The Best Comics of The Decade

Robert Boyd

In 1990, I worked on one of my favorite publishing projects, a two-volume anthology called The Best Comics of the Decade, published by Fantagraphics Books and co-edited with Gary Groth and Kim Thompson. The thesis behind these volumes was that the 80s had seen an explosion of great comics in anthologies (like RAW and Weirdo), in newspapers (specifically in alternative newsweeklies), and in what at the time was called alternative comics (which included publishers like us, Fantagraphics Books). Another part of our thesis was that most of the greatest works had been in short stories. The age of the graphic novel hadn't yet arrived, although Maus volume 1 had been published in 1986.



Our volumes excluded superheroes from Marvel and DC, partly because we were snobs about mainstream comics, but partly because we didn't have access to that material. If we had, would we have included something? Maybe an excerpt from Watchmen? We did include an Alan Moore story which we loved, called "Pictopia," which is a weird story about how the innocent fun of old-time heroes in comics had been replaced by a grim and cynical type of superhero--one that Alan Moore himself is partly responsible for (along with Frank Miller).

The thing about assembling this volume was that we editors felt that knowing what comics actually were published in the 80s was a doable task. We had each read thousands of pages of comics and felt like we had a grasp of what had been published. (Because we thought that book buyers back then would never shell out for a 240-page book of comics, we published it in two volumes. That's another thing that has changes a lot in the past 30 years.)



Things have changed. Back then, "alternative comics" (i.e., anything that wasn't super-hero comics) were eking out an existence on the fringes. While superheroes now dominate our pop culture, in the world of comics, they are no longer utterly dominate comics mind-space as they once did. They still do to a certain extent--I know when I tell someone I am interested in comics, they usually ask about superheroes. As I have pointed out many times before, I am interested in comics as a category of art, like literature, theater, music, film, visual art. (To limit it to one genre or format is something I am not willing to do, especially a genre controlled by two large entertainment megacorporations, Warner Brothers--which owns DC Comics and all its properties--and Disney--which owns Marvel and all its properties.)

But in the 2010s, so many comics have been published that there is almost no way one person could have read them all. (I would fear for the sanity of anyone who tried.) Nonetheless, some brave souls have attempted to construct their own "best of the decade" lists. This decade has been dominated by book-sized publications, which is reflected in their lists. The lists I looked at were:

• Comic Books Are Burning in Hell
• Entertainment Weekly
• The A.V. Club
• Polygon
• The Comics Beat
• The Guardian

The best list in my opinion is Comic Books Are Burning in Hell's, and it is also the shortest. The Beat's is the longest. The total of all five lists is 130 titles (or 129, because there is some overlap on a Batman title). The lists are mostly unranked. (I'll put the whole list at the bottom of this post.)

It occurred to me that one way to rank the comics would be to look at which ones appeared on multiple lists. So with a long morning of Excel-ery, I have made a list of the most highly regarded comics of the decade by that criterion (appearing on multiple best-of lists).

Here are all the titles that appeared on at least two lists:

• Hawkeye, Matt Fraction and David Aja, 4
• Mister Miracle, Tom King, Mitch Gerads, and Clayton Cowles, 3
• The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Derek Charm, 3
• Prince Of Cats, Ron Wimberly, 3
• Hark! A Vagrant!, Kate Beaton, 3
• Lumberjanes, Grace Ellis, Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh, Brooklyn A. Allen, Carolyn Nowak, Carey Pietsch, Ayme Sotuyo, Maarta Laiho, Aubrey Aiese, with Brittney Williams, Faith Erin Hicks, Aimee Fleck, Rebecca Tobin, Felicia Choo, and T. Zysk, 3
• Daytripper, Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon, 3
• My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Emil Ferris, 3
• Saga, Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples, 3
• Batman, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, 2
• Copra, Michel Fiffe, 2
• The Nib, Matt Bors and a cast of thousands, 2
• Monstress, Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda, and Rus Wooton, 2
• This One Summer, Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, 2
• The Wicked + The Divine, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, 2
• The River At Night , Kevin Huizenga, 2
• House Of X/Powers Of X, Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, R.B. Silva, Marte Gracia, Clayton Cowles, and Tom Muller, 2
• Giant Days, John Allison, Max Sarin, Lissa Treiman, Whitney Cogar, and Jim Campbell, 2
• Black Hammer, Jeff Lemire, Dean Ormston, 2
• Thor, Jason Aaron, Russell Dauterman, 2
• The Love Bunglers, Jaime Hernandez, 2
• Goodnight Punpun, Inio Asano, 2
• You & A Bike & A Road, Eleanor Davis, 2
• Last Look, Charles Burns, 2
• O Human Star, Blue Delliquanti, 2 

