Archive for the ‘Books in my Bookcase’ Category
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
His nights may have been spent portraying a scary colonial-era barroom drunk (see my October 24 blog entry), but during the days my husband Eddie took on a very contrasting role for last month’s Haunted Williamstown festivities: playing the ghost of Oxford don Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, 1832-1898) for children who flocked to the Milne Library for Halloween observances in a more literary vein.
Though impersonating a thoroughly dead historical personage, Eddie refrained from scaring the kiddies and opted instead to mess up their minds by reciting Carroll’s nonsense poem "Jabberwocky," leaving no borogove’s mimsiness undramatized.
(Truth to tell, Eddie doesn’t bear much resemblance to Carroll; but then, Meryl Streep doesn’t look like Julia Child, either, and that didn’t stop Streep from playing Child in a movie!)
"One, two! One, two!
And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack…"
Above: Eddie’s audiences were generally respectful, with the exception of one little know-it all who thought it would be cute to bring a pig to the show.
Dr. Seuss and Me: The Sequel
Remember the note I got from Dr. Seuss in 1957 in response to a fan letter I sent to him when I was thirteen? Y’know, the one I shared with you in my December 6 blog post a couple of years ago?
Well, I recently came across a carbon copy of a follow-up letter I sent to him in 1985, to which he responded with a similarly gracious reply. Both are reproduced below.
Maybe it’ll take a cartooning rebel like Abby Denson to inspire the next generation of plastic Barbies to think outside of the box and seize the reins of their own destinies. With the subversively childlike drawings in her graphic novel Dolltopia, Ms. Denson does her part to further the revolution.
Mr. Millidge Weighs In
In his new graphic novel trust/truth, Tim Fish delivers a romantic comedy built on the less-than-romantic tribulations of gay lovers James Michael and Terry, who are doing their damnedest to end their relationship and move on. But who gets custody of the dog?
Doll Liberation
Now it’s time to salute a few of the worthy new comics-related books that have been settling onto my bookcase shelves of late.
Can This Breakup Be Saved?
The award-winning British comics creator Gary Spencer Millidge (famed for the Strangehaven series), has collected a career’s worth of insights about how comic book pages are built into the lavishly illustrated volume, Comic Book Design. The keenness of Gary’s visual taste is demonstrated, of course, by his decision to include a few pages from my own Stuck Rubber Baby in his book. But no kidding, my own fleeting presence in this book is but the least of its attractions, which include work by an international who’s who of comics masters, past and present, most of whose work is displayed in beautiful color.
(You may notice, by the way, that the version of Gary’s book that’s available from Amazon has different cover art than the one shown above. That’s because the American version comes from Random House, whereas the copy in my bookcase comes directly from the book’s British publisher, Ilex. They do that kind of thing just to confuse you.)
I thought I was going to be unable to show photos from Eddie’s rendition of Carroll. Eddie’s sister Susan, however, belatedly sent us these snapshots of Eddie in action, thereby enabling me to belatedly share them with you.
Posted in A Tip o' the Hat, Books in my Bookcase, Family & Friends, Life & Art, Me, Me, Me!, Yesterday & Today | 5 Comments »
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Then on Monday I found email in my inbox from James Vance, author (with illustrator Dan Burr) of the award-winning graphic novel Kings In Disguise. James was giving me a heads up about his blog’s November 16 post, in which he comments generously about next year’s re-issue of Stuck Rubber Baby and reminisces about the link we share to my 1989 short play About Scott. The play, a theatrical tribute to Broadway dresser Scott Wiscamb, who was the first person that Eddie and I knew personally to be struck down by the epidemic, was written at the request of my college mate Lyn Spotswood, who wanted something to direct in Birmingham for that year’s International AIDS Day. Soon thereafter James wrote and asked if he could perform, for an AIDS benefit in Tulsa, OK, a stripped-down, one-man version of what in Lyn’s and my hands had been a multi-media, puppetry-enhanced pageant of sorts with masks and projected images of ACT-UP demonstrations interspersed with pop recordings and music by a live jazz ensemble.
What’s impressive was how moving James’ shorter and far simpler rendition of About Scott turned out to be. I know. James sent me a videotape.
A handsome trade paperback reprint of James and Dan’s graphic novel, which first saw print during the late-1980s under the auspices of Kitchen Sink Press, has recently been published by W. W. Norton, by the way, and a sequel by the same team — also from Norton — is now on the horizon.
From My Photo Archives It Came:
Could I Really Have Ever Looked Like This??
