Fantagraphics Blog

The Comic-Con programming schedule for Friday July 22 is up — it's a bit less hectic than Thursday, so this will be a good day to come spend some time browsing our booth (#1718)! (We will, of course, give a complete run-down along with our signing schedule and more info in the near future): 10:30-11:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #5: Critical Approaches to Comics: An Introduction to Theories and Methods— Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan (powerofcomics.com), co-editors of the forthcoming textbook Critical Approaches to Comics (Routledge 2011), moderate a panel of contributors including David A. Berona (Plymouth State University),…

"I don't hardly think that a way will come in which they can draw those comic book panels on the monitor screen with a mouse. It may be that they can. It may be that that's the form it will take – just make up these whole comic book pages on the screen and draw in all the things with the mouse. It wouldn't have the spontaneity, the look of reality that you get from drawing these out with the blue pencil… You get a thoroughness in the expression and all which I don't think you could ever get with…

I can't think of a nicer way to celebrate the Year of the Rabbit than with this Usagi Yojimbo exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles!   The exhibit gets hoppin' this Saturday, July 9th, as the great Stan Sakai is in town to give a talk, a demonstration, and sign some books! In fact, the whole day is jam-packed with fun activities, including screenings of anime films from the '20s and '30s, origami workshops, and a cooking lesson on how to make a broccoli carrot slaw, sure to satisfy any samurai! Sakai-san explains himself, on his…

This interview with Megan Kelso was conducted via email by editorial intern Hans Anderson, and proofread by Kristy Valenti. Thanks to all! Megan Kelso appears at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery tomorrow (Saturday, July 9, 2011) for the opening of The Quiet Rrriot, an art exhibit featuring Kelso, Stella Marrs and Nikki McClure. – Ed.

Megan Kelso’s career spans the ’90s to the present. In that timespan she has grown into a highly adept artist and storyteller. Her Ignatz Award-winning Artichoke Tales tackles the themes of power, feminism and the relationships that define our daily lives. In the early 2000s, she also spent time in New York, publishing her serialized strip Watergate Sue in The New York Times Magazine.

Kelso’s latest release from Fantagraphics is a reprint of her Queen of the Black Black anthology, originally published in 1998. This book collects stories self-published from her zine Girlhero, which was written and drawn by Kelso between 1993 and 1998 in her hometown of Seattle. In this interview, which serves as a snapshot of early ’90s self-publishing, Kelso discusses her influences, her Xeric Award, and her development as a cartoonist. — Hans Anderson

Early Life

HANS ANDERSON: When and where were you born?

MEGAN KELSO: 1968: Seattle, Wash.

ANDERSON: Where did you spend most of your early life?

KELSO: Seattle, Wash.

ANDERSON: Did you have any siblings?

KELSO: One sister: two-and-a-half years older than me.

ANDERSON: What did your parents do?

KELSO: My father was an urban planner, and my mother was a college registrar. Both are retired.

ANDERSON: Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is an anthology of short strips, self-published as the serial minicomic (zine?) Girlhero?

Girlhero #1 (July 1993)

KELSO: Yes, mostly. “Whistle and Queenie” was never in Girlhero. It was for an issue of Dark Horse Presents, and there are two stories that I did specifically for the book, “Queen of the Black Black” and “The Daddy Mask.”

ANDERSON: What years were you publishing Girlhero?

KELSO: 1992-1996.

ANDERSON: How old were you when you started drawing these strips?

KELSO: 23.

ANDERSON: How old were you when you stopped publishing Girlhero?

KELSO: 28.

ANDERSON: Where did you go to school?

KELSO: I went to public school here in Seattle with a couple years of private school in the middle. I started college at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but dropped out and finished my BA at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

Snapshots

ANDERSON: In many ways, this book is a snapshot of youth culture, in Seattle and elsewhere, in the mid-1990s. What were you drawing your subject matter from?