I have only read six of these in their entirety. The Nib would be difficult to read all of--it's a political comics site that one dives in in bits and pieces. But I've read a LOT of the comics there; I highly recommend it. I've read a bit of Lumberjanes and Copra, but didn't really connect with them. I haven't read any of the superhero titles because that's a genre I've outgrown in comics. And as for the rest, I've heard of most of them...

Perhaps a better way to look at it would be to see which authors and artists were referenced most frequently by appearing on multiple lists with multiple titles. Of course, I made a similar list.

• Matt Fraction 6
• Eleanor Davis 5
• Scott Snyder 4
• Brian K. Vaughan 4
• Tom King 4
• Jamie McKelvie 3
• Jason Aaron 3
• Blue Delliquanti 3 
• Emily Carroll 3 
• Greg Capullo 3 
• Jaime Hernandez 3
• Jillian Tamaki 3
• Kieron Gillen 3
• Mariko Tamaki 3
• Emil Ferris 3
• Gabriel Bá 3
• Fábio Moon 3
• Kate Beaton  3
• Ron Wimberly 3
• Ryan North 3
• Alan Moore 2
• Jason Latour 2
• Olivier Schrauwen 2
• Raina Telgemeier 2
• Sam Alden 2
• Charles Burns 2
• Inio Asano 2
• Jeff Lemire 2
• John Allison 2
• Jonathan Hickman 2
• Kevin Huizenga 2
• Marjorie Lu 2
• Matt Bors 2
• Michel Fiffe 2

The number refers to the number of times a person appeared anywhere on any of the lists. Several appeared in anthologies that made the list (Mould Map 3 and Smut Peddler 2012 Edition, specifically).

I'm willing to agree with the consensus in one small way: Eleanor Davis is the comics artist of the decade. What a privilege is has been to see her blossom as a cartoonist.

It is interesting to look at this list and see who among them were also in The Best Comics of the Decade in 1990. The only three who made both were Charles Burns, Jaime Hernandez and Alan Moore (three giants, to be sure).

OK, given that I have read only a small fraction of the comics that were published between 2010 and 2019 (and given that I have only read some on the master list that I will reproduce below), here are my favorites, selected by perusing my bookshelves 10 minutes ago:

• Sir Alfred No. 3 by Tim Hensley (Pigeon Press, 2015)

• Tenements, Towers & Trash by Julia Wertz (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2017)

• Motel Art Improvement Service by Jason Little (Dark Horse Comics, 2010)

• Over Easy by Mimi Pond (Drawn & Quarterly, 2014)

• The Property by Rutu Modan (Drawn & Quarterly, 2013)

• Berlin by Jason Lutes (Drawn & Quarterly, 2018)

• The River at Night by Kevin Huizenga (Drawn & Quarterly, 2019)

• Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen by Dylan Horrocks (Fantagraphics Books, 2014)

• Incidents in the Night by David B (Uncivilized Books, 2013)

• You & a Bike & a Road by Eleanor Davis (Koyama Press, 2017)

• The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books, 2014)

• Your Black Friend and Other Strangers by Ben Passmore (Silver Sprocket, 2018)

I have personal connections with many of the artists here, and I've met all of them except for Julia Wertz and David B.

This is the most I've thought about comics in one sustained burst in a long time.  I wish I had insights about the past decade to share. I don't except to note how that book has become the dominant form and that female artists and artists of color are now the dominant figures in art of comics. They make up more than 50% of my personal list, at least. That's a big shift.

I want to dedicate this post to the memory of my friend Tom Spurgeon, who died in November.

Addendum: Some additional best-of lists made me want to revise these compiled lists, which I have done here.

