Kelly Sheehan
What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2012?
Seeing Darren start a new Inhabitants episode. Titled A Day at the Races
it features new characters, the foregrounding of previous background
characters and the backgrounding of previous foreground characters. It
was meant to appear in the first issue of Fraction but fell
victim to real life and will now, hopefully, appear in the second issue.
Also finishing the latest of our little 'netsuke' comics. All going to
plan I should be picking it up from the copy shop next week. Keep eyes
peeled for Some were meant for sea.
Enjoyed contributing to Bob's Tearoom of despair and
subsequently being linked to by Tom Spurgeon. Writing for Bob's blog
suggested some possibilities for writing comics which I'm slowly trying
to sort out in my head. Nice to be included in Dylan's catalogue of New
Zealand comics creators.
Who are some of the comics creators that you've discovered and enjoyed for the first time in 2012?
Am enjoying Brian K Vaughn's Saga. I've waited for years to like something by that guy. Y the last man left me cold and I wanted to enjoy Ex-machina but something didn't quite click. Saga grabbed me right away. Jonathan Hickman's Manhattan Projects is
fun. It's good to have a monthly(ish) comic that I look forward
to. Been a while since I felt that sort of regular anticipation. There's
a seat of pants feel to the book that makes you feel Hickman is having
the time of his life making it all up as he goes along. Great stuff.
Prophet
from Brandon Graham and friends is my hands down favourite for this
year. Like Hickman's comic there is a feeling of a free wheelin' good
time. Reading interviews with Graham and co you get the idea that the
creators are always trying to top each other. All of those titles have
the fun, smart feel I associate with reading 2000ad when I was young.
Finally, she's not new but I really liked Alison Bechdel's Are You My Mother? There
seems to have been an almost indifferent response to it's release. I
find this puzzling considering the accolades heaped on Fun Home. Anyway
it's an astonishing piece of work and is less an autobiography than an
interrogation of Bechdel's relationship with her mother in the form of a
comics essay.
What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2012?
Breaking Bad season 5. David Thomson's The Big Screen, a
history of film, the screens we watch it on and an exploration of the
dangerous effect it has on us as individuals and as a culture. Thomson's
vision is pessimistic, but so beautifully expressed that you can't help
but be swept along. Some of the dead are still breathing:living in the future by
Charles Bowden. Even more jaded than Thomson, Bowden has been covering
the Mexican Drug War for way too long. This book is a collection
of intermittent writings knitted together into a dream meditation
on the coming world and the ecological and moral apocalypse we are
staring down the barrel of. Excellent.
Mitch Jenkin's and Alan Moore's Jimmy's End was great. It is interesting to see Moore trying to come to grips with a new form. Not all of it worked but when it did Jimmy's End was
fantastic. My favourite part was the end, it was like Moore had driven
one of his spoken word pieces at high speed into the back end of
Jenkins' film (though the gold face paint was a bit silly). Oh, and
reading all of A song of ice and fire in a binge that lasted six week. When's the next one out?
Have you
implemented any significant changes to your working methods this year?
No. I still don't work regularly enough. I still have things that are
half finished. That still makes me feel guilty Would like to say this
will change in 2013 but I doubt it.
What are you looking forward to in 2013?
Making more comics
with Darren. Seeing some of our work being part of the exhibition at St
Pauls Street Gallery. Finally getting hold of Tim Molloy's It shines, it shakes and laughs (and his new Mr Unpronouncable book). The combined thrill power of LofEG:Heart of ice and Jerusalem. Hanging with fellow cartoonists at various events. Seeing more work from Mr Timothy Kidd. Family stuff.
