RiYL

Not too long before our conversation, the Library of Congress appointed Gene Yang its “Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.” It’s the kind of announcement that makes everyone around the comics community cheer — another big moment in a space perpetually starved for legitimization as the institution chose its first ever graphic novelist for the post. Of course, they would have been hard-pressed...

Friend of the podcast Nicole Georges joins us via Skype to discuss her brand new show, Sagittarian Matters, which combines her love of conversation, advice and eating food products past their expiration date. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a conversation about love, punctuation, offering unsolicited advice, and the pitfalls of writing comic books about your parents. Hosted on Acast. See acast.c...

We kick things off Noah Van Sciver, one of comics’ most exciting — and prolific — young talents. Last year alone, the Denver cartoonist released three books, all of which made their way to various best-of lists: St. Cole, Fante Bukowski and My Hot Date. The artist is also well-known in indie comics circles for his on-going series Blammo and the 2012 Fantagraphics title The Hypo, following the life...

It’s been several years since I last spoke to Bill Griffith. I’m fairly certain I spent much of that last interview attempt to talk the cartoonist into drawing a full length book — and while I certainly can’t take any of the credit, I’m happy to say that the artist was on-hand at this year’s Comic Arts Brooklyn to discuss just such a project. Invisible Ink marks, incredibly, Griffith’s first full-...

“It’s woven very densely into the fabric of my life,” explains Josie Long. “It happens when you do your accounting every year. You look at your receipts, and everything there you’ve written about.” The comedian began her standup career at the tender age of 14, scoring a BBC New Comedy Award three years later. Having spent more than half her years on Earth as a standup, it’s certainly understandabl...

Eric Bogosian is not an easy interview — but he’s a good one. I came ready to discuss his recently published book on the Armenian genocide, Operation Nemesis — but the writer quickly made it known that he’s not keen to reflect upon something that’s already out in the world, particularly not with something new in need of promotion just over the horizon. Before we began, he sat me down and played a...

Walter Martin and I keep getting kicked out of coffee shops. It’s a strange thing. Over the course of the 50 minute interview, we close out two places in Manhattan. But as romantic as getting kicked out of two New York City establishments in under an hour with an indie rock star looks on paper, the whole thing is slightly mundane. Turns out the coffee shops in midtown like to shut their doors befo...

Our final round of interviews from Baltimore Comic Con includes two artists who have had a profound impact on the American underground/independent comics community. Carla Speed McNeil has produced the sprawling, epic aboriginal science-fiction series Finder since the mid-90s, making it one of the longest running series in all of indie comics, with 10 printed volumes of output released through the...

In A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers describes the auditioning process for The Real World: San Francisco. The spot the McSweeney’s founder tried out for was won by another artist, a cartoonist who served a, perhaps, the moral compass for a reality show fueled by roommate strife. Most of us can count on a single hand the moments that had a truly profound impact on our lives. For...

Of course Chip Kidd put out a book with Art Spiegelman. In an age when the transition to digital seems all but inevitable, both artists have a vested interest in the book as object, crafting tangible experiences that cannot be recreated on a tablet or e-book. For his part, Kidd is probably best known for his book designs for cartoonists Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware, along with a who’s who of conte...

“All you really want to do is get yourself excited, get your wife excited, get your friends excited,” Colin Hay explains with a smile. “Beyond that, who knows? You want to say to someone who’s upstairs, ‘hey, come and listen to this. This is cool.’ ” The crowds, the fans, the radio play, the record sales are secondary. Thirty-four years after the release of Men at Work’s debut, Business as Usual,...

The artist has been something of a hero before I’d even heard his name, through his illustration work in the aforementioned classic children’s book and as the screenwriter of Robert Altman’s perfectly chaotic 1980 cinematic adaptation of Popeye. Since then, Feiffer’s work has been a constant in my life, from his four decades long stint as an editorial cartoonist for the Village, to his early appre...

By all rights, the story of South Atlantic Blues should have ended in 1968. Released the same week as Van Morrison’s masterpiece of pastoral angst, Astral Weeks, the record failed to garner any notice, in spite of promises that its young singer-songwriter would soon become “bigger than Elvis.” A masterpiece of a soulfully sung, lush psychedelic folk, the record vanished into obscurity, thanks to a...