Here is the combined best-of list mentioned above:

• “Time” by Randall Munroe
• 20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa
• A Silent Voice by Yoshitoki Olma and Steven LeCroy
• Afterlife With Archie by Robert Aguirre-Sacasa, Francesco Francavilla, and Jack Morelli
• All-New Wolverine by Tom Taylor, David Lopez, David Navarrot, Marcio Takara, IG Guara, Bob Wiacek, Victor Olazaba, Walden Wong, Nik Virella, Scott Hanna, Djibril Morissette-Phan, Leonard Kirk, Cory Hamscher, Marc Deering, Terry Pallot, Juann Cabal, Marco Failla, Ramon Rosanas, Nathan Fairbairn, Jordan Boyd, Mat Lopes, John Rauch, Michael Garland, Jesus Aburtov, Erick Arciniega, Nolan Woodard, and Cory Petit
• Archival Quality by Ivy Noelle Weir and Christina “Steenz” Stewart
• Arsène Schrauwen by Olivier Schrauwen
• Basquiat by Julian Voloj and Søren Mosdal
• Batman by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo
• Batman: The Black Mirror by Scott Snyder, Jock, Francesco Francavilla, David Baron, Jared K. Fletcher, and Sal Cipriano
• Batman: The Court of Owls by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo
• Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët
• Becoming Unbecoming by Una
• Berlin by Jason Lutes
• Big Kids by Michael DeForge
• Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine DeLandro, Cris Peters, Kelly Fitzpatrick, and Clayton Cowles
• Black Hammer by Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston
• Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze
• Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang and Lark Pien
• Brazen by Pénélope Bagieu
• Building Stories by Chris Ware
• Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu
• Clyde Fans by Seth
• Copra by Michel Fiffe
• Criminal by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
• Daredevil by Mark Waid, Chris Samnee, Javier Rodriguez, Matt Wilson, and Joe Caramagna
• Daytripper by Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon
• Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot
• Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles by Mark Russell, Mike Feehan, Mark Morales, Sean Parsons, Howard Porter, Jose Marzan Jr., Paul Mounts, and Dave Sharpe
• Fatherland: A Family History by Nina Bunjevac
• FF by Matt Fraction and Mike Allred
• Frontier #7 by Jillian Tamaki
• Gawain’s Girlfriend and the Green Knight by Polly Guo
• Generous Bosom by Conor Stechshulte
• Giant Days by John Allison, Max Sarin, Lissa Treiman, Whitney Cogar, and Jim Campbell
• Girl Town by Carolyn Nowak
• Goodnight Punpun by Inio Asano
• Grip by Lale Westvind
• Guts by Raina Telgemeier
• Hark! A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton
• Hawkeye by Matt Fraction and David Aja
• Hellboy in Hell by Mike Mignola
• Helter Skelter by Kyoko Okazaki
• Here by Richard McGuire
• Hilda & The Black Hound by Luke Pearson
• Hip Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor
• Hot Comb by Ebony Flowers
• House Of X/Powers Of X by Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, R.B. Silva, Marte Gracia, Clayton Cowles, and Tom Muller
• How To Be Happy by Eleanor Davis
• How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less by Sarah Glidden
• Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
• Is This How You See Me? by Jaime Hernandez
• It Never Happened Again by Sam Alden
• Julio's Day by Gilbert Hernandez
• Killing and Dying by Adrian Tomine
• Last Look by Charles Burns
• Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valerio-O’Connell
• Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe
• Lumberjanes by Grace Ellis, Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh, Brooklyn A. Allen, Carolyn Nowak, Carey Pietsch, Ayme Sotuyo, Maarta Laiho, Aubrey Aiese, with Brittney Williams, Faith Erin Hicks, Aimee Fleck, Rebecca Tobin, Felicia Choo, and T. Zysk
• March by Rep. John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell
• Margot’s Room by Emily Carroll
• Mister Miracle by Tom King, Mitch Gerads, and Clayton Cowles
• Monstress by Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda, and Rus Wooton
