Tag Archive for 'Chris Ware'

Hype: Chris Ware Conversations

Published on 19. 01. 2017 in comics and cartooning and hype & linkage. Closed Tags: , , , .


The latest volume in University of Mississippi Press’ series compiling interviews with individual cartoonists features Chris Ware. It is edited by Jean Braithwaite, characteristically beautifully covered by Ware himself, and includes a compelling selection of very different interviews spanning the cartoonist’s career — including rarely-seen ones made very early on in his career as well as a couple of brand new ones with Ware and one with his wife Marnie.

The book also contains my 2010 conversation (see here and here) with Ware from the Copenhagen comics festival Komiks.dk (which has since changed its name to Copenhagen Comics and whose most recent edition is coming up next month). I am proud in general to be in this series for the second time (the first was the Chester Brown volume; see also here) and in this particular, skilfully edited volume in particular. Do check it out.

Building Stories Roundtable at Nummer9

Published on 07. 01. 2013 in comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism and hype & linkage. Closed Tags: , , .


For those who read Danish, or are willing to brave a Google translation, myself and a few colleagues — Thomas Thorhauge, Erik Barkman and Johan F. Krarup — have discussed Chris Ware’s latest major publication, Building Stories — one of the past year’s most anticipated and remarkable comics — at some length in roundtable-style format. It’s at the comics site Nummer9 and can be read here.

The Week

Published on 14. 10. 2012 in comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism, culture, current affairs, hype & linkage and music. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Julie Christie and Oskar Werner in François Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

The week in review

This week I have a Danish-context comics-related grievance I want to address, so please excuse the shift in language here. International links below!

Bogtillægget til denne uges Weekendavis skæmmes af et fejlinformeret og tendentiøst opslag. En ærgerlig plet på en ellers som regel velredigeret og seriøs publikation. Kan det overraske, at emnet for begge artikler på opslaget er tegneserierelateret?

På venstresiden får vi en kommentar til sidste uges tildeling af Kronsprinsparrets Kulturpris til tegneren Jakob Martin Strid, skrevet af Bo Bjørnvig, der tydeligvis stadig ikke er kommet sig over halvfemsernes skingre presseopgør med tressernes venstrefløj (kan læses online her). Bjørnvig pointerer det pudsige i, at folk — herunder kunstnere — bliver mere konservative med årene, mere specifikt at Strid (og Bjørn Nørgaard, og givetvis også, ad åre, dilletanterne i kunstnergruppen Surrend) fralægger sig tidligere tiders ekstreme holdninger for mere samfundsbevarende af slagsen. Der bliver minsandten også plads til en stikpille til Carsten Jensen.

Alt er, med andre ord, ved det gamle. Continue reading ‘The Week’

The Week

Published on 16. 09. 2012 in comics and cartooning, hype & linkage, journal and music. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The week in review

Not much to report from this angle this week, apart from the fact that the Jewish new year reminds me that I’ve been back in the ole home country for over a year now. Last year’s Rosh Hashannah kind of marked a fresh return to new beginnings here and it’s been a great ride since then, one of the best years I’ve had. Thanks to everybody taking part.

Links!

  • I would like to supplement this week’s welcome announcement that Fantagraphics is going to publish Ed Piskor’s online comic The Hip Hop Family Tree with this interview with Piskor, conducted by my man PTA on said piece of edutainment.
  • Also in comics, the Hooded Utilitarian’s five-year Anniversary of Hate! has brought some good criticism to the table. I liked in particular Steven Grant’s essay on bad comics and why the field still makes sense as a vocation. Plus! HU has reprinted Ng Suat Tong’s notorious Comics Journal essay from 2003 on why the EC New Trend comics are among the most overrated in the canon, supplemented by a back-and-forth on the issue with R. Fiore.
  • Other (more!) comics-related links: Slavoj Žižek on The Dark Knight Rises, Tom Spurgeon on Dave Sim’s recent, depressing letter of resignation, Chris Ware on display in New York.
  • Meanwhile in hip hop, I really enjoyed what El-P had to say about Nas’ classic debut album Illmatic (1993) in this otherwise rather dumb list of best albums of the nineties, and I totally dug this video of a young Kanye West rapping with his mom.

    • Picks of the Week

    Published on 30. 05. 2011 in comics and cartooning, hype & linkage, music and pictorial arts. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

    The picks of the week from around the web.

  • This is a well-written piece on the sometimes hermetic and puzzling vagaries of art world authentication. It doesn’t change, however, that there is no way the Buffalo Pietà at its center was painted by Michelangelo. Look at it. The provenance may be compelling, though the argument about the wax seal on the back seems iffy. And the underdrawing could of course be by the master, as the owner and his conservator champion claim, but the cropped infrared published in the interactive section of the article (look right) is hard to judge by. Nothing about it yells Michelangelo at this viewer though.
  • The passing of Gil Scott-Heron brought this fine personal tribute from one of his talented heirs, Michael Franti of Spearhead, but if you only read one thing about him, make it this profile by Alec Wilkinson, written last year for the New Yorker.
  • Comics links. Two excellent pieces up at The Comics Journal this week: the latest installment in Ryan Holmberg’s history of gekiga and Ken Parille’s analysis of creation as a motif in Jack Kirby and Chris Ware.