The Comics Journal #302
edited by Mike Dean & Kristy Valenti; Gary Groth, Executive Editor

672-page black & white/color 7" x 8.5" softcover
ISBN: 978-1-60699-603-4

Ships in: February 2013 (subject to change) — Pre-Order Now

The newly formatted, 600+ page Comics Journal proved a resounding success with 2011’s edition. 2012’s Volume 302 is sure to prove just as essential and exciting to comics readers worldwide.

This edition’s cover feature is a long, intimate interview-portrait with and of Maurice Sendak, the greatest and most successful children’s book author of the 20th — and 21st — century, the author of Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, Outside Over There, Higglety Piggelty Pop, and the illustrator of works by Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, and Randall Jarrell. In his longest published interview (and one of the last before his death in 2012), Sendak looks back over a career spanning over 60 years and talks to Gary Groth about art, life, and death (especially death), how his childhood, his parents, and his siblings affected his art and outlook, his search for meaning — and also, on the lighter side, about his love (and hate) of movies. And his unbridled comments on the political leadership of the previous decade have already garnered national media attention and controversy.

Sharing equal billing in this issue's flip-book format: Kim Thompson conducts a career-spanning interview with French graphic novel pioneer Jacques Tardi. The two explore the Eisner Award-winner’s genre-spanning oeuvre comprising historical fiction, action-adventure, crime-thriller, “icepunk” and more, focusing on Tardi's working methods (with step by step illustration), collaborations and other media (such as film and animation), and his fascination with World War I. Plus, Matthias Wivel examines Tardi's adaptation of Léo Malet's 120, Rue de la Gare.

Also in this issue, Art Spiegelman conducts a wide-ranging aesthetic colloquy on classic kids’ comics (Carl Barks’s Donald Duck, John Stanley’s Little Lulu, Sheldon Mayer’s Sugar and Spike, and many more) with a group of comics critics and historians. Bob Levin provides a revelatory investigation of the twisted history of the "Keep on Truckin’" litigation and a fascinating biographical portrait of R. Crumb’s lawyer, Albert Morse. Warren Bernard writes a ground-breaking historical investigation of the 1954 Senate Subcommittee Hearing on Juvenile Delinquency. R.C. Harvey looks at Bill Hume's Babysan and Donald Phelps examines Percy Crosby's Skippy. And a tribute to the late Dylan Williams from his peers and the artists he published.

Plus: “How to Draw Buz Sawyer” by renowned newspaper cartoonist Roy Crane (and a previously unpublished interview), a new comic by Joe Sacco and one by Lewis Trondheim in English for the first time, Tim Kreider on Chester Brown, Tom Crippen on Mort Weisinger and Superman, Rich Kreiner on "difficult comics," and a visual gallery of and commentary on proto-comics.

The Comics Journal has been for 37 years the world’s foremost critical magazine about comics. It is now more vital than ever, a gigantic print compendium of critiques, interviews, and comics.

Video & Photo Slideshow Preview (view in new window):

Monday, July 30th

• Portland, OR: Northwesterners should not miss the chance to see Tim Kreider while he's on our side of the coast! Tim will be doing a reading at 7:30 PM at the infamous Powell's Books! (more info)

Wednesday, August 1st

• Bothell, WA: And then, Tim Kreider will be doing a reading at 7:00 PM at Third Place Books! (more info)

• Snoqualmie, WA: And our own Jim Blanchard is launching his art show Primitiva at The Black Dog. Ten or so of his acrylic paintings will be adorning their walls through September 15th. Check it out if you're in the area! (more info)

Gee, sure is a slow week for events at Fantagraphics... cough.

