Hey gang, just a little message letting you know that I am going to be taking two or three weeks off from updating my end of the Cube. Got a couple comics projects that I want to devote more time to in order to release ’em soon.
Expect some really cool stuff when I come back though, which should be in time to celebrate a whole year of the Comix Cube! Take care of each other, you guys <3.
Images taken from the episode “Hiatus” of Home Movies.
While we’re talking about lists, perhaps it’s time to throw my own hat in this ring.
I had a really fabulous year in 2011, thanks in no small part to the amazing comics landscape I found myself increasingly mired in. It can be exhausting trying to keep up, to the point where it’s hard to breathe. That’s when you remind yourself that you don’t need to keep up with anything, this is your damn life and whatever happens in it is all she wrote. As I’ve said a few times before in this column, I’d like to champion the creation of one’s own personal canons, one’s own list of definitive works and so forth. So, in that spirit, here is a list of the works released in the past 12 months that made a significant impression on me.
Frank Santoro writes a regular column for The Comics Journal titled “Riff Raff.” This past weekend, Santoro revisited Eddie Campbell’s 2001 memoir ALEC: How To Be An Artist in the format of a drawn review. The interesting thing about How To Be An Artist is that it concludes with a long list of books which Campbell considers to be the best graphic novels created thus far (again, the year was 2001–only the beginning of the “Graphic Novel Boom”). Santoro, in his review, wonders how well this list holds up, over a decade later.
Below is my email to Santoro, reprinted here at his suggestion.
xoxoxoxoxoxo
Sometimes I fantasize about newspaper comics returning to the forefront of the North American comics medium.
Reading comics stresses me out. I don’t enjoy the continual accumulation of comic book magazines or the promotion machine that produces them. Graphic novels often leave me wanting for more depth and consideration even though they take cartoonists off of the map for years at a time. Manga that makes it to North America tends to overwhelm me with volume while disappointing me with substance. Webcomics make me feel shackled to my technology. What I really desire is a good old-fashioned newspaper and a cup of coffee.
Your influences will pass through you like roughage. Whether you’re a novice artist or a wizened veteran, you will become absorbed in the work of somebody else and occasionally you may fear that this influence is having too strong an effect on your thinking. There is no need to cut yourself off from it, however. Drink deeply of the well of inspiration and it will pass.
Indulge yourself. Allow yourself to go through phases. They will pass. When the mood leaves you, what is left will be the traces of influence. In this way, you will advance your craft and your understanding of your medium.
Eventually, it all becomes a part of the matrix of ideas and thoughts that comprise you. So you will be able to embrace it all at once: personal identity as well as the building blocks which helped create you.
Hey, it’s January, BCGF was a month ago, but I still have comics to review. Here we go, the end is in sight.
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