Comic History and Culture

Cover images: Chris Ware, R. F. Outcault

[danismm]

The Tiny Universe of Dot Screens

[tomorrowandbeyond]

[wilwheaton]

Love these storyboards from the old Batman TV series.

[ottopress]

[neil-gaiman]

Click here to support Neil Gaiman Will Do A Reading Of The Cheesecake Factory Menu If We Raise $500K For Refugees by Sara Benincasa

I asked Neil Gaiman if he'd do a live reading of the Cheesecake Factory menu if I raised $500,000 for a charity of his choice. And because he's not just a great artist but a great person, he said yes. He chose UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. I want to hit this goal by World Refugee Day on June 20. You read that right. If we hit $500K, Neil has kindly agreed to do a live reading of the greatest restaurant menu of all time. It's about 8000 pages, last time I checked. Have you heard Neil's voice? Mellifluous, I tell you. There's a reason he won an award for audiobooks along with all the 18,000 other things he's won as an author/screenwriter/producer/raconteur/hero. FYI, the hashtag for this silliness is #neilcake. Why? Because it is silly and good. I'll arrange with Neil at his convenience to do the reading within the next year in a public setting, whether onstage or online. If it's onstage, I'll sell tickets and donate profits after costs to UNHCR. Regardless, I will make the event available to the general public via livestream or a lovely video you can watch later whilst weeping at the beauty of Neil Gaiman saying "avocado egg rolls." You think you loved "American Gods" or "Sandman" or "Good Omens" or his "Doctor Who" episodes or the other 18,000 great things he's written? This will almost certainly be better or at least ...

This is a real thing. We’re at over $42,000 already! I think she might actually pull it off…

[neil-gaiman]

And now it’s over $76,000. Tell the world. 

[theybby-deactivated20231001]

Mexican/lantix and Arab/Mena in Michigan, please be careful, ice agents are starting​ to raid restaurants, they’re doing the arrest now and check later policy and even though some have proper paperwork, they’ll find a flaw in the immigration contract and try / will deport you. Please stay safe, especially those who work in Arabic and Mexican restaurants.

[theybby-deactivated20231001]

Please boost!

[retrofitcomics]

Preview of How to be Alive by Tara Booth. Available via the Retrofit Comics Kickstarter. 

[theillustratedarchives]

Assorted strips from The Bus, by Paul Kirchner.

[comiccurate-blog]

I haven't posted in a while, but I've been a bit busy with a big project. I thought I'd offer a few process shots in lieu of a real post. (Fun fact: I stole that ruler from a grade schooler.)

[comiccurate-blog]

Charles Burns (born September 27, 1955) is an American cartoonist and illustrator.

Charles Burns’ earliest works include illustrations for the Sub Pop fanzine, andAnother Room Magazine of Oakland, California, but he came to prominence when his comics were published for the first time in early issues of RAW, the avant-garde comics magazine founded in 1980 by Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman. In 1982, Burns did a die-cut cover for RAW #4. Raw Books also published two books of Burns as RAW One-Shots: Big Baby and Hard-Boiled Defective Stories. In 1994, he was awarded a Pew Fellowships in the Arts. In 1999, he showed at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Most of Burns’ short stories, published in various supports over the decades, were later collected in the three volumes of the “Charles Burns’ Library” (hardcovers fromFantagraphics Books): El Borbah (1999), Big Baby (2000), and Skin Deep (2001). (A fourth and last volume, Bad Vibes, has yet to be published, which would have the Library collecting the entirety of his pre-Black Holecomics work. It was later stated that Burns did not feel there was enough material for a complete fourth volume.)

From 1993 to 2004, he serialized the 12 chapters of his Harvey Award-winning graphic novel Black Hole (12 issues from Kitchen Sink Press and Fantagraphics Books). The series was collected into a single volume in 2005. Black Hole was featured prominently in the film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

In 2007 Burns contributed material for the French made animated horror anthologyFear(s) of the Dark.

In October 2010, Burns released the first part of a new series, X'ed Out. Part two of the new trilogy, The Hive, was released in October 2012. Sugar Skull, the final installment in the trilogy, was released Fall of 2014.

Burns’ high-profile illustrations include album cover work for the Iggy Pop album Brick by Brick. His art was also licensed by The Coca-Cola Company to illustrate product and advertising material for their failed OK Sodaproduct. More recently, he has worked on advertising campaigns for Altoids and portrait illustrations for The Believer. In the early 1990s, his Dogboy stories were adapted byMTV as a live-action serial for Liquid Television. In 1991, choreographer Mark Morris commissioned him to create illustrations that were then used as a basis for his version of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, calling it The Hard Nut. Burns’s style was a source of inspiration for Martin Ander’s artwork for Fever Ray, Karin Dreijer Andersson’s solo project.

(Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Burns_(cartoonist))

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George Joseph Herriman (August 22, 1880 – April 25, 1944) was an American cartoonist best known for the comic strip Krazy Kat(1913–1944). More influential than popular,Krazy Kat had an appreciative audience among those in the arts. Gilbert Seldes' article "The Krazy Kat Who Walks by Himself" was the earliest example of a critic from the high arts giving serious attention to a comic strip.The Comics Journal placed the strip first on its list of the greatest comics of the 20th century. Herriman's work has been a primary influence on cartoonists such as Will Eisner,Charles M. Schulz, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Bill Watterson, and Chris Ware. Herriman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, to mulatto Creole parents, and grew up in Los Angeles. After he graduated from high school in 1897, he worked in the newspaper industry as an illustrator and engraver. He moved on to cartooning and comic strips—a medium then in its infancy—and drew a variety of strips until he introduced his most famous character, Krazy Kat, in his strip The Dingbat Family in 1910. A Krazy Kat daily strip began in 1913, and from 1916 the strip also appeared on Sundays. It was noted for its poetic, dialect-heavy dialogue; its fantastic, shifting backgrounds; and its bold, experimental page layouts. In the strip's main motif, Ignatz Mouse pelted Krazy with bricks, which the naïve, androgynous Kat interpreted as symbols of love. As the strip progressed, a love triangle developed between Krazy, Ignatz, and Offisa Pupp. Herriman lived most of his life in Los Angeles, but made frequent trips to the Navajo deserts in the southwestern U.S. He was drawn to the landscapes of Monument Valley and theEnchanted Mesa, and made Coconino Countythe location of his Krazy Kat strips. His artwork made much use of Navajo and Mexican themes and motifs against shifting desert backgrounds. He was a prolific cartoonist who produced a large number of strips and illustrated Don Marquis's books of poetry about Archy and Mehitabel, an alley cat and a cockroach. Newspaper magnateWilliam Randolph Hearst was a proponent of Herriman and gave him a lifetime contract with King Features Syndicate, which guaranteed Herriman a comfortable living and an outlet for his work despite its lack of popularity. (Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herriman#)

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Zenas Winsor McCay (c. 1867–71 or September 26, 1869 – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo (1905–14; 1924–26) and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). For contractual reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. From a young age, McCay was a quick, prolific, and technically dextrous artist. He started his professional career making posters and performing for dime museums, and began illustrating newspapers and magazines in 1898. He joined the New York Herald in 1903, where he created popular comic strips such as Little Sammy Sneeze andDream of the Rarebit Fiend. In 1905, his signature strip Little Nemo in Slumberlanddebuted, a fantasy strip in an Art Nouveaustyle, about a young boy and his adventurous dreams. The strip demonstrated McCay's strong graphic sense and mastery of color and linear perspective. McCay experimented with the formal elements of the comic strip page, arranging and sizing panels to increase impact and enhance the narrative. McCay also produced numerous detailed editorial cartoons and was a popular performer ofchalk talks on the vaudeville circuit. McCay was an early animation pioneer; between 1911 and 1921 he self-financed and animated ten films, some of which survive only as fragments. The first three served in his vaudeville act; Gertie the Dinosaur was an interactive routine in which McCay appeared to give orders to a trained dinosaur. McCay and his assistants worked for twenty-two months on his most ambitious film, The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), a patriotic recreation of the German torpedoing in 1915of the RMS Lusitania. Lusitania did not enjoy as much commercial success as the earlier films, and McCay's later movies attracted little attention. His animation, vaudeville, and comic strip work was gradually curtailed as newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, his employer since 1911, expected McCay to devote his energies to editorial illustrations. In his drawing, McCay made bold, prodigious use of linear perspective, particularly in detailed architecture and cityscapes. He textured his editorial cartoons with copious fine hatching, and made color a central element in Little Nemo. His comic strip work has influenced generations of cartoonists and illustrators. The technical level of McCay's animation—its naturalism, smoothness, and scale—was unmatched until Walt Disney's feature films arrived in the 1930s. He pioneered inbetweening, the use ofregistration marks, cycling, and other animation techniques that were to become standard. (Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsor_McCay)

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Joe Sacco (born October 2, 1960) is aMaltese-American cartoonist and journalist. He is best known for his comics journalism, in particular in the books Palestine (1996) andFootnotes in Gaza (2009), on Israeli–Palestinian relations; and Safe Area Goražde(2000) and The Fixer (2003) on the Bosnian War.

