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Well this is pretty cool, and has flown mostly under the radar of my usual comics sites: Roz Chast has an exhibit up at the Museum of the City of New York. It runs from April 14th until October 9th, so you have plenty of time to go see it...and you should. Best known for her 2014 award winning 2014 memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Chast's droll cartoons capture urban foibles of dread, fatalism and UES (upper East Side, to non New Yorkers) neuroses with a levity that barely masks how deep they cut. One of the exhibits mentions that one of her biggest influences was Charles Addams, and it easy to see how Addams' loose penwork and gallery of characters informs her work. She also shifted his emphasis on the lugubrious and horrific to internal anxieties over health, parental guidance, mid-life crises and geographic uncertainty.

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Calvin Trillin, a staff writer at The New Yorker and a poet, has signed a deal with the Scholastic imprint, Orchard Books. He plans to create his first book of poetry for children which will be called No Fair! No Fair! And Other Jolly Poems of Childhood.

Roz Chast, the graphic novelist behind Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, has been brought on to draw the illustrations. The publisher has set the release date for October 2016.

Trillin gave this statement in the press release: “My father, who had a restaurant in Kansas City for a while, used to put a rhyming couplet on the menu at lunch every day, mostly about pie. (His shortest was ‘Don’t sigh/Eat pie.’) So you might say that I’m a second generation poet, since I’ve published verse about the events of the day for twenty-five years. When I acquired enough grandchildren to describe myself as ‘a grandfather who writes on the side,’ it was inevitable that I’d turn my hand to writing verse for children—thus No Fair! No Fair!”

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The Reuben Awards were given out over the holiday by the National Cartoonists Society, and Roz Chast won the Reuben Award, a once in a lifetime trophy only bestowed on the finest cartoonists. Chast is only the third woman to win the Reuben—Lynn Johnston won in 1985 and Cathy Guisewaite in 1993—and she beat out Hilary Price and Stephen Pastis for the honor, mostly on the strength of her graphic novel Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant, a book that has racked up a ton of awards and acclaim for Chast, along with a $250,000 prize.

The rest of the divisional winners are as follows:

Magazine Feature / Magazine Illustration
Tom Richmond

Newspaper Illustration
Anton Emdin

Greeting Card
Glenn McCoy

TV Animation
Patrick McHale, Creator (Over The Garden Wall)

Feature Animation
Tomm Moore, Director, (Song of the Sea)

Advertising / Product Illustration
Ed Steckley

Book Illustration
Marla Frazee (The Farmer and the Clown)

Magazine Gag Cartoon
Liza Donnelly

Graphic Novel
Jules Feiffer (Kill My Mother)

Comic Book
Jason Latour (Southern Bastards)

Online Comics – Short Form
Danielle Corsetto (Girls with Slingshots)

Online Comics – Long Form
Minna Sundberg (Stand Still, Stay Silent)

Newspaper Panel Cartoon
Hilary Price (Rhymes with Orange)

Editorial Cartoon
Michael Ramirez

Newspaper Comic Strip
Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine)

The Reuben Award
Roz Chast

Special honorees this year were Mort Drucker and Jeff Keane. The kudos were handed out at the annual NCS dinner, held this year in Washington DC, and Michael Cavna was there to record the scene, which like just about everything else in comics, was notable for featuring six female winners, a record!

On Saturday night, in a ballroom holding hundreds of top cartoonists, the organizers might as well have piped in Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” because for only the third time in the event’s six-decade-plus history, a woman — the New Yorker’s Roz Chast — received the group’s big honor, the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year. And her trophy capped what may well be the event’s winningest night ever for female writers and artists, as six women won in the 16 competitive categories.

Tom Spurgeon has a little commentary on the winners here, and notes that the NCS has to move forward, just as newspapers make up less and less of the cartooning world, hence the awards for animation and graphic novels and webcomics, while still battling a bit of “old skool” sensibilities as an organization. I would say that Girls with Slingshots is exactly the kind of webcomic that you’d expect the NCS to honor—but it’s also a webcomic deeply deserving of recognition. So despite the changing of the guard nature  of the awards they kind of turned out okay.

 

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Graphic novels have a lot more prizes than they once did, including literary awards that help validate the medium. Awards season is well upon us, and I’ve been way behind in noting some of the most important.

