The Comics Journal 306

In this issue, Gary Groth interviews Roz Chast, the New Yorker humor cartoonist turned graphic memoirist (Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?). TCJ #306 focuses on the intersections between comics and politics. It includes op-eds on the importance (and lack thereof) of modern political cartooning. Also featured is a meditation on the creator of the Dilbert newspaper comic strip, Scott Adams; a piece about Daisy Scott, the first African American woman political cartoonist; a gallery of underground cartoonist John Pound’s code-generated comics; portraits of mass shooting victims; a selection of Spider-Gwen artist Chris Vision’s sketchbook pages; and other essays and galleries.

The Comics Journal #304 features Gary Groth in conversation with outspoken Tasmanian cartoonist Simon Hanselmann, who discusses how his tragicomedy webcomic starring a witch, a cat, and an owl became an internationally acclaimed, best-selling phenomenon, collected in books such as Megahex and Bad Gateway. This issue also highlights the labor and economics issues facing the medium — the past and future of organizing a comics union, work-for-hire contracts, and how comic conventions can better serve creators — with the Journal’s hallmark candor. Other features include an exclusive look at the unfinished graphic novel that Eisner and Geisel Award winner Geoffrey Hayes was working on before his untimely death in 2017, a peak inside the lush sketchbook of Sophie Franz, a timely work by Brazilian cartoonist Laura Lannes, a reconsideration of the comics canon by Skin Horse cartoonist Shaenon K. Garrity, and more!

A groundbreaking anthology of contemporary literary indie manga. 332 pages. Perfect bound 7 × 10 inches format book. 1-color risograph printed interiors on a creamy natural paper stock. 4-color risograph covers, with a deluxe soft touch cover lamination. Features work from 13 artists (including the artist for the cover illustration) from the Japanese indie manga scene, almost all of whom have never been published in English before. Like the previous issue, Glaeolia no. 2 includes an essay introducing the participating authors and works to the English literary world, as well as endnotes contextualizing aspects of the stories, and a complete author biography ?section.

Gardens of Glass is the first comprehensive collection of comics by Lando, bringing together the very best of his short works produced over the last five years for Decadence Comics, the influential publishing collective he co-founded with Stathis Tsemberlidis. Blending Ballardian contemplation of the near future with the aesthetics of early European sci-fi comics, Lando's incredibly meticulous, impossibly fine pen line describes the deserted world that follows the Anthropocene epoch, where warfare, class division and ecological collapse dominate the landscape.

Contributions by Thomas Andrae, Martin Barker, Bart Beaty, John Benson, David Carrier, Hillary Chute, Peter Coogan, Annalisa Di Liddo, Ariel Dorfman, Thierry Groensteen, Robert C. Harvey, Charles Hatfield, M. Thomas Inge, Gene Kannenberg Jr., David Kasakove, Adam L. Kern, David Kunzle, Pascal Lefèvre, John A. Lent, W. J. T. Mitchell, Amy Kiste Nyberg, Fusami Ogi, Robert S. Petersen, Anne Rubenstein, Roger Sabin, Gilbert Seldes, Art Spiegelman, Fredric Wertham, and Joseph Witek A Comics Studies Reader offers the best of the new comics scholarship in nearly thirty essays on a wide variety of such comics forms as gag cartoons, editorial cartoons, comic strips, comic books, manga, and graphic novels. The anthology covers the pioneering work of Rodolphe Töpffer, the Disney comics of Carl Barks, and the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman and Chris Ware, as well as Peanuts, romance comics, and superheroes. It explores the stylistic achievements of manga, the international anti-comics campaign, and power and class in Mexican comic books and English illustrated stories. A Comics Studies Reader introduces readers to the major debates and points of reference that continue to shape the field. It will interest anyone who wants to delve deeper into the world of comics and is ideal for classroom use.

In the long-awaited New Yorker Issue', Gary Groth talks to Francoise Mouly, the magazine's art editor, and discusses how cover illustrations by artists like Art Spiegelman, Barry Blitt, Lorenzo Mattotti, Sempe, Chris Ware, Peter deSeve and Joost Swarte are conceived and executed. Also features interviews with such artists as Gahan Wilson, Harry Bliss, Bob Mankoff, Roz Chast, Victoria Roberts, George Booth and Sam Gross.'

This issue of the award-winning magazine shines a light on how comics creators are affected by chronic disease, disability, and our nation's health care system. This issue also features a document that is significant not only in terms of comics history ― but American history, as well. Created by the civil rights organization SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and the Black Panther Party in 1967, this hand-printed zine is a report about a black community in Alabama that attempted to take back their voting rights in their local elections. There is also a profile on cartoonist Kevin Huizenga (Ganges), and much more.