Attending the book release party for the last volume of Old Jewish Comedians was one of the great pleasure I’ve been afforded thanks to this site. The event, fittingly, was held in the legendary Friars Club in midtown Manhattan, with the likes of Joe Franklin, Mickey Freeman, Larry Storch, and Jerry Stiller all present to celebrate the Drew Friedman’s collection of comic portraits.

Earlier this month, Fantagraphics released the third and final entry in the series, yet another tribute to the cartoonist’s love of capturing every wrinkle and liver spot of a well-seasoned face.

We sat down with Friedman to discuss the new collection and the club’s place in comedy history.

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In this third part of our interview we discuss animation, an absence of dialog, and The Wolf soundtrack that never was.

[Part One][Part Two]

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We wrap up our interview by discussing the importance of starting small, the pitfalls of the music industry, and promoting Cleveland after the death of Harvey Pekar.

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

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In this second part of our interview with The Wolf author, we discuss the pluses and minus of the panel format, the natural evolution of drawing styles, and the importance of being able to toss away false starts.

[Part One]

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In this third part of our interview with the Cleveland cartoonist, we discuss drawing the perfect Harvey Pekar, being embarrassed by your early work, and how best to grow beyond your influences.

[Part One][Part Two]

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Released in 2007, The Blot easily made my year-end top 10. The largely silent book was steeped in certain comics  traditions, owing a lot to the works of pioneers like EC Segar, while managing to be something entirely its own. And as far as most of  us were concerned at the time, its author, Tom Neely came seeming out of nowhere.

It’s taken a few years for the cartoonist to issue a proper follow up, finally releasing the self-published The Wolf this summer. Of course Neely has kept plenty busy, through a slew of minis, design work, and collaborations—perhaps most notably the Igloo Tornado Rollins/Danzig tribute, Henry & Glenn Forever.

We sat down with Neely to discuss the genesis of his latest book, the importance of imagery, and taking long walks in the forest.

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In this second part of our interview with the Cleveland artist, we discuss collaborating with Harvey Pekar and how the process of drawing the book changed once its author passed away.

[Part One]

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Later this year, Top Shelf and first-time publisher Zip Comics will release Cleveland, the first posthumous book from Harvey Pekar. The work is a combination autobiography of the writer and an biography of the city he loved, drawn by Joseph Remnant, marking the cartoonist’s graphic novel debut.

Remnant has been releasing work for a few years now, including his debut self-published short story collection Blindspot and a number of collaborations with Pekar, as part of the online Pekar Project. I first met Remnant a few years back, when we took a trip to Cleveland to celebrate Pekar’s birthday.

Meeting Remnant, it’s difficult to believe that he’s the artist behind the work, with a style that belies his years, steeped deeply in the work of Pekar’s own contemporaries and subjecting him to fairly consistent comparisons to Robert Crumb—there are, of course far worse things in this world to be compared to.

The cartoonist insists, however, that while Crumb and his fellow underground artists did factor heavily into his early influences, his style has evolved gradually away from that style, a shift that he says is evident in his longest and more ambitious work to date.

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We wrap up our interview with Fantagraphics’ Eric Reynolds by discussing book distribution, how not to be precious, and the publisher’s online future.

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

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In this third part of our interview with Fantagraphics’s associate publisher, we discuss the importance of new cartoonists, losing artists to competing publishers, and the importance of the number 22.

[Part One][Part Two]

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