Tony Millionaire is one of my favorite comic artists, even though the gross-out factor is sometimes a bit much for a sissy like me. If you love his Maakies strip, or his Sock Monkey and Billy Hazelnuts books, or his Drinky Crow show, this interview, on The Sound of Young America, is required listening!
Related: Sunday Comics: Tony Millionaire
Steve Wolfard’s Monstro-Draw, where you’ll also meet Cat Rackham.
I’m not quite sure how I stumbled upon this, by Steven Sugar, but I like it. Nightmare in Birdland has the kind of ending I’m partial to.
In the same shorts section of sugarboukas.com is Don’t cry for me I’m already dead, by Rebecca Suger which is kind of disjointed but extremely touching anyway, and beautifully drawn, although nobody is beautiful in it, per se. Who would have thought that a preservative would lead to tears?
I also love this one, though I’ve never been fired it’s what I’d do if I were.
Chris Harding’s We the robots.
Pictures for sad children, about “Paul, who is a ghost.” At first I was like, huh? Wha? And then I was like, okay, why not? And now I like it.
John Campbell also has a blog, with other comics on it, some with accompanying memes.
And I’m not sure what this blog is about (seems to be a temporary blog created during some server down time?), but I’ll definitly use this line someday:
8:05:01 a.m.:
8:05:05 a..m.:
8:05:06 a.m.:
(Pat Moriarity’s “Dead Earth,” for sale on Comic Art Collective, for pretty cheap! Click on the image for details.)
Want to buy original artwork from alternative comics? I just discovered the Comic Art Collective, where the range of styles is as extreme as the talent. Reasonable prices, too—see above! (Cheaper than New Yorker cartoonists’ work in many cases, depending on the size and level of demand, it seems).
(Cartoon by Caroline H. Dworin, The New York Times)
I missed the photo op last Tuesday, but I’m mentioned (and thank goodness there’s no photo of me to belie Caroline Dworin’s unbelievably flattering description!) in “Doodles à la Carte,” about the Tuesday cartoonist lunch gatherings, in today’s Sunday Times.
Pergola des Artistes is a wonderful little place, cheap and cheerful, which is why we cartoonists like it. I’ve been a fan since way before I joined the TNY cartoonists—found it with my friend Vania Leveille when we were seniors in High School (I believe we played hooky to go). It’s a great place to go with a dinner date if you don’t want to spend too much, and yet don’t want to look like a tightwad who’ll eat at any old dive either. The atmosphere is cozy, and the food is always good: the lobster special can’t be beat. It’s one of those places you don’t want too many people to know about, lest it spoil the pleasure of having a great secret.
I’ll never forget the $4.95 lunch special (in 1983), and how Marie-Rose, the owner, responded to my question, “What’s the vegetable that comes with the meal?”, with, “Do not worry, ze chef will geev you a very nice vegetable.”
(Mind you, stalkers will be fricasséed!)
Image: carolita johnson
(Coming soon, with any luck, video footage of my new year’s fellow revelers burning President Bush’s effigy while screaming “stay the course!” on the stroke of midnight, along with Condi, Rove, and Cheney… I’d been looking forward to singing Auld Lang Syne, but this was fun, too!)
Don’t know how I missed Partially Clips’ New Yorker gag, “Man With Martini.” Click on the partial clip above for the next two frames.
(Click on the image to go to the complete strip—there’s a third panel!)”
Partially Clips: irony with a dash of wise-assery. Would that be wise-dashery? I’ll say no more. Have a look yourself. I have a hangover from too many holiday parties.
A few favorites, whether because of the deadpan humor (dog in wagon), or choice of image (as in the ducklings) or the dark humor (as in Mrs. Baxter):
Puppy and Kitten
Boy with Dog in Wagon
Ducklings
Mrs Baxter’s Baby
Browse through and find your own favorites: Partially Clips.
And if you want to see what a “fit model” looks like, in various sizes ranging from a 6 to an 18W “Goddess,” click here for the pics from my agency’s holiday party. (And then don’t let me ever catch you complaining that clothes are made for unreal people!)
Matt Diffee’s always known what to do with rejected cartoons. He started with the Rejection Show (in cahoots with Jon Friedman), and continued with The Rejection Collection.
Normally I would not review my fellow New Yorker cartoonists here because I don’t like to toot our own horn, preferring to point to the artists and cartoonists who are our contemporaries and/or inspiration, leaving our own work for our audience to judge. But David Remnick and his beautiful and accomplished wife, Esther Fein, just threw us a party, and if they saw fit to encourage and reward our bid for negative attention with free alcohol and a pat on the back (I think Mr. Remnick was just grateful not to see some of us crying that Thursday night), then I can make an exception this once.
