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Rob Clough
Rob Clough fights cancer by day, and writes about comix, college basketball and funky music by night. He is the comics editor of Other magazine and is happy to have published many fine cartoonists. He used to write for Savant and just finished something for idea-bot. He is married to award-winning poet Laura Clough (formerly Jent), with whom he lives in lovely Durham, NC.
MAGAZINE CONTENT BY ROB CLOUGH (52 TOTAL)
Comics Round-Up
All sorts of different comics to review this time around: THE UNDERBURBS #1-5, by T.J. Dort and Joe Haley. This is a sort of goth/horror parody comic, with the humor coming from playing out the… [more]
Dreams, Nightmares & Visions: Haunted, Jessica Farm & Funeral of the Heart
In this article, we’ll be looking at three comics that deal with the life of the mind and the delights & terrors within. First up is Phillipe Dupuy’s HAUNTED, a book that’s part dream journal… [more]
My Favorite Comics of the Year
This was one of the best-ever years to be a fan of comics, no matter one’s tastes or interests. Fans of classic comics delighted in the first volumes of deluxe collections of Popeye, Terr’ble Thompson,… [more]
My Favorite Minicomic of the Year
One of my favorite finds of SPX was by an artist I was only a bit familiar with: Andy Hartzell. Meeting him at the Global Hobo table, I was immediately astounded by the intricacy and… [more]
Comics Understood: An Anthology Of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons & True Stories
AN ANTHOLOGY OF GRAPHIC FICTION, CARTOONS & TRUE STORIES (hereafter just AGF) is the third significant general-audience comics anthology to be published in as many years, and in many ways it’s the most important. The… [more]
Deadpan: Gabrielle Bell’s LUCKY
LUCKY started as a strip on serializer.net (as Bell’s Home Journal), then a series of mini comics. They were an exercise in doing quickly drawn diary comics, a counterpoint to Bell’s more polished “serious work”,… [more]
Formalism, Fancy and Melancholy: Paul Hornschemeier’s LET US BE PERFECTLY CLEAR
I’ve been following Paul Hornschemeier since his mini comics days. Of course, the aggressively ambitious & experimental artist made minis with production values that were astonishing. Some of the results can be seen in THE… [more]
SPX: Twelve Great Minis
One of the highlights of any alt-comics events is the opportunity to take a look at a new crop of mini-comics. Some of them are by established artists who have regular, professional publishing outlets. They… [more]
Whatever Happened to the Periodical?
In this column, I’ve mostly paid attention to the avalanche of quality graphic novels that have been released of late (I have a huge stack still demanding my attention) as well as the large variety… [more]
Best Behavior: SPX 2006
Introduction I’ve written extensively about the MOCCA festival for this website, but the event that truly changed the course of how I think about comics was the Small Press Expo, or SPX. It opened my… [more]
Life In Regression: Dash Shaw’s The Mother’s Mouth
Dash Shaw is one of my favorite artists, hands-down. Readers of this column may recall my review of his previous collection of stories, GODDESS HEAD. Many of the same themes are explored in his newest… [more]
Artists to Seek out at SPX 2006
The Small Press Expo (SPX) is coming up this Friday and Saturday, October 13th-14th, in Bethesda, MD. It’s still the pre-eminent smallpress/indy/alternative/etc. comics festival, and this year it’s in a new location. Happily, the new… [more]
Mini-Comics Round-Up
Ah, the variety of mini comics I receive. I generally like to review comics that I can compare and contrast in some meaningful way, but these three comics couldn’t be any more different. Liz Baillie’s… [more]
Art + Comics = Arf!
This is a golden age for publications about comics and their history. There are more reprints of classic comics (and in better formats) than ever before. There’s a broad range of books and magazines focusing… [more]
Strange Territory: Joe Daly’s Scrublands
It’s hard to pin down Joe Daly’s influences and hence what sort of comic SCRUBLANDS is. The book notes his strong influence by American underground artists like R.Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, S.Clay Wilson and others. While… [more]
Pulp Politics: Alixopulos’ Mine Tonight
Those that follow the mini comics scene will observe that geography plays a large part in forming artist support groups. These groups provide encouragement and critique for young artists and play a part in their… [more]
Art Comics For Beginners: The Best American Comics 2006
As anyone who’s read my articles on MOME and HOTWIRE will quickly realize, I have a particular interest in comics anthologies and the effect they can have on comics in general. While there are many… [more]
Firing On All Cylinders: Sparkplug Comic Books
A welcome trend in the comics world in recent years is the rise of the boutique publisher. With modest publishing goals and realistic release schedules, a small publisher can carve out a nice niche for… [more]
It’s Not The Destination, It’s The Trip: Three Comics About Travel
There’s something particularly appealing about travel comics. Traveling involves beginning and ending points, making it easy to adapt as a narrative. By definition, travel stories almost always involve the narrator or protagonist doing something that’s… [more]
Identity, Shame and Confrontation: American Born Chinese
Ultimately, the moral of AMERICAN BORN CHINESE is not especially profound. Gene Luen Yang’s three storylines converge to deliver the message of be who you are. Resist the urge to assimilate. Be proud of your… [more]
Passionella: A Welcome New Collection From Jules Feiffer
There’s a case to be made that Jules Feiffer was the first prototype of the underground/alternative cartoonist. A comics lifer, he started out as Will Eisner’s assistant on THE SPIRIT and eventually wrote a number… [more]
The Picturesque World of Klezmer
Continuing my look at First Second’s fall line of books, Joann Sfar’s KLEZMER is the best of the bunch. Sfar is a master of characterization, creating fully-formed and intriguing people out of thin air. While… [more]