Eddie and I finally succeeded in luring cartoonist Jennifer Camper up to North Adams for a visit earlier this week. Jennifer was one of the earliest of the Gay Comix contributors, which means we’ve known each other and been buddies for something like 28 years now.
The weird thing is that Jen was already a grown up when we first met for lunch at a Seventh Avenue diner in New York — and yet today she still looks like she’s maybe twenty-two. How is this possible?
Jen’s longtime sweetie Emmalee couldn’t make the trip so she brought along another young cartoonist, Carlo Quispe (see below, with me and one of his drawings). If you’d like to see the online video of Laura Flanders‘ GritTV interview with both Jen and Carlo (as well as San Francisco’s Erika Lopez), click here.
Eddie and I enjoyed taking Jen and Carlo around to see some of the cool attractions North Adams has to offer (besides Mass MoCA, I mean), including the top of Mount Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts, and the fascinating collection of barber chairs (plus a dentist’s chair) that has begun drawing tourists to the waiting room at T&M Auto on Curran Highway.
Above: Jen, Carlo, and Eddie pause to seek shelter from Greylock’s mountaintop chill. Below: Afterwards, at T&M Auto…
What fun we have in the Berkshires!
Now For Some Thank-Yous
I’ve been honored of late by two friends and fellow comics creators who’ve seen fit to include laudatory mentions of me and my work in their respective blogs.
Above: a photo of my mom and me taken on March 18, 1966, the day before I boarded a plane for a six-week visit to San Francisco.
As you can see, my penchant for plaids, about which I have been teased by no less a personage than Alison Bechdel, had already been established by then and has continued uninterruptedly to this day but for a temporary side trip into paisleys during the late-’60s and half of the 1970s.
Posted in A Tip o' the Hat, Books in my Bookcase, Family & Friends, Home Life, Life & Art, Yesterday & Today | 2 Comments »
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Above: Professor David Bordelon introduces a roomful of his OCC students to yours truly, after which it’s all up to me and my laptop.
The Ocean County College students, teachers, and administrators I met during my trip to the Garden State ten days ago couldn’t have been more attentive and interesting during my Powerpoint slideshow and afterwards. This is the kind of thing that makes authors view traveling around as worthwhile.
Having Eddie along for the lengthy drive made it feel as much like a family excursion as a professional speaking engagement, and it’s thanks to Eddie that I have some snapshots to share with you instead of my usual embarrassed excuses for having forgotten to take my camera out of its travel case. He also served as my "roadie" by making sure that my computer, notes, and technical peripheral were taken care of while I chatted with audience members and signed copies of Stuck Rubber Baby, which had been assigned reading for some of the students in advance of my talk.
Some Correspondence
About That New SRB Cover Art
with mon ami en France, François Peneaud
FRANÇOIS: The new Stuck Rubber Baby cover [See my previous blog entry or the smaller version of the same artwork below. —H.C.] is so different from the previous one. I wonder what motivated that choice? It seems to me that, instead of emphasizing the connectedness of all the characters, as did the first cover, this one shows a main character all alone, remembering bits of his past (he does look older on the cover), with the silhouettes looking a bit like ghosts lost in, well, the fog of memory. Interesting choice, to say the least.
HOWARD: Well, one wants to have a distinctly different cover if one is going to redo a book’s cover at all.
And actually, even back in 1995 I was drawn to the images of Toland meditating alone at Bluerabbit Lake (pages 146-147 in the book) as a good emblem for the story as a whole. Even though the book has all of the civil rights activism stuff in it, the unifying theme is Toland trying to find out who he is and learning to be honest with himself.
As you can see by visiting this old feature showing how the 1995 cover came to be, my first thought even then was to suggest the book’s duality by juxtaposing the conflicted yearning represented by the "imaginary children" playing on the lake’s surface with an ominous Klan rally in the sky. While Joan Hilty, who is serving as the editor for next-year’s Vertigo re-issue, understood my inclination to use the Bluerabbit Lake image as a jumping-off place, she and her colleagues at DC Comics thought that adding on a Klan rally in the sky, as I had suggested in 1995, was probably trying to cover too much ground. Also, they feared that featuring the unexplained children might be overly confusing to potential readers who hadn’t yet read the story. They were probably right about that.
Above: Me in booksigning mode after my slideshow.
Professor David Bordelon of the OCC Department of English and Literature, who doesn’t seem to have a personal web site I can link to, had been my main contact person since he first emailed me back in February to ask if I would visit the campus as part of the department’s Visiting Writers Series. Once I had set foot on the grounds he introduced me to his colleague, author Jayanti Tamm, and later on, over lunch, to a tableful of most interesting fellow faculty members.
