DOG CITY Contents:
MAGAZINE
PDF Contents:
2-3: Contributor Information
2-17: Magazine
4: Editorial
18-35: Visits
5: Dog City Information
36-47: The Starship BoobyPrize
6-7: Cartoonist Spotlight: Rachel Masilamani
48-57: All Set 58-66: Dead Bulb
8-9: Mangy Mutt by D. Rinylo 10: Proto-Graphic Novels in WWII
11: Almost Comics: Sol Lewitt Wall Drawings 12-13: On the Ubiquity of Nancy 14: Cartoonists from the other Anglosphere 15: A comic a day...
67-75: Helene 76-139: Landing 140: Poster 141-143: Postcards
144: Stickers
145-169: Pigs Incorported 170-181: Restricted
Contributors Ben Evans
Mathew New
Ben Evans is from California, and draws comics about strange people who do strange things. www.benkevans.tumblr.com
www.mathewnew.com
Juan Fernandez
Simon Reinhardt
Juan Fernandez likes to doodle. Improvisation is at the heart of his cartooning practices. He draws daily strips that he posts every week on his site. www.crinkledcomics.com
Simon Reinhardt hails from Western Massachusetts. He likes to make comics about rappers, pyramids, and cartographers.
Landing
Editor, Helene, Art Card, Stickers
Dead Bulb Mathew New comes from Indiana, and mostly makes comics about a hapless explorer and his trusty talking-duck sidekick.
Editor, All Set, Art Card
www.simonmreinhardt.tumblr.com
Ben Gowen
D. Rinylo
Ben Gowen hails from Colorado, and makes comics about soldiers, wizards and mountain men.
D. Rinylo lives in White River Junction where he draws comics and cartoon pictures. He posts most of them regularly on his website. www.drinylo.com
Eleri Mai Harris
Aaron Shrewsbury
Restricted
The Starship Booby Prize, Dog City Magazine
Mangy Mutt (Dog City Magazine)
Eleri is a cartoonist and journalist from Tasmania. She likes to make comics about, hipsters, mischief and the oddities of living in America. www.elerimai.com
Poster Aaron Shrewsbury considers himself to be a painter first and foremost, but he has lived with comics since he was a very little child with a very large head. He prefers black and white comics to color comics and he hopes to make a comic that stirs the soul as deeply as it stirs the eye. www.nothingspace.tumblr.com
Luke Healy
Iris Yan
Luke Healy is a Cartoonist and Journalist from Dublin, Ireland. Most of his comics are about sarcastic women who smoke.
Iris Yan is a Brazilian-born Chinese cartoonist who has also lived in the U.S.A.,Taiwan and Mozambique. She believes life is humorous and prefers to make funny comics.
Editor, Visits, Landing, Art Card, Box Illustration
www.lukewhealy.com
Josh Lees
Landing Fueled by manga, table top RPGs, and 80s teen movies, Josh’s comics move from emotional tableau to intergalactic ska concerts at the drop of a hat. He also has a pair of cowboy boots in the colors of the New Mexico flag. www.josh-lees.com
Pigs Incorporated
www.pigsinmaputo.blogspot.com
Welcome to Dog City
Find Dog City on:
Tumblr: www.dogcitypress.com Twitter: @dogcitypress
Send your comments, questions, queries and letters to dogcitypress@gmail.com If we get enough, we’ll even include a letters section in the next issue of Dog City. Join the conversation!
