Joe McCulloch is here with his usual guide to the Week in Comics, highlighting the most interesting-sounding books new to stores. This week, his Halloween-appropriate spotlight picks include new titles by Julia Gfrörer and Rick Geary.
Rarely do I encounter a perfect All Souls' Day comic, but Julia Gfrörer is a rare talent - wholly committed to a completely distinct vision and just going for it over and over again.
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
—Interviews & Profiles. Dilbert creator Scott Adams talks to Michael Cavna about his Donald Trump boosterism and "Master Persuader" theories. (I so wish Kim Thompson were still here, so he and Gary could do a part II of this epic argument.)
“My speaking career ended because of this,” the Bay Area-based cartoonist said of his once-lucrative side business.
Although his book sales have stayed healthy, Adams said that many off-put readers now view “Dilbert” through more critical glasses, which has affected his licensing sales. All told, Adams said, his income has dipped precipitously.
Yet the Reuben Award-winner says he regrets none of it.
Xavier Guilbert talks to Sammy Harkham.
I mean, I’m always looking at stuff. I’m seeing stuff from Japan, I like a lot of the older comics, but with Kramers, I realize there’s a certain thing that I go for. I like work that regardless of the decade that it’s made in, feels very relevant today. So it fits in aesthetically with everything else. So — with the stuff we’ve reprinted in the past, because we’ve also did Marc Smeets. So when we reprint something, it’s important to me that for the person flipping through, it all feels cohesive, you know ? Sometimes, there’s works that I like, that I’m like — argh, I don’t think that Kramers is the right place for this. Maybe I can help get it published as its own book, or do something with it. But for Kramers, it has to hit this sort of sweet spot of a very particular kind of comic.
A Case for Pencils talks to Best American Comics series editor Bill Kartalopoulos.
In general, my job is to consider all of the comics that come to us through our open submission process and to keep my eyes open and reach out to artists and publishers to make sure we’re getting all of the work that we should be seeing and considering. I end up with countless piles of comics in many forms: graphic novels from large publishers, small hand-stapled zines self-published by artists, comics published online, and pretty much anything else you can think of. We’ll take anything as long as it’s previously published (in print or online) within the past year and is by a North American artist (which includes Canada and Mexico). I consider all of these works and select a pool of about 120 comics to send to each year’s Guest Editor, who then chooses the approximately thirty pieces that will go into the final volume.
The Hollywood Reporter talks to Frank Miller about Batman movies and his desire to create a Superman book exploring his Jewish roots.
When you tell a superhero story you tell it in broad strokes. You don’t sneak you message in. I would love to see the visuals of Superman facing a Panzer tank and the emotional release of him smashing a place like [the] Buchenwald [concentration camp].
The Arkansas International talks to NYR Comics editor Gabriel Winslow-Yost.
I do think there’s sometimes been a tendency, when non-comics publishers approach comics, to focus on books that do recognizably “serious” things: nonfiction comics on worthy subjects, and graphic novels with elaborate literary structures and characters. It’s a way of saying that hey, comics can do it too — they’re real books! And plenty of really good comics fall into those categories, including some that we’ll be doing. But I think that what’s most interesting and exciting about comics is not how they can do what prose novels or journalism already do, but that they can do things no other medium can: how they form something unique and powerful, with its own possibilities to be explored.
The most recent guest on the Virtual Memories podcast is Jim Woodring.
The most recent guest on Process Party is Matt Furie.
—News. Tim Pilcher has written The Guardian's obituary of Steve Dillon.
When asked “What do you like to draw?”, the comic artist Steve Dillon would reply: “A good story.” That retort explains why he was considered one of the best exponents of his craft, both by fans and by fellow creators. “I’m not one of these artists into drawing giant robots or soldiers or big-titted women,” he said. “Because, for me, it’s all about the story … The acting side of comics is quite important to me. The facial expressions, how they interact and all that sort of thing.”
Lynda Barry has been chosen as the University of Wisconsin’s first recipient of the Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art.
—Commentary. Christian Heymans writes about the scandalous manga of Go Nagai.
The economic development and the social and political upheavals profoundly changed the Japanese way of life and the manga industry had to adapt. The Dankai generation, the baby boomers, who constituted the main readership of the school-life themed manga in the post-war period, and who had now grown up, were receiving more pocket money or their first salaries. The moralistic stories and good-mannered heroes of their childhoods no longer suited the tastes of these teenagers and young adults. Manga publishers did not want to lose these readers whose expectations they still had to meet. Elements that were once considered taboo (sex, violence, scatology) were introduced one by one in humoristic manga as well as action and adventure stories in order to accommodate this masculine readership.
