What It Is by Lynda Barry

What more can I say about this book?

It’s collage, it’s a writing textbook, it’s a memoir…it’s everything. It’s big. It’s hardcover. It’s awesome.

• Buy it on Amazon
• Lynda on Talk of the Nation

Devotion music by Beach House

Quiet, soft, and beautiful. Lots of organ and reverb. Good hangover music.

• Buy it on Amazon
• Nice live set (MP3)

And Then There Were None… by Agatha Christie

There was something magical about an island — the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world — an island was a world of its own. A world, perhaps, from which you might never return.

Hmmm. A group of strangers stranded on a mysterious island, all with shady pasts that come back to haunt them…sound familiar?

My wife is an Agatha Christie nut. This was the first thing of hers I’ve ever read. 173 lightning fast pages. Fun read.

• Buy it on Amazon
• 1940 review in the Times

Away from Her a film by Sarah Polley

So sad, but so good. And the first time directing for Sarah Polley. She was quoted as saying the film was about

the opposite kind of love than we usually celebrate in films, which is new love without knowledge and without hardship.

It’s also a terrific example of how short stories fleshed out (as opposed to novels being compressed) make better films. (See also: In The Bedroom)

My favorite line (from the Alice Munro short story):

She said there ought to be one place you thought about and knew about and maybe longed for but never did get to see.

• Buy it on Amazon
• Read the short story by Alice Munro

Giant a film by George Stevens

PT Anderson was once asked to name 3 films that he loved but no one had ever heard of. He replied,

I like films that people HAVE heard of: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Giant, The Big Lebowski.

I recommend all three, too. Giant is a 3-hour epic set in West Texas. (Shot in Marfa.) James Dean. A gorgeous, young Elizabeth Taylor. What’s not to like?

• Buy it on Amazon

Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock

I first heard about this book last year when my parents sent me clips from their local newspapers.

This is the book I wanted to write as an undergrad: an updated Winesburg, Ohio set in the Southern part of the state. I grew up about 30 miles from the real Knockemstiff, but I never really belonged there, not the way Donald Ray Pollock belonged: he worked at the Mead paper plant in Chillicothe for 30 years before he started writing, and got his MFA at Ohio State. He knows his place and writes about it beautifully.

This is a strong first book — but it can tough to read all the dark stories (note: it’s full of sex, booze, foul language, and drug use) at once. I recommend spreading them out. Standout stories for me were “Real life” and “Discipline.”

• Buy it on Amazon
• Donald Ray Pollock’s story
• Donald Ray Pollock’s website

No More Heroes a videogame by Suda51

This is a violent videogame for the Wii, in which you play a hipster assassin with a lightsaber. It’s basically a GTA ripoff, but the art is great, and the game is full of little side missions which really make it entertaining. A good buy for $30.

• Buy it on Amazon
• Yahtzee (my favorite video game reviewer) reviews No More Heroes for Zero Punctuation

PILOT G2 BOLD POINT GEL PEN

Holy crap these things are awesome. If you want to lay down a big fat line, these babies will do the trick. 1mm > .07mm.

• Buy them on Amazon

Some Like It Hot A film by Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder is quickly becoming one of my favorite directors: I especially love The Apartment, which also stars Jack Lemmon. And Marilyn Monroe is gorgeous, of course…

• Buy it on Amazon

Thoreau at Walden by John Porcellino

John Porcellino is definitely in my top 5 favorite cartoonists, and his simple, zen lines are perfect for adapting Thoreau into comics.

• Buy it on Amazon

Youth Novel music by Lykke Li

I can’t really describe her music. I always play it when I’m walking to the bus…

• Buy it on Amazon
• Download my favorite track, “Dance, Dance, Dance”
• Good live set (mp3)

Dan in Real Life a film by Peter Hedges

If Eddie Campbell says something is good, you know it’s good. This really surprised me. It’s a story about nice people who get into a genuine conflict. Probably why it didn’t get very good reviews: no explosions or incest or whatever…

• Buy it on Amazon

FAMILY: A TIME MACHINE STUCK ON REPEAT

Tuesday, July 4th, 2006

My grandmother’s 80th birthday. A trip to Salem, Ohio. Family slides, deja vu, and memories of things that never happened.

Moments flickered on the edges of my sight that never happened. A life that was never lived. It was something like the opposite of deja vu: what I was seeing in front of me triggered memories that had never existed.

FRIENDS: CAT POWER OUTAGE

Sunday, October 16th, 2005

My buddy Nathaniel, who was going to UVA at the time, tells a great story about going to see Chan Marshall live in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A few minutes later, she muttered something about the KKK, claimed she felt “this weird energy,” and literally RAN off stage.

MYSELF: IT’S JUST A SERIES OF GAG STRIPS WRITTEN IN A SECRET CODE

Saturday, June 24th, 2006

The first post where I tried to articulate my thought that an artist’s job is to create his own “secret code.”

People talk about voice and style, and I have no clue what they’re talking about. “Find your voice!” they say. Screw that. I’m working on my secret code.

Other related posts:

• THESE CODED DRAWINGS ARE REALLY MY JOURNALS
• MORE THOUGHTS ON MAKING A MOUNTAIN OUT OF GAG STRIPS

SOMETHING I LOVE: DRAWING THAT SIGNIFICANT OTHER (SCENES OF DOMESTIC BLISS)

Monday, October 1st, 2007

I really love drawing my wife. She’s the perfect model: she’s beautiful, she doesn’t complain, and she’s always around. This post has examples of other cartoonists drawing their significant others.