In 1988, he traveled across Europe, a trip which he chronicled in his autobiographical comic Yahoo (also published by Fantagraphics). The trip led him towards the ongoing Gulf War (his obsession with which he talks about in Yahoo#2), and in 1991 he found himself nearby to research the work he would eventually publish as Palestine.

The Gulf War segment of Yahoo drew Sacco into a study of Middle Eastern politics, and he traveled to Israel and the Palestinian territories to research his first long work.Palestine was a collection of short and long pieces, some depicting Sacco’s travels and encounters with Palestinians (and several Israelis), and some dramatizing the stories he was told. It was serialized as a comic book from 1993 to 1995 and then published in several collections, the first of which won anAmerican Book Award in 1996 and sold more than 30,000 copies in the UK.

Sacco next travelled to Sarajevo and Goraždenear the end of the Bosnian War, and produced a series of reports in the same style as Palestine: the comics Safe Area Goražde,The Fixer, and the stories collected in War’s End; the financing for which was aided by his winning of the Guggenheim Fellowship in April 2001. Safe Area Goražde won the Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel in 2001.

He has also contributed short pieces of graphic reportage to a variety of magazines, on subjects ranging from war crimes to blues, and was a frequent illustrator of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. In 2005 he wrote and drew two eight-page comics depicting events in Iraq published in The Guardian. He also contributed a 16-page piece in April 2007’s issue of Harper’s Magazine, entitled “Down! Up! You’re in the Iraqi Army Now”. In 2009, his Footnotes in Gaza was published, which investigates two forgotten massacres that took place in Khan Younis and Rafah in November 1956. In June 2012, a book onpoverty in the United States, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, co-written with journalist Chris Hedges, was published.

In addition to his 1996 American Book Award, 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, and 2001Eisner Award, Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza was nominated for the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Graphic Novel award. Sacco was awarded the 2010 Ridenhour Book Prizefor Footnotes in Gaza. He was award the 2012 Oregon Book Award for Footnotes in Gaza and 2014 Oregon Book Award Finalist for Journalism.

(Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sacco)

[comiccurate-blog]

Raw was a comics anthology edited by Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly and published by Mouly from 1980 to 1991. It was a flagship publication of the 1980s alternative comics movement, serving as a more intellectual counterpoint to Robert Crumb's visceral Weirdo, which followed squarely in the underground tradition of Zap and Arcade. Along with the more genre-oriented Heavy Metal it was also one of the main venues forEuropean comics in the United States in its day. Raw featured a mix of American and European contributors (including some of Spiegelman's students at the School of Visual Arts), as well as various contributors from other parts of the world, including the Argentine duo of José Muñoz and Carlos Sampayo, the Congolese painter Chéri Samba, and several Japanese cartoonists known for their work in Garo. Though comics were the main focus, many issues included galleries of non-comics illustration and illustrated prose or non-fiction pieces; for example, RawVolume 2 Number 2 featured one of the earliest published articles on Henry Darger, complete with fold-out color reproductions of his paintings and diaries. Raw also frequently reprinted public domain works by cartoonists and illustrators of historical significance such as George Herriman, Gustave Doré, andWinsor McCay. The most famous work to come from the pages of Raw is Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel Maus, which was published serially in Raw. Individual chapters were packaged as small comic books bound within each issue of Raw Volume 1, starting with Raw 2 (a few color comics, such as Spiegelman's "Two-Fisted Painters: The Matisse Falcon" and Yoshiharu Tsuge's "Red Flowers", were also packaged as inserts). By Volume 2 Raw's own dimensions had shrunk to match those of Maus. (Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_(magazine))

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Lynda Jean Barry (born January 2, 1956) is an American cartoonist and author. Barry is best known for her weekly comic stripErnie Pook's Comeek. She garnered attention with her 1988 illustrated novel The Good Times are Killing Me, about an interracial friendship between two young girls, which was made into a play. Her second illustrated novel Cruddy appeared in 1999. Three years later she published One! Hundred! Demons!, a graphic novel she terms "Autobiofictionalography". What It Is (2008) is a graphic novel that is part memoir, part collage and part workbook in which Barry instructs her readers in methods to open up their own creativity; it won the comics industry's 2009 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work. In recognition of her contributions to the comic art form, Comics Alliance listed Barry as one of twelve women cartoonists deserving of lifetime achievement recognition and she received the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynda_Barry

