The Comics Journal 301

Comics artist Kevin O'Neill explains how he broke into the comics field at the age of 16 and discusses how his artistic vision meshes with writer Alan Moore's on the hit series League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the title's switch from DC to indy publisher Top Shelf. Also, syndicated political cartoonist and Academy Award-nominated animator Bill Plympton talks about his long and varied career.

"Sacco brings the conflict down to the most human level, allowing us to imagine our way inside it, to make the desperation he discovers, in some small way, our own."—Los Angeles Times Rafah, a town at the bottommost tip of the Gaza Strip, has long been a notorious flashpoint in the bitter Middle East conflict. Buried deep in the archives is one bloody incident, in 1956, that left 111 Palestinians shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to a long history of killing, that day in Rafah—cold-blooded massacre or dreadful mistake—reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war. In a quest to get to the heart of what happened, Joe Sacco immerses himself in the daily life of Rafah and the neighboring town of Khan Younis, uncovering Gaza past and present. As in Palestine and Safe Area Goražde, his unique visual journalism renders a contested landscape in brilliant, meticulous detail. Spanning fifty years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, Footnotes in Gaza—Sacco's most ambitious work to date—transforms a critical conflict of our age into intimate and immediate experience.

"The story traces the lives and techniques of Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon, RipKirby), Stan Drake (Juliet Jones), Hal Foster (Prince Valiant), and more, dissecting their techniques through recreations of their artwork,and highlighting the metatextual resonances that bind them together"--Page 4 of cove

In December 1977, struggling Canadian comic book artist Dave Sim self-published the first issue of Cerebus the Aardvark, a Conan the Barbarian satire featuring a foul-tempered, sword-wielding creature trapped in a human world. Over the next 26 years, Sim, and later collaborator Gerhard, produced an epic 6,000-page graphic novel, the longest-running English language comic series by a single creative team. They revolutionized the comics medium by showing other artists that they too could forgo major publishers, paving the way for such successes as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Bone. This work, the first collection of critical essays on Cerebus, provides a multifaceted approach to Sim and Gerhard's complex and entertaining oeuvre, including their innovative use of the comic medium, storytelling and satiric techniques, technical and visual sophistication, and Sim's use of the comic as commentary on gender and religion.

Bart Beaty and Benjamin Woo work to historicize why it is that certain works or creators have come to define the notion of a "quality comic book," while other works and creators have been left at the fringes of critical analysis.

A spectacular anniversary issue featuring intergenerational dialogues between alt wiz Kevin Huizenga and reigning Maus king Art Spiegelman, indy comics publisher Zak Sally and Love and Rockets co-creator Jaime Hernandez, Bottomless Belly Button auteur Dash Shaw and David Mazzucchelli and many, many more.

In 1977, Dave Sim (b. 1956) began to self-publish Cerebus, one of the earliest and most significant independent comics, which ran for 300 issues and ended, as Sim had planned from early on, in 2004. Over the run of the comic, Sim used it as a springboard to explore not only the potential of the comics medium but also many of the core assumptions of Western society. Through it he analyzed politics, the dynamics of love, religion, and, most controversially, the influence of feminism—which Sim believes has had a negative impact on society. Moreover, Sim inserted himself squarely into the comic as Cerebus’s creator, thereby inviting criticism not only of the creation, but also of the creator. What few interviews Sim gave often pushed the limits of what an interview might be in much the same way that Cerebus pushed the limits of what a comic might be. In interviews Sim is generous, expansive, provocative, and sometimes even antagonistic. Regardless of mood, he is always insightful and fascinating. His discursive style is not conducive to the sound bite or to easy summary. Many of these interviews have been out of print for years. And, while the interviews range from very general, career-spanning explorations of his complex work and ideas, to tightly focused discussions on specific details of Cerebus, all the interviews contained herein are engaging and revealing.