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I have an illustrator celebrity crush on Marc Boutavant. I just bought his Around the World with Mouk, and it’s a candy-coloured cute-infused thing of beauty, complete with fun impermanent vinyl stickers to populate its pages. Boutavant’s illustrations have us traveling the world with little Mouk, and the entire experience is like if Richard Scarry and M. Sasek got it on at Disneyland during the It’s a Small World ride.
See also: Matt’s Picks
The most charming kids book I read this year (original review). Delphine Durand’s illustrations are pure joy, and could melt the heart of anyone who forgot how much fun drawing can be.
A beautiful love letter to engravings, bookmaking, and language from bookmaker John M. Carrera, Pictorial Webster’s collects the original engravings from 19th-Century dictionaries into a new pictures-only dictionary (original review). Pictorial Webster’s satisfies my hunger for visual list-making that probably grew out of picture book dictionaries from my childhood, and now extends to things like Blackstock’s Collections and the work of Tom Gauld.
And speaking of Tom Gauld, his The Gigantic Robot was another instant favourite of the year. His usual mix of subtle humour and minimalist drawings are used here to tell a parable about war, futility, and decay. It may not be a meaty book, but Tom manages to say more with 15 single-panel pages than some cartoonists do with entire graphic novels. Visit Tom Gauld’s website.
R. Crumb’s visual, literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis is certainly the most impressive comics project of the year, if not the decade. I usually try to avoid such hyperbole but, even though Crumb claims to have treated this adaptation as an impartial word-for-word illustration job, we must appreciate the context of such a book. That context is not only one of Crumb’s kingly status in the pantheon of underground comics–psyche-driven comics of sex, drugs, desire, and the antiestablishment–but a modern world in which the origins of life on earth are a highly-politicized battle between Darwinian Science and the Hand of God. In this context, a literal adaptation of the bible’s first book–a story of how we came to be–is a statement in itself.
Quoting my original review:
Anyone familiar with GigPosters.com knows it’s the site for modern music posters. And with the CD going the way of the LP, and its cover art with it, these posters are fast becoming some bands and artists’ primary means of representing their music visually.
The Gig Posters book features over 700 posters, 101 of which are full-page. And it’s a true poster book; each page is perforated and ready to be torn out and hung on your wall.
It’s a terrific resource for how contemporary designers are fusing illustration, typography, and reinvigorating the world of the poster.
Inspired by the likes of Saul Bass and Charley Harper, the contemporary artists featured in Naïve all embrace the virtues of modernism and minimalist design–simplicity, restriction, patterns, and shapes–and even if the work was made with the aid of a computer, the pieces all boast an aesthetic that seems to say, “this was made with my own two hands.” Like the Gig Posters book, this is an invaluable source of inspiration for designer-illustrators and printmakers, featuring favourites of mine like Tad Carptenter, Matte Stephens, Linzie Hunter, and Nate Williams.
That brings us to Charley Harper himself. There’s not much I can say about this smaller affordable version of its larger, more expensive counterpart, that I haven’t already said in my initial review, but I can once again stress that if you had put off purchasing the original behemoth of An Illustrated Life because of its size or pricetag, you have little reason to avoid adding it to your collection any longer. Charley Harper’s work is modernist, abstracted illustration at its best.
I’ll start by stating that I didn’t love the story, or the characters in Asterios Polyp. But I am a sucker for formalism in comics and artists that play with the medium itself. Usually, cartoonists’ forays into form-bending rarely sustain full-length stories. But in Asterios Polyp we may have the first true formalist graphic novel–a story actually about style and duality that exploits form, motif, colour, and line to their fullest, in a way that could only be achieved in comics.
Seth’s serialized story for the New York Times Magazine is collected here in a gorgeous volume, which makes the wait for the next Clyde Fans book a little more bearable. Mixing mid-Century Canadiana with death and the passing of time, Sprott is pure Seth through-and-through. The panels are rich in the warm, monotone colours befitting a tale of nostalgia and the oversized pages allow Seth to showcase some of the best-designed page layouts of his career.
Fans of webcomics darling Kate Beaton finally got a book this year, collecting Kate’s hilarious comics featuring historical figures (if not historical fact). Kate’s expressive characters are up there with the best of Jules Feiffer’s work, and it is always a good day when my RSS reader gives way to one of her comics. Guaranteed to be the only book on your shelf featuring Tesla, Napoleon, AND Stompin’ Tom Connors!