§ This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki continued to barnstorm all the honors by winning the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, perhaps th emost prestigious stand-alone comics prize in the US. The jury cited the book thusly

“This One Summer,” says the jury, “is a beautifully drawn, keenly observed story. It is told with a fluid line and a sensitive eye to the emblematic moments that convey character, time, and place—the surf at night, the sound of flip-flops, a guarded sigh—all at the meandering pace of a summer’s vacation. The Tamakis astutely orchestrate the formal complexities of the graphic novel in the service of an evocative, immersive story. At first blush a coming of age story centered on two young girls, the book belongs equally to all its cast of characters, any of whom feel realized enough to have supported a narrative in their own right. Striking, relatable, and poignant, this graphic novel lingers with readers long after their eyes have left the pages.”

Richard McGuire’s Here was named an Honoree:

Of “Here” the jury says, “Making literal the idiom ‘if these walls could talk…’ McGuire’s ‘Here’ curates the long history of events transpiring in one location. Through the subtle transposition of objects and individuals in a room, the book teaches us that space is defined over time. … Evoking our longing for place, the book performs this cumulative effect for the reader, by layering people, experiences, and events in the context of a single environment.”

The Prize is presented by Penn State and is named after the author of what are now accepted to be early example of standalone graphic novels. (Ward donated his papers to the university.) This year’s jury consisted of Joel D. Priddy, Veronica Hicks, Brandon Hyde, Brent Book and Jonathan E. Abel. MOre information on the prize, the jury and past winners can be found here.

§ The Cartoonist Studio Prize, presented by Slate Magazine and the Center for Cartoon Studies, was also presented a while back. And the graphic novel winners Here by Richard McCguire. (Do you sense a pattern here?) The webcomic prize was won by Winston Rowntree for Watching. The prize comes with a $1000 cash award for each. This year’s jury consisted of Slate Book Review editor Dan Kois; CCS fellow Sophie Yanow; and guest judge, cartoonist Paul Karasik. You can see all the runners up in the above link.

(This result has been sitting in my links for a month; apologies and congratulations to the winners.)

§ While This One Summer and Here have scooped up a bunch of prizes, you must be wondering about the third most honored graphic novel of 2014, Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant. Well, Chast won the Heinz Award, which is present to six “exceptional Americans, for their creativity and determination in finding solutions to critical issues.” Along with glory, the prize includes $250,000 in cash.

” ‘Floored’ does not begin to describe it,” Chast says of her reaction. “I don’t think I’ve fully absorbed it yet.”

 

§ As you may have heard, the PEN American Center, a literary organization that promotes free speech, presented French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award, and all hell broke loose. Many prominent authors protested the award on the grounds that Charlie Hebdo is offensive. You can read many of those comments here. Other authors, including Neil Gaiman, Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel and Salmon Rushdie filled the tables at the awards gala vacated by the protesters, and defended Charlie Hebdo as an equal opportunity satirist. You can read all about that here.

While no one in the kerfuffle seems to think that being offensive deserves death, the dissenters felt that giving Charlie Hebdo an award intensified “the anti-Islamic,
anti-Maghreb, anti-Arab sentiments already prevalent in the Western world.”

The pro-Charlie group felt that, as Gaiman put it, “The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists are getting an award for courage. They continued putting out their magazine after the offices were firebombed [in 2011], and the survivors have continued following the murders.”

There aren’t any easy answers here. Terrorists acts are committed to create terror and confusion and turn ordinary people on both sides into radicals. In this goal, at least, the Hebdo attacks were a rousing success.

In the above photo Charlie Hebdo Editor-in-Chief Gerard Biard accepts the award as Alain Mabanckou looks on. AP photo by Beowulf Sheehan

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After several months of waiting, my turn for Roz Chast’s graphic memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? finally came round. It was worth the wait.

You may already know what it is about. Chast’s parents were aging and she tried several times to talk to them about what they would want to do if something happened. Of course no one likes to think or talk about these sorts of things and trying to talk to your parents about it, especially when they don’t want to talk about it, is no easy thing. So Chast’s attempts went nowhere. And her parents continued to age and everything was fine until it wasn’t.

In their early 90s and becoming more frail, unable to keep the apartment clean and relying on a friendly neighbor to pick up things from the grocery store for them, it was only a matter of time before something happened. The call came at midnight. Chast’s mom had fallen while trying to stand on a ladder to change a light bulb. The fall had actually happened a few days before and she refused to go to the doctor. Nothing a little bed rest couldn’t fix. Until she couldn’t get out of bed. While Chast’s mom spent a few days at the hospital she had her father stay with her and her family. It was then she noticed her dad’s mental acuity was nowhere near what she thought it was. Her mom had been taking care of him and covering up just how bad he had gotten.

Thankfully, her mom was not seriously injured. But it was the beginning of the long decline. After more incidents Chast managed to convince her parents that they needed to move into assisted living. It was a nice facility where they had their own apartment and Chast, her husband and kids were nearby and could visit them frequently. Still, the parents did not go willingly.

