Valentine’s Day Is Over – This Week’s Links
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Article Archive
Who Built the Mouse in the House the Mouse Built?
Steven Brower details the lineage of famous public domain cartoon character Mickey Mouse, who is not the great man of history, but instead one of several cats, rabbits, foxes, etc., before and after.
Arrivals and Departures – February 2024
The classic burden: too many comics. Yes, RJ Casey bought too many comics at November’s Short Run Comix & Arts Festival – too many for last month, so here’s an extra-long column reviewing the rest of ’em.
Juliette
Perhaps the cleverest trick Juliette pulls off is its simple title, printed large on the cover of the book above an alternate title, “The Ghosts Return in the Spring.” It is a book about a family’s reckoning with figurative ghosts during a troublesome few weeks, sure, but set atop the compelling family drama is a… Read more »
The War on Gaza – 2.13.24
This is the fourth installment of Joe Sacco’s column, “The War on Gaza.”
Hypericum
No two consecutive Manuele Fior books have looked much alike until now, although they have always felt like the same mind at work: thinking about craft, and mark-making through that craft. This line of inquiry doesn’t necessarily rule out vivid emotion beaming into a reader’s quivering cortex at 10,000 volts, but Fior might not have… Read more »
“I Will Always Choose Reality”: Dave McKean, Retrospective
An extensive talk with one of the most instantly recognizable stylists of the past 35 years, on the occasion of a mammoth new retrospective, Thalamus: The Art of Dave McKean.
Friday Night’s A Great Night (For Football) – This Week’s Links
The Super Bowl is this weekend?! Pilot, turn this jet around!
John G. Miller, 1954-2024
Cartoonist and publisher Rob Miller eulogizes the Scottish underground cartoonist John G. Miller, who died this past January, aged 69.
Hexagon Bridge #1-5
A word, then, for the pamphlet comic book. Oh, you groan, that old thing. Didn’t we dump that by the wayside? Well, we did, sort of. They still make them, you know. Yes, the new superhero comics can feel a bit thin between the fingers. Buffered only by house ads, put together on computers so… Read more »
Natsume Sōseki and Manga
We are pleased to present a brief essay by the late manga historian Shimizu Isao, an expert on Meiji period cartooning; here, he elucidates the connections between early 20th century literary titan Natsume Sōseki and the cartoonists of his day.
Welcome Home
When longtime socialist writer and activist Lois Weiner recommended me Welcome Home by sisters Clarrie & Blanche Pope (both wrote while Clarrie drew), I wasn’t sure what to expect. The subject matter seemed very distant, both physically and metaphorically. I’m a man living in Metro Detroit; what do I know about a London-based queer love… Read more »
The War on Gaza – 2.6.24
This is the third installment of Joe Sacco’s column, “The War on Gaza.”
Dwellings #1-3
Despite having honed an aesthetic that relies heavily on cute, streamlined cartoon characters–the kind you used to find on Saturday morning television–Jay Stephens has had one foot firmly planted in darkness throughout his career. Take, for example, the first issue of The Land of Nod (Black Eye Books, 1996), which ends with the Magilla-like Space… Read more »
“Girls Like Us”: Karina Shor & Natalie Norris in Conversation about the Perils and Triumphs of Making Graphic Memoirs About Trauma
Natalie Norris and Karina Shor are cartoonists who released debut longform comics in 2023; both were memoirs depicting trauma in their lives. In this conversation, they discuss their intent, their process, and the effect of this work on their daily lives.
Year One
Inspired by DC’s recent “Facsimile Edition” reprinting of Batman: Year One as four comic books, with all the ads and letters from 1986-87, Tegan O’Neil writes about everything surrounding that classic story.
The War on Gaza – 1.31.24
This is the second installment of Joe Sacco’s column, “The War on Gaza.”
H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth
There is a certain expectation when an adaptation chooses to put the name of the original author in its title. Renounce all other versions, only this particular take can do the work justice. Of course, the very nature of an being an adaptation from one medium to another means things will have to change; Bram… Read more »
Martí, 1955-2024
Remembering a key figure in Spanish alternative comics as the 1970s became the ’80s, best known to English readers for The Cabbie, a grimly funny vision of authoritarian mania in a comic strip vein.
The Collected Audra Show Vol. 1
Some comics you can feel straining against the self-imposed constraints of their form. Open any given page of The Collected Audra Show, compiling the first six issues of Audra Stang’s self-published anthology, and you will find a work as structurally well-behaved as anything present on a daily newspaper page (or its modern-day webcomic successor, I… Read more »
Three Years of Thick Lines: An Interview with Sally Madden and Katie Skelly
RJ Casey interviews Sally Madden & Katie Skelly, cartoonists and hosts of the popular Thick Lines podcast, now celebrating its three-year anniversary.
The War on Gaza – 1.26.24
Joe Sacco has been a writer, an editor, and a cartoonist since the 1980s. He is the author of Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza, among more than one dozen books. “The War on Gaza” is a completely new and recurring feature of this website.
Over The Land Freckled With Snow – This Week’s Links
Call the cops! No, not those cops; the news cops. No, not those news cops; the cops that congratulate you on reading the news. You’ve got a citation coming.
