How To Say Everything

The New Year, Our Hearts Open

2012-01-13T09:33:00.000-05:00

Dearest friends

Everyone's support and love have helped us get to this point, where we feel like the hospital doors are closing on us and we are being discharged to go heal on our own. to continue the strained metaphor, our triage was a few week's in our friend Travis and Meredith's yard, our operating room was our trip to New Mexico, and our post-op was ourtrip to Hawaii. Visits in the form of emails, FB posts, calls, cards and our own returns to Gainesville all helped us feel nurtured and ready to live again.

The new year turned, we've changed all our routines, moved to a new house, and here we are going forward. We no longer sob every day, and we recognize that we can't bring her back. Though we no longer busy ourselves with tending to her needs, we dedicate all our actions to her, and to her future brother or sister.

We keep our hearts open to spirit, to you, and to our world. Thank you, again, for all your love and support.

Postscript.

In the interest of a sort of spiritual transparency, to satisfy all kinds of curiosities, and also to share in the way that I have been shared with (stories and thoughts and feelings of people who have gone through similar troubling events helped me so much), I will begin posting some of my raw writings and pictures from mid-November onward, as I try to form them into some sort of final, presentable shape. Stay tuned. Have to get the internet turned on, and get the computer fixed and get the computer talking to the camera...

Tom

Rosalie's Play

2012-01-11T11:33:00.002-05:00

Dear friends,

Leela and I were remembering tonight Rosalie's best joke: "Uh oh, eea dahhhk." She'd say meaning, "Uh-oh it's dark!"

She'd say this when we'd arrive late to the house via bike, or if she'd wake up early before the dawn, or when the lights would go off in the car.

She'd vary it in so many ways: Uh-ohh eeaaa daaahhahahk, Uh-oh eaaah dahk! Dahahahak..

It was the first she was doing this kind of thing. It was a dance with her throat, and a dance with our reactions. She was messing with us.

Just a day or two before she died, she started with imaginary play. She'd hold nothing in her hands and bring it to us and say "I got one!" to which Leela would say, What color is it? and Rosalie would respond: Blue!

What kind of world is this? This heavenly time, when her mind is expanding, growing, becoming so socially alert, so clever, so playful, and this time now is frozen forever. We will never know Rosalie beyond these behaviors, a Rosalie whose cleverness is more sophisticated, whose language is precise, a Rosalie who isn't childish. It's a lovely, perfect time to have frozen, I suppose, but who would want that?

More about Rosalie

2011-12-30T23:53:00.002-05:00

Dearest friends,

I've been wanting to write but not sure what to write, then I realized all I've been doing the past two days is playing her lovely voice in her head. So I thought I would share some stories. In no particular order.

She never loved Richard Scarry until we brought a little story book with 3 stories in it, all staring Huckle and Lowly Worm. "Read Huckle!" she'd ask, and we'd read the story of the cat who gets in a bike accident while returning from purchasing a cuckoo clock for his mom. The bike bell is broken as a result and so is the clock. Rosalie loved to say "cuckoo! cuckoo!" and also "dring dring!" for the bike bell.

Biking. We biked constantly in the last couple months here in Gainesville. Every morning and evening to preschool at the very least, and while my bike bell was working, I'd ring it and she'd say "Dring dring!" from behind. We'd bike past the duckpond and she'd says Duck Pond! and then list Big Tuddle, Little Tuddle... and I'd usually think she wanted to stop and I'd fib a bit and say we'll stop later or tomorrow. Usually we only stopped at the duck pond every few days. We'd feed the geese and the ducks and turtles. Rosalie loved this, would get cranky if we had to stop.

Biking was heavenly. We'd bike past the supermarket chain, Publix, and she'd announce, "Rodzy Mop! [Rosalie Milk!] Mommy Mop! Daddy Wine!" Just about every time. She loved shopping. And shopping at the locally owned supermarket, Wards was so wonderful I can't even write about it here.

We moved here partially for us, partially for her. Our friend Faruk-who as far as I know, is the only person not to know that she's gone- owns Madina Pakistani food in Brooklyn on Coney Island Avenue. The three of us loved Faruk, and dropped by often, sometimes just to talk. His restaurant was near her daycare, and a lot of times we walked in just to wave hello and be friendly. Faruk loved Rosalie and asked to hold her early in her life- no other shop keeper of any kind was so forward, and we were surprised, but glad to let him. Faruk is a good spirit. When we told him we were leaving NYC for Florida, he instantly understood and he in fact let out his secret that he hated it in New York. Too stressful, etc. And he was so glad Rosalie was going to have a more peaceful life. He was really happy for her. He gave her a samosa.

She drew in most of her books. She loved Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. We had a reverse-cover book with both on them. We'd get a few pages into Peter Pan and she'd say "Read Adice" and we'd flip to Alice, then back to "Peetu Pan." These were lovely old books. I was so glad to share them with her, even though I think Alice is a bit too long. We also read Heidi. She loved characters. Heidi, Alice, Louis by Metaphrog.

I decided to find some Looney Tunes at the library and the only one they had in stock was a set of extremely old Porky Pig cartoons. She loved these. "Eea watch Pinky Pig!" Watching her try to get syllables right was gorgeous. She got to "Eea watch Poky Poke" once, and then almost "Pinky Poke." Then she was gone.

She drew in most of her books. When we'd read the books, if she spotted her own scribbles, she'd stop it all and announce "Oh! Rodzy draw!"

Our house is full of boxes: Rodzy pillows, Rodzy toys, Rodzy blankets, Rodzy clothes. So much life she had.

t

Tom and Leela and Rosalie, 1 month later

2011-12-18T17:13:00.000-05:00

My dearest friends,

I want to thank everyone for your love and generous generous words and support. We're in a new country, Leela and I. A new state of being that frankly isn't welcome but we understand we have no choice but to enter it and to stay. It's the country without Rosalie running around our house, wanting to blow bubbles and to do watercolor to visit the big turtle and to watch Ponyo, all while asking "Dop?" - ("what's that?") and also "where'd the big moon go?"

Which of course is our question too: Where'd the light in the sky go? Where'd the big moon go? Where did Rodzy go?Leela and I spent a week having some sort of weird mythic time in New Mexico, which we are both writing about in our own way, and will discuss later.

We've been haunting Gainesville for a week and are heading away for another week to spread our daughter's ashes into the ocean. I can't tell you how incredibly weird this all is. It has gone from shock and horror to grief and sorrow to grief and sorrow and weird. I wake in the morning not knowing how my life switched from one track to another so quickly and effortlessly. Didn't I have a daughter? Didn't I adore her? Wasn't that just 5 weeks ago? Where am I?

For a short while after, Rosalie's picture was a thing we kept hidden, it was too powerful and destructive to our sad mortal selves- it hurt us to look at it. But we've taken it out and now we see it when we go to bed and when we wake and she's slowly becoming a spirit embedded in an image. A story, a saint or an icon. Something we are glad to have a connection to, something to remind us of our human story and of cosmic joy and laughter, but no longer a part of our flesh and blood family. It's harrowing, incredibly sad, and well... weird.

For lack of a better idea, I'm writing a lot about it, composing a comic book (a terrible term, still, if you ask me) about it, and will be happy if you read it someday. (This is NOT "Daddy Lightning" which I have to finish and will still ship from Retrofit in the spring.)

Leela will be picking her radio show up again this Monday December the 19th, two hours devoted to songs we were listening to in our deepest grieving. I'll be there in the studio. It will probably be a sad couple of hours but I bet you're strong enough. Find the link here, look for Ecstasy to Frenzy: http://growradio.org/ You can listen live or look for the podcast later. (Two weeks later we'll have guest DJ Brendan Burford there with us...)

A potential student gave me a set of hand-thrown cups today. I'm drinking coffee from one, warming my hands. Another student wrote "I don't pray so I drew 100 roses", and she sent them to us. Ignatz threw a brick at Krazy.

It's a new country, a world whose meaning we create.

TH@SAW

Rosalie Lightning

2011-12-03T09:44:00.000-05:00

Dear friends, as many people know, my wife Leela and I lost our most precious life force, our most generative, beautiful, gorgeous daughter, Rosalie, this past month.

Her passing was shocking, ripped a hole in our hearts, "My heart is a blast site" Leela said. A friend offered, "Rosalie opened a capacious space in your hearts" - capacious, capacity. I get it.

We had just moved from New York City to Gainesville, Florida, in search of a simpler, less stressful life. Rosalie loved, absolutely loved it here. I will tell more of this story some other day.

Leela and I will be spending time traveling, first to the Golden Willow Retreat in New Mexico, for people grieving and suffering from loss. Leela first heard about this on the radio show Snap Judgment, when the founder of the retreat told his story of losing his wife, then his mother and children all successively. That show was broadcast on my birthday earlier this year.

After a return to Gainesville, which we too, love and are committed to staying and working in, we're going to spend a week in Hawaii, where we've been offered a small free artist's cottage in Makawao, Maui, at the Hui No`eau Visual Arts Center. This is a place we taught at when Leela was pregnant in 2009, and it is where we were happiest during those first 9 months. It also gave us the kick we believed to move to a more beautiful place and to start a school and center dedicated to making art.

In Maui, we'll scatter Rosalie's ashes there in the ocean. I always said she was a water spirit. I still believe it.

We've had an outpouring of generosity and love from you all. We have cards and emails and postings of all kinds still to open and read; the deluge of support and love from you all has been our greatest strength.

We certainly didn't wish it would take a tragedy to remind us that we are loved among our friends, and even strangers, but reminded we have been. We thank you so deeply for your words, contributions, prayers. All that was sent our way helped bolster us, strengthen us in this time when we were so deeply deeply in pain.

Leela and I have been together on a long path. Suddenly diverted, shocking, terrible, but the path out is still forward. In the darkest times, your support meant everything.

We are feeling a lot of bruised and conflicting emotions throughout all of this, but one thing has remained consistent: our gratitude towards the people who reached out to us. We honestly could not, and can not, make it through without you.

Love each other, and thanks.

If you ever met Rosalie Lightning, keep her in your hearts, and send us your fond stories or reflections. She was special. We miss her immensely.

Tom Hart

New Suspect Device Page

2011-11-14T10:19:00.000-05:00

Josh Bayer's Suspect Device is gearing up for issue 2, this issue featuring Garfield beginnings and Nancy endings. These are endless fun for me, and are completely in keeping with my HTSE ideals: it's about finding stories you didn't know were in you.

For instance, here's a grotesque ode to eating excrement. Who knew?

Dennis Goes Down, a story

2011-11-06T12:37:00.006-05:00

See more Hutch Owen samples (the better drawn stuff!) here

Hutch Owen's 3rd book, Let's Get Furious is slated to come out from Top Shelf in March 2012. I thought I'd show some samples here now and there, including how some of these things relate to the How To Say Everything concepts of idea/image, character, storyclock, poetry and linefield.

This long story is the longest in Let's Get Furious, and is the most concrete storyarc, narrative arc, the mythic cycle, that thing that relates to something I call the Storyclock. This story was the first to center on the antagonist of the Hutch Owen world, CEO Dennis Worner. Dennis is a bad dude, he’d sell his dying mother to his children if he could make her somehow look hip enough. This story focused on him confronting some of the limits of his perception.

What follows is a very small subsection showcasing none of the subplots involved. Click any image to read more in depth. The entire story can be read here and in Let's Get Furious by Top Shelf in March 2012. More Hutch Samples can be seen from the Hutch main page, here

Above, here’s that surprise, that 1:00 incident that upsets the character. Dennis sees that his usual theatrics aren’t appreciated by the masses of poor people and consumers. His routine has been interrupted.

He begins his trek into “the other world”, above. To put the world back in order, he decides he has to get the POOR back on track. A typically deluded and wrong-headed action for this character. He hasn’t crossed over into the “other world” yet, but it’s an important moment, a moment of acceptance. He’s accepted his fate.

Above, the world is new to him. As he crosses the threshold into the new world, he's sees things he doesn't understand (but Dennis being Dennis will never admit to not understanding)

Next, above, a typical scene in the other world (“act 2” - we’re sort of 4 or 5:00 here) where the main character confronts constant new oppositions (in this story’s case, most of these are psychological.) In this instance, Dennis’s lackey, Fristoe confronts him with ideas so frustrating that he banishes him. Note too, that this moment serves as the inciting 1:00 incident for the lackey’s character’s subplot. This is his expulsion into the new world, his first upsetting event. Fristoe undergoes a complete, though less elaborate narrative arc in this piece as well.

Here, above, Dennis tries to contemplate this new world, and tries to use the language of that world to wrestle his way out of it. But he doesn't get it quite yet...

Above, Dennis’s low point in this whole experience is confronting, face-to-face a series of real poor people. None of whom do anything to change his opinion of them. In fact, his impressions of them worsen, hastening his return to his own sheltered world. (This also coincided with Hurricane Katrina in real time when I was creating it, as you can gather.)

Above, this is the CRISIS, the 6 o clock, the furthest moment from our “ordinary world”, but working in a strip format I chose not to push him too far into dangerous dramatic territory. I want to keep the character mostly in his familiar state of mind.

In this comic strip format, even his worst moments are pretty manageable. Also, I poked fun at the idea of his knowing where he was in his own storyline. Dennis being a smart ad man and marketer, would know these terms.

Above, now reunited with Fristoe, he tells of his adventure and begs to go home. He’s on the cusp of leaving the new world, 7 or 8 o clock. He’s got access to his old employees and his language here is understood.

Ah home, life is once again in balance. I chose to reuse an image of the front door I used in one of the earliest pages of the character on the way out into the “other world.”

Here, Dennis has returned wiser, smarter, even more ready with the brilliant lines. He’s on top of his game (this final line was one my favorites that I had in my store at the ready.) His reward for having gone through the underworld is a rejuvinated sense of purpose.

