Trevlin Utz

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You can only see her through a telescope anymore. Or is it a rifle scope? In diegetic terms, it is a telescope, but they can seem very much like the same thing. Regardless, it is now the only way to see her.

Trevlin Utz drew comics professionally from 1994 to 1998. For the first three years he worked collaboratively, at a Virginia publisher he outlasted. For the last two, he worked alone, for an Illinois publisher still prominent today. Almost everything he made related to Donna Mia, “a Demoness to make you forget other girls,” and her picaresque swagger through a United States flush with vampire swells and human gluttony. She is a succubus, in part, and often she is naked. This was called the “Bad Girl” era, though Donna Mia did not want to be bad. One time at a party she met a man who was dating Truman Capote. One time at a carnival she met a veteran of World War I. Another time in a diner she met Neil Gaiman, but Neil Gaiman wasn’t quite Neil Gaiman in 1995.

It was the time of the comic book industry crash, and this is an interview with somebody who was there, until he wasn’t.

-Joe McCulloch

Note from the broadcaster. Something weird happened with Joe’s audio where he was recorded quicker than the guest, so as the interview goes on, there is some overlap in voices. These kind of things unfortunately happen with live recording. I once had an interview that didn’t record anything the guest said. I also once had an amazing in person interview with Ho Che Anderson where the recorder wasn’t turned on.

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Tom Ellard

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Tom Ellard is the main mind behind Australian music project, Severed Heads. Their work in the early 80’s was well ahead of the curve for electronic music. Albums like Since the Accident have aged quite nicely 30 years later. This interview was conducted last year in advance of a north american tour.

I recorded this interview last summer. I had lofty ambitions of doing a podcast interviewing experimental musicians. It’s still something I would love to do, but just honestly don’t have the time. Preparing for this interview was really challenging, listening a whole lot of music and reading what i could to some up for podcast conversation. I am so used to my comics interviews, that a music interview is a whole different part of the brain that I haven’t exercised. I doubt this is anywhere near to one of my finest interviews, but it’s still interesting in some aspects. I felt pretty defeated by it though. I could that Ellard did not get much out of it as being a guest. I was supposed to follow up to continue the conversation, but honestly didn’t see a point. So here is a fragment conversation. This was to originally run in Island Magazine, but that fell through.

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Tim Hensley Interviewed By Roman Muradov

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Tim Hensley is among the many great living underappreciated cartoonists. His work is impeccably crafted, witty, inventive, it feels at once frozen and alive, questioning constantly the language, the medium, the relationship between drawings and words. There’s no one like him.

Dan Clowes described Wally Gropius as “a work of unassuming genius that rewards on ever-deepening levels on each re-reading” and this quote applies just as well to Tim’s two other books, Ticket Stub and, most recently, Sir Alfred Number 3, a comic-strip biography of Alfred Hitchcock that is unlike anything you may expect from the phrase “comic-strip biography.”

Read these comics with care and patience that they deserve. We could end it at that–the books speak for themselves, but I did talk to Tim for quite a while about writing, high and low culture, literary influences, found texts, punchlines and weather, so go and press the play button below. Bye.

– inkstuds note, this interview was conducted by another fantastic cartoonist, Roman Muradov.

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Sloane Leong – Emerald City Panel on Shaping Space and Time in Comics

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As a follow up to last weeks show, this weeks is the second panel, this time featuring Brandon Graham, David Brothers, Adam Warren, Meredith Gran and Farel Dalrymple. And of course, all this was hosted by the great and inquisitive Sloane Leong.

The topic of this panel was about manipulating narrative time and space on the page through paneling styles, drawing styles, narration, staging and pacing.

Below is a messy gallery I threw together from images that Sloane provided.

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Sloane Leong – Emerald City Panel on Exploring Alternative Story Structure

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This weeks studs is a little different. Inkstuds regular guest host, Sloane Leong did a couple of really interesting panels on comics with some great folks at Emerald City Comicon in March. This is the first. It features Brandon Graham, David Brothers, Jen Wang, and Meredith Gran. An amazing crew of fantastic cartoonists.

The panel said that they would discuss alternative story structure, story theory, the legacy of Western storytelling, and how to expand beyond it.

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Evan Dahm

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Prolific web-cartoonist, Evan Dahm, joined me to talk about hist latest self published work, Vattu. Evan’s work is extremely enjoyable to read. I really liked seeing where his work went, eschewing standard fantasy tropes to fully explore these weird world’s he has created.

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Malachi Ward

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Malachi Ward makes beautiful, intricate science fiction and fantasy comics. The stories are set in richly illustrated, fantastic landscapes, addressing existential questions and carrying a certain dark edge that I appreciate and associate with some of the very best science fiction writing in prose or comics. I was eager to talk about his recent work: a new short story collection from Alternative Comics called FROM NOW ON, and the serialized story he’s working on with Matt Sheehan in the ISLAND anthology called ANCESTOR. We also talked about time travel, why people explore strange new worlds, religious cults, and why we love Vancouver so much. I think Malachi is doing some really interesting comics right now and I hope you’ll check them out.

Interview by Sean Ford

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Caitlin Skaalrud

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Minneapolis cartoonist Caitlin Skaalrud joined me to talk about her fantastic book, Houses of the Holy. It’s a really strong debut graphic novel. Caitlin takes some big chances in making this book and succeeds.

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Sophie Goldstein

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Sophie Goldstein joined me to talk about her soon to be concluded series, House of Women. Sophie’s work has an amazing humanity and depth to it. I really enjoyed this series and her book from Adhouse, The Oven. We had some technical issues over skype, so there is some editing on this to splice it together.

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Ryan Heshka

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I’ve been wanting to interview Ryan Heshka for a quite a while. His painted work has long been a proud gem of the Vancouver illustration scene. His work has been featured in Blab and shown a string of fantastic galleries. We got together to talk about his latest work, Mean Girls Club from NoBrow. It was originally published as a risograph book to accompany an art installation, Mean Girls is  great new direction for Heshka’s work.

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