The Cartoonist and The Art

“I like to think of it as the Venn diagram of graphic design and poetry, and right in the middle there’s comics,” he said. “The poet is sussing words . . . but the graphic designer is directing the eye. Once I realized that, it wasn’t about drawing so much but more about thinking about comics, which I had been studying my whole life, I realized that I could be a cartoonist.”

Today Mr. Karasik is an award-winning cartoonist whose work appears in The New Yorker, Martha’s Vineyard Magazine and the Vineyard Gazette, among other publications.

Taught early on by the cartoonist Art Spiegelman, he said he gained an understanding of the structure and language of comics and honed his visual style.

The Vineyard Gazette discusses the Art of Cartooning with Paul Karasik.

 

 

Connecticut Public Radio, from January 27, 2018, interviews

  • Bill Griffith – The creator and author of the daily comic strip Zippy
  • Henry McNulty – A writer and editor who worked for the Hartford Courant for more than 25 years
  • Cullen Murphy – The editor-at-large of Vanity Fair and the author of Cartoon County: My Father and His Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe

Cullen Murphy discusses the Cartooning Community of Fairfield County during the 1960s. Henry McNulty, a knowledgable comics fan, relates the trials and tribulations of a newspaper editor having to deal with comics strips and the readers of same. Bill Griffith remembers the old guard of the National Cartoonists Society—Mort Walker, Bil Keane, and Ernie Bushmiller.

 

 

The Wicked + The Divine – the Zeitgeist comic about godhood and glamour by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson and Clayton Cowles – is coming to an end in June with issue #45. The final cover is being kept under wraps for now, but a variant cover has been revealed – and it’s by none other than internet sensation Olivia Jaimes, who continue to rock the comics world with her take on the Nancy comic strip.

And the crowd went crazy.

 

 

…where can you find comic strips about religion?

One place people can turn to is Man Overboard, an online strip by Man Martin of Atlanta, Ga.

I recently came across the comic. I was immediately taken by its sly and subversive take on Christianity, theology, church and other topics involving religion and the meaning of life.

Wanting to know more, I reached out to Martin. I discovered the 59-year-old is an Episcopalian, a high school English teacher and a novelist.

Man Martin, who (very) few may remember from his Sibling Revelry of the 1980s, has returned.

He gets his material for the strip by observing what’s happening in the church, the world and from “personal experience, worship and scripture,” he says.

“The only difference is that in my case, religious ideas come out funny,” he says.

One ongoing source of inspiration is what he calls “one of the great themes of Christianity… the astonishing way people just don’t get it.”

 

 

Did you catch Mark Trail waxing eloquent about the Good Old Days of Newspaper Comics last month?


above: Mark Trail’s favorite comic strip

 

 

More audio. The Blockhead podcast interviews Will Henry about his Wallace the Brave comic strip and the influence of Charles Schulz in the character development of Will Henry’s comic strip kids.

While waiting for part two of the Will Henry interview, scroll down and listen to Brad Perri.

 

 

I so want ERB Inc. to start putting the Roy Thomas/Tom Grindberg Tarzan strips
into their newspaper syndicating rotation.
Hat tip: The Bristol Board.

 

 

 

 

 

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