Monday, July 9th

• Berkeley, CA: Our own Tim Kreider will be doing a reading at 7:00 PM at Books, Inc. (more info)

Tuesday, July 10th

• Brooklyn, NY:  Join Michael Kupperman at Littlefield for another fine edition of his monthly comedy series The Crime Stoppers Club, with special guests Julia Wertz, James Adomian, Matthew Thurber, Annie Lederman, and special guest Adam Warrock! (more info)

• New York City, NY: It's the launch party for Significant Objects, hosted by editors Joshua Glenn & Rob Walker at The Strand! Starting at 7:00 PM, writers Luc Sante, Matthew Sharpe, Mimi Lipson, Ben Greenman, Annie Nocenti, Shelley Jackson, Jason Grote, and more will share their extraordinary stories of ordinary things! (more info)

Wednesday, July 11th

• San Diego, CA: Oh right, it's Preview Night at that San Diego Comic-Con thing! (more info)

Thursday, July 12th

• San Diego, CA: Hurry! Quick, get to Booth #1718 at the San Diego Comic-Con and check out all our awesome debuts before they sell out!  (more info)

 • San Diego, CA: Mome-vet Malachi Ward is part of The Crazy Rattlesnake Treehouse Gang live comics reading at Space 4 Art [ 325 15th St ]! No badge required to attend! The fun starts at 8:00 PM! (more info)

• San Diego, CA: Comedian Patton Oswalt is doing a show at the awesomely-named Spreckles Theater at 8:00 PM. Patton wrote the introduction for The Complete Peanuts 1985-1986 (Vol. 18) which happens to be debuting aaaaaat... (more info)

Friday, July 13th

• San Diego, CA: Dang, you guessed it! Booth #1718 at the San Diego Comic-Con! Patton, come by and see us! We love you! (more info)

Saturday, July 14th

• Seattle, WA:  The Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery presents the opening reception for “The Massive World of Mini Comics,” an exhibition featuring art created by young students who attended an 826 Seattle workshop devoted to comic zines taught by Seattle cartoonists Max Clotfelter, Ben Horak and Tim Miller, and facilitated by Fantagraphics Books and Alex Bleecker, program coordinator for 826 Seattle! (more info)

• San Diego, CA: Swing by Booth #1718 at the San Diego Comic-Con to see which Fantagraphics employee has cracked from all the loud video game noises! (more info)

Sunday, July 15th

• San Diego, CA: It's your last chance to visit us at Booth #1718 at the San Diego Comic-Con! Will there be amazing deals? You better swing by and check. (more info)

The most-current Online Commentaries & Diversions: 

•Interview: MTV Geek questions Noah Van Sciver about his new graphic novel, The Hypo, and why he chose to focus on the man before the president. ". . . it’s important to see who [Lincoln] became, or I should say how he became is more spectacular when you think about who he was, and where he came from, because I don’t even know if that’s possible anymore, to come from nothing and then become a president, you know?"

•Review: Drew on ComicAttack.net reviews kid-friendly The Adventures of Venus by Gilbert Hernandez. "It’s not quite Betty and Veronica, but it’s not quite Calvin and Hobbes; it’s that special place in between that catches that transition from childhood into adolescence, which doesn’t get captured on the comic book page much, and is a rare treat that Hernandez delivers here to such perfection."

•Interview (audio): ABC News Radio's Sherry Preston interviews Daniel Clowes (at the 30 minute mark) as his work is on display at the Oakland Museum of California. "I was more interested in kinda funny comics and comics about real life situations. And I thought it made no sense that there weren't comics about every subject you can imagine." You'll love the following story.

•Commentary: TURN IT OUT in clothes inspired by Daniel Clowes' Ghost World and America's two favorite juveniles on Trent.

•Plug: Follow the White Rabbit eloquently mentions Jacques Tardi's New York Mon Amour. A rough translation might say,  "Altogether, a perfect Edition for the lovers of this French author that already amazed us at 'The cry of the people,' 'The war of trenches' or 'The extraordinary adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec'."

 •Commentary: Chris Mautner of Robot 6 gives a nice mention to Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8. "A pretty solid issue overall, the best and funniest part being the opening segment, a parody of coloring books, this time involving trains that … well, it’s not fit for polite conversation, really."

•Review: Greg Burgas of Comic Book Resources breaks down one beautiful page by Archie Goodwin and Alex Toth from Blazing Combat. "This story shows off [Toth's] strengths very nicely, because it’s one of the bleaker stories in the volume (none of them are happy; I mean “bleak” in that the landscape is stripped of vegetation and is dotted with destroyed building, giving this story its post-Apocalyptic tenor) and Toth does very well with that." 

•Plug: The Daily Beast features an excerpt from Joe Sacco and Chris Hedges' new book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.  In this article, they "detail the effects of coal mining in West Virginia, a state destroyed by mountaintop removal."

•Interview: Peering from under a swell hat, Noah Brand from The Good Men Project interviews TCJ contributer and cartoonist Tim Kreider on the art of writing. "Cartooning also seems to allow me to express a much sillier, stupider, more puerile part of my personality than writing. I get all stiff and serious and writerly when I sit down to write prose."

•Commentary: Rick Klaw lists Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko by Blake Bell as part of the comic book essentials. "Bell shines light on many diverse corners of the comics industry in an attempt to understand the reclusive Ditko."

Not a ton going on this week... I s'pose we're all either recovering from CAKE, or gearing up for... SAN DIEGO! (More details about that coming soon.)

• New York City, NY: Tim Kreider will be doing a signing at the Half King Restuarant & Bar at 7:00 PM! (more info)

Friday, June 22nd

• St Louis, MO: Kevin Huizenga will be doing a signing at Star Clipper, along with Dan Zettwoch, at 7:00 PM! (more info) 

Saturday, June 23rd

• Brighton, UK:  There's gonna be a midsummer midnight 35mm-print screening of the Daniel Clowes movie Ghost World at the Duke Of York's Cinema. They'll have a Ghost World-themed bar, zine stalls, and a raffle! Plus, the screening will be preceeded by live music from Sacred Paws and The Choo-Choo Trains! What? No Blueshammer? (more info)

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Awards: Congratulations to Lorenzo Mattotti for the much-deserved Max and Moritz Prize Lifetime Achievement Award and to Joe Sacco for being awarded Best International Comic Book, as announced over the weekend at the Internationaler Comic Salon at Erlanger and reported by Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter, Torsten Adair at The Beat and Joe Gordon at Forbidden Planet International

• Review: At Boing Boing, as part of their "Mind Blowing Movies" series of guest posts, Amy Crehore examines the Ghost World film: "I knew it was going to be good, but I had no idea that the movie Ghost World (2001) would bathe me in such an uncanny sense of deja vu from start to finish. The characters are so real and familiar that they could have been based on my friends and me."

• Commentary: Ashok Karra has a short but thought-provoking analysis of elements of the Ghost World graphic novel: "A ghost world could be three things. Two of them are types of haunting: either by the past (nostalgia for childhood) or the present (the glow of the television). The third possibility is that you pass through as a ghost."

• Plug: At Flavorwire, Emily Temple includes Ghost World on the list of "30 Books Everyone Should Read Before Turning 30," saying "Clowes writes some of the most essentially realistic teenagers we’ve ever come across, which is important when you are (or have ever been) a realistic teenager yourself."

• Plug/Preview: At The Beat, Jessica Lee posts a 5-page sneak peek of New York Mon Amour by Jacques Tardi et al., saying "This newest Tardi release... is slated for a July release, just in time for Independence Day, where we can all revel in the patriotic depictions of New York that Tardi has provided — oh wait. True to his new realism style, 'Manhattan' retains the same kind of gritty aesthetic as his illustrations of WWI trench warfare as well as Parisian life."

