Five cartoonists on their love of the form
Steve Yeowell
Why do I love Comic Books? As an artist I love them for the thrill I get reading a script as good as one of Ian's Red Seas episodes and for the opportunity to work on a group of characters as unique, in a plot as intriguing as his always are.
As a reader I love them as a simple medium capable of great complexity, able to suggest the vastness of the universe or the most intimate thoughts in a panel a few inches square.
As a nostalgist I love them for the different memories: the dumbfoundment that only fathers can wear on my Dad's face when my infant self burst in to tears after he didn't buy me the comic I had convinced myself he was about to; the holiday with my best friend in East Anglia during the hot summer of 1973 pretending we were Sergeant Rock and Easy Company with the two American brothers from the base near our caravan park; and the disquiet I felt looking at the penultimate page of Fantastic Four 91, the captive Thing confined with Torgo the alien gladiator he must fight, whose haunted look as he stares out of the page is vivid even now.
Artist Steve Yeowell started working in comics back in the 1980s and provided art for Grant Morrison's much-lauded Zenith strip in 2000AD and Morrison's infamous New Adventures of Hitler in the Scottish music magazine Cut (later reprinted in Crisis). A regular in the pages of 2000AD his supernatural pirate strip Red Seas, written by Ian Edginton, has now been released as 2000AD's first digital first collection.
Karrie Fransman
I've been madly in love with the medium since I read Daniel Clowe's Ghost World 13 years ago. The UK has been a little slower to catch on to the joys of comics than, say, Japan, France or the US. But we're starting to realise the power of visual storytelling. Death of the Artist pays homage to the many possibilities and potentials of the medium of comics. It's so exciting to know you can contribute to a medium but also be a pioneer for it- there is so much unchartered territory for us all to explore!
Karrie Fransman's Death of the Artist is published by Jonathan Cape. She has been published by The Guardian, Time Out and The New Statesman and not too long ago answered five questions for Graphic Content.
Five Questions for Karrie Fransman
Annie Goetzinger
I fell in love with comics the day I discovered it's possible to tell a story through drawings. Just using paper, pencils and colours, quietly.
Annie Goetzinger is a Parisian comics artist who has been making gorgeous art nouveau-style comic strips in France since the 1970s. Her latest book, Girl in Dior, a biopic about the fashion designer, has recently been published by NBM. She has also answered five questions for Graphic Content. With this answer, make it six.
Five Questions for Annie Goetzinger
Michael DeForge
I learned to read by reading comics, and have been wanting to draw them for as long as I can remember. Also, I have no practical skills, no college degree and very little else to fall back on, so all my eggs are basically in this basket.
We love Michael DeForge at Graphic Content. Ant Colony was one of our favourite books of last year and his graphic novella First Year Healthy has been one of the best things we've read this year so far.
Graphic Novellas of the Month: First Year Healthy
Andy Hixon
What's not to like? It's a novel with loads of pictures in! Beyond that, it's a different way of telling a story - the images work very closely with the text. Graphic novels have changed a lot in the last few years. They are not just 'comics' now. There are a lot of serious pieces of rich and varied art work which, in their depth, can easily hold a candle to any traditional novel.
If you haven't read Andy Hixon's Lucia by now you should be deeply ashamed.
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