The Forbidden Planet Blog on the Jeff Smith Bone and Beyond exhibition in Ohio + Johnny Ryan on restrictions imposed by Vice Magazine: “No boners and no Nazis, so I did ‘Chief Sitting Bullshit Versus Nazi Penis.’ That one never made it to print, but it did go up on the website and I remember there was a lot of feedback.” + Dazed & Confused go to the zoo with Tony Millionaire and ask him why cartoonist are fond of humanising animals: “It’s hard to explain why something works. If it happens to be funny that a duck is shooting you, then you just do it. Ducks are funny.” + Heidi MacDonald on the new New Wave of graphic artists: Jeff Lemire, Dash Shaw, Hope Larson and, a favourite of mine, Eleanor Davis of Little House Comics + The Daily Cross Hatch talk to Jessica Abel: “[Readers] assumed that the Artbabe character, who was on the cover, was me, which she isn’t. The stories, not so much, because often they don’t have a female protagonist. I didn’t get that as much. But I get that all the time with La Perdida—people think it’s autobiographical.” + Dan Clowes‘ ‘Man’s Best Friend’ on the cover of the New Yorker + Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman and Rory Hayes in the Virginia Quarterly Review + Forbidden Planet give Marc Ellerby some love: “Autobio has it’s own sort of cliche and stereotype that the medium often falls into and more often than not, new work produced has hints of Tomine, James Kochalka, Jeffrey Brown and therefore doesn’t stand on it’s own rather it’s a just a poor cover version. With my book Venal Muse and like wise with my personality I try to engage the reader as much as I can, inviting them to relate to what I’m saying or question if I’m wrong or if they have a different viewpoint. As I with all my autobio stuff I just try to write stories that people can go “oh this reminded me of such and such” or “oh I do that too!” I think sometimes with Joe Matt or Chris Ware they can often alienate the reader because they’re so self critical and self deprecating, personally I find it a bit tiresome, I mean they can be endlessly harsh on themselves that it’s sometimes hard for the reader to care.” More Ellerbisms + Megan Kelso is interviewed by The Daily Titan: “If the creator leaves things a little open - I leave space for you, the reader, to have your own thoughts about what it’s all about - that’s definitely my favorite kind of art. The kind that kind of respects my intelligence and assumes that I will have my own thoughts about what it all means. That’s definitely the work that I’m trying to do.” [via Journalista!] + Drawn & Quarterly share some pages from John Porcellino’s just-released Thoreau at Walden + Paul Gravett on Herge + Michel Faber on Jack Kirby: “One of Kirby’s plentiful woes was Marvel’s insistence that he did not own his art; it was the company’s to keep or dispose of at will. Obsessed with providing for his family, Jack drew 14 hours a day, seven days a week, “chained to the board” in a windowless basement cubicle he called the Dungeon, haunted by the fact that when he became too old to work, he would have nothing to sell. After a protracted “Shame-on-you” campaign by the most renowned figures in the comics world, Marvel returned a crateload of pages to the seriously ill 70-year-old, and it is from this retrieved booty, and from disparate pieces in private collections.”
First posted: Tuesday, May 13th, 2008.
