For those who didn’t follow the link in Friday’s post, James Sturm has quit the internet for four months and is writing about it at Slate.

It’s not exactly Thoreau territory. He’s still using his phone (now more than ever!) and still part of the electronic landscape in other ways. He’s even talked to ABC about it. But his observations on the process are illuminating and his illustrations for the article are a delight.

James and I have had some vigorous debates about the value of information technology over the years. It’s no secret that I’m pretty happy with the way things are going. But a part of me wouldn’t mind following him for a while.

I’m increasingly aware of my own addictions. After answering as many emails as I can in the morning (never enough!), I’ll sometimes close my laptop and put it away to avoid the temptation of checking for new mails until I get at least a few hours of drawing done on the main machine (yeah, I use a local client for email—not living up to my surname yet). Sooner or later, I may have to start unplugging the modem for part of the day too.

If James inspires you to try something similar, go for it. But you might want to wait until his Slate reports are done, since those are available only on…

Yeah.

Ivy throws me surprise parties once in a while. She’s brilliant at engineering surprises, but it’s almost wasted, because I’m pathetically easy to fool. (Imagine Ricky Jay doing card tricks for a cocker spaniel, seriously.)

Anyway, she pulled off another wonderful party Saturday, two days after my actual birthday, which was all it took to eliminate any suspicions on my part, because, well… see above. I’m dense. We had a fantastic time all the way into the wee hours.

Along with our great local pals, longtime friends Kurt Busiek, Larry Marder, and Barry Deutsch flew/drove/rode in for the occasion, and Larry and local legend Paul Smith even gave me some gorgeous original art! (Check it out!: Paul’s | Larry’s)

And then there was the cake! Yet another piece of great original art; quickly demolished, but no less appreciated.

Friends, Life, Wife: I love you.

Thanks. ^__^

I read three books on the plane back from London: Jim Woodring’s Weathercraft, Dan Clowes’ Wilson, and James Sturm’s Market Day (thanks to Gosh! and Forbidden Planet for having them in stock).

I strongly recommend the Woodring and Clowes books. Weathercraft is a perfectly-crafted hallucination from a brilliant cartoonist at the top of his game. Wilson, while uneven, has a ton of dark, funny moments, and is far more than the sum of its parts.

But, of the three, Sturm’s Market Day made the strongest impression on me. I talked to James Sturm recently and told him that he went toe-to-toe with Woodring and Clowes and won, but I want to make it official here so he knows (provided someone tells him) that I wasn’t just blowing smoke up his ass. Market Day is the best comic I’ve read all year.

Sturm’s story follows a rug merchant in a distant time and place, but if you make art of any kind and have ever questioned your relevance in a changing world (show of hands?) this book will speak to you. It might not cheer you up, but you’ll know you aren’t alone.

I’d say more, but John Martz seems to have beat me to it, so I’ll just recommend that while all three books are worth reading, if you read just one graphic novel from the year so far, I hope it will be Market Day.

Been reading and enjoying two very different autobiographical comics; Tracy White’s memoir GN How I Made It to Eighteen and Lea Hernadez’s Near-Life Experience entries at LJ.

White’s book delivers literally on the title, detailing her recovery from mid-teen traumas, and how treatment helped her to not die before becoming the successful and accomplished adult she is today. And like her webcomics at traced.com, How I Made It to Eighteen is “guaranteed 95% true.” She’s changed names and details, but you know you’re getting the facts that matter.

Hernandez’s NLEx also struggles with those 5% quandries, in her case because she’s not writing about events and friends from decades ago, she’s writing about stuff that happened Tuesday, and about a family that might be in the next room. You can feel the inner struggle as she writes about how much she’s willing to write about her son’s ongoing struggles to fit in to society’s limited expectations of him.