We love mini-comics. We love holding in our hands something small, and complete, and personal. We love handmade books, impeccably presented, hand sewn, silk screened, colour, black and white, xeroxed, stapled, or run off your grandmother’s shitty inkjet printer at the last minute. We love the feeling that something was made just for us. We also love comics anthologies. Getting a well packaged book of comics from a group of cartoonists working in sync is it’s own special kind of exciting. We love cracking open a book and discovering a whole heap of artists we might never have found otherwise. But when groups of awesome cartoonists come together and put their work into a single book, for all of the great things that result, something is lost. So why can’t we have both? Dog City is our attempt to bring you both of these feelings at the same time. We’ve spent four months rounding up the coolest mini-comics we could find from the best young cartoonists we know. We love cartoonists. For the last four
months, our Dog City contributors have been hard at work. They wrote, they drew. We printed, silk screened, folded and stapled. All to bring you guys the best mini comics collection we possibly could. All of our artists have been incredible to work with. They have been generous with their time and their talent. I urge you to check out their websites, and support them any way you can. We love talking about comics. Many of the comics in Dog City are explorations in style, and heavily reference the work of some fantastic cartoonists. Both the editors of, and contributors to Dog City try to engage with the history and possibilities of the comics medium. To this end, we chose to include a magazine of comics criticism and journalism. We interviewed some great cartoonists, and read a whole bunch of comics, in the hopes of highlighting some cool stuff you might not have seen before. But most of all we just love comics. And at the end of the day, that’s what it comes down to. Inside this box, there are funny comics, sad comics, exciting comics
and some weird comics. We hope you enjoy reading them. We hope you share them with your friends. We hope you pass them on, we hope you put them on your shelves forever, we hope you do whatever it is you like to do with the comics you love. Keep reading and keep making. -Luke Healy Co-Editor
Cartoonist Spotlight: Rachel Masilamani
“There’s things you can’t do with words and there’s things you can’t do with pictures, that’s what’s so exciting about the form. It’s constantly pressing against your limitations. ” - Rachel Masilamani 2013 By Juan Fernandez A veteran self-publisher, Rachel Masilamani
has been making comics in the United States since 1997. Her first comics collection, RPM Comics #1, received a grant from the Xeric
blurring the line between fact and fiction. In
University in 1999 with a degree in
She walks this tightrope in ways similar to
she didn’t go looking for a job or head off
so doing, she makes her inner life palpable.
the memoir work of Carol Tyler, Mardou and Gabrielle Bell.
Although Masilamani grew up reading
Anthropology and a minor in Art History, to graduate school, rather she attempted to make cartooning a full time job.
For months she dedicated herself to
Foundation and was named “Best Comic
newspaper comics, she didn’t start making
improving her cartooning and honing her
then, her comics have appeared in Meathaus,
John Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD in
It was a bold move as a young cartoonist.
Book” by the Baltimore City Paper. Since
Street Runoff, Graphics Classics, The Indiana Review, in other anthologies and in her own
her own comics until she was a student at the late nineties.
Her first formal forays into the medium
publications.
were under the guidance of Baltimore
hard pressed to categorize her work.
Chalkley. One of the stories made under
An accomplished story teller, Masilamani is Endlessly fascinated with people,
Masilamani draws inspiration from her own life and the behaviors of those around her to create stories that burrow themselves deep into the minds of her readers. Her stories
elegantly blend naturalistic storytelling with expressionistic visual representation.
In much of her work, Masilamani explores
notions of local and universal truth by
ability to translate her observations to paper. Her efforts paid off when she received the
Xeric Foundation Grant.
The grant provided her with $5000 to print
based cartoonist and instructor, Tom
and distribute her first collection of comics,
Chalkley’s guidance, Pen Bandit, appears in
she hit the ground running.
Masilamani published RPM #2 in Baltimore.
Pittsburgh, PA.
original, personal stories, carefully rendered
of observation and personality that made
her release of comics.
of an artist who had tighter storytelling
taken a hiatus from her cartooning, the truth
draftsmanship.
new comics privately.
Masilamani’s first collection of comics, RPM #1. Originally planned to be a short film
that she wanted to propose to John Hopkin’s film club, Masilamani decided to make Pen Bandit a comic on her own to avoid the
inevitable frustrations she foresaw of having to compromise her vision.
After she graduated from John Hopkins
RPM #1 in 2000. With the help of the grant, The first issue of RPM featured uniquely
in pencil and pen & ink.