Below: Me pausing for a quick farewell snapshot alongside Professor Bordelon in the OCC parking lot before Eddie and I hit the road back to North Adams.
So we batted around alternative ways of adapting the Bluerabbit Lake images for this purpose.Substituting other characters from the book for the children was Joan’s idea, and I warmed to that variation when I thought of portraying those characters in silhouette (thus retaining some of the mystery and poetry of the original silhouetted children) and substituting mist for the water’s surface.
This way we still have the otherworldliness of the first image even as we allude to several of the other individuals in the story who play a big role in Toland’s evolution.
Alison Bechdel , who is writing a new introduction to the book, also mentioned via email that she thinks Toland looks older in this new drawing. That wasn’t intentional on my part, particularly, but since the whole book is framed as a "memory play," there’s something appropriate about suggesting that Toland is reviewing the silhouetted characters from the vantage point of one who is looking back on a story that has already happened — if not from quite as large a passage of time as in the book itself.
FRANÇOIS: Thanks for the explanations about the cover. I’d forgotten that first project for the old cover with the children and Toland. You should post something like that on your blog, it’s interesting for your readers.
In fact, showing on the cover Toland at an age between his young and old selves does add some resonance to the story, I think. If there was something I regretted in the book, it was that the older self didn’t have much grounding, he was mostly/only a narrator. So, this shows Toland at yet another point in his life, and makes him more real for the readers, I think.
And While Ms. Bechdel Is On My Mind…
…Thanks, Alison, for plugging From Headrack to Claude so entertainingly in your September 18 blog entry!
Who else but my comics-creating colleague and pal Stephen R. Bissette, who teamed up with John Totleben in the mid-1980s to bring Alan Moore’s distinctive incarnation of Swamp Thing to life in the pages of a DC Comics series by that name?
Steve’s ongoing fascination with large and threatening forms of non-human life were subsequently manifested in Tyrant, his gone-but-not-forgotten comic book saga of the 1990s that forever raised the bar when it comes to the exploration of dinosaur life from egghood onward.
Steve, being a Vermonter himself (and an instructor at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction), knows whereof he draws when it comes to disturbing life forms that may set one’s spider-senses a-tingling if one stays out too late in the Vermont forests on a moonless night.
So for those of you who have been putting off your Halloween gift-shopping until the last minute, could there be a better Halloween stocking-stuffer than The Vermont Monster Guide? Remember, just because the Citri-Bissette book under discussion limits itself to a geographically specific population doesn’t mean that creatures from the Green Mountain State or their cousins from other states don’t occasionally vacation in your neck of the woods. Won’t they be surprised when they peek in your window on Halloween night and discover that their existence has now been fearlessly documented for all to see!
And won’t they be pissed!
I discovered Mad when I was fourteen, which is pretty much the perfect age to make that discovery. I can still vividly remember the cover of the particular issue that grabbed my eyeballs that day from a Birmingham magazine rack, even though I haven’t laid eyes on it since my collection of Mads was lost decades ago during an unfortunate garage sale of items that had been cluttering up my mother’s basement. (As you can see, I have even been able to locate the cover in question, which was #37 in the series and which sported typically wonderful cover art by Norman Mingo, online at Doug Gilford’s Mad Cover Site.)
It Came From Vermont!
Let’s say you’re an author named Joseph A. Citro who is described as a "respected monster hunter" by the publisher (University Press of New England) of your new book. And let’s say you’re in need of an expert depicter of monsters to decorate your new book about the subset of scary creatures who have reportedly been making the wilds of Vermont extra-creepy during the last few million years. Who’re ya gonna call?
Cover design by Cayetano Garza Jr. and Stephen
R. Bissette
Artwork
©2009 by Stephen
R. Bissette
At the time Mad was being edited by Al Feldstein, and I thought it was about as funny as any magazine could ever expect to be.
Then a high school classmate of mine said, "You think Mad is funny now? You should see what it was like back when Harvey Kurtzman was editing it!"
(There was no missing the reverential tone Charlie used in speaking the name Harvey Kurtzman.)
Several of us Indian Springs kids were guests at Charlie’s home that day, preparing to eat the Thanksgiving dinner his mom would be serving soon, so it was easy for Charlie to usher me up to his bedroom and open a filing cabinet drawer in his bedroom that contained his prized collection of Mads, going all the way back to #1.
And without intending any disrespect for Al Feldstein, I have to say that the reason for Charlie’s special reverence for Mad’s founding editor swiftly became obvious.
Many’s the time I fantasized about it in my youth, but it was not to be.
