{Scattershot 2}

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Chris Mautner interviews Ryan Sands on Youth In Decline, which is one of the more impressive publishers operating right now. If Thickness ends up debuting at CAB it’s going to be a strong contender for book of the show. 

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The first couple iterations of Meg, Mogg and Owl on Vice had me a bit worried. They didn’t feel like Hanselman's previous work with the characters, more like imitations. The last two strips though seem like a return to form, they’re funny as always but with an underlying sadness to them. Moggs eyes in the last panel of this weeks strip brought a tear to my eye. It’s those little moments that i always loved in Hanselman's work and i’m glad to see them creeping back in.

You can read the newest strip here. Vice also has a pretty solid comics section at the moment that is definitely worth checking out. 

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Ryan Cecil Smith dissects the Gary Groth Todd McFarlane Comic Journal 1992 interview. Smith points out that, at the time, that interview was seen almost universally as a win for Groth, but over time, and in particular now, McFarlane seems to come out on top. I was 2 when this interview came out so i can’t speak to any of the “scenes” thoughts at the time besides the ones Smith relates (he seems to be citing people after the fact) but it doesn’t seem particularly hard to think Groth walked out smiling.

I read this interview about a year ago when it was reposted on The Comics Journal website and the few conversations i’ve had about it, particularly with alt-press cartoonists, is how many of the current fantagraphics demographic grew up during the Image boom. Groth and company won them over later in life, but those image guys were their EC Comics or Undergrounds or whatever comics are great works of literature that the baby boomers grew up on and express the need to explain to me why they are.

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A documentary about John Porcellino is in need of funding on Kickstarter. I feel like that would be a good thing to give money to.

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Stumbled on a nice series of interviews at a site called ClawClaw. They have one with Heather Benjamin and Jonny Negron which are both worth checking out.

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Michael DeForge released a new series called Actual Trouble on his site. I really like when DeForge uses slightly off-kilter narrative devices, like his faux-documentaries or in this case his storybook model of single images with separated text. This is probably the strongest thing of his i’ve seen this year (although i’m waaaay behind of Sticks Angelica). The colors alone are worth giving this a look over for.

Oh also DeForge set up a webstore which you should go too and buy everything you don’t already own.

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Dash Shaw interviews Brian Lee O’Malley on Seconds. Whenever Shaw does anything it’s worth checking out, and in this case it’s in association with what will probably be the biggest book of the year. Or at least the most talked about in the “mainstream”. (I’m about halfway through Seconds as of writing this and so far it’s pretty good, the arts strong and i’m surprised how much i like the coloring. Story wise i’m ambivalent, maybe it will pick up in the second half.)

Ryan Sands also interviewed O’Malley at Google, which seems worth mentioning.

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If there's one thing punks can do, it’s draw Ronald Reagan.

By Gary Panter

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Alec Berry is writing again.

His first piece is on the act of writing.

His second is on Lizards and Sex

And his third is on Image comics and old Marvel guys.

someone said Alec’s not from there side of town. i assume they meant a metaphorical comics town. i’m not sure if the metaphor holds up that well, i think they wanted it to convey the some kind of faux gravitas or implied moral strength. towns are built out of concrete or something. maybe they have some bridges. a pond or two. a dog park would be nice also. a comics town with a dog park, man, thats the dream. it all seems silly. but definitely tough.and hardcore and and and all that stuff. i know i’ll straighten right up.

unless that wasn’t a metaphor. than yes, alec berry does not live in new york city to my knowledge. unless he moved without me knowing. dude wanders.

i should probably just email ayo and ask what he meant, but i don’t think he uses the same email provider as me. so we will never know.

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*rap lyrics to make sure everyone knows i’m from the right side of town and not that one with a clown college*

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Interview with Lana Del Rey

“What’s the worst relationship advice you’ve received?”

“That love doesn’t come easily and that relationships are supposed to be a struggle. Everything else is so hard; hopefully love is the one thing that is actually fun.”

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Interview with Kanye West

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Frank Santoro seems sad. That sucks.

Since COMICS COMICS is back up in a readable format, i have been going through their archive for the first time. I was a few years too young to have caught it when it was still operating sadly. These two columns by Santoro seem as relevant today as when they were posted all the way in 2009. How far comics have come.

“The Bridge Is Over”

“Tastes Change”

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The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh by Gore Vidal.

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 Joe Swanberg reviews Sex Tape.In other indie filmmaker writing reviews news, Lena Dunham, a co-star of Swanberg’s newest film Merry Christmas, reviewed The Big Chill for the Criterion Collection.

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Andrew White reviews Seconds and then interviews himself.

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Werner Herzog interviewed.

You don’t seem to be interested in re-creating our daily lives, but instead in presenting something you’ve called “the ecstatic truth.” You want to present something recognizable in an unrecognizable way.

Well, recognizable on a much deeper level, where you recognize yourself all of a sudden. I’m trying to find these rare moments where you feel completely illuminated. Facts never illuminate you. The phone directory of Manhattan doesn’t illuminate you, although it has factually correct entries, millions of them. But these rare moments of illumination that you find when you read a great poem, you instantly know. You instantly feel this spark of illumination. You are almost stepping outside of yourself and you see something sublime. And it can be something very average, some small thing that everybody overlooks. For example, in Grizzly Man, Timothy Treadwell filmed himself. He’s in the Starsky and Hutch mode and reenacts them and does something and he jumps and runs away and the camera is rolling. Twenty seconds later he returns as Starsky and Hutch and switches the camera off. And in these 20 seconds there is only reed grass wafting in the wind. And all of a sudden I notice something very big out there. An image that wanted its own existence. That’s so powerful and so strange and so illuminating that I had to show it in the film. And everybody overlooked it and I have to point it out. It’s something very, very strange and it can be the most insignificant, which all of a sudden acquires something deep and almost illuminating of your existence. You’re deep inside into the nature of things, into the abysses of the human soul.

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