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The Comics Journal
The Comics Journal Special Edition Volume 2: Cartoonists on Music
This Comics Journal Special Edition spotlights master cartoonist Jim Woodring with a spectacular cover painting, two essays on the artist's oeuvre by Donald Phelps and Kenneth Smith, and a new interview. Text-and-art features include an appreciation of the cartoonist W. E. Hill by Zippy creator Bill Griffith (with many examples of Hill's gorgeous tabloid-sized Sunday pages in full color) and Timothy Kreider on B. Kliban.
Our comics section's theme this volume is "Cartoonists on Music and Musicians" including many of the greatest names in cartooning today: Mary Fleener, Roger Langridge, Peter Bagge, Penny Van Horn, Spain, Ron Rege, Al Columbia, Jordan Crane, Steven Weissman, Diane Noomin, Megan Kelso, Gerald Jablonski, Justin Green, Mark Kalesniko, Carol Lay, Blanquet, Sam Henderson, Phoebe Gloeckner, Tony Millionaire, Michael Kupperman, John Porcellino, R. Crumb, Bill Griffith, Arnold Roth, David Mazzucchelli, Ivan Brunetti, Matt Groening, C. Tyler, John Kerschbaum, Sherri Flenniken, Richard Sala, Rick Geary, Mack White, and Mark Martin. Rockin' good comics!
- GenresComics
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Anne Elizabeth Moore
25 books145 followersAnne Elizabeth Moore is an award-winning cultural critic. The Fulbright scholar and Truthout columnist behind Ladydrawers: Gender and Media in the US is also the author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (The New Press, 2007), Hey Kidz, Buy This Book (Soft Skull, 2004), Cambodian Grrrl (Cantankerous Titles, 2011), Hip Hop Apsara (Green Lantern Press, 2012) and New Girl Law (Cantankerous Titles, 2013). Co-editor and publisher of now-defunct Punk Planet, founding editor of the Best American Comics series from Houghton Mifflin, Moore teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has worked with young women in Cambodia on independent media projects, and people of all ages and genders on media justice work in the US. Moore exhibits her work frequently as conceptual art, has been the subject of two documentary films, and has lectured around the world on independent media, globalization, and women’s labor issues. She has written for Al Jazeera, The Baffler, N+1, Good, Snap Judgment, Bitch, the Progressive, The Onion, Feministing, The Stranger, In These Times, The Boston Phoenix, and Tin House.
She has twice been noted in the Best American Non-Required Reading series. Her work with young women in Southeast Asia has been featured in Time Out Chicago, Make/Shift, Today’s Chicago Woman, Windy City Times, and Print magazines, and on GritTV, Radio Australia, and NPR’s Worldview.
Her friend (and one of her favorite fiction writers) Elizabeth Crane wrote a short story about Moore, and it was widely reviewed. Thus the Village Voice called her a “Possibly perfect protagonist”; Washington City Paper said she was “A woman who has always been comfortable in her own skin”; and Hipster Book Club said she was “A perfect altruistic punk-rock super-heroine.” She has appeared on CNN, GritTV, WBEZ, WNUR, WFMU, and Georgian television. Moore recently mounted a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
In 2016, she was awarded the third permanent residency in Detroit's Write A house program and now lives in a Bengali community in Eastern Michigan.
She has twice been noted in the Best American Non-Required Reading series. Her work with young women in Southeast Asia has been featured in Time Out Chicago, Make/Shift, Today’s Chicago Woman, Windy City Times, and Print magazines, and on GritTV, Radio Australia, and NPR’s Worldview.
Her friend (and one of her favorite fiction writers) Elizabeth Crane wrote a short story about Moore, and it was widely reviewed. Thus the Village Voice called her a “Possibly perfect protagonist”; Washington City Paper said she was “A woman who has always been comfortable in her own skin”; and Hipster Book Club said she was “A perfect altruistic punk-rock super-heroine.” She has appeared on CNN, GritTV, WBEZ, WNUR, WFMU, and Georgian television. Moore recently mounted a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
In 2016, she was awarded the third permanent residency in Detroit's Write A house program and now lives in a Bengali community in Eastern Michigan.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 10, 2009
"I thought my parents wanted to kill me," says a surprisingly lucid Jim Woodring. "Actually, that might have been true."
