
I Never Found You
Comics abound in maladjusted weirdos – but then, so do books, movies, music, the government… Maybe better to say maladjusted weirdos are a constant throughout our lives, though comics is a haven for the type. Hell, perhaps you might stare into the mirror, some lonely nights, wondering if you’re the weirdo. We’re all friends here.… Read more »
A Boy’s Life
A reflection on memoir as morbid fiction, the exquisite torture of progress, and the unfinished English translation of Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future.
Escape from the Great American Novel
Is it trite to say that A Lot Was Happening during the peak years of the COVID-19 pandemic? Maybe so (definitely so), but it was an especially fertile time for emerging indie cartoonists, what with nobody being able to go outside for extended periods of time. It lent itself well to the emergence of creative,… Read more »