From then on I followed Kurtzman’s work through the succession of similarly inventive, if never as commercially successful, satirical magazines (Trump; Humbug; Help!) that he founded and edited after a dispute with Mad’s publisher, William M. Gaines, led him to depart from Gaines’s realm.
Once I had moved to New York and I had gotten a foothold in professional cartooning, I found myself rubbing elbows with Kurtzman periodically at conventions and other industry gatherings, but we never became close. That wasn’t true of my principal underground comix enabler Denis Kitchen, who represented Kurtzman’s creative projects to publishers while the man was alive and has overseen the man’s artistic legacy in the years since Kurtzman’s death—in the process all but becoming a member of the Kurtzman family.
From Kurtzman’s high school drawings to the Little Annie Fanny strips he and longtime collaborator Will Elder contributed to Playboy, the book is a marvelous tour and an implicit indictment of a culture that, despite Kurtzman’s huge impact on satire in the second half of the 20th century and beyond, never fully gave the man his due.
A Tangential Postscript:
"What—Me In Mad?"
Given those circumstances, it’s not surprising that Denis has been entrusted with the mission of bringing fresh attention to the long arc of Kurtzman’s career via The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, a book co-authored by Denis and historian Paul Buhle that lovingly devotes 242 pages to telling you more than you ever thought you’d be privileged to know about a man who still continues to inspire new generations of cartoonists and humorists.
Posted in A Tip o' the Hat, Books in my Bookcase, Life & Art, Me, Me, Me! | 3 Comments »
Saturday, September 12th, 2009
E. J. Barnes is bailing out of the Pioneer Valley and heading for her new digs in Cambridge! What are we cartoonists she’s leaving here in western Massachusetts supposed to do now??! Whimper.
E. J. has been the prime mover behind the Pioneer Valley Comic and Cartoon Shmooze, a monthly informal gathering of cartoonists from around these parts that I blogged about back in 2007. But now her life is taking her eastward, which means she is unavoidably leaving the rest of us to our own devices. Will we recover from the loss or will we shrink back into our respective caves and chew on our kneaded-rubber erasers for recreation? Time will tell.
Whatever the future holds, a number of us shared a most enjoyable send-off shmooze for E.J. at the Monarchs Restaurant in South Deerfield, where we chattered to the soothing sounds of flapping butterfly wings wafting our way from the beautiful Magic Wings Butterfly Conservarory next door.
Above: My snapshot of E.J. at her farewell Cartoonists Shmooze last month. (The cartoon image next to her is a panel from issue #1 of Blaster Al Ackerman’s Tales of the Ling Master, her three-installment adaptation of the works of the writer and mail artist alluded to in her title.)
Below: My fabulously talented cartooning colleague (and fellow Birmingham expatriate) Mark Martin took this photo of me alongside Michelle and Gary Hallgren. Next to Gary and all but cropped out of this picture is Andy Laties, author of Rebel Bookseller and winner of the 2006 Independent Publisher Award. Some more photos from this gathering are included in a Facebook photo album called "The Last Supper" that Mark has posted here.
So What Have I Been Doing Lately?
Many hours have been spent drawing cover art for next year’s re-issue of Stuck Rubber Baby. I’m pretty happy with the new drawing and would love to give you a peek at it now. Unfortunately, you’ll just have to be patient, since I’m not supposed to go public with the art until the book’s publication date (June 2010, the last I heard) is approaching.
Next Stop: New Jersey!
I’ll be giving presenting a slideshow about Stuck Rubber Baby at Ocean County College in Toms River on October 8. It’s part of the school’s Visiting Writers Reading Series.
Today’s Offering From
My Artifacts of a Misspent Youth File
Here’s a 39-year-old drawing I came across yesterday. Old Simon & Garfunkel fans will recognize that it’s based on a photograph of the pair that appeared on the back of their 1970 Bridge Over Troubled Water album jacket.
(Ah, for the days when contemplating those 12"x12" album jackets within which vinyl records came packaged was a major artistic experience!)
Shown to the book’s left above as they prepare to "do it" are my own Ollie and Wendel; to the book’s right is a panel by the British master cartoonist Hunt Emerson, taken from his 1986 comic book adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. (As for the "Tentacle Porn" component of Pilcher’s opus: you’ll have to buy the book to see what those randy Japanese octopuses do for fun on a Saturday night.)
I am personally impressed by the sheer classiness and excellent production values of this book, which lift it far out of the realm of sleaze that its subject matter — rife though the book is with cartooned genitals in every imaginable state of turgidity, lubrication, and unembarrassed copulation — might imply. Pilcher quotes webcomic artist Jess Fink’s assertion that "Sex is just as good a topic for art as anything." I concur.
