Bill Blackbeard, Comics Historian: 1926-2011

I will only say this: I scoured the The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977) as a young lad, and Blackbeard’s commentary in this volume and his essay in The Complete E.C. Segar Popeye (Volume One: Sundays, 1930-1932) were among the first extended historical treatments of comics I ever read. May Blackbeard’s contributions to comics long be remembered.

LINKS:

Bill Blackbeard, 1926-2011 (The Comics Reporter, April 25, 2011).

Bill Blackbeard, R.I.P. by Jeet Heer (The Comics Journal, April 25, 2011).

Bill Blackbeard: Tributes, edited by Dan Nadel (The Comics Journal, April 25, 2011).

Bill Blackbeard, the Man Who Saved Comics, Dead at 84 by R.C. Harvey

Bill Blackbeard Dies at 84; Saved Comic Strips, New York Times, April 29, 2011, by Margalit Fox.

The beauty that is Inkstuds

It didn’t take me this long to read Inkstuds (Conundrum Press, 2010) because I found it tedious; on the contrary, I wanted to savour these interviews and read them in small doses, interspersed with the ongoing consumption of comics—many created by artists featured on the radio show. Kudos to McConnell: with all of the interviews he’s conducted, I don’t know how he decided which ones to put in this volume. I suspect that’s why there’s a “1” on the spine of the book!

In the introduction to Inkstuds, comics scholar Jeet Heer remarks, “McConnell takes a deceptively casual tack, winging his way like a student at an oral exam who is willing to make up for in gusto what he lacks in preparation (6).” This may be especially true when listening to McConnell’s show, but one feature of reading the interviews that I found interesting was how once transcribed on the page, these conversations take on a new life. Now edited, gone are the traces of improvisational filler, instead leaving only a fluid path of ideas.

I usually listen to the Inkstuds podcasts at work, when I’m doing some task that isn’t totally labour-intensive. Even so, I still can’t invest all of my attention in them while I’m working. To revisit these conversations in book format means the conversations can be absorbed with crystal clarity; this is especially so since text is much easier for me to process compared with oral language. The combination of listening to, in addition to reading the interviews strengthens the Inkstuds experience. Even though I probably wouldn’t go back and listen to a podcast again, it’s easy to pick up this book and read any interview I’ve already heard. Reading Inkstuds reminds me what I’ve learned and reinforces connections. And now if there’s ever information I’d like to refer back to, it’s that much easier to find.

The one regularly recurring theme that I found present in the commentary of so many cartoonists in the Inkstuds volume is the commitment to craft—whether that be in terms of pencils, inks, paints, or (dare I say it?) Photoshop. Many of the featured artists have a formal background in visual arts, with a wide array of experience outside of the comics realm, in particular print-making and other commercial illustration. Without exception, what McConnell brings to his show is the cross-section of a vast array of individual styles, each with its own idiosyncratic strengths.

There is lots of great Canadian content in Inkstuds, such as exchanges with Jeet Heer, Seth, Chester Brown, David Collier, Jillian Tamaki, Billy Mavreas, Jeff Lemire, Marc Bell, Marv Newland, Joe Ollman and Kate Beaton.

In McConnell’s interview (accompanied by the illustrious Colin Upton) with Jason Lutes, Lutes comments on teaching at the Center for Cartooning Studies in White River Junction, Vermont:

I mean, comics is a medium, like I’ve been saying, and you guys are also believers. It’s a medium like any other medium. It’s a way of expressing yourself and whether it has commercial potential is a whole other question separate from what you can do with the tools. It’s the thing that you want to express yourself through and it might as well be puppetry or poetry. It’s just a way, and if you feel moved, you do it. The greatest thing about the school, the thing that’s really had the biggest impact on me, is that it’s a place where people who feel that way, people who feel that draw, that powerful resonance, this is a place for them to come and pursue it full time (168).

In much the same way, Inkstuds is a place where the comics-converted can be exposed to the minds of great artists working in the field. Jeet Heer mentions in his introduction, “For me, my love of comics is inseparable from my love of hearing cartoonists talk (5).” Personally, I couldn’t agree more.

The radio show interviews are not just with cartoonists, they also involve many discussions with people involved in the comics industry and comics criticism, including Dan Nadel (PictureBox and The Comics Journal blog), Jeet Heer, Tom Spurgeon (The Comics Reporter), Gary Groth and Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics), and Chris Staros and Brett Warnock (Top Shelf), among others.

Were it not for the Inkstuds radio show, my discovery of Mome, Kramers Ergot, Fort Thunder, Tom Devlin and SPX might not have occurred. For all of these reasons and more, I thank you, Robin McConnell. I love your site.