Though the work might not have been fully
developed, it was a promising collection of stories that offered a fresh perspective. After continuing freelance work and
putting out the occasional minicomic,
A spread from Las Cuerpas by Rachel Masilamani
RPM #2 retained the same ingenious sense
RPM #1 stand out, but revealed the hand mechanics and a greater confidence in
Comprised of memoir, folk tales, and urban
While it would seem that Masilamani had
was that she continued to work and re-work This new period of cartooning saw
fantasies, the variety of genres in RPM #2
Masilamani put out two self-contained
stage.
While both stories take place in the same
placed Masilamani’s narrative chops center After publishing RPM #2, life caught up
with Masilamani. Though she’d given the life
of a free-lance cartoonist and illustrator a go, it wasn’t meant to be.
Masilamani returned to school to study
Library Science and began a series of Mangy Mutt by D. Rinylo
During this time, Masilamani slowed down
relocations that wound up taking her to
mini-comics, Song Contest and Las Cuerpas. physical landscape, the Mexican-American
border, Song Contest and Las Cuerpas explore radically different emotional landscapes. Song Contest tells the story of a young
woman who leaves her home to participate in a televised singing contest.
The comic is a playful experiment that
cleverly uses the iconographic power of the comics medium.
In Song Contest, Masilamani allows
the animals that aid the protagonist on her journey to speak in words, while
all of Masilamani’s human characters
speak in icons. As a result of this formal
decision, Masilamani creates a smooth, but
idiosyncratic reading experience that lends the story an air of heartfelt whimsy.
Las Cuerpas, which Masilamani published
in 2010, is much heavier. It deals head on
with the femicides of Ciudad Juarez Mexico.
A wordless comic inked expressively in pen
and ink, Las Cuerpas swiftly moves across the city of Juarez and builds to a feverish crescendo.
Mangy Mutt by D. Rinylo
www.drinylo.com
Proto Graphic Novels in WWII
Sol Lewitt Wall Drawings By Simon Reinhardt
Almost Comics is a series examining artwork,
literature, and publications that are not comics but are not far off, either. Although these works might not be comics under a strict definition, thinking
of them as comics might suggest new possibilities or lessons for the comics medium. The Sol Lewitt wall drawing retrospective at MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art)
consists of 105 large pieces, each drawn on a wall.
By Luke Healy An unusual form of illustrated book flourished in
intention of showing them as a series of prints in a gallery setting.
Okubo’s story is interesting and well told, but
GI during WWII. Unlike Citizen 13660, this book is
was a young student at the time of her internment.
opportunity to use metaphorical and fantastical
treated people of East Asian descent horribly,
Happen tells the story of a young draftee, who wakes
pictures and words. Usually, they consist of a single illustration per page, with one or two sentences of text beneath.
These books are reminiscent of earlier woodcut
novels by artists such as Lynd Ward and Frans
surrounding it’s creation. Take Okubo herself. She
She was working in a medium that has traditionally especially during WWII. She created all of this work while interned, and living in awful conditions.
Okubo’s cartooning is simple and appealing, yet
Choosing to use fiction gives Freeman more
creation.
military, and the general public allow us to draw
book, written and drawn by Mine Okubo is
autobiographical. It is an account of Okubo’s
experiences in an internment camp during World War II.
The book was never meant to be a book. Okubo, an
American citizen of Japanese descent, was a young woman studying fine art when she was interned.
She created the images from the book, with the
complex and well realised graphic narratives of the time.
Citizen 13660 was the first published account of
life in an internment camp, written by an interned US Citizen.
It Shouldn’t Happen by Don Freeman gives us
a look at the other side of the story. The book
examines the dehumanising experience of going
through boot camp, and the social stigma of being a
scribbles, and other elements.
So what do Lewitt’s drawings have to do with
world’s largest comic book.
Lewitt’s wall drawings don’t have appear to
generally practiced. Each drawing is produced
imnation and expansion gradually emerges. Lewitt
seemingly arranged in every possible permutation.
