How to use this Page

Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel is a new book by former DC publisher Paul Levitz that looks at Eisner’s historical contribution to comics. And New York magazine has just excerpted the chapter in which Levitz discusses how and why Eisner is credited with being the midwife of the graphic novel form. Of course […]

This exhibit of works from Craig Yoe’s original art collection has already garnered stellar accolades – tonight you can see why. And that’s not all …

I had the good fortune of seeing an early preview of Is That Art? at the Society of Illustrators a few weeks ago, and it’s a must-see for anyone who wants to connect with the magic and the power of creative design. The exhibit covers much of the first century of comics & cartoon art, and the work is displayed in ways that highlight deep connections and spark new ideas. A original Spark Plug parallel to a Peanuts strip where Snoopy is dismissed as a dog; a landmark portrait of Superman for Siegel-and-Shuster’s syndicate chief near a reflection on a woman’s dual identity by Fay King; the first Pogo newspaper strip; the original Fin-Fang-Foom-awakes page, signed by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Dick Ayers ….

I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover all the wonders for yourself. The exhibit’s official opening is tonight from 5pm – 10pm at the Society of Illustrators, 128 E. 63rd St. in New York City. If you can’t make it this evening (or at all, alas), you can find some consolation in the extensive Yoe! Books library, which includes lavish and faithful restorations of material ranging from kitsch to classics. One place to start: the latest Yoe! Books/IDW publication, Milt Gross’ New York, which has been receiving impressive reviews.

If you can make it to the Society of Illustrators, don’t miss its other must-see exhibits. The original art from Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream is up through tomorrow (April 9), and seeing it at full size reminded me of seeing the original art for Robert Crumb’s Book of Genesis at the Hammer Museum – a revelation. As for the exhibit on Alt-Weekly Comics curated by Warren Bernard and Bill Kartalopoulos, well, that too deserves a book of its own – this exhibit is important not just for chronicling an influential, if under-appreciated genre within North American comics, but for helping us understand the world today.

Wordless! is a collaboration between artist Art Spiegelman and musician Phillip Johnston—but it’s really about Frans Masereel, Lynd Ward, and Milt Gross. The evening—which I was fortunate to catch last year—involves the Johnston Sextet improvising over a slide show of the wordless comics of the above as set up by Spiegelman. And Art being Art, this is also a lucid, connection making journey through comics and art history, the oppressive woodcuts of Masereel eventually coming out in Spiegelman’s own work. And for you social history buffs, the continued theme of young women who are done in by their own society flouting desires—aka getting knocked up by some cad —provides an interesting window into the time period of these comics.

Wordless! was commissioned for the same Australian arts festival which saw the astonishing The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman, Eddie Campbell and Fourplay.

Wordless! is quite an amazing piece of theater and while it’s been touring for a bit New Yorkers will have ONLY ONE MORE CHANCE TO SEE IT! And it’s this March 13th. Deets:

Art Spiegelman & Phillip Johnston’s 
WORDLESS!
***
one performance only:
Friday, March 13, 7:30 pm. Miller Theater

Columbia University Theater 2960 Broadway (at 116th Street)  

Tickets here.

If you haven’t seen Wordless, do it. You’ll kick yourself forever for not seeing it when you had the chance. And here’s a video trailer in you need any more convincing.

For the past few days on Cartoon Brew's Instagram account, we've been running a series called 25 Cartoonists You Should Know. The entire series is below, and yes, the list could easily be twice as long and still incomplete.

Tweet Before “meta” was physical, before Modernism became Posted, before Art Popped, cartoonists drew stories about cartoonists and cartooning! Some of it was autobiographical (or possibly semi-auto… I doubt Milt Gross almost became Batman!), some of it was pure fantasy.  (The pygmalian dream of a drawing come to life is represented twice in this volume, [...]

Craig Yoe’s latest book celebrating cartoon history, The Complete Milt Gross Comic Books and Life Story is not so much a book as it is a small museum. All cartoonists should be so lucky to get such a lovingly assembled retrospective.

The book is not a complete collection of Gross’s work, but does represent a complete collection of the artists’s hard-to-find comic book work. What’s more is the sheet amount of extras, photos, sketches, original art, and other rare pieces of Milt Gross ephemera that you’ll find in its pages.

The meat of the book is the comics, though. Milt Gross’s cartooning is loose and wild, and is quite unlike anything that came before or after. Although I’ve been marginally aware of Milt Gross’s work with the help of books like Dan Nadel’s Art Out of Time and the National Cartoonist Society’s Milt Gross Fund (now the NCS Foundation), this book offered me my first substantial introduction to his work.

It’s a manic, colourful world where anything goes. Gross’s floppy-armed grotesque characters that zoom from one antic to the next remind me of The Muppet Show if they remind me of anything, and that’s most certainly a good thing.

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: Books, Comics, Milt Gross