THIS AMAZING STRANGER
The Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater will screen the Fleischer animation studio's classic "Superman" cartoons on Saturday, November 23 as part of a program called "Retro Superman," reports the New York Times. The Fleischer cartoons are remembered for naturalistic rotoscoped animation set against a stylized, art-deco backdrop and are directly influenced by the dynamic of the early Siegel/Schuster Superman stories. The theater's presentation of the animated shorts, says curator Laurie Cearly, "gives you a chance to see them as they were meant to be seen." Showings are at 2 and 4:30; tickets cost $5 for theater members and $10 for the general public.
INFO: New York Times
posted by Egon on Friday, November 22, 2002

BEN KATCHOR'S GRAPHIC POETRY
Ben Katchor will join a group of poets for "The Words of My City: New Yorkers Read New York Poems," presented by the Poetry Society of America. The event takes place Tuesday, December 3rd at the Cooper Union. Tickets are $10 for Society members and students and $15 for the general public.
INFO: Poetry Society of America
posted by Egon on Thursday, November 21, 2002

OGILVE HOME COMICS
Salon.com has launched a semi-regular column covering comics and graphic novels, according to the Comics Journal's "ˇJournalista!" website. The columns, by writer Amy Benfer, will "be published occasionally" in the online magazine; the inaugural edition examines the latest graphic novels by critical favorites Dan Clowes and Adrian Tomine.
INFO: Salon.com
posted by Egon on Thursday, November 21, 2002

KARASIK AND KARASIK ON AUTISM
Cartoonist Paul Karasik and his sister, Judy Karasik, have collaborated on a book about their brother's autism, according to an article published in the Library Journal and spotted by the Comics Journal's "ˇJournalista!" website. "The Ride Together," like Phoebe Gloeckner's upcoming "Diary of a Teenage Girl," will be a hybrid of prose and comics, with Judy writing in a traditional memoir style and Paul contributing cartoon sequences. "Judy's chapters tended to move time forward in a more lyrical way, while mine tend to halt the progress of time," explained Paul, who is best known for collaborating with David Mazzucchelli on the acclaimed comics adaptation of Paul Auster's "City of Glass." "The Ride Together" will be available in January from Washington Square Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, and will see first publication as a 208 page hardcover.
INFO: Library Journal
posted by Egon on Wednesday, November 20, 2002

CARTOONISTS FOR THE AMERICAN WAY
The 18th Annual Dinner Dance of the People For the American Way Foundation boasts an invitation by Garry Trudeau and a slate of celebrities scheduled to read from selected works in celebration of free speech. Walter Cronkite, Kathleen Turner, Eric Bogosian and others will read excerpted texts by a dean's list of writers that happens to include cartoonists Trudeau, Jules Feiffer and Art Spiegelman. The event takes place at New York's Roseland Ballroom on December 9, 2002, with tickets ranging in price from $350 to $25,000. People for the American Way was founded to "meet the challenges of discord and fragmentation" by asserting "pluralism, individuality, freedom of thought, expression and religion, a sense of community, and tolerance and compassion for others."
INFO: People for the American Way
posted by Egon on Tuesday, November 19, 2002

IBOOKS: THINK REPRINT
Debut books in iBooks' fledgling graphic novel line include Guy Davis' "Baker Street" and Jacques Tardi's "Leo Malet," according to Newsarama's interview with publisher Byron Preiss. "Baker Street," drawn by Baker and written with Gary Reed, will appear as a complete 336-page volume titled "Honor Among Punks." The Tardi books will see release as a series of graphic albums. "Jean-Marc Lofficier is doing the adaptation for us," says Preiss. "Normally, our books will be regular comics trim size, but with something like Tardi, it would be a crime to reduce them, so we'll make those volumes larger." Preiss' aesthetic stands, in his own words, "a little to the right of Top Shelf in terms of commercial appeal – the works are less personal and more commercial, but a little to the left of a mainstream comics publisher."
INFO: Newsarama
posted by Egon on Tuesday, November 19, 2002

3-D COMICS
Randy Wood announces "Off the Page: 3 Dimensional Narratives," upcoming at the Seattle, WA Soil gallery. Opening December 6 and running through December 29, the exhibit seeks to explore the possibilities of visual narrative in three dimensions. More than twenty artists including Jim Woodring, Ellen Forney, David Lasky, Greg Stump and Bill Griffith were invited to "to create a pictorial narrative ... that would convey a story (however loosely they choose to interpret 'story') in 3 dimensions. We wanted to see work that would tell a story in such a way that it couldn’t be conveyed on the pages of book; that created a new way of looking at a pictorial narrative." Soil will host an opening reception the evening of December 6.
LINK: Soil
posted by Egon on Monday, November 18, 2002

THE POETRY EXHIBITION
A two-page comic by Phoebe Gloeckner will grace the January 2003 issue of the Poetry Project Newsletter. The piece will be an "interpretation of Kevin Killian's poem, The Black Cat," according to Gloeckner's website. The newsletter is available via subscription and to members of the Poetry Project; it is unclear whether or not the publication can be had via alternate means.
INFO: The Poetry Project
posted by Egon on Monday, November 18, 2002

STRIP SCHOLARSHIP GETS GRANT
Professor B. Keith Murphy of Georgia's Fort Valley State University has received a $24,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study obscure black comic strips, the Macon Telegraph reports. The strips that fall within Murphy's research parameters "were published in black-owned newspapers, some from as early as the 1820s." The article further explains, "Black-owned newspapers in the 19th century often hired artists to avoid running syndicated white strips... Some were some whimsical, others explicitly political." Murphy plans to eventually build an archived collection of these strips and hopes to publish a book on the subject.
INFO: Macon Telegraph
posted by Egon on Monday, November 18, 2002

ALTOGETHER OOKY
The Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, NY presents "Charles Addams: American Gothic" through January 5, Newsday reports. The show, curated in cooperation with Addams' widow Tee Addams, features "45 finished and unfinished Addams pieces in ink and in watercolor" along with a representative collection of oddities from Addams' personal collection. These include weapons, torture devices, and "a carved wooden flying incubus from Germany."
INFO: Newsday
INFO: Guild Hall Museum
posted by Egon on Monday, November 18, 2002

CFP: QUEERING COMICS
"Comic books and comic strips are among the most iconic of art forms, and therefore the most queerable." So says a call for papers issued by Florida Atlantic University's Dr. Jeffery Dennis. Dr. Dennis is accepting academic papers for an upcoming anthology called "Queering Comics." Abstracts are due by February 1st, 2003 and can be submitted via email to jdennis@fau.edu.
INFO: PennEnglish: Calls for Papers
posted by Egon on Monday, November 18, 2002