A Bold New Direction in Comics {product_snapshot:id=1444,true,false,true,left}Ray Fenwick has pioneered his own medium of storytelling, one best described as “typographical comics.” Hall of Best Knowledge is presented as a handsome, personal journal written by an unnamed voice, referred to only as “The Author.” Little is known about him; he makes occasional, derogatory references to a twin brother and younger sibling, but reveals little else. He clearly fashions himself a genius, writing with a faux-aristocratic air, and it is presumably his belief in his own genius that leads him to want to share his knowledge with the world. Each page features…
MOME Interview 6: Tim Hensley
This interview is reprinted in its entirety from MOME Vol. 6. Tim Hensley was born in 1966 in Bloomington, Indiana. Besides a familiarity with his comics, this is everything I knew about him before I spoke to him on September 2. He filled in the details: He moved to LA (where he still lives) at age 3. His father was a successful musician who had a psychedelic rock band in Indiana called Masters of Deceit. In LA he did session work for such unpromising acts as Pia Zadora and Pink Lady, but went on to become Neil Diamond’s piano player…
MOME Interview 5: Andrice Arp
This interview is reprinted in its entirety from MOME Vol. 5. Andrice Arp was born in 1969 in Altadena, California, where she grew up in the ’70s and ’80s. Her mother was an artist — a sculptor, performance artist and, most recently, a novelist — and probably influenced her future vocation. Her father is an astronomer, whose profession apparently did not influence her quite as much. She was by no means a comics geek. She remembers reading beautiful childen’s books when she was a little girl, as well as the work of Edward Gorey, Charles Addams, B. Kliban, and Tove…
MOME Interview 4: Jonathan Bennett
This interview is reprinted in its entirety from MOME Vol. 4. It was practically inevitable that Jonathan Bennett would become a cartoonist: Growing up in Syosset, a suburb on Long Island, he was a comics geek at an early age, reading newspaper strips first (Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Ziggy), then graduating, if that is the word, to shitty Marvel comics at the age of eight or nine. I use the word ‘shitty’ advisedly since Jonathan admitted to loving Marvel’s Secret Wars II series, one of the most incontestably awful comics series ever conceived. But apparently nothing could stop the young…
MOME Interview 3: Kurt Wolfgang
This interview is reprinted in its entirety from MOME Vol. 3. Kurt Wolfgang, the old man of MOME, was a late bloomer, which may be why he’s the old man of MOME. He always drew and always drew comics, but he never read comic books as a kid, much less obsessed over them. He read a handful of newspaper strips, but as he sagely put it, most of the strips in the ’70s were “crappy,” so he didn’t read many of them — though he did manage to take one of Joe Kubert’s ancillary weekend comics courses when he was…
MOME Interview 2: Gabrielle Bell
This interview is reprinted in its entirety from MOME Vol. 2. {mosimage}Gabrielle Bell was born in London, England in 1976, but was raised in Mendocino County, California, with three siblings. Many cartoonists, especially of the alternative stripe, relate a stereotyped childhood of alienation and anomie; Gabrielle had a leg up on most of them: She was raised in an isolated, bohemian mountain enclave. Her parents grew and sold pot for a living, as did many of her friends’ parents. It probably didn’t help that the community was split between pot entrepreneurs and rednecks who worked at the local wood mill….
MOME Interview 1: Paul Hornschemeier
This interview is reprinted in its entirety from MOME Vol. 1. My first exposure to Paul Hornschemeier‘s work was Mother, Come Home, which I read sometime in late 2003. It impressed me enough to start the gears churning, and I remember thinking that the three-issue comics series would make a good graphic novel; I made a mental note to contact this Hornschemeier fellow and inquire about the possibility of collecting it. I didn’t know that copies of the collected graphic novel were en route to America from an Asian printer and would be in stores within weeks. But at least…