As this book’s title suggests, an earlier volume (which I haven’t seen) already exists, and since Pilcher was also in charge of that one I would expect it to be of similar quality. I’m especially aware of Volume 2 because my own work is included in it.
A Thank-You Moment
Reviews tend to be few and far between for self-published, print-on-demand books like my recently released venture From Headrack to Claude, which makes them more likely than conventionally published books to fly under everyone’s radar, especially when the self-publishing author can’t afford to pay for advertising.
For that reason I want to include a grateful shout-out here to some folks who’ve been gracious enough to call attention to my book online.
Gay Sex! Straight Sex! Sex with Octopuses!
It’s all there in easy-to-read comics form, a perfect adornment for your coffee table on those special Sundays when your local Jehovah’s Witnesses comes to call.
I’m speaking of the second volume of Erotic Comics: A Graphic History, a handsome and lavishly illustrated hardcover showcase edited by comics historian Tim Pilcher, which arrives with extensive and enlightening commentary contributed by Pilcher and with an introduction contributed by comics legend Alan Moore.
Below: The British edition of the book (published by Ilex Press), which features a different cover design that the one used for the American edition (published by Abrams ComicWorks) that’s displayed at U.S. bookstores.
Posted in A Tip o' the Hat, Artifacts, Books in my Bookcase, Family & Friends, Me, Me, Me!, Yesterday & Today | 3 Comments »
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
No, that kid (seen above in adulthood) grew up to be Manfred Rommel, Barr’s fictitious gay brainchild otherwise known as "Desert Peach," who has been starring in printed comics and books for the last twenty years and, in keeping with the digital revolution, has also established a secure beachhead in the webcomics world of ModernTales.com.
The latest book to find its way onto my bookshelves is Stitches, a totally engrossing childhood memoir in graphic novel form by the multiple award-winning picture-book illustrator David Small. To say that this book chronicles a kids struggles with cancer is to oversimplify to a criminal degree the emotional complexity of young David’s family relationships, which as recounted here are simultaneously fascinating and horrifying.
As a graphic novelist who occasionally errs on the side of wordiness, I observe with admiration how much of Small’s inner life is communicated in the novel’s pages through silences. And at the risk of being metaphorically insensitive in describing a story freighted with intimations of mortality: the book’s fluid pen, ink, and wash drawings are to die for.
Who would have thought that Eddie and I would spend part of our lives with a filmmaker living over our heads? Or hearing the feet of a filmmaker’s toddlers padding about, for that matter?
But what is life without surprises? I love knowing other creative people, and it’s been fun watching our upstairs tenant Andrew Bemis, who writes so entertainingly about movies in his blog (Cinevistaramascope), set about making an indie film of his own during the past year.
You can learn more about Black Light, the movie in question, by browsing through Black Light Journals, Andrew’s companion blog that documented the shooting of it last year. And if you live in or near northern Berkshire County here in Massachusetts, you can see the finished product when it premiers at a special screening that’s being held on August 9 at Images Cinema in Williamstown.
"Moth Films," by the way, is the company name under which Black Light is being released. And if you detect a touch of the Howard-Cruse esthetic in the Moth Films logo (see below), that’s because I designed it. What kind of landlord would I be if I didn’t boot up my iMac in the service of a tenant’s creative aspirations?
As the World War II history buffs among you know, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (otherwise known as "Desert Fox"), had an younger brother who, alas, died in infancy. And as the serious comics fans among you know: No, he didn’t.
The kid didn’t die, that is—at least, not in Donna Barr’s telling!
I run into Donna every few years at comics events and it’s always a pleasure. (The snapshot above was taken in 2003 when we were both signing books at Lee’s Comics in Mountain View, CA.) Her astonishing productivity puts most of her fellow comics creators to shame, particularly since she has never benefited by having the big-time comics publishers blowing wind into her sails. Donna has charted her own course and controlled her own creative destiny, and in the process she has provided inspiration and generous mentorship to others of us who would similarly like to avoid being shackled by presumed commercial ground rules.
Also, a Big Public Thank You
to Heidi Macdonald…
…for citing my book in her Publishers Weekly blog, The Beat.
Posted in A Tip o' the Hat, Books in my Bookcase, Life & Art, Me, Me, Me! | 1 Comment »
Friday, July 17th, 2009
The exhibition of commercial artifacts bearing Whitman’s image, called Walt Whitman: The Commercialization of an American Original, is curated by a longtime collector of Whitman memorabilia named Ed Centeno, whom I met in 2005 when he commissioned a drawing from me showing Whitman’s spirit hovering over my characters Wendel and Ollie as they read the poet’s classic Leaves of Grass and snuggle. (Scroll down this blog post to see the drawing I’m referring to.
