Jimbo Returns To The NO WARPING Zone

After the break, check out the latest episode of Comic Books Are Burning In Hell, with Chris Mautner, Joe McCulloch, Matt Seneca & Tucker Stone!

It's time to return to the subject of old: Jimbo, from Gary Panter. We've been jawing on the subject of Gary Panter for as long as we've been jawing at each other on anything, podcast or no podcast. NYRC's reissue gave us yet another chance to return to the subject, as did Fanta's publication of the big orange Crashpad. But none of us expected this episode's shocking discovery!

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Comments

[Robert Boyd]

Just started listening to this episode and I want to make one correction: some of the underground guys had serious fine arts educations (even if they rejected them later). Victor Moscoso studied at Cooper Union, Yale, and the San Francisco Art Institute, Spain studied at the Silvermine Guild Art School (at the same time M.K. Brown did, apparently) and Robert Williams at Chouinard Art Institute, which later became CalArts. Calling them "outsider" artists is definitely not accurate.

[Robert Boyd]

Just started listening to this episode and I want to make one correction: some of the underground guys had serious fine arts educations (even if they rejected them later). Victor Moscoso studied at Cooper Union, Yale, and the San Francisco Art Institute, Spain studied at the Silvermine Guild Art School (at the same time M.K. Brown did, apparently) and Robert Williams at Chouinard Art Institute, which later became CalArts. Calling them "outsider" artists is definitely not accurate.

[Jeet]

Contra Matt, quite a few of the underground guys studied art: Victor Moscoso at Cooper Union and Yale, Robert Williams at California Institute of Art (where Rick Griffin also studied), Spain at Silvermine Guild Art School etc. etc. One way to understand the early undergrounds is that it was a movement of people trained in modernism and abstraction who embraced popular iconography.

In terms of Panter's generation, my earlier remarks in Comics Comics is pertinent:
Post underground, pre-alternative. Gary Panter and Mark Beyer were both born in 1950, Charles Burns in 1955, Lynda Barry in 1956, Matt Groening in 1959. Is it possible to see these five as a coherent generation, a cohort with shared artistic concerns that distinguish them (however slightly) from the older underground generation of the late 1960s and the alternative comics generation of the 1980s. The connections are manifold: Barry and Burns went to high school together and later at college met Groening. Aside from Burns’ ultra-polished style, the other four often draw with a scratchy, ratty line. All of them (even Burns in an odd sort of way) have explored the two-dimensionality of comics images, and designed panels and pages with an eye for decorative effect. All five are interested in making things as well as making comics: dolls, toys, knick-knacks. Monsters and ghouls are a common theme in their work, and they cherish the pop culture debris of the monster craze of the 1960s. Lacking a foothold in either head-shops or comic books shops, they’ve all had to find outlets apart from the regular comics world, often in weekly alternative newspapers. If they are a generation we need a name for them.

[Jeet]

Argh, I only saw Robert Boyd's post after sending out my own. Didn't mean to dogpile! He's right.

[chris]

btw, this is on the travis bickle feed

[TUCKER]

Hey Chris, I think it's been fixed now--sorry about that.

[Derik]

So when do we get the Hawkworld episode? Or did I miss it?