KELSO: I went to college in Olympia, Wash., which at the time was exploding with bands, zines and really amazing, ambitious art projects: people started galleries; organized music festivals; film festivals; elaborate art installations. People just went out and started these things, not really knowing how, but figuring it out along the way. Because it was a college town, a lot of this work was informed by what we were all studying in college: feminist theory, labor politics, postmodern theory. I started my comic Girlhero because I wanted to be a part of this explosion going on around me. The stories in Queen of the Black Black were not literally autobiographical, but I definitely drew from my life, my work, sex and relationship experiences, my dreams and memories. I was learning to draw comics in these stories, so many of them were kind of like challenges I set for myself — can I learn to draw a convincing bicycle? Can I pull off setting a story in the past?

ANDERSON: The book Queen of the Black Black takes its title from a short story in the middle of the book about a depraved old artist disillusioning a young one. Why did you choose to take your title from this comic?

KELSO: Depraved?! That seems a little strong! I think of her more as old, tired and a bit bitter and cynical. I have always been interested in power relationships: between women, mothers and daughters, teachers and students, babysitters and babysat, employers and employees. I think I’m fascinated by this because, while between women, the classic male/female power dynamic has been eliminated, other more mysterious power dynamics are still at work and are harder to pin down. The title, “Queen of the Black Black,” is from a poem written by the sculptor, Louise Nevelson, who is, in part, the inspiration for the Queen character in that story.

ANDERSON: Who were your artistic influences before and during the creation of these strips?

KELSO: I did not grow up reading comics very much, and when I did (Peanuts, Archie), I didn’t give them much thought. So as a drawer and a beginning cartoonist, I was much more influenced by book illustrators: Maurice Sendak, Doctor Seuss, Beatrix Potter, Tove Jansson, Ludwig Bemelmans, Arnold Lobel, Garth Williams.

I think the work of Julie Doucet’s is what really made me want to try making comics. Once I moved back to Seattle and started meeting other cartoonists, I learned a lot from my peers: Jason Lutes, James Sturm, Ed Brubaker, Jon Lewis, Tom Hart, Jennifer Daydreamer, David Lasky. We actually had a comics working group for a while and shared work, did critiques and helped each other problem solve. Later, I met more cartoonists who[se] work influenced me a lot — Ron Regé and Brian Ralph, who I mentioned earlier. Also, Marc Bell and Lauren Weinstein’s work had a big impact on me.

Today's Online Commentary & Diversions: • Review: "…[T]he fifth [Popeye] collection, "Wha's a Jeep?", is just as vital and zippy as any of [the] earlier books, particularly in the daily strips…. This is great stuff — as I've said before, Segar's Popeye is not just one of the great American comics, it's one of the great comedy/adventure works of all time, full of brawling, joking, inexhaustible life." – Andrew Wheeler, The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent. • Review: The Comics Journal's R. Fiore on David B.'s The Littlest Pirate King, in its entirety: "Speaking of comics that would make…

(final cover may vary) Ten words I got to use in my translation of the upcoming second Adèle Blanc-Sec book (trying valiantly for an SPX premiere!): bollix, bolster (as a noun), deucedly, dingus, harridan, insensate, pied-à-terre, pithecanthropus, plinth, and thoroughfare.

Comic-Con has announced their programming for Thursday July 21, the first full day of the convention, and here are the panels to circle in your program or plug into your smartphone app or scribble on the back of your hand (we will, of course, give a complete run-down along with our signing schedule and more info in the near future): 12:30-1:30 Spotlight on Bill Schelly— Comic-Con special guest Bill Schelly (The Golden Age of Comic Fandom, The DC Archives) is a leading fandom and comics historian. Moderator Gary Brown interviews Bill about his work, with special emphasis on his latest…

(not final cover) News has broken over the last few days via The Guardian and now The A.V. Club about our impending publication of Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons, collecting the author's seldom-seen visual work from her student days. The Guardian's Peter Wild writes: "Cut from linoleum with oil-based ink applied to the ridges, the drawings are rudimentary but charming, a stripped down version of what Marjane Satrapi did in Persepolis. What's clear, though, is the perspective of the outsider, which O'Connor refined in her debut novel Wise Blood and stories such as 'A Good Man is Hard to Find.' ……