The memoir is well told with humor and compassion. The art is cartoon-y but expressive. Chast’s story is the story of so many others that it is no surprise really why the book is so popular. I have family members who have had to take care of their aging parents. I have friends who are in the midst of taking care of theirs. It is not easy and our society doesn’t help make it any easier. Care facilities cost astronomical sums of money. Chast’s parents had scrimped and saved their entire lives and it only took a couple of years before they had nearly run through all their savings. Is that what we work all our lives to save for? Not retirement, but to pay for decent end-of-life care? And what happens when the money runs out? What happens if you have no one like Chast to look out for your best interests when you are not able to? It’s a scary prospect.

Growing old sucks. But the thing is, I don’t believe it has to. I don’t know how to change society and culture so that the golden years truly are golden right up to the last breath. But it is definitely something that needs to change.

Filed under: Books, Graphic Novels, Memoir/Biography, Reviews Tagged: Roz Chast

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Roz Chast: "I told my agent that I would bet the lives of my 2 parrots that I wasn't going to win." #NBCC. pic.twitter.com/NPskyvr8v2

— Ron Charles (@RonCharles) March 12, 2015

Roz Chast had an incredible 2014 as her book Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? topped best seller list, garnered award nominations left and right, and in general become one of a handful of graphic novels—Maus, American Born Chinese and This One Summer among them—to gain as much prestige in the larger world of books. Last night it added to its already formidable laurels by winning the National Book Critics Circle Award in the Best Autobiography category, a huge win for a graphic novel. Michael Cavna has all the background, tweets and quotes. To which we can only say congratulations, Roz Chast! For your first graphic novel you not only knocked it out of the park, you invented a new sport.

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I know I was supposed to be watching the Super Bowl, gauging the plumpedness of those laced-up game balls, but I, beneath my furry blanket on the long stretch of the couch, could not take my eyes from Roz Chast's bestselling, award-winning graphic memoir, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

Like Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, Chast's illustrated story of her parents' later years is devastating and also beautiful and finally heart crunching. An only child of two people who have lived inseparably for years, Chast finds herself challenged by the encroachment of their needs and by the intensifying quirks of her parents' respective personalities. The domineering, almost bullying mother. The talks-too-much-and-can't-fix-a-thing-and-has-a-holy-soul father. They live in a four-room Brooklyn apartment crowded by lifelong detritus. They live increasingly afraid of stepping outside. They rely on Roz, but Roz is hardly enough. And when they finally agree to move into an expensive assisted-living facility, things don't get a whole lot easier.

But like Gary Shteyngart's Little Failure, the memoir we'll be unpacking in tomorrow's English 135 at Penn, Chast doesn't allow her confusion to rise to clanging bitterness. Doesn't allow her own disappointment, weariness, frustration, beleaguered condition to transmute into hateful spite. Doesn't tell her story to trump or exploit. She is just telling it as it was—the good she can remember, the empathy she feels, the anger that flashes, the hurt places in between the loved places, the ambiguity she will always feel about her mother and the love she'll always feel for her dad.

It's not a tirade, in other words. It's an archeological dig.

It's here, it's gorgeous, it proves (again, like Edward Hirsch's Gabriel proves, again) how many different ways there are to tell the stories of our lives.

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Only two comics made the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014 list, the ubiquitous Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant by Roz Chast and Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel by Anya Ulinich. However, the piece did include cute comics style illos by sometime cartoonist Jon McNaught (above). And also, books without pictures can make for good reading. Check out the whole list—you may find something that catches your fancy.

Actually the Ulinich book is an interesting choice—it’s a novel about a woman who ends a 15-year marriage and has to learn about dating again while raising two kids. In other words…it’s literary fiction in comics form. (Ulinich’s previous book was the prose only Petropolis.) These sorts of books when put out by mainstream publishers haven’t found a lot of purchase—but that frontier too is inching forward.

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Here are some literary events to pencil in your calendar this week.

To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.

The topic of the forthcoming Pen Parentis Literary Salon will be “Risqué Words.” Check it out on Tuesday, November 11th at The Andaz Hotel from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. (New York, NY)

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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The Beat took pictures at CAB 2014! Some of them are Hipstamatic. Live with it. This was a good show, as usual. I came back with a bag full of books and immediately started reading them, one of the virtues of the home show. Although jam packed the show was surmountable, and I thought I would go once around the room and take photos of every one so I would have good file photos for when someone wins the Nobel Prize or marries Taylor Swift. This plan did not go as well as anticipated as you will see.

