Weekend Pattering for 12/26/14

We here at Panel Patter are hoping everyone is having a great holiday.  While you're hopefully relaxing, here are a few great articles to check out this weekend.

Art by Edvin Biukovic

** From a couple of weeks ago, Andrew Wheeler at Comics Alliance has a great piece up on Edvin Biukovic.  The article features a lot of great artwork by the artist who passed away 15 years ago this month.  The Grendel comic that Wheeler spends most of the article discussing is a great war story, more about the fighting in Biukovic's Croatia than the Grendel mythos that it's a part of.

** Zak Sally talks to Chris Mautner at Robot 6.  The Recidivist IV sounds like it may be one of the most interesting comics of 2014 that almost no one (including myself) has gotten to read.

Hah! OK, so — and without giving too much of the game away, because I think the enigmatic nature of these stories is what gives them a lot of their potency — to what extent does the material in Recidivist IV directly address your relationship not only to comics, but to the comics industry and how comics are produced and viewed in North America today?In 500 words or less. 

HA! I think I spent time — time I wish I could take back– concerned with where I did or didn’t fit into “comics.” It’s totally natural, given how much of my life I’ve spent in that world. The “midlife crisis” might have been me realizing … I just DON’T. I have no idea where I fit in. And … it’s very difficult to not sound snotty, and I don’t feel that way, but so much of it just has nothing to do with me or the things i care about in my daily life. I look at major comics sites and I just think — I’ve got more in common with cookbooks than I do with this. And even in the world of “indie” comics … I don’t know. And I’m done trying to figure it out.

The Recidivist IV is available from Zak Sally at La Mano 21.

** Joe Gordon at Forbidden Planet reviews Phillipe Dupuy and Charles Berberian's Monsieur Jean: From Bachelor to Father.  I think a lot of this book has been printed in English before in the old Drawn and Quarterly huge yearly anthologies but has a new life now from Humanoids.  The Monsieur Jean stories are fascinating because the creators let the character grow up, do different things, make mistakes and actually learn from them.  If you read all of the Monsieur Jean stories, you actually get the feeling of moving through time thanks to all of the ways that Monsieur Jean changes.

Some lovely coloring of the sky and the Siene in Monsieur Jean.

** The National Post has a virtual gallery of Art Spiegelman's retrospective CO-Mix which will soon be at the AGO in Ontario.

** The Comics Journal has an comprehensive piece on Greg Theakston's threatened legal actions against The Kirby Museum.  Even after Marvel settled with the Kirby family earlier this year, there's still drama about Kirby art and who owns it (or in this case, it's all about first generation photocopies of the artwork.)

Kirby's Pencils from 2001 #2.

 ** Paneleers in Action:

• Rob McGonigal wrote about a number of comics that came out on Christmas Eve.
• Whit Taylor has a look at CAB and the sustainability of the current comic festival model that's sprouting up everywhere. (At The Comics Journal)
• Rob Kirby at his site has a few new pages of "Them" up on his Tumblr.  It's a fun look at random encounters Rob has had with people over the years.

From Rob Kirby's THEM