St Louis cartoonist, Mardou, joined me to talk about her Sky in Stereo collection from Revival House press. Mardou’s work can also be found featured in the new film, The Missing Girl.
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Image courtesy of Colin Upton. Taken in 1991. “Dennis Eichhorn at Misfit Lit, a major show of underground/Indie comics in Seattle’s Coco Gallery curated by the folks at Fantagraphics in 1991. As far as I know it was one of the first comic art shows of it’s kind. This was when Seattle was the place to be for comic artists, when comics wasn’t so much a business as a cause.”
With the passing of Dennis Eichhorn, I wanted to repost this interview that we did back in 2007. I was joined by Colin Upton and Donald King. All three of us were really excited to interview him. Dennis was one of the most important folks in late 80’s/early 90’s alternative comics. His series of autobio comics, Real Stuff and Real Smut, were revealing, brutal, human, hilarious and heart breaking. almost every independent cartoonist that you can think of from that era, has drawn a comic based on an Eichhorn script. Last Gasp comics recently released a new book of Real Stuff strips. Go check it out.
Colin Upton was one of those collaborators. I asked him for comments on Dennis’ passing
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this but JR Williams has reported that Dennis Eichhorn, journalist and comics author, has passed away suddenly. Details so far are non-existent, although he was known to be suffering from heart trouble. He wrote a story about it in his latest book. Dennis was the most important author of American autobiographical comic stories after the late Harvey Pekar. While Harvey’s life was one of angst and working class routine Dennis, who began as a burly, football playing redneck from Idaho, had a life full of adventures, often skirting the fringes of society, to write about. I had collaborated with Dennis over the last few decades, stories autobiographical, historical and journalistic. He often came to me to do Vancouver or historical related stories. I always found Dennis easy to work with, he was willing to incorporate suggested changes I made to the stories we worked on together without rancor. He had outlined a story to me, “Doughnuts of Spokane”, for the next book which now will never happen. Did I mention he was kind, gentle and open to people, no matter how strange? There was a Zen like calm to Dennis. It’s not right, it’s too soon… Dennis still had stories to tell for others to draw…”
I also asked Don for some comments too “Probably one of the most underrated writers in underground/ alternative comics. He deserves the same kind of status given to Harvey Pekar for being able to entertain and be poignant with slice-of-life stories. And I helluva nice guy. I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet him. I’m saddened to hear he’s gone.”
Drawing by Dennis from Colin Upton’s sketchbooks “This is a drawing I finally persuaded Dennis to do at a slow comic con in a failed shopping mall in Moscow, Idaho.”
Antoine Cossé joined me to discuss his new works. Over the past couple of years, Antoine has released a good amount of really strong comics work. From British publisher Breakdown Press, he has the book Mutiny Bay as well as smaller works Nwai and Showtime. Retrofit/Big Planet put out the one shot Harold last year. I really like Antoine’s work and looking forward to see where he goes with it.
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I caught up with Portland cartoonist, Jason Overby. I have been a big of his work for quite a while and really happy to see a nice book of it collected. Being Being is published by Gridlords and well worth hunting for. Jason has a really unique voice in comics and is worth investigating.
It has been a couple of years since I had done a critics roundtable. I took break partially because Comics Are Burning In Hell does a great job of podcasting comics critics. I was somehow able to convince The Comics Reporter’s very own, Tom Spurgeon and the great voice in comics podcasting, Joe McCulloch to return. This time we were joined by Zainab Akhtar, the head boss of Comics and Cola. Both Tom and Zainab have Patreon’s that are very much worth supporting. they produce high quality comics criticism and are important voices to pay attention too. If Joe had a Patreon I would suggest supporting that too, but he doesn’t.
Unfortuantely there was a lot of technical difficulties while recording. Our first session was cut short because of power failure at my house caused by a major storm in Vancouver. The second session had a lot of problems with signals especially near the end. Many apologies to my guests and listeners for the substandard qualities. I am very thankful for their scheduling flexibility.
Here is our discussion list in order of what we talked about
Demon by Jason Shiga
Vacancy by Jen Lee
Flop to the Top by Eleanor Davis and Drew Weing
Master Keaton by Naoki Urasawa and others
Resident Alien: The Sam Hain Mystery by Steve Parkhouse and Peter Hogan
Corto Maltese: Beyond the Windy Isles by Hugo Pratt
Wuvable Oaf by Ed Luce
First Year Healthy by Michael DeForge
We were also supposed to talk about Phoebe Gloeckner’s Diarty of a Teenage Girl but had to end early because of previously mentioned technical difficulties.
This special episode of Inkstuds is hosted by Katie Skelly. Because of the support through the Inkstuds Patreon, I am able to bring on some excellent guests hosts. I am really happy to have Katie taking part. I am a big fan of both Katie’s work and her guest for this week, Liz Suburbia.
Liz’s new book is a collection of her long running webcomic, Sacred Heart. Published by Fantagraphics, Sacred Heart is a great look at exploring teen relationships on different levels. Liz has a natural flair for full realized characters and is a book well worth checking out.
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Glenn Head‘s new book, Chicago is an excellent first big release from one of the greats in comics. Glenn has been producing fine work under titles likes Avenue D and Guttersnipe as well as editing the excellent anthologies Hotwire Comix and Snake Eyes (co-edited with Kaz). Glenn was a child of underground comix. Coming to age in the 1970s, feeding on the work of generation before him. His latest work explores that time, looking at Glenn as a young impulsive reckless man. I really enjoyed it and it’s quite worth checking out.
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Vortex cartoonist William Cardini joined me to talk about his comics work. William has an amazing loose style that takes his work into some really odd space and direction. I am especially enjoying his work on the great Study Group website. William will be at SPX launching a new comic with Yeah Dude Comics.
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Robert Goodin returned to the show his initial interview 5 years ago. His new book is Kurdles from Fantagraphics. A beautifully drawn children’s book, showing a nice departure in style. Robert’s a great drawer and I love to see anything that has his ink.
Robert was also the founder of the much loved Covered blog.
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This weeks guest is cartoonist Daryl Seitchik. I first got Daryl’s mini comics through the great Oily subscription and have sine picked up others thoroughly enjoyed her introspective work that explores her childhood and adolescence. You can find her Missy comics on her tumblr and finer comic stores.
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