The creator of the audacious FRANK cartoon led a life tortured with hallucinations and apparitions - and yet, the surrealist backgrounds and characters featured prominently in his work is, according to the man, "pure craft." There is nothing further beyond each pointy-tipped psychedelic mound or Glatified dwelling skillfully injected into each panel of work. It's just for look and atmosphere.
Can that possibly be true? Perhaps. At least, if it isn't, Woodring is not telling. That, however, is acceptable - given that he had divulged so much of himself throughout the interview already. A man can't give away all of his secrets, can he? Especially not the incomprehensible, illogical ones.
Within The Comics Journal Summer 2002 Special, an oversize paperback coffee table book, are many other specimens of artistry from other creators (Robert Crumb, Johnny Ryan, Sam Henderson, John Porcellino, et al.) giving special focus to music and musicians. Some features interpret song lyrics, either from actual or self-created songs. Others look into the effects and styles of various musical genres, and their impact upon the artists' lives, their personalities, and their own artistic output.
Also featured are reprints of the long-forgotten W. E. Hill's Among Us Mortals, a full-page Sunday newspaper piece from 75 years ago, which were never collected in their entirety from that day to this. French bande-dessinee artist Lewis Trondheim is given a platform to discuss his own work and influences. And several of The Comics Journal's regular contributors give - as can be expected - verbose, opinionated, pretentious analysis of the likes of Li'l Orphan Annie, Harvey Kurtzman, and King Aroo's Jack Kent.
While some of these articles prove challenging to get through (thanks, in no small part, to the grandiose verbiage selected by several of the columnists), they each prove in some way to be rewarding. Opinions aside, there is a lot of fascinating material to be extracted from the passages and observations. For instance, while stopping short of "explaining the jokes" of bizarre caricaturist/cartoonist B. Kliban, writer Timothy Kreider provides possible readings of several of his one-panel works, insofar as to raise a curtain on a previously indecipherable punch-line.
As a whole, this special edition does not make itself indispensable - but one would be remiss to allow the Woodring interview and King Aroo reprints (along with a few of the other articles) to slip on past, unread.
The creator of the audacious FRANK cartoon led a life tortured with hallucinations and apparitions - and yet, the surrealist backgrounds and characters featured prominently in his work is, according to the man, "pure craft." There is nothing further beyond each pointy-tipped psychedelic mound or Glatified dwelling skillfully injected into each panel of work. It's just for look and atmosphere.
Can that possibly be true? Perhaps. At least, if it isn't, Woodring is not telling. That, however, is acceptable - given that he had divulged so much of himself throughout the interview already. A man can't give away all of his secrets, can he? Especially not the incomprehensible, illogical ones.
Within The Comics Journal Summer 2002 Special, an oversize paperback coffee table book, are many other specimens of artistry from other creators (Robert Crumb, Johnny Ryan, Sam Henderson, John Porcellino, et al.) giving special focus to music and musicians. Some features interpret song lyrics, either from actual or self-created songs. Others look into the effects and styles of various musical genres, and their impact upon the artists' lives, their personalities, and their own artistic output.
Also featured are reprints of the long-forgotten W. E. Hill's Among Us Mortals, a full-page Sunday newspaper piece from 75 years ago, which were never collected in their entirety from that day to this. French bande-dessinee artist Lewis Trondheim is given a platform to discuss his own work and influences. And several of The Comics Journal's regular contributors give - as can be expected - verbose, opinionated, pretentious analysis of the likes of Li'l Orphan Annie, Harvey Kurtzman, and King Aroo's Jack Kent.
While some of these articles prove challenging to get through (thanks, in no small part, to the grandiose verbiage selected by several of the columnists), they each prove in some way to be rewarding. Opinions aside, there is a lot of fascinating material to be extracted from the passages and observations. For instance, while stopping short of "explaining the jokes" of bizarre caricaturist/cartoonist B. Kliban, writer Timothy Kreider provides possible readings of several of his one-panel works, insofar as to raise a curtain on a previously indecipherable punch-line.
As a whole, this special edition does not make itself indispensable - but one would be remiss to allow the Woodring interview and King Aroo reprints (along with a few of the other articles) to slip on past, unread.
December 27, 2021
I leafed through most of this huge volume since I bought it mainly for the Woodring interview. And said interview is a nice companion piece for all the things that were yet to come. It's interesting to read that he didn't see Frank going anywhere and now there is another comic announced for spring 2022. I also read the King Aroo reprints from the 50s and enjoyed these whimsical strips quite a lot.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews