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Robert Crumb might have the public persona of a cranky, creepy curmudgeon, but when it comes to music, he enthuses without reservation. That is, of course, as long as it’s his kind of music, which skews toward nearly forgotten blues and jazz artists of the first half of the twentieth century. His cover for Janis Joplin’s Big Brother and the Holding Co.’s “Cheap Thrills” is iconic, and no doubt he could have illustrated the pick of the rock ‘n’ roll litter over the subsequent years had he wanted to. But with the exception of a few things for the likes of the Grateful Dead and Frank Zappa, he’s wallowed in intentional obscurity, which makes this collection all the more valuable. Read the rest of this entry »

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It was a comic about mice, and if it hadn’t been, would anyone have noticed?

When Art Spiegelman began to draw a comic-book serial about his father, a survivor of Auschwitz, he couldn’t have imagined that it would change the face of visual literature. With its deceptively simple symbolism of the Jews drawn as mice and the Nazis as cats, “Maus” became a complex and acclaimed work, helping to usher in the idea of graphic novels and becoming the first comic to ever win a Pulitzer Prize. Twenty-five years after the publication of the first half of the two-volume memoir, Spiegelman sat down with University of Chicago professor Hillary Chute for a book-length interview to explain how, and perhaps more important, why he did it. Read the rest of this entry »

By Casey Brazeal

Born in Alabama but living in Kansas City, Jason Aaron is the writer and co-creator behind the gritty crime comic-book thriller “Scalped.” Earlier this year, he announced that “Scalped” would end its story and its run at issue #60. During its run of more than four years, this story of reservations, casinos and meth has been nominated for both the Eisner and Harvey, the two most prestigious awards in comics.

But Aaron will still have plenty on his plate—he also writes “Wolverine,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Wolverine and the X-men” and “Punisher Max” for Marvel. Both “Hulk” and the new title, “Wolverine and the X-Men,” launched number-one issues November 2.

How’s the response been to the books that just came out?
I am really happy. Both books seem to be getting a great response, especially X-Men. Read the rest of this entry »

Marjane Satrapi is best known for her autobiographical graphic novel work, “Persepolis,” which was later made into a film. Her latest project, “The Sigh,”  goes in a new direction: Rather than stories from Satrapi’s life, “The Sigh” is a fairy tale about a woman in a fantastical world who’s trying to save her lost love. It’s told as an illustrated story rather than a work of sequential art.

The eponymous sigh, which begins the story, summons a magical creature, Ah the Sigh, from the Kingdom of Sighs. Rose, a merchant’s daughter, follows this creature back to its realm where she meets and soon loses a prince.

The story builds in traditional fairytale style with one important difference. Instead of allowing herself to be held hostage by her strange world, Rose becomes an adventurer who moves the story forward. Unlike Rapunzel or Cinderella, she’s not a damsel in distress waiting for a man to save her. Instead, Rose sets out to rescue her prince and ends up helping a number of families by saving their sons and husbands from various magical predicaments along the way. Read the rest of this entry »

By Brian Hieggelke

If we’re living in the most creative and fertile period in the history of comics, Daniel Clowes and Seth are two of a handful of cartoonists largely responsible for it. Clowes, born and raised in Chicago before relocating to California, is best known for his long-running “Eightball” comic, which spawned several graphic novels (and a couple movies), including “Ghost World” and “Ice Haven,” as well as last-year’s “Wilson.” The Canadian Seth came to fame with his long-running comic “Palookaville,” as well as the recent graphic novels “George Sprott” and “Wimbledon Green.”

This month, publisher Drawn and Quarterly is releasing Clowes’ “The Death-Ray” and Seth’s “The G.N.B. Double C: The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists” and, in the tradition of the old superhero team-ups, is sending them on tour together, with a stop this week at Oak Park’s Unity Temple. In that spirit, we conducted a three-way interview in advance of their visit. Read the rest of this entry »

Nicholas Idell, right

By Alex Baumgardner

Nicholas Idell had been working at comic book shops in Chicago for a few years when he finally decided to strike out on his own. The 29-year-old Rockford native didn’t want to limit himself. He considered moving back home from Andersonville, knowing there was an open market in Rockford. At the behest of friends, he scouted areas in Washington D.C. and California. Ultimately, he settled, quite literally, in a back alley.

Opened just last month, AlleyCat Comics is squeezed in the courtyard behind a Potbelly and Starbucks, and accessible only through a gated alley no wider than a yard or two on North Clark. A handmade metal sign forged by Idell’s dad is the only signal to sidewalk traffic that it’s there. Idell admits he wasn’t floored by the location when it was first presented to him, but fellow owners David Ballard and Tim Harris both had a feeling the secluded spot could be a special one, so Andersonville’s first back-alley comic shop was born.

