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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.

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Yes, that's a new painting by Ebisu.

If you’re anything like me, you must be wondering, “What does Japanese comics legend Ebisu do these days?” And you must also wonder, “Does he paint in his underwear?” Well, never fear, because here are the answers to all your questions. And mine, too. And some I didn’t know I had. You’ll be happy to know that we (ahem, PictureBox) will be selling work much like what is pictured in the link in just a few short months. If you poke around (NSFW) the rest of this site (an art agency) you’ll find some good information on Ebisu and Nemoto as well, not to mention a rather more eccentric artist, too.

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I promise not to link to every nice review about the book, but Tom Spurgeon’s is the first substantive take on the book and he does a better job than I ever could of explaining it and what I hope is its appeal. It’s heartwarming, even for grouchy ol’ me, to have my work, and that of the cartoonists, so well discussed.

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Check out this review of Dash’s new book. And then click over to his blog. He has another new book to put on your radar. Bodyworld, the awesome webcomic, is now an amazing hardcover comic book. Forgive the hype, but I’m really excited about Bodyworld. I think it’s going to make folks think about the way comics are constructed from the inside out. It’s a very freeing, very compelling way to read a comic. And something I don’t think I’ve really seen before. Over and out.

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Further to Dan’s excellent post on Wally Wood, one way to think about Wood’s career is to realize that he followed a pattern common to commercial comic book artists of his era. Think of Kirby, Ditko, Kane, and Eisner (and maybe also John Stanley). All these cartoonists started off as journeymen artists, had a mid-life crisis which made them try do more artistically ambitious work, but ended up being thwarted either by the limits of their talent or the constraints of marketplace.

Jack Kirby had his midlife crisis in the late 1960s. He already had a formidable body of work, arguably the best adventure cartooning ever done in the comic book form, running from the explosive patriotic bombast of the early Captain America to the mind-stretching cosmic adventures of the Fantastic Four and Thor. But by the late 1960s he was tired of playing second fiddle that blowhardy glory-hound Stan Lee. So Kirby made is big break for DC and became the auteur behind the hugely ambitious Fourth World series. I’m very fond of the Fourth World series, and even enjoy the aspect of them that is most often mocked, Kirby’s peculiar writing style, which to my ears at least has a kind of vatic poetry. Be that as it may, DC comics wasn’t willing to give the series the support they deserved and the books were canceled mid-storyline, leaving us with the fragments of a promising epic. Kirby would go on doing fascinating work, but he never really got over the sting of losing the Fourth World. None of his subsequent work had the same crazy ambition as the Fourth World.
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