The cotillion for young cartoonists was arranged by experience. It takes a few years to get to tyro.

This book, The Jacket, by Kristen Hall and Dasha Tolstikova is lovely. Published by Enchanted Lion.

Enchanted Lion publisher Claudia Z. Bedrick on the right, I forgot the young fellow’s name alas.

That’s Laura Lannes on the left, cartoonist of the mini comic The Basil Plant which got a rave review on the Comics Journal the other day which had about 200 times more words than the comics. but sometimes that’s how it works. She’s good! On the right is…another cartoonist from the Paper Rocket studio whose hand cleverly covered his name badge. I’m really awful with names, people.

Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth spring into action as Paul Karasik looks on and Olivier Schwauren sketches away. This show was action packed!

Secret Acres creators. One of them is Theo Elsworth. Help me out here, people!

Sophie Yanow and Sam Alden are shocked to see all the action at the show. These guys have moved beyond Tyro class even!

People looked at comics sometimes buying them.

I was trying out this new Hipstamatic filter I just bought. A little too blue?

The animated Leslie Stein.

John Pham was at the show! I didn’t even know he was going to be there!

The mad talented Lala Albert. Her new comic from Breakdown Press was a sellout.

Patrick Kyle, returned from his tour more or less intact.

Dean Haspiel and Z2 Publisher Josh Frankel.

Nick Bertozzi is chatting to SVA’s Keith Mayerson, I believe, That’s David Mazzucchelli in the hat but don’t worry you’ll get a better look at that later. Bertozzi has developed quite a varied shelf of books. I adore his latest one, Shackleton

Gregory Benton of Hang Dai and Target.

Jillian Tamaki, Keren Katz and Mazzucchelli. David and I embarrassed Jillian by telling her how amazing her work in This One Summer is, and then David explained how tiny gestures can changes every drawing. A collection of Jillian’s funny and painful SuperMutant Magic Academy is coming in the Spring from D&Q.

I know this isn’t a very good photo, but CAB is full of magical moments like Keren Katz yakking with Ben Katchor while James Romberger and Marguerite van Cook stand nearby.

I grabbed a bite with tireless Torsten Adair at this little sandwich shop called re.Union which was around the corner from the church. Their sandwiches were JAMMIN’ but everyone turned backlit. Scott Eder of the Scott Eder Gallery was at the next table and we passed a pleasant half hour or so talking about shows and art.

Here’s the Breakdown Press gang, which is, I believe Simon Hacking and Tom Oldham. Breakdown is a small English publisher and they’ve put out works by Cossé, Conor Willumsen, Connor Stechschulte, Lala Albert, Joe Kessler and Seiichi Hayashi. They are kind of killing it. Seriously, loved every book I got from them. They also filled me in on some of the background of the UK’s fast growing indie scene. (Thought Bubble is already on!) I pointed out that once the English think something is cool, American hipsters have to go along, so all our hopes rest on these guys. They also told me a possibly apocryphal story about a cartoonist who had spent the night on a park bench and still managed to make a mini comic in the process.

Karl Stevens! He’s backed by Sam Henderson.

Action Austin English! Those Domino Books people totally use a hurry up offense.

Of course an actual wedding was going on at the church. What would a comics show be without a wedding nearby?

Adrian Tomine. A new issue of OPtic Nerve is on tap for 2015 he told me.

Annie Koyama and Gary Groth exemplify the love that is CAB.

Flash Forward to Day 2! There was some confusion over people thinking that there would be books for sale on Sunday, but there weren’t Only panels. Here’s Paul Karasik talking to Art Spiegelman and Roz Chast. This was a blockbuster panel by any definition, and I love Paul Karasik, but I kind of wish more had been devoted to the two talking about their parents. I don’t mean to gripe. Karasik put together a marvelous slideshow of both their work and of course both Chast and Spiegelman were witty and wonderful.

Then Josh Bayer interviewed Raymond Pettibon, the famed punk artist. This was a priceless, you-had-to-be-there moment as Bayer would ask a question and Pettibon would go off on an amazing rant about something, every line quotable. (I put a few really goods ones on Twitter.) It was a pretty unstructured talk but Bayer knows Pettibon well and quickly rushed through a slideshow that included work by Harold Gray and Jack Kirby, both obvious influences. Petibon clearly has comics hopes and dreams (Caniff and Frank Robbins were also cited as influences.) but luckily came up at a time when someone of his talents could make a ton of money doing commercial art and selling paintings.

