See additional frames, Below.
Comic art is growing up
By Paul Buhle / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2009
Comic art is growing up. And the youngest generation promises to be the best yet, building upon the work of the past. That is to say: the previous generations of newspaper and comic book art, but especially the Underground Comix days of The Rag and others, and the alternative art (Austin’s Jack Jaxon notably) that began to take history seriously. I’m happy to have had a small role in much of this since the appearance of RADICAL AMERICA KOMIKS in 1969, with Gilbert Shelton in charge editorially and me, a mere publisher.
It was the happiest of coincidences that brought artist Ellis Rosen and Sam Marlow together with me, through a particularly wonderful student of mine at Brown. I’d been working fitfully on a Tom Hayden Comic, given it up a couple years ago, now see it come to life in a new way, from Tom’s passing observations on the global scene.
Keep tuned, this is something new and exciting.
[Tom Hayden, a prime mover in the Sixties New Left, was a California State Senator. A respected activist and author, he was a founder of Progressives for Obama and is the author of Ending the War in Iraq (2007), The Voices of the Chicago Eight (2008), and Writings for a Democratic Society, the Tom Hayden Reader (2008).]
[Sam Marlow and Ellis Rosen are graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Together they self-published two comics. Marlowe also worked as a digital colorist for Chicago comic artist, Paul Hornshemeier, on titles such as “The Three Paradoxes”, and Marvel Comics’ “Omega the Unknown.” He recently completed a short science fiction comic about the end of the world. He is currently volunteering at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art. Rosen lives in NewYork where he also works part time at the Barry Friedman Gallery.]
[Paul Buhle is an educator and a historian. He published the New Left journal Radical America during the 1960s and has written or edited many books on radicalism and culture. He now organizes leftwing comic books.]
Coming Soon: “Partial Peace, Looming War,” by Tom Hayden, a Rag Blog comic.
Cool. I like political comics. I hope these are collected and published in book form. I’d probably buy one.