In this memoir, illustrator David Small tells the harrowing story of a childhood spent with unloving parents and the cancer they unintentionally gave him, and subsequently kept a secret from him. A quick but engrossing read, Stitches features some of the most vivid images of childhood to be realized on the comics page, and several truly stunning wordless sequences–appropriate for a story of a child who loses his voice, and finds it again in his ability to draw.
Monsters almost didn’t make the cut this year, and only because I didn’t read it until just a few days ago, when it quickly secured itself a position on this list. Ken Dahl/Gabby Schulz’s semi-autobiographical graphic novel about herpes is a cautionary tale for, as Jeffrey Brown writes on the back cover, “anyone who has had sex, is going to have sex, or wants to have sex.”
Honourable mentions: Jeffrey Brown’s Funny Misshapen Body, R.O. Blechman’s Talking Lines, Denis Kitchen’s Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix, and R. Sikoryak’s Masterpiece Comics.
See also: Matt’s Picks for 2009
Last year’s lists: Matt’s Picks / John’s Picks
Nobrow is fast becoming my favourite small press outfit. They keep putting out fantastic small runs of illustrated books and comics, all of them beautifully printed.
The latest is an English translation of French comicker Blexbolex’s graphic novella Abecederia. The book is a horrific scifi thriller masked as an alphabet book; each page features an illustration based on the shapes of the letters of the alphabet, all printed in a minimal 3 colours, and the combinations they make. Visit Nobrow to order the book.
One of the most eye-catching books in the bookstore this season is The Red Shoes [Amazon Link] – illustrated by Sun Young Yoo. The book is a re-telling of the classic Andersen fairy tale with lush linework. It’s dark illustrations evoke Edward Gorey with a touch of Manhwa (Korean comics). Definitely check it out if you can.
This is my favourite page… the hair becomes a river.
The book is published by Ammo books who just released the popular edition of Charley Harper’s ouevre (our review here). Looking forward to more from Ammo.
Congratulations to Janice Nadeau, the wonderful Montreal artist who just won a Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award for her illustrations in the children’s book, Harvey.
You can see a cross-section of Janice’s books and illustrations on her site. Also, check out Nadeau’s great patterns (example below).
A documentary about Ed Embereley and the impact of his book Make a World? Yes, please!
Ed Emberley’s books were an integral part of my creative childhood — and my creative adulthood. I can’t wait to see this: Ed Emberely’s Make a World: The Film.
One of my most prized books is the beautiful, and massive Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life. It’s a book filled with Harper’s brilliant modernist nature illustrations, and one that I think belongs in every illustrator’s collection. Two factors otherwise prohibit more people from adopting the book into their libraries: the book’s physical size (it’s so big, mine hides away in a drawer because no bookshelf can handle it, and it’s big enough to be its own coffee table) and its hefty $200 pricetag ($135 on Amazon).
As a book, it’s a work of art itself, and it’s truly inspiring to flip through and be fully enveloped by its pages, but I’ve always wished there was a more accessible showcase of his career for the more casual (and thrifty) fan. I suppose AMMO Books agrees; they have just released a popular edition of Charpey Harper: An Illustrated Life — the same book, but considerably smaller (and bookshelf friendly) and at an affordable $49.95 ($32.97 on Amazon).
So if you have been pining for this collection, but could never justify the price, now you have no excuse. And, of course, if money is no object, there’s always the limited editions from AMMO for $400 that are signed by Charley Harper and author Todd Oldham, and come with a fancy slipcase and one of Harper’s silkscreen prints. Yowza.
Previously: Charley Harper 1922-2007
Will of A Journey Round My Skull shares with us twenty-five book covers and posters from the out-of-print bookBlickfang: Bucheinbände und Schutzumschläge Berliner Verlage 1919 – 1933.
The book features a thousand images, so these 25 are but a small taste. I’m dying to see what other treasures are in its out-of-print pages. Will also astutely points out that Blickfang is German for eye catcher.
In collaboration with the Folio Society and the estate of William Golding, Sam Weber recently illustrated a new edition of Golding’s novel The Lord of the Flies. You’ll need to join the Folio Society to get your hands on it, but as you’ll see, it’s a thing of beauty (like most of what comes from Sam’s paintbrush).
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