Cartoonist Profiles Part CCIV
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Deon Parson, Kate Beaton, Barbara Shermund, Art Spiegelman, Colin Whittock, Alison Bechdel, Clay Jones
$upr Dee Parson
Parson, 29, is the creator of multiple comic strips, including “Life With Kurami” (debuted in 2015); “Pen and Ink” (debuted in 2017); and “Rosebuds” (debuted in 2019).
“Rosebuds” has been Parson’s biggest financial success thus far in his career. The strip is syndicated through Kings Publication.
“Once I figured out there was a glimmer of hope for my comics to turn into something, I started to pursue it more and more,” said Parson, who spoke to an audience of more than 70 people last week.
Colette Costlow for Saint Francis University’s Troubadour visits Deon Parson as he visits the campus.
Kate Beaton
Kate Beaton is a best selling author and comics artist in Cape Breton, N.S. Her webcomic Hark! A Vagrant caricatured historical figures from Napoleon to Ada Lovelace and was one of the first webcomics to achieve worldwide recognition after its debut in 2007. More recently, her graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, documented her experience working as a young woman in the Alberta oil patch. The book won the 2023 edition of CBC’s Canada Reads. Her new children’s book, Shark Girl — a spin on Hans Christian Andersen’s classic mermaid tale — releases in late February.
Kate Beaton spoke to Kate Spencer for Broadview about creativity, fish and the false meritocracy of art.
KS: How did the process of writing a story for children differ from writing works aimed at adults?
KB: It’s just as hard, and children are just as smart and discerning as an adult audience. Kids will not tolerate a bad book. If it’s too wordy or boring, they will tell you. And you remember your favourite book from when you were little, whereas I don’t remember what I read six months ago. If you make something that means a lot to them, they will carry it with them always. What a privilege that is for an author. You also don’t know what they’ll take away from it. They’ll be obsessed with one detail in a corner that you never even thought about. They look at everything on the page.
Barbara Shermund, Barbara Shermund
Cartoonist Barbara Shermund was a young art school graduate when she made her first contribution to the New Yorker: a bold illustration of a woman riding the night bus on the cover of the June 13, 1925 edition. Themagazine, which published its first issue 100 years ago this month, carved a niche in the crowded 1920s landscape of American periodicals with its distinct art direction and tongue-in-cheek coverage of local cultural life. As one of the New Yorker‘s first women cartoonists, Shermund created single-panel cartoons drawn with a seemingly off-the-cuff fluidity of line and expression that came to define its now-iconic sense of humor.
Izzy DeSantis for Hyperallergic profiles New Yorker cartoonist Barbara Shermund.
You can’t deny the arch wit of a Barbara Shermund cartoon.
Over the hundreds of illustrations she created for the New Yorker and Esquire in the 1920s through ’50s was a voice refreshingly astute, and a sense of humor equally wicked and teasing—yet charmingly so. Hers were modern cartoons.
Min Chen at Artnet put a spotlight on Barbara Shermund.
Both the above are the result of Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins by Caitlin McGurk
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman’s life was always doomed to be one that wrestled with a larger legacy — or a 500-pound mouse.
In his book Breakdowns, about his artist’s journey, he illustrated his Holocaust survivor father, Wladek, giving him a Yiddish-syntaxed lesson in packing. “Use what little space you have to pack inside everything what you can.” (You’ll never know when you may have to run.) He claims it was the best advice he’d ever gotten as a cartoonist.
Forward’s PJ Grisar reviews the new documentary Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse.
It was through MAD, Spiegelman says, that he learned “the whole adult world is lying to you.”
Colin Whittock – RIP
Tributes have been paid to a ‘legend of Birmingham journalism’ who told the city’s story through cartoons. Colin Whittock became known across the city over four decades for his cartoons in the Birmingham Mail.
He worked for the newspaper in the 1960s until he retired in 2008. After his death on February 14, aged 84, Birmingham Mail editors past and present have queued up to pay tribute to a talented cartoonist and an even better man.
The Birmingham (UK) Mail obituary for Colin Whittock.
Colin also drew the Mail’s cartoon strip, Chipper. Originally created in 1949 by the late Len Pardoe – who died in 2002 – the dog was under Colin’s guardianship for more than 7,000 editions.
He also contributed to national publications such as Punch, the Daily Mirror, Private Eye, and The Oldie.
Alison Bechdel
In Spent: A Comic Novel, from her pygmy goat farm in Vermont, a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel wonders: Can she pull humanity out of its death spiral by writing a scathing memoir about her own greed and privilege?
But how can she just sit around writing a book when the world is hanging on a thread?
In this hilariously skewering comic novel, Alison is existentially pained by a climate-challenged world and a country on the brink of civil war.
downthetubes’ John Freeman reviews the forthcoming Spent by Alison Bechdel.
In the United States: Spent by Alison Bechdel
Clay Jones
Cartoonist Clay Jones talks about the power and history of illustration in political cartoons, including images of the present day.
Jason DeHart and Words, Images, & Worlds hosts a half hour YouTube interview with Clay Jones.
feature image: cartoonist Homer Stinson ca. 1920s
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