Tonči Zonjić: The Total Approach
I first noticed Croatian cartoonist Tonči Zonjić only recently, when his work appeared in the Image comic Zero, which is written by Ales Kot and drawn by a different artist every issue. Among quite an interesting and eclectic group of artists, Zonjić’s cover and interior art for Zero #9 stand out as informed and moving...
Yearning for Space: a conversation with Tom Kaczynski
I first encountered Tom Kaczynski’s work while delving into the substantial collection of comics-related materials in Columbia University’s Butler Library stacks, where there is a run of Fantagraphics’ anthology title MOME. I very much liked Kaczynski’s deliberately drawn short stories such as “100,000 Miles” and then, when I was lucky enough to get a story...
Massive, Eccentric, Ambitious: Anders Nilsen’s ‘Big Questions’
This month Drawn and Quarterly will publish Anders Nilsen’s massive graphic novel Big Questions, a book fourteen years in the making. Nilsen’s previous books have dealt with humans facing the unpredictability of the natural world. In Dogs and Water (2004), a boy makes his way across an expanse of desert to encounter a roaming pack...
Gary Panter: Strip-Mining on Mars
Considered one of the only true punk cartoonists, Gary Panter is a tremendously influential underground cartoonist best known for a ragged, aggressive line and the wildly imaginative formal experimentation in his Jimbo graphic novels. This month Fantagraphics Books will release DalTokyo, a serial comic strip first produced by Panter in the 1980s, now collected in...
Logical, Believable Ducks
With the December publication of Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, Fantagraphics will bring the classic comics stories of cartoonist Carl Barks (1901-2000) to bookstores in a comprehensive collection of handsome, durable hardcovers. This first volume is actually the seventh in the series’ complete timeline. The publisher elected to debut the series with stories that...
Frank Santoro’s Timeless Lovers, Lines and Ashes
This month sees the release of Pompeii, Frank Santoro’s historical graphic novel, published by PictureBox. I first noticed Santoro as a columnist at the innovative but now-defunct Comics Comics website. We initially began a correspondence based on his perceptive comments about color in comics, a crucial but probably least understood aspect of the medium. When...
Control Freak: Michael DeForge
Michael DeForge is one of the most striking and popular talents in alternative comics, as evidenced by his two Eisner nominations this year: for Best Single Issue (or One Shot) for Lose #4 and Best Digital Comic for Ant Comic. This month, publisher Annie Koyama’s innovative imprint Koyama Press is releasing the first trade paperback...
Paul Kirchner’s Apocalyptic Sensibility
First published on The Comics Journal: Paul Kirchner began his career at Neal Adams’ Continuity Associates in 1973 and he later served a tenure as an assistant to legendary cartoonist Wallace Wood. His own surreal, meticulously drawn comics were mostly seen throughout the seventies and eighties in slick magazines such as High Times, Heavy Metal...
Gene Colan: The Hidden Eye
In 2008, Steve Cohen asked me to contribute to a magazine to honor Gene Colan, to be entitled Genezine. I took the opportunity to arrange with Gene and his late wife Adrienne to tape an interview. We met at a pizza joint in midtown Manhattan while they waited for an appointment Gene had at a...
The Unreliable Observer
Gabrielle Bell’s new book The Voyeurs will be released this month in the form of a handsomely designed hardcover with full color interior art. It is the first book format publication by Uncivilized Books, a small press imprint run by artist Tom Kaczynski. Bell’s incisive, often whimsical short stories have won her a substantial following...