If I may shift into diary mode here for a moment (I wasn’t already?) I experienced one of those weird time circles. Back when I lived in LA I went to a blockbuster show at MOCA that included Robert Williams, Pettibon, and Manuel Ocampo among others. It was called Helter Skelter: LA Art in the 90s, and it was a pretty incredible show, I have to say. The work of Pettibon and Ocampo and Williams very clearly referenced comics imagery in a respectful way. This was long before comics were as accepted as they are now, but I saw clear flashes of it back then. A few months later I was at that cafe in Silverlake we all used to hang out at (Jeebus what was it called?) with Phil Yeh and Alfredo Alcala and Ocampo and his fellow Filipino art crowd, because it turned out Ocampo idolized Alcala and the other cartoonists. Anyway flash forward 24 years, and Bayer asked Pettibon if he liked the Filipino comics school, and he said “Yeah, Alcala and…” So, see, everyone knows every one!

I saw Robert Boyd at the show and he was taking notes at this presentation. I look forward to his notes on the event because he knows a lot more about art than I do.

For a finale, Pettibon did a live drawing based on a Jack Kirby drawing of Spider-Man. It was awesome. CAB was awesome.

You can see the finished drawing here. WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK! REPEAT NOT SAFE FOR WORK!

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Roz Chast continues her dominance of the end-of-year best graphic novel lists, by topping Amazon’s list of the best graphic novels of the year. The books are selected by the Amazon editorial team, led by Sara Nelson, and ranked in order of sales (which is pretty interesting in and of itself.)

Chast’s book, a painful yet humorous look at the end of her parent’s life—has already won the first Kirkus Award for non fiction, and been named to PW’s Best Books list, and I suspect we may see it on a few more lists before the year is done. As of the moment, it’s Amazon’s #1 book in the “Parenting & Relationships > Aging Parents” category. So there.

The best of the list includes all the books from PW’s list, and some more, including strong efforts by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Charles Burns, Jeff Lemire, and more. The complete list:

• The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances by The Oatmeal and Matthew Inman (Andrews McMeel)
• Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleaseant? by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury)
• Saga Deluxe Edition Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
• Seconds: A Graphic Novel by Bryan Lee O’Malley (Ballantine)
• The Graveyard Book Graphic Novel Vol. 2 Hardcover by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell (HarperCollins)
• Batman: A Visual History by Matthew K. Manning (foreword by Frank Miller) (DK Publishing)
• Through the Woods by Emily Carroll (Margaret K. McElderry Books)
• Sugar Skull by Charles Burns (Pantheon)
• Deadpool by Joe Kelly Omnibus by Joe Kelly, James Felder, Stan Lee, Ed McGuinness, Aaron Lopresti, Bernard Chang, Shannon Denton, Pete Woods and Rob Liefeld (Marvel)
• Beautiful Darkness by Fabian Vehlmann and Kerascoet, translated by Helge Dasher (Drawn & Quarterly)
• The Harlem Hellfighters by Max Brooks and Canaan White) (Broadway Books)
• Trillium by Jeff Lemire (DC/Vertigo)
• This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki (First Second)
• Locke & Key: Alpha & Omega by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW Publishing)
• The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew (First Second)
• How to Be Happy by Eleanor Davis (Fantagraphics)
• Andre the Giant: Life and Legend by Box Brown (First Second)
• The Wrenchies by Farel Dalrymple (First Second)
• The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics)
• Ant Colony by Michael DeForge (Drawn & Quarterly)

 

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There is a nice, long profile of Roz in Salon today:

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In our cartoonists getting plaudits corner this week, Roz Chast has made the five book short list for the National Books Awards for her exemplary Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? which deals with the twilight years of her hilarious, annoying and lovable parents. She is entered in the non-fiction category and it is the first adultcomic, and only the third graphic novel over all to ever make the NBA lists. The entire category:

Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? (Bloomsbury)
Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes (Metropolitan Books/ Henry Holt and Company)
John Lahr, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (W.W. Norton & Company)
Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence (Liveright Publishing Corporation/ W.W. Norton & Company)

Sounds hard to beat a book with a title like the last one, but go Roz!

• Peter Bagge (Hate, Woman Rebel) is one of 34 winners of the USA Artists fellows program which includes a $50,000 grant.

The unrestricted awards, announced Monday, are from the United States Artists program, a grant-making organization funded by philanthropic foundations and individuals to support creativity. The 16 women and 18 men were selected by experts in their fields and were among 116 nominated artists living in the United States.

 

Among the other winners, singer Meshell Ndegeocello, artist Edouard Duval-Carrié and so on. Bagge won the Rockefeller fellow grant, which given that he is a cartoonist is…awesome. According to his bio on the page he’s working on cartoon biographies of Zora Neale Hurston and Rose Wilder Lane, also awesome.

