Franz Jantzen doesn’t need to explain what the Library of Congress has lost, now that its consumers no longer have the option of ordering silver gelatin reproductions of images in its collection. He’d rather show you.
He points me toward me a high-resolution digital print of Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother,” one of the most iconic images of the [...]
The Library of Congress' National Book Festival is happening on the Mall this Saturday and Sunday, with most cartoonists appearing on Sunday in the big new Graphic Novels tent. George O'Connor is sneaking in on Saturday, however, where he'll promote Journey into Mohawk Country, a historical graphic novel on an early Dutch explorer's travels in what became [...]
Jen Sorensen, late of Charlottesville, Va., moved to Portland, Ore., a couple of years ago and is making her return to SPX. Jen's Slowpoke comic strip, which incorporated characters introduced in her college strip at UVA, premiered in 1998, and is resolutely [...]
Regular readers of the City Paper know that comic strips and cartoon illustrations disappeared from the paper a couple of years ago. Now they're back. David Malki!'s steampunk-influenced Wondermark appeared locally in The Onion until that paper dropped its comics months ago. It's one of my favorite web comics, and I'm glad to see [...]
Carl Cephas has spent the last 10 years of his life fighting his one-time employer, the Library of Congress. Last Christmas, the Library fired Cephas after placing him on unpaid leave for almost six months and 27 years as an employee. This Christmas, it rejected his appeal of his firing.
Cephas first stirred up trouble [...]
Some of the first African slaves in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, after toiling on the plantation each day, secretly engaged in a form of call-and-response singing while moving in a circular pattern, accompanied by others hand-clapping, stomping, and pounding broomsticks. Different than spirituals or gospel, this activity—associated with the Gullah, the culture of African-Americans who [...]
If you've ever been curious about the America of Bob Dylan—the folk, country, blues, vaudeville, and rock music, the beat poetry, politics, religion, values, art, and Mr. Jones—there are all kinds of fascinating ways to learn about it starting this week. Unique cultural academic, rock critic, and Dylan scholar Greil Marcus speaks at the Library [...]
In May, the Library of Congress quietly opened 222 containers of papers from the man who in the 1950s almost single-handedly destroyed comic books.
Or, seen a different way, the library shed light on one of the first psychologists to be concerned with pop culture’s effects on children’s mental health. Opinions vary, and people of good [...]
Comic book creator Jeff Smith was in town on Saturday for the National Book Festival and kindly took a few minutes on an unseasonably hot day to answer a few questions for us. In a journalistic coup, the Bone creator's hard liquor of choice is revealed, and should be vitally useful in the future to [...]
This weekend the Library of Congress hosts the 10th National Book Festival. Yes, that does mean it was started in the Bush administration, by Mrs. Bush no less. This year there are four guests with cartoons in their careers. The festival takes place Saturday on the Mall between 3rd and 7th streets.
One is Jeff Smith, [...]
