Spins A Web, Any Size – This Week’s Links
If all the internet has been collapsed into four or five social media platforms, what happens when they all break? I for one will be linking to this news column from my favorite anime web rings.
Article Archive
Aztec Ace: The Complete Collection
“They don’t make ’em like this anymore.” Both a true and false statement. But first, let us discuss what ‘this’ is. The Complete Aztec Ace is a crowdfunded Dark Horse/IT’S ALIVE! collection of the entire 15-issue run (plus extras) of a 1984-85 Eclipse Comics series by writer Doug Moench, initial penciller Michael Hernandez (aka Michael… Read more »
Visiting Short Run Comix & Arts Festival 2022
In addition to Chris Anthony Diaz’s photo coverage, TCJ went to Short Run 2022 and jotted down some notes on printing, satellite events vs. panel blocks, and the joys of seeing new comics, new faces and old friends in person.
Notes on Charles Johnson: Cartoonist, Radical
Aubrey Gabel examines a new collection of vintage gag comics by the National Book Award-winning novelist and academic Charles Johnson, situating them in the particularities of Black radicalism in the ’60s and ’70s.
Detention No. 2
This new release from Tim Hensley is probably his most straightforward comic to date, although you’d be missing some of its charm by leaving it at that. Detention No. 2 is a sibling book to 2015’s Sir Alfred No. 3—an homage to goofy celebrity branding comics of the ’50s & ’60s a la The Adventures… Read more »
Inside the World of Korea’s “Digital Snack Culture”
RJ Casey gets a peek behind the curtain of big money comics in this conversation with former Fantagraphics intern Jiwon Kim as she walks him through NSFW webcomics 101.
Hard to Hold a Candle – This Week’s Links
Never more violent has been the barbarous bearing of a cruel destiny.
Battle Action
Here’s an easy one: you lay in bed, or you sit in a bar, you drift off in a Zoom meeting, you’ve got a long commute. The same thoughts won’t leave you alone, memories of the things you loved as a child, the stories you pored over, the movies you rewatched obsessively. Maybe there were… Read more »
Losing Faith in Comics Translation
Are more accurate translations more faithful? Foreign comics in translation are among the best-selling works today – and Bart Hulley is here to ask the million dollar question of our automated age.
West #1-2
West opens on an idyllic panel of a peanut-shaped home with lots of windows at the edge of a dark forest. Song lyrics emanating from a radio float through the air, “flowers and weeds grow from the same soil, but the shovel cuts both for gold ore and oil.” This is the crux of the… Read more »
Big in Ohio: A Massive Justin Green Exhibit and CXC’s Triumphant Return
Two big reports in one post, as John Kelly attends Binky Brown’s Funeral Pyre, a memorial exhibition for the late underground pioneer currently running in Cincinnati, and Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, the 2022 edition of the popular east coast comics show.
Who Will Make the Pancakes: Five Stories
Now three decades into her career as a cartoonist, Megan Kelso’s newest book, Who Will Make the Pancakes, contains a spectrum of stories encompassing not only sex and birth but how the life that follows stays sustained. The volume is an intimate look at both external duties and the internal worlds behind them. The opening… Read more »
COVID, Comics & Manga: A Talk with Juan Albarran, the Mangaka from Spain
In this rare look at comics cultures in juxtaposition, Ritesh Babu & Ari Bard sit down with former DC Comics inker and current seinen manga artist Juan Albarran, one of relatively few western talents to headline a weekly serial for a major Japanese publisher.
The Blouse
Bastien Vivès has been causing a stir in the European comics scene over the last decade or so with his keen sense of character, fluid and loose drawing style, and ability to do effective work in a broad range of genres. (TCJ has discussed his work on the Prix-de-la-Série-winning Last Man here; included his A… Read more »
Joseph Greene, Comics Creator
A profile of an industrious Golden Age comic book writer, a collaborator with Jerry Robinson, Jack Kirby and Mort Meskin – one of the first to see his fortunes flower on television, before politics took its toll.
Seinen Manga Legend: Remembering Miyaya Kazuhiko
In this deeply personal reflection from 1997, Natsume Fusanosuke considers the work of the late gekiga artist Miyaya Kazuhiko (1945-2022), and how his early works embodied the aspirations of young Japanese readers in the late 1960s.
Blacksad: They All Fall Down – Part One
Blacksad is back after almost eight years, and it’s just what we need. There’s plenty of twists and intrigue in this Part One of a new storyline to keep the pages turning. You’ll want to do that slowly however, to give yourself plenty of time to take in the gorgeous Juanjo Guarnido artwork. Although the… Read more »
“We’re In An Unavoidable Age Of Twitter-metrics”: An Interview with Daniel Irizarri
Daniel Irizarri talks about his early self-published comics work, coming up via DeviantArt, working with a publisher versus Kickstarting a project, the current political and environmental challenges in his home of Puerto Rico, and how one does all these things while grappling with a hurricane.
Brad Bird on the Late Animator Ralph Eggleston
The filmmaker Brad Bird remembers Ralph Eggleston, a beloved colleague at Pixar Animation whose work in the animation field spanned over 30 years of theatrical films.
The Drew Friedman Interview
In this 1992 interview, Drew Friedman talks about his family, technique, photorealism, his love of “sub-celebrities” and ugly faces, and more.
Vincent Makoto Palani Kukua, November 5, 1976 – October 4, 2022
Andrew Farago looks back at the life of an artist and comics professional whose life–and deliberate kindness–affected all who worked with him.
Mickey Mouse: Zombie Coffee
As great as the meaty action up front is, when I watch old Mickey Mouse cartoons my attention always drifts into the deep focus of the beautifully painted backgrounds. The promise of a whole cartooned world out there in the cathodes, bathed in vivid color, subject to the pipecleaner physics and superball gravity that Mickey and… Read more »
