{"id":507,"date":"2009-07-11T15:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-11T20:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/2009\/07\/weekend-clean-up\/"},"modified":"2009-07-11T15:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-11T20:28:00","slug":"artists-rendition-of-my-vacation-i-was","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=507","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Clean-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5357302276120770834\"<\/a>(Artist’s rendition of my vacation)<\/p>\n

I was away kayaking, fishing, having water balloon fights, eating ice cream, and doing other “manly” things this past week, so I’ve been designated “weekend boy” by my compatriots. What have we learned this week?<\/p>\n

Well, for one thing we had an off-blog discussion about the incredible Trevor Von Eeden interview<\/a> in The Comics Journal<\/a>. Truly the must-read of the year so far. Like the Dick Ayers autobiography or the Dave Stevens book<\/a>, it’s a pretty incredible record of a cartoonist’s psyche. I mean, all the stuff about Lynn Varley<\/a> alone is remarkable — almost (Ok, maybe totally) too candid. Also, it reminds me of how the TCJ interviews use to be — the totally off the cuff candor of Kaluta or Conway or Chaykin in the 1980s. I think it’s less that the Journal has changed (though it has) and more that the culture of comics has shifted so much in the last 20 years. After all, by contrast that interview with Ba and Moon (contemporary young “hot” artists) is remarkable for its contentment and happiness. I mean, the industry is still bizarre but the rewards and possibilities are so much more…lucrative. Comics isn’t small anymore, I guess, and certainly what’s left of public bitching now occurs more on message boards and blogs than it does in the old style interviews. But someone who lived through all of that could speak to this better than I. <\/p>\n

Of course, Von Eeden<\/a> was\/is very talented, which is pretty much what distinguishes it from, say, a million other interviews you could do with superhero artists and why I’m at all interested in him. That’s what I love that he talks about more or less drawing in ink, rather than tracing pencils, and that he’s unconcerned with any conceptual logic to his layouts — they seem to just evolve from whatever he feels like doing. Luckily the drawing and storytelling remains clear. I suppose that’s the trick. <\/p>\n

Oh, and I sure liked Frank’s Brinkman<\/a> review<\/a>. I’m of course biased and I’ve been meaning to ask Mat to confirm a few things. Certainly Frank’s thoughts about relating to the work seems dead on. I also wanted to note that so much of what makes MF work has to do with Mat’s experiments with multiple generation xeroxing and the scale shifts throughout a page. Those are miraculous compositions which, as Frank so eloquently noted seem unimpeachable. <\/p>\n

Finally, we learned<\/a> from Lauren Weinstein<\/a> that I’m against social interaction and a “killjoy” (oh, Weinstein, you’re in trouble!). She may or may not be right. Next week we’ll have a cage match about that very subject. Also, we have intuited<\/a> that we will never be as cool as Al Jaffee<\/a>, but oh lord we can try. Plus, we at CC have given birth (we’re competing with Lauren!) to a new feature which will be unveiled soon. The suspense must be killing you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Artist’s rendition of my vacation) I was away kayaking, fishing, having water balloon fights, eating ice cream, and doing other “manly” things this past week, so I’ve been designated “weekend boy” by my compatriots. What have we learned this week? Well, for one thing we had an off-blog discussion about the incredible Trevor Von Eeden interview in The Comics Journal. Truly the must-read of the year so far. Like the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[30,313,351,573,781,867,899,1254,1280,1328],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-jaffee","tag-d-stevens","tag-ayers","tag-chaykin","tag-weinstein","tag-brinkman","tag-kaluta","tag-hodler","tag-tcj","tag-von-eeden"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}