Comic from two Nancy panels for Josh Bayer's anthology

2011-07-06T13:17:00.003-04:00

Josh Bayer is heading up an anthology of comics created from two Nancy panels. Here's mine.

I had a lot of fun aping Bushmiller, especially in the last panels. He draws schmutz and filth better than I had seen previously.

I was trying to channel my best ROM-era Josh Bayer here, but failed. Realized that I was still who I was, and I should just try bettering my own vocab than to ape someone else's.

Same lessons, always.

Still like this strip very much. Thanks to Josh for prompting it.

She's Not Into Poetry

2011-06-03T10:13:00.004-04:00

I've put together a collection of my entire 1990s mini-comics called She's Not Into Poetry and it's available now at Lulu, here:
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/shes-not-into-poetry/15918142

People have been asking for this book for 15 years. I always poo-poo-ed it. But it wasn't until I reread these recently 20 years later and with 10 years teaching experience that I realized how weird and fresh most of them are. They're funny and surprising. Read what Tom Spurgeon says:

Angry Crimnal and The Most Powerful Gate are wonderful Tom Hart mini-comics from his prolific early- to mid-1990s phase, as good a sustained output in minis for anyone not named John Porcellino.
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/briefings/commentary/346/

The Angry Criminal by Tom Hart. Tom Hart is a multi-talented threat in today's alternative comics scene. As smart and engaging a person as works with comic art, Hart makes graphic novels, produces web comics, and teaches cartooning classes in New York City. In the early to mid 1990s, Tom Hart was one of the most dedicated mini-comics makers around. His minis are very simply designed, and Hart uses a vibrant art style that borders on crudity. But the stories are offbeat and funny, and anyone who reads them will be reminded of the first time you saw an independent film or heard a non-major-label rock and roll record. Hart's unique voice is in all of his mini-comics, and although my favorite is the out of print Love Looks Left, the pages of The Angry Criminal should open any doubting eyes.
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/all_about_comics/all_about/78/

Complete Contents:
--Some 2011 rambling
--Woodabe Comics
--The Angry Criminal --Love Looks Left
--Prince Fredrick's Feet
--Maria
--The Most Powerful Gate
--The Ditch, The River, The Sea, The Snake
--Manana, Heike, (This is an all-prose diary about a road trip to Mexico. It fits perfectly here.)
--New Hat
--Ramadan
--Some more 2011 rambling and lists.

I had a blast putting these together. I used as much old school technology as I could in conceiving the package, including crappy photocopiers and press-type, but mostly what I did was scan or type things out in Photoshop, flatten and then never edit except using cut-and-paste.

There's some recent ramblings too, an intro and an epilogue, including a list of my favorite art and artists then and now, and a list entitled "Everything I Knew When I Was 20 Was Right." See for yourself.

272 pages.
Pics at Flickr here.
Buy at Lulu here.

My undying thanks to Stephanie Mannheim for helping out this together.

Oblique Strategies for 4 panel comic strips.

2011-03-19T11:17:00.005-04:00

Digging around through some old boxes of notes, instructions, ideas, images. Presenting these "oblique strategies" specific to 4-panel comic strips (and as such slightly literal sometimes):

no difference between panel 3 and 4
panel 3: a new character walks in.
one box is all words peanuts: "hey what're you doing with those pliers?"
4th panel: report back to a new family member
reality wins out in panel 4
ask permission to do something already done
absurd answer to unsolvable problem calvin and hobbes: how to get quarter out of snow field? melt it with a drier
try to write as someone who doesn't love coffee
all empty panels
get what you want in panel 4 but work for it
use a famous folk tale but keep it under wraps
the way something feels
1 panel or 2
something you saw on a meta-Garfield site
more Japanese: less joke, more (development) movement
compare 2 wildly different things Peanuts: school and prison (Sally: I'm still thinking!)
panel 4 is much much later
what is the silent gesticulating person talking about?
panel 4 disproves panel 3
the difference between panel 2 and 4
the (character's) physical limitations make for a bizarre finale
traditional character tries something traditional with nontraditional materials example: charlie brown kicking a hose (?)
Compare AND contrast
silent visual metaphor
someone else's visual POV
action described
something weird, later contextualized
everything is off panel
switch a role
stretch a character's strength (or weakness) and call him/her on it
keep characters not on the same page
funny picture for negative emotion
beg (or get cocky) for something you don't get in panel 4.
announce the climax early on
what can you censor? example: lauren's locker room (****) for bag of crap

Brian Eno on foiling the critic

2011-01-24T08:27:00.000-05:00

I managed to get through 70some drafts of How To Say Everything before quoting Brian Eno, but it was bound to happen.

From a terrific 1980 interview with Charles Amirkhanian (found here. Thanks, Matt Madden.):

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Lyric writing is an embarrassing thing to do because there’s a kind of exposure in writing lyrics that is really more critical than any other kind of exposure I can think of.

Words have such distinct meanings that they pin you down in a sense. So to start writing lyrics is hard. To start writing lyrics when you don’t know quite what to say is even more difficult.

So I began inventing systems the intention of which was to foil the critic in me and to encourage the child in me. I tend to think that one’s mind is mediated by two characters: one is a critical one and the other is playful and childish one. And we’re inclined to let the critic have a bit too much sway in that balance.

And so quite a lot of the procedures I use are intended to catch him off guard for a little while so that the playful person can come out.

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And more:
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When I was young the most overpowering emotions were induced in me by music. Not only emotions but also a sense of wonder and a sense of "I must find out what that is or how it was done or where it came from."

I suppose a lot of my early knowledge if you like was the result of a self-education in culture, particularly in music.

Now, once you become more culturally aware, you tend to know where things come from and upon hearing them you already have a category in which to place them. And so by that means you lose that sense of mystery that some of them have. One of the points in writing music is exactly that, to produce music that has that same effect on you. As music first did. To produce things that are as strange and mysterious to you as the first music you first heard. And I guess that's the thrill for me: to do something that is actually outside of the territory of things I can defend, I'm just moved by it and I'm not sure of the reasons why I'm moved by it.

Classes with Tom Hart in the Spring

2011-01-06T09:20:00.005-05:00

Comics Classes with Tom Hart in the Spring

I'm teaching two classes for adults at SVA this spring. These are the last non-summer classes I'll teach before moving away to start my own school!

First is Sequential Art: Expanding Your Vision, which is a fancy way of saying Comics/Graphic Novel intensive.

We'll do exercises for the first 5-6 weeks, expanding our ideas about composition, transitions, page design, etc. We'll work on our own projects intensively for the remaining weeks. It's always a good class, and very flexible. When students come needing more exercises and help, I'll offer that. If they just need good sounding boards for their ideas and execution, I create an atmosphere for that too. I'll show a dozen or so slideshows giving historical, technical and thematic context for our work.

Monday evenings from 6:30-9:30. Register here.

Next class is Independent Projects Seminar: Comics. I teach this with Matt Madden and I'll let his description suffice:

Independent Projects Seminar: Comics is a great opportunity to get occasional feedback on a project you are working at on your own: graphic novel, short story, webcomic, whatever. We meet three times throughout the semester for full-day Saturday critique sessions which always generate thoughtful feedback and enlightening discussions from the whole group. We've had multiple repeat students in this class as it is well suited to artists who are basically working on their own but want to come in from the cold occasionally.

Three Saturdays plus time for email or a short personal conference. Register here.

There will be an open house/info session next Tuesday, January 11, where you can learn more about these and other classes. I'll be there as will a bunch of other teachers. Details below.

If a quick, 6 week class downtown is more your speed, I'm teaching at the 92Y Tribeca, as well. Take a look here: http://www.92y.org/shop/92Tri_class_detail.asp?productid=MD3AF19

Comix Manifesto

2011-01-04T21:50:00.004-05:00

For various reasons, I've been reading a lot of manifestos lately. I've been working on How To Say Everything- the book, a sort of manifesto- for 2 years and thought I would dash off a quick alternative to keep spry.

Here it is:

The spirit world is where.

The spirit world is larger than you think.

Art and story let you see it, and make a guess at its boundaries, but much like humanity's limited ability to see all of our universe, our own inner life is too broad to be understood or contained.

Constant art making gets you closer to it.

Careful art making makes you understood. Craft helps other people understand what the hell you are talking about.

Diary comics can get you there, but only if you are flagrantly self-centered and your spirit world IS the people around you. (This is not a bad thing.)

Seeing the themes of your life enables you to live more fully.

Characters and stories direct you to the themes of your life.

The characters and stories which appear when you are barely paying attention are your first cloudy glimpses of what is there.

Your attentive exploration gives you a better sense of the scope and boundaries of it.

It is boundless.

Looking at other work you are reading maps and log books and hearing yarns.

Go into culture and histories asking to be haunted.

The spirit world breathes themes.

Reverberate.

First Daddy Lightning pages

2010-12-29T09:27:00.004-05:00

Best thing about being snowed in and stranded: 3 pages in 2 days

Interview with me at Daily Crosshatch

2010-12-29T08:48:00.001-05:00

Interview with me on Daily Crosshatch about teaching and The Sequential Artists Workshop: http://bit.ly/fo1QFp

She's Not into Poetry Mock-Up

2010-12-27T11:12:00.003-05:00

Putting together a collection of my 1991-1996 mini-comics. For cats.

Great Student: Lisa Lim

2010-12-23T11:45:00.000-05:00

Lisa Lim's terrific comic has made it to print and is viewable on the web here: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/english/nashvillereview/archives/2787

It's an unbelievable tale of her mom having to retrieve her half-sister from a sort of kidnapping in Egypt, after 5 years in exile. Totally crazy story, with vivid characters and weird situations and lavish diagrammatic, designy illustrations.

Check it out!

Tim Kreider on Stealing From Your Friends

2010-12-08T09:34:00.001-05:00

Actually creating art, like giving birth, is a painful, unsightly and ultimately solitary business, best done in private--but conception is necessarily more sociable, and way more fun. Nothing is ever created in total isolation. Here is how you come up with good ideas: cultivate friendships with people much smarter and funnier than you, spend hundreds of hours drinking and talking with them, and steal everything they say. Keep a little notepad and jot down every hilarious idea they come up with. Often you'll wake up to find cryptic and inscrutable items like "Giant Squid--CONSPIRACY???" scrawled in there, but sometimes you will find an idea that's worth preserving. And once in a while you get a gift from the Gods.

I'm being (kinda) facetious when I advocate stealing your friends' ideas. I'm not really recommending anything quite as lazy or straightforward as plagiarism. Being around smart, funny, creative people forces you to be smarter, funnier and more creative yourself, just to keep up. In your effort to impress and best them you better yourself. We've all been in a barroom or car full of friends all riffing on some joke, outdoing each other, trying to crack each other up. it's both a competition and a group collaboration. It's often impossible, in retrospect, to parse out which was whose idea, exactly; they were products of a group mind, quicker and more inventive than any one person's efforts. Just recently, in one of our late-night phone conversations, my friend Boyd and I came up with what sounds like the title of a bold manifesto, Beyond Pants. And at dinner this week some friends and I hit upon the name of a blockbuster that pretty much writes itself: Godzilla Dubai. This is the fruitful battlefield of creativity Nietzsche describes in "Homer's Contest." (Nietzsche, the loneliest of philosophers, wrote eloquently and often on this subject: "One seeks a midwife for his thoughts; another, someone he can assist. Here is the origin of a good conversation.")

Joseph Conrad, in his introduction to The Secret Agent, describes how an offhanded comment dropped by a friend of his in conversation and something he read in a book a week later somehow connected in his mind--he describes the experience as both "illumination" and "crystallization"--and inspired him to begin the novel. H.G. Wells and his brother Frank were walking in Surrey discussing the extermination of the aboriginal Tasmanians when Frank wondered aloud how the English would feel if beings from another world were to drop out of the sky and begin methodically laying waste to the countryside. Not long ago I had a conversation over breakfast with the author of this book, my friend and colleague Tom Hart, in which we got to talking about people we'd known who were habitually dishonest. I'd once had a friend who wasn't a pathological liar but made up a lot of stories and kept a lot of secrets. I'd resigned myself to never writing about him because there were certain secrets I felt bound to keep for him, even thought he'd been dead several years. But in describing him to Tom that it occurred to me that the things I was free to say about him were stranger and more interesting than I'd realized; that perhaps I could write an essay about him after all without revealing the things I didn't want to. Tom is an autodidact, bereft of the chronic boredom and incuriosity that are the gifts of a formal education; his urgent and insatiable interest in the world makes you feel more erudite and fascinating. Such people animate every conversation they enter into, giving even a rambling barroom talk focus and momentum; they make you realize you have something to say.

Even talking with ordinary people, if it can't possibly be avoided, is occasionally valuable. One of the first things I learned in college was that quite often you think you have no opinion on a subject until you listen to other people's stupid ideas and wrongheaded interpretations and realize that in fact you have very strong and peculiar opinions; you'd just mistakenly thought they were so obvious and sensible that they went without saying. Your inner thirteen-year-old who believes that Everybody in the World Is Stupid Except Me isn't actually as smart as s/he thinks and will make you very unpopular if allowed to mouth off uncensored, but that buried arrogance is necessary if you're going to presume on people's time and attention to tell them what you think about anything at all.