More drawings of my wife:

ANYTHING I WANT: PROCESS: MY COVER FOR HAWKLINE’S UPCOMING EP, “SHIPWRECK”

Friday, July 27th, 2007

This was a really fun project to work on, and I think it gives a really accurate, honest portrait of how I work.

I tend to look at everything through the medium of collage: all we’re really doing with art is taking things that we’ve seen and making something we can call our own. Borrowing. Stealing. Mixing. We take the words we know and put them into sentences. We take the notes we know and put them into melodies. We take the experiences we have and shape them into stories.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

My reaction was similar to James Kochalka’s.

Harry Potter 7 by J.K. Rowling

Always a fan of the movies, this year I let go of my HP snobbery, looked past the clunky prose, and let myself fall into the dream..

The Early Comic Strip by David Kunzle

A long-out-of print collection of ancient precursors to the comic strip that I got my hands on through interlibrary loan.

Posts about the book:

• KUNZLE’S HISTORY OF THE COMIC STRIP, VOLS. 1 & 2
• R. CRUMB ON COLLECTING AND DAVID KUNZLE’S THE EARLY COMIC STRIP
• EXAMPLES FROM KUNZLE’S “THE EARLY COMIC STRIP”

Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow, by Anders Nilsen

Maybe my favorite book last year by my favorite contemporary cartoonist. My “review.”

The Political Brain by Drew Westen

A book that got me interested in politics again. My mindmap of the book.

Secret Knowledge by David Hockney

A book about the use of optics in painting from the 1400s on, which changed a lot of my ideas about perspective, realism, comics, and collage.

Related Posts:

• DAVID HOCKNEY’S SECRET KNOWLEDGE: COLLAGE AND THE RETURN TO AWKWARDNESS
• WHAT VANISHING POINT? SOME REALLY BRIEF THOUGHTS ON COMICS AND PERSPECTIVE

King-Cat Classix by John Porcellino

A retrospective collection of Porcellino’s King-Cat mini-comics. I also read his Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man and Perfect Example. Those clean, Zen lines!

The Gospel According to Jesus by Stephen Mitchell

Reminded me how much I love the teachings of Jesus and how much I hate contemporary Christianity. A lovely book.

Related posts:

• CUTTING AND PASTING THE GOSPELS
• ON THE CHRISTMAS LEGEND

Saul Steinberg: Illuminations by Joel Smith

This was the catalog of a gallery show we saw while we were on our honeymoon, and it kick-started the Year of Steinberg, in which I became obsessed with his work.

Posts about Steinberg from this year:

• NOTES ON SAUL STEINBERG
• SAUL STEINBERG’S REFLECTIONS AND SHADOWS
• AN ARTIST NOT-IN-RESIDENCE
• A WRITER WHO DRAWS

The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders

A collection of essays from my favorite living fiction writer. We got to meet Mr. Saunders twice this year: once at Oberlin College and once at the Texas Book Festival.

10. Soccer In Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano

The ultimate bathroom reading. Short, smart, prose-poem chapters about soccer. Picked it up because Barry Yourgrau (another good bathroom read) recommended it. Became an instant fan.

9. Making Comics by Scott McCloud

Not as good as Understanding Comics, but way better than Reinventing Comics. Any McCloud release is an event. Thrilled to see a chapter on world-building in there. Will make a good textbook someday.

8. Six Memos For The Next Millennium by Italo Calvino

Intended as lectures, Calvino died before he could give them. The first five, Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, and Multiplicity, were written. The sixth, Consistency, was not. A hell of a collection of last words from a hell of a writer.

7. Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte

The fourth of Tufte’s books, contains his devastating pamphlet on Powerpoint, which should be required reading for everyone. Come to think of it, all of his books should be required reading — in the age of pictures and words, they could take the place of freshmam composition…

6. The Rabbi’s Cat by Joann Sfar

The Rabbi’s cat swallows a parrot and announces his ambition to learn the Torah. Loose, wonderful drawings, a no-nonsense structure, and a great story. Didn’t get to read Sfar’s Vampire Loves, but that looks excellent too.

5. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

Gallows humor, anyone? Picked this up because I read that it was Etgar Keret’s favorite Vonnegut. Devoured it in one sitting during a sunny afternoon on our balcony.

4. Curses by Kevin Huizenga

I haven’t actually put my hands on the Curses collection (it’s on the xmas list), but when I was at Quimby’s in Chicago, I bought every Huizenga comic they had, and after that, ordered everything available through USS Catastrophe (including his great booklet for the Center for Cartoon Studies). Along with the stuff available online, I’ve read a good bit of what’s gonna be in the book. His blog is great, too.

3. Consider The Lobster by David Foster Wallace

“I don’t know a whole lot about non-fiction journalism, but the way i think about [it] in terms of what I can do is: I think of it as a service industry. Essays like this are occasions to watch somebody reasonably bright but also reasonably average pay far closer attention and think at far more length about all sorts of different stuff than most of us have a chance to in our daily lifes…”

Brilliant dude, brilliant essays. Still haven’t read a bit of his fiction.

2. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

A story that couldn’t be told in any other form than a comic book. I loved meeting Alison, and her Powerpoint presentation about the “making of” made the book seem even more brilliant. Best book published this year, hands down.

1. Cruddy by Lynda Barry

Next to getting married, meeting Lynda Barry and hearing her read from Cruddy was probably the event of my year. To me, Lynda is the perfect model of a writer and an artist. This book is just too cool for words.