Writer and visual artist Aubrey Hirsch knows Clarence Thomas won’t be reading Graphic Rage – and that’s fine. Her new book isn’t meant to convert opponents; it aims to witness, validate, and give readers a steadier sense that they’re not alone.
At this year’s Harvey Awards, six storied comic book creators were inducted in to the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame: John Byrne, Peter David, Patrick McDonnell, Wendy and Richard Pini, and Barbara Shermund. We’re pleased to present McDonnell‘s speech, in which he reflects on his own development as an artist and awareness of comic book history.
Both Matt Wagner and Kelley Jones have created some of the most unsettling stories in comic book history; Wagner’s work includes the sprawling science fiction/horror hybrid Grendel, while Jones’s uncanny illustrations appear in places like the graphic novel Batman: Red Rain. In collaboration with José Villarrubia, Wagner and Jones have also created several graphic novels reimagining the character of Dracula. A Kickstarter campaign for the third book, The Count, has raised over $181,000 as of this writing.
How best to describe Mattie Lubchansky‘s new graphic novel Simplicity? It’s a nestled narrative about how a futuristic society remembers the past; it’s an unsettling account of an academic learning too much about the history of an isolated community; and it’s a psychedelic-infused story where bizarre creatures lurk just out of sight. There’s a lot going on, basically, and Lubchansky deftly balances these seemingly disparate elements throughout. I spoke with her about utopias past and future, the legacy of The Wicker Man, and the follies of jetpacks.
I’m Kris Bertin, author of a few books of short stories, screenplays that never got made, and Hobtown Mystery Stories, a collection of surrealist small-town folk-horror stories published with ONI Press, and I’m here to introduce you to Little Visitor & Other Abductions and interview its author Adam Szym.
What will the cities of the future look like? Could the solution to the environmental problems of today involve an unlikely use of poultry? In this excerpt from Steve Mushin’s ULTRAWILD: An Audacious Plan for Rewilding Every City on Earth, Mushin explores an unlikely ally in transforming urban spaces. “According to experts, chickens have dreams, do basic math, and can solve simple problems by anticipating future events,” Mushin said in a recent interview. “They’re also the perfect soil-making engineers to help us transform the world’s roughly 2 billion roofs into vertical gardens.” Read on to see what that might look like.
For decades, Howard Chaykin has made an impact on the world of comics – both through groundbreaking work like American Flagg and more recent graphic novels like the period mystery Satellite Sam. The new anthology Lost Marvels No. 2: Howard Chaykin Vol. 1 collects some of Chaykin’s work for Marvel Comics, specifically his work featuring the characters Dominic Fortune, Monark Starstalker, and Phantom Eagle.
I’ve been reading Jeff Lemire‘s comics for over twenty years now, ranging from the psychological complexity of Royal City to the unnerving road narrative of Phantom Road. I’d spoken with Lemire once before, and had the opportunity to chat with him again about the release of his new memoir, 10,000 Ink Stains, a candid and insightful look at his career in comics thus far.