Named for the suburb of southwestern Sydney, Australia, where his family settled after having fled their war-torn homeland of Vietnam, a black and white autobiographical comic from Matt Huynh called “Cabramatta” draws on the artist’s experience as the son of refugees and a childhood spent near an open-air drug market.
Tag: comics
A notorious mind-weirding origin story
Cultural journalist, author, and all-around nice guy Jesse Jarnow has a new column at Aquarium Drunkard—in its debut installment, he has some characteristically smart stuff to say about cartoonist Brian Blomerth and his vibrant graphic novel Bicycle Day:
The most accessible of the new batch of psychedelic books–and surely the most gleeful–is Brian Blomerth’s Bicycle Day (Anthology Editions, $30.00). A gorgeous graphic novel, it depicts the most notorious mind-weirding origin story of them all—Albert Hofmann’s 1943 lab accident that unleashed a world-changing technicolor superpower. Blomerth’s rendering Hofmann’s invention of LSD in Basel, Switzerland in the years surrounding World War II is lush and overflowing, a welcoming color-swirl that will almost surely beckon repeat dives. A stunning visual rendering of Hofmann’s discovery, Bicycle Day winks to R. Crumb, Yellow Submarine, the Grateful Dead, and numerous comix conventions, unfortunately including a hyper-buxom depiction of Hofmann’s assistant, Susi Ramstein, the first woman to take LSD.
Read Jarnow’s whole column here. And as Jesse and I share a great deal of common interests, I reviewed Blomerth’s new comic for The Los Angeles Times in June.
Sue Coe’s incisive political art
Activist and graphic artist Sue Coe has been producing some fierce political art for The Nation magazine. Last year, I wrote about a solo exhibition of hers at Long Island City’s MoMA PS1 that encompassed prints, newspaper illustrations, large-scale collage works, and more aimed at a number of ills, each demonstrative of the social reform element long at the center of Coe’s work. Visit her archive at The Nation.
Image © 2019 Sue Coe via The Nation. Visit Sue Coe’s website.
Brazil through the eyes of comics artists
Reporting from Brazil, Shasta Darlington profiles a handful of comics artists for American Airlines’ in-flight magazine American Way, which includes a discussion with award-winning artist and writer Marcelo D’Salete.