One of the most naturally funny cartoonists I’ve encountered in my travels is Sean Bieri, yet I’m betting most of my readers aren’t familiar with his work. He’s a bit scattered across the Web, here and here and maybe elsewhere, but really deserves a more conspicuous showcase. Here’s my bid to bump him up a notch.

[Note that the illo above is from years ago. I’ve seen others use the gag since, but I’m pretty sure Sean came up with it on his own. Click on the image for more of Sean’s great “Meatbeaters.”]

It somehow slipped my mind that America has its own website, but if a nation of 300 million wanted to pick a cartoonist to profile, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy than Gene.

[Link via Dirk]

I saw some great new work in Barcelona that was published in Spanish, but hadn’t been translated into English yet (don’t have those books at hand at the moment, so I’ll save them for another post). 

Meanwhile, though, one small press comic that caught my eye while in Spain was actually from an Italian cartoonist living and studying in Barcelona named Giulia Sagramola. It was called Riunione di Famiglia and if you know any Italian, you can tell me if the story is any good, but I liked the art and storytelling.

Turns out there’s more at her site, including intriguing short subjects in varying styles, with tantalizing descriptions in English. The story Perchè non ballate? sports the following note (I’ve repaired the syntax a bit):

Graduation project: a study about comics storytelling.

“Why don’t you dance?” is a beautiful Raymond Carver novel I’ve asked to 4 friends to read and to summarize ìn their own ways. Then I’ve anaylized the texts and used them to draw my comics. The results are 4 versions of the same story drawn and composed in 4 different ways.

The project wants to analyze the grammar and composition of comics pages. I collected the 4 exercises in a book that I designed and structured with a written part introducing comics history and its language evolution. 

This project is looking for a publisher, if you are interested in please contact me! 

You heard her.

Milk and Mint also looks really cool, though if she had any in Barcelona, I don’t recall. Hmm. Time to look through the bags…

Fortunately, for us language-impaired Angloids, you can read her short diary comic Cosas Raras in English at grandpapier.org.

Fantagraphics is offering a 10-Page PDF excerpt and slideshow of Carol Tyler’s first full-length graphic novel You’ll Never Know Book 1: A Good and Decent Man. Tyler’s short comics include some true classics, so this book is generating a lot of well-earned anticipation.

Found via Spurge in the middle of one of those depressing “women in comics” arguments which always seem to bury the headline of the remarkable flood of great new comics by women in favor of rehashed 20th Century grudge-matches and signpost tugs-of-war.

Whatever your opinion of the history of women in comics, there’s enough comics in this woman to last a lifetime.

Beaver and Steve creator James Turner offers his take on the creative process and yeah, sometimes that’s just how it is. 

[Thanks to Dirk Deppey at Journalista for the link (crediting Xaviar Xerexes).]

…this collaboration with writer Alexander Danner from 2005 is five kinds of wonderful if you’ve never read it. Reading it again yesterday, I was reminded of Neil Gaiman at his most dry (and most succinct—it’s a quick read). 

Neal Von Flue used the original “infinite canvas” application developed at Vienna’s University of Technology by Markus Müller under the supervision of Peter Purgathofer in 2003-2004 (not to be confused with Microsoft Live Lab’s recent experiment). The app isn’t being actively developed anymore, but a few artists gave it a try with some cool results. The implementation on Alexander and Neal’s story is simple, but I think it adds a lot to the reading experience.

Tymothi Godek offers a gargantuan sidescroller simply called “!” that I enjoyed— it’s just a “rough draft” but an entertaining and brain-bending read nonetheless.

Thanks to the Neal Von Flue (no slouch in this department himself) for pointing us to “!” in the comments section of the XKCD post from Friday. Tymothi’s experiment, like the much shorter XKCD strip is playing with parallel narratives, but ramping it up with more characters and some great intersections. Despite the crazed fantasy storyline, Tym is mapping the sort of intersecting, branching, and colliding paths that people in real life take all the time, but that only comics can make visible. Very cool.

Just had the pleasure (via Bob Weil at Norton) of devouring an advance copy of illustrator David Small’s Stitches: A Memoir due out this fall. Get it and read it when the time comes, it’s strong stuff. Small comes to comics via children’s books, but he’s deadly serious about the form, and exploits it masterfully to paint an unforgettable picture of his harrowing childhood.

There are some amazing books on their way in the next several months. David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp is imminent (just assuming that one’s amazing like everyone else—poor David) and I recently got advance peeks at Hope Larson‘s Mercury and Vera Brosgol‘s in-progress GN for First Second, both of which are the best work to date from these two powerful cartoonists.

Comics is changing. Behind the drawing table, people who would have been content splashing about in other fields a decade ago are swimming to comics’ deep end without even taking a breath. And on the drawing table, there’s a growing understanding of comics’ power to relate emotion, POV, and the warp and weave of memory. The compact, literal, rat-a-tat of post-Kirby mainstream storytelling that I started out reading is finally giving away to something far deeper, stranger, and potentially more beautiful.

Comics may not have its Beethoven yet, but he/she might just be reading this stuff in a year or two, between Math and Social Studies, and realizing for the first time just what they want to do when they grow up.

Talked to…

…Ryan North about Music.
…Kate Beaton about Books.
…Bryan Lee O’Malley about Exhaustion.
…Seth about Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka.
…Derek Kirk Kim about Eternal Smile.
…Paul Pope about International Styles.
…Carla Speed McNeil about Hats.
…Faith Erin Hicks about Hair.
…Alec Longstreth about Beards.
…Chris Butcher about OMG we barely saw you!
…Mark Siegel about Mad Men.
…Mark Askwith about Everything Else.

Met…

…Emmanuel Guibert.
…Joey Comeau and Emily Horne.
…Jillian Tamaki (narrowly missed Mariko).
…Nate Powell.
…Miss Lasko Gross.
…Josh Cotter.

Failed…

…to meet the great Yoshihiro Tatsumi.
…to spend more than a minute with many other friends.

Learned that…

…Joey Comeau can be frighteningly loud.
…Rich Stevens should be on every panel.
…Chester Brown carries gigantic bags on his bike.

And much more, but that’s off the top of my head. Thanks to everyone at TCAF for a great weekend!

Only one day until the whole family flies to Toronto with me for TCAF! You can find me wandering around a lot, but also at:

Saturday, 10:15am-11:15am: Concept Comics: Abstract Comics Ideas. Bill Kartalopoulos will investigate the challenges and opportunities of communicating abstract ideas in the comics form with artists Tom Kaczynski, Scott McCloud, Dash Shaw and Jason Shiga. Learning Centre 1.

Saturday, 2:00pm-3:30pm: Scott McCloud: FAQ. The author of Understanding Comics, Making Comics, and ZOT! will be talking and taking questions from the audience! Have you ever had a question for Scott McCloud? Well here’s your chance to ask Scott! TD Gallery.

Sunday, 1:00pm-2:30pm: Newspapers, Comic Books, and The Internet. Featuring R. Stevens, Scott McCloud, Stuart Immonen, Brendan Buford, and John Martz. Moderated by Steven Murray. Learning Centre 1

[Photo: Edgar Wright’s snapshot of Mr. O’Malley on the set of the Toronto-based Scott Pilgrim film w/Michael Cera, filming right now.]