Blog Flume look at Crickets 2 by Sammy Harkham: “If all you knew about ‘alternative comics’ came from sources like the message boards at comicon.com, you might get the idea that an art comic or an art comics anthology is just autobiographical or fictional stories about guys whining or doing nothing. But, Crickets is a great response to any such argument.” + Harkham is the latest artist to illustrate a Penguin Graphic Classic [above] + A Charles Burns illustration [& lettering by Chris Ware] adorns the cover of Chip Kidd’s new novel, The Learners. Jackets Required discuss it. + The Daily Cross Hatch consider Chris Ware’s drawings for New York periodicals: “Anyone who has ever read or even glanced at a Chris Ware book knows that his work is anything but simple. Whether one narrative fills a given page, or five simultaneously, Ware’s method of story-telling is incredibly complex. His brilliance stems largely from his ability to play with and disrupt the clean, orderly flow of the comic strip without ever completely losing the reader. Sometimes he leads us right up to the edge of an abyss of confusion—but he never actually throws us in.”
Charles Burns meets Bat Segundo: “I was one of those types of people in varying degrees. Someone was asking me the other day, “Were you a punk?” I was there in all those concerts participating, but I never shaved my head or carved a swastika on my forehead. But yeah, I was there. I guess that’s what I wanted to do too — in the book, talk or just have a realistic look at the times I was growing in. There’s moments in there, even though they’re very sedate, that are very horrific to me. To be sitting in a room for four hours listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon get played over and over, and sitting around with a bunch of guys for hours and hours, is horrific to me.” + Comic Book Resources talk to Tony Millionaire: “I actually do the [Maakies] strip sober. I have to get it done Monday by the afternoon. But the Sock Monkey book, there’s no weekly deadline, so I’m pretty drunk when I do those. I do the penciling in the day when I’m sober. Then at night I settle down with some beer, turn on the radio and just get to work. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the morning and the last two panels are just a big mess. I have to redo them and Photoshop the new panels in. You can see it if you look through the book.” [via Journalista!] + Comics Reporter reviews Millionaire’s Maakies with the Wrinkled Knees. + Adrian Tomine, who has his own spiffing website, is interviewed by The Phoenix: “I have many, but one lifelong influence would have to be Charles Schulz and Peanuts. . . . There’s nothing, culturally speaking, I can enjoy the same way.” [via Journalista!] + Talking of Peanuts, an original 1952 strip of Charlie Brown & Schroeder at his piano sold for $31, 640 at auction recently [via Comics Reporter]
Alex Cox’s Repo Man will return, as a graphic novel & penned by Cox himself [C/R] + A Guy from Boston’s Guide to the Oscars, a Peter Bagge animation for Vanity Fair [Journalista] + The 21st-Century Adventures of Tintin :“Tintin Interferes in the Georgian Election, Tintin in Darfur, Tintin Blames America First” and so on [via Daily Cross Hatch] + More Tom Neely at The Daily Cross Hatch. On The Blot: “I had these little ideas of vignettes for different stories, and originally I thought that it might actually be a collection of short stories. I intended the first chapter to be sort of an opening that could be continued, but would stand on its own. At that point I thought it would be a series of short stories, based on different paintings that I had been doing. But then I had the idea of tying them altogether, so I sat down and wrote a plot. I ended up writing the whole thing out, before I actually started drawing it.” + Comics Reporter reviews by Jaime Hernandez. + Joe Sacco talks to The Montreal Gazette: “Comics are fluid and naturally entertaining. For example, you can seamlessly go back and forth in time as well as depict landscapes and figures in a way that can’t be done in prose writing or even in a documentary film. The atmosphere of a place - in Gaza it was the mud, destruction - that can be shown again and again. You can’t repeat descriptions too much in prose or in a film, but the mud in Gaza can follow me and the reader around in the comic book.” + An Inkstuds interview with Paul Hornschemeier [mp3]
A Short Story Festival, organised by 