• Review: "The 11 horror stories in [The Furry Trap] showcase Simmons’s possession of a dark and capable imagination, one that has discomfort down to an exact science.... Simmons is at his best in stories like 'Mutant' and 'Demonwood,' where rash decisions and chance encounters lead to nightmarish consequences ... Simmons’s brand of deep unease permeates all of [these stories], even in the opening story, 'In a Land of Magic,' which features a scene of sexual and physical violence that could lead to sleepless nights. The book is also filled with illustrations and short comics that just add to the pile of evidence that Simmons has a wide-ranging talent, with an artistic sense that brings to life his most ghoulish creations. These stories are, hopefully, harbingers of even stronger and more sinister work in the future..." – Publishers Weekly

• Review: "The action [in God and Science] ebbs and flows, but the story remains engaging and exciting. I had to read it all in one afternoon because I just couldn't put it down. I was enjoying it too much to stop reading.... [There]'s another great thing about this comic — there's some subtle philosophical questions nudged in that the characters (and reader) have to answer themselves.... I can't recommend this title enough. I can easily say that I want more Ti-Girls, or at least comic characters like them." – Sheena McNeil, Sequential Tart

• Review: "Prince Valiant Vol. 5 — As the war years draw to a close, the strip finds Valiant settling down — at least a little bit — by finally winning his true heart’s love, Aleta. There’s still enough brigands and evildoers to keep Val busy, but a lot of Vol. 5 is spent with the couple developing their relationship, and Harold Foster deepening and developing Aleta’s character in the process. ...[I]t remains a thrilling, boisterous work." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Review: "Dungeon Quest Book Three — Joe Daly’s faithful D&D fantasy by way of Harold and Kumar proceeds apace, with lots of bloody skirmishes with fierce animals and fiercer bandits and an abundance of jokes about penises, pot, hand-jobs and the like.... His incredibly detailed forest backgrounds are really quite exquisite, and the full panel sequences of his band of adventurers simply trekking along a forest path or walking through a stream were my favorite parts of the book." – Chris Mautner, Robot 6

• Commentary: It's been interesting seeing the evolution of the "hey, they should bring Love and Rockets to the screen" article in the age of the serialized cable drama. Arthur Smith at The Paley Center for Media is the latest to add his voice to the chorus

• Plug: "Got this beautiful Popeye compilation book (Fantagraphics) a couple of days ago. Haven't had a chance to even crack it open, but my son is now running around going 'Arf, arf.' It's a hit." – Ruben Bolling

• Tribute: At The New York Times, Tim Kreider remembers the great Ray Bradbury: "Prescience is not the measure of a science-fiction author’s success — we don’t value the work of H. G. Wells because he foresaw the atomic bomb or Arthur C. Clarke for inventing the communications satellite — but it is worth pausing, on the occasion of Ray Bradbury’s death, to notice how uncannily accurate was his vision of the numb, cruel future we now inhabit."

• Tribute: Monte Schulz (seen above with Bradbury and Gary Groth at Comic-Con 2009 — click the image for a larger version) has a lovely memorial to Bradbury currently on the main page of the Santa Barbara Writers Conference website

Twilight descends upon Texas on Friday, July 20th as cartoonist and essayist Tim Kreider makes a special appearance at the Dallas Museum of Art! 

He'll be giving a lecture on political cartooning, particularly German artist George Grosz, as part of the "Late Nights at the Museum" series, and in celebration of the summer exhibition Flower of the Prairie: George Grosz in Dallas.

The event runs from 6:00 PM to midnight, with the talk scheduled to begin at 9:00 PM. The Dallas Museum of Art is located at 1717 North Harwood Street, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "The names here are mysterious, but the book makes a good case for many of the artists to be better known, which seems to be its intent. Tommi Musturi’s 'Samuel' stories, for example, several of which are included, are colorful, wordless, and Zen-like in their focus on the here and now. Joanna Rubin Dranger’s 'Always Prepared to Die for My Child' is another highlight, with simple drawings that manage to convey a lot. And Jenni Rope’s minimalist stories, which nearly bookend the volume, are poetic and impressive.... The number of woman cartoonists is also worth noting, partially because there’s no attention called to it. Kolor Klimax is a good first offering and may well indicate a series worth revisiting." – Hillary Brown, Paste

