The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

This last week I’ve found three pieces of absorbing and illuminating material from three veritable veterans of the indie comics scene of the 90s.

First up we have Ted McKeever. In a two part audio interview over at Indie Spinner Rack (part 1, part 2) McKeever talks of many. many things. But possibly the most exciting news is that Image Comics are publishing the Ted McKeever library, starting in with the never finished Transit, expected in October and following this with Eddy Current and finally Plastic Forks.

I’ve loved Ted McKeever since picking up an odd issue of Eddy Current in 87 or 88. There was something gloriously inventive in his angular, scratchy and original black and white art that just made the 17 year old me, still weaning myself off a straight Marvel & DC diet.

Next up in this interview troika is Jamie Hernandez.Over at Daily Crosshatch in a two part interview he talks of many things but it starts:

It started out with Gilbert and I wanting to do a superhero comic separate from Love & Rockets. We wanted it in color and wanted to do a superhero comic, our way. As it got more involved, my story started to get longer and kept going. Gilbert was working on other stuff, and one day he goes, “why don’t you just do that yourself, and we’ll maybe do something together later?” It just got longer and longer, and I thought, “well, I’m really into this—it’s really exciting, so maybe I should just do it as Love & Rockets. I didn’t know how I was going to split up the chapters or anything, and shortly after that is when we came up with the idea of doing this 100-page annual. It just worked perfectly. I just fell into it. It was the right time and the right amount of work. I don’t know how it happened to work out like that, but that’s how it started.

The new Love & Rockets is already looking like a must read (although to be fair, that makes it no different from the old Love & Rockets). But the new formatting of an annual 112 page original graphic novel is a major change in the model of comic publishing. It’s one I expect to see happen more and more often.

Jaime Interview Part 1, Part 2.

And last, but definitely not least we have Seth at the Walrus in an thinkpiece suitably titled The Quiet Art Of Cartooning. Not a long article, but well worth it for the very Seth-esque sense of over-analysis and everyday detailing he utilises when talking of his cartooning life….

A cartoonist isn’t like a writer. Writing requires a special kind of focus. Your mind must be utterly devoted to the task at hand. When I’m breaking down a strip or hammering out dialogue, I’m using that writer’s focus. But drawing and inking are different. They use different parts of the brain. I often find that when I’m drawing, only half my mind is on the work — watching proportions, balancing compositions, eliminating unnecessary details. 

And then there’s the extra bonus of a new Seth single page cartoon, as usual a beautiful yet almost painfully melancholic piece:

(thanks to Heidi for the McKeever link & Blog@Newsaram for the Seth link)