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Here’s a thought about comics (and Mœbius)
Language is the oldest technology humankind has – and visual language, the ability to distill human experience and emotion and make a representation of it, one of the oldest human impulses (the cave paintings in Luscaux are testament to that). It’s a kind of alchemy perhaps, something that helps us reimagine our environment and design the world we make for ourselves. It’s the place in our minds where we translate what we see and experience, where we invent new vistas, new ways of seeing.
Here’s a thought about comics’ influence on Picasso
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[A]s [Gertrude] Stein relates in The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas, there was another visual influence on which Picasso fed voraciously when she first knew him in Paris in 1906, when he was pushing towards the most revolutionary artistic discovery since the Renaissance: a comic strip called The Katzenjammer Kids.
As Alice tells it, she and Stein were worried about Picasso and Fernande, his partner in these years, because they had broken up. So they went to see Picasso and Stein gave him a gift: a package of newspapers. “He opened them up, they were the Sunday supplement of American papers, they were the Katzenyammer [sic] kids. Oh oui, Oh oui, he said, his face full of satisfaction, merci thanks Gertrude, and we left.”
Next they went to see Fernande, who asked if Stein had any American comics left. But Picasso had got the lot of the Katzenjammer kids. “That is a brutality that I will never forgive him,” said Fernande.
From The Guardian’s preview of the 2002 Tate Modern Matisse Picasso exhibit.
And that just lends even more credence to the quote attributed to Picasso himself:
If there is one thing I regret in life, it is never having made comics.
(Which, after all, he did, so no regrets, Pablo!)
Here’s a thought about thinking about comics
Quote
Do you have to want to be a cartoonist in order to make comics?
Or can making comics be more like singing along to a song when we are alone for no reason other than it gives us something (almost undetectable) that not singing doesn’t?
Or can making comics be more like using a salt and pepper shaker to show your friend just where your car was in relation to the other car when the accident happened?
What if people thought of making comics as another good way to sort certain things out?
Lynda Barry, on her tumblr
No quarter
I sat down and planned 2012. It doesn’t look very ambitious, but considering I quit C’est Bon Kultur, which is a very well-oiled unit in every respect, those are the events I dare promise to show at.
April 27-29 Stockholm International Comics Festival, Stockholm
What used to be called SPX has probably been renamed to avoid confusion with the (slightly better-known) Washington festival. It remains, however, Sweden’s foremost comics festival, and you don’t want to miss it if you’re a local. Shoot, in recent years even Top Shelf and Buenaventura Press have been going!
In a bit of a “beauties and the beast” constellation, I’ll be tabling with two of my favourite comic artists, Sofia Falkenhem and Eliza Frye. Can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to that!
October – AltCom, Malmö
Although the AltCom festival still hasn’t been announced for this year, I’m taking for granted that it will continue to fill the biannual gap between ISV comic festivals, and anyway it’s right in my backyard, so I’ll be there in one capacity or another.
November 12-18 – Thought Bubble Festival, Leeds
I’ve wanted to go to TB since I first heard of it, and with the amount of talent in th UK at the moment, I would really be stupid not to go. So far the exhibitor signup hasn’t opened, so no details are available yet – other than I’ll be there, manning a table alone or with friends.
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All of this information is subject to change, and will be individually updated as needed in later posts. Just to say, keep your eyes on this blog 
Shhh, it’s Privacy Day!
So today I’m staying quiet on Twitter to protest their recently stated intentions to comply with censorship laws in different countries. Other Twitter users are boycotting the service today, too, under the #twitterblackout and #j28 hashtags.
Ironically, this means that I’m also updating my blog for the first time since Xmas (!) in order to post a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s International Privacy Day’s address: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/right-anonymity-matter-privacy
It’s a piece to remind us all that the fight for freedom of information, and security of privacy, isn’t done with the SOPA and PIPA blackouts. I urge you to read it, and to consider how you want the internet to look in the future.
That’s me on the Scandinavian Muppet Art blog!
Link
http://scandinavianmuppetart.wordpress.com/2011/12/28/allan-haverholm/
(just kidding, I just drew the picture )
What now?
Let’s do a bit of review here on the brink of a new year. There’ll be a bit of a gap in updates for a while now that the (first) Wertham story is done, but I hope to have new material to post, come January.
I’ve been posting on a daily basis from November on, thanks to Derik Badman’s 30 Days of Comics project (which I rather foolishly extended with the Wertham comic) and as much as I like that update frequency, I’ll take the last week of 2011 off to gather my thoughts.
There’ll probably be more comics tied together by an overarching concept, like the 30 Days project or the Lost minicomic that grew out of it. My “dead tree” output has more or less stagnated this year, and I want to do work that can turn into books again.
So my 2012 work may come in bursts of activity on individual (book) projects, some continuing the sketchbook comics, others will be part of the Astoria umbrella which has hibernated long enough. I have some new ideas about that.
Long story short, I’ll shut up for a week or so. Merry winter solstice, little pagans, and a happy new year. See you on the other side!
In the Beginning there was Wertham, page 24
In the Beginning there was Wertham, page 23