In an interview with Saul Ostrow in Bomb Magazine,
forms--are introduced. If you walk through the
loosely chronological retrospective, this pattern of systematic recombination of a limited number of
elements becomes clear. The cumulative effect of the wall drawings are a narrative of the development of an artistic universe, from the most basic elements on down. You can “read” this body of work as a
comic book--there’s not a lot of what anybody would traditionally call “story” there, but it works because the form is integrated so fundamentally with what narrative there is.
Furthermore, like most comics you read and
unlike most gallery art, the wall drawings are
produce logical systems. Most of these systems
the way he pushed back against the fetishization
simple forms--square, cube, line and color--to
were finite; that is they were complete using all
reproductions. Part of Lewitt’s particular genius was of the artist’s hand. The “original” of the wall
drawing is a sheet of typewritten instructions, the drawings are then executed by a team of
assistants accordingly. Comics, too, are primarily a reproduction medium, with “originals” that more often than not are a distraction from the actual
experience of the art. Lewitt understood that if
the end goal was a wall covered in straight pencil
lines, it didn’t matter if he was the one to draw the
which he is treated by both his superiors in the
lines himself and that understanding allowed him
to create a warehouse full of wall drawings. Comics
interesting comparisons between his experiences
is a medium in which work that takes months to
and those of Mine Okubo.
produce often only takes a few minutes to read, and
Both books give us an unique, contemporary look
Lewitt’s modes of production might point toward a
at the dehumanising effects of war, not only on the
way around some of the agonies of cartooning.
soldiers in combat, but on those left at home.
And they still hold up today. Both of these books
still feel fresh and exciting, and excellent examples of what can be done with the illustrated book form.
85, Fall 2003). When the system is exhausted
Lewitt said that he “used the elements of these
Freeman’s character is patriotic, and desperately
adult picture book.
And the book is, in my opinion, one of the most
less austere as he introduces color, wavy lines,
turned him into a dog.
wishes to serve in the US military, but the way in
Citizen 13660 is a fascinating case. The
progresses, the drawings eventually become slightly
up one morning to discover that boot camp has
firmly rooted in observational drawing. It manages to feel contemporary and fresh, 70 years after it’s
going in a different direction. As Lewitt’s career
elements to communicate his message. It Shouldn’t
Masereel, however, they are undeniably distinct. The inclusion of text, almost gives them the feeling of an
of this retrospective as a leading candidate for the
according to predetermined instructions (e.g. “Six
tell lengthy narratives using a combination of
are often considered proto-graphic novels, as they
quarters, each one featuring thin, straight lines
begins simply, with straight black pencil lines,
military.
possibly more fascinating are the circumstances
new components--new colors, types of lines, or
principles. A typical wall might be broken into four
area of the walls is close to an acre. I like to think
have any obvious connections to comics as they’re
America just after WWII. These illustrated books
of thin, straight lines organized by various different
comics? Most fundamentally, they are a sequence of
framed as a work of fiction, though it undoubtedly draws from Freeman’s own experiences in the US
possible variations. This kept them simple” (Issue
a black wall.” The earliest pieces are mostly fields
The retrospective takes up an entire building--a
three floor former industrial mill. The combined An Illustration from Mine Okubo’s Citizen 13660
white geometric figures (outlines) superimposed on
Sol LeWitt, “Wall Drawing #1113: On a wall, a triangle within a rectangle, each with broken bands of color,”
On the Ubiquity of Nancy By Simon Reinhardt
published in issue 8 of Raw. Newgarden’s strip
throughout the work of Michael Deforge, beginning
a comic strip. Lacking the multimedia licensing and
and Nancy.
man anthology published by Koyama Press. In one
than any other iconic comic strip, belongs solely
concerns a failed romance between Bazooka Joe
Ernie Bushmiller said that he made Nancy “for the
gum chewers,” but his true audience may well have been cartoonists. Perhaps no other comic strip is
so disproportionately appreciated by cartoonists
compared to the general public. Cartoonists have not only been vocal in their enjoyment of Bushmiller’s creation, they have frequently created parodies,
Sluggo, these comics are produced by a series of
publishers, from St. John Publications, to Dell, to Gold Key through 1962. The Dell issues are notable for the involvement of gifted scripter John Stanley, better known for his work on “Little Lulu.”
