Book hunt

It took me a month or two, but I finally finished The Education of a Comics Artist, an extensive collection of essays and interviews about the comics medium.

Despite being a real word-brick with very few pictures for being a book about a visual medium, it had some very interesting and enlightening ideas.

My personal favorite essay was by Craig Yoe. He talked rather tongue in cheek-ly about being a voracious accumulator cartoons and comic art to the point of saturation. That point where A&E or Oprah might document your extensive hoarding and give you an intervention.

Some artists he mentioned, like Heinrich Kley, only have so much available. Just the same two books that've been around for the last 50 years.

Even a prolific artist like Walt Kelly is hard to find books published in the last 20-30 years. Fantagraphics was supposed to start releasing books of Pogo strips like they have with Dick Tracy, Terry & the Pirates and the like, but nothing has ever come of the book since I preordered it on Amazon two and a half years ago. Yet every year instead of canceling it Amazon pushing it back and keeping my feeble hopes up.

Sorry, maybe next year

Despite all this I've been cramming my Amazon wishlists (yes, plural) full of cheap, used books on comics, cartoons and illustrations that'll take me years to buy off.

I'm not sure what happens after that. I think you just soak up comics awesomeness through you pores or something. Maybe I need to reread the essay.