Cross Hatch Dispatch 3/24/2007

These days, you can trip over a comic strip just walking down any old street. Not that I’m complaining:

• Bobby Fingerman gets to talk about his trip to Italy in comic travelogue format for the benefit of this month’s GQ fools for Lyndsay Lohan.
• Megan Kelso will be the next resident comic creator for the New York Times Funny Pages, but the Seth comic is still up if you need to catch up.
• A few “only in New York” moments here, and here.
• And as if cellphones don’t already control your life, here comes comics sent straight to your phone. Yay. It just needs a better selection, but all in good time.

On the other end of the exposure spectrum, there was some news about Al Columbia this week. Except most of it seemed to have disappeared. Mysterious. All that’s left are rumors of a documentary and sketchbooks. The only concrete thing we have is an amateur adaptation of his work and that idiosyncratic personal website of his. I’ve never heard of him before, but I get a Ray Johnson How to Draw a Bunny vibe from it all.

After looking at how much it costs these days to make an honest comic book (make that graphic novel) reader of me, I am all the more thankful for the comics that people post online:

• Put that Robert Crumb tome down and sample some Aline Kominsky Crumb at not one, but two online tomes.
• Matthew Woodson has the look, touch, but don’t read variety (wordless comics, that is) in his online portfolio. Pretty stuff.
• Eleanor Davis has some incredibly whimsical and beautiful material on her site as well. It’s been linked to death everywhere, but it’s just so great.
• And don’t forget this IV drip of strips by Liz Prince.

Randomly, but with a purpose, I came upon two comic links with Santa Cruz connections (The Daily Cross Hatch’s alma mater, by half):

• Jennifer deGuzman talks about her China trip to a Santa Cruz radio host: “The Chinese do not hide their puzzlement and fascination with foreigners…”
• UC Santa Cruz graduate Debbie Huey is the Small Press Spotlight featured artist at the Cartoon Art Museum. If you’re in San Francisco, why not catch the free admission and reception on March 27, 2007 at 7pm?

And finally, did someone mention “words” and “pictures”? Okay, so this five-minute, silent film-ization of Top Gun might not have anything to do with comics, per se, but give me a second here: suppose it inspires a silent film renaissance within the comics to movie adaptation trend? Robert Rodriguez, are you getting this down?

Meanwhile, at the Yes But No But Yes pop culture blog, comics live up to its name, unintentionally.

-Elizabeth Chou