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As we noted a few days ago, Comic Arts Brooklyn, the final comics related event on the NYC calendar, will expand to two days this year, with exhibits on Saturday, November 8, and programming on Sunday November 9th, at a new venue, the Wythe Hotel. Programming director Paul Karasik has just released the lineup, and the news that, just like at NYCC, the panel room will be cleared between panels! Line up now for your Raymond Pettibon wristband!

The line-up is pretty damned solid, with em emphasis on acknowledged art stars. I imagine the marquis event will be the Chast/Spiegelman conversation, but while camping out is not allowed it would be appropriate because it’s all belly meat here.

All programming will occur on November 9, 2014 at the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg.

PLEASE NOTE: Each presentation is free to the public on a first come, first served basis.  In order to accommodate interest in each panel, the audience must clear the room at the conclusion of each talk.  Please plan accordingly.

Al Jaffee Unfolded 11:00

Al Jaffee has drawn hundreds of features for the MAD Magazine but he is undoubtedly best known as the creator of the Mad Fold-In that he has drawn monthly since 1964. His originals will be on display concurrently at the Scott Eder Gallery in Brooklyn.

 Charles Burns: Down the Black Hole 12:00

A retrospective of Burns’ work as an illustrator (Sub Pop, The Believer, The New Yorker) and as a cartoonist (Black Hole, Big Baby, RAW), with a focus on the recently released third book of his graphic novel trilogy, X’ed Out. (Burns will be interviewed by Paul Karasik.)

 Tim Lane, Ben Marra, & Jim Rugg: Neo Noir 1:00

These three cartoonists love tough yeggs, mean streets, and femme fetales. All three have recent work evoking smoky, double-crossing noir. Each creator will present and discuss his own Gods of Noir. (Lane, Marra, and Rugg will be interviewed by Karen Green.)

 Roz Chast and Art Spielgeman Talk About Something More Pleasant 2:00

Roz Chast’s cartoons are synonymous with the New Yorker. Her recent work, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant”, surprised her readers as a frank memoir about her parents’ final years. Art Spiegelman is best known for his masterwork, “MAUS”, but has recently surprised his readers with a musical, “Wordless”. Together they will surprise the audience by asking each other questions.

 Aisha Franz, Lisa Hanawalt, and Jillian Tamaki: Cutting Edges 3:00

These three young artists represent three different approaches to comics-making and all are focused on making comics unlike anything you have seen before. Their deeply individualized approaches toward work and working will be discussed. (Franz, Hanawalt, & Tamaki will be interviewed by Alexandra Zsigmond.)

 Richard McGuire is Here 4:00

Fans of cartoonist / children’s book author / illustrator / musician, Richard McGuire, have been waiting years for the publication of the book-length “Here”, which originally ran in RAW. The wait is over. (McGuire will be interviewed by Paul Karasik.)

 Raymond Pettibon and the Comics 5:00

Pettibon came to prominence in the early 1980s in the southern California punk rock scene, creating posters and album art for Black Flag and other groups on SST Records. He has since gone on to international acclaim, earning several awards and exhibiting in major galleries and museums. (Pettibon will be interviewed by Josh Bayer.)

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Gabe Fowler, the main man behind Comic Arts Brooklyn, the late fall comics arts fest that traditionally caps off New Yorks comics year, will expand to days in 2014. Taking place November 8-9, the show will see exhibits at the usual place at the Mt Carmel Church on Saturday and on Sunday a complete track of programming at the Wythe Hotel, which is also located in Williamsburg.

Announced guests this year include Roz Chast, Richard McGuire, Raymond Pettibon and Art Spiegelman, but as you can see from the above poster,more guests have been added including Michael DeForge, Lisa Hanawalt, Julie Doucet (!!!!), Josh Bayer, Charles Burns, Aisha Franz, Al Jaffee, Tim Lane, Benjamin Marra, Jim Rugg and Olivier Schwauwen.

“We want to give more artists and exhibitors the opportunity to come to the presentations,” said Fowler in a statement, “Often the very people who want most to see creators speak are unable to attend. CAB wants to change that equation.”

Paul Karasik is curating the panels again this year. “We have some cool surprises about the specific panels to be announced in the coming weeks,” Karasik said in his own statement. “But, let’s just say for now, that if you are a Charles Burns fan, you might want to circle Sunday, November 9.”

I think the addition of a day of panels is a fine idea, somewhere between the Brooklyn Book Festival and olden days of SPX when Sunday was just panels and softball. The community of small press comics, so evident at SPX and TCAF, likes to hang out and enjoy one another’s company and a day of programming will act as a fine nexus for this.

