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Chris Ware: Drawing is a Way of Thinking

I’m in the book so I won’t say too much about it except that the editors are very intelligent and the table of contents (pasted below) looks promising. The book will also have a lovely frontispiece by Ivan Brunetti.

As it turns out, my contribution to the book is relevant to the discussions we’ve been having here at Comics Comics about book design and reprints of old comics. My essay is about Ware’s work on the Walt and Skeezix series and the Krazy and Ignatz series, which I try to place in the larger context of the history of comic strip reprint projects and also tie to Ware’s thematic concerns in his own comics with family history, the legacy of the past, and the pathology of the collector mentality.
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This isn’t a review. These are just a few different notes/ideas after reading Drawn and Quarterly’s recent collection of John Stanley‘s Thirteen (Going on Eighteen).

1. These comics are like a ping-pong match. Val runs right, runs left, right, left, back and forth. The dialogue is like this too, like Seth’s repeated image of Val and Judy in silhouette facing-off. If Val’s excited, she grabs Judy by her arms, and then Judy will pull back the opposite way.

If there are six panels on a page, the average page could be seen as battle between the right column and the left: running, bouncing back and forth, with each panel having two characters screaming, grabbing, pulling each other back and forth. It’s all motion. It’s all high conflict, high energy. It reminds me of how kids always run towards something. They never walk. They scream, “Nuh-uh!” If they don’t like something they run in the opposite direction. It’s super entertaining.

A scene where Val’s stuck in a doorway during a rainstorm, waiting for anyone to come by with an umbrella (anyone but Charles!) would be a static scene in any other comic, but here the rain substitutes for the running zig-zag ping-pong motion. Stanley took a quiet scene and made it an energetic back-and-forth riot. I love how Val balls together her fists and leans back when she yells. “Oh, I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!”

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Art by Osamu Tezuka, from MW

Hey everyone. My name is Joe McCulloch, although you might also know me by my various internet aliases, like “Jog” or “Thierry Groensteen.” I was a contributor to two of the print issues of Comics Comics — and I currently write reviews and essays at The Savage Critics and The Comics Journal (er, soon!), while contributing to a weekly movie column with the Rev. Tucker Stone and occasionally blowing dust off my homepage — but I’m here right now to put this site into compliance with recent amendments to the Greater Internet Funnybook Discussion Act of 1933 (initially prompted by an especially potent stack of Tijuana Bibles and, likely, the repeal of Prohibition) requiring all comic book websites redesigned after December 31, 2009, to furnish a weekly post detailing all the neat-looking shit due in comic book stores that particular Wednesday, or be liable for penalties, including and limited to death.

So here’s a short rundown of comics and things due imminently (3/3/10) at Direct Market retailers serviced by Diamond Comics Distributors (and whatever else I find). Not all of this stuff is guaranteed to show up, although most of it stands at least a fighting chance.

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Cover for Chip Kidd's The Art of Charles M. Schulz

Since the issue of Chip Kidd’s book design for The Art of Charles M. Schulz (as well as Kidd’s other books) came up in Tim’s earlier posting, I thought readers be interested in my review of that book, which ran in the National Post on Dec. 1, 2001. Re-reading it, I wish I had said even more about Kidd’s design, which really did shake up our familiar perception of Schulz and started the process whereby people started taking a closer look at the Schulz as a cartoonist.

Here is the review:

The Art of Charles M. Schulz is perhaps the most lavish tribute any cartoonist has ever received. Assembled by Chip Kidd, the most influential designer in contemporary publishing, the images in this thick book have been culled from a variety of sources, including Schulz’s high-school yearbook and his private notebooks.
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I’m only about halfway through Todd Hignite’s upcoming The Art of Jaime Hernandez, but while it’s possible if unlikely that the whole thing falls apart near the end, and while I have a few mostly minor qualms (some fair, some not) about its approach, even at this point it is clear that this is a rich and beautiful book, and an essential volume for the advanced Hernandezologist. I’m not going to review the book right now, but just point out a few thoughts it inspired.
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Glenn Head's Hotwire Comics

Below are some jottings from my notebook. They are not substantial enough to be essays but might spark some thought or debate.

Praise for the competition. Lots of spitballs have been thrown at The Comics Journal‘s new web format, some of them hurled by mutinous writers from the Journal itself. I care more about content than format, so I don’t agree with the general line of criticism. For me the biggest problem with TCJ these days is that there is an overabundance of good stuff. It’s hard to keep up with the magazine since it offers so much to read every day. Put it this way: the magazine features long essays by Donald Phelps, Gary Groth, and R. Fiore. These aren’t just three of the best comics critics around, they are among the best essayists around period. Phelps is a critic of the stature of Manny Farber or Pauline Kael. (In fact, the Library of America’s great volume American Movie Critics has essays by Farber, Kael, and Phelps). Fiore and Groth are a notch below that Olympian level but there essays are as good as anything found in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Believer or n+1. Aside from these key writers, the magazine offers regular essays from a strong cohort of intelligent, informed critics — Clough, Worcester, Ishii, Kreiner, Suat Tong, Crippen, Garrity, etc. (Anyone who isn’t on the list shouldn’t be offended, I’m writing off the top of my head.)
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Friday Feb 26th NYC.  Have a night on the town with the endangered species known as Manhattanus Cartoonistas.

The SOHO GALLERY FOR DIGITAL ART

138 Sullivan St. NYC, NY  10012. This Friday  from 8 – 11 pm.

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Burger King's true nature

Do not let this injustice stand. I don’t know how long this contest will last, so go to the site now to cast your vote for integrity, solid values, and Neon Knome.

[image found via]

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Kirby's models: Glorious Godfrey and Billy Graham, Big Barda and Lainie Kazan, Funky Flashman and Stan Lee

Graham: This stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.

Nixon: You believe that?

Graham: Yes, sir.

Nixon: Oh, boy. So do I. I can’t ever say that, but I believe it.

Graham: No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something.

Kirby knew evil when he saw it, and he used that insight in drawing his comics.