Today we present the second part of my interview with the great Tim Hensley. This time, he talks a lot more about comics in general, as well as his own Wally Gropius, closed captioning, Alfred Hitchcock, serialization, and his latest project.
[Hensley:] You know, actually in general, a lot of times if I get confused about the process of writing something, I’m more interested in somebody who’s a novelist than reading about a cartoonist’s process, because at least with a novelist they’re used to the idea of failure and something that takes a long time [laughs]. Sometimes with comics they just wanna say like, oh, I’m prolific and there’s a lot of things, and everything’s going well.
[Hodler:] It’s interesting you say that because I feel like the prevailing stereotype these days about cartoonists is that they’re all, you know, lonely…
Like a self-loathing kind of thing, you mean?Yeah, I feel like that’s normally what people say about modern cartoonists, that that’s the image that’s promulgated.
But that’s considered more what their expression is or what their work is about, more than it’s not that there’s a small amount of it [laughter]. You know, like, Joe Matt seems prolific to me.
It’s been a long time since Spent came out.
I’ve seen him around the city in the past and he said he was working on more comics.
Oh, that’s good.
Sometimes it seems likes he’s bragging that he’s not working. I don’t really know him at all.
I don’t know him well either but he does seem to make fun of himself in his comics, and get joy out of making himself look as bad as possible.
Yeah, I admire that [laughter].
Elsewhere:
—Reviews & Commentary. For Open Letters Monthly, Joanna Scutts reviews Joe Sacco's The Great War. Samantha Meier looks at the feminist context of Wimmen's Comix.
—Interviews. J. Caleb Mozzocco talks to Michael DeForge about his new Ant Colony. On the anniversary of what would have been William S. Burroughs's 100th birthday, James Reich talks to his artistic collaborator Malcolm Mc Neill.
—News. Chester Gould's family has donated a collection of original Dick Tracy-related art to the Billy Ireland library. Also, Koyama Press has announced its fall 2014 lineup, including books by Renee French, Patrick Kyle, and Michael DeForge.