• Mould Map 3 by Aidan Koch, Amalia Ulman, Angie Wang, Ben Mendelewicz, Blaise Larmee, Brenna Murphy, CF, Cody Cobb, Daniel Swan, Dmitry Sergeev, Gabriel Corbera, GHXYK2, Hugh Frost, Jacob Ciocci, James Jarvis, Joseph Kelly, Jonas Delaborde, Jonathan Chandler, Jonny Negron, Julien Ceccaldi, Karn Piana, Kilian Eng, Lala Albert, Lando, Leon Sadler, Matthew Lock, Noel Freibert, Olivier Schrauwen, Robert Beatty, Sam Alden, Sammy Harkham, Simon Hanselmann, Stefan Sadler, Viktor Hachmang & Yuichi Yokoyama
• Ms Marvel by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona, Jacob Wyatt, Elmo Bondoc, Takeshi Miyazawa, Nico Leon, Francesco Gaston, Marco Failla, Diego Olortegui, Ian Herring, Irma Knivila, and Joe Caramagna, with Saladin Ahmed, Rainbow Rowell, Hasan Minhaj, Devin Grayson, Eve L. Ewing, Jim Zub, Gustavo Duarte, Joey Vazquez, Kevin Libranda, Minkyu Jung, Juan Vlasco, and Bob Quinn
• My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris
• My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf
• My Hero Academia by Kohei Horikoshi, Caleb Cook, and John Hunt
• My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Kabi Nagata
• Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
• O Human Star by Blue Delliquanti
• Octopus Pie by Meredith Gran
• On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
• Patience by Daniel Clowes
• Peplum by Blutch
• Poochytown by Jim Woodring
• Prince Of Cats by Ron Wimberly
• Prison Pit by Johnny Ryan
• Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows
• Rock Candy Mountain by Kyle Starks and Chris Schweizer
• Sabrina by Nick Drnaso
• Saga by Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples
• Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O’Malley
• Sex Criminals by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
• Sex Fantasy by Sophia Foster Dimino
• Silver Surfer by Dan Slott and Michael Allred
• Sir Alfred no. 3 by Tim Hensley
• Smile by Raina Telgemeier
• Smut Peddler 2012 Edition by Rebecca Ruby, Megan Furesz, Trisha L. Sebastian, Erin Basie, M. Magdalene, Mr. Darcy, Betty Jean Doe, Nora Riley, Kel McDonald, Rennie Kingsley, Erika Moen, Leia Weathington, Algesiras, Dwam, Argets, Ursula Wood, Jennifer Doyle, E.K. Weaver, Magnolia Porter, Shari Hes, Steve Horton, Erica Leigh Currey, Alice Fox, B. White, Ambrosia, Alice Hunt, Dechanique, Carla Speed McNeil, Karate McDanger, Jess Fink, Blue Delliquanti, Nechama Frier, Pupcake Jones, Lee Blauersouth, Abby Lark, Theo Lorenz, C. Spike Trotman, Diana Nock, Amanda Lafrenais
• Southern Bastards by Jason Aaron, Jason Latour
• Spider-Gwen by Jason Latour, Robbi Rodriguez
• Sunburning by Keiler Robert
• Sunny by Taiyo Matsumoto
• Super Late Bloomer by Julia Kaye
• The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Sonny Liew
• The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
• The Encyclopedia of Early Earth by Isabel Greenberg
• The End of the F@(U$*#+g World by Charles Forsman
• The Fifth Beatle by Vivek Tiwary, Andrew Robinson
• The Hard Tomorrow by Eleanor Davis
• The Hospital Suite by John Porcellino
• The Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing, Joe Bennett
• The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez
• The Multiversity by Grant Morrison, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Chris Sprouse, Karl Story, Walden Wong, Ben Oliver, Frank Quitely
• The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon
• Nemo by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
• The Nib by Matt Bors and a cast of thousands
• The Oven by Sophie Goldstein
• The Passion Of Gengoroh Tagame by Bruno Gmuender
• The Private Eye by Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin
• The Property by Rutu Modan
• The River At Night by Kevin Huizenga
• The Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman, JH Williams III and Dave Stewart
• The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Derek Charm
• The Vision by Tom King, Gabriel Walta, Jordie Bellaire
• The Walking Dead #193 by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard
• The Wicked + The Divine by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie
• This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
• Thor by Jason Aaron, Russell Dauterman

