While at the CXC comics show in Columbus, I did a couple of interviews in these weird little pod study rooms just off of the festival floor. It was very convenient to have and easy to use.
My first interview was with Sean T Collins. Sean has been involved comics criticism since the early 2000’s. He has been on the inkstuds before for a critics roundtable many years. I don’t see Sean very often, but I thought since we would be at the same show, it would be a good chance to catch up.
Sean has stepped away from directly focusing comics criticism to the greener pastures of tv show reviewing for many high profile entertain sites. He recently he posted a list of 33 favorite graphic novels for the Thrillist.
Sean’s next upcoming comics related project is Mirror Mirror 2 from 2d Cloud. An anthology that he is co-editing with Julia Gfrörer. The contributor list is aces and I am really looking forward to checking it out when it comes out in the new year.
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Hmmm…who is to blame for the current preference in comics for “young” creators? maybe this preference is held by an equally “young” readership who have grown tired of attempting to relate to artists constantly referencing, restating and incorrectly exaggerating what culture and politics occurred in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. This relates very closely to Chris Ott and why he is disliked. In many of his videos he suggests that young music critics are too naive to engage with canonical albums without the guidance of more learned critics. If only physically what Chris Ott and the previous comics vanguard expect is exhausting as the young creators must pay their proper respects to the greats. fuck Bob Dylan and his Nobel peace prize. All joking aside my serious point is that it seems old cartoonist don’t care too much about new work coming out so its a little questionable why they should be included in a new anthology. The ageism is mutual
And yet good work is good work and should not be ignored in any case. I think Collins’ point about an entire era in comics and feminism in comics being often overlooked and forgotten is a good one. I don’t think he’s exactly arguing for the tired old cannon here, there’s just certain work, that wasn’t made in the last 15 years, that he feels shouldn’t fade into obscurity.
Al Columbia is extremely popular (much respect) and anything he draws I’m sure FG will immediately publish. Frances Bean Cobain has a tattoo of Al’s artwork on her arm.
To me it just doesn’t make sense to include someone like him in a “new” anthology beside new artists. I see you could try to frame a grouping such as this as if it will create an equivalency between the varying creators , but I’m not sure that’s how it works- you can’t exorcise competition that effortlessly. Someone possessing the renown of Al Columbia might outpace his anthology mates. mixing all these different weight-classes discourages the light-weight rookies and makes them more likely to despair and not participate. There should be thousands of comics scouts giving book deals to 23 year old creators every day
hey,just heard the interview with the t collins guy and he named a polski chick who make dark comics.i´m also polish(also making dark comics)and,not having a tweeter account,i cant ask this to the collins guy.what´s the name of the chick?
Aleksandra Waliszewska
Awesome interview! Thank you so much. A much appreciated shot in the arm for me. I met Sean in San Diego and loved to hang out and talk comics with him. This reminded me of those conversations.
I would like to disagree with my earlier comments. For a readership it’s probably more enjoyable to read comics that are know to be exceptional than to sort through all the new content coming out in the “now”. The readership wants good work and Julia/Sean understand this and are delerivering and ignoring the hack attempting to critique them anonymously. Only a nameless creator without any actual work would complain about such a system as I did before. I’ve brought shame on myself and the community. I will now take a vow of silence
There are so many strange misconceptions in this series of conflicting comments from a variously numbered listener that I hardly know where to begin. Normally, therefore, I wouldn’t begin at all, but since this stuff is out there now I’d like to correct the record.
As I mentioned in the interview, our oldest contributor, Nicole Claveloux, is 76; our youngest, Laura Lannes, is 23, I believe. Aidan Koch, Heather Benjamin, Mou, Meaghan Garvey, Céline Loup, Trungles, Gretchen Alice Felker-Martin, and Apolo Cacho are all in their 20s as far as I know; Lala Albert, Simon Hanselmann, Julia Gfrörer, Noel Freibert, Jonny Negron, and Sean Christensen are all 35-and-under. This leaves Nicole, Renee French, Dame Darcy, Josh Simmons, Uno Moralez, Al Columbia, Carol Swain, Chloe Piene, and Clive Barker as the dreaded elder-statesperson enforcers of the comics canon described earlier, and I think it’s clear simply from looking at that list of people how absurd that notion is. None have either the ability or the inclination to enforce ageist views of alternative comics on anyone, and none are part of the pejoratively applied “comics canon” so resented by some cartoonists and critics. (I suppose there’s me myself to consider, but all I’ll say in my own defense is that I helped put this line-up together; the ages of the contributors alone should be ample evidence that we oppose ageism in either direction.
The only politically programmatic intentions we had with this book, as far as comics culture is concerned, is to include the work of veteran women alternative cartoonists whose work means a lot to us but which has too often been overlooked on both sides of comics’ generational and gender divide for the reasons described in the interview; and to promote dark and difficult work out of the belief that it reflects the world around us and hopefully nudges us in the direction of empathy.
Dear Sean T. Collins,
I am breaking my vow of silence to tell you I am surprised that you responded to my comments. My experiences in posting have been limited to sites like Youtube and Reddit so I currently feeling alarmed at how much weight my somewhat insincere comments carry existing on this platform. This has caused me to fully realize how potentially claustrophobic alternative comics culture is. As far as my confused views, sadly I am basically a crypto-normatavist