Appendix: Further Reading

Brunetti, Ivan

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Appendix: Further Reading

Ivan Brunetti

Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice

When I started teaching, I relied mostly on reams of photocopied handouts, which expanded with every class I taught. Fortunately, with the publication in 2004 of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #13 (a special comics issue, edited by Chris Ware), I finally had an ideal textbook.

Author

Ivan Brunetti

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-100250

Appendix: Further Reading

When I started teaching, I relied mostly on reams of photocopied handouts, which expanded with every class I taught. Fortunately, with the publication in 2004 of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #13 (a special comics issue, edited by Chris Ware), I finally had an ideal textbook.

Besides McSweeney’s #13 and my own assemblages of favorite essays and comics, I also gradually amassed an ever-shifting set of Powerpoint “slideshows.” Eventually, the photocopies and slideshows morphed into my own textbook, An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories (Yale University Press, 2006). A second volume of the Anthology was published in 2008, and together they formed a complete set. I briefly considered, before sanity intervened, editing a third volume, to include the many favorite comics I regrettably could not collect into the first two volumes, but I will leave that endeavor to the ages, or at least to a much younger, less broken human being.

Houghton-Mifflin has been publishing an annual volume, the Best American Comics, since 2006, and this series is a great way to stay current on the outstanding, noteworthy, and interesting work being done in the field. A rotating roster of guest editors helps keep the contents lively and varied.

Two books that are long out of print but well worth seeking out by the serious student are The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics and A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics, both edited by Bill Blackbeard. It should not be too difficult to obtain them in this instant-gratification age of eBay and online booksellers.

There exist today quite a few well-researched and lavishly produced reprint series of classic comics, as well as cutting-edge anthologies of current work. The meaty tome Art Out of Time (Abrams, 2006) and its sequel Art in Time (Abrams, 2010), both edited by Dan Nadel, provide an interesting overview of long-neglected and unfairly marginalized work.

The original version of the very book you hold in your hands first appeared as a supplement to issue 9 of Todd Hignite’s lush and informative Comic Art magazine, which appears to be on hiatus, although one hopes not permanently. In the meantime, I would highly recommend tracking down any and all of the nine back issues (searching online is a good starting point). The magazines are well worth your investment. Another option is to purchase Mr. Hignite’s book In the Studio (Yale, 2006), which reprints some material from the magazine (and has much new material besides). In the Studio contains interviews with eight of the best contemporary American cartoonists, plus one with me.

The aptly named Web provides a platform for all kinds of discussions about comics, with no shortage of mean-spirited “experts” purporting to offer informed criticism; occasionally, and with a little help from the “search” function, one finds more high-minded fora. The Internet also serves as a great resource for the archiving of old comics as well as the continual upload of brand-new work. I imagine all of this will continue indefinitely, or at least until civilization irrevocably collapses.

Art Spiegelman’s Maus (Pantheon, 1986, 1991) is not only a groundbreaking masterpiece but also a comics course unto itself, its every page a lesson in thought and construction. Even after re-reading it at least 50 times, I still discover new subtleties and complexities within it, and the story has lost none of its emotional power. A flashback: I shake my head in disbelief when I overhear one student earnestly describe Maus to someone as a book about “a bunch of mice in a concentration camp.” Oy gevalt! I can think of no better argument for the absolute necessity and value of humanities education.

Lynda Barry’s What It Is (Drawn and Quarterly, 2008) remains the best, most inspiring, mindblowingest book on tapping into one’s own innate creativity. The book is a beautiful, lovingly crafted art object in and of itself, and that alone is worth the price of admission. But Lynda also expands our idea of what an image is and can be, teaches us how to remember, asks us to ponder philosophical questions, and encourages us while gently guiding us through an accessible (and potent) creative process. Best of all, she does this without even a smidge of pretension. If you ever get the chance, attend her creative workshop “Writing the Unthinkable,” which, as this author can testify, will profoundly change your life.

The list continues, but this should be plenty to get you started on a basic “core” comics education. Needless to add, you should also take care to educate yourself fully in many other areas besides comics. Most great cartoonists, both by nature and necessity, tend toward the autodidactic, and thus are unsurprisingly well read and intellectually engaged, with a wide variety of interests.

And, oh, read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. It will help you immeasurably.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

This is by no means a complete documentation of every source used in the book and is meant simply as an extension of the list of further readings.

Clowes, D. Modern Cartoonist. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 1997.

Frost, R. The Complete Poems. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1930, 1949.

Gleick, J. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Penguin, 1987.

Hazan, M. Marcella’s Italian Kitchen. New York: Knopf, 1986.

Klee, P. The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898–1918. Ed. F. Klee. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964.

Kochalka, J. The Sketchbook Diaries, Vol. 1. Marietta, GA: Top Shelf, 2001.

Mamet, D. On Directing Film. New York: Penguin, 1991.

Mendelson, L., and C.M. Schulz. Charlie Brown and Charlie Schulz. New York: Signet, 1970.

Murch, W. In the Blink of An Eye, 2d ed. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1995, 2001.

Prose, F. Reading Like a Writer. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Little, Brown, 1951.

Steinberg, S., with A. Buzzi. Reflections and Shadows. Trans. J. Shepley. New York: Random House, 2002.

Thomas, L. The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher. New York: Penguin, 1974.

Ware, F.C. Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. New York: Pantheon Books, 2000.

Woodring, J. The Comics Journal, no. 192 (Dec. 1996): 2.

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