1957: Perhaps the first unofficial appropriation
Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy. Mid 1960s: Publication of a “Nancy and Sluggo”
Tijuana bible. Fritzi had previously starred in several Tijuana bibles, but this uncredited 8 pager (available
at www.tijuanabibles.org) appears to be Nancy’s only appearance in the genre.
tributes, and homages to it. Below, we explore the
of Nancy appearances; unsurprisingly, it is in Mad
medium and beyond.
as drawn by the artists of other popular comic strips
“Jimbo” strips for L.A. punk magazine Slash. Nancy at
Wood presents Nancy filtered through the style of
the reader, “if you can’t stand a little emotion, go read
history of Nancy’s spread throughout the comics A brief timeline of relevant events:
1905: Ernie Bushmiller, eventual creator of Nancy,
is born in the South Bronx, New York.
1922: Fritzi Ritz, a comic strip whose titular
protagonist eventually evolved into Nancy’s Aunt
Fritzi, is created by Larry Whittington, debuts in the New York Evening World.
1925: Bushmiller replaces Whittington on Fritzi
Ritz.
1933: Character of Nancy first appears in Fritzi
Ritz.
1938: Fritzi Ritz retitled Nancy to reflect the
increasing dominance of Fritzi’s spunky niece.
1949: Nancy escapes from the confines of the
comic strip and into her own, officially licensed
comic books. Variously titled Nancy and Nancy and
magazine. In “Nansy” Wally Wood imagines Nancy of the time. In a display of chameleonic virtuosity, artists such as Milt Canniff, Chester Gould, and Al
Capp. Nancy would return frequently to the pages
of Mad, most notably in “If Famous Authors Wrote
the Comics,” a strip in which Wood and Frank Jacobs imagine a hard-boiled Nancy written by Mickey Spillane (April, 1959).
1961: Andy Warhol depicts Bushmiller’s creation
in his painting Nancy.
1963: Joe Brainard begins to appropriate Nancy
in a series of paintings, drawings, and collages. Brainard produces these pieces, including “If
Nancy Was an Acid Freak,” “If Nancy Had an Afro,”
1978-1979: Nancy appears in Gary Panter’s
first is only invoked by name—the narrator implores Nancy!” In the next episode, Nancy herself appears
his own astute analysis of Bushmiller’s strip: “Some people find the straight-faced absurdity rampant
Carlin, found in the Brian Walker edited The Best of
notable story, published in Lose number 4 (2012),
a young couple watches a sex tape featuring Nancy and Dilbert.
2011: Josh Bayer edits and publishes the first
Bushmiller uses in Nancy, including “visual pun,”
issue of Suspect Device an ongoing anthology that
dissect the interplay of core elements in a single
Nancy. Bayer says of Five Card Nancy “I assumed
“word pun,” “incongruity,” and “inversion.” They also Nancy strip, promising that, “you too can play this analytical game at home with every strip in this
book, with amazing results. What you may have once considered simple will reveal itself as a complex fabrication of the highest order.”
1990s: Scott McCloud invents Five Card Nancy,
into new strips.
reconfigure randomly selected panels from Nancy 1993: David Hornung’s “Life o’ Bub” published
developed out of his misinterpretation of Five Card that the game was about drawing the missing action. (I later learned it was about juxtaposing random
images.) So when I began my teaching career I gave
out the Nancy assignment, which I thought was Five Card Nancy” (quoted in Drawing Comics Lab by
Robyn Chapman). Suspect Device features a number of cartoonists drawing comics that connect two
in her life, in the middle of a disastrous marriage to
own comics? Perhaps it is the fundamental simplicity
laughter?” After Nancy gives Jimbo a guitar and Sluggo appears, demanding a part in his band.