Columbus part 2: Buying Comics Art

Robert Boyd

Long-time readers of this blog know that I like to collect art, and a subset of the art I collect is comics art. In the past month I've got several pieces by artists I love, including four pieces of art at Cartoon Crossroads Columbus. Each piece was purchased directly from the artist--no gallery acted as a middleman. In fact, there are very few galleries that sell comics art, presumably in part because there is very few pieces of comics art will sell for amounts that make it worth a gallery's time. But this is kind of a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Artworks often gain in value due to being sold by a gallery (the right gallery). This was demonstrated in The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Don Thompson. I often feel that comics artists are missing out--not getting what they should get when they sell their original art. These low prices have allowed me to build up a really choice collection, if I may make such a claim. But I would gladly sacrifice this if it meant that Jaime Hernandez earned $25,000 whenever he sold a page of comics art.

Anyway, just before I went to CXC, I was looking at Sammy Harkham's webpage. And I realized that he was selling original art. I had just gotten the fourth issue of his self-published comics zine, Crickets, and I thought, why not. Here's what I purchased.

 
Sammy Harkham, Blood of the Virgin p. 19, 2009, pen and ink

Here's what the printed page looked like:

 Sammy Harkham, Blood of the Virgin p. 19 printed in Crickets issue 3, 2009

Which should remind one that whatever auratic value a piece of original comics art has, it is always a work-in-progress. The final work is the published work, which in this case had a layer of half-tone added.

Even the comics fans among you might not know who Harkham is. He is an artist's artist. In the comics world, he is probably best known for editing the avant comics anthology Kramer's Ergot, which was a key document of comics moving in the direction of contemporary art. It has been highly influential. The first issue was published in 2000. It really started to click with its third issue, released in 2002, and Harkam edited an additional five issues at a rate of about one every two years. I'd say the really classic issues were issues four, five, six and seven, which included great work by Mat Brinkman, Ben Jones, Gabrielle Bell, Gary Panter, Stéphane Blanquet, Shary Boyle, Chris Ware and many, many others. (Kramers Ergot issue 9 is scheduled to come out next year.) In addition, he, his wife Raina and David Kramer run a bookstore/gallery in Los Angeles called Family. Being a great editor and running a great bookstore are accomplishment enough for anyone, but Harkham is also a great cartoonist.


Sammy Harkham, covers of Crickets issues 4 and 5, 2009 and 2015 respectively

His main venue aside from Kramer's Ergot has been a solo series of comics, Crickets. Some of the contents of the first two issues were collected in a book Everything Together. (He has one other book as well, Poor Sailor.) The most recent two issues of Crickets have been serializing a story called Blood of the Virgin, from which the original art I bought came.

With a title like Blood of the Virgin, you expect it to be unbelievably lurid. But the title in fact refers to a horror movie being made by a B-movie studio in 1972. The story deals with the mechanics of making such a movie, the ambitions of the filmmakers and their barely middle-class lifestyles. It's about making art that is barely considered art--something that comics artists deal with frequently! It appeals to me especially because of my own connection to that world--I was an employee of Roger Corman in Los Angeles in the early 90s. As I read Blood of the Virgin, I feel like I am watching an important work of comics art unfold before my eyes in real time. So I was very happy to be able to acquire a page from it.



Jaime Hernandez, untitled (Doyle), 2015, pen and ink

Jaime Hernandez is one of the brothers who created Love & Rockets in the early 80s. I don't exaggerate when I say he is one of the most important comics artists in the last 50 years. His collective works are one of the gigantic artistic achievements in any artistic medium of its time. I have adored his work ever since I stumbled onto the second issue in 1982. Over the years I've bought three pages by Hernandez from Love & Rockets. Hernandez was a guest at Sol-Con and CXC. He had half a table at Sol-Con, and the only thing he was selling were small black-and-white ink drawings of some of the characters from Love & Rockets.


Jaime Hernandez, untitled (Hopey), 2015, pen and ink


Jaime Hernandez, untitled (Frogmouth), 2015, pen and ink

I assume he can draw these things in his sleep, and yet they are beautiful little vignettes, all the more meaningful if you have been reading the stories for years and know the characters like your own family. Hernandez has aged his characters more-or-less in real time. When readers first met Hopey, for example, she was a cute lil teenaged punk rock runaway. Now she is a middle-aged lesbian working as a teaching assistant. And Hernandez draws her as someone who has earned some wisdom about life the hard way. Or maybe I'm reading too much into one drawing--after all, I already know Hopey like family.

