Sunday News Desk- August 26th, 2018

Panel

Russ Heath (1926-2018)

Previously on Panel Patter

Cover of the Next Week


This may be a cheat because this isn't a new book but this week, Avery Hill Publishing is reprinting Tillie Walden's I Love This Part is a nice, new hardcover edition.  Walden is one of the great, emerging voices in comics right now and this is a great book about discovering love, all of the joys and fears that go along with it.  


Interviews


***JG Jones on why he’s taking a break from art (The Beat)-- JG Jones talks to Hiedi MacDonald and reveals his recent battle with cancer.

OK well I have to shut things down for a while to have a stem cell transplant. I’ve had a rare blood cancer called Polycythemia Vera for the last seven or eight years and it’s manageable. But in the last year it’s transformed into what they called Myelofibrosis where my bone marrow is beginning to fail. So yeah, that’s it. It’s going to be a long procedure and I’ll be in the hospital for a long time and then recovering at home for much longer time afterwards. So probably about six months all told before I can even leave the house again. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be doing things.

***For Cartoonist Jason Lutes, 'Berlin' Marks a Career Milestone
(Seven Days)-- With the series wrapup of Berlin and the forthcoming complete collection of 20 years worth of work, Jason Lutes is profiled by a Vermont website.
Lutes' mastery of his medium cannot be overstated; Berlin is a veritable compendium of cartooning techniques. His realist cityscapes are exacting, his characters' faces uniquely expressive. Lutes' use of line, contrast, and panels of variable shape and size contributes to the graphic appeal. Sometimes whole pages of pictures, without words, tell us everything.

***BoJack Horseman's Lisa Hanawalt on her new graphic novel, Coyote Doggirl (The Guardian)-- A successful cartoonist as well as television creator, The Guardian profiles Lisa Hanawalt's newest book.
Despite Hanawalt’s interest in women having control over their own narratives, she never wants her work to be didactic. “I never set out to make overtly political work where the moral is very clear. I think it should always be a little muddled. Even in this book, [Coyote] gets revenge on the bad guys. It is very violent, when she lashes back at her attacker. But I don’t think violence is the right answer. I think it complicates things for her.” The book’s original ending was going to be a bloodbath, but she toned it down. “That kind of represents who I am, and what I believe about the world, a little better,” she says. “So I changed it.”

This and That


*** Rape, Sexual Harassment Allegations Prompt Defamation Suit from Small-Press Comics Publisher Cody Pickrodt (The Comics Journal)-- Alec Berry gives us the details on what may be one of the most important comic-related stories of 2018 and the next few years.  Cartoonist and publisher Cory Pickrodt is suing several cartoonists, publishers, and critics due to accusations that he's a sexual predator and rapist.  Those involved in the lawsuit include a number of friends of Panel Patter and we stand by them during this time.  While a number of the details are still being worked out, the defendants are planning to put together a joint fund to cover what could be a costly defense.  

Cody Pickrodt, a small-press comics publisher and cartoonist — who has been accused of rape, sexual harassment, anti-Semitic remarks, and withholding payment of royalties to artists whose work he’s printed — has filed a defamation lawsuit against 11 individuals who either made those allegations or denounced Pickrodt while commenting on them.

The defendants include the cartoonists Whit Taylor, Laura Knetzger, Emma Louthan, Emi Gennis, Ben Passmore, Hazel Ne< wlevant, Tom Kaczynski, Jordan Shiveley, and Morgan Pielli, as well as writer, editor, and publisher Josh O’Neill, and comics critic Rob Clough. The complaint also lists Kaczynski’s business, Uncivilized Books.
For a story that was starting to break just over a week ago, Berry does a good job of digging into this and figuring out what's going on so far.

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