AUSTIN KLEON » what it is

LYNDA BARRY IS MY FAVORITE LIVING ARTIST

Austin Kleon — Sat, 10 May 2008 17:11:32 +0000

Just in case you wondered. Meeting her was a turning point in my creative life. And look: here’s a good portrait of her in the New York Times. Everyone go out and buy her new book next week.

VISUAL THINKING

Austin Kleon — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:58:28 +0000

this one is dedicated to lynda barry and her new book which looks amazing

pretty much a paraphrase of this page:

ONLY AN IDIOT WOULD SAY THERE AREN’T ANY GOOD FEMALE CARTOONISTS

Austin Kleon — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 02:32:41 +0000

Has anyone read Cathy Malkasian’s Percy Gloom? New York Magazine ran an excerpt, and I am intrigued:

Also, Chris Oliveros at D+Q posted another page of Lynda Barry’s upcoming “What It Is”:

Beautiful stuff!

Just in case anyone else is interested in my other favorite female cartoonists: Renee French, Julie Doucet, Hope Larson, Alison Bechdel, Roz Chast, Lilli Carré, and Jessica Abel. I probably left a ton out, but those are the ones I can think of.

Who are your favorites?

THIS BOOK IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME

Austin Kleon — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 17:23:21 +0000

Blessings on Tom Devlin’s head for posting these previews of Lynda Barry’s WHAT IT IS on the Drawn and Quarterly blog. I’ve only seen about 15 pages worth of it from the “graphic issue” of Tin House. The (official!) cover:

A fantastic excerpt which resembles part of a talk Lynda gave at Oberlin:

And finally, the cover for the sneak-preview D+Q is releasing for FREE COMIC BOOK DAY:

I really hope I can get my hands on this next Saturday.

My other rambles about how wonderful Lynda is, here.

LYNDA SIGNS WITH D + Q

Austin Kleon — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 21:14:48 +0000

In case you haven’t already heard, my heroine and all-around-awesome-gal, Lynda Barry, has signed a publishing deal with Drawn + Quarterly. They’ll not only be putting out her collage/comics work-in-progress book, What It Is, they’ll also be putting out a FIVE VOLUME SET of Ernie Pook’s Comeek!

In the meantime, in case I haven’t already stressed/mentioned it, my favorite place to check up on Lynda on the WWW is her Shop Super Marlys Ebay Store , where she posts little “outtakes” for sale like the piece from ONE! HUNDRED! DEMONS! above, with super-fantastic, revealing commentary like this:

Hey before Lynda figured out exactly how to do the water color work for the One Hundred Demons strips, she messed around a lot! This is hand ground Chinese ink and water color on lightweight drawing paper size 8x10ish, the image size is 6x6ish. And! I called Lynda up and said “Tell me more about this art!” and she says there were a couple of versions of the comic strip Hate which is in 100 Demons and this is a panel from a version that didn’t make it into the book. It features Lynda at her Jr. High School talking to two girls she actually grew up with but now there was Black Power and Lynda had suddenly become “Whitey”. She says about that time “It was BAD time! I wanted to be a Black Panter! Even I hated Whitey back then” I said “Back when? She said “1968, darlin’, a longass time ago.” I said “Do you still hate Whitey?” she said, “Well, I certainly hate White House Whitey and his flunky imps” and then she starts to go on about, you know, Bush, Cheney, and how bad everything is right now so I say OK! I have to go!

I’d actually been wondering about the size of the ONE! HUNDRED! DEMONS! stuff for a while. Search around and you shall receive.