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And Barry said things like this:

I stumbled on these magazines called Grade Teacher, which were sent to grade-school teachers every month, and I have a pile of them from the late twenties to the sixties. They have stuff like “Fun Things to Draw” or “Let’s Do Our Bulletin Board.” But the big ad sponsorship is from coal companies and asbestos companies: “Free giant charts for your class about how wonderful coal is!” The weirdest things are the art projects with asbestos powder, like “Lets make beads and make necklaces and wear them.” I am not joking.

You can read more of the interview here.

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Gil Kane, an artist whose interviews are always worth reading.

Autodidacts. I often think William Blake is the prototype for many modern cartoonists. Blake was a working class visionary who taught himself Greek and Hebrew, an autodidact who created his own cosmology which went against the grain of the dominant Newtonian/Lockean worldview of his epoch. The world of comics has had many such ad hoc theorists and degree-less philosophers: Burne Hogarth, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, Neal Adams, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter, Lynda Barry, Howard Chaykin, Chester Brown, Dave Sim, Alan Moore. These are all freelance scholars who are willing to challenge expert opinion with elaborately developed alternative ideas. The results of their theorizing are mixed. On the plus side: you can learn more about art history by listening to Gary Panter and Art Spiegelman talk than from reading a shelf-full of academic books; Robert Crumb’s Genesis deserves to be seen not just as an important work of art but also a significant commentary on the Bible; Lynda Barry’s ideas about creativity strike me as not just true but also profound and life-enhancing. On the negative side: Dave Sim’s forays into gender analysis have not, um, ah, been, um, very fruitful; and while Neal Adams drew a wicked cool Batman, I’m not willing to give credence to his theories of an expanding earth if it means rejecting the mainstream physics of the last few centuries. Sorry Neal!

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We are constantly in training here at the Comics Comics mansion, keeping the Danger Room busy while always trying to hone our critical acumen, broaden our coverage, and sharpen our skills. We vow never to stop improving, growing, and providing better philosophical funny-page fodder. As the song says, “Time will not allow you to stop still. No.”

As you probably noticed, yesterday a brilliant writer made her debut as a new occasional contributor to the Comics Comics juggernaut. For those who don’t know, Nicole Rudick is a freelance writer and critic. She formerly worked at Bookforum, and was responsible for commissioning much of the great comics content there in recent years, including hiring a bunch of us from here, including myself, Dan, Jog, and Jeet. She’s also interviewed cartoonists such as Gipi, Adrian Tomine, and Dan Clowes, among others. (The Clowes interview will appear in an upcoming issue of The Believer.) She is sure to be a great addition to the site.

Stay tuned.