Merry Xmas, Happy Holidays, Lang May yer Lum Reek.

I'm having a holiday from me blog over Xmas, so let me wrap a few things up, send them to bed, run them up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes; as it were.

First of all, I hope you all keep well over Xmas and avoid the nasty flu-bug - however, if you don't, can I suggest you buy the following Get Well card, which I think is very, very, funny. They do say that laughter is the best medicine, and I'm pretty sure this will raise a chuckle from even the very ill!

Okay, Marian Heath sent me copies of my latest Get Well card, you know, the one I showed you in the short post about 'layering in Photoshop', somewhere below, so I thought I'd let you see how it turned out. Anyway, you keep well, but if you don't...

Secondly, whilst I have cartooning on my mind, there is still some time left for you students out there to become as fantastic as me - yeah, you wish! Just joshing. Anyway, you know it has been a bad year, and well, I hate saying at least some good has come out of it because that is a tired old cliche, but, at least this is a fitting memory to one of the cartooning family we lost this year; it's the Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship (the cartoon is by the brilliant 'usual idiot', Mad Magazine's, Tom Richmond, who is built something like myself):

My friend, cartoonist, and occasional boss, John (Bonanas) Kovaleski, had the following to say about the scholarship being open to all students, which I, as a student of English Lit' and Arts Humanities, certainly would have welcomed:

As for the reasons behind some of the requirements, starting with "don’t have to be an art student": This comes from the fact that a number of cartoonists, many of them prominent, were not art students (including last year’s Reuben winner, Bill Amend, who was, I believe, was a Physics major). And, let’s face it, being an artist is a tough career and students might not choose that as their major. But they might have a strong interest and be doing it on the side. (Some of my strongest cartooning students, the ones with the most drive, are not art students. One does three different web cartoons a week.) And the scholarship might be just the thing to help them think about it as a career.

Jay's bio is here.

Thirdly, my cousin Allan Macfadyen is 50 years old this month. You remember him, he's the guy in the Lepertown comics who read The Bunty when it was still regarded by the unenlightened as a soppy-girls comic. The handsome facial features he once might have had, have now been replaced by a slight facial resemblance to Droopy, the cartoon dog, and he has begun to shrink somewhat so that he is probably now well-under six feet tall, maybe 5' 5" or thereabouts - and a little portly. I think, that if he had a bulldog, and he was out walking the thing, people might assume they were seeing conjoined twins.

So, I'm wishing him a Happy Birthday and sending get well wishes to my Aunt Peggy, who has been poorly. And my Aunt Kathy too, who has managed to bravely overcome a very deadly foe. My goodness me they don't make them like that these days.

That's your lot for this year, my chums. Keep well, and may your God go with you (Dave Allen).

Aren't the Critics we Agree with Just Great?

Now we're cooking with gas. Dirk Deppey has pointed the way to Dan Kois's most excellent list of the best comicbooks of 2007, at the New York Magazine, and I have to say, I agree wholeheartedly with it, Neel!


Of course the fact that Dan has The Arrival by Shaun Tan (Scholastic) in his number-one slot helped swing it for me, but his inclusion of The Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms by Fumiyo Kouno (Last Gasp) shows the guy really knows his stuff, Neel.

Augh, this year really has been oveshadowed by gloom.

I see from my morning visit to Mike Lynch's blog that the gloom hasn't lifted, but deepened, and that veteran cartoonist Al Scaduto died last week, aged 79. Mike has written a really nice, affectionate piece on the passing of his friend and colleague.

Earlier this month, Australian cartoonist,and the man who single-handedly helped to keep people like me in touch with the wider world, through the OZ cartooning publication, Inkspot, James Kemsley, the cartoonist behind Ginger Meggs, died an untimely death, on December the 3rd 2007, at the age of 59, after a brave battle with Motor-Neuron disease.




Another recent tragedy, and one a little closer to home, was the demise of Stirling-born artist and cartoonist Ged (Gerald) Melling, who died on October 29 2007, as a result of a road accident. Ged worked as a cartoonist and illustrator for The Times, the Sunday Telegraph, the Economist, The Financial Times, the Spectator, The Observer, Sporting Life, Private Eye and The Oldie, which isn't a bad resume for a cartoonist who only took up the profession in his 50s.

Neel Mukherjee Reviews 'Graphic Novels'. Why?

Now, Neel Mukerjee is a serial reviewer. He is a Cambridge graduate and so he is uniquely placed to review 'graphic novels' because...actually no, I'm being sarcastic.


It's not that I have anything against Neel Mukharjee, you see, it's just that I don't think the sort of people who get invited to review novels, should automatically be encouraged to review 'graphic novels', for reasons that I have recorded in earlier bloggings (see below), and nothing written in today's Times, by Neel, has changed my mind.

In today's Times the job of reviewing 'Graphic Novels' is given to Neel, who may well be a fan of the genre, for all we know, but there must be a certain amount of doubt cast on that assumption when we read the reviews. It's not that he doesn't effuse over the titles, he does, it's just that, well, he doesn't seem to quite get it. For instance, the 'Three Books of the Year', according to Neel, are, It's a Good Life if you Don't Weaken, by Seth, Exit Wounds, by Rutu Modan, and Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings.

