This is presented as John wrote it, but please ignore the 'Preaching to the Choir' paragraph as we're no longer taking subscriptions or fund raising. - MR.
Editor’s Note
John A. Lent
Cartooning and War and Threat of War
Of the scores upon scores of countries where I have interviewed cartoonists and visited studios, offices, libraries, and museums, about ten hover over others in number of outstanding cartoonists and strong comic art infrastructures. Those singled out here are Iran and Cuba—perhaps, for obvious reasons. Both are targets of tyrannical trump (purposely not capitalized). At the time of this writing (March 16), Trump had invaded Iran by air, land, and sea, not in response to any provocation on the part of Iran, but as a distraction from the pedophile charges leveled against him and his dozens of felonious convictions. Simultaneously, he has been quoted as saying that Cuba’s leader must be removed, as happened with the leader of Venezuela, by kidnapping, and of Iran, by killing both at the orders of trump. In mid-March, Cuba experienced an island-wide blackout, in large part because of the oil blockade orchestrated by Washington. At about the same time, Trump, in his obnoxious bullying fashion, boasted that he would have “the honor of taking Cuba.”
Comics art’s rich and robust presence in Iran reaches back to the Mughal Empire to Persia’s east, 500 years ago, when a couple of emperors kept court caricaturists to draw psychological portraiture. At the beginning of the 19th Century, itinerant Persian artists decorated coffee and tea houses with stories in comics formats to attract customers, and by 1900 the country had already published more than 400 humor magazine titles.
In contemporary times, the richly government-supported cartooning community has had a sturdy infrastructure, made up of a museum, many exhibitions, an elaborate biennial (in which I participated in 1999, 2013), as many as six humor magazines at a given time, the House of Cartoons, started in the mid-1990s primarily as a training center, and about ten small clubs (e.g. White Crow, Zangooleh, Talkhkak, Famous) for professional linkage and advancement. Iran also ranks very high worldwide in the number of winners and participants in international comics art competitions and women cartoonists, particularly in an Islamic country (see, Lent, 2023: 239–243).
What remains intact among these structures and the plight of our Iranian cartoonist friends is not known at this stage of the Trumpian war. We can only remain hopeful and optimistic.
Cuban authorities and the society at large hold humor and cartooning in high regard, maintaining for decades, three humor/cartoon periodicals, Palante, Dedeté, and Melaito; the International Humor Biennial since 1978–1979; the Humorists Section of the Journalists Union of Cuba; the Visual Arts Section of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba; El Museo del Humor since 1979; and at least five other cartoon and/or humor repositories. A number of world-class cartoonists have hailed from Cuba, among them, Conrado W. Massaguer Díaz (1889–1965), Eduardo Abela Villareal (1891–1965), Antonio Prohías (1921–1998), Juan Padrón Blanco (1947–2020), Angel Boligán (1965– ), and Aristides Esteban Hernández Guerrero (1963– ).
Let’s hope that this superior humor/cartoon community is spared from any Trumpian lunacy.
Congratulatory Note
On a more pleasant note, congratulations to Stephen R. Bissette upon being appointed Vermont’s sixth Cartoonist Laureate. Steve is known internationally as the cartoonist of Saga of the Swamp Thing (along with Alan Moore and John Totleben) and many other works. He has been a longtime subscriber and supporter of the International Journal of Comic Art.
90 Years, or 32,850 Days, or 788,400 Hours
My friend, and a strong pillar of this journal, Mike Rhode, has made sure that I remember, I am wiggling through my nineteenth year, by publishing InterGalactic Journal of Comic Art, a “parody festschrift fanzine,” with a cover by Pulitzer Prize political cartoonist, Matt Wuerker, and whimsical cartoons or snippets by José Alaniz, David Beard, Bart Beaty, Troy Michael Bordun, Stephen Connor, Ian Gordon, Charles Hatfield, Julian Gene Kannenberg, Jr., Thony Loui, Gert Meesters, Matt Morrison, Mike Rhode, Leonard Rifas, Mark C. Rogers, Marc Singer, Lizzy Walker, and Rusty Witek.
I am grateful to Mike for this tribute and to all of those friends and acquaintances who took the time to pen something. Mike was also responsible for publishing an earlier festschrift, Interplanetary Journal of Comic Art: Lent Knows, for my seventeenth birthday.
Preaching to the Choir
Only on a very rare occasion have I used this space to bemoan the financial straits the International Journal of Comic Art finds itself in because it is preaching to the choir. Those of you reading this missive likely are already subscribers. But, just in case… here goes. As we bring out this issue, our fifty-fifth, we call upon you to help us out. How so?
1. Have the library of your institution subscribe. 2. Seek subscriptions from comics art colleagues. 3. Promote the online option. For years, there were pleas that IJOCA should offer a digital version, and when we did, only a handful subscribed. 4. Perhaps, seek advertisers; our page rates are inexpensive. 5. Promote IJOCA in magazines, newsletters, fanzines, podcasts, blogs, and websites that you or acquaintances are affiliated with. 6. Provide us with ideas for successful fundraising. email: jlent @ temple.edu. Thank you.
In Appreciation
Every once in a while, I wish to express my greatest appreciation to three individuals who volunteered their services to the International Journal of Comic Art nearly from its birth, namely, Jaewoon Kwon, Mike Rhode, and Mu Lin. We could not have achieved what we have without these gentlemen.
No comments:
Post a Comment