It’s a real open question whether any autobiography can ever be more than 95% true. Mark Twain stipulated that his memoir not be published until 100 years after his death (this year!), presumably so that he could be 100% honest—a full implementation of the Mystery Quote—but from what I’ve heard, the old guy doesn’t come across as particularly objective while ranting about his many late-in-life grudges.

Emotional honesty and factual accuracy aren’t the same thing after all. Twain may have thought he was hitting 100%, but maybe nobody can ever get past 95%. And maybe saying so upfront, as White and Hernandez both do in their own fashion, is the most honest way to start.

Running late this morning, so just time for a quick one.

Paul Laroquod points to an interesting Scientific American article about the history, influence, and value of simplified line art and its relatives. Along the way, they point out a correlation between great line artists and lazy eyes.

Art Spiegelman has been saying for years that his own impaired vision in one eye probably influenced his own 2-D world of comics and art, but I doubt he ever expected science to back him up.

Alan Rose checks in via email with a link to his memoir comic L’il Rose of Corn, a Sunday Paper-style strip about growing up in Nebraska, complete with newsprint colors to complete the illusion that it’s been printed (it hasn’t—yet).

I was impressed by the confidence and craftsmanship of both writing and art on display. It has a classic feel to it; bolstered by the simple fact that Alan’s stories are genuinely interesting.

In his email Alan shared a great quote attributed (perhaps wrongly) to H. L. Mencken about the great Nebraska-based writer Willa Cather: “I don’t care how great of writer she is, nobody wants to read about Nebraska.”

After reading Rose’s memoir comic, I’ll upgrade “nobody” to “one” at least.

First of all, you knew I would link to the new Scott Pilgrim Trailer, so here it is (link via everyone on Earth).

Also in the news [via The Beat in my case] is a teaser trailer by Dash Shaw and Frank Santoro for an animated feature-to-be called The Ruined Cast (co-produced by John Cameron Mitchell who, I discovered a few years back, looks a bit like Ron Regé when not in Hedwig make-up, but that’s neither here nor there).

Funny thing is, when looking at the two trailers rubbing shoulders in their separate browser tabs, and considering how different they were, I realized there was a big part of my old ’80s-era lizard brain that wanted to label them “mainstream” and “alternative”—even though those terms have mutated beyond recognition in the last ten years.

After all, O’Malley’s comic, for all its rabid fans, is hardly the X-Men (and Edgar Wright is hardly James Cameron). The Scott Pilgrim movie is more geared to “mainstream audiences” than Shaw and Santoro’s project, but both have their roots in what my generation would have unhesitatingly championed as independent sensibilities.

Maybe, the best way for me to get a handle on what “mainstream” means is to just go to what I assume is the root of the term and look to see where the money flows like a big river; and know that rivers split all the time.

Here’s a cool idea: Rene Engström and Rasmus Gran have a long distance relationship and have decided to chronicle it in parallel diary comics (I would say it’s a unique idea, but I’ve actually seen at least one other!).

From the site:

“Every Tuesday, since the 16th of March, Rasmus Gran and myself have documented our lives in the form of autobiographical comic strips. We have quite the buffer now so we feel pretty good about finally launching the comic. Our hopes are to give a little glimpse into the lives of a modern family spread out over the Swedish landscape, from downtown Östersund to Möllevången in Malmö. Sometimes we do things together but a large part of the time we have to live our lives apart.”

In other news, my host in Barcelona, David Macho Gomez, is launching Spanish comics site spanishinq.com.

For those of you who enjoyed Choose Your Own Carl (back in the Jurassic era), here’s another crossword-style comic.

And finally, on the work front, I’ve now finished the second rough draft of my graphic novel (working title The Sculptor). Next step: Beginning many months of finished art (and probably going back to make some more changes to the roughs, but that’s to be expected.) Wish me luck!

Follow the link. Follow the instructions. Maybe make some spares to put on other peoples’ fridges.

Voila! Project Mayhem.

A great story from Larry saves me the trouble of coming up with one of my own this morning.

Back to work!