• Review: "Between the heavy cross hatching and almost wood-carved appearance of Rickheit’s art and his fixation on the degraded physical form, Folly often looks like a Jan Svankmajer film or Tool video adapted by Geof Darrow or Jim Woodring. Rickheit’s work is visually striking... Folly is a gorgeous but uncomfortable collection best enjoyed a few pages at a time." – Garrett Martin, Paste

• Review: "Like a Velvet Glove [Cast in Iron] is an early work by a creator who will later become one of the artform's greatest creators. There are themes and moments in this book that will be revisited in Clowes's later works, and revisited in smarter and more focused ways in some of his newer and greater works. Daniel Clowes is clearly building his skillset in this book, as he works on his art style, story progression and thematic obsessions. But it's still an incredible work of art that shifted my perceptions of the world a bit as well." – Jason Sacks, Comics Bulletin

• Interview (Audio): Mike Dawson's final guest as host of The Comics Journal's "TCJ Talkies" podcast is Tim Kreider, about whom Dawson writes in his intro, "Tim has often insisted that he doesn’t consider himself a proper political cartoonist, but was only drafted into writing about current events by the lunacy of the times. It’s true that going back and re-reading Tim’s comics in the run-up to the Iraq war, is a vivid reminder of how hysterical things were at that time (not in a good way)."

• Analysis: Matt Seneca examines a 1937 Krazy Kat strip for his column at Robot 6: "This page expresses a single gem of an idea, duality of character. It’s an idea both simple and profound, perfectly suited to Herriman’s aesthetic, and the way it’s put forth is so straightforward that it’s easy to read the strip over time and again before realizing that what it achieves could only be done using the comics medium."

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review (Video): It's a pretty safe bet you've never seen a review quite like Héctor G. Olarte's take on the Spanish edition of Jason's Athos in America for el Mundo's el Cultural — from the text intro (in translation): "If you have not read any of Jason, I can not think of a better way to start than with Athos. Most likely not be the last work of this author that passes through your hands."

• Plug: "Fantagraphics has released the cover for Popeye Vol. 6, the final volume of their handsome reprint series of E.C. Segar’s immortal Thimble Theater strips. We’re eager to get this if only to finish selling out POPEYE on the back of the books. Great design, great strip — one of those 'must haves' for every well-stocked comics library for sure." – Heidi MacDonald, The Beat

• Commentary: At The Comics Reporter, Tom Spurgeon has some things to say about the situation with our Jack Davis art book; Robot 6's J.K. Parkin also shares the news

• Commentary: The Comics Reporter's Tom Spurgeon again, endorsing Jim Woodring's fundraising efforts for his in-progress book Fran: "Jim Woodring is one of the great cartoonists of his generation, and probably one or two generations on each side of his own. He's one of those cartoonists that raises one's estimation of the entire art form for him being [in] it." Joe at Forbidden Planet International adds "I doubt I am alone in thinking Jim creates some of the most amazing art in the medium and he’s an artist well worthy of support." Amen to both.

• Scene: On the Sequential Artists Workshop blog Tom Hart writes "Tim Kreider came to SAW to discuss with Cartoonist Majed Badra and myself the issues of expressing charged themes in single images, in addressing concerns of sensitivity, the powerful vs the powerlessness, coming to historical understandings in political situations, plus also just cramming concepts and images together to get strong visceral cartoons."

This is a poster illustrated by Tim Kreider:

This is Nichelle Nichols receiving a copy of said poster on her Feb. 29, 2012 visit to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center for the MLK/African American History Month Keynote Event (official photo; credit: NASA/GSFC/Bill Hrybyk):

This is another cartoon by Tim for the occasion:

That is all.

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