Sluggo.
2009-present: Nancy appears frequently
you are reading is in fact comics and nothing else.
Maybe it is something simpler, though, something
basic inherent to the character of Nancy that makes her irresistible. After all, if there is any consistency in the history above, it is in Nancy’s constant
expansion, from an incidental side character to the
title character, from the comic strip into comic books (and later into games, critical writing, and the fine arts), and finally from officially sanctioned form
into a state of near-ubiquitous free appropriation.
Perhaps, like Bushmiller, we just can’t stop ourselves from drawing Nancy.
So, why Nancy? What is the attraction of
laugh… [W]here would you neurotics be without a mode of releasing absurdist anxiety through
functions like a stamp or sign, verifying that what
Little Orphan Annie, and Popeye in addition to Nancy.
Bushmiller’s creation that has inspired cartoonists
Hornung’s titular protagonist befriends Nancy later
to the comics form. The presence of Nancy, then,
other classic comic strip characters such as Garfield,
in David Mazzucchelli’s Rubber Blanket issue 3.
single panels out of context they can get quite a
merchandising of Garfield or Peanuts, Nancy, more
random panels of Nancy. Subsequent issues feature
in my strip quite refreshing & find that by reading
over the past several decades to work her into their of the strip, the sense that it represents comics
boiled down to the pure essentials, that it is, in the
words of Newgarden and Karasik, “a blue-print for
1985: Bill Griffith’s Zippy meets Ernie Bushmiller
logs and rocks for Ernie. Three rocks and three
the fine art world, see “Nancy’s Art Attack” by John
Newgarden and Karasik inventory the types of gags
Panter cleverly makes Nancy the mouthpiece for
collection of Joe Brainard’s Nancy work. For further Warhol and Brainard’s lead in bringing Nancy into
published in The Best of Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy.
a “Dadaist card game” in which participants
about your calling my strip devoid of sentiment?”
in “It’s Bushmiller Time,” printed in the Zippy
information on the many artists who followed
Nancy studies by Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden,
and chastises Jimbo, “ Ok man! What’s this I hear…
and “If Nancy Was a De Kooning” through 1978.
In 2008, Siglio Press published The Nancy Book, a
1988: “How to Read Nancy,” a seminal essay in
at least as early as the first issue of Lose, his one-
collection “Are We Having Fun Yet?” Zippy carries logs, naturally. Meanwhile Nancy and Sluggo debate natural forms vs. ideograms.
1986: Mark Newgarden’s “Love’s Savage Fury”
Mangy Mutt by D. Rinylo
Cartoonists from the other Anglosphere
Bitterkomix’s Anton ‘Joe Dog’ Kannemeyer, South Africa By Eleri Mai Harris When Anton ‘Joe Dog’ Kannemeyer and Conrad
‘Konradski’ Botes launched their magazine
Bitterkomix, using scholarship money from
University of Stellenbosch, it was a dangerous time to be publishing cartoons.
The year was 1992 and South Africa was a country
in transition: in March, Apartheid had ended by
mainstream, and I believe there are different ways of
Kannemeyer makes silkscreen prints of his
looking at things.”
comics at larger sizes to exhibit in conjunction with
was censored in America; a comic depicting incest
context.
The first collected edition Best of BitterKomix #1
was cut from the publication.
launches, items suitable for display in a fine art Now a University professor himself teaching
“In America I find that people tend to polarise
illustration and silkscreen printing, Kannemeyer is
“They do not see all the shades of grey in between.
art style: to address issues of race, sex, politics,
these things,” Kannemeyer said.
credited with teaching his students the same critical
referendum; and in August, South Africa’s Springbok
And the liberals in America still think they’re liberal,
black players.
which is what they really are.”
to visual art and cartoons. Controversial satirical
by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for its
magazine as an inspiration and have collaborated
rugby team played their first international game with “I was warned by some of my lecturers that we
might get into trouble if the comic was seen by the
‘wrong’ people,” Kannemeyer recently told Agenda Magazine.
