Well, this is my last blog post of the year. I know you'll miss my begrudging, skimpy link-blogging for the next week or so. But I'll be back! And we're leaving you with some goodies.
We have Tim's interview with cartoonist and Uncivilized Books publisher Tom Kaczynski:
Uncivilized was at first created mainly as a self-publishing vehicle. At some point, I was talking to Gabrielle [Bell], because she was coming to Minneapolis for the Rain Taxi Festival, and we decided to do this mini-comic together. It was just a one-off for this show, but it went really well, we got some good feedback on it, and we decided to make more of them. In the meantime, I thought, “Well, it’s kind of fun to do other people’s books.” So I started adding other artists to the mix, with Jon Lewis and Dan Wieken, who’s an artist in Minneapolis. At some point Gabrielle decided not to do The Voyeurs at Drawn & Quarterly, and asked me if I wanted to do the book. At that point I was just a mini-comics publisher. It took me a while to think about it. To really do justice to that book, I would have to become a proper publisher. That’s where it started snowballing. Once I said yes to that book, I was like, “Okay, distribution, I gotta figure that out. I gotta figure out where this is gonna get printed, I gotta figure out all that stuff.” Started making a plan to become a publisher, which is where I’m at now, I guess.
And we here's Hayley Campbell with an essay on complaining, awards, and women in comics:
i. that the British comics industry (in particular) will whinge (an English, whinier version of whine) itself out of existence, and ii. that WOMEN IN COMICS (campaigners, agenda-ers) are ruining it for women in comics. Hey wait, come back. Let me bend your ear a second.
Elsewhere:
The late John Updike on Big Little Books.
Those Burning in Hell boys on Mike Mignola.
And via R. Fiore, "the Terrytoons version of The Juggler of Our Lady, from 1958, which was probably Deitch's second best picture after Munro. This is a pan-and-scan version, but I've seen it a couple of times in full size Cinemascope. It was designed by Blechman [from Blechman's graphic novel] and narrated by Boris Karloff, which might have given Chuck Jones ideas."