And let us not forget what is most important in life: the Ladies. The women I've loved most in my life are the ones in whose company, and for whose benefit, I've become the smartest, funniest, sanest and best version of myself. Impressing women (or men, or both, depending on your gender and orientation) is perhaps the main incentive in any kind of creative endeavor. As my therapist keeps telling me, kind of tiresomely, "Sublimation is the highest form of defense mechanism." (It seems to me like a paltry substitute for fucking, but you do sometimes get paid for it.) Even romantic disappointment and grudges can be powerful incentives; Tom and I once agreed, in a barroom converation, that 94% of all art in the history of the world was created to make some girl sorry. A novelist friend of mine told me an anecdote about giving a reading from her first novel in a bookstore where her first boyfriend, who was, humiliatingly, working as a clerk in that bookstore, approached her and actually admitted he'd read her book looking for any allusion to himself, and had found none. This story is to me as thrilling a tale of vengeance, in its small way, as The Count of Monte Cristo. Yes: we will show them. We will show them all. The night my book of essays sold to a major publisher, my girlfriend brought me five congratulatory cupcakes that said, in cursive icing, one word per cake:

They will rue the day.

Tic Tac Toe Jam with Matt Madden

2010-12-06T09:00:00.003-05:00

Matt Madden and I took a morning to do a "Tic Tac Toe Jam" of his invention. We had a lot of fun and I drew probably my 4th superhero ever. See explanation, both jams and more pics in his post on it here: http://mattmadden.blogspot.com/2010/12/tic-tac-toe-jam-new-jam-comic.html

2010 Post Thanksgiving KGB COmix Reading!

2010-11-23T09:21:00.003-05:00

Hello readers,

Our annual post-Thanksgiving Sunday Comix Reading at KGB this year will be Sunday November 28 at 7pm and will feature:

Lisa Hanawalt: http://www.lisahanwalt.com
Mike Dawson: http://www.mikedawsoncomics.com/
Kate Beaton: http://www.harkavagrant.com/

KGB Bar:
85 East 4th Street
NYC

Let's Get Furious Cover

2010-11-17T20:58:00.006-05:00

God knows I've never designed a good book cover myself, so we're letting Andrew Devries Barton at Top Shelf design it and he's making lovely choices. Here's the cover at right, and the entire spread below.

The book is 378 pages, baby. That's more than 300 pages longer than your average new graphic novel these days at about the same cost.

Coming in May 2011.

On Not Shooting the Outline

2010-11-16T09:55:00.000-05:00

My wife, Leela and I were trying various episodic TV from HBO, and we watched our first episode of ROME. Hundreds of Caesar’s troops on horseback, are trudging through the woods towards the Capitol. They come to a river. One Centurion looks to another and says “What river is that?” Centurion #2: “That’s the Rubicon.” The troops cross it.

Leela looked at me and scowls, “They’re just shooting the outline!”

You can imagine the dramatic outline of the story here: Caesar makes his decision. The troops prepare. The march starts. They cross the Rubicon, marking the first act of war in Caesar’s civil war.

What’s missing in the producers’ execution is some grace, some evocation of emotion, some decorative element, some genuine grubby humanity.

Mamet gets it right in On Directing Film: “...In the beautiful drama, each moment serves the purpose of the superobjective, and each moment is beautiful in itself. If the moment only serves the superobjective, we have plodding narrative pseudodrama, good only for object-lesson or ‘message’ plays.”

Not shooting the outline, or poetry, is about getting to know the plot point and using it as a springboard to let your humanity explore. This can come in any form of detail- beauty of language (be it verbal or visual), emotional depth, psychological clarity, connections and “poetic units”, great jokes, etc.

If your outline says “The surgeon accidentally put a guy’s feet on backwards” but you write:

The surgeon had finished up sewing
The feet on a man without knowing
He switched them around
Now he walks into town
They can’t tell if he’s coming or going
(-Edward Lear)

You’ve made poetry.

If you write, "Doctor, you've accidentally put the patient's feet on backwards" you've shot the outline. Or written a set-up for the Muppet Show's "Veterinarian Hospital."

Some writers find poetry in language. From Shakespeare to Lear to Mamet, they lock down the outline- the structure of the drama to allow the verbal landscape to soar. A hip-hop artist’s outline might be a single line: “Tell them how bad-ass your rhymes are” and from that 4 minutes of verse flows.

Other artists will find it in their drawings, lighting, composition, etc. Douglas Sirk transcended his “pseudodrama” with an excess of style. Osamu Tezuka dazzled with a brilliance in his craft.

Talks with my Buddhist student

2010-11-10T20:22:00.002-05:00

I had a discussion with a student who deeply invested in Buddhism. Some thoughts:

There is a spiritual world and a material world.

If you choose to be in the material world, even just a little, you have to act, you have to do something.

When you choose to be present and you pay attention, you realize life is incredibly strange. So is art. It can be like living twice- it has the potential to be just as strange and wonderful and horrible for the artist as real life. But not everyone has the courage to go through it twice.

Attention is the best artistic gift you can give yourself.

"My life has been about paying attention to things. Most people don't know how few things they pay attention to." - John Cage

Random quotes

2010-11-10T19:51:00.004-05:00

Random quotes. Organizing my How to Say Everything detritus folder.

"Nothing is worse than a good beginning" - Pablo Picasso

"As soon as your mind knows that it's on and it's supposed to produce some lines, either it DOESN'T, or it produces things that are very predictable. You want your mind to wander, that's really what you want to happen." - Paul Simon

"Be regular and [word illegible in my notes] in your life so you can be violent and original in your work" - Flaubert

"I was obessesed with movement and action... I pursued them all my life. I began to fall into patterns. Ultimately... you align everything with your need" AND

"Dramatize means to characterize. I wasn't characterizing, I was doing biblical illuminations... As I began to become aware of drama, I became aware of character." AND

"I got away from a totally abstracted view to a more personalized one. I tried to humanize..." AND

On comparing his own work to Harold Grey: "I've never reached that level of being able to casually- I'm corrupted by my ideal to still have a Wagnerian element enter into every subdued picture that I want to do." - Gil Kane, TCJ interview (this and above three)

"Intention of an artist: to make enough mistakes to be able to receive gifts" - uncredited.

Political nuts then and now, in cartoons

2010-10-24T12:04:00.005-04:00

Angry rants from the Political Fringe!

From Super I.T.C.H., a great pas de deux with the past and the present:
http://superitch.com/?p=12726

Cartoon from Puck's Joseph Keppler.

Great Student: Sophie Goldstein

2010-10-24T11:17:00.005-04:00

Sophie Goldstein re-emerged to show me what she's been up to. Aside from this single strip which cracks me up:

http://dcisgoingtohell.com/?paged=3

And whatever painting technique she is using to great effect,

She is also demonstrating a great use of PERSONAL FONTS. Sophie made this font for $10 at http://www.yourfonts.com/

So get with the program, read Sophie's Darwin Carmichael is Going To Hell and stop using bad fonts.

A web app. I want. Please build it and give me a free copy.

2010-10-19T12:35:00.001-04:00

Ideally, here's what it would do.

Like tweeting, you send a SMS to a number. You are creating a personal log. It records your message, the date (automatically), and a tag. Here's a few sample messages to show how I would use it:

Finished Veronica, Mary Gaitskill; @books, @log
Dreamt dad sitting on tire swing, I pushed him off; @ dreams, @log
idea for new play: old high school bullly earns second degree learning from teacher he once bullied as kid; @ideas
short story read: xxxx by xxxx in New Yorker june 2010 issue; @short stories, @log
finished draft of xxx; @writings, @log

Etc. And all it would have to do is create a database that you can access on the web that you can view (and print) in calendar or spreadsheet form. That's it

A secondary option: use "z-1" to mean you did it yesterday, "z-2" two days ago, etc.

I WOULD LOVE THIS APP.

For 2 reasons: no where to record ideas on the go
Nowhere to record personal history on go and it always seems like I do nothing. I've always found that looking at a log of what I have accomplished (even if the accomplishements are small) make me feel so much BETTER.

I would call it TAGLOG (like tagalog without the A) or TAP A Z (and incorporate the "z" idea, above.)

New Barney Banks Pages on Act-i-vate!

2010-10-08T07:48:00.002-04:00

This is the final batch of pages in part 1: http://www.act-i-vate.com/87-8-4.comic

See you in part 2!

On striving for the mark in fiction.

2010-10-05T11:53:00.002-04:00

From Michael Cunningham in the NY Times : (lots more in this essay too.)

"Here’s a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest, will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they’d intended to write. It’s one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, and in your mind it’s transcendent, it’s brilliantly comic and howlingly tragic, it contains everything you know, and everything you can imagine, about human life on the planet earth. It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire.

But even if the book in question turns out fairly well, it’s never the book that you’d hoped to write. It’s smaller than the book you’d hoped to write. It is an object, a collection of sentences, and it does not remotely resemble a cathedral made of fire.

It feels, in short, like a rather inept translation of a mythical great work."

Sophocles, Philoctetes

2010-09-24T20:53:00.001-04:00

This is how you start a story:

"This is it; this Lemnos and its beach
down to the sea that quite surrounds it; desolate,
no one sets foot on it; there are no houses.
This is where I marooned him long ago,
the son of Poias, the Melian, his foot
diseased and eaten away with running ulcers."

-Sophocles, Philoctetes, translated by David Grene

New Banks page!

2010-09-24T08:20:00.001-04:00

http://www.act-i-vate.com/87-7-7.comic

Badly written business books in bright orange

2010-09-08T22:30:00.003-04:00

Just read two semi-recent business books, horribly written (why are they always so?) and branded in bright safety orange: Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur, and Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind.

Both might be right in the short and long run (and are certainly at least half right), but Keen's is unconvincing. histrionic, and full of blanket, unquestioning statements like "We need to reform not revolutionize an information and entertainment economy that has reinforced American values and made our culture the envy of the world." (That doesn't sound like an argument I want to get behind.)

Pink's worst crime is he acts like creativity is crazy some new thing and we're lucky that our American business people are able to behave now like those crazy artist-types they've heard so much about for so many years. He also makes no attempt to predict what will happen in 10-30 years when our so-called competitors (India, China, et al.) are just as "CREATIVE" as we are...

Keen's worst worst worst crime, in a book full of attributed quotes, in a book about separating the trained, publishable professional from the "untalented" amateur is on the last page of "The Great Seduction" chapter:

Quote:

In a cartoon that appeared in The New Yorker in 1993, two dogs sit beside a computer. One has his paw on the computer; the other is looking up at him quizzically.

"On the Internet", the dog using the keyboard reassures his canine friend, "nobody knows you're a Dog."

Endquote.

No attribution. No mention of the professional behind this tidbit of wisdom. It's just "The New Yorker."

Hey pal- it's by Peter Steiner and it's his JOB to write and draw cartoons. Credit your source.

Here's hoping Jaron Lanier's book (next on my list) isn't as horribly written. No safety orange on the cover, but bright bright lime green. What is it with these books?

New classes, fall 2010

2010-09-06T21:09:00.005-04:00

Fall is here, and I'm teaching three classes this fall this to help you to see what you want to say and then say it.

First at SVA, SEQUENTIAL ART: Expanding Your Vision. A basic 12-week cartooning class. We'll do a lot of small exercises early on and then dovetail into longer projects. We'll look at lots of work throughout history and try to expand both our aspirations and our abilities.

Then, also at SVA, Independent Seminar: Comics

Meets for 3 five-hour Saturdays over the fall. An intensive class to get you finishing your big project. Meet other artists, set goals, get lengthy critiques and visit with the guest lecturer. This is always a great class with terrific work coming out of it. Matt recently posted about it, you can read more about it at his (and his wife Jessica's) Drawing Words blog:
http://dw-wp.com/2010/07/a-new-course-idea-the-extended-comics-workshop/

Finally, a 5-week intro to the graphic novel class at 92Y Tribeca:

http://www.92y.org/shop/92Tri_class_detail.asp?category=Art+Center888Art88892TRI+92YTribeca+Art+Programs888&productid=MD3AF19

This quick class runs twice in the fall. We'll look at the building blocks of comix storytelling and send you out the door with the ability to communicate and an idea for a longer work.

Visit my teaching website with some links and a little theory and book recommendations. Take a look at my testimonials page for the voices of people who've taken my classes; then sign up!

See you in the fall,

TH

Reporters of War and Refugees - Review of The Photographer, A.D., We Are On Our Own and books by Joe Sacco

2010-09-05T17:00:00.004-04:00

An old piece of unpublished writing, circa 2009:

Reporters of War and Refugees

Reporting in graphic novel form (an inexact term, but one which seems to be sticking) is a fairly new development in mainstream media, though visual artists have certainly been commenting on and from war zones for centuries. From Goya’s series of etchings, Disasters of War (about uprisings after Napoleon attempted to install his brother as King of Spain) to Winslow Homer’s etchings of the American Civil War, to Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe, single panel cartoons composed in Europe during World War II and printed in Stars and Stripes , artists have often been there, or have been called upon, to document -sometimes not without propagandistic intent- the wars of their culture.

The recent surge in reportage and memoir graphic novels has been paved by Art Spiegelman’s Maus , a memoir of the author’s father’s experience during the holocaust. Having won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, Maus is now widely known and is found in bookstores, libraries and schools around the world.

Since Maus, other artists have gone to find and report the stories of people in wars, and of the refugees fleeing them.

Palestine
By Joe Sacco
Published by Fantagraphics
ISBN: 978-1-56097-844-2
http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=1018&category_id=83&manufacturer_id=0&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=62

Joe Sacco’s Palestine, a collection of dozens of short stories reporting from the occupied Arab areas of Israel during the early 1990s, cemented the genre. Palestine was slow to take off; at the time people didn’t understand this type of reporting. Mainstream media thought that comics was a childish format for serious subject matter and as such didn’t even notice the prodigious accomplishment Sacco was achieving beneath their radar.

