Fans of the Ignatz award-winning comic artist Keiler Roberts will not be disappointed by her latest autobiographical work, Rat Time. As in her other five books, the artist serves up a series of entertaining slice-of-life vignettes about the daily life of her family of three. Unlike her previous collection Chlorine Gardens, which addressed important milestones… Read more »
It’s easier to name publications Ken Landgraf didn’t work for than to name all the ones he did. Get ready for a firehose of history, and make sure you stay seated long enough to hear about the experience of working for magazines like Whitetail Deer Hunter & Tactical Knives.
Dr. Murder and the Island of Death suggests its ambitions early. The comic begins with a full-page drawing of Earth before a multi-panel zoom-in on the volcanic lair of its title character. The island is an evil hideout as a microcosm, with supervillain kitsch belying the story’s bigger concerns: isolation, the nature of the self,… Read more »
This past weekend has seen a steady stream of allegations against Canadian graphic novel and horror publisher Chizine, resulting in the publisher and managing editor’s resignation. Alec Berry has the story.
Having established her comics bonafides with her graphic novel series Angel Catbird, a collaboration with artist Johnnie Christmas, legendary prose writer Margaret Atwood’s second major modern comics work didn’t come as quite as much a surprise, nor did it receive quite as much attendant attention and coverage. That’s understandable, but also sort of unfortunate, as… Read more »
When do you get your complimentary drink? Don’t just guess–there’s a right answer! Dylan Edwards, Diary style!
Allow Flanders to cut through the chaff, to slice the wheat, to provide you the gluten that will cause your comics story to rise: it’s time for all the news, reviews and interviews you’ll need to make it through another week!
Screwball follows an isolated strain of comics history as opposed to those other books that tell the whole lot decade by decade or by lining up a canon of masters. Which is not say it isn’t linear: from Fred Opper to Boody Rogers, editor Paul Tumey locates fifteen cartoonists in a singular furrow, giving each… Read more »
Plot amnesia is a popular trope because it’s such a useful way to advance a narrative. In the Bourne films, or Captain Marvel, or any number of pop culture stories, the hero doesn’t remember their backstory. They have to discover who they are and what they’re supposed to be doing, and at the same time… Read more »
“I don’t think about it in that way. At this point, that’s the way that I draw and the way that I write. It’s not a choice. It’s just the way I do it.”
Another day, another Cartoonist’s Diary entry, another opportunity to potentially frustrate the locals with tourist-style mishaps!
Are you ready to get spit on? Because if you’re not, you might be in the wrong room. Dylan has the deets!
Couldn’t make it to Germany for the boundary incinerating installment of Comicfestival? Never fear. Boots were on the ground, worn by Heike & Oliver, and they’re here to catch you up on everything you missed. And it’s a lot!
Choreographed heavy metal crowd work: there’s more to translation than merely the spoken word. Dylan Edwards is ready to play catch-up, in today’s Cartoonist’s Diary!
I’m a democratic socialist. The ‘democratic’ part is very important to me, and it’s important to a lot of other people too, because when you live in America and identify as a socialist, you have to spend a lot of time explaining that you don’t want to send everyone off to a prison camp. (I,… Read more »
Alex Dueben attempts to catch up with Mark Waid, one of the most prolific and successful comic writers of the last three decades, and while he can’t quite cover it all–they certainly cover a good bit of what has kept Waid’s creative fires burning on books like Archie, Daredevil, Superman: Birthright, Impulse and his latest, Ignited.
Dylan Edwards is in Japan, and so is heavy metal band Mejibray. Can Dylan make it through the evening, or will drink ticket politics stymie a dream? A new Cartoonist Diary begins!
The 7 Deadly Sins is a two-fisted tale full of crosses, double-crosses and enough blood to surf from San Antonio to the Gulf. Set between Texas and Comanche land (Comancheria) in 1867, The 7 Deadly Sins sets a septet of bad hombres and las mujeres on a suicide mission to return a child stolen from… Read more »
In this week’s links, Ryan Flanders bemoans the Brooklyn youth of today; not their politics, not their art, not their choice of chain restaurants…but their lack of interest in Halloween costumes related to Russell Myers Broom-Hilda character.
In, The Death of the Master, one of the characters, fairly early on, says, “If you have a belief in your heart and you keep it there[,] it will almost certainly be real before you know it.” And this, in a way, is the book’s thesis. Suppose you believe in something for so long you’re… Read more »
Raina Telgemeier’s work may feature a child-protagonist and may be read by children, but her compositional complexity within and across her autobiographical graphic narratives is as thoughtful and nuanced as the comics medium permits. It’s not good because it’s popular: it’s popular because it really is that good.
What happens when a dedicated insomniac reviews a book about a man who cannot sleep? Action as you have never seen.
Michel Fiffe returns with another look at a bin denizen of the not-so-recent past: Tom Tenney, whose work on the Marvel series Force Works brought a whole bunch of words that, according to Michel, were completely unnecessary.