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Alison Bechdel (born September 10, 1960) is an Americancartoonist. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir Fun Home, which was subsequently adapted as amusical which won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. She is a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Award. She is also known for the Bechdel test, an indicator of gender bias in film. She began Dykes to Watch Out For as a single drawing labeled "Marianne, dissatisfied with the morning brew: Dykes to Watch Out For, plate no. 27". An acquaintance recommended she send her work toWomaNews, a feminist newspaper, which published her first work in its June 1983 issue. Bechdel gradually moved from her early single-panel drawings to multi-paneled strips. Dykes to Watch Out For began this process, developing into a series of posters and postcards, allowing for people to have a look into the urban lesbian community. After a year, other outlets began running the strip. In the first years, Dykes to Watch Out Forconsisted of unconnected strips without a regular cast or serialized storyline. However, its structure eventually evolved into a focus on following a set group of lesbiancharacters. In 1986 Firebrand Books published a collection of the strips to date. In 1987 Bechdel introduced her regular characters, Mo and her friends, while living inSt. Paul, Minnesota. Dykes to Watch Out For is the origin of the "Bechdel test," which has become a frequently used metric in cultural discussion of film. In 1988, she began a short-lived page-length strip about the staff of a queer newspaper, titled "Servants to the Cause", for The Advocate. Bechdel has also written and drawn autobiographical strips and has done illustrations for magazines and websites. She became a full-time cartoonist in 1990 and later moved near Burlington, Vermont. She currently resides in Bolton, Vermont. In 2012, Bechdel was a Mellon Residential Fellow for Arts and Practice at the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center at theUniversity of Chicago and co-taught "Lines of Transmission: Comics & Autobiography" with Professor Hillary Chute. In November 2006 Bechdel was invited to sit on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Bechdel#/search

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Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware (born December 28, 1967), is an Americancartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Libraryseries (begun 1994) and the graphic novelsJimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth(2000) and Building Stories (2012). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style. Ware often refers to himself in the publicity for his work in self-effacing, even withering tones. He is considered by some critics and fellow notable illustrators and writers, such as Dave Eggers, to be among the best currently working in the medium; Canadian graphic-novelist Seth has said, "Chris really changed the playing field. After him, a lot of [cartoonists] really started to scramble and go, 'Holy [expletive], I think I have to try harder.'" Ware's art reflects early 20th-century American styles of cartooning and graphic design, shifting through formats from traditional comic panels to faux advertisements and cut-out toys. Stylistic influences include advertising graphics from that same era; newspaper strip cartoonistsWinsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland) and Frank King (Gasoline Alley); Charles Schulz's post-WWII strip Peanuts and the cover designs of ragtime-era sheet music. Ware has spoken about finding inspiration in the work of artist Joseph Cornell and citesRichard McGuire's strip Here as a major influence on his use of non-linear narratives. Over the years his work garnered several awards, including the 1999 National Cartoonists Society's Award for Best Comic Book for Acme Novelty Library and Award for Graphic Novel for Building Stories. Ware has won numerous Eisner Awardsduring his career including Best Artist/Writer in 2009 (Acme Novelty Library) and 2013 (Building Stories); Best Artist/Writer-Drama in 2008; Best Continuing Series in 1996 and 2000 (Acme Novelty Library); Best Graphic Album: New in 2000 and 2013 (Building Stories); Best Graphic Album: Reprint in 2001 (Jimmy Corrigan); Best Colorist of 1996, 1998, 2001 and 2006; Best Publication Design in 1995, 1996, 1997 (Acme Novelty Library), 2001 (Jimmy Corrigan), 2002, 2006 (Acme Novelty Library Annual Report for Shareholders) and 2013 (Building Stories) Ware has won multiple Harvey Awardsincluding Best Continuing or Limited Series in 2000 and 2001; Best Cartoonist in 2006 (Acme Novelty Library); Best Letterer in 1996, 2000, 2002, and 2006 ; Best Colorist in 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2004 (Acme Novelty Datebook); and Special Award for Excellence in Presentation in 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 (Acme Novelty Library), 2001 (Jimmy Corrigan), 2004 (Acme Novelty Datebook) and 2013 (Building Stories). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ware

[comiccurate-blog]

William Erwin "Will" Eisner (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005) was an American cartoonist, writer, and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series The Spirit(1940–1952) was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term "graphic novel" with the publication of his book A Contract with God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). TheEisner Award was named in his honor, and is given to recognize achievements each year in the comics medium; he was one of the three inaugural inductees to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. (Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Eisner)