Austin Kleon – Page 540

EXAMPLES FROM KUNZLE’S “THE EARLY COMIC STRIP”

Thursday, March 22, 2007

the early comic strip

I don’t have too much more to say about David Kunzle‘s long-out-of-print series, THE HISTORY OF THE COMIC STRIP, but I did want to post a couple of wacky examples from the book that caught my attention last week:

I plan on ripping these off as soon as I can.

On a side note, here’s what R. Crumb had to say about the book. Unbelievably, Professor Kunzle had never heard Crumb’s praise, so he was delighted when I forwarded him the quote from Hignite’s book. I still think that with a little editing, maybe whittling it down to a paperback format, this book could be re-released and sell quite well. Kunzle has two books on Rudolphe Topffer coming out soon: a collection of his strips, RUDOLPHE TOPFFER: THE COMPLETE COMIC STRIPS, and a monograph, RUDOLPHE TOPFFER: FATHER OF THE COMIC STRIP.

ADVENTURES IN THE BATSUIT

Monday, March 19, 2007

I am not the kind of guy who would want to frame Batman...

I had one [pitch] where Batman went completely broke. His corporation went completely broke. He was like, ‘should I throw this Batarang? These cost me $550 each. I’m not really sure I can afford to throw it. I should probably just run.’ And he had to sell all his cars and ride a bicycle around. If anyone sees him on a bicycle with his costume on, they’ll catch him, so he can’t even wear that anymore. He just has to wear a t-shirt and run around. They said, “no, we’re not going to do that” [laughs]. I’d like to do a story about the real Batman, what a real Batman would be like. Just some guy, who’s not really that rich. He’d just run around and try to figure out where the crime is. In my neighborhood, all he’d be doing is running up to cars where they’re selling drugs out the window.”

—Tony Millionaire, interview