So have I ever mentioned my theory of cheesecake? Maybe I’ve mentioned it once or twice. Maybe “theory” is overstating it… let’s say maxim. Tegan’s Cheesecake Maxim, if you will: As drawing attractive women well is among the most singularly difficult aspects of drawing, cheesecake art disproportionately attracts disproportionately talented artists. We live in a… Read more »
Out in North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Morgan’s Comics seeks to be a community gathering place. Zach sits down with Morgan Albritton herself to hear about how it’s going.
Ever have trouble relating to others, especially those you desperately want to relate to the most? Then perhaps you can relate to the nameless protagonist of Ignatz nominee and Best American Comics contributor Jed McGowan’s My Life Among Humans: a sentient, mechanized creature sent to spy on random humans in the American southwest for an… Read more »
Your wretched editor writes about Chantal Montellier’s newly-translated Social Fiction and Frédéric Coché’s new, needs-no-translation L’Almageste.
Blasting though the realms of perception, Jean Marc Ah-Sen astral links with Tradd Moore, artist of a decade’s worth of lysergic genre comics and auteur of the soon-to-be-collected Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise.
Two dozen crabs on the trawl, and one of them is mine.
Longtime retailer and comics distributor Bud Plant remembers a friend: the collector, historian and publisher Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr., who died earlier this month.
Our story today begins many, many months ago. In response to comments that my reviews were skewing too mainstream, I set out a call on social media for the weirdest books around. I can only review what I see, after all, and I live out in the sticks. The really weird stuff doesn’t hit the… Read more »
For 80 years, Tom Shapira has hunted the white whale… or, at least, he’s read 80 years’ worth of Moby-Dick comics. And the tale they tell is literal, prosaic: shrinking before the Leviathan.
Jason is chasing that strange alchemy of words and pictures, and with him is cartoonist Oliver East and illustrator/philosopher Helen De Cruz.
What forces bind us together? Are they biological, cultural, shared experiences? Are they forces tangible or intangible? Good or ill? These are the questions at the heart of Thien Pham’s Family Style, a poignant and disarmingly humorous graphic memoir about Pham’s formative refugee experience. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), during 2022, 108.4 million… Read more »
A special, first-time-online transcript of a momentous meeting between four major talents: Paul Auster, Paul Karasik, David Mazzucchelli and Art Spiegelman discuss the making of the graphic novel of City of Glass, at it happened at Comic Arts Brooklyn in 2013.
I’m sorry… I’m so distraught that the local pretzel stand burned down… I can’t write anything, I’m sorry…
I consider myself to be a reasonable person. In hindsight, reasonable people can chuckle at the boob shouting “Judas!” at Bob Dylan from the cheap seats at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on 17 May 1966. “I don’t believe you,” Dylan scowls from the stage, calling the bluff of every aesthete committed enough to care too… Read more »
A man reads the manuscript to a book slated for publication, and encounters an image familiar to him. It’s from a recurring dream of the book’s protagonist, in which a primitive man crouches by fire, surrounded by corpses. “This dream haunts the character,” the reading man narrates, “and he comes to wonder if there’s some… Read more »
Matt Petras discusses Dear Mini, a memoir of friendship in troubled times, with author Natalie Norris – a Center for Cartoon Studies graduate releasing her first collected book.
A new work from Pierre-Henry Gomont is always a pleasure. After the fumblings of resurrecting a family estate in deepest Africa in Malaterre and an embellished history of the theft of Einstein’s grey matter in Brain Drain, to what subject matter will he turn his considerable talent and style? “Freed from the Communist yoke, Russia… Read more »
Remembering a generous curator, an avid collector, an astute connoisseur – Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr. died this past week, aged 76.
Do incarcerated people want to read comics? Absolutely. But how can they? Ian Thomas speaks with representatives of four organizations dedicated to getting books into the hands of American prisoners – comics included.
Tegan examines the work of cartoonist Katie Skelly, with a special emphasis on the new, expanded re-release of her erotic comics collection The Agency.
Flashback to the early 1970s, as Natsume Fusanosuke recalls the situation of his youth, living alone with a woman and reading two landmark manga about young people living together: Hayashi Sei’ichi’s Red Colored Elegy and Kamimura Kazuo’s Dōsei jidai.
Twenty years ago, the Marvel Universe felt like a larger place. This is not a comment on the comics themselves—by now I suspect I can no longer be brought to the point of caring about what ersatz-Biblical wisdom emerges from the mouth of the Silver Surfer—so much as on publishing circumstances. For all the many… Read more »
It’s hard enough running a comic book store during a pandemic, but how about opening one? Dreamers & Make-Believers pulled if off, going from pop-up retailer to brick-and-mortar in Baltimore, and Zach’s got the story.
