Weekly Pattering for April 4, 2014-- Mothers and Wars

** The Washington Post profiles the Cartoonist Rights Network International, an organization designed to defend, help and support persecuted political cartoonists around the globe.  The article gives a good overview of the organization and also provides list of the many editorial cartoonists who are threatened by their governments over their editorial criticism.

The article was published just a few days before Malaysian Zunar was officially charged with sedition for critical Tweets.  He now faces 43 years in jail if found guilty on these charges.

** A bit closer to home, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund released the first issue of their quarterly magazine The Defender.  You can read it online for free but if you do, consider making a donation to the CBLDF.  

Whit Taylor's The Passing

** Whit has page 10 of The Passing now up at Darling Sleeper.  I've linked to most of these but haven't really talked much about it. With this latest page, I figured out why I like this comic.  Releasing it only a page a week, Whit makes each page a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end.  Even as she's slowly building it, every installment feels like a complete unit, even with the obvious cliffhangers built in to keep you coming back next week.  And even in those small units, the characterization and mystery just keep building as well.  I can't wait to see more of this.

** The Paris Review has an interview with underground cartoonist Victor Moscoso.  Like too many of his generation, I don't really know much about Moscoso but this was a fascinating interview into the mind of this artist.  There's a lot in that interview about painting and cartooning.  But I love the last line in this excerpt of Moscoso talking about his early Mad Magazines.

And we found out there was going to be a comic called Mad coming out from EC. Since we were all EC fans, we waited with bated breath till finally Mad came out. I bought it out off the rack. Number one. Off the rack ... and my mother threw it away. I had it stored in the basement. It goes for about five to ten thousand dollars now, depending on the condition of it. She threw away number two and kept number three. I don’t know why. Mothers and wars are the greatest destroyers of art.

My mother threw out my first series Star Wars cards from Topps. I don't know if anyone would have ever called that "art" but I think we all remember these childhood treasures that our mothers discarded to make a stand.

Victor Moscoso from Zap #2

** Lineworks NW has a Q&A with cartoonist Lucy Bellwood.

What can we look forward to seeing on your table at Linework NW?

I’ve finally taken the plunge into making prints of some of my larger watercolor paintings, so I’m excited to have those alongside my usual array of adventurous autobio comics about sailing on whaling ships built in the 1840s and rafting through the Grand Canyon with a team of childhood friends.

I'm quoting that last portion of the interview just to justify posting this image.

Lucy Bellwood 

** Antony Johnston announces that his and Christopher Mitten's Umbral is going on hiatus due to low sales. The timing of this seems a bit bittersweet as his long running Wasteland (originally drawn by Mitten) is ending after a multi-year run.  For at least the past year if not more, all we've heard from creators is how great the Image deal works for them.  I'm not sure yet if this announcement refutes that but this is the first news I've seen from a fairly well established Image creator that the Image "I" on a cover isn't a sure-fire guarantee of success.

** Artist Wilfredo Torres' wife recently passed away after fighting cancer.  Brent Schoonover and many other artists have been hosting original art auctions to raise funds to help support Torres in this time.  Bleeding Cool has a nice write up of these efforts and you can see more of that on the Twitter hashtag #torresbenefit.

** Panelling in Action this week:

• Brianna R. writes about The Secret Life of Miranda Turner.
• Scott C. writes about Love and Rockets New Stories #7, A Wrinkle in Time and Multiversity: Ultra Comics (at Newsarama.)
• James K. joins the Comics Bulletin 140 Character Review team and tweets about Avengers #43 and Lady Killer #4.