Search Results for: log book

POSSIBLE SAILOR

Monday, June 12, 2006

a bar napkin sketch from this weekend…

Monday links:

You should head over to Kevin Huizenga’s blog and see the booklet he’s working on for the Center For Cartoon Studies.
NYTimes profiles Deadwood, ponders the influence of The Searchers, and Salon proclaims the Western will never die and provides a great reading list to catch up.
Some of my favorite Westerns, courtesy of YouTube: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon A Time In The West, Dead Man, Deadwood, and Unforgiven.
LCRW #18 is out.
I’ve never owned a video gaming console before, but the supreme coolness of the Wii matched with the stress of doing this book makes me think I will soon.
My Bloody Valentine, 1992. For noise last week it was Black Sabbath, this week it’s Tool.
At the Independent, Saunders talks Carver.

SCRAPS…

Friday, June 9, 2006

…from a gag comic ~~I’m working on~~ I just finished. My soundtrack: Little Steven’s Underground Garage.

You can see a ton of that comics-only issue of Vice Magazine online. These reviews are hilarious! Anybody know where you can find this in Cleveland?
A great post from Fantagraphics about all the comics-related videos you can find on YouTube.
Chip Kidd guest blogs at Powells. It’s great to hear the king of book design bitch about idiotic marketing people testing book designs.
Post on a Marjane Satrapi reading in Seattle. We’re going to do PERSEPOLIS as the first book in my new 20-30 something reading group at the library. (More about that later, but if you’re interested, please contact me!)
Interviews: George Saunders and Kevin Huizenga.

Happy Weekend, all!

I was relieved to hear Gabrielle Bell in the Fall 2005 issue of MOME (take a sneak peek at the new one) confess to Gary Groth, “I’m not so obsessive about comics, actually. I don’t really read that many comics as much as I would like to. I’ve often been really impatient with most comics….The stories, in most cases, even if they’re good, they’re still not as good as most books, most novels are. So it’s frustrating to read a comic when I could be reading some great literature.”

John Hodgman quoted her interview in his “Comics Chronicle” piece in the recent NYTimes Book Review, and added his own two cents: “I have not been as brave as she to admit even to myself (never mind to Gary Groth), that many of the alternative fine-art comics that cross my desk these days are kind of boring. I’ve been quiet on this point in part because I do believe comics are literature, and do not wish to undermine the cause…”

So much of the past year has been about me slowly coming around to the fact that comics — and the graphic novel form in particular — is what I’m meant to do, and that my frustration with the form (the thin plots, boring characters, mediocre artwork) is really just a big blinking neon sign pointing to the void which I hope that my own work will fill. As Dylan Horrocks points out in his Scott McCloud essay, “The problem with comics is that people associate them not with what they could be, but with what they have been.”

Yesterday I read some great workshop advice from Kelly Link (via). Essentially, the advice was: don’t play it safe. There are way too many people out there churning out competant, respectable work. The only way to rise above it all is to push yourself to your absolute limits. Take big risks.

For me, making comics is turning my back on playing it safe. It’s about pushing myself to that terrifying yet exhilarating place where I have no idea what I’m doing, but it’s so much fun, and I’m right on the edge of my skills.

My old friend Jeremy is doing it right now with his music. Two years ago he was writing competant, respectable pop songs. Then one day he sat down and realized that it all bored the hell out of him. He started from scratch, totally re-invented his sound. Now he’s on the verge of having his first album out, and it’s going to be really, really good — but only because he pushed himself. (Check out his new single, “I Promise,” over at his website or MySpace.)

I’m about to start out on my first graphic novel. I have no idea how I’m going to do it. It feels dangerous. It feels scary.

And it feels great.

THE SQUANDERING INFIDELS

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

It’s ninety degrees up here in Cleveland, so I spent the afternoon buying an air conditioner.

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In celebration of the World Cup, I’m reading prose-poet Eduardo Galeano’s Soccer In Sun and Shadow.

Here’s an excerpt.

Barry Yourgrau highly recommended it. The writing is gorgeous.

I don’t know much of anything about soccer: I’ve lived in two countries where the game is a religion, but the only match I ever caught was in Columbus, Ohio. I went to a Crew game with the son of one the team’s doctors, and had my mind blown from the terrific seats.

There’s something about watching a game for the first time: everything looks foreign and magical. Galeano’s book has the same effect.

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Up on the lit balcony this morning, we got to talking about Amy Hempel.

She’s another one for my map: Ray Carver–>Gordon Lish–>Amy Hempel.

Check out her story, “The Harvest.”

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The Art Spiegelman piece in Harper’s on the Muhammad cartoons is really something. If you care anything about the serious study of cartoons, you should get ‘hold of a copy.

Here’s a big block quote from the beginning.

Here’s a big scan of Spiegelman’s cover.

Here’s the earlier dialogue between Joe Sacco and Spiegelman.

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Get a whole MP3 set of Destroyer, Live in Atlanta.

I TOLD THAT TREE AND IT DIDN’T LISTEN

Friday, May 26, 2006

Our man maintains that comics are a first-rate art form, Fantagraphics’ battle against lousy cartooning runs on 30 years, Michael Pollan and Meghan are in Texas at the same time, and the Walkmen rock out NPR.

Great article on LOST, and the inspiration for including OUR MUTUAL FRIEND in the plot. I studied O.M.F. in Cambridge and loved it. I drew these crazy maps of the “psychological geography” of the London in the book, which my tutor found far more interesting than any of the drivel I wrote up for him. Guess I should’ve known then that my pictures trump my words…

Anyways, my co-workers always ask me what’s my pet theory about LOST, and I always have to say, “I don’t have one, and really, I don’t care.” For me, it’s all about the ride of the episode, and the characters, and the great writing. And the pneumatic tubes! Sometimes I think I should get one of those: just roll up my latest sketchbook, stick it in a cartridge, and pop it in the pneumatic tube to nowhere…