News about the premier academic journal devoted to all aspects of cartooning and comics -- the International Journal of Comic Art (ISSN 1531-6793) published and edited by John Lent.

Monday, September 12, 2016

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMIC ART 18-1 Table of Contents

The current issue is shipping now and subscribers should receive it soon.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMIC ART
Vol. 18, No. 1 Spring/Summer 2016

Calvinball: Sport, Imagination and Meaning in Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes
Jeffrey 0. Segrave and John A. Cosgrove
1
Mali & Werner's Mike: Underground Sensibility in a German Advertising Comic
Paul M. Malone
14
The Meanings of Comics
Chris Gavaler
36
Founding a Dynasty and an Art-Form: John Doyle (1797-1868)
Richard Scully
60
Tactility Meets Visuality: Race, Sexuality, and Texture in Howard Cruse's Stuck Rubber Baby
Ashley Manchester
103
Forbidden Readings: The British Parliamentary Debate on "American-Style" Comic Books
Ignacio Fernandez Sarasola
118
Corruption Among the Cats: Hypocrisy Exposed by Liao Bingxiong
Linn A. Christiansen
138
Eye/I: Rodolphe Topffer's Style and the Concept of Graphiation
Charlotte Pylyser
157
Art and Science in Pere Joan's Nocilla Experience (2011)
Benjamin Fraser
169
Comics as Borderlands: The Asymmetrical Relations of Power in La Perdida, by Jessica Abel
Thayse Madella
196
An Independent Production: Comics in Paraiba (1963-1991) Regina Maria Rodrigues Behar
Waldomiro Vergueiro
211
Traces of Mauritian Origins and National Identity in Two Mauritian Comics
Aurelie Meilin Pottier
240
Syntax of Sound Symbolic Words: A Study of the Hindi Comic Books in India
Subir Dey and Prasad Bokil
260
Migration of Comics Onomatopoeia to Other Supports
Thiago de Almeida Castor do Amaral
278
Burma's Loudspeaker
An exclusive report by The Surreal McCoy
293
Grim Reapers and Shinigami: Personifications of Death in Comics and Manga
Marc Wolterbeek
297
Economy of the Comic Book Author's Soul
Nathaniel Goldberg and Chris Gavaler
331
Si Jin Kwi's Comic by Otto Suastika (Siauw Tik Kwie)
Toni Masdiono and lwan Zahar
355
Revenge, Roads, and Ronin: Finding the Weird West in Contemporary Japanese Anime
Joseph Christopher Schaub
368
Kenya's Kham and His Multi-Faceted Career
Msanii Kimani wa Wanjiru
379
Caricaturing lmran Khan during His Anti-Electoral-Rigging Campaign in Pakistan - Naveed Iqbal Chaudhry
Amna Ashraf
392
Hong Kong Comics after the Mid-1990s
Matthew M. Chew, Boris L. Pun, and Kofi P. Chan
416
It Started With A Kiss: Reframing Superheroines' Visual Narratives
Chadwick L. Roberts and Anita K. McDaniel
434
The "Not So Dark" World of the Dark Knight
Rima Bhattacharya
458
History and Philosophy of Manga Translation in North America
Katherine Lundy
477
Cultural Revolutions and Stylistic Evolutions or, Reboots and Remakes: A Conversation with Derf
Janis Breckenridge
493
Character Consumption and Character Industries in Japan
Zhiyu Zhang, Feng Su, Chang Fengxia
506
    The Next Generation of Comics Scholarship
Huang Yao's Roar of the Nation I (1938): Multi-media Approach to Wartime Cartooning
Harrison Douglass
525
Two Frameworks for the Interpretation of Metaphoric and Literal Size Depictions in Comic Books
Christopher Crawford and Igor Juricevic
561
    An Essay
Exploring Wakanda: Black Superheroes, Comic Books, and Persistent Tropes
Douglas Clarke
585
    A Preliminary Study
Feminine Representation in Misty: Brazilian and American Editions
Daniela Marino
594
It's a MAD World After All: Confessions of a MAD Collector
Jason Levine
602
The Printed Word
John A. Lent
608
Book Reviews
David Kunzle
John A. Lent
Kirsten Mollegaard
Lim Cheng Tju
613
Exhibition and Media Reviews
Edited by Mike Rhode
Ayanna Dozier
Janis Breckenridge
627

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

"Scratchy sketchbook drawings, doodlings, exquisite caricatures and humorous paintings": Reviewing Richard Thompson's last books


by John A. Lent, publisher and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Comic Art. This
review will appear in print in the Spring/Summer 2016 IJOCA issue later this summer.