In Palestine, we were shown stories, interviews, places, events and reactions in rich visual detail. Sacco is an artist with great attention to detail. He cross-hatched and rendered every rivet and every wrinkle, and drew faces full of flesh, fatigue and emotion. Sacco’s own curious and excitable voice was never absent, the comics were always filtered through his unique sensibilities. He had a robust sense of humor that came across in his narration and self-caricature. He played himself as warm and understanding, fully aware how lucky his own situation was, and humbled before the stories of the people who were hosting him. He draws himself slightly odder than the people around him, a sort of homunculus amidst a cascade of real human stories.

In Palestine, we watched him make his way from ravaged villages to broken factories to floorless living rooms to Israeli cafes, interviewing Arabs and Jews-anyone wanting to share. Sacco, trained as a journalist and is always the listener, always looking at all sides and presenting what he understands the story to be.

Eventually, ten years after Palestine’s initial published serializations, the mainstream media were won over and Sacco had popularized, if not created a new form of direct graphic novel journalism. His 320 page hardcover collection of the Palestine stories, recently republished in 2007 with sketches and notes and an introduction by the late historian Edward Said, is a touchstone for anyone doing similar work since, including Sacco himself.

Safe Area Gorazde
By Joe Sacco
Published by Fantagraphics
240 pages
ISBN: 978-1-56097-392-8
http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?keyword=gorazde&Search=Search&Itemid=62&option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse

In 1995, presumably while taking a break from finishing the drawings for Palestine , Sacco visited Gorazde, a UN-created “safe area” in eastern Bosnia during the Bosnian War.

While Bosnian Serbs were ridding their country of Muslims , these areas were supposed to be enclaves of safety for the Muslims living there, protected by the U.N. Instead what happened was that these difficult-to-reach areas were instead where some of the fiercest exterminations happened. Of the three safe areas, only Gorazde was left with inhabitants standing at the end.

Sacco arrives, and the book begins, when a permanent peace settlement is about to be announced. Will Gorazde be given to Serbia in exchange for more of Sarajevo? Would these people who have endured years of living on the run and in whatever shattered buildings they could find be forced out of the town they grew up in?

In Gorazde, Sacco shares the townspeople’s stories, histories, opinions, framing his book around the waiting during these peace talks. Like in Palestine, Sacco divides and titles his chapters according to themes, stories or characters. Each chapter is a little human essay, on history, on war stories, on state of electricity, or on one particular character. One image returns over and over: the shell-damaged main road through town. The road, where the Serb tanks roll through, the road along which the citizens of Gorazde run to escape into the forests, the road on either side of which they wait for the U.N. convoys after the cease-fire.

He recounts grim war stories told the inhabitants. Months of hiding in woods, watching their town and possessions burn and be looted. Stealing food, swimming upriver beneath the watch of the Serbian enemies on the riverbanks. Other times he shows the people light-hearted, ready to begin living again. The teenage girls want jeans from America, college students begin going back to classes, and when the U.N. convoys begin delivering flour, people begin to cook their favorite dishes again. For comedic relief, Sacco treats us to several portraits of a soldier named Riki, who loves to party and belt out American pop songs.

Sacco’s drawings are detailed- he draws every muddy rock, every tree, every piece of bombed out rubble and broken lumber- but they’re not lush. Drawn with cold lines in stark black and white using coarse cross-hatching for most lights and darks, the effect is fragile, coarse, and brittle. When he draws faces harried and haunted faces, he draws them as he saw them, noting each line, brow and muscle of every expression. The drawings are clearly full of affection, but become filled with a grim resignation too. A permanence. Young women seem old, even children’s faces seem haggard.

Sacco lets his drawings loosen for parties and fun. Faces flushed, teeth and gums joyously about to fly out of mouths, bodies loosened and pressed up against one another, or tautly marshalling energy to belt out a song into a toy microphone. Sacco allows himself more cartoonish freedom in these instances, the instances where the people of Gorazde give in to hope and joy.

The book teems with Sacco’s humanity in fact, even though most of the stories are grim. At the book’s core are a handful of first person accounts of the war. “Disappearance” details the night that the Serb residents of the town (it was once almost half Serb, half-Muslim) disappeared in the night. The military attacks on the Muslim population began from the outlying hilltops the next morning. “The First Attack” picks up a couple weeks later. Already, people who lived too close to the hillsides have abandoned their homes and found shelter where they could. The chapter shifts between five narrators, all trying to escape enemy fire as the attacks escalate. What was once a town is now an outpost, with everyone using whatever they find shelter, to fortify the defenses, and to keep themselves warm and fed.

Life under occupation, life under threat, life on the run, life renewed with glimpses of hope, all of this is in Gorazde, as the people in the book try to put their lives back together. Sacco’s books, his essayistic style, his narrative inclinations like the richest documentaries, his detailed cartooning, and his verve and love of people make his books the strongest in the genre.

We Are On Our Own
By Miriam Katin
Published by Drawn and Quarterly
ISBN: 9781896597201
http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/shopCatalogLong.php?st=art&art=a4277ec7c94305

Not a book of journalism, We Are On Our Own instead is a Katin’s recounting of her time as a young girl, running with her mother from the Nazis in Hungary. Katin is an animator by trade, and she draws her story with a quick soft line, all the drawings lasting only long enough to get to the next image. This is a book about fleeing and it makes sense that her book, in fact her career, would be about movement. We Are On Our Own is quick book, a book on the run.

Katin’s mother Esther is a sophisticated Jewish woman in Budapest, with a husband in the war. It’s 1944. She is told to hand over her dog to the authorities, to catalog her personal items and to leave the list with her landlord. She is forced out of her apartment and turns to black marketer for false papers to help her escape to the countryside.

In the country, in the guise of a servant, she finds shelter with a family of grape farmers. A German Commandant stops by to steal wine, and taking a fancy to Esther, returns frequently to rape her while offering her lavish gifts.

When the Russians move in and the Germans have been kicked out, she is raped too by a Russian soldier who then dies at her side. Esther and Miriam are forced to go deeper into where another family takes them in. This family has grown to be expert in trimming the goods from dead soldiers. They take boots, bloodied uniforms, and Esther spends time sewing, and repairing these garments until she soon realizes she is pregnant.

World War II piled it on; situations went from bad to worse. Esther is now in search of an abortion. Meanwhile, Esther’s lost husband returns to Budapest and begins his search across the country for his family.

The title of the book comes from Esther’s loss of faith during this turmoil, and young Miriam’s misunderstanding of those ideas about God and faith. The book occasionally shifts briefly to present rendered in colored pencil, where Miriam and her husband and children discuss faith and God. After the book’s experiences, adult Katin is a secular non-believer.

Katin’s quick animator’s pencil sometimes renders the drawings in this book so quickly that they are clearly designed to be glanced at, like any horrible situation. Who wants to draw the rape of their own mother? Who wants to linger while reading that? Like fleeing the Nazis, you flee through Esther’s story. Esther is a strong and fearless character; Miriam’s drawings are fearless, but fleeting. We Are On Our Own is the story of flight in the face of great horror.

The Photographer
By Emmaunel Guibert
Didier Lefevre
Colored and designed by Frederic Lemercier
Published by First Second
http://us.macmillan.com/thephotographer
ISBN#

Most recently, we’ve seen The Photographer, a riveting, vivid book by Emmanuel Guibert and Didier Lefevre. This book is ostensibly a documentation of the activities of Medicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders) in Afghanistan in 1986. But more than that, it is also a moving, terrifying story of the man who sought to provide that documentation, Didier Lefevre, The Photographer. What Lefevre and Guibert have collaborated to do is to present the full range of Lefevre’s documentation, entwined with the story of his many physical and emotional trials during the mission to create what seems like an entirely new genre, an entirely new form: the photo/comix mélange.

In 1986, Lefevre was a photographer still in his 20s when he got the opportunity to document an MSF mission in Afghanistan. His story starts there. On page 1 he is packing his things, he takes photos of the surroundings he says good-bye to his mother, and he boards a plane to what will be his home base: Pakistan.

Over the course of the next few months, Lefevre will endure terrible travel conditions. He will be endangered over and over again, he will meet strong people, sickened people, secretive, powerful people, spies, war-ravaged villagers, war-wounded and war-strengthened Mujahideen.

And he will take over 4000 photos. Hundreds of these photos are woven into this book and his story, and it is in this way that I say Emmanuel Guibert and Didier Lefevre have created an entirely new genre. A book that is both read and stared at; a story that is experienced and presented in anecdote, event and character, but also glimpsed via the windows and lenses through which the protagonist himself literally once looked.

Without the photos, it would be a powerful travelogue. A story about a man traveling outside his boundaries, outside his comfort zone to summon the fortitude to be better than he was before. With the photos intertwined via the fabulous design work of Frederic Lemercier, the book and story is a precipice the reader will always feel on the edge of. A tunnel into another world, a book to be involved with, so penetrating and serious that I scarcely believed my heart was still beating when I finished reading it.

The story follows Lefevre as he meets his MSF crew in Peshwar in Pakistan, moves around the subculture of expats and NGOs there, and prepares for his mission to Afghanistan. He and the MSF crew join a caravan which will take a month on horse and mule over mountain passes to get to the small villiage where they will serve the Afghani people for three months, and then will return to Pakistan before the mountains become unpassable in the winter.

He is properly clothed, is hazed while packing supplies, meets people who might or might not be spies in western bars, and spends time documenting an aimless month in Peshawar.

Guibert has done a superb job of giving us the details of Lefevre’s story and then letting the photos amplify or punctuate those details. Often those story events are new cultural scenarios, strange to western readers, which the photographs give us a better glimpse into. Sometimes those events are surprising or shocking, sometimes they’re absolutely tragic. In many of these circumstances, Guibert’s habit of allowing pictures to comment after the fact allow us as readers to deepen our experience with the story at our own pace.

Lefevre spends a month in Pakistan awaiting the departure of his group. This aimless, almost luxurious month is a gift to us: we are treated to three pages of photos: a city few people have ever heard of, teeming with people and commerce and life of all kinds. We see the streets, we can look into the eyes of children on this side of the world, in this part of the story.

Out of necessity, the MSF group must attach itself to a weapons caravan consisting of more than 100 horses and donkeys and 40 armed fighters. The group is woken in the middle of the night and smuggled across the border to meet their caravan in Afghanistan.

The crossing is hard and takes a month. Lefevre struggles hard and is strengthened by the arduous trek over the mountains. In this time, the caravan struggle against fatigue and hunger, they lose a member of the caravan, Lefevre is shot at by other members of the caravan, they meet warlords, and visit the grave of a man who didn’t make it the last time. The doctors treat villagers along the way while Lefevre takes photographs. Guibert (with Lemercier) strings this all together, combining his own drawn renditions of the trip with the photographer’s, Lefevre’s exact record.

Slowly Lefevre learns something of this strange culture, as his Western guides inculcate him and his Afghani guides inspire him. His body acclimates, his heart widens, his photographer’s eye remaining alert and active, his shutter always clicking. By the time they arrive in Zaragandara, their goal, he has seen and recorded enough to last a lifetime.

It’s in the primitive hospital/shack of Zaragandara where MSF get finally down to the work they came for, the treatment of Afghanis wounded by war. Children arrive with burns, maimed soldiers in excruciating pain are tended to. The Photographer presents dozens of these cases, documenting via photo-montage entire operations, including a man having his jaw resewn, another having shrapnel removed from his eye, and another having his leg amputated above where his foot fell off. The effect of these silent extended photo sequences is harrowing, severe and saddening.

I will refrain from giving away more of the plot, because amazingly, in a book which seemingly at first seems to serve as documentation of the astounding altruistic work that MSF does, in fact, what happens is that Lefevre himself becomes a major protagonist in a story that is shocking, vivid and terrifying.

That The Photographer manages to have so few photographs of its main character (3, by my count) allow what should be a strange mixing of comix and photography to become a perfect blend. I was originally annoyed that the book was called The Photographer; it seemed a boring title, but I now see that it’s perfect. The main reason the photos work is because it offers you a way to experience the main character through another point of view, through his own non-literal point of view.

Photographs have occasionally been used in comics, often as source material, back-up material, or the stranger merging of fumetti, where dramas are staged and photographed; word balloons added on top. Rumor has it that Harvey Kurtzman would give any student in his cartooning class an A+ who tried such a bold form.

The Photographer sometimes reverses the traditional order of importance, by allowing drawings to comment on sequences of photographs, not the other way around. Lefevre’s eye is all through out this book. His desires, his fascinations, his hunger. We see traces of his thoughts on full contact sheets as he identifies the photos most worth developing further. He is a man who lived through his camera, and with The Photographer, readers get to live a portion of his life.

The Photographer, in a way similar to Joe Sacco’s work because of Sacco’s dedication to drawing every single line, is a book that is meant to be read but also forces you to look. Most graphic novels, Maus and Persepolis, and Katin’s book included, are designed to be read. The Photographer is multi-layered. You’ll read it, but you’ll also stare at it, faces will stare back at you. You’ll look deep into the story. You will be transported.

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge
By Josh Neufeld
Published by Pantheon
ISBN#
http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307378149

Josh Neufeld’s A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, is designed to be read, maybe even seen. The story telling is cinematic, the shots and sequences designed to be experienced like one would experience a modern movie; even the characters look and act like indy movie actors. It almost comes with an orchestra. You are expected to sit back and take it all in.

A.D. is about Katrina-ravaged New Orleans in 2005. It starts before the storm, focusing on seven main characters preparing themselves and their belongings for the oncoming storm. Three of the characters evacuate, two stay to guard their convenience store. One sticks it out in his home, and another goes from evacuation zone to evacuation zone Neufeld documents all their stories thoroughly, in a straightforward, sometimes melodramatic way.