The exhibit opened on May 24, which means I’m being decidedly less than prompt in telling you about it. But if there’s a chance you’ll be touring Long Island soon, you’ll be relieved to know that Ed’s fascinating artifacts (and my own original artwork) will continue to be on display until August 31.
At left:
Ed Centeno shares his knowledge about Whitman with exhibition attendees.
Below:
Ed poses with my framed original.
Below:
The drawing I did for Ed four years ago showing Wendel and Ollie communing with the poet.
A side benefit of participating in my college alma mater’s Alumni Art Exhibition earlier this summer was being made aware of the fascinating, endlessly inventive, and humor-filled artwork of fellow Birmingham-Southern grad Don Stewart, who contacted me to suggest I send a comics page south to be part of the group show.
It wasn’t exactly my intention to bail out of blogging for an entire month, but that seems to be what I’ve done. There’s something about applying the final touches to big projects that totally consumes your attention and often leaves no room at all in your head even for putting together the simplest kinds of sentences describing those activities for loyal blog-readers to peruse.
In this case I’ve been polishing up graphics, finalizing page layouts, and completing supplementary text for a new book collection of old gay-themed comic strips that should become available for online purchasing within the next week or three, depending on how swiftly the wheels turn at Lulu.com (the same print-on-demand self-publishing site that I used last year to put out Felix’s Friends), and how briskly my application for ISBN registration gets processed.
The new book will be called From Headrack to Claude, and since I’m telling you this in a relatively G-rated blog environment I must add this note of caution for the curious: many of the comics compiled in this book were originally drawn for adults-only underground comic book and are definitely not recommended for the faint of heart. Or for children.
Anyone who wants to be among the first to know when From Headrack to Claude becomes available can pay regular visits to the book’s Facebook page. (You don’t have to be a Facebook member to view this page, but Facebook members who join the group will receive an actual notification when the book comes out.)
Now to catch up on some of the things that, if the book hadn’t kept me so distracted, I would have blogged about during the last month.
Walt Whitman: The Poet as a Commercial Icon
In times past, the face of 19th Century Poet Walt Whitman may have appeared on as many commercial product packages as Betty Crocker. He was just so darned folksy-looking and confidence-inspiring that you couldn’t help wanting to eat any beans that came in a can with his face on the label!
The box of tea you see below wasn’t one of those products, of course. It’s just a fictional Whitman product that I was asked to invent to serve as a promotional graphic for an exhibition of bona fide Whitman products now on display at the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site in West Hills, NY.
Browsing through Don’s image-rich web site will give you a taste of what this guy’s fertile imagination has to offer, but to fully grasp the details or his visual wit you may want to track down his beautifully produced hardcover book (see above). It’s the newest addition to my own library and I’m happy to report that there’s a gem on every page.
Don was a surgeon by profession, incidentally, before he strayed from the medical fold and turned to producing art full time. Below is his visual reflection on the life he left behind.
Believe it or not, Don executes his subtly rendered drawings not with high-end graphic tools but with lowly ballpoint pens! I’m in awe! Who knew so much graphic potential resides in that Bic you do your doodles with while some customer service number has you on hold?
Let’s Get Candid
Our neighbor Zach Noel whipped out his cell phone and snapped this shot of me and Eddie as we left for the airport to fly to Portland in May. Taking photos with telephones! Making fine art with ballpoint pens! What is this modern age coming to?
As you can see, my Ben Franklin hairstyle is coming along well. If I persevere in nurturing this Founding-Father affect, my portrait may well soon qualify for display on U.S. paper currency of some obscure and rarely used denomination.
Zach and his girlfriend Lydia Reyburn graciously moved into our house temporarily to provide on site dog-sitting services while we were traveling, thus sparing Lulu the canine disorientation that goes with extended stays in a kennel.
And while I’ve got your attention, I should let you local readers of my blog know that artwork by Zach will be part of an upcoming group show at Elf Parlor (303 Ashlund Street). The opening reception for the show will be next Tuesday, July 21, from 8-10 PM.
Below left: Zach’s telephone captures Lulu during an uncharacteristically (when she has a camera pointed at her) tranquil moment. Below right: Neighbor dog Picalilly pays Lulu a courtesy call.
Posted in A Tip o' the Hat, Books in my Bookcase, Family & Friends, Home Life, Life & Art, Me, Me, Me! | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
Remember "abuse pillows"? Therapists used to encourage their clients to punch them, throw them, and stomp on them as a harmless way of venting their suppressed anger. Maybe they still do.