Two conversations with extremely talented — and patient — artists conducted at Baltimore Comic Con. Both were also prefaced by waiting quietly for their signing lines to slow down before taking time out of their signing schedules for a chat. In the case of the legendary Marvel artists Jim Starlin, it was a long, unbroken line of autograph seekers carrying armfuls of Silver Surfer and Warlock comic...

I’ve been wanting to have Lucy Sante on the show for some time now, and a recently appearance at the Brooklyn Book Fair finally afforded the opportunity to sit down with the author. Immediately after a panel with Vivian Gornick and David Ulin on the topic of writing about cities, Sante and I sat down in a courtyard on a windy Sunday. Published the same year I moved to New York, the author’s book L...

It had been a while since I’d last spoken with Sara Varon. At the time, the artist had a handle of comics and kids books under her belt, including most notably — and recently — Robot Dreams, a delightful wordless buddy comic about a relationship between a robot and a dog. Since then, Varon’s been plenty busy, adding several more titles to her bibliography and teaching printmaking at her alma mater...

Like many of roughly my age bracket, my first exposure to Usagi Yojimbo was as an action figure — a badass samurai rabbit that fit in perfectly in world where Ninja Turtles roam the streets of New York at night. It’s one of those perfect sorts of synergy, anthropomorphic superheroes trained in Eastern forms of combat born out of the small press black and white comics revolution of the mid-80s. But...

“The head space for a lot of people post-any kind of cancer is ‘I gotta get going,’” Jennifer Hayden explains with the positive energy of an all-star slugger holding a World Series trophy aloft. Whatever it is, I’m gonna jump on it. Everything is doable, everything is wonderful, thank God I’m still here.” When she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 43, the struggling artist turned to comics f...

This one gets pretty raw. No surprise, really, given the nature of Sam Zabel And The Magic Pen, a semi-autobiographicalish comic that deals with the nature of and relationship between creativity and depression, kicking things off with a chapter titled “Anhedonia,” an inability to experience pleasure that arises from melancholy states. Of course, it’s not all gloom and doom. When New Zealand cartoo...

“It's a good story,” Joe Biel wrote in an email from a few weeks back. “It’s our 20th anniversary book and my big reveal is that I have Asperger’s.” When Good Trouble comes out from Microcosm in March, it’s bound to cause a stir in the company in which Biel’s publishing has played such a central role over the past couple of decades. It’s deeply personal to a fault, exploring Biel’s work, relations...

He calls it “the curse of being multi-talented” and insists that it is, in fact, a curse. Musician, author, politician, comedian, and all around gadfly, Kinky Friedman is one of the those rare multi-faceted artists who is arguably equally well-known for several of different endeavors. Reflecting upon his singular career at 70, Friedman hesitates for a moment, invoking the curse with the suggestion...

When I asked for interview suggestions for my five day work trip to Berlin, Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon suggested Olivier Schrauwen, heaping praise upon the Belgian expat and categorizing him among the top living cartoonists. And indeed, the trip halfway around the world afforded a rare opportunity to speak with the Arsene Schrauwen cartoonist, who, in spite of growing acclaim within the comics l...

It had been eight or so years since I last interviewed Raina Telgemeier. After a few years spent adapting the beloved young adult series The Babysitter’s Club into a handful of graphic novels for Scholastic, the cartoonist was getting ready to branch out on her own. Telgemeier was understandably nervous ahead of the book’s debut, unsure whether or not she would even be able to find a publisher. As...

“It comes down to a lot of educated guessing and trying to handle it like a grown up,” explains Jaime Hernandez. We’re seated on a curb outside the San Diego Convention Center and the subject of the Love and Rockets cartoonist’s propensity for strong female protagonists has come up. For Hernandez, writing women is second nature. Writing men, on the other hand — that’s where things get difficult. ”...

I first encountered Ed Piskor’s work through the cartoonist’s collaborations with the legendary Harvey Pekar. The duo released the book Macedonia in 2007, highlighting The American Splendor author’s work to push non-fiction storytelling forward in the medium by highlighting cultural struggles in the Republic of Macedonia in comics form. It was no doubt a formative experience for the cartoonist who...