In fact, the Manhattan seminar will be doubling as reference-taking for that story which takes place in New York City.

Then Toronto, where the whole family will be joining me for TCAF, a show we’ve wanted to do for a while and which we’re all very much looking forward to. Then I’ll be swinging by Barcelona for the 27th Annual Comics Festival there.ĭespite a busy spring, my travel schedule will cool down for the rest of the year as I focus increasingly on my new graphic novel for First Second, The Sculptor. Still catching my breath after China, but three more trips loom in the next five weeks. First Manhattan for the two-day seminar. The compact, literal, rat-a-tat of post-Kirby mainstream storytelling that I started out reading is finally giving away to something far deeper, stranger, and potentially more beautiful.Ĭomics may not have its Beethoven yet, but he/she might just be reading this stuff in a year or two, between Math and Social Studies, and realizing for the first time just what they want to do when they grow up. And on the drawing table, there’s a growing understanding of comics’ power to relate emotion, POV, and the warp and weave of memory. Behind the drawing table, people who would have been content splashing about in other fields a decade ago are swimming to comics’ deep end without even taking a breath. David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp is imminent (just assuming that one’s amazing like everyone else-poor David) and I recently got advance peeks at Hope Larson‘s Mercury and Vera Brosgol‘s in-progress GN for First Second, both of which are the best work to date from these two powerful cartoonists.Ĭomics is changing. There are some amazing books on their way in the next several months. Small comes to comics via children’s books, but he’s deadly serious about the form, and exploits it masterfully to paint an unforgettable picture of his harrowing childhood. Get it and read it when the time comes, it’s strong stuff. Just had the pleasure (via Bob Weil at Norton) of devouring an advance copy of illustrator David Small’s Stitches: A Memoirdue out this fall.

Scott mccloud comics