I've just finished transcribing the second part of a really long interview I did recently with the artist Gunnar (you can find it in Skin Deep #272 and the forthcoming #273 - I had to split it over two issues to get it all in even with serious edits). As we got towards the end, we talked about creative people like Tex Avery and Walter Lantz and magazines like Mad and EC comics and how we were exposed to a dark kind of creativity that doesn't exist anymore. Hopefully it doesn't come across like two middle aged men longing for days gone by because that's not the spirit it was conducted in at all. It was more about how most people are only really exposed (and happily so) to the top ten search results you get back from google.
Such is the machine that you built.
Anyway, it struck me that so far as I know, there aren't a lot of places online that will really dive in to investigate little known authors and raise a flag for them - which begs the question, have I got the inclination here to begin such a thing? I think I have but it will be intermittent that's for sure. Maybe I'll make a shortlist of half a dozen of my favourites I think other people would get a kick out of reading, go back revisit their work and write about it here. I'll keep you clued in... well, you'll probably notice.
It's been my habit whenever I'm sending out books during the last couple of years, to throw some extras inside. Sometimes a postcard, sometimes a type-written letter, sometimes a hand written letter... that 'something' is anything I have at hand to make the experience of getting a parcel in the mail a little more personal. Things come and things go and we leave no trace in the world anymore - that's not a good thing.
I love the phrase 'tread lightly' but not when it comes to the things you spend the days of your life creating with blood. That's the one time you should leave a scar otherwise you may become one of those mentioned above. One of The Forgotten.
Take a look at this:
If that isn't a good reason to take a few moments out of your day to commit yourself to the history of the real world instead of the history of the digital, I don't know what is.
Oh the irony of blogging...