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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hi. Sorry I’ve been so inactive here recently. I went into a deep trough of work on my long-overdue book, which is a good thing.
I hardly remember how to make a blog post…but I will try.
I thought I would mention the curious spate of references lately to what seems to now be officially called The Bechdel Test. I’ve made at least a couple of posts about this phenomenon…here’s one. And then Neda Ullaby did this NPR piece. It’s all about a cartoon I did a hundred and twenty six years ago about two lesbians going to the movies, and how one of them won’t see a movie unless it meets three criteria. I totally ripped this idea off from a karate buddy one day when I couldn’t come up with an idea for my strip, but I’ve been unsuccessful at disconnecting my name from it.
Anyhow, I feel vaguely sheepish about the whole thing but it just seems to have a life of its own.
The Guardian’s (UK) Sunday Magazine had this recent column by Eve Wiseman that cites the Bechdel Test.
It’s like the culture is finally catching up to the radical lesbian-feminist notion from a quarter century ago that women can be subjects. Thanks to the various people who tipped me off to these links!
Hey, this week Vermont’s Cartoonist Laureate, James Kochalka is being sworn in at the Vermont state house. 9:30am! I’m gonna get up early so I can be there for his inauguration or coronation or whatever. Update: It’s at 1pm, thank the lord.
There’s a great article my pal Lauren Ober wrote about James in last week’s Seven Days, our local alt weekly.
The whole Cartoonist Laureate scheme was thought up the by the Center for Cartoon Studies, the amazing MFA program in cartooning just down the pike in White River Junction, VT.
CCS is always looking for motivated and talented new students–and it’s not too late to apply for the fall semester! If you think this might be up your alley, or you know anyone up whose alley it might be…check out the admissions page on their site! This place is a remarkable hotbed of cartoonaceousness.
