Caterpillar Publishing

Welcome to my blog! The next few posts will be a little sporadic, as I’m in the midst of finals for graduate school. Keep checking in! Expect regular posts beginning in June.

About a week ago a group of us from the Center for Cartoon Studies had the chance to visit Mirage Studios in Northampton, MA, home of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles created by Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman. Peter was a gracious host, answering our questions and telling us stories before giving us great toys! We also got to tour Jim Lawson’s studio, who has been penciling and inking the Turtle comics since they began. We all had a fabulous time. He also posted an image of the mini comic I gave him on his blog– thanks Peter!

http://plairdblog.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

Got up at 5:00 am to layout and color some drawing samples to send to Sorche Fairbank, a friend and talented agent working on a book for Ten Speed Press. It’s been fun to work on whether I am chosen for the project or not– it’s a great way to kick off the summer!

I’ve been thinking a lot about thesis projects for my second graduate year at the Center for Cartoon Studies, and continue to return to the idea of doing something that takes place during a wedding, basing some of the plot on our experiences during our engagement and big event. I just ran across this quote in Wedded Bliss:

“In Western Societies today, the white wedding prevails as the dominant form of this popular ritual, and is rapidly becoming the standard for weddings internationally. Although considered traditional, this type of wedding is anything but. The stereotypical, lavish white wedding that has become a highly prescribed spectacle featuring a bride in a formal white wedding gown, a formally dressed groom, some combination of attendants and witnesses, a religious ceremony, and an elaborate– and expensive– wedding reception is largely the product of a host of marketing campaigns. The white wedding has become so overdetermined in the popular imagination that to consider an alternative seems unthinkable.”

Surely there’s something that can be said about this through comics? While keeping the theme from being so heavy handed that it becomes unreadable?

It is somehow wildly exhilarating to read, devour really, the chronicled chapters of fiction recounting Sammy’s love for Tracy Bacon and the discovery of his own sexuality, the daring and passion of the love between Joe and Rosa, their art, their ****ing, never seen but smoldering and constant in the hinting in each chapter. Chabon has an amazing tale, and after eight months in cartooning school I am finally beginning to glimpse just how masterfully he has woven his fictional story into the real world of New York City in the late 30′s and early 40′s. It’s SO steamy. And the city vibrates with a life and color that is greater than life, it sings from the past, calling out to these two cousins and the world that somehow brought them together. I want to tell stories with this kind of depth, this kind of significance. I want to be able to absolutely capture my audience. And I have no idea where to find that kind of a story.

Michelangelo wrote of carving as if he must release the form inside the block of marble, as if the figure is already there, waiting, throbbing and tenacious to breathe and live. Is that what it is to write a thing? To create something new. Is the story, can the story, be told with meaning and depth through comics? 

I don’t know. I hope so. I do know that for the better part of two days I’ve done little else but read. This novel is just so damn good most of the time. It’s amazing.

Tim drove us home from New York after his three week internship at First Second followed by his birthday celebration. After so much rain, the clouds were incredible. I did this quick sketch in the car– I miss drawing and intend to do a lot more of it this summer.

I first met Jules Feiffer when he spoke at the Center for Cartoon Studies with Jeff Danzinger in April. He was charming, enthusiastic, and quite the ham in front of a crowd. He liked my sketchbook, which later resulted in the opportunity to be his teaching assistant for the summer during his Montgomery Fellowship at Dartmouth College, just a few miles away from White River Junction. He arrived yesterday. I’m already having a blast!

Drawing out on the balcony at the Montgomery House after labeling some PowerPoint slides for Jules Feiffer. And lookin’ cool. 

Jules Feiffer and I have spent a lot of time together over the last three days, scanning books, organizing slides, discussing possible class topics. It’s been enormously fun to work as his assistant, and I’ve had the chance to reexamine so many gorgeous drawings from the early 20th century. I’ve always loved Winsor McCay’s work, but god- the ingenuity! the draftsmanship! His weekly pace! They are just so beautiful. Here are some of my favorites:

Jules Feiffer has offered to looked through some of my past work this week to see what I’ve been doing during my time at the Center for Cartoon studies along with some sketchbooks from RISD. He has responded best to the drawings and stories I love while instinctively critical and unimpressed with the work that I, too, am unhappy with, or fought my way to complete. He can see the inspiration—or the lack thereof—however much I try to hide it. I never knew it was so transparent to the outside world. So where can that come out next year? How? How do you bring yourself to be inspired? Show up, do the work, commit to putting in the hours as your desk. We’ll see what happens in the fall.

Jules Feiffer’s pets Lily and Daisy are up here for the week while his daugther, Kate Feiffer, and his granddaughter Maddie stay as his guests in Hanover. Lily is “the dog that winks” in their book Which Puppy?. She was terrific fun to draw.

This week I had the privelege of attending the Politics of Cartooning panel discussion at Dartmouth College, with guests Jeff Danzinger, Jules Feiffer, Ed Koren and Ed Sorel. What a group! I loved them. But more fascinating than the work that they showed and their conversation was the audience’s attitude toward the future of cartooning—and publishing in general—as all but extinct. “You’re all of a certain age…” one woman began. “Just what the hell does that mean?!” came the response. But many audience members were nodding in agreement; are these cartoonists the last generation?

The Center for Cartoon Studies couldn’t exist without a new group of visual storytelling enthusiasts rising to the occasion to step into the giant shoes of past creators and continue forging new ground in the medium of comics. Graphic novels and comics format picture books are turning literary heads, snowballing onward as more titles are published every year. The new future in cartooning won’t rely on newspaper syndicates, but instead on book deals and digital media. Fingers crossed!