PODCAST

I posted Episode 683 of my Virtual Memories Show yesterday, where we celebrated (or commemorated) America’s independence with an amazing new double book, DECLARATION ILLUSTRATED / EMANCIPATION ILLUSTRATED (Drawn & Quarterly)! R. Sikoryak rejoins the show for an conversation about adapting foundational American documents (verbatim!) with a mind-blowing array of comic art parodies, ranging from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers to Jump Start to Check, Please! to Thanos! We talk about how this project spun out of his CONSTITUTION ILLUSTRATED in 2020, why he decided to include the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address alongside the Declaration of Independence, how he gave himself some pretty strict rules about which artists and characters he could and couldn’t use, including not re-using artists he used in his Constitution (which meant employing 200 different artists’ styles over the course of these books), and his goal of trying to bring the whole history of American comics into these books. We get into what it’s all taught him about America, the ways these documents show how America changed, why he doesn’t take offense at being a called a rip-off artist, and why he conceives of these books like a quilt. We also discuss whether he’s more sensitive about parodying art by living artists or dead ones, why he wants to get back to comics-parody adaptations of classic books and plays, the ways that access to comprehensive digital comics archives is both good and bad for his work, the artists he wishes could have included in these books, why he brought in many African-American artists and characters in the Emancipation portion of the book, but still found room for Barney Google & Snuffy Smith, the page that almost broke him (okay, it was his Emil Ferris parody), his series of 8-page comics stories for Tom Hanks’ first novel (!), and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read DECLARATION ILLUSTRATED!

(And go listen to our 2012 and 2020 conversations!)

Recent podcast episodes: Katie Skelly • Colin Asher • Kate Maruyama & Me • Heather Cass White • Paul Gravett • Luis Mendo • Benoit Denizet-Lewis

Every book (non-comics) that I’ve finished since 1989.

BIRDY!

The groomer just got here, so this is the last fluffy-face pic of Birdy for a while:

INSTAX

Top row: a couple of Instax pix I took when I recorded with Bob Sikoryak two weekends ago. Bottom row: two from 2024 that’ll be in my Instax book (one for Bob, one for Kriota Willberg; they’re both written):

HITTING THE LINKS

Here are some links for you:

• RIP Bonnie Tyler . . . RIP Hershel Parker . . . RIP Jayson Conner and Jeffrey Newman . . . RIP Sam Neill . . . RIP Randolph Mantooth . . .

• RSS still rules.

• Arthur Lubow wrote about Paul Thek. You should read Andrew Durbin’s recent biography of Thek and Peter Hujar.

• GO READ Elon Green on the 1975 bombing of LaGuardia Airport.

• Sorta like an Upper East Side sequel to Zweig’s Mendel the Bibliophile.

• Count Binface has my vote.

• Musclemen in tight suits are a joke.

• But I guess that’s of a piece with everyone’s obsession with plastic surgery and the male looksmaxxing craziness.

• Arthur Hoyle wrote about making a visit to LA and being reminded why he moved to Santa Barbara.

• Stoya and Jesse Sheidlower tag-team her recent sex advice column on what comprises a kink.

• The Ballad of Fudgie the Whale.

• Which means it’s time to include my sketch of Tom Carvel from four years ago, because it’s one of the best drawings I’ve ever made

  

COMMONPLACE

Here are some recent entries from my online commonplace book:

In this life that sometimes seems to be a vast, ill-defined landscape without signposts, amid all of the vanishing lines and the lost horizons, we hope to find reference points, to draw up some sort of land registry so as to shake the impression that we are navigating by chance. So we forge ties, we try to find stability in chance encounters.
—Patrick Modiano, In the Café of Lost Youth

*

“Surgery was your mission,” she said.

“Missions are stupid, Tereza. I have no mission. No one has. And it’s a terrific relief to realize you’re free, free of all missions.”
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

*

I saw her exit through the small door of the garage. She waved at me, exactly the same way she had that other time, when I was waiting for her and Jeannette Gaul that summer day on the quays. She’s coming towards me with that nonchalant walk of hers, and it’s as if she’s reduced her speed even more, as if time no longer mattered. She takes me by the arm and we wander the neighborhood. We will live here one day. In fact, this is where we’ve always lived. We walk down the quaint streets, we cross the deserted roundabout. The village of Auteuil very gently breaks away from Paris. The ocher or beige-colored buildings could easily be on the Côte d’Azur, and those walls, who knows whether they conceal a garden or the edge of a forest. We reached the place de l’Église, in front of the Métro station. And there, I can say it now that I no longer have anything left to lose: I felt, for the first time in my life, what the Eternal Return really was. Up until then, I had struggled to read books on the subject, with the determination proper to an autodidact. It was just before we went down the steps into the Métro at Église-d’Auteuil. Why there, of all places? I haven’t the slightest idea, and it doesn’t matter anyway. I stood still a moment and I held her arm tightly. We were there, together, in the same place, for all of eternity, and our stroll through Auteuil, we had already taken it during thousands and thousands of other lives. No need to look at my watch. I knew it was noon.
—Patrick Modiano, In the Café of Lost Youth

*

What is flirtation? One might say that it is behavior leading another to believe that sexual intimacy is possible, while preventing that possibility from becoming a certainty. In other words, flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Living and Dead

Are you still reading? Haven’t I already given you enough words, pix, links & such? Do you really want more? FINE.

My dad’s widow & I visited his grave on his first deathiversary last Friday, and she brought him an orchid.

I haven’t written about exercise/meditation for a while now. I’ve only very recently started making time for meditation again, and that’s making subtle changes, I think/unthink.

All that work travel screwed up a lot of my routines, and on-off depression has screwed up my body, but I’m starting to get back into shape, although I still feel ~10 lbs. heavier than I’d like to be.

This pic after yesterday’s yoga has a neat/weird symmetry going on, so enjoy.

POSTCARD

I mail out a postcard every day, so let me know if you want to be on my list.

EXPENSES

If you want to help out with Virtual Memories Show expenses — this email runs $29/month, podcast-hosting is $25/month, and the remote recording account is $20/month — or otherwise Contribute To The Cause, you can make a one-time contribution of any size via Stripe, or a recurring one via Patreon. Or maybe save your money for when I launch the Kickstarter for my Instax book.

NEXT TIME

Thanks for reading this far. See you next time, I hope.

Become the rising sun / (We will become, become) / Become the damage done / (We will become, become) / Become the river sway / (We will become, become) / Become the love we made / (We will become, become),