“We knew that this neighborhood could really use a store,” Idell says. “Everyone loved that space. And I thought, ‘Well, if everyone loves it so much, how much is not having a storefront really going to hinder this business? Or could it help?’” Read the rest of this entry »

“The bottom line is print is expensive,” says Mike Norton of the Chicago-based comics company Four Star Studios. The pressure of funding a printed comic book “can really affect the type of story you decide to tell,” adds co-founder Josh Emmons, “you’re going to tell a different, safer, more broad story” that will appeal to the masses. Through digital distribution, however, Four Star Studios has the financial ability to offer new comics to the public monthly for just ninety-nine cents.

Their iPad App, DoubleFeature, offers a new issue with two stories from a single genre each month. “We’ve started with two action stories,” says Emmons. “Next month will be horror, then sci-fi, then fantasy… eventually looping back around to action stories again.” Four Star Studios is also able to offer in-depth special features with DoubleFeature. The Four Star crew, made up of Norton, Emmons, Tim Seeley and Sean Dove, “really thought about what the iPad can offer and what are the things comic readers and art enthusiasts would like to see,” says Dove. “A lot of people don’t really understand all the stages that go in to making a comic and the DoubleFeature app really shows you layer by layer all the things that went in to drawing and creating the comic, from pencils, inks to final colored artwork.” (Tiana Olewnick)

Chris Ware Self-Portrait

“There are two sides of comics that are always competing: the text and the image,” says Ingrid Olson. If last year’s Comic Symposium of Chicago emphasized the image, this year’s successor event hones in on the word when School of the Art Institute hosts its second annual Small Press and Comics Symposium (spandcsc.tumblr.com) March 24.

Organized by Olson and other SAIC alumni, the event features two panel discussions with ten Chicago presses and comic artists aimed at exploring the connections between the small press, independent publishing and comics communities. Moderated by University of Chicago comics scholar Hillary Chute, the comics discussion will include Chris Ware, Onsmith, Corinne Mucha and Aaron Renier, and will tackle such questions as the “changing cultural status of comics.” The Chicago press discussion features panelists from Front Forty Press, Featherproof Books, Green Lantern Press and Poetry magazine, and is moderated by publisher Sally Alatalo. Both panel discussions are free and open to the public. Read the rest of this entry »

Though Daniel Clowes soared to indie-culture celebritydom when his stories “Ghost World” and “Art School Confidential” made the journey from regular installments in his ongoing comic book, “Eightball,” to the movie screen, he’s never actually crafted a fully realized graphic novel without serialization before his latest, “Wilson.” Perhaps it’s not surprising, given that, that this native Hyde Parker (now living in Oakland) structures the story of a lovable misanthrope, who suffers from a toxic mix of yearning to make connections in his lonely life with a tourettic tendency to blurt out uncomfortable truths, as an episodic narrative of one-page comics. It’s like they’re drawn for the Sunday funnies of a better world’s newspaper, one in which real people age and progess through a life never quite as good as it should be or as bad as it could be. Wilson’s a handsomely crafted book, in Clowes’ distinguished graphic signature, with interspersed stylistic interruptions that make for some interesting interpretation, both visually and narratively. Chicago makes a big cameo as well, when Wilson’s father takes ill, a parallel narrative to Clowes’ own journey home a couple years back, when he sat bedside as his father died of cancer. Given the accomplishment of “Wilson,” this weekend’s return should mark a significantly happier homecoming. (Brian Hieggelke)

Daniel Clowes appears at Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 West North, (773)342-0910, June 12 at 7pm, and again on June 13, in conversation with Newcity’s Ray Pride, at the Printers Row Lit Fest, Center Stage, at 11am.

Artist and local resident Alex Ross is one of a very short list of comic-book artists working in the superhero genre anymore with a truly idiosyncratic visual style. Particularly notable is that what others draw, he paints. So his new sketchbook, “Rough Justice,” wherein he too draws, in preparation for painting, is revelatory. This guy could easily work with pencil and ink alone, since his “roughs” are often on a par with, nay superior to, the finished work of many of his peers. Equally interesting are the insights into the creative process, as practiced by the mainstream comic book industry these days, that emerge in his descriptions of some of the projects that never saw the light of day, such as proposed creation of an imagined son of Batman, called Batboy. It’s all fanboy fantasia. (Brian Hieggelke)

Alex Ross signs copies of “Rough Justice” at Chicago Comics, 3244 North Clark, June 5 at 3pm.