A.D. is a seamless reading experience. Weaving from one story to another, your main thread is the storm that ripped and destroyed an entire city. In Neufeld’s book, we see the storm from many human angles: from the dead center, from the horrific Superdome, from the protected French Quarter, from the highways, from the outskirts, from the rooftops.

What sticks about A.D. is the tremendous story of those who stay in New Orleans. The dramatic center is the story of the two men, Abbas and Darnell, who aim to guard their store, and wind up soon on top of its roof with water, warm beer and a couple of handguns. Abbas loses his Mercedes to the flooding, and Darnell’s asthma worsens as he is stung by mosquitoes while sleeping on the roof. Their story sticks because they they have contributed to their own experience, their decision-making effecting their situation as their tender friendship seems to deepen in this crisis.

This contrasts with Denise’s story. Denise, though a strong personality, is a victim and her story couldn’t have turned out any less tragic than it did. She is shipped from one part of the story to another, from one evacuation route to another, ultimately winding up in the horrific tragedy that was happening in the Superdome.

If anything weakens A.D., it might be Neufeld’s overly-straightforward way of drawing and storytelling. Never shooting for the poetic heights that Joe Sacco or Emmanuel Guibert shoot for, it’s the "Law and Order" to those creators’ "The Wire". Where the stoicism of Guibert’s photographer and the shell-shocked determination of Sacco’s characters serve to allow the reader a little room to imagine their emotional insides, Neufeld’s characters never fail to indicate their feelings, never fail to act for the camera or the pen and brush. Thus, the music always seems to be swelling or falling, the camera always going in for the dramatic close-up.

The most powerful moments in A.D. come from the horrific sequences in the Superdome. When Denise and her family first arrive there, in a single illustration spanning two pages, a word-balloon from the bus asks “Why is everyone outside?” No attendant music is needed. The remainder of Denise’s story is the horrible answer to that question, shown it in desperate, terrifying detail; detail that Denise and no citizen of this country was in any way prepared to witness. A.D., for this documentation at least, should be required reading for every American, as it prods these details of this suffering back into the public consciousness. “Never Forget” perhaps should not refer to not to the attacks on the World Trade Center. but to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A.D. is a public service.

Finding your style

2010-08-22T22:03:00.003-04:00

From a recent New Yorker short story, The Train of their Departure by David Bezmozgis:

"Apart from recommending a doctor, Karl was no help. Alec was left to his own devices. And, with Polina sitting in his kitchen, it occurred to him that life, which he’d treated as a pastime, and which he’d thought he could yet outdistance, had finally caught up with him. And he discovered, much as he’d suspected, that once life caught up with you, you could never quite shake it again. It endeavored to hobble you with greater and greater frequency. How you managed to remain upright became your style, who you were."

Best description of an artist's style I can think of. How you manage to remain upright...

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/08/09/100809fi_fiction_bezmozgis?currentPage=8#ixzz0xOHeS6ln

Nik Virella at B & N tonight- Aug 4

2010-08-04T11:20:00.003-04:00

SVA Grad Nicole Virella at Barnes and Noble Union Square NYC tonight! http://bit.ly/aSZ8do

Another "re-make": Segar Popeye

2010-07-25T13:07:00.003-04:00

This time I took a Segar Popeye strip tried to make it my own. Click links for larger, and to see the earlier Julie Doucet rework.

From The Seen - Reworked panels, pages and stories from predecessors.
From the Fantagraphics old series volume 8; first few months with Swee'Pea. Being a new dad I was drawn to this one, and -sob- know exactly how Popeye feels!

From The Seen - Reworked panels, pages and stories from predecessors.

Not sure who the woman is on the left. A friend of Barney's, if you can believe that.

92Y summer cartooning camp for teens

2010-07-24T08:53:00.002-04:00

Join cartoonist Tom Hart, creator of Hutch Owens, for a two-week cartooning extravaganza! Cartooning camp at 92Y for teens Aug 9-Aug 20 M-F, 10am-3pm.

Barney Banks: New Page (45) up at Act-I-Vate

2010-07-23T06:45:00.002-04:00

Barney Banks: New Page (45) up at Act-I-Vate

Great Students: Penina

2010-07-22T20:30:00.004-04:00

I was Penina Gal's thesis advisor in 2007 at Center for Cartoon Studies. I must have seemed like I'd be a compassionate tutor when we met and I suggested we play ping pong rather than suffer through Leela's "figure drawing gulag" upstairs, when clearly Penina wasn't feeling well. Since then, Penina's done great work on her "The Fire Messenger", especially the post-Tom input issue 2. She's really gotten into painting lately, and has begun landscape painting between drawing projects. Her slightly Turner-like abstract landscapes go up in at The Zollikofer Gallery White River Junction, July 23.

Go Penina!

Tom Heart is watching you with his cartoons

2010-07-18T12:21:00.000-04:00

I did a small workshop at the bookmaking camp at St. Ann's School in Brooklyn. We did character creating and then a little storytelling then a gallery walk. I found this in my mailbox a few weeks later as a thank you.

Sarah Glidden visits SVA summer seminar

2010-07-17T19:11:00.003-04:00

Sarah Glidden gave a great talk at my and Matt Madden's Comics Seminar class at SVA. She talked about her self-instruction in comics, her dedication to a larger project, her being scooped up by Vertigo and then their SLAVE for 2 years!

Her "How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less" is going to be wonderful. A complex, journalistic investigation with full-color, handpainted artwork.

Ware, Feiffer, Barry, Groening on the demise of the weekly strip

2010-07-15T12:07:00.003-04:00

Great run-down of a semi-recent panel featuring Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Matt Groening, Jules Feiffer on the demise of the weekly strip.

http://edmoorman.blogspot.com/2009/11/barry-ware-groening-and-feiffer-in-one.html

Great Students: Nicole Virella

2010-07-09T09:23:00.000-04:00

Nicole was my student for the SVA Pictorial Problems class a few years back. Nicole did a beautiful painted project and also begun the project at left, viewable more on her blog, http://www.nikvirella.com/

Since then, she's been working on a GN adaptation of a popular series of vampire novels, The Mortal Instruments.

http://www.mortalinstruments.com/graphicnovels.html

Go Nicole!

New Barney Banks Page at Act-I-Vate

2010-07-09T00:08:00.003-04:00

Barney Banks page 43!

New Barney Banks page: # 42 up today

2010-07-02T08:55:00.001-04:00

Barney thanks her for the yoga.

http://www.act-i-vate.com/87-7-3.comic

Great Students: Stephanie Buscema

2010-06-25T12:12:00.003-04:00

Stephanie Buscema was in my Principles class at SVA some 5 or 6 years ago. The granddaughter and niece of the respected Mavel Buscemas, she had a lot of rough skills but couldn't She is the only person I ever sat down and suggested she move from comics to illustration, which she did, but she has ultimately triumphed in both.

Discovering gouache (at some point after my class!), she made that her primary medium and creates delightful, vivid, fun paintings and comic pages steeped in pop-culture hipness, and sheer pleasure of color and form.

Check her out at

http://www.stephaniebuscema.com/

Great Students: Jen Rose

2010-06-18T17:15:00.003-04:00

The horrible hilarious love lives of Jen Rose ("Mouchette")

Jen slipped into my 92Y class after taking some workshops with the amazing Lauren Weinstein. Jen loves to describe all the crazy sh*t she's going through, and crazy sh*t it is.

Go check her site out. She told me to find it by googling "This summer I subjugated myself to an elf."

However, I can offer YOU the direct link here:
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/mouchette/elf/series.php

Jen's demons go up to 111!

Great Students: Maria Sputnik!

2010-06-18T17:08:00.004-04:00

I'm beginning an ongoing series of work by great students. Starting with the first two chapters of this weird, silly, literary, visionary story about "Big Nose National Monument" by student "Maria Sputnik":

http://maria-sputnik.livejournal.com/167310.html

Help a new comic strip newspaper first issue featuring Ali's House!

2010-06-17T16:46:00.001-04:00

Elia Kazan on directing

2010-06-13T21:23:00.003-04:00

Elia Kazan on "Streetcar" and directing...

I've never done a storyboard in my life, I wouldn't know how to start. It wouldn't mean anything to me...

You can't make a storyboard until you see what the actor's going to give you. And if you have any respect for your own talent, stirring up an actor, or the actor's talent for responding to your direction, you're not sure of what the hell's going to happen. And a good director's not sure when he gets on the set what he's going to do. I like directors who come on the set and create something that's a little dangerous, difficult or unusual.

I fell that the more ambivalent you are and the more uncertain you are in the morning, then you'll get something you have not gotten before and that you can not anticipate and no one else can anticipate.

New Barney Banks page

2010-06-11T06:10:00.002-04:00

New chapter starting of Barney Banks on
http://www.act-i-vate.com

Barney Banks pages 38 and 39

2010-06-04T09:20:00.001-04:00

New Barney Banks Page up at Act-i-vate:

http://www.act-i-vate.com/87-6-5.comic

John Cage's Rules For Students

2010-05-16T14:19:00.000-04:00

John Cage's Rules for Students and Teachers

* Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.
* General duties of a student:
* pull everything out of your teacher.
* pull everything out of your fellow students.
* General duties of a teacher:
* pull everything out of your students.
* Consider everything an experiment.
* Be self-disciplined.
* Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail, there's only make.
* The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something.
* It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things. You can fool the fans but not the players.
* Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.
* Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.
* Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Save everything. It may come in handy later.

Keep in mind I found the above on the INTERNET so not sure it's his for real, but it sounds like Cage. Found here.

Barney Banks Page 37

2010-05-14T08:36:00.001-04:00

Barney Banks, page 37 on Act-i-Vate here.

Walt Kelly quotes

2010-05-02T21:11:00.000-04:00

Walt Kelly: "You got to be yourself, you got to discard all the bull and get YOU across... and get what you have to say across..."

Lotsa links: Milt Gross, Dingbats, Searle and more

2010-04-25T08:58:00.006-04:00

Craig Yoe really made a splash this year at MOCCA, by presenting his recent line of great comic collections, including a fantastic new Milt Gross book, a collection of Krazy Kat "Tiger Tea" strips, some Dan Decarlo and lots more. His site got me browsing around and collecting these wonderful links.

Go read these bits and lovelies:

Wild zaniness from Milt Gross:
http://comicrazys.com/2009/06/19/pete-the-pooch-hi-jinx-4-1947-milt-gross/

I never realized how gorgeous his Punch work was. I'd love to find bigger scans of these:
http://giam.typepad.com/100_years_of_illustration/2010/03/happy-birthday-ronald-searle.html

Tons of Pogo:
http://whirledofkelly.blogspot.com/

Jon Lewis and I cherished this comic when we found it years ago. Love that Kirby always felt like he was talkin' to "the kids":
http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2010/04/sunday-funnies-jack-kirbys-dingbats-of.html

Shame on me for not realizing there was a whole Blair dynasty. I'm really in love with Mary Blair's watercolors:
http://magicofmaryblair.com/mary-gallery.htm

I was talking yesterday with Matt Madden, we were looking at the trend of simple work by young cartoonists whose major theme seems to be characters who like spending time with each other. These lovely little illustrations by an illustrator I never heard of prior to today show how to draw these themes with originality, flair and wit. Study these, young students!
http://giam.typepad.com/100_years_of_illustration/2010/02/raymond-peynet-19081999.html

And of course every time I run into the below, I'm floored:
http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/05/meta-100000-animation-drawing-course.html

Go Emily!

2010-04-22T22:54:00.003-04:00

Emily Wernet, 2010 SVA grad has a new website. Please visit.
http://www.emilywernet.com/

I've been doodled, sketched and recorded!

2010-04-22T10:54:00.003-04:00

The very kind and clever Jeaux Janovsky won a new sketchbook, and proceeded to watch my interview at SVA, sketching and recording as he watched. Click the image to see the post, the sketch in full, and the interview.

Garo Show Garo Show!

2010-04-22T00:02:00.001-04:00

Reminder about GARO show in NEW YORK. DO NOT MISS IT!

Barney Banks: Extra Life! on Act-I-Vate - Chapter 6 starts. Plus lots of notes and sketches

2010-04-02T06:52:00.006-04:00

Part 6 starts here, and I'm starting to understand Lodi, and figure out how Banks can get close to her. Sketches are below, and then a block of text that probably is more relevant to the late December postings.

THE FINAL SKETCH, AT BOTTOM RELATES MORE TO THIS POSTING

after two weeks (or so) off to get various errands done, woke up early and began doodling/writing. After a look at the index cards (the ones at right felt right for this point in the story), I doodled a sheet (see scan) and came to ideas about the new section. I knew this section was about Banks and Lodi getting more friendly, but how, and what changes, and how to keep it lively, fun, engaging, deep- all that stuff?

On these sheets, I tend to start from an upper right corner? Why?! I don't know- I think I tend to think the notes I'm writing will later be minor notes and the real notes can go in the center where important notes belong. Invariably, I wind up creating a maze of ideas and events and images that I can barely follow. But it seems a good way to sow a little disarray to think in new ways about the material...

At some point I realized I would end this section again with an exclamation from a video game player. From in the latrine. I have to be careful this doesn't become a trope, but my annoyance with how often I use this idea could force the Barney Banks character to rebel even sooner than I have been thinking.

Your characters react to you. You react to all sorts of stuff, but your characters are filtered through you. They may surprise you, because you are in a different place than you think, or you a different person than you think...

Hutch Owen Strips: Fortune Cookie!

2010-03-23T09:00:00.003-04:00

Still gathering and working on the 368 page Hutch Owen collection for Top Shelf. I was always charmed by these strips about finding a bag of fortune cookies. Like a giant pinata of luck salad...

These were my favorites, the rest are here.

Daddy Lightning Rough Draft pages 1-5

2010-03-18T19:17:00.003-04:00

Talking with Sarah Glidden, Karen Sneider and Domitille Collardey got me determined to catch back up with "Daddy Lightning", so posting here the first 5 pages of a super rough first draft.