The thing I like best about The Rejection Collection are the questionnaires. The “draw something that will give us a clue to your childhood” is frightening (but perhaps not surprising) in its population of angry nun drawings. Images of persecution (both of and by the child cartoonist) also abound. (Not mine! I’m a pacifist!) Some of the answers to the questions are serious and there are even a few touching outbursts of earnestness. I was particularly intrigued by how many of us actually left the “for office use only” box empty, never realizing we were such an obedient lot!
What cartoonists do when they’re not cartooning, what we most fear, what we do to survive rejection: all these questions are answered, and often illustrated. Still, the key to understanding a cartoonist, is knowing you will never really understand a cartoonist. Which is why each cartoonist’s questionnaire is followed by five cartoons which will confound you further.
As for the cartoons, it goes without saying that they are completely stupid, tasteless, offensive, and… well—funny!
And what about the cartoonists who aren’t featured in The Rejection Collection? Well, obviously they’ve never had a cartoon rejected, the lucky duckies!
For your supplementary reading pleasure, read Diffee’s Huffington Post blog, here.
The Rejection Collection. Not to be confused with the Deer Rejection Collection.
(Click on the image for the clip!)
What do you look for in a comic book? Laughs? Suspense? Visual excitement? Emotion? Try Cancer Vixen (Knopf, hardcover $22*), a comic book by my friend and fellow New Yorker cartoonist, Marisa Acocella Marchetto, about her experience with breast cancer.
We all know someone who’s been touched by cancer. But not everyone deals with it in ways we find easy to face. The struggle for life isn’t always pretty. Cancer Vixen is pretty. Strip it of its glittering bright purple cover to see it’s just as vibrant and funny underneath. Inside, the color schemes all match my own favorite outfits: “It clashes, so I love it, ” she says in one frame, and that’s why I love it too. The style is Marisa’s recognizable own, with real people possessed of reassuringly human proportions and body shapes, a change from the elongated, thin fashionistas her New Yorker cartoons often portray (and poke light fun at). Her visual vocabulary engages you immediately. If the attractiveness of a book about cancer is a paradox, it’s a timely one. I can’t imagine what it would have been like without the happy ending, but Marisa doesn’t seem cut out for unhappy endings.
This is a comic book with a strong, seductive narrative, and images that keep you turning the pages. Marisa expresses honest, naked truths about fear, self-doubt, physical pain, and the disease itself in question in ways that are more than instructive: it’s enriching. It teeters on the edge of TMI only rarely, and does so rather charmingly (the truffle-scented farts in bed, not to mention the less than lovely “chemo farts”). You’ll also learn a thing or two about designer shoes and the world of the so-called “beautiful people.”
And I’m proud to say I make a two-frame guest appearance in it! Which is very touching, because it’s basically the scene where we first sealed our friendship, perhaps without even realizing it yet. It’s an honor, Marisa!
(image: carolita johnson)
For all you cartoonists and illustrators out there, Tom Richmond has the best answer I’ve seen yet to the question, “How much should I charge for an illustration?” Tom should know, he’s a MAD Magazine illustrator, and among other things his blog also offers a tutorial in two parts about inking that’s very helpful or interesting to those of us who wonder how the others do it.
Tom Richmond’s “Tom’s MAD Blog.“
I wasn’t here when it all happened. I was living in another country where terrorist attacks had got me used to the idea that something could happen at any time—and had, several times— in my subway, my outdoor market, or in other public places. I got used to seeing the occasional sadly mutilated person afterwards, moving on with their life while bearing the marks of one of those explosions. Still, I was duly horrified by the human tragedy I saw unroll on the September 11th we’ve all come to call “nine eleven.”
I looked at the excerpts of the comic strip style illustration of the 9/11 Commission Report by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, called The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, with some reluctance. Why? Because I don’t particularly like anyone playing my heartstrings, even if they think they’re doing something good.
Jacobson and Colon are veterans of the comics world, Colón having overseen production of Wonder Woman (among others), and Jacobson having created the character of Ritchie Rich, so I was curious to see their graphic treament of the subject. I was reassured by a graphic style I found to be reminiscent of those glossy emergency instructions cards we find in the pouch in the back of the airplane seat we sit behind on a commercial airline flight. Cold. Not very human, people almost appearing to pantomime the moments of panic depicted, such as on page 97. A “blam!” here and a “flam!” there, but it all looks rather institutional, or like “progressive” educational materials that might be provided to American public school students disinclined to reading straight text. But, being a graphic adaptation of the 9/11 report meant for anyone who couldn’t bear to plow through the original report, I suppose this is appropriate.
