Blammo #6 by Noah Van Sciver

Blammo #6
By Noah Van Sciver

Welcome, Noah Van Sciver, to an extremely exclusive club. Ivan Brunetti’s in it. So’s Tony Millionaire, Johnny Ryan, and Nick Gurewitch. Oh, and Ken Dahl, too. It’s a short list indeed. I am sure there are a few more whose names I can’t think of at the moment, but the list of cartoonists capable of honestly making me laugh outloud is rather short indeed.

There is, perhaps, a theme across these works. Something gutteral. A sometimes base sensibility that I just can’t repress, no matter how hard I try. I even, on occasional, feel a bit guilty. I remember, once, reading an Angry Youth Comix collection on a train, eyes dart back and forth to make sure no one saw exactly what was eliciting such explosive, full body laughter.

It’s not that I don’t find other cartoonists funny—I’d like to think that I recognize good humor when confronted with it—it’s just that, frankly, there’s a difference between recognizing that “this is funny” and actually momentarily losing control over one’s composure.

Now, I should state definitively that this newest issue of Blammo doesn’t have the laugh frequency of a, say, Maakies or a Schizo, but that certainly isn’t an entirely negative thing. Sciver really treats his series as a catchall. Ideas are thrown against the wall, and some stick better than other—or, perhaps more appropriate, stick in different ways. The result is a surprisingly diverse collection that is sometimes funny, sometimes surreal, and even, amazingly, sometimes touching.

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Interview: Dan Goldman Pt. 4 [of 4]

“I’m really in love with comics,” Dan Goldman admits in this final part of our interview. The Red Light Properties is a film school graduate, and while he confesses to visualizing comics in that cinematic manner, he tells me that he’s unlikely to leave the medium any time in the foreseeable future—even as he begins to script out his first go at a prose novel.

[Part One][Part Two][Part Three]

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The Cross Hatch Podcast Episode 001: Kenny Kramer’s Superhero Tour

Well, we finally did it. After promising, joking, threatening, and generally procrastinating for so long, we’ve finally gone ahead and launched our own Daily Cross Hatch-branded podcast, The Cross Hatch Podcast. The show stars myself (Brian Heater); our mini-comics editor, Sarah Morean; and former Rocketship owner/some time Project: Runway cartoonist, Alex Cox.

The show’s a (we hope) thoughtful, if not especially serious, take on the indie comics scene—and, really, the world of sequential art at large. Take this debut episode, in which we tackle the subject of New York City superhero tours, the pronunciation of well-known cartoonists’ last names, and try to figure out, once and for all, why all cartoonists own cats.

The music was provided by our pal James Rickman, and Alex is drawing a new strip for each episode, because that’s the kind of guy he is.

As you can no doubt image, the audio on this first episode isn’t perfect, but we promise that we’re working on it! Feedback is certainly appreciated. Please send us a note at crosshatchpodcast@gmail.com, or, if you love the sound of your own voice as much as we love ours, you can call us at 713-36-Hatch—who knows, maybe we’ll even put you on the show.

Apple tells us that our show is “under review” as we speak, but we’re sure that we’ll pass with flying colors, because it’s amazing. Also, we don’t threaten to kill anybody and there are no swears. We’ll post a note when you can subscribe that way.

Happy listening!

–BH

The Cross Hatch Dispatch 8.31.10

The Cross Hatch Rehash: The First Annual Read Comics in Public Day

I spent most of Sunday forwarding images to Sarah. There was the shot at the wedding, the happy couple reading Hellboy; the guy reading Batman in front of an illuminated Eiffel Tower at Dusk; the shot of the guy reading while driving (certainly not recommend). One woman took of a photo surrounded by dinosaurs for one of our contests. There was one of a uniformed police woman reading Sin City. And there are just too many adorable images of kids and pets reading comics to mention.

I suppose we first knew we were really onto something with Read Comics in Public the day after the initiative launched, when people first started asking about meetups—something we hadn’t really anticipated. If there was one thing we had to come to grips with fairly early on, it was the fact that, try as we might to control the thing, it belonged to the everyone now.

Comic shops all over the world started offering promotions, libraries were planning group readings, there were even some complimentary splinter groups like the much talked about Women Reading Comics in Public Tumblr page. Before it was over, we were getting notes from all over the world, from Alaska to Saudi Arabia. Official meetups were planned for four continents (there were more, but frankly I just couldn’t manage all of the submissions that came through—apologies for the numerous balls I dropped).

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Guest Strip: Ji Wook Moon

Ji Wook Moon is a pastor and native Korean. He graduated from Korean Methodist Seminary and has worked as a pastor for several years. Last May, he graduated from Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, earning a Master of Divinity degree.

