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change of plans

June 28th, 2011 | Other Projects

My editor had an intervention with me last week…remember the book I’ve been working on for the past five years? Well, I finally really have to turn it in. By the end of the year. So my editor suggested gently that considering how much work I have left, perhaps going to Chicago for the fall semester was not the best idea, and could I maybe switch my visit to the spring?

Fortunately this seems to be okay with the Chicago people.

I’m working hard, though. Here I am posing as my therapist for a scene I have to draw.

Today June’s fascinating gay bar series on Slate takes an in-depth look at Stonewall. Plus there’s a funny slide show about gay bar names.

I can’t seem to blog any more

June 27th, 2011 | Other Projects

But I wanted to tell you about our pal June’s series about gay bars on Slate this week. In part two, she collects stories from a bunch of lgbt writers about their first time in a gay bar. I have a little squib there about my frightening visit to Satan’s in Akron, Ohio.

June could not have asked for a better hook for her piece than the image of people at the Stonewall Inn over the weekend, cheering the passage of same-sex marriage in New York. If that’s where the modern gay rights movement began, perhaps that’s where it ended too. At any rate, if we continue racking up civil rights like this, it’s hard to imagine the institution of “pride” persisting much longer.

i’m a fellow!

June 8th, 2011 | Other Projects

No, I haven’t transitioned.
But I will be transporting myself to Chicago for the fall to be a Mellon Fellow at the new Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago.

(old file photo of me and Hol in Chicago, just for atmosphere)

This is pretty cool. The whole idea of the Center is to mix up practitioners and theorists in various fields. There’s an architect and a physicist, for example. A choreographer/dancer and composers. And me, a cartoonist, paired with my friend the comics scholar Hillary Chute. We’re going to teach a course on autobiographical comics.

I will also be drawing like crazy to finish the book I’ve been working on for the past forty years, a memoir about my mother.

It feels a bit daunting to have all of this stuff colliding, but I feel like I’ve come out of the woods on the book, so maybe it’ll be all right.

I’m kind of psyched about getting to be part of an academic community. I have a recurring dream that I get to go back to college, and it’s always a very pleasant feeling.

geekout

May 4th, 2011 | Other Projects

A guy who’s teaching Fun Home did a very interesting post on his blog Parabasis about the panel transitions in Fun Home. He explains the six types of transitions that Scott McCloud outlines in Understanding Comics, and finds that the vast majority of transitions in FH are scene-to-scene, as opposed to the more usual action-to-action.

I’ve been going back and looking at Fun Home to see how I put it together as I struggle with the new memoir I’m working on. I worry all the time that I’m not sticking enough to simple dramatic action, but maybe that’s okay.

postprandial walk in spring, Best American Comics

April 22nd, 2011 | Other Projects

Ramps (wild leeks), forest cat, trout lilies, brook, melting snow, raccoon print, some kinda furry pussy willow kinda things on a fallen branch.

I’m the guest editor of Best American Comics 2011, which will be coming out this fall. The amazing Jillian Tamaki drew the cover—she just posted the art on her blog, along with some discarded ideas. I really love the final drawing.

It’s interesting to read about her experience doing sketches on the Cintiq. This is a very fancy digital pen system that enables you to draw right on your computer screen, thus obviating the annoying distance problem of graphic tablets in which you draw here, and your line shows up over there.

my little bro

April 14th, 2011 | Other Projects

Look, my brother John and me got mentioned in this list in the Village Voice of “The Ten Best Musician/Comic Artist Friendships!”

I remember once going to a record store with John when I was twenty and he was sixteen, and the clerk being so impressed with the stuff he was getting. I think it was a Kraftwerk album. I was proud to have such a discerning little brother. In recent years, a fan of his work with Ministry has shown up at a couple of my readings. This makes me feel very happy and connected.

We’re number 10.

Mapping Memory

April 10th, 2011 | Other Projects

If you’re in the Boston area, come hear her supreme awesomeness Lynda Barry and me talk with comics scholar Hillary Chute at Wellesley on Friday night.

I’ve been reading Lynda’s new book about drawing. It has been immensely inspiring as I slowly grind into gear to begin drawing the memoir about my mom that I’ve been fussing over for years now.

i think this thing has officially gone viral

April 8th, 2011 | Other Projects

The Bechdel Test gets a mention in this week’s New Yorker, in an article by Tad Friend about the actress Anna Faris. I’ve had the magazine sitting here all week, but hadn’t made it past “I Was Gandhi’s Boyfriend” by Paul Rudnick. I only found out about it when someone from the blog She Said, She Said emailed me a link to their recent post about the test.