This week Koom wraps up London Super Comicon with more interviews.
First, TPub Comics’ Neil Gibson talks about the publisher’s ongoing series Twisted Dark (a series discussed in Critiquing Comics episodes 59 and 85!).
Then, Amrit Birdi (at left in above photo) and Ram V talk about the attraction of comics, the relative merits of various books on the medium, and how (or whether) being from India affects their comics work.
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Derf Backderf, author of My Friend Dahmer and a onetime garbage man, is back with Trashed, a book that defies pigeonholing. Part history, part awareness-raiser, part fictionalized reminiscence, part gross-out humor fest (and a few other “parts” as well), Trashed seems like a book that shouldn’t work, but does. In this episode, Tim interviews Derf about Trashed, the Dahmer movie, and more; plus, Tim and Kumar review Trashed!
Derf will be headlining at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus later this month!
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At London Super Comicon last month, Koom got to sit down with Paul Gravett, a comics journalist and exhibition curator. Gravett is currently preparing the touring Asian comics show Mangasia, which will debut in Rome next month. This is a guy who’s read a lot of comics; do they all become a blur after a while? Koom asks him about avoiding burnout, the amount of progress comics have (or haven’t) made toward being accepted by the “art world”, and much more.
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This time, Koom travels to Cardiff, Wales, to talk to David Roach, an artist who’s done work for 2000 AD, Dark Horse, and DC, and is currently working on Dr. Who Magazine in the UK. He’s also a comics archivist and historian, and has written several books about Warren Comics artists of the ‘70s, and one about great British comics creators. He tells Koom what inspired him to be an artist and how he broke into comics, and whether living the dream has lived up to the hype. |
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Look who Tim (center) ran into in Columbus: Derf Backderf (My Friend Dahmer, Trashed), Tom Spurgeon (The Comics Reporter), Stephen Bissette (Swamp Thing, Tyrant), and Craig Fischer (English professor and occasional contributor to The Comics Journal)! (Click the photo to enlarge!)
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In this episode, Tim talks to Steve and Craig about their summer research tour that brought them to Columbus and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, and how it relates to Steve’s revival of his ’90s comics biography of a Tyrannosaurus rex, Tyrant! |
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Then Tom talks about the upcoming Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) event he’s organizing for the Billy Ireland, and the current state of mainstream comics. |
As for Derf — that interview is coming later this month!
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At the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum in Columbus, Ohio, curator Jenny Robb has what most of us would consider a dream job. But she and other staff members recently had an unenviable task: choosing which 40 items to include in the museum’s fortieth anniversary exhibit. In this episode, she talks about that decision process, and answers some burning questions: Why was the comics field so male-dominated in the 20th century? How were Windsor McCay’s colors for strips like Tale of the Jungle Imps transmitted to newspapers? And much more.
Meanwhile, in Arkansas, Mike Curtis is helping to keep alive another classic comic, Dick Tracy. He’s the current writer of the strip, which won the Harvey award for best syndicated strip for three straight years through 2015, and in this episode he describes his work process on the strip. He’ll also tell us about being one of Harvey Comics’ last writers, his long-running “furry” comic Shanda the Panda, and his Superman memorabilia collection. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a cheese box!
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More Minneapolis comics creators!
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Christopher Jones has done a variety of work for DC Comics (including The Batman Strikes and one story in Batman ’66) and other animation adaptations), a few things for Marvel, and Dr. Who comics for Titan. How did he break in, and why is so much of his work of a more “cartoony” nature? |
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Lucid is making her living from crowdfunding in support of her webcomic, Avialae, a “boy’s love” story with an emphasis on consensual couplings. She talks about how “living the dream” can sometimes be a double-edged sword. |
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Minneapolis is increasingly becoming a “comics town”. While it doesn’t have the publisher presence of Portland, it’s filled with comics creators of all stripes, from mainstream guys to indy creators to web cartoonists.
It also may be the only town in the U.S. where New Comic Book Day is a bar event every Wednesday, with comics giveaways, standup comedy, and a creator interview!
In this episode, Tim talks with:
Also, you’ll hear Eliot interviewing Kristin Tipping, creator of Evil Witch Allie, a comic we’ve critiqued!
Become a patron and you can see video of some of the standup comedians at New Comic Book Day!
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My Little Pony is a toy line that initially had success in the ’80s (including TV and film appearances) but then stumbled until the 21st century. Its fourth iteration debuted in 2010, with a hit TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and more world building and continuity than before.
IDW has the license to make My Little Pony comics, and Ted Anderson is one of the writers on the book. Tim recently talked with him in Minneapolis about his approach to writing for kids, how he gets from a story concept to an actual story, the stumbling blocks in writing for a multimedia franchise, and more.
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Our friend Matt Silady is back with us for the first time in five years, and he’s here to introduce us to a friend: Thi Bui, who recently completed her decade-long quest to create a graphic novel about three generations of her family in the context of Vietnamese and American history. After catching up with Matt, Tim talks with Thi about the book, The Best We Could Do, and how she now finds herself teaching comics!
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