Joe McCulloch is here with his usual indispensable guide to the Week in Comics, highlighting the best-sounding books coming to stores tomorrow. His spotlight picks this time include new comics by Miriam Libicki and William Cardini.
We also have day two of Dash Shaw's tenure creating A Cartoonist's Diary. Today he talks about receiving the French edition of Cosplayers: Perfect Collection.
I got the French edition of Cosplayers: Perfect Collection in the mail. This collection is maybe more "perfect" than the U.S. one because it has the Christmas Special in it, which will come out later this year as a separate pamphlet comic in the States. Apparently, Christmas Specials are not a thing in France, so it wouldn't make sense for it be a separate item. Seeing this French edition is cool for me a few different reasons... One is that the issues never came out in France. I redrew and corrected and added a bunch of things for the collection, so France will only see the better versions.
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
—Interviews & Profiles. Vice speaks to MariNaomi about her Cartoonists of Color database.
So you hear the question, "What people of color cartoonists?" a lot?
I’ve heard this so much over the years that’s it’s just rote. “There aren’t any black people in comics.” “You have to write for men, because women don’t read comics.” The people who say that shit aren’t doing their homework. Apparently we're doing their homework for them.
Michael Cavna talks to Keith Knight.
[My strips about police brutality] are getting more attention than they used to. Someone who worked at a museum in St. Louis said she first discovered my work because someone was posting my comics around St. Louis during the Ferguson protests. I thought that was really cool.
People aren’t nearly as naive or ignorant about it as they were even a few years ago. And it excites me that we seem to be entering into a new era of activism and active protest amongst the masses. Athletes, students and others are stepping up and speaking out.
And he also talks to Ed Piskor.
I think when I started getting significant birthday/Christmas money to spend is when I started thinking hard about how that cash could be invested in my career as a cartoonist. The money would go to comics, and not [to] little bags of weed or cigarettes like normal kids. It was really mind-blowing to see the credits on the splash pages of comics, because it let me know that actual human beings created them, and not just some computer program or something.
Dominic Wells has an epic-length interview with Alan Moore.
“Here it was,” Moore says, pointing to an unprepossessing stone wall underneath a bridge that’s so low that he has to stoop. “That’s where industry and free-market conservatism were born. It [the machinery] was driving three looms, these looms would work without anybody to look after them, they’d just employ a few children to sweep out the corners and unsnag the machines if they got snagged, and immediately of course all the local cottage industries collapsed.
“So a little while after that, Adam Smith came to visit and he saw these machines working with nobody to work them, and he said ‘oh that’s marvellous, it’s like there’s a hidden hand’, then ‘ooh, that would make a nice metaphor for freemarket capitalism’. And that’s why we have this completely mystical notion that doesn’t exist, this is why Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher said that it was OK to deregulate the banks; we didn’t need market control because there was hidden hand! And now here we are.”
Steven Heller talks to Drew Friedman about his second Heroes of the Comics collection.
At this point, so much has been written in comics history books and comics magazine articles and online tribute groups that it’s rare you’ll find an unheralded genius from that era. Everyone seems to have a Facebook tribute book these days. But there are a few innovative cult comics artists who perhaps are not as well-known as they should be, maybe because their styles were a little more oddball than the norm. A few that come to mind include Ogden Whitney, who I included in the first book. He was a master of deadpan absurdity and his comic book adventures of the lollypop sucking Herbie, the “Fat Fury,” really jumped out at me. I also include in the new book the notorious publisher Myron Fass, actually two drawings of him in More Heroes of the Comics. He started out as a comic book artist, but he’s fascinating because his publishing career basically consisted of shamelessly and successfully ripping off what other publishers were having success with, like MAD, and Creepy & Eerie.
The latest guest on Virtual Memories is Tom Gauld.
On the latest episode of Inkstuds, Sean Ford interviews Tillie Walden.