Also, programming at CAB and it’s predecessor, BCGF, has always been a problem, as the programs are consistently  packed. I missed last year’s CAB, but I understand people had to line up far in advance for the talk on City of Glass held at The Knitting Factory. A few years before the panels were held in the back room at a bar and NO ONE could get in. I realize this is yet another whole weekend given over to comics, but given the calibre of the comics and programming offered at CAB, it seems like a worthy sacrifice.

 

 

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The National Book Awards longlist for Nonfiction has been announced  and it includes a graphic novel for the first time.  Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant, Roz Chast’s wry, honest memoir of her parent’s fading years, made the list; it was not only the only graphic novel but the only book by a woman to make the list.

The book is Chast’s first long-form comic—one can hope it won’t be her last—and has won both exemplary reviews and strong sales  since it came out in April.

Chast, best known for her New Yorker cartoons,  is only the second graphic novelist to make the NBA list; Gene Luen Yang was twice a finalist, for Boxers and Saints and American Born Chinese.

In case you haven’t noticed it, comics aren’t just for kids any more.

 

 

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One of the top graphic novels of the first half of 2014 is surely Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir; the long time New Yorker mainstay has penned her FIRST (amazing) graphic novel and it’s a true classic even though the subject matter sounds grim. The book follows Chat’s experiences with her aging and increasingly vulnerable parents, a sad topic but a part of the human experience that a lot of us are going to have to deal with from one side or another some day. This being Chast it’s also full of laughs, as she limns her eccentric sometimes annoying parents in rich comic detail. Anxiety and duty mingle in a neurotic but loving broth, as they do in real life.

Anyway, I was checking on Amazon, and I see it’s the #1 graphic novel and in the top 100 in books and has been for a few days, so, while this doesn’t mean thousands of copies, it does indicate solid sales. I’m not surprised to see this book find an audience but I am pleased that it has done so. It’s definitely gotten a ton of mainstream press, and glowing reviews in major outlets.

There’s a pretty good preview of the book up at Paste, if you haven’t seen it. Here’s one page that made me laugh out loud, and it’s also a good indicator of just what a great storyteller Chast is. Although the book is wordy, and the narrative somewhat episodic, the art supports and amplifies the words in a natural, flowing (and of course hilarious) way. Even RC Harvey would like this book.

The subject of aging parents is a little genre to itself in comics. There’s Joyce Farmer’s Special Exits
and Carol Tyler’s peerless You’ll Never Know Trilogy. I’m told that there is a Spanish graphic novel called Arrugas (Wrinkles) by Paco Roca on the same subject that is the Maus of Spain in that it broke through literary boundaries to become a bestseller—60,000 copies, a HUGE amount in the market—and even got made into an animated movie (poster below). So clearly there is a lot of interest in this subject…even when we would rather read about something more pleasant.

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Nursery Rhyme Comics
Edited by Chris Duffy
Introduction by Leonard S. Marcus
$18.99
ISBN: 978-1-59643-600-8
Ages 9-12
On shelves October 11, 2011

Nursery rhymes. What’s up with that? (I feel like a stand up comedian when I put it that way). They’re ubiquitous but nonsensical. Culturally relevant but often of unknown origins. Children’s literary scholar Leonard Marcus ponders the amazing shelf life of nursery rhymes himself and comes up with some answers. Why is it that they last as long as they do in the public consciousness? Marcus speculates that “the old-chestnut rhymes that beguile in part by sounding so emphatically clear about themselves while in fact leaving almost everything to our imagination” leave themselves open to interpretation. And who better to do a little interpreting than cartoonists? Including as many variegated styles as could be conceivably collected in a single 128-page book, editor Chris Duffy plucks from the cream of the children’s graphic novel crop (and beyond!) to create a collection so packed with detail and delight that you’ll find yourself flipping to the beginning to read it all over again after you’re done. Mind you, I wouldn’t go handing this to a three-year-old any time soon, but for a certain kind of child, this crazy little concoction is going to just the right bit of weirdness they require.

Fifty artists are handed a nursery rhyme apiece. The goal? Illustrate said poem. Give it a bit of flair. Put in a plot if you have to. So it is that a breed of all new comics, those of the nursery ilk, fill this book. Here at last you can see David Macaulay bring his architectural genius to “London Bridge is Falling Down” or Roz Chast give “There Was a Crooked Man” a positive spin. Leonard Marcus offers an introduction giving credence to this all new coming together of text and image while in the back of the book editor Chris Duffy discusses the rhymes’ history and meaning. And as he says in the end, “We’re just letting history take its course.”