Bitterkomix flipped the bird at politically correct
moves towards reconciliation. I’m talking racist,
sexist, violent - straight out offensive comics - as political satire.
they do not think of themselves as conservative,
20 years after its debut Bitterkomix is collected
artistic and cultural significance.
Bitterkomix’s success in transition from the
underground to the mainstream gallery world owes a lot to its co-ordinated exhibit-launch process in South Africa.
religion and society head on.
The contribution of Bitterkomix isn’t just related
hip hop and film artists Die Antwoord also cite the with Kannemeyer on video clips and other artwork. Bitterkomix is a sometimes annual collected
anthology of works published mostly in Afrikaans, with some English language content.
A comic a day... By Luke Healy In September of 2012, cartoonist Will Payne moved
to White River Junction, Vermont to attend The
Center for Cartoon Studies. The Center for Cartoon
Studies is home to the Schultz library, a collection of comic books, graphic novels, comic strips and more.
collection. “Like everything, 95% of the comics were crap. Sometimes I just went to the store and bought prose books, just to have a break from reading comics.”
“I can’t think of anything really bad that I stuck
Eight months later, when the school year had come
with. Usually, if it was really bad, I just stopped
“I was never gonna live 20 feet away from a comics
graphic novel by Frank Miller. I stopped five pages in.
to a close, Will had checked out a total of 248 books.
library again.” he said. So at the beginning of the year, Will resolved to try and read every comic book in the Schultz library.
But the first issue of Kannemeyer and Botes’ now
often, he would get tired of powering through the
“Towards the beginning I took recommendations
reading. For example, I checked out an Electra
It was totally unreadable. Although I did finish most of the books, I checked out.”
Will, who is returning to his home state for the
summer, is now facing 4 months without access to
cult underground comics magazine received positive
from the librarians...” he said, when describing his
crazy confrontational.
tired of that. I took it into my own hands.”
of Ultimate Spiderman” he said, a far cry from the
and race relations in South Africa where it hurts:
the categories.” he said. Only two remained largely
just try to read more prose. I don’t buy comics on a
characters; a gang of minstrel characters prepare
“I tried reading Akira. I read the first volume, but
press reviews despite being hands down, gloves off,
system for choosing which books to read. “But I got
Bitterkomix hits middle-class complacency
“I checked the new section a lot, but I tried to hit all
a parody of Tintin happily massacres minstrel
untapped; the manga section, and the erotica section.
to rape a white women; black beach goers avenge
I didn’t want to continue. I also tried Nausicaa. It
children - hundreds of uncomfortable short comics
was no point in reading it, when I could just watch
themselves on white sand hogs; fathers abuse
has beautiful art and a great story, but I felt there
and cartoon strips where the gag is always South
the movie. After all, the books were just made so
Africa’s racism and Afrikaans society.
Miyazaki could pitch the movie.”
“We get lots of hate mail from white Afrikaners,”
“I only checked out two erotica books. One was
Kannemeyer said in a 2003 lecture in Cape Town,
called Clean Cartoonists, Dirty Work. I has art by
“Some of it is just astonishing.”
people like Dr. Seuss and Bruce Timm. It wasn’t
“I shy away from political correctness because I
actually very dirty at all.”
see it predominantly as dishonest,” Kannemeyer
said, “‘Politically correct’ reasoning has also become
Over the course of the school year, Will read more
Anton Kannemeyer, “Very Very Good” (2010)
than 1 comic or graphic novel per day. Every so
the Library.
“The local libraries to me just have some trades
Schultz library’s extensive collection. “I’ll probably regular basis. My entire comics library at home is: Some old Farside collections from middle school, Volumes 5 and 6 of Scott Pilgrim, Kingdom Come
by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, and The Golden Age Superheroes but Jules Feiffer.”
In his first year, Will read almost half of the
library’s collection. With over 300 books left to read, Will has his work cut out for him.
Mangy Mutt by D. Rinylo