The Clean Up Episode

Click through and you'll hear the new episode! [Note: Joe McCulloch is not featured on this episode.]

 

Jack Kirby. Wally Wood. Dave Sim. Jesse Jacobs. Brian Bendis. Kathe Kollwitz. One of these things is not like the other.

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Comments

[mateor]

I can not imagine someone who has read High Society to guess "Not like".

Jeet, those Daredevil books are pretty good. I know you are a dialogue guy. Pretty much has you written all over it.

[Scales]

Ah, more foreshadowing for the upcoming "Mautner Murders Everyone" episode I have been expecting.

[Jeet Heer]

1. "High Society" along with "Church and State" is definitely the high point of Cerebus. I think Chris jumped ship at the right time -- Jaka's Story and after are when things start going downhill.
2. I'm not sure I agree with Tucker that the problem of the artist's life versus his/her work is usually discussed in relation to inferior work. In fact, I think it's the reverse: that it's usually artists of a high caliber for whom this issue is relevant (classically Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, Leni Riefenstahl, Celine, etc.)
3. You guys are wrong, wrong, wrong about the origins of The Demon. Kirby was not relying on a 30 year old memory. Those Prince Valiant strips had been reprinted in the early 1970s. (I believe Mark Evanier talks about this in his intro to the recent Demon collection). And Kirby never hid the fact that his Demon was a hommage to Foster. It was common knowledge at the time -- I'm pretty sure Kirby talked about it in interviews.
4. I honestly don't see any more Kollwitz in Kirby than general German expressionist art. Would be cool if he was influenced by her but I'm not sure about this at all.
5. Thanks for explaining Brian Bendis is -- in all honesty, without this show I would know nothing about him, or Garth Innis or Judge Dredd or any of this stuff. Occasionally based on stuff said in this show I'll pick up a comic of this sort -- am invariably disappointed. It's almost infinitely better to listen to you guys talk about Judge Dredd than to read Judge Frigging Dredd.

[Larry B Vossler]

I really enjoyed Jaka's story and I think it's the beginning of Melmoth that Cerebus starts to go down. Then it really tanks with Mothers & Daughters.

I kept with it and the last final issues does help bring up the series even with the weird misogyny that's prevalent through Cerebus.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

http://stevemannioncomics.blogspot.co.uk/

Steve Mannion more than any other recent artist reminds me of Wally Wood.

[Joe McCulloch]

AAAHAHAHA, Jeet... this is like the time I had Tom Spurgeon reading Golgo 13 for eleven seconds!

[tucker]

Jeet--the Pound and Celine thing is a good example of a larger culture argument, but I was speaking to comics in particular, although in retrospect I don't make that clear. However, in comics, I am correct. These conversations circulate around the continued consumption of generic and middling super-hero comics almost exclusively. I'm pretty sure i've even seen Riefenstahl brought up as a buttress to arguments supporting the continued patronage of bad Creeper comics.

Regarding the Demon--I will never regret my membership in the word police. Which brings me to my next comment: it's Ennis, buddy.

[Tim Hamilton]

Ah! Käthe Kollwitz! Her book is beside me often. I used her for inspiration on a particular Graphic Novel I did. Yep.
I have read a bit of Cannon. Other peoples work he reminds you of is... Frank Miller. Him or Eric Stanton. Or movie director Herschell Gordon Lewis.
I thought I had a funny Dave Sim story, but them I realized what I really mean is that I have a inappropriate Dave Sim story.

Tim

[Jonlost_log]

Had a crap day. You guys cheered me right up. Well done.

[Aaron]

Once Gerhard came on board it tilted the comic towards sweeping backdrops, which is fine, and if you've got a Gerhard on the team it makes sense to use him, but it took Sim away from the smaller panels and tighter frames that he used so well in High Society. I can't help wondering where he might have taken his comics vocabulary if he hadn't made space for Gerhard's virtuosic background art.

Anyway, I was friendly with a minor self-publishing cartoonist in the 90s, and he spoke often of the debt he owed Sim as a guru. Sim had taught him a lot about craft, about business, had given him encouragement... many of the self-publishers at the time could say the same, and self-publishing looked like it would provide what web-comics would ultimately provide: freedom from Procrustean editors, access to audiences, all at a low price. Dave Sim was both the foremost evangelist of self-publishing, and arguably its foremost practitioner. So for Sim to unveil a bunch of nut job hate speech, and not only in the back pages but right in the core of the Cerebus narrative, was taken as more than the downfall of an admired artist; this was the guy who had given time and attention to making You and You and You a better cartoonist and businessperson. This was the scene celebrity you boasted about drinking with. To my friend, it was like his Dad went nuts in an embarrassing and public way.