He became interested in cartooning through his experience as a pastor and theologian. During his ministry years, he made self-published books and sometimes printed out his cartoons to share with congregation members. He hopes to learn more about cartooning and has applied to the Center for Cartoon Studies.

Currently, Moon lives in Korea and continues to work as a pastor and save up for tuition. His ambition is to become a pastor and cartoonist with a Master’s degree in each.

Moon’s guest strip is called “Think T-shirt” and he has this to say about his piece:

One evening at Emory library, I found people around me wearing T-shirts filled with meaningless pictures and colors. I thought that I want to wear a T-shirt that gives me a challenge and time to think. Thus, I began to draw some reflective cartoons on the T-shirts format.

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Interview: John Porcellino at MIX [Audio]

I had a long conversation about interviews last weekend. At some point I suggested that, if the interviewee says something along the lines of “this is going to sound crazy” or “I shouldn’t be saying this,” you’re probably doing something right. It’s not about tripping someone up so much as witnessing the on-the-spot formation of thoughts.

Canned answers are for politicians and movie stars. Good interviews are organic, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can witness a person rethink an idea they’ve clearly been over a million times in their brain.

You’re lucky if you can get that out of a John Porcellino—not because he’s not thinking, of course, but rather because he’s clearly examined his own motives ad nauseam, since launching King-Cat Comics in the late-80s. But what began as a casual conversation in front of an intimate crowd at last weekend’s Minneapolis Indie Expo, ended in some fascinating revelations about everything from factory work to Zen Buddhism.

The interview began, fittingly enough, rather casually, the audience still chatting, largely unaware that we had begun—that probably doesn’t come across in this recording, since the mics are so close to Porcellino and myself, but I think it’s an important to point out.

The full audio of the interview is available as a stream, after the jump. Special thanks to Sarah M. for recording us. More interviews from MIX will be available in the coming weeks.

–BH

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The Cross Hatch Rehash: Minneapolis Indie Xpo 2010

It’s strange to think of a city as a layover—well, only strange, I suppose, once you have invested in it more than a ten minute run from one side of an international airport to the other. As I boarded the plane, a 727 out of LaGuardia, there were jokes to this effect—that everyone on-board was really destined for somewhere else. Most for Los Angeles, the plane’s final destination. Others for Bozeman, Montana, of all places—a fine destination, I’m sure, but odd that it might be one more in demand than the Twin Cities.

I’ve spent my entire life on two coasts—the lion’s share just outside of San Francisco, and the last half-dozen or so in the heart of New York City. Destination cities, I think. And I know that every city and town possesses within it the potential to be either a pitstop or a destination, but there’s a reason we arrogant coastal urbanites refer to heart of our contiguous nation, somewhat condescendingly as “fly over.”

I’ve not spent a lot of time in the Midwest. I visited Cleveland last year, and stayed in Michigan next to the lake for part of one summer as a youth, to visit my extended family. I have been told by a very reliable source that neither of these place “count,” however. Chicago does, apparently. I spent a little time there, traveling for business.

I liked Chicago. It was by sheer coincidence that I was reading Devil in the White City on the plane ride there, and in its own way, that book informed some grotesque sense of romanticism for the fractured semblance of a temporary kingdom on a lake. My preconceptions were also informed by a Dan Clowes strip. One from Eightball about weird Chicago, a city where’s it’s perfectly acceptable to run a store that specializes in individually wrapped brown eggs.

And true to form, there is a wonderfully vibrant oddness to the Windy City, one I’ve largely failed to properly relay to other in conversations—especially those who live there. I never found that store with the eggs, but I did discover a city that, at least in my brief experience, long ago learned to accept and perhaps embrace those qualities that have made it so unique.

I do find glimmers of this, from time to time, in my home of New York, but taken together, they don’t provide enough light to read with, in a city where habitual insomnia can, in part, be chalked up to the fact that the lights never truly go out. Good luck to those in New York City attempting to find a truly dark place to fall asleep.

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The Cross Hatch Dispatch 8.23.10

Interview: Dan Goldman Pt. 3 [of 4]

“Comics is a very traditional and very backward looking medium,” Dan Goldman tells me. “We love to be nostalgic.” And we must—at least to some degree. Why else would the fact that Goldman relies so heavily upon a tablet for his drawings be such a constant source of fascination among those who follow his work?

I’m certainly guilty of it, too. After all, It’s not as though I could make my way through an entire interview with the artist without steering the conversation in that direction.

[Part One][Part Two]

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