WCAX-TV up in Vermont ran a video feature on a different cartoonist every day this week! Sheesh who woulda thunk there were that many in one little state? Wait until they figure out that Ank-fray Iller-may is a Native Vermonter.
Jodi Picoult (Wonder Woman writer) and Hawk Otsby (Iron Man
screenplay author)
Sadly the videos are not Mac friendly, so we must just read this interview with ARMY AT LOVE’s Rick Veitch:
Veitch explains, “The problem, I think, with comics, is it’s been constricted. The money men had to sell them for ten cents so they thought they could only be Superman or Spiderman. What we’re finding now is it can be a lot more than that.”
The Bellows Falls native trained at the nation’s first cartooning school in New Jersey, and worked on the popular horror/fantasy series Swamp Thing in the 1980. It was just one stop on his way to fame in the world of alternative comics. Veitch says, “They’re a little deeper in their thinking, stranger in their imagery, and I think they appeal to a slightly older audience.”
[Thanks to RV and JK for links]
I’m calling out Rick Veitch. When comics where 10 cents, there were superheroes … AND romance comics, and horror comics, and westerns, and sci-fi, and funny-animal comics, and humor comics, and … well, you get the point. When comics were 10 cents, the superhero market eventually imploded, and all of those other genres outsold superheroes. There are many reasons why superheroes dominate American floppies today, but the price point isn’t one of them, except maybe that it’s too high, not too low, as Veitch implies of the good old days.
Vermont is an extremely comics-heavy state. There’s Bill Griffith, also . . . not to mention James Sturm and CCS.
There are several more videos on their site, but finding them is a challenge.
As far as I know, Bill Griffith still lives in East Haddam, Connecticut.