© Grant Snider
Grant Snider, whose newest collection “I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf,” was nominated for a 2020 Goodreads Choice Award gets profiled in The Derby Informer.
Once he went off to college at the University of Kansas, Snider began drawing comics for the student newspaper, “The University Daily Kansan.” He was drawing comic strips five days a week during his junior year. When he went off to dental school, that passion followed and he kept drawing, submitting to local publications like “The Kansas City Star.”
Eventually, those works evolved into Snider’s brand of Incidental Comics and website – where he posts to weekly. Those comics were then collected for his first book, “The Shape of Ideas,” published in 2017 – something Snider said he was always working toward from a young age.
© Tim Atseff
A retrospective exhibition of political cartoons and paintings by Southern Illinois University Carbondale alumnus Tim Atseff will begin today, Nov. 4. In anticipation of the showing SIU talks to Tim.
As editorial cartoonist for the Herald-Journal, Atseff’s work of more than 1,500 cartoons with local, national and international themes appeared in several publications, including The New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe. He has also designed and edited six tabletop books. The exhibition of paintings and editorial cartoons will be in University Museum through the end of February 2021.
© respective copyright owner (United Feature Syndicate?)
Steven Heller appreciates the endeavors of publisher Peter Maresca.
However, out of all the amazing collectors, hoarders, scholars, archivists, and authorities of this indigenous American art and design narrative form, I am most in awe of Peter Maresca, the founder in 2005 and publisher of Sunday Press, purveyor of newspaper comic page reprints, including strips by Winsor McKay, Lionel Feininger, George Herriman, Gustav Verbeek, E.C. Segar, and more. This story is as much a tribute to his incredible preservation vision as it is a salute to his latest collection: Gross Exaggerations: The Meshuga Comic Strips of Milt Gross.
© Katy Farina
Publishers Weekly interviews graphic novelist Katy Farina.
Farina faithfully adapted the Baby-Sitters Little Sister books, rendering the stories about family life in a curvy, manga-influenced drawing style. Song of the Court is very different. Pitched to readers aged 6 to 8, a relatively new category in the graphic novel world, the book features cute animals living in a fairy-tale kingdom, but the story gently touches on some difficult emotions.
© Walt Disney
Jim Korkis, for MousePlanet, pulls a Floyd Gottfredson interview from 1979.
Gottfredson: About a half hour later, Walt called me into his office and asked me whether I would like to take over doing the strip. By now I had become very interested in animation and was reluctant to change. I told Walt that he was right and that I would prefer to stay with animation. Well, Walt was quite a salesman. He told me to just take the strip for two weeks to give him some time to find another artist.
I wanted to help out so I agreed. After all, he had told me that part of my job was to be a possible back-up on the strip. At the end of a month, I wondered if he was really seriously looking for anyone. After two months, I began to worry that he might actually find someone because I was enjoying doing it and wanted to continue with it.
© Walt Disney
Korkis: Did you ever run into the same censorship issues that Walt was facing with the animated cartoons?
Gottfredson: There was one sequence in the “Blaggard Castle” story where Mickey grabs a pole and vaults over this alligator pit but as he is leaping, the pole breaks. King Features sent us a frantic telegram that they were going to cut out the entire sequence because the alligators would upset women and children reading the newspaper.