Apatoff, David, Nick Galifianakis, Mike Rhode, Chris Sparks, and Bill Watterson. The Art of Richard Thompson.  Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2014. 224 pp. $35. ISBN 978-1-4494-4795-3.

*Thompson, Richard and Mike Rhode (editor). The Incompleat Art of Why Things Are (preview edition).  Arlington, VA: Comics DC, 2015. 179pp.
*Thompson, Richard, with Mike Rhode and Chris Sparks.  Compleating Cul de Sac, Asheville, NC: Team Cul de Sac & Arlington, VA: Comic DC, 2015. 146 pp.

            Richard Thompson, who has had exalted praise heaped upon him from the likes of Arnold Roth, Pat Oliphant, and Edward Sorel, figured as the subject or author of three books since 2014*, on all of which, IJOCA exhibitions and media reviews editor Mike Rhode was a main sparkplug.  For at least two decades, Mike has enriched comic art and its scholarship through his many bibliographies, resource aid to researchers (check out acknowledgements in books by comics researchers and you are likely to see Mike’s name), and interviews with cartoonists published in his online Comics DC, IJOCA, Washington City Paper, and elsewhere.
            Mike is a close friend of Thompson, recognized by Richard sometimes in jest, such as when he signed a copy of his book for Mike: “to my friend, chauffeur, source, & #1 stalker.”  I assume the “stalker” label has to do with Mike’s hounding him to gather together in books the abundance of strips, gag cartoons, humorous drawings, and paintings Richard has penned over the years.
            With The Art of Richard Thompson, Mike was part of a team of editors that also included David Apatoff, Nick Galifianakis, Chris Sparks, and Bill Watterson.  In the credits, Mike is listed as “Editor, Project Coordinator, and Copy Editor.”  Mike’s key role was noted with a touch of humor in Galifianakis’s “Introduction”: “…Mike was called in to focus our collective ADHD.  He took to the job, maybe too well, eventually nicknaming himself ‘The Enforcer.’  He’s been superb.  We will never speak to him after this, but he has been superb.”   Mike was sole editor and his Comics DC co-publisher of The Incompleat Art of Why Things Are and co-editor with Chris Sparks of Compleating Cul de Sac.  Comics DC also co-published Compleating Cul de Sac. 
            Now, to Richard Thompson and the books under review.
Thompson's original art for IJOCA
            Richard Thompson is best known for his “Cul de Sac” comic strip that was nationally syndicated for five years in 150 newspapers.  Starring four-year old Alice Otterloop and her eight-year-old brother Petey, the strip dealt with their relationship and the foibles of living the suburban life.  Thompson retired the strip in September 2012, three years after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
            Richard Thompson’s genius has been spread over different forms and genres (magazine, book, and newspaper illustration, comic strips, caricature, humorous paintings) and shared by an assortment of audiences during his long stints with periodicals such as The New Yorker, Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, and National Geographic.  He is much respected by other artists for his widespread knowledge, whimsical drawings, articulate use of words, and experimentation with styles and formats.   
            The Art of Richard Thompson captures the life and career of the artist through interviews or discussions with Galifianakis, Peter de Sève, Gene Weingarten, and John Kascht, and essays by Thompson himself and Apatoff.  The book is attractively designed with hundreds of Thompson’s art works, including scratchy sketchbook drawings, doodlings, exquisite and wall-displayable caricatures and humorous paintings, parodies of other masters’ work (e.g. “Little Neuro in Slumberland”), regularly published strips (“Cul de Sac,” “Richard’s Poor Almanac(k)”), and one-shot (sometimes rhyming), multi-panel, nonsense-filled “instructive” comics.  Some cartoons could easily serve as editorial cartoons.  Acclaimed illustrator John Cuneo summed up Thompson’s art very well:

Everything in a Richard Thompson drawing is funny--each line is put down with a caricaturist’s eye and cartoonist’s vigor.  It’s a rare and daunting thing to pull off; a sofa in a room is somehow drawn ‘funny’ the same way the person sitting on it is.  And also the dog, the side table, the lamp, the vase of flowers, the teacup and the lettering--everything gets filtered through a visual sensibility that’s grounded in exquisite draftsmanship and giddy comic exaggeration.  It becomes a wholly realized world--and it’s delightful. 
           
            The prose of The Art of Richard Thompson suits the drawings: casual, to the point, and sometimes meant to be funny.  Half (9) of the sub-chapters were written by Thompson; three others were interviews with him.  Thompson’s articles recounted all types of subjects--his new favorite nib, music, caricaturing Berlioz, thinking up a funny name for his “Cul de Sac” family, and the circumstances surrounding his doing a drawing during a Deep Brain Stimulation surgical procedure performed on him. 
            The Incompleat Art of Why Things Are and Compleating Cul de Sac are part of Mike Rhode’s continuing efforts to fill out the Richard Thompson story.  “Why Things Are” was a weekly column by Joel Achenbach in The Washington Post, which Thompson illustrated with a cartoon.  In the foreword to the book, Achenbach said he would pose a question for the column and Thompson would come up with an hilarious drawing.  An example: The question--Why is time travel impossible?  The illustration-- a man in a time machine hovering over Adam and Eve and the snake and disappointedly bellowing, “Oops! Too Late.”  Or, “Why do we presume that human meat tastes worse than, say, cow meat or pig meat?”  Thompson’s image--a meat counter called “Downer Pass Gourmet” with a butcher standing next to meats called “Franks,” “Chuck,” and “Steak Diane.” 
            Compleating Cul de Sac supplements Thompson’s The Complete Cul de Sac, which Rhode and Sparks explain is not complete, because Thompson was ill while compiling the book and “accidentally left out some strips,” actually more than 100.  Compleating Cul de Sac collects the “lost” strips, as well as “the early inchoate musings about what the strip should be, the promotional material, the sketches for fans, and finally some fugitive Team Cul de Sac charity art,” the latter to benefit the fight against Parkinson’s Disease.  As with the other two books above, Compleating Cul de Sac is a rich compendium of brilliant art going back to his high school newspaper strip, “Fleabag Theater,”  Thompson interviews with Rhode and John Read, three live Post website chats Thompson participated in, and, of course, the missing “Cul de Sac” strips. 
            Together or apart, these books provide hours of enjoyment at the same time that they describe in an interesting fashion how a top-level artist got to where he is, how he generates ideas, characters, and strips, and how he copes with adversities.  Rhode and the others responsible for compiling this material have done a great service not just to Thompson’s name, but also to comic art practitioners, those waiting in the shadows to become cartoonists, and to the growing field of comics scholarship.  


            *Both Compleating Cul de Sac and The Incompleat Art of “Why Things Are” are no longer available from Lulu.com.  Instead, Lost Art Books under Joseph Procopio has undertaken The Richard Thompson Library project and will be publishing editions of them this fall.  Compleating Cul de Sac will be published in a second, substantially expanded edition with additional interviews and recently-unearthed artwork. After these two volumes, other books are projected in the series -- one on caricature by Thompson, pulled together by Scott Stewart, another collecting the best of his comic strip “Richard's Poor Almanac” compiled by Rhode, and likely a Thompson sketchbook.

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

IJOCA Spring/Summer issue delayed

The Spring/Summer 2016 (Vol. 18, No. 1) issue of IJOCA has been delayed in production.

We expect to ship it at the beginning of September 2016.

We are very sorry and thank you sincerely for your patience.

The deadline for manuscripts to be considered for 18:2 (Fall/Winter 2016) has been extended until August 31, 2016.

We expect the Fall/Winter 2016 issue to ship in December.