The creators of Understanding Comics and Market Day discuss transforming the unruly creative process into practical instruction, in a conversation recorded on Friday, July 23. (Downloadable MP3 audiofile, 19.4MB.)
Sobel was right-on in talking about Market Day a study of transitions: the transition to fatherhood, the transition from a golden age of practicing an art and its inevitable decline, and finally a transition from Mendleman as an artist to becoming something else (and lesser). While this is all true, I’d also say that for Sturm this was more than just a transition. His stories tend to be about the beginning of the end: the crucial point where something that was once good tends to fall apart. There’s a crisis point where this occurs, but it’s really more a matter of a house of cards collapsing. Market Day is no exception.
James Sturm is a cartoonist’s cartoonist, a passionate supporter of the medium and one of its great ambassadors. His comics, like all great artists, have sharpened and focused over the course of his career, and following his trilogy of graphic novels, recently collected as a single, stunning volume simply titled James Sturm’s America, it was only logical that Sturm would turn next to Europe.
In Market Day — his first graphic novel since 2001’s The Golem’s Mighty Swing — Sturm appears to have lost his former optimism and what’s left is a beautifully told piece of abject nihilism.
The 7th annual Toronto Comic Arts Festival will be held May 8th and 9th 2010 at the Toronto Reference Library in Toronto, Canada. Sponsored in part by the Toronto Public Libraries and comic retail giant The Beguiling, the free festival focuses particularly on the art form of comics as well as the creators, aiming to open and encourage dialogues between the creator and the community. Last year, the festival drew 10,500 attendees and 300 exhibitors from several countries and this year will likely see more. Featured guests include Jeff Lemire, James Sturm, Dash Shaw, Jim Woodring, Paul Pope, Daniel Clowes and Charles Vess.
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