Anyway, they were obviously on my mind when I drew the sketch below as an adornment to a personal letter I wrote to a friend 22 years ago.
The Old Turf Calls
Odds are that the vast majority of you aren’t going to be in Birmingham, Alabama, during the next month, but should fate take you there (or if you’re an old pal of mine or blog-follower who happens to live in the area), you’ll find a page of my original comic book art included along with art by numerous other Hilltop graduates in the Alumni Art Exhibition that’ll be on view June 12-July 3 at my beloved alma mater, Birmingham-Southern College.
Above right: A panel from "Mister Bug Has His Say," the comic I loaned out for the BSC exhibit.
My fellow BSC alum Don Stewart (who’s a pretty fascinating artist himself, as you’ll see from his web site and presumably from art of Don’s that’ll be in the show) nagged—I mean, encouraged me to be part of the show until I finally overcame my resistance to packaging up yet another drawing for mailing. And I’m glad he persisted, since it’s pleasing to see that cartooning is being recognized these days by BSC as part of the "real" art landscape. That was a leap of the imagination that the Art Department Chair couldn’t quite muster when I was an undergraduate four decades ago (although a couple of more open-minded professors encouraged me individually).
The opening reception for the exhibit is this Friday (June 12) at 6 PM at the Durbin Gallery.
Underground
Overview
I recently found my mailbox next to the front door all but overwhelmed by a handsome hardcover catalog that’s been put together by James Danky and Denis Kitchen, the co-curators of the Underground Classics exhibit at the University of Wisconsin that I blogged about on April 28.
The book is a real pleasure to pore over, and besides showcasing the art that’s still on display (until July 12) at the Chazen Museum in Madison, Wisconsin, it includes enlightening essays by Jay Lynch, Patrick Rosenkranz, Trina Robbins, and Paul Buhle in addition to the introduction by Danky and Kitchen.
I’ll admit that I had misgivings when Denis Kitchen told me that the catalog would feature color photographs of the originals themselves instead of high-resolution scans, which is the way that my drawings normally make it into print. Color photos, after all, show all of the flaws and patches and corrections and marginal notes that are not expected to be visible to readers when a page of comic art is published, not to mention the yellowing that can afflict sheets of Bristol Board with the passage of time.
But now that I can see the finished catalog, I’ve gotta admit that there’s something especially intimate about encountering the sheets of art in their unadorned, physical "reality"—if photos in a book can be extrapolated by the imagination into something like physicality. I’ve always known that there is a special pleasure in seeing original comic book art on a gallery wall (or as part of a personal collection) instead of in reproduction, with all of the sweat marks, remnants of pencil sketches, and other artifacts left by the artist’s hand right there for the eyes to see. I wouldn’t have predicted, though, that this intimacy could be as effectively approximated in print as it has been in this book.
Seeing pages like the one above of the late Joel Beck’s art takes me back to 1966, when I first visited my brother in Berkeley and came across a hand-stapled copy of Beck’s Lenny of Laredo on Telegraph Avenue. It was a revelatory discovery. It had never occurred to me that the supposed "children’s medium" of comics could be represented by pages of art drawn excellently, without abandon, with the human id fully acknowledged and incorporated into the mix but without the visual griminess of the surreptitiously exchanged "Tijuana Bibles" I had seen.
Suddenly a new world seemed possible. I couldn’t imagine, however, how far into that world I would ultimately venture.
Posted in A Tip o' the Hat, Books in my Bookcase, Life & Art, Me, Me, Me!, Yesterday & Today | 1 Comment »
Saturday, February 7th, 2009
If you were trying to get crosstown by taxi in New York City a little over two decades ago and happened to see the face shown above peering back at you from the rear-view mirror, you could be forgiven for wondering whether your cabbie had murder on his mind.
And you would have been right, since your driver was then in the process of launching his new career as a murder novelist whose debut book, A Twist of the Knife, was "like riding an avalanche all the way to a satisfactorily explosive finale," according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
At the risk of blowing this cabbie-turned-author’s sinister image, I’ve gotta tell you that in reality Stephen Solomita, who’s a longtime personal friend of Eddie’s and mine, is a sweetheart. He just happened to be able to summon an evil-eye for his first (and still only) author’s portrait that’ll knock you right off your recliner if you contemplate it at a vulnerable moment.
Above: Steve’s first book alongside three later ones that are favorites of mine.
