MadInkBeard | Derik A Badman

Tatsumi, Yoshihiro. A Drifting Life. Drawn & Quarterly, 2009. 856p. ISBN: 9781897299746. This massive autobiographical manga has been appearing on a lot of the early best of 2009 lists, and while I can, to a point see, why, I’m not in agreement. A Drifting Life is, basically, the story of Tatsumi’s early entry into the [...]

Somehow I missed this book when it came out. It’s a kind of textbook for students and general readers on reading comics and the history of bande dessinée in particular. The book as a whole is quite good, covering a wide area though, because of this, occasionally lacking in depth. I’ll admit I didn’t read the whole book. There were sections I skimmed. Miller covers history, followed by a variety of approaches to comics: formal analysis, cultural studies, nationalism, gender, autobiography, psychoanalysis. I read the parts I’m interested in and skimmed the others.

The Early Years of Mutt and Jeff by Bud Fisher. Edited by Jeffrey Lindenblatt. NBM, 2007. 192p., $24.95. A few years back, in an attempt to broaden my literary knowledge (which at the time was fairly limited to the twentieth century), I read my way through a selection of titles from Harold Bloom’s Western Canon. [...]

In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists by Todd Hignite. Yale UP, 2006. For some reason, when I first heard of this book, I thought it was just a collection of interviews. While it is a book of interviews, they aren’t of the regular old question and answer type. What this book really collects is [...]

Masters of American Comics. Edited by John Carlin, Paul Karasik, and Brian Walker. Yale: 2005. 328p., 9.5″ x11.5″, $45.00. This book accompanies the Masters of American Comics exhibit currently running in California, coming to the East Coast in the fall. It features: Winsor McCay, Lionel Feininger, George Herriman, E.C. Segar, Frank King, Chester Gould, Milton [...]

I recently read both The Art of the Funnies and The Art of the Comic Book (both subtitled “An Aesthetic History”) by R.C. Harvey. I heartily recommend both volumes for those interested in the history of comics from the “Yellow Kid” to recent alt-comics. Both books are collections of essays molded into book form. As [...]