My problem: I have good ideas with a good sense of storytelling, but my first and second drafts of anything are horribly drawn. See for yourself. The better pages here (1,3,4) are second drafts. Page 5 you can see the 1st draft and 2nd in progress.

See below "Daddy Lightning" for the earlier stages of the process...

Also, I stole some features of the lady on page 5, panel 2, from Nylso, who is my favorite unpublished-in-America French cartoonist. I'll show him these pages someday...

New Barney Banks Page at Act-I-Vate

2010-03-12T09:01:00.001-05:00

New Barney Banks page!

Up here.

It should be evident that I have no idea about what video games the kids play no days.

Horses between the highway and the Holiday Inn

2010-03-06T17:59:00.004-05:00

Leela mentioned needing to make a story without "Hesitation, Repetition or Deviation." This catch phrase, from the BBC radio's Just a Minute game show strikes us a perfect metaphor for a certain kind of storytelling- the Mametian drive towards the hot center of the drama. It's something she and I can both use a bit more of. It struck me as a perfect instructional phrase.

Tell the story committed to main idea. (No hesitation.)
Tell the story economically. (No repetition.)
Tell the story quickly. (No deviation.)

Of course, the counter is just as valid, if not more glorious. Just harder to teach. Think of Tristram Shandy, full of all three. The wandering IS the story. The deviation is the point, the hesitation is the laugh, the repetition is the music.

I'm sitting at a hotel pool looking out at the highway that leads to Dulles airport in DC. There are 4 horses grazing in the small field between highway and service road. What on earth are they doing there?

You have to allow for surprises. In a lot of playwriting and screenwriting books, you'll see the authors argue for knowing your central premise such as "Ultimate ambition leads to destruction" (Macbeth.)

But not enough beginning authors know how to allow themselves to follow distraction, and to connect images otherwise unconnected.

Hesitation, repetition, deviation: It's Waiting for Godot.

The horses graze on the smoggy grass. A plane flies low overhead. Children splash while learning how to kick. I breathe the humid bleachy pool air and drift to sleep.

Barney Banks: Extra Life! NEW PAGE

2010-03-05T00:17:00.004-05:00

Banks page 31 is up at Act-I-Vate. Here are the notes from when I was writing/drawing this:

-------------------

Having just finished the section where Barney gets up to use the can, and Lodi lures him into doing some YOGA. I had a short list of potential next sections, this being the formally weird, “lettered” sections. Don't know what to do! Here's a shot of my ideas: (Godard, etc pic here.) Instead I realized none of these were quite right yet. The Godard thing could happen later, the hippo thing soon (though I don't know what it is.) I went to sleep 2 nights ago doodling, nothing much. But today when I looked again, there was this guy, with his tummy making noise. I don't even remember drawing it. Perfect. If he's hungry, if all the VGers are hungry, then we're in great shape to show Lodi more stressed, to have fun with this section (that's what these sections are about) and to further separate Banks and the rest. I immediately sketched these thumbnails (37+):

Then, browsing through cards, looking at other stray pieces of paper, I put together this: The third part doesn't want to be nailed down yet. I can feel it NOT wanting to be codified. But part 1 just gelled, and most of part 2 is starting to feel right. Fun fun fun. Great.

Announcing Easter Sunday KGB Reading Line-Up

2010-03-01T10:27:00.004-05:00

Announce!

The KGB Annual Easter Comix Reading will feature:
Emily Wernet: http://aladyisme.livejournal.com/
Tom Hart: http://www.tomhart.net/
Joan Reilly: http://www.joanreilly.com/
Mark Alan Stamaty: http://www.markalanstamaty.com/

Date: Sunday, April 4, 2010.
Location: KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, New York City
Time: 7 ish!

"Rules" for writing by Margaret Atwood and 27 others.

2010-02-27T11:41:00.002-05:00

From the UK Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one

Weirdly, I think Neil Gaiman's resonate the most with this blog. Atwood, who I adore I think might be kidding- I can't tell.

GARO exhibit coming to NYC

2010-02-20T12:12:00.003-05:00

This is making me nuts and breathless. An exhibit of GARO art in New York City, from April 16-June 26.

Garo, the weirdo-alternative Manga that ran in Japan from the 60s through the 90s, I think. Every time I saw an issue, mostly in Kinokuniya back in the early 90s in Seattle, it would knock my head around.

I wound up subscribing for a short period around the time it died. Every issue is full of weird ideas, weird styles, fascinating

More information at SAME HAT, here.

Presented by the Center for Book Arts.

Barney Banks new page up! Page 30

2010-02-19T11:13:00.002-05:00

Barney Banks new page up here!

Rango by Edgar Vasques

2010-02-10T09:46:00.004-05:00

Posting more strips for the upcoming Hutch Owen collection. Here's an early couple, establishing the junkyard, and the low-high dynamic or the poor vs the corporations.

Sadly, I'd never seen Rango by Brazilian artist Edgar Vasques until just yesterday.

Student Mariet Guerrero and I were researching Latin American cartoonists. (I'll post a link to Mariet's blog when she gets hers up and running.)

Near as I can tell Rango is a dude who lives in the garbage or a junkyard. I can't tell if he's in these terrific strips where the can itself seems to be talking.

This strip is certainly about striated class, economics, etc. It's also fearlessly drawn- it's killing me. I'm off to read more; you can too:

External Links:

A Portuguese site about comics. Lots of Rango here.

Blog posting about Rango

Translation from Portuguese Wikipedia

Rango toy page

Barney Banks: Extra Life! on Act-I-Vate

2010-02-05T08:36:00.003-05:00

Page 29. On ACT-I-VATE

And then I realized I didn't know what Lodi wants. And I wasn't understanding her. Wasn't giving her any reason to become friends with Barney at all. Went rollerblading. Then realized: she wants to be understood as being overworked. She wants to separate from her parents and her job. But right now she wants help with her work, understanding. Barney can offer this, should and will. He may not get it right away. But when he does he'll impress himself. She'll be grateful but not the way he thinks.

(More comments and following the thoughts and sketches in progress here: http://hutchowen.blogspot.com/search/label/projects-in-process)

unseen Hutch immigration strip, from the collection

2010-01-26T08:23:00.002-05:00

A strip that hasn't run- I had to ink it for the collection. The Hutch series was fun, but it always the most fun for me when it was farce. When it was SATIRE, like this strip, it was impossible to stay ahead of reality. I'm sure immigrants are being branded right onto their chests as we speak. I'm sure someone is talking with Kraft Foods about how to make sure Haitians get their brand of relief packages, and even my local NPR were making jokes about the recent Supreme Court decision (granting corporations free "speech" in elections) saying, "The gentleman sponsored by AT&T now has the floor..."

See other Hutch Owen SAMPLES at

Flickr

Picasa

Great Student: Maggie Siegel-Berele

2010-01-25T10:23:00.000-05:00

The great thing about Maggie Siegel-Berele's comic about gaming is that she doesn't do that kind of stuff at all. Near as I can tell she's just putting one over on all the fanboys out there, and good for her!

http://www.gamefanboys.com/search/label/Monthly%20Comic

Maggie's one of my favorites from SVA in a long time and just so you know I don't play random favorites, it's because she's always up for a challenge and she always goes for those challenges voraciously. She's eager for challenge, in fact. When she fails at one, she learns from it. She'll try anything, and she's always getting better.
She also did the cover of my soon-to-be-published student anthology, which I really should get on the ball in organizing and printing.

Bravo to Maggie.

Barney Banks: Extra Life! on Act-I-Vate - page 28 I think

2010-01-22T07:49:00.002-05:00

Newest page in Barney Banks: Extra Life is here

Hutch Owen Strips from the collection

2010-01-20T08:07:00.004-05:00

Two strips from the upcoming 378 page Hutch Collection. This from a series at the tail-end, The Unpajamable Snowman.

I can't remember where I first scrawled "Unpajamable Snowman" in my sketchbook, but it was probably around the same time that Leela and I kept hearing sponsorship by the Pajamagram company on NPR. It took another year (they tend to sponsor around Valentine's Day) to get me riled up again to make the idea come to life.

In these strips, the Unpajamable Snowman turns into two other forms (while running for office): the Unpajamable SnowMONSTER and the Unpajamable SUPERMONSTER. Since learning about them from my young nephew, I always liked these Pokemon ways of morphing two times into one's supreme kick ass form...

The entirety of this storyline (30 or so strips) are here.

Barney Banks page 27 at ACT-I-VATE

2010-01-15T08:35:00.001-05:00

New Banks page up here: http://www.act-i-vate.com/87-5-3.comic

From the Hutch Owen Collection

2010-01-13T09:01:00.003-05:00

I drew this sequence of strips after Brendan Burford stepped on a rusty nail while shooting photos of old junk on Long Island (I think I've got that right.) The pose of Hutch in that asana (I forget which!) became a staple I returned to. A symbol of trying to find balance in trying times, tryingly. mean, it's not a restful pose. You would only stay in it if everything else hurt like hell.

The second one is health-care related, with Ayn Rand as bitchy proponent of more private insurers. Even still, she was a cutie, as I pointed out in the strip here.

Daddy Lightning in process 3: To hell with Comic Strips!

2010-01-11T07:45:00.003-05:00

I had been thinking of this as a Sunday-style, weekly comic strip. Something wide, screen-formatted, but then at some point I realized To hell with comic strips! WHAT HAVE THEY EVER DONE FOR ME? So I took the best bits I had sketched or thunk up, and wrote them all down in an effort to organize into a single unit. Above.

Now thinking should try to package as typical 44-page French album. As I write this, a week later, I still like this idea. So I tried to imagine a 44-page outline.

And two first pages. Have to open with panic I think.

New Barney Banks page at Act-I-Vate

2010-01-08T00:26:00.003-05:00

New Barney Banks page, new chapter. Barney wakes up...

Hutch Owen Collection-In-Progress: Decompressing Nora

2010-01-07T11:17:00.006-05:00

Collecting 380 pages of strips for "LET'S GET FURIOUS", coming out within the year from Top Shelf.

In my earlier years, I rarely based characters on my friends and families, but I started to do so in the more recent years. Nora had a lot of my wife Leela in her, and some of these books come right from her late-night reading. She also is constantly pulling me over to look at puppies and bunnies on cuteoverload.com, I only really care about the baby hedgehogs.

The rest of the introductory Nora strips are here.

Daddy Lightning in-process: 2!

2010-01-06T09:54:00.002-05:00

Finishing with the pre-new year sketches. This first sheet was one week into being a new father when I was completely bleary-eyed and overwhelmed. Doodles made barely consciously.

Above, the first idea about WANTING WAFFLES. Wanting something simple, human, comforting. This notion arrived in a stairwell where I was certain I was smelling waffles. Bleary eyed and focusing all my thoughts on the baby, I realized at that moment if I could just have a waffle, I would be happy. It became symbolic for treating myself well, for still treating myself like a human. This image later became the focus of a longer narrative arc.

Above image inspired by the writings by Joann Sfar in the back of KLEZMER. I remembered I hadn't done long form prose exploration of images in a while. This is Lynda Barry's method too. Just SEEING the image, seeing where you-as-character are, and writing what you see and do. This silly paragraph I think will be folded into the longer arc as well.

Daddy Lightning!

2010-01-01T17:46:00.007-05:00

What is Daddy Lightning?

I don't know! That's why I'm posting this. This is about How to Say Everything (HTSE), even when you don't know what you want to say.

At the birth of my daughter in Dec 09, I was surprised by my mad drive to buy a new sketchbook and to doodle up a new comic strip around my new life.

I began sketching the imagery in my head: father and baby walking a lonely landscape; but also sketching the things most recently in my life memory and body: screaming babies, sleeplessness, feeding, swaddling, wanting waffles. All the changes that happen when you have a newborn. Mixing cartoon language with real feelings and impressions, looking for that "Ecstatic Truth" of Werner Herzog's, not some boring verisimilitude.

For a week I was sure it was a new comic strip- a Sunday style weekly where I could play off the page compositions that a large Sunday-style field allows. But I've been so burned commercially by comic strips, I thought SCREW THAT! But that leaves me wondering: what is it.

I am posting sketches here to show the HTSE process: finding images: looking for the before and after, writing after images, mixing random ideas and images. As I let this project develop into what it wants to be, I'll post more. Feel free to browse more sketches here: http://www.tomhart.net/daddyLightning/

Review of Caricature, Apollo's Song, Master of Reality

2010-01-01T10:23:00.004-05:00

I'm posting this semi-recent review that I wrote for the Comics Journal until they tell me to take it down. A review of Dan Clowes Caricature, with Osamu Tezuka's Apollo's Song, with John Darnielle's Master of Reality.

More pics to maybe follow

THE WAY OUT-SIDERS

Review of Master of Reality by John Darnielle, Apollo’s Song by Osamu Tezuka and Caricature by Dan Clowes.

A series of books about angry, isolated, lost misfits came my way in a coincidental cascade this week (all via the Alachua County Library, Gainesville, Florida): John Darnielle's Master of Reality, Osamu Tezuka's Apollo’s Song and Caricature by Dan Clowes. All are about loners: isolated, lost, some delusional, some dangerous, some occasionally clear-headed but hurting.

