Post by Administrator on Dec 4, 2005 12:14:56 GMT -5
By STEVEN HELLER
Published: December 4, 2005
Fans in the United States would never have imagined two decades ago that comic art would emerge as the popular literary genre it is today. While in Europe comics have long enjoyed such stature, here they were considered mere funny books. But when Art Spiegelman won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for "Maus," about his parents' ordeal at Auschwitz, comics began to be taken more seriously. Since then, lavish exhibitions and books have chronicled the leading artists and artifacts both past and present.
MASTERS OF AMERICAN COMICS (Yale University, $45), edited by John Carlin, Paul Karasik and Brian Walker, is a smartly designed, comprehensive history of 20th-century comics and the catalog of an exhibit at the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (November 2005 through March 2006). The book is the first to analyze and compare mainstream and alternative comics together. It reveals the evolution of important works, including Winsor McCay's pioneering fantasy "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend"; Milton Caniff's adventure classic, "Terry and the Pirates"; Charles M. Schulz's droll "Peanuts"; and R. Crumb's surreal "Mr. Natural." Comics are illustrated in full color and crisp black and white, and there is a generous sampling of sketches, roughs and original finished art (with brown paste-up patches and printers' markings intact).
For a more detailed analysis of one of the most inventive comic artists, the revised and expanded edition of WINSOR McCAY: His Life and Art (Abrams, $45), by John Canemaker, with a foreword by Maurice Sendak, is must reading. Canemaker, an animator and scholar, offers a rare glimpse into the life of an artist who in last century's second decade was called without exaggeration America's greatest cartoonist. In addition to his fabled "Little Nemo in Slumberland" (an inspiration for Sendak's own classic "In the Night Kitchen"), McCay created in 1914 the first live stage show with an interactive animated film, "Gertie the Dinosaur." This lavish volume includes printed comics pages, as well as a number of McCay's rarely seen editorial cartoons for the Hearst newspapers, exposing the fools and follies of the 1920's.
With so many graphic novels published during the past decade, it's a challenge to keep up. In GRAPHIC NOVELS: Everything You Need to Know (Collins Design/HarperCollins, paper, $24.95) the major examples (and some obscure ones) - from Will Eisner's groundbreaking "Contract With God" to Daniel Clowes's "Ghost World" and scores more - are astutely summarized and parsed in illustrated capsule reviews. The author, Paul Gravett, a critic and lecturer on comics, covers all the established genres, from horror (Charles Burns's "Black Hole") to autobiography (Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis") to journalism (Joe Sacco's "Palestine") and even the superhuman (Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Returns").
Published: December 4, 2005
Fans in the United States would never have imagined two decades ago that comic art would emerge as the popular literary genre it is today. While in Europe comics have long enjoyed such stature, here they were considered mere funny books. But when Art Spiegelman won a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for "Maus," about his parents' ordeal at Auschwitz, comics began to be taken more seriously. Since then, lavish exhibitions and books have chronicled the leading artists and artifacts both past and present.
MASTERS OF AMERICAN COMICS (Yale University, $45), edited by John Carlin, Paul Karasik and Brian Walker, is a smartly designed, comprehensive history of 20th-century comics and the catalog of an exhibit at the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (November 2005 through March 2006). The book is the first to analyze and compare mainstream and alternative comics together. It reveals the evolution of important works, including Winsor McCay's pioneering fantasy "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend"; Milton Caniff's adventure classic, "Terry and the Pirates"; Charles M. Schulz's droll "Peanuts"; and R. Crumb's surreal "Mr. Natural." Comics are illustrated in full color and crisp black and white, and there is a generous sampling of sketches, roughs and original finished art (with brown paste-up patches and printers' markings intact).
For a more detailed analysis of one of the most inventive comic artists, the revised and expanded edition of WINSOR McCAY: His Life and Art (Abrams, $45), by John Canemaker, with a foreword by Maurice Sendak, is must reading. Canemaker, an animator and scholar, offers a rare glimpse into the life of an artist who in last century's second decade was called without exaggeration America's greatest cartoonist. In addition to his fabled "Little Nemo in Slumberland" (an inspiration for Sendak's own classic "In the Night Kitchen"), McCay created in 1914 the first live stage show with an interactive animated film, "Gertie the Dinosaur." This lavish volume includes printed comics pages, as well as a number of McCay's rarely seen editorial cartoons for the Hearst newspapers, exposing the fools and follies of the 1920's.
With so many graphic novels published during the past decade, it's a challenge to keep up. In GRAPHIC NOVELS: Everything You Need to Know (Collins Design/HarperCollins, paper, $24.95) the major examples (and some obscure ones) - from Will Eisner's groundbreaking "Contract With God" to Daniel Clowes's "Ghost World" and scores more - are astutely summarized and parsed in illustrated capsule reviews. The author, Paul Gravett, a critic and lecturer on comics, covers all the established genres, from horror (Charles Burns's "Black Hole") to autobiography (Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis") to journalism (Joe Sacco's "Palestine") and even the superhuman (Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Returns").