Comic Book Commodities — Cartoonist and illustrator Dave Gibbons, best known for his work on Watchmen with Alan Moore, interviewed at The Huffington Post:
[E]conomically comics are in a really difficult place because the monthly American comic books which are maybe 22 pages of story, now can cost $4, which is £3, and that is a lot of money for really such a small amount of entertainment when you think what you can get on the app store or you know the several hours of entertainment you can get at the movies or whatever for not dissimilar sums of money.
So, I think what happens nowadays is actually people ‘as they say,’ wait for the trade collection. But the way I can see it polarising even more is that you’ll then want is something that is more than just the reading experience, you’ll want something that is a beautiful object in it’s own right that has extras, that has maybe artist notes or writers’ notes, backup material, is really nicely bound, is beautifully printed, so you know I can see those two kind of commodities diverging even further in the future.
Gibbons discusses his contribution to Watchmen in the nicely bound, beautifully printed book Watching the Watchmen.
Let the Medium Do the Work — Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich) on storytelling:
[I]t’s very important that what you do is specific to the medium in which you’re doing it, and that you utilise what is specific about that medium to do the work. And if you can’t think about why it should be done this way, then it doesn’t need to be done.
CRAZY – A wonderful interview with Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, in The Guardian:
“I’m totally crazy, I know that. I don’t say that to be a smartass, but I know that that’s the very essence of what makes my work good. And I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that’s fine. I don’t do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can’t not do it.” You can’t be that crazy, I say: you managed to stay in one relationship for half a century. “Yes! And he was – well. He was a man who loved music and reading. He never smoked and he died of lung cancer, utterly ridiculous. I had that friendship for a long, long time.”
And finally…
One Step Ahead of the Scrap Dealers — The Globe and Mail obituary for typographer and book designer Glenn Goluska who died of lung cancer on Aug. 13 in Montreal at the age of 64:
In the mid-1970s, Glenn Goluska was usually one step ahead of the scrap dealers.
The typographer and his buddies would be on the prowl in Toronto for cast-aside printing equipment. Specifically, they were picking up letterpress, its type made from carved wood or cast metal that left unique marks when smashed on to paper. The technique had stopped being economical for large printing outfits and had been on a 20-year decline, replaced by offset printing, which used a photographic process. This left all kinds of wood and metal cuts, linotype and letterpress machines available for a song.
For Goluska and his friends, here were historic pieces of art-making tools and all they needed to do was gather a few guys and find a truck with reliable suspension.
R. I. P.