The Tariff Is Self – This Week’s Links

Spring is (false) springing outside my window, there’s a plethora of new Monster Hunter-based reality avoidance techniques available for the discerning couch potato, and inroads are being made on the to-read pile to the extent that there are only books published in 2025 teetering on there now, so what could possibly bring the mood dow– oh… well, well, well, if it isn’t a new selection of this week’s links, below.

Preservation

— Liya/mochipanko (@mochipanko.bsky.social) 2025-03-05T17:31:22.992Z

This week’s news.

• Starting our week wading through ticker tape to check in on how Webtoon’s trading on the Nasdaq is going, as the company reported a net loss of $153 million for 2024, but revenue growth for the digital comics platform in the last financial year – Webtoon’s stock is currently trading at around $9 at the time of writing, down over 50% since its initial offering last year, and is either undervalued, benchmarked correctly, or the product of "materially false and/or misleading statements" and thus worthy of a class action suit, depending on your preferred source.

• In comics funding news, the Center for Cartoon Studies announced the opening of the call for applications for this year’s Cornish CCS Residency, with a deadline to apply of April 1st; and Comic Arts Maine Portland announced the opening of the S’mores Awards programme, which offers two $250 mini-grants to emerging comic artists in Maine and New England, with a deadline to apply of March 28th.

• Former employees of Silver Sprocket who were laid off last month have started a crowdfunder to support living costs while looking for other work - donations towards covering rent and bills for two months can be made here.

Galactus and the surfer

— Justin McElroy (@thoughtographic.bsky.social) 2025-03-04T16:28:16.367Z

This week’s reviews.

TCJ

• Austin English reviews the varied stances of New York Review Books’ From Ted to Tom: The Illustrated Envelopes of Edward Gorey, edited by Tom Fitzharris - “When Gorey writes to Fitzharris and draws these animals, the envelopes are of an undeniable quality and unique intensity. The ten envelopes where Gorey resorts to more general themes (his Edwardian humans) are not particularly noteworthy. Though they are excellent drawings, they show Gorey as the first rate illustrator he was more than they reveal Gorey as one of the 20th century's greatest artists, which he also was.”

• Kevin Brown reviews the inventive messaging of Michael D. Kennedy’s Milk White Steed - “Kennedy’s artistic style also shifts, sometimes within stories, moving from silhouettes that appear more like woodcuts to panels that seem quickly sketched with minimal details. often when he uses a page full of small panels, while pages with only one to four panels offer more detailed, realistic drawings, especially of people.”

• Tom Shapira reviews the thin clichés of Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido’s Blacksad: They All Fall Down, Part Two translated by Dana Schulz and Brandon Kander - “If something sticks out, artistically, in They All Fall Down, it’s the backgrounds. The bursting clouds when visiting the beach, the disorienting scenery in the high-rise climax and, of course, the building itself. Caro might have not approved, but Moses probably would. The city looks great.”.

• Helen Chazan reviews the impulsive naïvety of Ana Woulfe’s Round World Thinking - “It's a showcase of silly little pictures and cartoon absurdities, but the message is loud and clear: bodies are beautiful, all that is strange and abject in the norm of society is beautiful. Woulfe is an obsessive cartoonist, returning time and again to strange plants and equally strange women, and at the core of her humor is a deeply trans-feminist anarchist love of all the ridiculous, gross, beautiful wonders and ideas that live and thrive against the will of society.”

AIPT

• Michael Guerrero reviews the brutal beauty of Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond: The Definitive Edition Volume 1.

• Kevin Clark reviews the grand beginning of Tom Sniegoski, Craig Rousseau, et al’s The Herculoids #1.

• David Canham reviews the teasing intrigue of David Pepose and Jonathan Lau’s Space Ghost #10.

• David Brooke reviews the inventive artistry of Juni Ba’s Monkey Meat: Summer Batch #1.

• Collier Jennings reviews the golden balance of Danbiel Kibblesmith, Ted Brandt, and Ro Stein’s Darkwing Duck #1.

• Marvel Maximus reviews the winning humour of Sholly Fisch, Dario Brizuela, et al’s Teen Titans Go! #1.

• Colin Moon reviews the dynamic bombast of Mark Waid, Mike Wieringo, et al’s Fantastic Four: Imaginauts.

• Tyler Brown reviews the emotional core of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Daredevil.

The Beat

• AJ Frost reviews the touching authenticity of Aron Nels Steinke’s Speechless.

• Kathryn reviews the narrative tension of Taylor Robin’s Hunger’s Bite.

• Ricardo Serrano Denis reviews the interwoven fears of Dark Horse’s Shook! A Black Horror Anthology.

• Matt Ledger reviews the visual cues of Tate Brombal, Takeshi Miyazawa, et al’s Batgirl #5.

• Jordan Jennings reviews the brisk beginning of Sophie Campbell, Matt Frank, et al’s Mothra – Queen of Monsters #1.

• D. Morris reviews the reliable excellence of Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo – Ten Thousand Plums #1.

• Jared Bird reviews the shifting tones of Matt Wagner et al's Grendel: Devil’s Crucible — Defiance.

• Zack Quaintance reviews the fearless visuals of Kay Sohini's This Beautiful, Ridiculous City.

• Kristina Elyse Butke reviews the talented scares of Anji Matono’s 100 Ghost Stories That Will Lead to My Own Death Volume 1, translated by John Neal.

Broken Frontier

• Lindsay Pereira reviews the complementary tones of Michael D. Kennedy’s Milk White Steed.

• Lydia Turner reviews the beautiful details of Caitlin McGurk's Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund.

• Andy Oliver reviews the claustrophobic allure of Josh Pettinger’s Pleasure Beach #1, the sprawling experimentation of Emil Ferris’ My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book Two, and the scathing anger of Joe Sacco’s War on Gaza.

CBC

Ashly July has capsule reviews of the harrowing intensity of Teresa Wong’s All Our Ordinary Stories, the grief process of Sarah Leavitt’s Something, Not Nothing, and the creative realities of Adrian Tomine’s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist.

House to Astonish

Paul O’Brien has capsule reviews of Marvel Comics’ Astonishing X-Men Infinity Comic #12, X-Men #12, Hellverine #3, Sentinels #5, Rogue: The Savage Land #2, and Sabretooth: The Dead Don’t Talk #3.

Montreal Review of Books

Esinam Beckley reviews the profound musings of María Medem's Land of Mirrors, by Aleshia Jensen and Daniela Ortiz.

Solrad

Ian Cordingley reviews the emotional spectrum of Boum’s The Jellyfish, translated by Robin Lang and Helge Dascher.

One week left to apply to CAKE 2025! Cakechicago.com/apply

— Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (@cakechicago.bsky.social) 2025-03-03T19:04:59.465Z

This week’s interviews.

TCJ

• Tom Devlin interviews Marc Bell and Ron Regé, Jr. about Raw Sewage Science Fiction and Shell Collection, collecting shorter works into books, cartoonist rituals, and negative reviews - “[Ron Regé, Jr.:] I really like thinking of these book-bound comics we make as time capsules. Books get shuffled around and shoved in closets and corners so easily. Picked up without context, years later. It’s how I found everything I love the most, there’s no reason it wouldn’t continue. It’s why I make stuff, for sure.”

• Tony Wei Ling interviews Mike Kennedy about Milk White Steed, comics making decisions, relationships with history and research, and admiring bodies of work - “I think the book can be divided between these interior stories and these exterior explorations. I would say that the title story is an attempt to blur the lines between the objectively interior and exterior experiences of the character. This more liminal, limbo state is one I'd like to play within in the future. How does one transcend the limbo of twentieth and twenty-first century life? The limbo of knowing our history on a day-to-day basis?”

AIPT

• Chris Hassan speaks with Murewa Ayodele about Storm and X-Manhunt, ongoing series inspirations, and the realities of infinity.

• David Brooke chats with Bixie Mathieu about editing IDW’s My Little Pony line of comics and working with creators who know their lore, and with Ram V about Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma and the question the book seeks to answer.

The Beat

• AJ Frost talks to Aron Nels Steinke about Speechless, the realities of selective and situational mutism, use of thought balloons, and the stop-motion scene in Portland.

• Christian Angeles speaks with Yuke Li about Monster Survival Handbook and the personal inspirations for the book, and with Caitlin Du about Scavengers and its alternate reality setting.

Dying Scene

Forrest Gaddis interviews Thierry Lamy and Nicolas Finet about Punk Rock in Comics, comic book origins and musical scenes, and keeping things in-scope for the punk movement.

ICv2

Rob Salkowitz talks to ReedPOP’s Kristina Rogers about Emerald City Comic Con, ticket sales ahead of this year’s event, and shifts in publisher attendance at events in the COVID era.

The Los Angeles Sentinel

Keith L. Underwood speaks with Tony Weaver Jr. about Weirdo, graphic novels as an effective literacy tool for younger readers, and ways in which the education system fails students.

The New York Times

Benjamin Mulin talks to Tony Doris, former editorial page editor of The Palm Beach Post, about being fired for running a cartoon by Jeff Danziger which drew complaints of antisemitism.

Polygon

Susana Polo interviews Kelly Thompson and Hayden Sherman about Absolute Wonder Woman, the magical nature of this version of Wonder Woman, and lasso variations in this setting.

Times of India

Arkapravo Das and Eshna Bhattacharya speak with Bill Golliher, John Layman, and Savio Mascarenhas at last month’s Comic Con India about current work and industry staples.

Painting rocks whenever I can

— 𝔾𝕆ℝ𝔸ℕ (@gorangligovic.bsky.social) 2025-02-27T16:01:30.743Z

This week’s features and longreads.

• Here at TCJ, Austin English writes on the limited availability of the work of Saul Steinberg, and how this paucity of work in print hampers a concerted appraisal of Steinberg’s work, or a comprehensive entry-point for new readers, limited by what current offerings present, including New York Review Books’ All In Line - “These kind of insights represent a glass ceiling of sorts, received notions from other media that cartooning all too often applauds itself for achieving (or, quite often, the applause is for an attempt at achievement). Steinberg's later art emerges as one of the most powerful bodies of work in the 20th century because it abandons a prosaic observation of the natural world and its norms.”

• Tammi Morton-Kelly shares the quiet transformation afforded by the sensory explorations of Caitlin McGurk’s Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund - “What results is a fully developed—or as fully developed as it can be—image of an artist who is driven to circumvent obstacles with her talent and her ingenuity, a sleight of hand or some such thing. The image is not of a helpless, oppressed woman, but of a determined spirit that reminds me of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy, a clever being, and a motherless daughter, who out-charms, and outwits whatever stands in her way; ultimately questioning gender roles and begs the question, What constitutes a bad girl?”

• For The Nation, Jeet Heer profiles Art Spiegelman, charting the making and publication of Maus, as the new documentary Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse shines a spotlight on the cartoonist.

• For more on Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, Print’s Steven Heller shares thoughts on the documentary, and signposts viewers towards the next (potentially) upcoming film in the same vein - Oddly Compelling: The Denis Kitchen Story.

• Elizabeth Sandifer’s Last War in Albion briefly returns ahead of the publication of book 4 of the series, skipping backwards in the chronology of UK comics and the British Invasion to examine the work of Neil Gaiman in the context of Gaiman’s family history with the Church of Scientology and the recent accusations of sexual assault leveled at Gaiman.

• Over at ICv2, Milton Griepp provides a whistlestop tour of recent pop culture events, including this year’s ComicsPRO Annual Meeting, testing the waters for how tariffs and bankruptcies may affect businesses.

• For Global Voices, Fred Petrossian charts the connections between the the Golem's origins in Jewish folklore and the modern pantheon of superheroes, and the ways in which the Golem can also be viewed as a metaphor for artificial intelligence.

• From the world of open-access academia, for the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Silvia Vari writes on Gipi’s Muttererde, exploring the ways the comic engages with the complexities of human nature, and the story’s examination of anti-immigrant and xenophobic sentiments in early-00s Italy.

• From Humanities’ recent open-access offerings, Jane Tolmie writes on the death of Mahsa Jina Amini at the hands of the Iranian state, and how comics, including Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis can be used to facilitate classroom discourse on human rights; and Lorinda Jean Peterson shares the research creation paper Badass Mom Art: Motherhood Untold in My Kind of Crazy, intertwining feminist mothering theory and traumatic mothering stories, and illustrating shifting modes of motherhood.

• For Experimental Physiology, Jacob P. Hartmann, Mathis B. Mottelson, Rasmus H. Dahl, Ronni R. Plovsing, and Ronan M. G. Berg present an editorial on the perceived rigours of fictional spaceflight, as depicted in Hergé’s The Adeventures of Tintin.

• Over at House to Astonish, Paul O’Brien’s cataloguing of the villains of Daredevil continues, as we have a first meeting with another briefly-present foe who hasn’t aged well, this time out in the form of Brother Zed.

• Mike Peterson rounds up the week’s editorial beat, over at The Daily Cartoonist, as pages continue to be graced with illustrations of President Donald Trump and various billionaire and international backers of his regime.

The COPRA alt cover looks great! Thanks @michelfiffe.bsky.social for asking me to do one!

— K. Wroten (@jukeboxcomix.bsky.social) 2025-02-27T15:51:07.438Z

This week’s audio/visual delights.

• Two new meetings of the New York Comics and Picture-Story Symposium this week, as Lilli Carré hosted a talk from Chris Sullivan on the realities of longform creative projects, taking the work of Christiane Cegavske (who also joins proceedings) and Emil Ferris as examples, alongside personal work; and Ben Katchor presented a panel conversation between Denis Kitchen, Paul Levitz, Patrick McDonnell and Susan Kirtley, moderated by Danny Fingeroth, celebrate 85 years of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, as part of 2025’s Will Eisner Week.

• Sally Madden returns with some more Thick Lines, as this week Frances Cordelia Beaver brought Michelle Perez and Remy Boydell’s The Pervert to the table, with added discussion of the etymology of ‘pervert’, the joys of Animal Collective, Seven Miles a Second, and stories that blur the lines between autobio and autofiction.

• David Harper welcomed Klaus Janson to this week’s edition of Off Panel, as they spoke about a storied career in comic books, the heydays of the 1970s and 1980s, changing perspectives, working as an educator, and the recent ‘Klaus Janson: 50 Years of Comics’ gallery show.

• Calvin Reid, Heidi MacDonald, and Kate Fitzsimons reconvened for the latest episode of Publisher’s Weekly’s More to Come, as there were looks back at this year’s ComicsPRO and looks ahead to this year’s MoCCA Fest.

• Henry Chamberlain welcomed Todd Webb to Comics Grinder, as they spoke about The Poet, the poems of Robert Lax, self-publishing and the realities of making a daily strip, gag strip classics, and the changing nature of the internet as a creative space.

• Drew Lerman was joined by Austin English for The Miami Review of Comics, as they discussed English’s recent TCJ essay on Saul Steinberg’s creative legacy, critical appraisal not existing in a vacuum, and the mysterious nature of certain cartooning greats.