* Yesterday, it was Art Brut at DC. Today it’s Slate at Marvel.

* We have definitely not been linking to enough of the fine interviews that Brian Heater has been conducting at Daily Cross Hatch. In a world where most interviews are naught but PR, Heater is getting people to actually talk about things. Case in point, a multi-part interview with rising star Hans Rickheit, whose THE SQUIRREL MACHINE is one of the oddest books of the year. In Part Two, we begin to see why:

How do you draw inspiration from keeping a scrapbook of medical images?

Oh, I mostly keep the scrapbook as a way to kick my brain into gear. I look at things and draw connections between random images and words and they suggest ideas that I wouldn’t be able to come up with on my own. I was working on some comics jams with friends and we were fascinated by the idea that a third mind was sort of composing the story as a result. It was nothing either of us would have composed on our own. Nor would we have necessarily wanted to.


Another recent interviewee is Jason Lutes, whose inspiration for BERLIN was not what you think:

In the two years that you spent research the book, were you ever afraid that it just wouldn’t come together for you?

No. there was certainly the possibility that I wouldn’t be interested in the subject, but I think because I had the initial intuitive impulse, I just sort of trusted that there was something there for me, and I discovered that, as I read stuff, whatever my unconscious interests were, would just sort of bubble to the surface through what I consumed. And then, just looking at those books of photographs, I’d see really interesting looking people, and those people would become a character in the story.


Here’s an index of all DCH interviews.

* Sean T. Collins reviews NIGHT BUSINESS, and it is not what you think.

* What is Fantagraphics doing at SPX 2009? Click for the answers!

* What is Sparkplug doing at SPX 2009? We think you can figure out how to find the answer.

* The Two Bens — McCool and Templesmith — talk CHOKER at Newsarama.

* ADD catches up with his former Comic Book Galaxy contributor, now IDW e-i-c, Chris Ryall.

* Michael May looks at Anne Freaks, Volume 2, one of those very good manga that was published by a now nonexistent company, in this case, ADV, so….hold on to those back issues!

* Colleen Doran points to the return of Ross Rojek , whose interesting past includes a four-year stint in jail. But in the spirit of second acts, Rojek seems to have found happiness publishing a book review section.

* J. Caleb Mozzocco continues his “calling a spade a spade” tour, by pointing out that Philip Tan is not as sympatico with Grant Morrison as Frank Quitely was.

I was expecting the drop in quality though, and I’m glad to report that it’s not that bad. It’s not good work, it’s certainly the worst work on any of the comics I’ve read this week (and you’d think one of DC’s best-selling comics penned by one of the company’s best-selling writers would have better art than Brave and The Bold, wouldn’t you?), but it’s not it usually didn’t take too long to figure out what was supposed to be happening in the panels, and the mis en scene wasn’t as messy as it was during Tony Daniel’s partner ship with Morrison (although as with those issue, I found myself in a constant state of reimagining each panel the way it might look if it were drawn better).