SDCC 2013 - A Couple of Neil Gaiman Stories

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman on meeting Will Eisner early in his career at the Will Eisner Tribute panel (joined by a stellar group: Paul Levitz, Denis Kitchen, Scott McCloud & Jeff Smith): "When I was getting into writing comics, I learned from Comics & Sequential Art. I gave Will a copy of Signal to Noise in an elevator. He was always supportive of young artists & writers... You would excitedly tell him about a brilliant new idea you came up with, and he would nod & listen, and then say "yes, when we tried that back in 1947, it didn't work because..."

Neil Gaiman & Denis Kitchen

At the Annual Kirby Tribute panel (another stellar group: Attorney Paul Levine, Mark Evanier & Tony Isabella), Neil talked about his first experiences with US comics as a child: "I was 7 when Marvel started reprinting anthologies... a few years later my Dad gave me a big box of Marvel Comics... Years later, I asked "Dad, where did that big box of Marvel Comics come from?" He said, "I'll tell you," and then a few days later he died. I never knew."

Neil Gaiman & Tony Isabella

Gaiman said he was particularly intrigued by the ads in the comics, "how do Father Sea Monkeys smoke their pipes underwater? How did the Americans get the technology for x-rays spectacles and make them so inexpensive that children could buy them for a dollar? If I could only get dollars in the UK, I could find out"!

Eisner panel - Levitz, Gaiman, Kitchen, McCloud, Smith

Kirby panel - Levine, Evanier, Gaiman, Isabella

Comic Art Show Article in Fall IJOCA

Catalog cover featuring Warhol's Dick Tracy.

My article about the Comic Art Show, which was at the Whitney Museum's downtown gallery in 1983, has finally been published in the International Journal of Comic Art (Vol 14, No. 2, Fall 2012). I thank the following people for sharing their memories, giving me input on my numerous drafts, or other assistance:

John Carlin, Art Spiegelman, Gary Panter, Sheena Wagstaff, Ann Philbin, Brian Walker, Leonard Rifas, Denise Lederman, Kristen Leipert, Marc H. Greenberg, John Lent, and the Frances Mulhall Achilles Library and Archive at the Whitney.
  
The IJOCA's articles are not published on-line.Here's a link to a (legible, but not fabulous) pdf scan of the article.

Wagstaff Moves to the Met

Photo of the Whitney at Night by Ezra Stoller/Esto;
from the Whitney's web site. See more about
the Breuer building here.

As part of my on-going research about The Comic Art Show, which was one of the first major exhibitions of comics as art at the Whitney's downtown gallery in the summer of 1983, I interviewed Sheena Wagstaff, who co-curated the show with John Carlin as part of the Whitney's Independent Study Program. Eventually she became Chief Curator at the Tate in London. I just read in the March edition of ArtNews that she is taking over as head of the Modern Art department of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.  By an odd coincidence, most of the Met's modern collection is moving over to the Whitney's iconic Marcel Breuer building, as the Whitney will be moving into their new Renzo Piano designed building in the meatpacking district.

I plan to incorporate this story into my final draft, along with info about the recent Feininger show, and finally complete and publish my research on this show over the next couple of months (honest :-)

PCA/ACA St. Louis

I recently returned from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association’s national convention in St. Louis, MO. It’s taken a few days to get to writing about it, because I’ve realized that my feelings about this trip are kind of complicated. The PCA/ACA conference itself was amazing as usual. Hundreds of papers are presented on every Humanities topic imaginable, from Arthurian and children’s literature to vampires and bondage. This particular conference always has a huge contingent of comics scholars, and it’s great to meet everybody and hear their papers. My friend and travel buddy Hannah Sigur was researching and presenting on World’s Fairs (an appropriate topic for St. Louis) and there were interesting papers in her section as well. More about all this in a minute…

Although I grew up in Northern Michigan, travel over the last few years tends to take me to the edges of the country: west coast, east coast, New Orleans, Texas, etc… Except for the heart of Chicago, I haven’t been to the actual mid-west much at all. Like most of us, I’ve read horror stories about the impact of the economic downturn on the nation’s center, but I haven’t seen much of it. Things in California are complicated enough!

St. Louis is a proud city. Once Chicago’s equal in power, architecture and creative energy, the city has had a steep decline over the last couple decades. Block after block downtown was full of impressive and stately buildings, boarded up and paddle-locked. Even the Rams, a Super Bowl team as recently as 2001 (“The Greatest Show on Turf”) have been sucking and have the first round draft pick this year, much to the dismay of every cab driver I spoke with. The city is working hard to come back. They have converted many of the grand skeletons downtown into inexpensive lofts, and people are starting to move back. There’s a new sculpture park downtown, CityGarden, with an excellent restaurant (The Terrace View). The garden features a spectacular array of public art (the photo on the left is Untitled-Ring Figure by Keith Haring), and a series of terraced fountains meant to represent different regions of Missouri. The riverfront park around the famous arch was lovely, and busy. Baseball and casinos are popular. Everywhere trees were budding and blooming and it seemed that life was returning. I hope it does.

So, back to the highlights of the conference. I enjoyed Diana Green’s session, and also enjoyed getting to know her after seeing her name for so long on the comics scholars listserve. We chatted over drinks and dinner on many topics, and I was amazed by her encyclopedic knowledge of comics and her dry wit. The comics area chair, Nicole Friem, gave a sort of “state of the union” summary of how she’s seen comics scholarship evolve over the years she’s been the chair, and trends that she thinks are on the horizon. Randy Duncan (The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture), who moderated the session I participated in (I presented on my latest research on The Comic Art Show), focused on a 17th century Ethiopian illuminated manuscript telling the story of the miracles attributed to the Virgin Mary that he came upon while touring the Chicago Art Institute. He successfully tied the illustrations, sequential narrative and captions to other ancestors of modern comics, and as an art historian I loved it. Hannah's presentation with John Findling on the Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893) was excellent, and I also enjoyed getting to know John. We were also treated to a special artist’s presentation by Mark Newport, who KNITS life size superhero costumes (and wears them in photos and performance). He was organizing a knit-in at a gallery during the conference, and I'm sorry I missed it. On the left he's wearing his Spider-Man costume (Self-Made. Color photograph, 2004. Edition of 5. 24" x 36").

One last thought, as usual, about the St. Louis Museum of Art, a small museum set in Forest Park in one of the last remaining buildings preserved from the St Louis World’s Fair in 1904. They had a nice collection for a small museum. I was pleased to find an altarpiece by the Florentine painter Piero di Cosimo for the private chapel of his patron Francesco del Pugliese, who are a peripheral part of my arm & hammer project. I was also fascinated by this 1887 painting by John Fredrick Peto (to the left) of a wall posted with mail and a newspaper (Rack Picture, c 1887, oil on canvas). I couldn’t help thinking of pieces like Stuart Davis’ 1924 painting Lucky Strike or recent paintings by Mark Stock (who paints in the trompe l'oeil genre and references comics frequently). If you ever go to this museum, however, avoid eating in the restaurant, it’s really awful.

Spring Conferences

The art-icons-comics blog has been taking a little rest over the holidays... more to come soon. In the meantime, I'd like to announce a couple presentations at conferences scheduled for the spring: In mid-February, I'll be presenting on my research into the origins of the arm & hammer emblem at the Pop Culture/American Culture Association's Southwestern conference in Albuqueque, NM. At the end of March, I'll be presenting on the Comic Art Show (Whitney, 1983) at the PCA/ACA national conference in St. Louis.
Hope everyone had a happy holiday season!

Beyond High & Low in the IJOCA

My article Beyond High & Low: How Comics & Museums Learned to Co-Exist, has been published in the Fall 2009 edition of the International Journal of Comic Art. Thank you John Lent, for finding my piece on the "paper table" at PCA/ACA New Orleans last year and inviting me.

Beyond High & Low is about art world politics, modernism, and how The Comic Art Show (Whitney, 1983), MoMA's High & Low (1990) and Masters of Comics (2005) built on and responded to each other, as well as a few lesser known shows and some exhibition strategies. Since I wrote this article, I've done extensive research and interviews about The Comic Art Show. This was the show that brought Art Spiegelman, John Carlin, Brian Walker and Ann Philbin together, and helped launch Sheena Wagstaff's career, as well as being the first show to display comic art and fine art as equal works in New York museum setting. I was beginning this research when I presented at SDCC in July, and will be presenting on the finished paper at PCA/ACA in St. Louis in March.

IJOCA articles are not published on line. If you are interested in a hard copy or subscribing to the IJOCA, their site is here.

Revisiting The Comic Art Show at SDCC

A quick note related to my on-going project exploring the relationships between comic art, fine art and museums: I am currently researching The Comic Art Show, which happened at the downtown branch of the Whitney Museum in New York over the summer of 1983. This show, co-curated by John Carlin (co-curator of Masters of American Comics in 2005) and Sheena Wagstaff (currently the chief curator at the Tate Modern), was one of the first to display comic art and fine art as equal works in a US art museum setting.

August Update: Since I originally posted this, I have presented on this show at PCA/ACA and WonderCon as part of a general "comics in museums" talk, and have more specifically presented on this show with new research at San Diego Comic Con 2009. You can view both of these presentations using the SlideShare widget on the sidebar, or at the bottom of this page. I have written generally about this show in the article Beyond High & Low: How Comics and Museums Learned to Co-exist, which will be published in the upcoming issue of the IJOCA. Since writing that article, I have done research at the Frances Mulhill Achilles Library at the Whitney Museum, and have interviewed John Carlin, Sheena Wagstaff and Anne Philbin, as well as delving into the art scene and art criticism of the 1980's. I expect to complete the article fall 2009.

Update 3/2012 - I have committed to finally finishing my research on this topic and publishing it in the IJOCA for the fall/winter 2012 issue. 

PCA/ACA follow up: Masters of Comics and the "Canon"

This post is in response to the lively discussion that followed my presentation Beyond High & Low: How Comics and Museums Learned to Co-Exist at the PCA/ACA conference on Saturday. Talking about Masters of American Comics and his choice to pick an all-male (and pretty much all white) “canon,” John Carlin tells Leslie Jones (Art on Paper magazine) that he realizes that the term “masters” seems like sort of an anachronism in this postmodern age and goes on to explain his thinking:

"This is an old-fashioned type of art exhibition that I would never organize or curate if I working in the art field…I really felt that the canon hadn’t been established in a coherent way. This attempts to do that and to create something that people can then criticize and move beyond. To be designated as a “master” for the purposes of this show you really had to combine two things: one was the highest level of craftsmanship and technical mastery… the other was a kind of formal innovation that added something to the medium so that everybody that comes after him, whether they imitate him or not, has to pay homage to his work."

The article continues with more of his thoughts on the artists and works selected for the show. Another useful article, in which Carlin goes into detail about some of the problems the show faced, was written by Scott Timberg for the LA Times. Lastly, there’s the ArtNews article on female comic artists I mentioned. I believe all these articles are available on J-Stor:

• Carly Berwick. Why Have There Been No Great Women Comic-Book Artists? ArtNews. Vol. 104, No.10 (November 2005). 166-169.


• Leslie Jones. Cracking the Comics Canon. Art on Paper. Vol. 10, No. 2 November/December 2005). 44-49.


• Scott Timberg. An uneasy accord: L.A. museums open their walls to comics as true works of art. Is it long overdue, still an odd mix, or simply inviting cartoonists to a party they might not want to attend? Los Angeles Times. October 23, 2005. E33.

I admit that I wish that the curators could have found a way to be more inclusive, but as a researcher/curator myself, I also know that you can never include everything you'd like, and that it's assumed that someone else is either going to argue with or build on your work. Starting a dialog seems to be what it's all about (or is it the Hokey-Pokey? I get confused...)
Thanks for all the great questions!

Speaking at SDCC!

Marc and I have been invited to speak at the Comics Arts Conference (in conjunction with the Institute for Comic Studies) at San Diego Comic Con this July. SDCC is an event we really look forward to every year, and we are thrilled to be part of it, even if we are the nerdiest of nerds (being an official egghead at a sci-fi convention is quite a distinction). I'll post more as the schedule is announced.

WonderCon 2009 Update

Marc & I both spoke at the annual WonderCon comics & pop culture convention on Sunday, which was held this year at Moscone Center in SF. Thanks to Peter Coogan of the Institute for Comics Studies for inviting us, and to Kate McClancy for her help. We really enjoyed doing it, and appreciated the opportunity to answer questions and interact with our fellow comic nuts. I spoke, as Pete wrote in a promo article, about "the importance of comics to contemporary visual culture and the central role of the 2005 Masters of American Comics exhibit in breaking comics out of the art world's high/low debate." Marc spoke about several cases defended by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and gave an in depth talk about the recent Superman copyright case. Bravo to Marc for explaining this complex case in a manner that non-lawyers could understand.

We’ve been going to WonderCon since it was a few booths crammed into a couple rooms in the basement of the Oakland Convention Center and are always amazed how much its grown. This year WonderCon featured panels and screenings about upcoming films like The Watchmen, the relaunch of Star Trek, Terminator Salvation and Pixar's UP, plus artist talks and sessions with comics publishers. The masquerade and anime festival are also popular attractions.

I missed most of it this year because I was in LA for CAA and just flew back to speak on Sunday, but Marc did surprise me with a 2 foot tall talking figure of Treebeard, one of my favorite Lord of the Rings characters, so I didn’t leave empty handed.

Kim Speaking at PCA/ACA

I just found out that I will be speaking about comics and museums at another conference, the PCA/ACA (Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association) in New Orleans in April (thanks for the suggestion Hannah). My talk will be entitled Beyond High & Low: How Comics and Museums Learned to Coexist. More on this as the schedule evolves. I haven't been to New Orleans since the flood, so I'm looking forward to seeing what its present condition is with my own eyes.