You may not be all that aware of Steve the Author since he suffers from a stubborn disinclination to promote himself on TV—a trait that’s inexplicable to a media whore like me. (Are you listening, Today Show? I’m right here near the phone when you’re ready.) But I’ve been happy to see a fresh flow of new novels from him being ushered into print lately by Severn House, a publisher in the UK. For my money, the only crime novelist I know who can match my pal Steve’s mix of grit, perversity, and class is the masterful David Cray—and that’s because Cray is Steve writing under a different name.
Steve is on my mind right now because I just finished reading his latest book, Cracker Bling. As usual, my expectations about the course its plot would take had been duly whipsawed right and left by the time I reached the last page, a familiar experience for anyone entering Solomita territory. His previous book, Monkey in the Middle, spun my brain around midway through in similar fashion. One hopes for those kinds of reversals in gritty police procedurals, of course, where horribly devious sociopaths match wits with supposed "good guys" who aren’t always that non-devious themselves.
And as an added bonus, Steve has a gift for vividly observed detail that makes his descriptive prose the kind of delicious reading pleasure commonly associated with so-called "literary" novels.
Posted in A Tip o' the Hat, Books in my Bookcase, Family & Friends | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
Above: A drawing of Harvey Milk that I drew in 1986 for openly gay New York City Council candidate David Rothenberg, who was referencing Milk’s iconic role in gay activism in one of his campaign ads.
Milk: A Good Flick
(or do I need to tell you that?)
Thanks to friends with sneaky access to an industry screener of Milk, a movie of great interest to my set that hasn’t made it to North Berkshire County yet, Eddie and I got to watch this film at home over the weekend. Yes, Sean Penn’s portrayal of the martyred Harvey Milk is as flawless and charismatic as you’re heard, and as best I can tell (allowing for the multiplicity of old memories that get activated and personal emotional buttons that get pushed) the Gus Van Sant movie is one of the most successfully realized portraits of an important historic figure you’ll ever see.
Of course, as a gay man who vividly remembers being punched in the gut one day in 1978 by news of Milk’s assassination, I can hardly claim to be viewing this film dispassionately. But for what it’s worth, my 1978 tears returned in full force before the film ended.
Meanwhile, whatever happened to Sean Penn the hot-tempered brawler who used to punch photographers in the face for breakfast while he was married to Madonna? Somewhere along the line this seemingly out-of-control lout (who on his worst days, it has to be said, was never less than brilliantly talented) turned into a Hollywood great whose commitment to political ideas outside of the Hollywood cocoon along with ever-maturing acting and directing skills make him that show-business rarity: a grown-up worth emulating.
Fume! Sputter! Snarl!
Don’t Get Taught Art This Way! As So Many People Do is a quirky little 252-page screed by Theodore L. Shaw, a guy who really had a hair up his butt about art criticism back in the 1960s.
This nuance-free book somehow found its way into my bookcase decades ago and has lurked there ever since as an example of passion untrammeled. If I had ever indulged in lofty public discourses about the relative merits of art pieces aiming at "greatness," I wouldn’t want to be cornered at a cocktail party by this guy.
Too Hot for the Dailies
Newspapers are (supposedly) fine with their editorial cartoons being controversial, but they have their limits. Read Featurewell.com founder David Wallis’s compilation Killed Cartoons to see a set of drawings that editors axed because they crossed some line or other. Then decide whether you feel cozily protected by their decisions or whether America’s media gatekeepers are too lily-livered for their own (or the citizenry’s) good.
Below: The late Doug Marlette’s rejected take on capital punishment
New from the late Will Eisner
Happily, the W. W. Norton publishing house seems bent on getting everything Eisner did in his hugely productive post-Spirit years back into print under a unified "Will Eisner Library" umbrella. Don’t let on that you notice; they might stop. Just buy everything.
Below: Just a few of the numerous "Will Eisner Library" titles.
Will Eisner died before completing Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative, but with the blessing of his heirs this work-in- progress was subsequently completed by underground comix veteran Peter Poplaski, whose attention to the notes Eisner left behind when he died in 2005 keeps the master’s voice ever present on the page.
For all the knowledge and experience that underlies any words Eisner wrote about cartooning in the several instructional books he produced, it’s his pictures that say what most needs to be said. Aspiring cartoonists will observe that Eisner could put more dynamism into a drawing of a guy trudging through snow than most comics artist could put into a titanic, Metropolis-destroying fist-fight between muscle-bound superbeings who wouldn’t know how to trudge if their lives depended on it.
And if they’re smart, they’ll spend time studying his pictures and figuring out how the hell Eisner did that!
Posted in A Tip o' the Hat, Books in my Bookcase | 3 Comments »