Still, I did not find myself being drawn in, and found the occasional “fly on the wall” detail (such as Mr. Hazmi’s English teacher saying, “you are still not pronouncing it correctly” on page 67) left me nonplussed. The truth is, you have to want to know what’s in the 9/11 report in order to read even this visual aid.
Brooklyn Heights Blog says:
In light of the the administration’s almost surreal actions before and since the attacks, it’s strangely appropriate for the commission’s findings to be outlined in this medium.
Have a look here, on Slate’s post, which I found thanks to Gothamist. They’re posting a chapter a day, and there were already 106 pages up when I looked, so there’s plenty to see. Somehow I missed the preview last month in the Washington Post.
That’s what I think of the overall look of the book so far. Mind you, I have nothing to say about the politics or the war, preferring to keep my opinions to myself on this blog. I happily spout all sorts of contradictory political sense and nonsense over drinks with likeminded fools.
NPR’s interview of Colon and Jacobson: here.
(Click on the image to see the full-sized version on Vanessa’s website.)
Vanessa Davis’s “Spaniel Rage,” is a cartoon format diary of the life of a human being of the fairer sex, a young woman with a job and the usual trials and tribulations we all go through. Not self-indulgent, but truly self-seeing, the lucidity of her point of view is what seduced me. For example, my old friend, let’s just call him “Jeff,” could probably relate to the image above. I’ve often complained about the “yeah, but,” conversation, which I’ve been subjected to by both sexes.
She’s recently been published in the New York Times, a whimsically low-key story about shopping for a pair of salt-water sandals.
Anyone who knows me will know why “The Blattarian,” is my favorite series on Spaniel Rage. In fact, this is the story that made me write to Vanessa, and we exchanged stories of aggressive cockroaches by email. Did you know that there’s a northeastern variety of cockroach known for its aggressive behavior? No? Well, that’s because there isn’t! Not officially, that is. I still believe it, Vanessa.
Here’s my favorite Blattarian image:
(Click on the image to see the full-sized version on Vanessa’s website.)
Do you want to know what it’s like to be a woman in the city? This is a classic: here.
Spaniel Rage has been compiled into a book by Buenaventura Press, which you can read about here.
Read her Gothamist interview, here.
Her work will appear in Kramer’s Ergot 6 this fall.
Jillian (right) and her cousin Mariko Tamaki, with whom she collaborated on SKIM. Double portrait by Jillian Tamaki.
I found Jillian Tamaki a long time ago when my friend Emily from Emdashes sent me a link to Illustration Friday. I put my name on her mailing list, contributed a drawing or two for the “rain” theme, then changed browswers, lost the bookmark, and forgot all about I.F. and Jillian till I got an email from her that I (yikes!) almost deleted as spam. But something told me to click it open, and I had a eureka moment. I checked out her website, and that is how I found SKIM.
I ordered a copy from Kiss Machine, but it has yet to arrive, or I’d review it for you right now! All is not lost, however, because Jillian’s website has two excerpts from it, both enticing enough to have compelled me to place my order, and one of which I’m excerpting here. Click on the image to see the full-sized image on her site.
SKIM was recently nominated for a Doug Wright Award, and, Jillian tells me, is being expanded into a graphic novel, due to come out in 2008.
Her comics and illustrations aren’t too disparate, both entirely recognizable as her own—see the lines in the tree, above, and the undulating, brushy lines typical in her renderings of hair, water, grass, skin creases. They’re something in her color illustration style that touches me the way William Wallace Denslow always did. (He’s my favorite children’s book illustrator of all time. Here’s one of my favorites of his, in which you might see what I mean, just a little?) But back to Jillian! Her illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker as well—illustrations, not comics: click here for a beautiful whirling dervish that appeared in TNY.
SKIM is definitely female-oriented, because of the fictionally autobiographical nature of the work (The Diary of Skim Dakota), written by Mariko, but not girly-girlish or twee (she’s not a fan of Emily The Strange), which may come as a relief and pique the curiosity of those among us who stand up to pee. Mariko’s humor is dry, freaky, and her observations are limpid. Check out the slightly unnerving interlude from SKIM below (click on the image to see the rest of this excerpt, which was too big for my 450 pixels of post space).
It’s well worth noting that SKIM has recently been nominated for a Doug Wright award, and is being expanded to a graphic novel, due for completion in 2008 (if, as Jillian says, she gets her “ass in gear.”)
For something darker, check out Jillian’s “City of Champions,” (excerpt here, more on her own website) and reviewed here.
Read Jillian’s interview on Illustration Friday, here. Mariko’s personal website: here.
