“To foster acceptance of any aspect of the human condition, to nurture enjoyment of it, and to vanquish meaningless guilt seem to me to be acts of high morality: such acts elevate the human spirit. If this be pornography, we need more of it.”
Helen takes a fresh look at Steve Ditko’s creativity under the content restrictions of the 1950s: a force that burned brighter than the comics code, by embodying the code’s ideology with a perfection the censors couldn’t match.
The Ignatz-winning cartoonist and Six Chix contributor sets the record straight in a wide-ranging discussion of vision, editors, comedy, and telling the story.
Closing things out with a book report, the return home, some difficult news: François’s vacation (and his Cartoonist’s Diary) come to a close.
Don’t walk into the weekend without knowledge cresting your brainpan: what if someone demands you provide it? Clark’s rounded up all the news, reviews and comics related blues that you could ever require in one handy dandy omnibus–all that’s required is that you settle in and allow it to imprint itself across your mental chassis. Get to clicking, childhood Savior!
NFTs have made their way into comics. Did they bring the sewage with them, or was the sewage already there? Artyom is on the frontlines, and he’s here to explain!
There can be no more direct and simple description of the adventures our intrepid explorers take this very day then these two words: limestone cowboy!
Today, François pulls back the curtain to show off the trusty steed that serves as chariot for the road trip these diaries depict: and speaking of depictions, today’s whale is still alive!
Check out an excerpt from the latest Iron Circus Comics comics anthology You Died, featuring new work by Casey Gilley and Raina Telgemeier!
James Romberger takes a look at 2021’s hit biography of Stan Lee from journalist Abraham Reisman and ask: how honest are we willing to get, this time around?
Will François’s visit to a Canadian lighthouse turn out like the lighthouse experience depicted in the movie with Willem Dafoe? Only a keen reader of today’s Cartoonist’s Diary will know the answer, unless somebody spoils it for them first. Don’t do that!
Today, one week will become two, as we’ll be joining François Vigneault for his travels along Canada’s Côte-Nord. In this installment, kayaks, subwoofers and Dan Brown make an appearance!
Zara Slattery talks about how she took her experience in a coma (and her husband’s diary he wrote while she lay in it) and turned it into a comic, the mythology that informed its narrative, and the thick-skinned life she’s lived since the experience.
Is comics just one long series of distribution related soap operas that will never die? No, you bozo! It’s an artform with a whole breadth of soap operas that will never die! Why, each week there’s a whole list of news, reviews and interviews to captivate and delight you–why, here’s a bunch now, collected in link form!
A stack of books–new editions of John Porcellino’s King-Cat collections from Drawn & Quarterly–sends our writer into a voyage of discovery regarding the influential cartoonist, whom he now reads for the first time.
We look back at the life and career of the beloved cartoonist, musician & animator Gary Leib, who passed away late last week.
When he couldn’t find a publisher for the radical cartoons of the early 20th Century, Michael Mark Cohen took to the internet. The result, Cartooning Capitalism, remains a one-stop history and engagement lesson in the power of cartooning, and the power that cartooning depicts.
The NEWS is here. It is NEWS ABOUT COMICS. There are REVIEWS. There are STORIES AND THOUGHTS. You can find them all now, you can feel them all NOW. Ask Clark and he will tell YOU.
This week’s Cartoonist’s Diary comes at you in one extreme, recognizably dramatic installment: join Michael Olivo as he and a very special guest deal with existential and creative ennui via illustrative assault. Or do they?
The written correspondence of Steve Ditko is so voluminous that even now, three years after his passing, readers are still sharing their conversations with the legend. Robert Elder looks at his own conversations with Ditko, a couple of recent non-fiction titles that utilize some of the letters, and examines the scope of this part of the Ditko’s life.
CW: This post contains explicit, drawn pornographic images. In this conversation from The Comics Journal #280 (January 2007), Frank Thorne talks about a cartooning career that ultimately spanned more than 60 years. He worked in genres such as SF, sword and sorcery and history on comic books and strips — most notably, on Marvel’s Red Sonja title — before following his bliss.
Another Friday arrives, and its time for the comics biz to rest its head: but not yours, art-loving-zealot! You’ve got news to read, interviews to click on and critical essays to ponder. Clark’s got them all lined up for you–join him now, on the other side of forever!
A true original, Frank Thorne’s career was a testament to joy, pleasure and rapacious creativity–and a hell of a lot of craft. In this obituary, Matt Seneca touches upon some of the many high points, following Thorne’s passing earlier this week.