All this rich conversation for free: back when I studied at UBC, I listened to CITR radio shows on jazz, blues, punk and heavy metal, reggae and everything in between. Adding comics into the makes me even more of a champion of student-run, free, public independent radio.

Among my favourite interviews aired on Inskstuds are the marathon sessions with comics veterans Gary Panter, Kim Deitch, George Metzger and Jerry Moriarty—each in his own way equally unique. So I was happy to see that at least Gary Panter and Kim Deitch found their way into the book, even if Metzger and Moriarty did not. But one ought not criticize what the book isn’t, since this is an unfair attack: rather, let’s concentrate on what Inkstuds is: nearly three hundred pages of comics goodness, brought to you by the good people at Conundrum Press.

The Art of Difficult Art

Keeping the Story Alive

Today’s National Post had an interesting article with artist Adam Matak. “Over the past few years, this young Toronto artist has made a name for himself by applying a cartoon style to classy gallery settings.” Matak explains that he began drawing at the age of three, and that when he was young he drew in a style inspired by Disney.

Later, I trained as a printmaker, so when I started getting into painting I brought in that graphic element, too. And I’ve always been interested in trying to create connections between disparate things. I started off doing Greek busts and combining them with graffiti -trying to meld ancient and contemporary art (The National Post, April 4, 2011).

Check out the photo of the Thames Art Gallery space above, with Matak’s cardboard cutout figures, whom he describes as “museum patrons.” Very cool. More examples can be seen on the “Sculptures” tab on Matak’s website. Matak’s “Museum Series” of paintings equally explores the public experience of art, poking fun at how disengaged many viewers may at times appear. But the deeper message concerns what an audience may be missing by not reflecting on the lineage from which art springs, and what we may have to learn from it about ourselves.

As an education graduate and former educational tour guide for large museums, Matak’s recent works seek to wake people up and invite them to see the world differently. The artists describes one of the functions that his life-size cutouts may serve in the gallery setting;

In a way, the cut-outs are about a loss of that connectivity I described earlier. On each side, the person in the cut-out has their back to you. I think that overall we have a disconnection to things; public participation in any kind of community institution, from recreation centres to churches to museums, is dropping. When we get free time now, we’d rather spend it by ourselves on a computer or watching a movie. The tendency is towards isolation. If we can’t even connect to something really significant -to art history, where I might get my sense of belonging from -then maybe that’s where the educational quality in my works comes in, in trying to connect images of the past and of history to our story today (The National Post, April 4, 2011).

 

Seth Reviews Ben Katchor’s The Cardboard Valise

Seth’s brilliant recent review of Ben Katchor’s The Cardboard Valise (Pantheon, 2011) in The Globe and Mail really hit home for me, since only a week or so ago I finished reading The Jew of New York and Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer. And while I agree with Seth’s appraisal of Katchor’s work, for the same reasons that he and many other comic artists (I think I read in The Ganzfeld, year 2000, that Paul Karasik is a big fan) are drawn to Katchor, I personally struggle to stay apace with him. Seth describes the phenomenon that is a Katchor comic:

He performs that often promised yet rarely accomplished feat of transforming the mundane into the sublime. He conjures up otherworldly alternative realities for the banal objects of our everyday world – figuratively tossing them up into the air, then magically recombining them into new and amusing forms (The Globe and Mail, March 11, 2011).

I grappled with Katchor’s earlier books to the point where I sought out some interviews with the artist, to try and understand his approach. Thankfully, a two-part Comics Comics interview between Frank Santoro and Katchor went a long way to at least providing me with a foundation. In Katchor’s comics, the setting of a strip serves as much as a supporting character as it does an atmosphere-provoking milieu. Seth concurs:

Whatever plot thread you thought you were following is eventually lost. There comes a moment where even the most attentive reader gives up hope of “following along” and simply goes where Katchor points. When you finally close the book, you find your mind has become temporarily altered. You can’t walk through the urban landscape without seeing it through his eyes. The supermarket becomes a place rife with exotic possibilities. A vacant lot suggests some fascinating historical urban struggle. A man delivering free newspapers might very well be a link in a secret chain stretching into the trackless wastes of Siberia or perhaps to the peaks of the high Himalayas (The Globe and Mail, March 11, 2011).

These are difficult comics, make no mistake. Sometimes the energy necessary to appreciate Katchor’s surrealist machinations are their own reward, with the occasional page catching you off guard and making you laugh out loud. But if you’re not fully investing your attention in these comics, from my experience they will be glossed over or at least under-appreciated.

Don’t miss the “Panel by Panel” link in which a Katchor strip is deconstructed by Seth. Though I have not read The Cardboard Valise, on the basis of my past reading experience with Katchor, nor am I in any hurry. I can appreciate his genius from a distance, but inaccessibility of Katchor’s work keeps me away.

See also Sean T. Collins’ review at The Comics Journal.