Look out for Jillian’s “Gilded Lilies,” a book of “comics n’ stuff” due to come out at the end of 2006.
(Click on the image to see the original on Fenwick’s flikr page.)
Now for something completely different. Ray Fenwick doesn’t really do your typical cartoon. It’s not a strip. It’s not Snoopy. Apparently he takes flack from “real cartoonists.” (Who would presume, I wonder?) It’s very personal, but even so, it’s somehow not annoying. (It’s very easy to annoy me by using cartoons as an excuse for banal personal disclosures, particularly because they’re as much in popular demand as toilet paper, and will never go away.) Fenwick manages to be personal, without being cute or deliberately pathetic, and his irony picks up where self-indulgence ends, as in “HA! I made fun of myself, and that means I am humble!” There’s something Mark Twain-ish about him that I can’t quite pin down.
Even better, his swirls, which frightened me at first glance, aren’t girly swirls. They’re not about expressing a glorified feminine outlook on life, the way most swirls and twirls do, lately. (Such curlicues in typeface seem to be the graphics incarnation of that most annoying creature, the “girly girl.”) None of that here: Fenwick’s flourishes and use of calligraphy and letters will bring to mind The New Yorker’s Saul Steinberg’s “No” and “Love” cartoons, among others. Ray Fenwick’s swirls refer to a long tradition of western calligraphy and pictorial calligraphy. In fact, if calligraphy were to become a cartoon, this is what it would be like:
The Calligrapals! (This frame is an excerpt from the complete cartoon, which you can view by clicking on the image, above.)
Or maybe like “darkness cometh” guy.
The Hall of Best Knowledge is updated weekly, here. It appears in The Coast Weekly, “in which a nameless author provides weekly lessons on universal concepts.”
Patterns by Fenwick (including this medieval pulp one, which I’m dying to have on my next summer dress): here.
Excerpts from LL Cool J’s “I need love”: here.
The Truth Bear: here.
Ray Fenwick’s pleasantly brownish website: here.
Ray Fenwick’s flikr page (with even more): here.
And don’t forget his “Kill” shirt: here.
And now, goodbye!
(I’ve had to shrink all the images a bit to fit on my template, but clicking on them will bring you to the larger original on Rees’ own website.
I was referred to David Rees by Dave from Jesus & Mo, who I’ve featured here now and again whenever one of his cartoons particularly moves me. About Rees, says The Author, “Like me, he can’t draw. But unlike me, he doesn’t even try. He uses clip art.”
For all that he uses clip art, I haven’t gotten tired of the re-used images yet. Consult his website for yourself, choose a strip (there are four), and click on the “next” or the “previous” links, to view them in chronological order. Here are a few of my favorites, starting with the one above that I found the most touching of all, from Adventures of Confessions of Saint Augustine Bear, or AOCOSAB.
From his My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable strip, the answer to life’s eternal question:
Not to be confused with his My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable strip. This is an approach to life:
that will lead to this.
And finally, with his Get Your War On, or GYWO strip, which has been well covered by the press, what we’ve all been thinking:
You can actually buy a t-shirt with that cartoon on it here. “Get Your War On” book royalties are donated to land mine removal. (Mine Detection & Dog Center Team #5 of Adopt-a-Minefield), so there’s no need to feel like you’re laughing at the expense of the less fortunate than yourself. And I’m so sorry that my cold has knocked me out to the point of missing his appearances in Manhattan recently, but click here to see upcoming ones: events. For some reason his August 1st appearance at Bar on A isn’t on that page, but it’s on his home page.
Click on the image above to get the next two frames of the strip on Kaz Underworld, and you’ll see that this cartoon (above) is the conceptual opposite of this one of mine. And yes, I do remember feeling that way in the third grade. (Funny how growing up makes you feel so much younger than you did when you were actually young! Thank God that’s all behind me!)
Kaz Underworld is, well, as I was warned by the person who recommended it to me, not for everyone. (On the other hand, neither is Dennis the Menace.) Have a look at the archives yourself. Basically you pick and choose, but it’s all take it or leave it. It offers no apologies, and I don’t know if it’s low-brow or no-brow. But every now and then one of those strips makes me laugh, and I do like the line and the contrast. Kaz Underworld has it’s environmentally conscious side, too, for all you greenies out there: see Walrus Lad.
PS- let me know if you’re having trouble viewing them, as it’s the same archival system as on Tony Millionaire’s site, and you might get an error message. Here’s a direct link to that error message, and if it’s what you get when clicking on the links I’ve provided above, I’ll re-post this piece with some downloaded pix that you will be able to look at, at your leisure! In the meantime, enjoy that error message, it’s the best one I’ve ever seen.
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