Leslie Stein

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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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Blaise Larmee

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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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Zainab & David, In Conversation

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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.

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Meredith Gran interviewed by Sloane Leong

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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.

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Derf

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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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Michael DeForge

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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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Jonathan Chandler

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Jonathan Chandler joined me to talk about his new book from Breakdown Press, Another Blue World. He also has work out from Landfill Editions and the upcoming Decadence anthology. Jon’s work is a weird exploration of sci-fi anxieties fueled by drugs, sex and navigating the unknown. Very natural feeling stuff.

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Benjamin Marra

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Benjamin Marra joined me to talk about his latest books. I had Ben on many years ago, so it was great to catch up and see how things have changed and what’s going on with his comics. His most recent book is Terror Assaulter: O.M.W.O.T. from fantagraphics. It’s an extreme visceral work that has some major punch to it. He’s trying to some new weird ways of straight forward story telling in it. I really liked it a lot. His other new work from Sacred Prism is the brightly coloured Blades and Lazers collection. It’s got monsters, tough guys and some great battling. I totally dig it. well worth checking out.

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Sean Azzopardi

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I was joined by UK cartoonist, Sean Azzopardi to talk about his comics work. Sean has a range of different work ranging from genre series Necessary Monsters for the renewed First comics to his wandering autobio work like in Rain on Glass and Twelve Hour Shift, which I especially enjoyed for how he was able to explore the world around himself with an interesting compelling distance.

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Jane Mai

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Jane Mai joined me to talk about her new books, Soft from Peow and See You Next Tuesday from Koyama. Jane’s new books are very different but both great. See You Next Tuesday is a natural extension of her previous book from Koyama, Sunday In The Park With Boys. Really funny personal revealing sketchbook and off the cuff comics. Soft is more of a fleshed out contained story exploring the high drama and despair of teen romance.

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