Maybe they are in 'no particular order' but Neel has Seth's, It's a Good Life...(published originally by Drawn and Quarterly in 1996 in his native Canada, and reprinted here, in the UK, by Cape) as his number one of these 'three books of the year'. Don't get me wrong, I like Seth, and this is a decent book, especially for Seth fans and cartoonists and illustrators who are, like Seth, in both his mode of dress and his style of drawing, drawn to the great illustrators of the past, and past New Yorker Magazine illustrators, in particular. But we have to bear a few things in mind. The first is that the story is actually a collection of Seth's comic Palookaville, issues 4 to 9, and it was originally published in, and has sold very well since, 1996, and hard though it may be for Neel to believe, a lot of some backward folks over here in yea olde Britain are already too familiar with the work to proclaim it a 'book of the year' for 2007. If you are new to Seth's work, which you may well have seen in the New Yorker (yes Neel we even get that in Scotchland) I certainly wouldn't put you off buying it. It's a Great Life... was voted number 52 on the list of the '100 Best Comics of the 20th Century' by The Comics Journal.

Exit Wounds, again originally published by Drawn and Quarterly, and again reprinted here in the UK by Cape, is new though, and a sample from its pages can be found here; http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/imagesPreview/a451165f22c05b.pdf
The book, by Rita Modan, was the North American 'graphic novel' debut by the impressive Israeli cartoonist/illustrator, who has already won several awards in Israel and abroad and was voted 'Young Artist of the Year' by the Israeli Ministry of Culture. Unlike Seth's book, the premise of Modan's story is thoroughly modern. Set in modern-day Tel Aviv, the protagonist, Koby Franco, discovers that his estranged father may have been a victim of a suicide bombing in Hadera, and he sets of, reluctantly, to discover the truth about his Father's disappearance. This is story of our times, and a really great example of what a modern 'graphic novel' can be.

The third choice here, Shortcomings, by Adrian Tomine, was published originally by Drawn and Quarterly (am I sensing a theme here?) and is reprinted here in the UK by Faber. A sample from the book can be found here; http://www.drawnandquarterly.com/imagesPreview/a462fba9cc8e66.pdf
Of course, those of you familiar with my blog will know that I just recently posted about an exhibition by Giant Robot Magazine that featured original artwork from this book, so I'm a bit of a fan, but I wouldn't fo so far as to proclaim Shortcomings one of three 'books of the year'.
Tomine's protagonist, Asian-American, Ben Tanaka, is, as The Village Voice pointed out, 'a lonely, socially constricted man, longing to make a connection and spinning in the purgatory between youth and adulthood', in other words he has the mind-set of a typical cartoonist. He is overly critical, overly sarcastic, and highly insensitive, especially in relation to his long–term, long-suffering, girlfriend, Miko Hayashi. I like Adrian Tomine and I like Shortcomings, but like Seth's book earlier, it has neither the scope or the depth that Exit Wounds brings to the medium.


Now, I draw no conclusions from the fact that ALL three of these books were originally published by Drawn and Quarterly, it may just mean that D&Q have a good eye (maybe that will rub-off on Cape and Faber and they will one day publish a new story, rather than a reprint that has already garnered critical acclaim). And although these three books are declared as '...THREE BOOKS OF THE YEAR' by Neel, he reviews a further five 'graphic novels': The Invention of Hugo Cabaret (Scholastic) by Brian Selznick, I Killed Adolf Hitler (Fantagraphics), by Norwegian cartoonist Jason, Paul Hornschemeier's The Three Paradoxes (Fantagraphics), Posey's Tamara Drew (Cape) and Nevermore (SelfMadeHero) an anthology, illustrated by Stuart Tipples, Steve Pugh, John McCrea, D'Israeli, Shane Ivan Oakley, Jame Fletcher, Natalie Sandells, Alice Duke, Erik Rangel, and Laura Howell.


Anyone writing a review of graphic novels and compiling a list of 'THE THREE BOOKS OF THE YEAR' in that medium, who has no knowledge of Shaun Tan's, The Arrival (Arthur A. Levine Books, reprinted by Lothian Children's Books in the UK), doesn't know the first thing about 'Graphic Novels'. In my humble opinion. I'd be prepared to overlook sloppy research that results in 'THE THREE Books OF THE YEAR', in the 'graphic novel' genre all being found on one publisher's website, but having no knowledge of a 'Graphic Novel' that has the entire cartooning community of cartoonists, illustrators, cartooning critics, cartooning bloggers and comicbook fans gaping in awe, is an astonishing oversight, is it not?


For the benefit of any Times readers who might look in and for Neel himself, Shaun Tan's, The Arrival is a 'silent graphic novel', of 120 pages of pencilled artwork, that took four years to develop. The reviews below, by people who clearly do have a clue about the medium, sum it up:


http://www.arthuralevinebooks.com/book.asp?bookid=123

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/review/Yang-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin