Inkstuds Radio

In advance of his comics trip to North America, HTML Flowers aka Grant Gronewold joined me to talk about his art, comics and music. We also cover his personal health in some detail, which relates a lot to his comics. His series of mini comics, No Visitors, which is orderable right now, are extremely revealing looks into one person navigating chronic health conditions in modern medical bureaucracy. You also has a book out from space face called Virtual candle as well as his collaborations with friend Simon Hanselmann in Werefolf Jones and Sons. I really got a lot out of this conversation and am grateful to Grant for his openness.

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HMTL Flowers [ 1:09:43 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This interview has been a long time coming. Gilbert Hernandez is one of the greatest living comic creators. His work in Love and Rockets has ranged from horrifying to heart breaking to meditative to anywhere in between. His latest work is the Blubber series from Fantagraphics. It’s a frightnening horror show not for the light heart or for someone lacking of sense of humour. The latest Love and Rockets book is out now too. He also wrote a book with illustrator Darwyn Cooke out from Vertigo, Twilight Children.

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Gilbert Hernandez [ 1:22:54 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

UK comics artist Simon Moreton joined me to chat about his new book from Uncivilized Books, Plans We Made. Simon has a really beautiful minimal style of story telling that works really nicely. Simon’s other work can be found in his Smoo mini comics.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon.

Simon Moreton [ 54:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week we’re joined by Vancouver comic artist Morgan Jeske to talk about his life, process, movies and comic work. Morgan is known for his work on Change, published by Image Comics, and his self published work Disappearing Town and ●●●● Vol. I. He also co-hosts a film podcast called Travis Bickle on the Riviera. His newest work ●●●● Vol. 2 feels like a fantastic meandering exploration of the self and other and wild liminal decaying spaces. Morgan creates unique comics with a strong sense of atmosphere and weight, so I’m excited to see what he does next. Interview by Sloane Leong.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon.

Morgan Jeske [ 1:24:37 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Leslie Stein joined me to talk about her latest book from Fantagraphics, Bright Eyed at Midnight. Leslie has been very active with new work being posted on her blog and Vice comics. Leslie’s work is a colourful balance of touching personal work mixed with an extremely joyful palette. Her style has been evolving and developing into an amazing discontructed way, boiling her work into essentials. I really like the direction she has gone in.

Apologies for the sound quality on this one. It was the first done on a new computer and forgot to set my stuff right.

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Leslie Stein [ 55:43 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Blaise Larmee joined me to talk about some of the new work he has been involved with from 2d Cloud. Most recently, Blaise edited the Mirror Mirror anthology which is part of 2d Cloud’s current Kickstarter efforts. It’s a fantastic anthology/art book, exploring the more conceptual end of comics right now.

UPDATE Jan 2018 – Since posting this interview nearly 2 years ago, 2d Cloud has severed ties with Blaise and pulped his collection, 3 books in response to allegations in regards to actions by Blaise.

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Blaise Larmee [ 1:31:35 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Inkstuds Radio and I’m David Brothers, a two-time Eisner Award co-loser. I used to run 4thletter!, the internet’s most popular comics blog that also focused on wrestling, movies, music, Venom, and the black condition. I did Inkstuds Spotlight a few years back, taking a look at the world of comics from a variety of different perspectives, and Robin Inkstuds, the proprietor of this fine internet broadcast, gave me an open invite to come back and interview whoever I’d like.

I chose Zainab Akhtar, the mind behind Comics & Cola (found at comicsandcola.com, with a Tumblr supplement atwellnotwisely.tumblr.com) and a comics critic and tastemaker whose voice I appreciate greatly in the current comics landscape. She has a taste for things that are new to me, and a way of describing them that fascinates me. She’s done an Inkstuds or two herself, most recently with Michael Deforge.

I reached out to her for an interview/conversation, and she was kind enough to say yes. We talked about Mads Mikkelsen, her childhood experience with comics, what led to her critiquing comics, being focused on narrative, the community she has found herself in, serializing comics for others, friendship, a brief aside into Masamune Shirow, and whether Vin Diesel or The Rock is better, more or less in that order.

The intro music is Akira Ifukube’s “Godzilla (Main Theme).” The outro music is Amit Trivedi & Tochi Raina’s Motorwada Song.

Zainab and David, In Conversation [ 1:10:46 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week Meredith Gran, the Ignatz Award winning creator of long-running webcomic Octopus Pie, joins us to talk about her creative history and process as well as the release of Octopus Pie in trade form from Image Comics, out February 26th. Meredith is one of my absolute favorite cartoonists and I consider her a huge creative pillar both in webcomics and the medium in general. She is constantly pushing the limits of the medium with a uniquely cartoony style and digs deeper with every story arc into the complex and sometimes absurd emotional drama of being young, chasing your dreams and confronting harsh realities, forming and breaking relationships, and trying to just live all the while watching the novelty of youth escape you.

If you like this podcast and want to hear more, please consider supporting Inkstuds on Patreon.

Meredith Gran [ 1:23:40 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It’s the Return of Derf. Derf’s latest book is Trashed, a look at his time as a garbage man, mixed with a look at the trash industry. A really interesting look at how we process garbage and the life of a garbage man.

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Derf [ 48:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In a moment of rash impulsiveness last year that he’s surely regretted ever since, Robin asked whether I’d be interested in guest-hosting some episodes for Inkstuds. We bandied about names and one of the first we settled on was Michael DeForge. Michael’s been interviewed on Inkstuds twice previously -in 2010, and then 2012, and Robin’s hope was that my approach would be different enough to provide a fresh and interesting perspective. I don’t think the resulting chat is *quite* that…

But the reason I wanted to interview Michael wasn’t necessarily because there’s new things to say and glean about his work, but because he’s one of a handful of cartoonists operating at a level of astonishingly consistent excellency. He’s also rather prolific, and conversely those two aspects can often come together and lead to a sense of flat expectation, of taking things for granted. In comics, more so than any medium -and maybe, too, it’s a symptom of the volume and quality of work on offer today- we’re eager to move on to the next thing: looking forward at the expense of engagement and being present. Look, I’m not saying he’s under-appreciated (as such), but that it’s difficult sometimes, when you’re in the midst of a thing, to recognise it for what it is.

Like many people, I anticipate a new DeForge work, but then I put off reading it until I’m sufficiently geared up to do so because of how much it moves me. Art provides us with varying emotions/reactions; my personal preference for it is to elicit joy and affirmation, enrichment and strength. Michael’s work fulfills the latter quotient in a way that’s acutely resonant. Colours and lines thrum and question. Shapes bulb and pulse. Tendrils weave and synapses spark. It makes me anxious and tense and restless, and yet it’s so gnawingly beautiful -shouldn’t the effect of beauty be the opposite of those things? I don’t always get it, but I get from it. And that’s enough, and then some.

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Michael Deforge [ 1:34:17 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download