Darnielle's prose book marks the first work of fiction as a part of the 33 1/3 series of non-fiction books deconstructing or reporting on the making of various famous rock and jazz albums. Darnielle's book takes as its catalyst and focal point Black Sabbath's 3rd album, Master of Reality. The story is told in diary form by Roger Painter, lost soul locked up in a juvenile mental ward, trying desperately to communicate to one seeming reasonably accessible therapist what hearing his heavy metal tapes would do for him. But the ward has locked up his tapes in the nurse's station (and Roger can SEE them, he knows they are there, and he just wants to listen to them!) In his diary entries to Gary, he pleads to hear his tapes again, specifically Master of Reality, and he attempts to write, in depth, what that music means for him: “So it's like me and the band are in a hidden cave and they are telling me horror stories and if I even try to tell someone about it there is no way they could understand, because they don't even know there is a cave...”

All throughout Dan Clowes' Caricature, isolated loners narrate to us similarly from deep inside their own existence. Some show us mere static windows into their world (Rodger in “Blue Italian Shit” and “Like A Weed, Joe”), some wind up in stories that they don't themselves quite understand (Carmichael in “Immortal, Invisible”; Mona in “Green Eyeliner”, The Superhero in “Black Nylon”) and some find themselves suddenly glimmering an understanding of who they are, of what they are really about (Mal Rosen in “Caricature”, some of the minor characters in “Gynecology”.) Most of these characters share a consistent disbelief in the world as it is. The nameless character in “MCMXLVI” believes in only the aspects of the world that he deems genuine and pure: “...this old bar called THE OWL... Nobody goes there, but it's pretty authentic.” and “It used to be you could walk around the city and once or twice a year you'd stumble on a view that was exactly as it was in like 1950...” This character is so driven by his need for pure, perfect experience that he has become twisted, obsessive and utterly friendless. He ends the above reverie with: “Now there's no way, luckily I don't have to leave the house except to go to the post office...”

66 (let's give the character that moniker) has something a lot of the Clowes characters have: the luxury and freedom to indulge in their thoughts. His “Sometimes I hate everyone so much I can hardly stand it!” segues into mental, aesthetic indulgence: “There were more great songs recorded in the summer of 1966 by bands than nobody has ever heard of, than in all the years since!”

Darnielle’s Roger Painter would never say like Rodger Young does, “I was mesmerized by its threadbare earnestness.” These characters are left alone with their thoughts too much and seem to prefer it; they have created comforting, if isolating, shelters there.

Roger is the opposite: he’s dying to evade his own thoughts and the hospital won’t let him. He’s left to hear his own madness constantly. He has no recourse or ability to explore his hatred, no one to hear his opinions and none of the perverse tools the Clowes characters have to wrestle it around. “What I need in my life is to be liberated into feeling bad... What I need is a place where I can spray anger in sparks like a gnarled piece of electrical cable. Just be mad at stuff and soak in the helplessness.”

Tezuka's Apollo’s Song is about Shogo, a loner who is unable to love. He hates to see people and animals in love or in coitus; he wants to kill them. Trying to cure Shogo, his doctors give this loner shock therapy. He hallucinates versions of himself trying to love, falling in love and losing, so many times that by the end the reader doesn't know which version is real. Shogo is glib early on: “I don't care if you think I'm dangerous. You can't change me. This is just how I am.” Echoes of this are in Clowes' work. Mona, in “Green Eyeliner” says “Actually, I hate everybody... I really do... I thought I'd soften up when I got older, but really, I'm getting worse.” The image in this panel is of Mona applying eyeliner, looking deeply at herself in the mirror. Or the lead in “Black Nylon”: “I'm a violent person by nature but I don't let it preoccupy me. I get my revenge whenever possible and the rest of the time I let it go.”

Darnielle's Roger is only dangerous if he doesn't get his tools. He's hurting and gets no help. Shogo is a sociopath, but lucky him, his doctors believe in him. Among Clowes' outsiders, Mona is weirdly dangerous, and like many estranged characters, she needs to be in the middle of something enormous to feel anything at all. Clowes' “Black Nylon” main character is more straightforwardly unhinged and dangerous: “First I put the boy out of his misery and then I dealt with the hag. I just wasn't ready to confront a scene like that so I got violent.” Clowes' characters have too much access to tools, and the wrong tools. The superhero of “Black Nylon” should have shock therapy; instead someone gave him a gun and a job.

Tezuka's Shogo when not feeling hatred, is thrown into situations where he must be guided by self-preservation. His internal damage is subverted and controlled by circumstance. Darnielle's Roger wants to harness his strong feelings. Keeping himself alive and unhurt are not for him similar priorities. He’ll take one pain over another: “We learn not to mind getting punished if we can just keep what we found on the way to the punishment... If any of this is at all surprising to you, Gary, you should hand in your counselor's license.”

Clowes traffics in unfeeling characters. Most of his characters, who all share an obsession and access to media, choose their emotional tools at the last moment of their story. Mona buys a fake gun and waves it around. Mal begins to draw the darker sides of his subjects. Epps, in the centerpiece story, “Gynecology”, chooses blackmail and begins his own downfall. His characters, having the freedom to indulge in their thoughts, act in order to switch on their otherwise stalled emotions. They have no natural predators, but in the end choose fight over flight so they can participate some grander story.

The world of the spiritual winds through these works. Carmichael in “Immortal, Invisible” uses the word “spiritual” three times, looking for a spiritual something, but never sure if he's finding it. This story about a set of Halloween rounds ends on a dynamic image: “I didn't eat any of the candy. I removed the dollar and put the bag in the closet, where it remains, next to an unbroken piñata, from which the abdominal bounty had been claimed by hand through a tiny hole.” Both the story and final image are about subverting ritual. Mona, too, behaves similarly: she subverts the ritual of cinema to end her story. Subverting ritual is ritual for many of Clowes' characters – they don't believe in anything, especially the things most believed in by others in society.

Darnielle's loner is different: an older Roger from Master of Reality stumbles into a Latino Church:

I feel like there's a shadow moving around inside of me. And I know right then, I can feel, that between “Lord Of This World” and the whole scene in the church, there's a connection for me. Circuits start forming in my head. Inside the building, the shrillness of the church music is really coming alive- it's mostly women, and they're all singing as loud as they can, and they get so totally into it: tears roll down their cheeks and their mouths open really huge. There aren't any breaks, no time to rest or think about what's going on. You can't even believe it's reality after a while.

Tezuka's Shojo believes in nothing, and seems only self-serving. (We don't see much of him before his visions start.) He finds himself before a giant, scolding goddess, who tells him that he will find himself loving and losing until he truly has learned to love, echoing the “fake it til you make it” brand of spiritualism. Believe until you can no longer disbelieve. His tasks in the rest of the book are designed to give him perspective as a valuable, feeling creature in the grander story.

Shogo is redeemed in the end by finally being able to love, and for giving himself to his beloved. Roger Painter never needed redeeming, and his story is of a good but completely mangled person trying desperately to untie his own knots. What Roger Painter wants is the same thing the Latina women in the church want: to be free of the pain and anger and resentment and fear for just for a little bit, or at least to commune with others to make something special out of those feelings for as long as they can. To see and feel themselves, in the grander story.

The “grander story” disgusts the Clowes characters, but they have no connection in lieu of it to anything comparable. They seem too to want to believe in something other than what the see around them, they just don't want to use the earthly tools of ritual and shared experience to do so. In fact, they hate ritual (other people's) and cling to their emotional uniqueness more than anything. Roger Painter's message is the opposite: I just want to commune with people who feel like I do. His is the story of a character unable to reach souls like his. Clowes’ stories are those mostly of characters uninterested in reaching other souls. Meanwhile, Tezuka forces connection onto his characters, and they in turn are pacified.

Carmichael stands out among characters from Caricature in that he seems motivated to fill an emptiness. Circling around using the word “spiritual”, he wants to believe in something unlike the day-to-day misery and boredom he sees around him. Many of the Clowes characters are frustrated by this, but they don't want to change. They don't want redemption, and as narrators of their own stories, rarely see the need for it. Even the few characters who have valuable earthly jobs (Mal the Caricaturist, Dr. Ten Boom the Gynecologist, the “Black Nylon” hero), wind up subverting their own social role for the sake of an emotional jolt.

2

Dan Clowes' Caricature is 10 years old at this point, compiling works almost 15 years old in places. These stories represented at the time the growth spurts of an already original and powerful artist. His consistency of theme makes the book a rewarding whole, but certain single stories stand out. “Gynecology” is particularly ambitious. It's the only story told in a third person narration, and offers a variety of creepy characters that work to create a complete moral world. Meanwhile “Caricature” stands out as offering a semi-complete circuit of dialectic in theme. The secondary character Theda (is she 15? 22?) offers an opposing dark and random force to Mal's benign and consistent normality. It's accident of circumstance that puts Theda in Mal's story and leads him to question his own behaviors, making for one of the most fulfilling reads in the collection.

“Black Nylon” stands out as the story where the inner world of the character becomes most manifest (Omitting “The Gold Mommy” which seems fully a dream narrative.) He’s the only character to have a psychiatrist, and he gripes about her in his monologue:

She said I was living in a self-created world; that the world isn’t the way I think it is at all. I told her: “Reality is a meaningless consensus. I’m trying to get at this inner reality you’re talking about.”

This story is so full of subconscious weirdness, that the world that he inhabits by the end is one he is almost calling into existence himself. The bizarre clues, the gunshots, the nemesis in the cave. In fact, the whole story stands as an analogue for artistic creation, complete with the call of Hollywood:

One part of me is thrilled to do this TV bit… but another part of me is drawn to this cave, hoping even though I know there’s no chance, that I can somehow achieve a spiritual epiphany in time to catch a six a.m. shuttle to the airport…

As it was I had painted myself into a corner and taken the easy way out… I decided right then to devote all my energy to my career and to impressing those producers in the morning… This thought was interrupted by two more loud bangs…

Quoting the text of this story sadly omits the rich, dripping, surreal imagery of the drawings in this section. “Black Nylon” stands out in Caricature as the most direct and clear vision of its protagonist.

Vertical Publishing's series of new Osamu Tezuka translations has been such a boon to us English readers. Those of us who knew him as the creator of Astro Boy, Princess Knight, Kimba the Lion and other clever child's fare had no idea the darkness and wild ambition he was capable of in Ode to Kirohito, MW, and this book. He is so capable at this stage in his career that he runs like a marathoner through his gigantic themes of our solitary eternity, the existence of evil, the value of love and altruism, and our repetitive but redeemable worldly circumstances.

The visual hand of Tezuka is so deft and so completely actualizes his exact vision. It's a seamless delivery system of the story, which is at turns wild, maudlin, erotic (love those copulating chickens!), violent, funny, etc. His experiments into page layout and symbolic rendering always gets me: characters rendered flatly and filled with 2-d abstract shapes, a chase scene that turns vertical or causes you to read upwards. All these experiments seem easy, and enable the parts to flow right into your story brain. Tezuka's weaknesses are only visible to adults: his occasional triteness, over-simplification, and reliance on the tools of excitable teen adventure comics.

John Darnielle is best known as the sole (usually) member of the Mountain Goats, and has written, played and sung hundreds of short, fiery songs. His strength as a rock and roll performer has been the percussive force of his sometimes amateurish guitar playing, the ability to tell stories in song about emotionally mangled people, and his need to force those songs out of his lungs. He addresses as his themes the explosive power of mistrusting intimacy, and the grace, beauty and (again) explosive clarity that opening your senses and heart can sometimes offer. He's at his strongest when his songs address the fatal fact that you can completely love and hate at the same time.

This is the message Roger Painter in Master of Reality was trying to offer to his therapists, and according to Roger, the same message Ozzy is trying to send to his listeners in “After Forever”: “I spent hours every day trying to get you to let me listen to some guy sending me the exact same message that Blue Cross was paying you to sell me all day.”

I imagine mixing up the circumstances of these books, and I long to force the luxuriating characters in Clowes' world to experience Roger Painter's pain. What if we took 66's Batman collection away from him, and didn't allow him to yard sale- where would that character wind up? Violent on the streets? Screaming in a mental ward? Working as an angry pent up restaurant manager? (This is where we see Roger as an adult.)

Or I want to force Clowes' Mona to run for her life a little. Shipwreck her and see how much time she has to hate everyone. Or see if she'll save an object of adoration if it's being taken to its death. Or let's force the “Black Nylon” hero to do good, but for god's sake, take away his ability to choose for himself what that means- that guy is deranged.

Tezuka's Shogo isn't much of a character. He was unloved, and in turn doesn't love, but we don't know how he manages. What Clowsian world might we see if we followed him around for a few days? Let's see the creeps he winds up sharing apartments with. Let's see the rituals he tries to subvert, and the facades he appropriates to communicate his specialness, to pervert his inner pain.

Two of the weaker stories in Caricature stand out to me now as more compelling than I thought: “Blue Italian Shit” and “Like A Weed, Joe”. Both stories are about a loner and loser, a guy who moves around within personalities a bit, a character who doesn't seem to like his friends or his family and typically doesn't really believe in anything. In these stories (especially “Blue Italian Shit”), unlike some of the ones cited above, nothing really happens, and we don't see the character move through his mental circumstances at all. We just see glimpses. Only when I realized they are the same character and that we are seeing portraits of a younger and older version of Rodger Young, did I feel compelled by what I read. There’s the “arc” that I originally wanted and couldn’t find in the single stories; I now see they are there when read together. Now we can compare, contrast and roll around in our minds the growth and changes of this character. He starts out isolated and confused but still open. Witness the great moment where he and Bemis are at the circus. Rodger hoping Bemis won't wisecrack and the only exchange between them is one of adulation: “That red-haired chick is sweet.” Yet, one moment of real openness in childhood isn’t enough and Rodger still winds up pretentious, aimless and angry. The two stories make a satisfying complete whole.

Darnielle's Master of Reality uses a similar narrative strategy. Divided into two parts, we hear from Roger Painter at 16 and then again 10 years later. The changes he documents are profound: in the beginning he is desperate for one thing- his tapes, which were never given to him. In the end, he is able to reflect -somewhat unclearly, very angrily and very high- on his experiences and how it has created his current situation. He's not happy about it, but he can see it.

Weirdly, Darnielle's Roger Painter is arguably a better person for having gone through all this misery. Deprived and forced to articulate himself to the world, he has become smarter, kinder and more able to see reality and to pierce non-reality. His teenage years were sacrificed, but he has grown emotionally and spiritually stronger: he's still furious and mangled but he's less broken. Darnielle know this, and so does Roger, who voices it:

It was like I had a secret that only people who couldn't do anything to help me could understand... In a way it was you and everybody like you who put the final binding signature on my contract with Black Sabbath. You sealed the deal. Now when I hear them I hear you disappearing into the meaningless passed. [sic.] Too high to write anymore. Still angry. Can't go back…

Darnielle’s shattering, white-hot understanding of what it is to know what you need but not be allowed near it is so humane and explosive that I can’t imagine reading it and not sobbing for the void of compassionless humanity the book reveals.

If “Caricature’s” Mal reaches the point of revelation that Roger reaches, it will only be after the last point in his story's narration: “...for some reason, I couldn't move. All of a sudden, things got deadly quiet. The only sound I could hear was a baby in the next room. Outside, the car was loaded and running-ready to go- but I just sat there breathless, starting ahead at my sorry reflection.” Mal has to make something happen, like Roger made his diary happen and made his job happen, both of which in turn gave him the tools to really know himself.

These books are about missed connections or incomplete circuits, gigantic and life-shaping.

Shogo, like Roger knows now that if he's being punished, he can at least to try to keep what he found on the way to the punishment. His last line is “Can I at least see Hiromi one more time?”, It’s easy to imagine Roger Painter asking “Can I just hear Master of Reality one more time?”

But Clowes' characters are so isolated and full of their own ideas about themselves that for them to utter a line like that (to another person) would be giving too much away. Mona and the rest would much rather not express their feelings (or perhaps not feel at all), in order to keep us guessing.

Artistically, such a move would seem overly Citizen Kane-like. Can you imagine 66 asking for his Batman doll as he dies, or Carmichael uttering something about spearmint candies as he shakes free his final earthly costume? No, Clowes won’t allow his characters such a simplistic reveal; they’ve already given you all you’re gonna get. They don’t want to be seen, revealed or gotten, they just want life to be different. They falter when life doesn’t work according to their vision. They don’t rebel, they stumble, and a sort of dumb cruise control sets in.

Shogo, Roger Painter and the cast of Caricature all are dying –some more quickly than others- to fit in to a world already replete with horror and injustice and the dregs of sloppy ineffective human culture that doesn’t just doesn’t care who they are deep down. Rebel, cry or pull away –those are the options these characters choose from What the hell else is going to work?

Tom Hart Interview on Graphic NYC

2009-12-30T14:08:00.003-05:00

Realized I forgot to post
this: Interview with me by Christopher Irving. From Seth Kushner's GRAPHIC NYC website.

From the Hutch Owen collection

2009-12-22T06:53:00.003-05:00

From the Hutch Owen collection: One of the first Sunday-style Hutch Strips I did.

I wish I could find the scrap of paper where I wrote "Grover Norquist=John Milius!" That was the first idea behind treating Grover Norquist in these strips.

Norquist, of course, is the ridiculous baby-man whose man fight in life is to save his tax money from the government. He had President Bush's ear, he's ridiculously influential in Washington and near as I can tell has the mind of a 4-year old.

John Milius also has the mind of a 4-year old but at least he's making movies. Milius, of course is the wacko right-wing screenwriter responsible for Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn and parts of Apocalypse Now. The wonderful thing about Milius is that he's shameless. Shamelessness- it's a great thing in art, a stupid thing in politics. Norquist can go to H-E-double hockey sticks. Milius can come over for beers if he wants.

Norquist became Public Enemy 1 in my strips, because if there's anything I hate in politics, it's acting like children. Kids need to learn if you hit another kid with a hammer, it will hurt them and it is probably a bad thing. Adults need to teach kids to share. Adults teach children to see beyond themselves to the feelings and needs of other people. Norquist never learned any of this.

So in my strips, he wears diapers and sabotages even his own publisher.

More from these strips later in the week.

New Barney Banks Page

2009-12-17T23:56:00.005-05:00

New Barney Banks page. Here!

New Barney Banks Page at Act-I-Vate Holy Cow

2009-12-05T00:18:00.002-05:00

Holy cow- new Banks page up here!

Broken Embraces

2009-11-29T23:16:00.007-05:00

(spoiler alerts!)

Broken Embraces is the first Almodovar movie I want to rewrite.

First, let me say I was captive for the full 2 hours. It's beautiful to watch, and moving and funny in places.

But in the end I almost feel cheated. There was no murder (there almost was) no adultery (there sort of was) no hookers (a hint of one) no abused sons or nuns. None of the usual melodramatics Almodovar uses as his material But these histrionics that Almodovar uses in his movies are usually what he transcends to make astonishing, surprising, giant and humane works.

In Broken Embraces, Almodovar under-challenged himself. His task here seemed to be to make a story full of mostly reasonable if somewhat obsessed people. It's like was trying to make Husbands and Wives.

Broken Embraces is not:

--A movie about a secretary who wants to be an actress and occasionally sells her body to further her ends though that story is in there.
--About the gay son, in adulthood, who only upon his father's death musters the strength to transcend his father's oppressive hand though that story is in there.
--It's not about the obsessive business man with his fingers and strings in everything, though that story is in there.
--It's not about a fraught love affair, a secret son, jealousy and camaraderie over 2 decades of shared creativity, though that story is in there

In fact, I'm not sure what Broken Embraces is about, except being in love with Penelope Cruz.

In the end, I hate to say (because I'm sorry to make any artist fulfill my expectations) that what I want Almodovar to break my heart, to surprise me with another person who at first seems unlovable, or who commits acts that should make me want to turn away. But he makes me/you love them. Almodovar opens those people out and it almost feels like he's watching as you learn to love them.

In this new movie, you start out by loving Cruz, his star. Everyone loves her. Her only impropriety is a momentary glimpse and feels like a plot device. The only character you're don't much like at first isn't a real character, and you don't really know or like him more by the end. He's too simple, he's just a type, like HR Costigan before Jaime Hernandez drew BAY OF THREES.

Here's what I would offer as possible rewrites:

--The Ernesto Jr character kills Lena. NOW why did he show up on Mateo's door when his father died?
--So Lena hooks on the side? What does that entail? WHY? What kind of actress is she anyway? Is she good?
--The son Diego is known from the beginning. Everyone knows anyway. Get the confession out of there.
--Lena shines when she is really loved. Show this in the film Mateo is making. The dichotomy between her normal fraught life and her vitality on screen when she is genuinely loved should be marked larger.
--Judit is full of potential. Who is she? She can never be a Lena, that's for sure. Show that.
--Who is Ernesto Sr? Chilean? Did he make his money under Pinochet? Who is he? Where is more of his trail?
--Mateo shines when he can aid his son Diego in writing the latter's dumb vampire script. Show that relationship.

All the above is latent in the movie, just not explored or opened much for consideration. Instead, it's a love letter to Penelope Cruz, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and movie making in general(and not even movies, just some vague notion of movie making.)

Almodovar usually breaks my heart, forcing me to see it in a new way while I pick up the pieces. Even the movies of his that don't instantly do this (I'm thinking Bad Education) are still stirring.

I'll see this one again and hopefully learn to love it. But I wanted my heart broken, dammit.

Barney Banks Page 19!

2009-11-13T09:37:00.002-05:00

New Barney Banks page here!

David Mamet vs Werner Herzog

2009-11-10T10:45:00.000-05:00

A link to my new small essay on David Mamet vs. Werner Herzog.

Excerpt:

I love Mamet's book. It's an arrogant, self-satisfied book, so laser-focused on telling a story that anyone in any medium will benefit from it. In detailed conversations with students and illuminating supporting essays, he describes what kinds of shots and scenes move a story forward, and which ones don't. If scenes and shots don't move the story forward, they're of no use.

In my mulitple readings of the book, I can only recall him mentioning one director by name who represents the type of filmmaking he has no use for: Werner Herzog. He says: "... listen to the difference between the way people talk about films by Werner Herzog and the way they talk about films by Frank Capra, for example. One of them may or may not understand something or other, but the other understands what it is to tell a story, and he wants to tell a story, which is the nature of the dramatic art- to tell a story." Mamet finishes this line of thinking with "The only thing the dramatic form is good for is telling a story."

Read more at Seth Kushner's Graphic NYC blog

Following Barney Banks, Chapter 3

2009-11-08T09:10:00.004-05:00

Continuing notes and sketches from
Barney Banks, Extra Life.

Aug 1, 2009,

Finished page 17 - the first page of part 3 (in some numbering system) which was begun yesterday. Now concerned it's getting mundane, and where it isn't mundane, it's dumb. Video games? As a motif? Really? I realized today- at some point, if SHE plays the game (being an outlayer at first), it's a betrayal.

The original ideas, young adults, being emo and wearing real bear suits and stuff, is now becoming more about video games? I have to make sure that is not the case. But it does give Banks something to rail about, something to be RIGHT about, and angry about, especially when he can't even model a better behavior. Is living “emo” (protected, harmless, gentle) and in video games better than fucking up time after time like Banks? This might be a governing question...

Aug 2, 2009:

Drew page 18. 3 panels, but a weird sort of agony. It's always about the decisions. What would the characters be saying here? Eventually I found it, after a break to go to the farmer's market. Needed to get to the “I was in a war” stuff, to connect her working with his working, also to make her verbose. I'm finding that's important, believe her being wordy and alternately silent will drive Banks crazy, and puts her into a rambunctious range of character drives that I think makes sense.

Frustrated at this point that what seems to be happening is that the alternating “formal” bits will probably be imagined sections. I don't want this to be the case, but think that's where we're leading. Thinking I have to merge reality with imagination or vice versa at some point. Gary Panter says make it ricochet like pool balls to get you there. Or something. Next, the next sequence of dialogue is easy- something about trading war stories, interrupted by game playing, maybe he follows, or watches her go to the main building, the store...

Following Barney Banks. Roughs, ideas and worries up during the 2nd chapter

2009-11-08T08:40:00.005-05:00

Trying to be transparent with the process of creating EXTRA LIFE. (on ACT-I-VATE, HERE) Most of these notes were written immediately after inking a page, or sketching some page, trying to document everything in my mind at the time.

July 28 2009-

Off the project happily for two weeks while teaching in Hawaii. I barely thought about this, except for during the plane flight in, where I made these sketches. Mostly looking for other crazy characters to introduce into the gallery of youngsters hanging around the campground where Banks winds up. I want them surreal, funny, possibly avatar-like, something someone might design for a lousy video game.

Next I sketched a few thumbnails for the next pages. Thinking what needs to happen is the introduction of MITCH, the box with dials and a handle that assigns something, or predicts something, or changes something, I don't know. These thumbnails so tiny, I got excited thinking I was working like Brian Eno here, the way he would throw out syllables and rework them until they made words. These half-sketched stick figures were just potential movement, potential compositions. (See Mitch HERE in Act-I-Vate, page 12)

Next, I get down to drawing again.

July 30, 2009-

Two new inked pages, inked quickly, I really don't know what's going on. This originally going to be a repeat- the characters both pulling the handle and changing instantly, but then what to do about that trail of paper receipts on the left side of Mitch? You can see from the margins (see sketches below) I thought- Banks picks it up, reads it; or other characters alternate and pick it up, or else maybe it gets left behind until much much later. I got bored with repeating the characters actions, and thought I should just have a character right now pull from the receipt, and then do something. I think one of the themes here is young people and their love of emo, animals, video games and other things I don't get.

July 31,

I'm sure I've ruined it. It's got all this video game imagery in it that I absolutely hate. I don't hate my version of it, but what I am doing playing with it? I have no idea what's going on. Part 2 is finished, and is not the formalistic treat I thought, but it is something. I opted for silent, and a rigid page structure. But I have to stick with the fever dream. If I am going to hit my goal of believing in whatever this project wants to become, and in my finishing it before the end of the year, then I have to treat it like a fever dream. I don't know what's going on, but I will stay with it. I can only try to parse it out, reflect a little, and move through the story forward.

More about part 3 later...

New Barney Banks Page at Act-I-Vate

2009-11-06T10:28:00.000-05:00

New Barney Banks page!

http://www.activatecomix.com/87-3-5.comic

On a panel about Political Cartooning this week

2009-11-02T08:50:00.002-05:00

On a panel about Poilitical Cartooning this Tuesday:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=296542080566

Moderated by Bill Kartalopoulos, featuring Peter Kuper, Eric Drooker, Tim Kreider and myself. I'm the cautionary tale.

Banks page 18

2009-10-23T11:00:00.001-04:00

New Banks Page 18!

Banks page 17

2009-10-16T11:29:00.001-04:00

New Banks Page 17!

Comments to follow

New version of How To Say Everything (#49) up.

2009-10-11T23:59:00.002-04:00

New version of How To Say Everything (#49) up. Working on Linefield and Poetry sections mostly. Trimming a lot out.

http://www.howtosayeverything.net

Barney Banks: Extra Life! NEW PAGE

2009-10-02T10:28:00.002-04:00

new B Banks EXTRA LIFE page updated at
http://www.act-i-vate.com/87-2-4.comic

Version #48 of book in progress up

2009-09-28T09:22:00.002-04:00

How To Say Everything version #48 is up in PDF form for those reading and keeping watch. Significant changes/edits to the Poetry section, the linefield section, and to many of the exercises in back. Go to http://www.howtosayeverything.net for instructions on downloading the PDF.