The crazy thing is that Hernandez was selling these for $100 apiece. I think he gets invited to a comics festival like this and maybe whips up a bunch of drawings so that in addition to whatever honorarium he gets, he can come home with a couple of grand extra in his pocket. I'm sure that it works well for him, but it still rubs me the wrong way. These drawings should be sold for a lot more. So I feel a little guilty that I spent so little to get so much, but my main regret right now is that I didn't buy more!


Dylan Horrocks, "Cornucopia" page 5, pen iand ink, 2009

This is the third Dylan Horrocks page I've bought over the years. As readers of this blog know, Horrocks is another comics artist whose work I've long followed and admired. I wrote about his book collection Incomplete Works here, and about his most recent graphic novel, Sam Zabel And The Magic Pen back when it was still a work in progress being serialized online. Horrocks is not an erotic artist, but he doesn't avoid it. This page is from a story called "Cornucopia" (included in the anthology Incomplete Works), and the eroticism of this page is critically important in this eight-page story. Horrocks has hinted at a "universe" (as they are called in comics) that all his characters inhabit. Cornucopia is a country in Horrock's universe that pops up here and there in his various stories. This particular story is about two people falling in love, one of whom is from this mysterious country which she is describing to her lover on this page.

Horrocks was at CXC, and I bought the page from him there. It was drawn on A3 paper, and I had to scramble to find a piece of cardboard large enough to protect it from damage on the flight home. Fortunately Chris Sperandio had brought a bunch of posters to the show, and he still had the cardboard backing he had used. Now the page is safe in my flat file along with other treasures of comics art.


Dylan Horrocks at CXC

Columbus Part 1: CXC

Robert Boyd

Welcome to The Great God Pan's first podcast. Please excuse my learning curve. In this episode, I take a trip to Columbus, Ohio, to experience the first-ever Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (aka CXC) festival.




(Or download it here.)

The photo above is a life mask of Milton Caniff which is property of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

Links and photos from CXC (more or less in the order mentioned in the podcast):

• Spill Some Stuff
• Comic Books Are Burning in Hell
• Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio
• Comics Art Brooklyn
• Festival International de la Bande Dessinée 
• La Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image
• Cartoon Crossroads Columbus 

In front of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum

• Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

Chris Sperandio with a Calvin and Hobbes at the Billy Ireland 

• Christopher Sperandio
• Comic Art Teaching and Study Workshop
• Sol-Con

Jaime Hernandez

• Jaime Hernandez

left to right: Tom Spurgeon (the Comics Reporter), Eric Reynolds (Fantagraphics Books), Jim Rugg and Chip Mosher (Comixology)

• Comixology
• Fantagraphics Books
• The Wexner Center for the Arts

Christopher Sperandio at Sol-Con


Ben Passmore at Sol-Con

• Ben Passmore

Daygloayhole issues 1 and 2

• Invisible Ink: My Mother's Love Affair With A Famous Cartoonist by Bill Griffith

Bill Griffith at the Billy Ireland


Jim Rugg and Gregory Benton at the Billy Ireland


Derf Backderf and Dylan Horrocks


Good-bye, Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson

• Craig Thompson

Hark, A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

• Kate Beaton

Dylan Horrocks being interviewed by Tom Spurgeon


Dylan Horrocks being interviewed by Gil Roth for Virtual Memories

• Virtual Memories

Chris Pitzer, publisher of Adhouse Books

• Adhouse Books

Paul Lyons at Hidden Fortress Press

• Hidden Fortress Press

Katie Skelly and her big check with Tom Spurgeon

• Katie Skelly

• Trashed by Derf Backderf
• Lumberjanes Vol. 1 by Shannon Watters, Kat Leyh, Carolyn Nowak, Noelle Stevenson, Brooke Allen, etc.
• As the Crow Flies chapters 1 and 2 by Melanie Gillman
• Non Binary by Melanie Gillman
• Closing Doors by Mark Rudolph

• Gigant by Rune Ryberg
• Even the Giants by Jesse Jacobs
• Pope Hats by Ethan Rilly

• Diary Comics by Dustin Harbin
• Spitball by various CCAD students and professional comics writers
• Screwjob issues 2 and 3
  Terror Assaulter (O.M.W.O.T.) by Benjamin Marra
• Columbus College of Art & Design
• Art Spiegelman

• Françoise Mouly