On this, the final day of the year, we bid the year a fond farewell to 2009 by sitting down with The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald to highlight some of the trends that came to define the year in comics, from iPhones to self-publishing to convention wars.
[Above, Katie Skelly's hospital orientation. Below, helllloooooo Dispatch.]
Smile
By Raina Telgemeier
Graphix
There are few things so universal in a young person’s life as a fear of the dentist. Even for those who have managed to coast by with little more than a twice-yearly cleaning, there’s a certain dread that inevitably comes with entire process. While Raina Telgemeier insists in her author’s note that she’s “not afraid of dentists or dental work,” one can only imagine the effect that the artist’s own real-life “dental drama” had on her formative years.
In a sense, her own experiences in the world of dentistry were rather atypical, a fairly straightforward experience with the orthodontist having been hijacked when she tripped and fell on the way to a friend’s house, knocking out her two front teeth. What followed were several years of increasingly complex dental procedures–a slew of retainers, false teeth, and professionals with unpronouncable job descriptions, save for the ever-familiar -dontist suffix. In all, it’s enough to make the vast majority of us thankful for our relatively painless experiences in the dentist’s chair.
Robert Crumb doesn’t have to pick up dog poop—this much Carol Tyler knows for sure. Neither does her husband, cartoonist Justin Green, for that matter, but that’s a different story. The point here is that Tyler does pick the stuff up, and while it may not be her idea of a good time, per se, she’s not going to let it keep her down. “Half-full, half-empty?” she tells me. “No, my glass is full. I don’t have a dime, but I’m happy.” She laughs—something she seems to do a lot.
Tyler has plenty going for her these days, of course—a steady teaching gig at the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, a book on Fantagraphics that’s been garnering her plenty of accolades [You'll Never Know: A Good and Decent Man], and, of course, a dog with a healthy colon.
In the second part of our conversation with the cartoonist (a word she’s hesitant to use when describing herself), we discuss Tyler’s life as an educator, what it means to be an “artist,” and her 90-year-old father’s reaction to A Good and Decent Man, the first book in a trilogy exploring his life after World War II.
[Part One]
John McNamee and Ted Raskol get together three times a week to draw jam comics. The comics are always four panels long, but they alternate who starts each one. What goes on from start to finish is completely improvised from panel to panel. Their strips are posted on the website Digestive Comics.
McNamee’s webcomic Pie updates thrice weekly. He has drawn over 660 strips so far and shows no sign of stopping. He has been published in three issues of Pulse Comic Zine and has self-published two compilations of Pie. He recently lent his drawing skills for Duck Tales from the Crypt in Big Planet’s November newsletter.
Raskol authors Raskol Political Cartoons, which updates daily. He has been published in Pulse Comic Zine and finds that it’s not so hard to draw a daily cartoon, as long as you’re willing to cut all the people you care about out of your life. His political drawings lean to the left of the political spectrum, but have a streak of independence when it comes to the economic issues.
McNamee and Raskol met while publishing daily comic strips at The Cavalier Daily, which is an independent and self-sustaining newspaper published by students at the University of Virginia (both were graduates of the class of 2007). McNamee has had a table at the last two Small Pres Expos, while Raskol visited to mill about for awhile. By next year’s SPX, they plan to publish a compilation of Digestive Comics.
UTU
by Malachi Ward
Self-published
It seems weirdly appropriate to review this book on Christmas Eve. I hope you will enjoy the irony.
UTU is beautiful comic book set in two worlds: the highly techno-savvy future and the mystical, superstitious past. The book’s author Malachi Ward claims it is his “finest and only work to date.” For a first comic, I’d say it’s pretty ambitious, but successful. Definitely worth a look.
UTU is about a guy who is able to move between time periods, but has no control over either. In 5102 B.C.E. he is the god of gods, UTU, who nobody seems to respect, and in the future he is just some lonely guy who can’t even pull a girl at the bar.
Carol Tyler isn’t a member of the original comics underground, a fact that she’s quick to point out. Sure she’s the same age, and she’s got a picture of her sitting on Robert Crumb’s lap—oh yeah, and did I mention that she’s married to Justin Green? In an artistic sense, however, she’s a child of the 80s—the titular late bloomer of her 2005 short story collection.
Tyler did work on spec for the Crumbs’ 80s anthology, Weirdo, but in typical late bloomer fashion, its her work over the past two decades that’s really put her on the radar of so many indie comics fans, beginning with two short story collections released a decade apart on Fantagraphics and culminating with the release of this year’s You’ll Never Know: Book 1: A Good and Decent Man—the first of a three book trilogy, which landed her on a number of year-end “best of” lists.
The book explores the impact that her father’s post World War II life had on her formative years. Tyler explains that the first volume is only a warm up—the other two will delve into far more serious issues. She also assures me that, despite this (and the fact that she was recently discharged from the hospital after some rather serious surgery), she’s happy. Very happy
Given the enthusiasm with which she approaches every topic from post-traumatic stress to picking up dog poop, it’s hard not to believe her.
In this final part of our conversation with the Pim & Francie author, we discuss reader interpretation, the importance of message board gossip, and whether or not Al Columbia is looking forward to the rerelease of Eddie Campbell’s Alec, a book featuring a young, faceless, and less-than-flattering version of Columbia himself.
[Above, it's a bad Garfield party. Below, the Dispatch is not a huge fan of Mondays.]
Every year for the past three years, we’ve asked artists and other important industry folk to present a list of their top five books. Like clockwork, a number of participants issue the same complaint: it’s impossible to narrow the list down to five. We’re living in an era of unprecedented creativity for the sequential art medium, as as such, I can’t really take issue with those who are just flat out unable to produce a list by the deadline.
Now take that indecision and multiply it by ten. The decade is quickly coming to an end, so we decided to take a similar approach toward picking the best books of the aughts. We asked each artist to pick their ten favorite books of the past decade. Naturally, plenty simply couldn’t. As such, the following list is decidedly shorter than the Best of 2009 that we presented last week. Given the relative scope of the list, however, I hope you will find it equally illuminating.
