I have an interview with the artist Michael Paulus on the Gobshite Quarterly website. We talk about cartoon characters and, specfifically, their skeletons.
To see Paulus’ art, he has a gallery on his website.
Meanwhile, over at Mindbuck.com, I have a review essay on Sandman Mystery Theater: Sleep of Reason.
And I have two pieces in the most recent Comics Journal. One, “Low-Calorie Cheescake,” is a review of Last Gasp’s Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings. The other, “Repeat Offender,” reviews Aaron McGruder’s latest Boondocks collection, All the Rage. (Sorry, these aren’t on the web.)
Interestingly, in our interview Michael Paulus said, “I think if it was Disney, the tendency would have been to do something profane.”
It seems Wally Wood couldn’t resist the temptation. His main contribution to Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings, “Disneyland Memorial Orgy,” is very profane indeed. As I wrote in The Comics Journal:
“There’s also something weirdly liberating about some of the images. My favorite of the bunch, Wally Wood’s Disneyland Memorial Orgy, shows — among other things — Goofy fucking Minnie as she leans against a cash register, Tinkerbell performing a strip tease, and the seven dwarves assaulting Snow White, all while dollar signs beam sunnily from the magic kingdom’s trademark castle. It’s all done in that characteristic Disney style, so it takes a minute to really understand what you’re seeing. It’s vulgar and it’s hilarious, and it’s also extremely satisfying to see the subversion of the cheap sentimentality and shallow moralism that has made Disney our most beloved commodifier of childhood. Is Wood meanly corrupting these sacred icons? Or is he merely stripping away the hypocrisy and laying bare the repressed subtext of our corporate fairy tales?”
Decide for yourself: You can see the “Memorial Orgy” (and more from the Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings collection) at The Realist Archive.