In the interest of public scrutiny, the complete list of artists on this book consists of Nick Abadzis, Andrew Arnold, Kate Beaton, Vera Brosgol, Nick Bruel, Scott Campbell, Lilli Carre, Roz Chast, JP Coovert, Jordan Crane, Rebecca Dart, Eleanor Davis, Vanessa Davis, Theo Ellsworth, Matt Forsythe, Jules Feiffer, Bob Flynn, Alexis Frederick-Frost, Ben Hatke, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Lucy Knisley, David Macaulay, Mark Martin, Patrick McDonnell, Mike Mignola, Tony Millionaire, Tao Nyeu, George O’Connor, Mo Oh, Eric Orchard, Laura Park, Cyril Pedrosa, Lark Pien, Aaron Renier, Dave Roman, Marc Rosenthal, Stan Sakai, Richard Sala, Mark Siegel, James Sturm, Raina Telgemeier, Craig Thompson, Richard Thompson, Sara Varon, Jen Wang, Drew Weing, Gahan Wilson, Gene Luen Yang, and Stephanie Yue (whew!). And as with any collection, some of the inclusions are going to be stronger than others. Generally speaking if fifty people do something, some of them are going to have a better grasp on the process than others. That said, only a few of these versions didn’t do it for me. At worst the versions were mediocre. At best they went in a new direction with their mat

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Snagged from the Sept. 26, 2011 issue of The New Yorker, by Roz Chast. Coincidentally, Chast became a staff cartoonist to the magazine in 1979, the year I graduated high school. It’s like she’s always been there, and I’m grateful for that; I like her work a lot.

And, oh yeah, by the way . . . buy my book. I don’t care which one.

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austinkleon:

Roz Chast on William Steig

Steig’s drawings seem to flow effortlessly from his mind to his pen and onto the paper. I doubt he ever looked at a blank sheet and thought, “I have nothing worthwhile to say today,” or “I can’t draw a car as well as Joe Shmoe, so why don’t I crawl back into bed and wait for the day to be over.” Steig gave himself permission to be playful and experimental. One of the many wonderful things about looking at his drawings is their message, especially to his fellow artists: Draw what you love and what interests you. Draw it how you want to draw it. When we are children we do this instinctively. But somewhere in our passage from childhood to adulthood, the ability to be truly and fearlessly creative is often lost. To quote Pablo Picasso, Steig’s favorite artist, “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

Steig is one of my favorites—Chast’s essay is from a new book on his work, Cats, Dogs, Men, Women, Ninnies & Clowns: The Lost Art of William Steig

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My husband Matt pairs well with me for a number of reasons.  Amongst them is our mutual inclination to collect things we love.  As such, Matt has systematically been holding onto all his issues of The New Yorker ever since he got his subscription in college.  Over the years these issues have piled up piled up piled up.  I was a Serials Manager before I got my library degree and one of the perks of the job was getting lots of lovely magazine holders. For years these holders graced the tops of our bookshelves and even came along with us when we moved into our current apartment a year ago.  Yet with the arrival of our puir wee bairn, we decided to do the unthinkable.

Yes.  We ripped off all their covers.

Well, most anyway.  We have the complete run of New Yorker text on CD-ROM anyway, and anything published after the CD-ROM’s release would be online anyway.  Thus does the internet discourage hoarding.

In the meantime, we now are the proud owners of only three boxes worth of New Yorker covers.  They’re very fun to look at.  I once had the desire to wallpaper my bathroom in such covers, but that dream will have to wait (as much as I love New York apartments and all . . .).  For now, it’s just fun to flip through the covers themselves and, in flipping, I discovered something.  Sure, I knew that the overlap between illustrators of children’s books and illustrators of New Yorkers was frequent.  I just didn’t know how frequent it was.  Here then is a quickie encapsulation of some of the folks I discovered in the course of my cover removal.

Istan Banyai

Zoom and Re-Zoom continue to circulate heavily in my library, all thanks to Banyai.  I had a patron the other day ask if we had anything else that was similar but aside from Barbara Lehman all I could think of was Wiesner’s Flotsam.  Banyai is well known in a different way for New Yorker covers, including this controversial one.  As I recall, a bit of a kerfuffle happened when it was published back in the day.

Harry Bliss

Author and illustrator of many many picture books, it’s little wonder that the Art Editor of The New Yorker, Ms. Francoise Mouly, managed to get the man to do a TOON Book (Luke on the Loose) as well.  And when it comes to his covers, this is the one I always think of first.

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http://rozchast.com/

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everyday angst (what else?)

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