Letter

A proof of The Marvel Universe is on its way to my house from Monee, Illinois. There will be a few minor corrections to make but I expect the book to be available from Jeffrey’s Jamboree later in the week. The speed of the turnaround is truly astounding. They really do just push a button and shit out a book. It’s futureworld.*

There’s always a hangover/empty nest feeling after one of these things is done. A few days of not knowing how to organize the hours in the day. One useful task is putting the art up for sale and building an archive page for the site. This takes up lots of time. It’s tedious busy work. Coding where the only thing I do is change a couple characters over and over. It leaves my head free to think up the next thing.

For the past few months, the thing to dive into next is a variation of the last. Another public domain book to illustrate. The wrinkle this time is that now I’m choosing between ones I haven’t read before. This adds an extra element of uncertainty to the process. How far in do I go before committing for real?

I don’t have any problem giving up on a thing I don’t like. I walk out of movies after fifteen minutes, throw a book across the room after reading a couple bad sentences, leave a restaurant that only has QR menus. I value my time.

But this is different. Because I’m putting my work into it, it’s an active engagement, rather than passive enjoyment. It’s kind of the way I always take a sketchbook to a concert now. The other night I went to the Bottle, took my customary spot in the Tall Guy Corner, then realized my pen was not in my pocket. It made me feel naked. Unprepared. I left the club and walked four blocks to the CVS to buy an emergency replacement. CVS hasn’t stocked Parker Jotters in decades so I got one of those four-color Bics. That pen had crossed my mind a few days before. I wondered whether they still made them. Recalled kids covering their school books with green, red, blue, and black ink. I was happy to see it on the shelf.

The pen didn’t feel quite right in my hand as I drew SML playing but it did the job. It will take some time to get into the next book I work on but I’ll get there.

Listen to me read the first few pages of Nathan Knapp’s Daybook into a microphone.

*If there was any more evidence needed, here it is.

The new season of Karina Longworth’s long-running show about Hollywood’s Golden Age concerns the late periods of previously-successful directors. Late periods are rarely kind to artists. Most end up spinning their wheels or grasping desperately for relevance but falling well short.

I’ve enjoyed watching or rewatching some of the movies she covers. Fritz Lang’s The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse is a hoot; Howard Hawks’ Red Line 7000 isn’t good but is very watchable, like a naive art version of a Godard; Alfred Hitchcock’s Family Plot is one of my favorites of his, but that’s probably because I hate most of his celebrated work and he was mostly drunk and disengaged while making this one. I didn’t bother with John Ford and Frank Capra because I’ve had my fill of them both. She covered Otto Preminger today and I’m hoping to watch Such Good Friends tonight.

The question of whether to keep going when the world is telling you not to bother has been a leitmotif most of my life, so watching legends struggle and falter is extra moving to me. There’s something to be said for doggedly staying your course. At the same time, who wouldn’t want a graceful exit?

Bob Dylan will probably die onstage performing some version of one of his classics that not even his diehard fans will recognize. They keep showing up to catch sparks from the past. That’s how it is with these last movies of the greats too. If you squint, you get glances from Psycho and Metropolis and The Big Sleep, but with eyes open, it’s rarely that pretty.

The dream is Rembrandt but the likely reality is Picasso—a doddering old man making grotesque caricatures of his greatest hits. Maybe the prospect of stopping is even worse than that of embarrassing yourself.

Get your copy of Babbitt directly from Bezos’ Bazaar. Plenty of Babbitt and Moby Dick art still available too. I’ll put up some of The Marvel Universe ones up soon.

RIP Roberta Flack & David Johansen

I meant to take a break after wrapping up Babbitt but took The Marvel Universe off the shelf and before I knew it, I was ankle-deep.

It’s another public domain book but contemporary rather than 19th or early 20th century like the two previous books I illustrated. The reasons it’s in the public domain are complicated but boil down to changes in the publishing industry that inhibit personal expression. The book’s writer, Bruce Wagner, decided to make the book available to the public for free rather than make the edits his publisher suggested.

Since the book appeared five years ago, Wagner has signed to a different publisher (which is still part of the same conglomerate to which his previous one belonged. A situation even more absurd and untenable than a writer with a long track record being inhibited by this or that passing fad of decorum…) and this “new” publisher has recently printed an edition of The Marvel Universe.

I reached out to Wagner to see if he’d be okay with my making my own version and he seems happy about the prospect. That’s a luxury I didn’t have with either Herman Melville or Sinclair Lewis. I’m not big on seances and favor spirits that live in bottles over the haunting kind.

It feels a bit different to be working on something made by someone who could react this way or that to what I make. This being the third book I’ve illustrated, there’s also muscle memory and weariness of repetition. I don’t want any of this to become rote. Changing up the style and subject matter of what I illustrate will hopefully keep that from happening.

I’m using Sumi ink this time, after ballpoint pen and pencil, respectively. I expect to return to the ballpoint when I’m done with The Marvel Universe. There’s a chance I’ll try some collage/mixed media things but my choices are limited because I’m committed to grayscale reproduction. Making the interior of these books in color would complicate the humble, democratic underpinnings of the entire experiment.

I’m sacrificing so much aesthetically by having these books printed on demand by the worst corporations going that charging extra for frills like color feels obscene.

I don’t really know if any of this will work out but I’ve got a queue of ten more titles waiting in a folder to be worked on. All by writers long dead. If you know of any topside that might like some art for their books, have them drop me a line.

Read my review of Wagner’s ROAR and/or listen to our talk.