Category: Comics
The moon—it’s for the birds
On the moon, there are no humans. The birds that populate the lunar planet don’t get caught up in ideas like weekends or “the economy.” They stay connected via a vast fungal network, and there is plenty of universal worm (there’s one big worm that they all eat) to keep everyone fed. Michael DeForge’s latest […]
’Art is the fuel for all things’
Editor’s note: for this issue, Coco Picard talked to Chicago artist and professor Nick Cave about his art practice and work, as well as his exhibition “Forothermore.” Edited text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability. The artist, activist, and educator Nick Cave’s first retrospective, “Forothermore,” is on view at the Museum of […]
Recombinations
Editor’s note: Coco Picard’s comic for this issue examines artists Jennie C. Jones and Norman Teague on the occasion of their respective exhibitions this summer at Patron Gallery and Converso Gallery. Edited text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability. Two summer exhibitions repurposed and remixed materials to make designed objects, furniture, paintings, […]
Building an opera in the waiting room
Editor’s note: Coco Picard spoke to Chicago artist and School of the Art Institute of Chicago assistant professor Anna Martine Whitehead in early June. The comic above captures moments of their conversation. Text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability. Performance maker Anna Martine Whitehead has been writing and developing FORCE! An Opera […]
Loving, repeating, collaborating, and intimacy
In a new exhibition, longtime collaborators Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger created an immersive multimedia installation that explores intimacy, distance, and the fluctuations between. The above comic captures their reflections on making together and materials in play. Text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability. Our collaboration developed organically. We were both ceramic […]
Julie Doucet is back
In 2018, the Reader ran a cover story: “Julie Doucet is done making comics.” The underground artist famously abandoned the scene in 2006, leaving fans of her cult-classic series Dirty Plotte and graphic novels like My New York Diary bereft. Through the years, her autobiographical comics became renowned in the canon. She explored other art […]
Lynda Barry is the North Star
One of my prized possessions is a 1989 playbill from Lynda Barry’s The Good Times Are Killing Me. Before the play’s award-winning off-Broadway run, it was produced here in Chicago by City Lit Theater Company at Live Bait Theater. My sister plucked the playbill from the magical chaos of Ravenswood Used Books and gifted it […]
Temp check
Interviewees: Alma Weiser, director of Heaven Gallery; Janet Dees, Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum curator of modern and contemporary art at the Block Museum of Art; Asha Iman Veal, associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography; Teresa Silva, executive and artistic director of the Chicago Artists Coalition; Edra Soto, artist and codirector of the […]
From the Dan Clowes Collection
If you head down to the basement of Chicago Comics, past the endless rows of back issues and vintage titles waiting to be priced, you’ll find 15 white boxes. They contain a pretty standard collection of 60s and 70s comics—Thor, Conan the Barbarian, X-Men, MAD magazine. But these comics have a special allure. They belonged […]
Comics serials farewell (for now)
The last installments of Prairie Pothole, Violet, Private Eye, and P.L. Dermes
Reading the Comments
Take an illustrated journey through the Reader‘s online comments.
The amazing adventures of Mike Norton, creator of Battlepug and Lil’ Donnie
The Chicago comics writer and artist finds many ways to indulge his absurdist sense of humor.