SPIEGELMAN ON POINT
Art Spiegelman joined host Tom Ashbrook via telephone for the December 25 episode of NPR's "On Point Radio," broadcast from Boston, MA. The pair engaged in a wide-ranging conversation over the course of forty-five minutes, accepting calls and talking in detail about Françoise Mouly and Spiegelman's "Little Lit" series of children's comics, Spiegelman's "In the Shadow of No Towers," and "Maus." Episodes of "On Point Radio" are available online as streaming audio files.
INFO: On Point Radio
posted by Egon on Friday, December 26, 2003

MOULY ON GOODRICH
The Stamford Advocate surveys the career of illustrator and frequent New Yorker cover artist Carter Goodrich. "He's a narrative artist," New Yorker art editor Françoise Mouly explains. "He combines the two requirements I need an artist to have. They must draw beautifully, and that's the case with Carter, and have something to say... He's responsible for four or five of the most memorable covers in the last 10 years, and that's a high percentage. That's about half of his oeuvre." Of his own work, Goodrich says: "How I work, how I approach the piece, I've just never felt that comfortable with what I'm doing. I've never felt that I've arrived at a signature look or comfortable vocabulary. I'm still groping."
INFO: Stamford Advocate
posted by Egon on Friday, December 26, 2003

GLOECKNER & PANTER GET ORDINAL
The Dec. 26, 2003 - Jan. 1, 2004 dated issue of the L.A. Weekly sits beneath a cover by Gary Panter titled "12 Garage Sale Victories," a series of painted images supplemented with descriptive text. The annual "list issue's" music section runs "Phoebe's 2003 Top 13," a text and photo composition by Phoebe Gloeckner listing favorite music and detailing important personal events from the past year. Gloeckner's piece is available online as an interactive, navigable "Flash" display.
INFO: L.A. Weekly
posted by Egon on Thursday, December 25, 2003

CALLS FOR PAPERS: SYDNEY, MONTREAL
Michael Hill of the University of Technology, Sydney solicits papers for the Third Sequential Art Studies Conference, Sydney, 2004 in an announcement to the Comics Scholars' Discussion List. This "mini-conference on mini-comics, and other themes," willl take place at the University on Saturday, May 22, 2004. "Scholars are invited to submit 200 word proposals which address any of the [below-listed] panels... The conference will adopt an interdisciplinary approach and so welcomes papers from a wide range of disciplines and also from cross-disciplinary approaches to the study of comics." Panel topics include "Minicomics," "Shape Shifting Manga," "Comics into Film" and an open panel for other topics. Proposals are due by February 29, 2004. Further inquiries can be directed via e-mail to co-cordinators Michael Hill (Michael.Hill@uts.edu.au) and Craig Norris (c.norris@uws.edu.au).

In a separate message to the same mailing list, Gene Kannenburg shares notification of a comics-themed panel at McGill University's 10th Annual Graduate Symposium on Language and Literature. "Comics and the reproduction of history" will examine "topics surrounding the representation of history in comics" at the symposium, taking place March 20 - 21, 2004. "The vocabulary of film is often imported into discussions of comics because they are both forms of visual storytelling," writes panel co-ordinator Stephanie Boluk. "However, to conceive of comics exclusively on the same terms as film ultimately renders the '9th art' a silent, frozen adjunct of the cinema. Having stated this caveat, paper proposals centered on film studies need not immediately be rejected on the fact that they are not comics. There may be a convergence with the themes and topics I have proposed." Three-hundred word paper abstracts are due January 26 and can be submitted to Boluk via e-mail (chouxsalad@mac.com).
LINK: Comics Scholars' Discussion List
posted by Egon on Thursday, December 25, 2003

GENE DEITCH IN THE U.S.
Prague-based animator and cartoonist Gene Deitch will make a rare North American appearance February 10th at Hollywood's Egyptian Theater, the Cartoon Research website reports. Jerry Beck will host "A Tribute to Gene Deitch," with screenings of "Munro, Tom Teriffic, Sidney, Flebus, Nudnick and many others, including a sneak peak at [Deitch's] latest animated collaboration with Jules Feiffer." Deitch will also appear as a guest on David Garland's "Spinning on Air" WNYC radio program on January 8th. "Spinning on Air" is broadcast on the internet via WNYC's website; episodes are archived online as streaming audio files.
INFO: Cartoon Research
LINK: WNYC: Spinning on Air
posted by Egon on Thursday, December 25, 2003

BEAUX BD
Beaux Arts Magazine's latest issue is another in that magazine's series of regular comics-themed specials, BDNews reports. The issue runs 32 new strips offering predictions for the coming year by artists including Blutch, Frédéric Boilet and Fabrice Neaud, among others. The 146-page issue costs 7.5 Euros.
INFO: BD News
posted by Egon on Thursday, December 25, 2003

VARSITY KURTZMAN IN ALTER EGO
Two upcoming issues of Alter Ego magazine will run rare Harvey Kurtzman material from Varsity Magazine along with explanatory material by Ger Apeldoorn, the writer announced to the Yahoo Groups Harvey Kurtzman mailing list. "Number 33 will publish three two-page satirical articles published between 1949 and 1951 in the magazine Varsity," writes Apeldoorn. "The articles are in strip form and have the look and feel of Kurtzman (and Feldstein's) later Mad articles. Number 34 will have an article about how I found the pages, some thoughts about their significance in Kurtzman's career as a satirist and all of the remaining illustrations, including two two-page spreads of the type Sergio Aragones later made popular in Mad and a great half page strip set 'inside the mind of a college student'." According to Apeldoorn, none of this material is listed in Glen Bray's "The Illustrated Harvey Kurtzman Index." "When I contacted Denis Kitchen about them (about a year ago) he said he knew some of them, since they were among HK's stuff as tear sheets," explained Apeldoorn. "As executors of HK's inheritance, Denis and Adele [Kurtzman] have been so kind to consent permission to reprint them to Michael [Gilbert] and Roy [Thomas]."
INFO: Yahoo Groups: Harvey Kurtzman
posted by Egon on Sunday, December 21, 2003

SWANN FELLOWSHIP ACCEPTS APPS
Martha Kennedy of the Library of Congress solicits Swann Fellowship applications for the 2004 - 2005 academic year. The "Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon awards a fellowship of $15,000 annually to support graduate research in caricature and cartoon. Applicants must be enrolled in M.A., Ph.D program in university in U.S., Canada, or Mexico." Guidelines and application materials are available online; applications are due February 13, 2004.
INFO: The Library of Congress
posted by Egon on Sunday, December 21, 2003

AD REINHARDT'S ART COMICS
The New York Times surveys Ad Reinhardt's body of cartoon and comic strip work, currently on view at the Daniel Silverstein Gallery in New York City. Throughout the 1940s and '50s, Reinhardt used the cartoons to educate a general public about abstraction while irreverently and iconoclastically addressing the art establishment of the day. The majority of the pieces were drawn "for the liberal New York newspaper PM in the late 1940's and for ArtNews in the early 1950's," writes Richard B. Woodward for the Times. "Using cutouts from 19th-century illustrated books and periodicals, as well as line drawings and hand-drawn dialogue balloons, he concocted a style in which the surrealism of J. J. Grandville and Max Ernst was inflected with a tough Queens accent." The exhibit, called "How to Look at Ad Reinhardt," displays all 29 of Reinhardt's cartoons and runs through December 31.
INFO: The New York Times
posted by Egon on Sunday, December 21, 2003