Cartoonists

If you think all indie cartoonists ever do is brush their teeth and gaze at their drawing board, MariNaomi's diary this week at TCJ should disprove that as she travels around South America and goes to the Galapagos Islands!

It's no secret that for the greater part of his later years, Jack Kirby was greatly concerned with leaving a financial legacy for his family. His whole life he'd worked night and day creating entire universes...and although his creations had gone on to become multimedia sensations, because of the way the comics industry was set up, he was in no position to benefit from it.

My favorite Kirby now is the more crazy abstract stuff, so my selection favors that. Of course there was much more to Kirby.

It's "see half dressed Marvel gods day" at the Beat!

After reading Bon Alimagno’s excellent interview/evaluation with colorist Erick Arciniega on iFanboy, I decided that it was time for more of us to start jumping on the coloring bandwagon. Getting the right colorist on a comic can be crucial to the success of the book, and yet there’s really very little coverage of this side of the industry available. With that in mind I contacted colorist-whizz (and nicest man alive) Val Staples, whose recent credits include books like Swamp Thing, New Mutants, Deadpool and Hulk, to get a basic insight into his life as a colorist.

Sad news today as the syndicate has announced that Richard Thompson is ending CUL DE SAC on September 23rd due to his ongoing battle with Parkinson's disease.

You may recall that earlier in the year, artist Colleen Doran's yard was being swarmed by adorable baby foxes. Well, Now it's under attack from lovable forest deer.

Brooklyn is, despite the gentrification covering a huge swath of the entire borough, still home to a few people who don't shop at Kitsuné; and most of these urban poor seem to be cartoonists, which Brooklyn also has a huge population. The local website Brokelyn catches up with a few of them for survival tips. Brendan Leach, Leslie Stein and Lisa Hanawalt, (whose book on farts for children is excerpted above) give their recipes for ketchup soup and other practical hints:

“I have spent 17 years in the dark, wondering what the readers of my stuff really wanted,” wrote Barks to Willits. “It would be an enlightening experience to talk to one. In the event you phone, my wife will answer the call, my hearing aids which are okay for ordinary conversation are shuttery for telephonic jazz.”

Daniel Clowes is in the news! So much going on.

Hedges and Joe Sacco appeared this weekend on the Bill Moyers show. The book features text by Hedges and comics by Sacco as the two explore some of the most drastically compromised places in the United States, including Pine Ridge, ND, Camden, NJ and Liberty Park during the Occupy Movement. The show can be watched online, or even in the link below and there's a live chat this Wednesday, July 25, at 2 pm EDT.

The Guardian has a series of comics up called A cartoonists worldview and it's a fantastic series of thoughtful comics by an all-star line-up. It's also a reminder that social commentary has always been one of the most powerful and direct uses of the comics medium. We're lucky to have so many insightful practitioners using that medium today.