Quiet Moments And Early Reflections: Kampung Boy and Missouri Boy
One of the really encouraging developments in recent years in the comics industry has been the increasing number of publishing houses that have started up a graphic novel imprint. This has been happening in fits… [more]
Two Paths To Comedic Enlightenment: Jeffrey Brown & The Langridge Brothers
Jeffrey Brown is best known for his episodic, autobiographical comics about assorted relationships. While the relationships inevitably go down the tubes for poor Jeffrey, he is often able to mine a lot of humor from… [more]
Let’s All Laugh At (and With) Lauren Weinstein
Lauren R Weinstein’s GIRL STORIES is a marvelously all-over-the-place collection of stories done over a seven-year period that somehow manages to cohere into one hilariously painful whole. Weinstein accomplishes something remarkable here: writing a book… [more]
A Minicomics World Tour
Time to take a look at the minicomics that have come my way, and it’s quite an interesting and varied assortment from all over the world. There’s historical adaptations, horror, humor and autobio in this… [more]
Lying in the Gutters: Hotwire
With MOME, Fantagraphics tried to put together an anthology that would appeal to sophisticated readers who were open to reading comics but didn’t necessarily know what to buy. A book for those who read GHOST… [more]
An Interview with Eric Reynolds, Co-Editor of Mome
SEQUART: What were your original criteria in selecting artists for MOME? REYNOLDS: Really just good cartooning, good storytelling. Also, the idea was that these cartoonists didn’t have a regular venue to publish, although that agenda… [more]
Mome: Comics’ New Murderer’s Row
Five issues of Fantagraphics’ new flagship anthology, MOME, have been published. I was immensely excited when news of it was announced, because a number of my favorite young artists were to be part of its… [more]
The Old Gags Are Best: Milt Gross & Will Elder
Humor is a particular area of interest for me as a writer, and that’s especially true for comics. Indeed, though the medium is capable of addressing any style or genre (as I hope I’ve showed… [more]
30 Under 30 Part 1: MK Reed
Mary Kate “MK” Reed (http://www.mkreed.com) noted at one point in her interview, “It’s comics or suicide”. She’s part of a generation of comics artists that is simply in love with the form, despite the many… [more]
New(ish) Comics from Old Favorites, Part 3: I LOVE LED ZEPPELIN
Ellen Forney is a hard cartoonist to pin down. Her work is charming and disarming, but isn’t easy to categorize. Her first collection of strips, MONKEY FOOD, compiled her “I Was Seven in ’75″ strips.… [more]
New(ish) Comics from Old Favorites, Part 2: 40 Hour Man
How do you measure someone’s worth? In a society where one’s career is supposed to define one’s self, what does this mean for the millions who work minimum-wage, soul-crushing jobs? Even for those who work… [more]
New(ish) Comics from Old Favorites, Part 1: The Squirrel Mother
The prevailing trend in comics these days is releasing graphic novels. Of course, that is still a painstaking, laborious process that can take years for an artist to complete. Even if a creator is consumed… [more]
Comics in, of, and about Other Media
A few years back, the Comics Journal published a list of the top 100 English-language comics of the 20th century. That list produced a lot of controversy because a number of the works included didn’t… [more]
The Concerns of the Midwestern Artist: The Minicomics of Will Dinski
Being only vaguely familiar with his name but not much else, I was quite pleasantly surprised by the minicomics I received from Will Dinski. They are by turns elegant, quirky, funny and enigmatic. He reminds… [more]
The Delicate Line and Subtle Wit of Gabrielle Bell
Gabrielle Bell has taken a career course that is not unfamiliar in the arts-comics world: an early series of minis where she experimented with different styles and learned her chops; a number of memorable appearances… [more]
Summer Guidelines
Just a few quick hits this week; I have a big project brewing for my next column. But this is a good time for some recommendations: ** If you’re doing some comics-related travelling this summer… [more]
Pekar, Piskor, and a Preview of Macedonia
Even the most casual of comics fans is probably familiar with Harvey Pekar, thanks to the film success of AMERCAN SPLENDOR. Pekar is one of the trailblazers of autobiographical comics, focusing on the insights that… [more]
Non-Dominant Hands and Off-Beat Superheroes
I happen to love comics anthologies, in all their beautiful sloppiness. I love panning for gold in them, hoping to get at least one great story even in an anthology that’s otherwise a waste of… [more]
Fear and Loathing: Dan Clowes’ Art School Confidential
Sequart.com as a site likes to look at comics as they impact other art forms, especially film. While the various superhero movies receive plenty of notice here, I thought I’d review a film that comes… [more]
Super Girls and Vibrator Oaths
This week’s reviews are of material a bit lighter in tone than I’ve been reading recently. There’s satire in the Harvey Kurtzman tradition with Stan Yan’s THE WANG: WHO’S YOUR DADDY? (www.squidworks.com). Also, I examine… [more]
Autobiographical Surrealism
It’s a bit difficult to give a proper critique of Henry Chamberlain’s ALICE IN NEW YORK. The author informs us from the start that it’s the beginning of a graphic novel. As such, it feels… [more]
Political Utopias and After-Life Taxi Rides
The works of the Brothers Goldman aren’t written like conventional comics, which is both their strength and weakness. While their storytelling methods are somewhat conventional, their ideas are clever. In the world of indy comics,… [more]
Two Men are an Island
So far on Sequart, I’ve mostly done broad overviews, and irregularly at that. But I’ve received a number of submissions that demand my attention, and so I’ll have a new review every Saturday for the… [more]
Five Overlooked Comics from 2005
There have been a number of “Best of 2005″ lists out there, but I wanted to do something slightly different. I think everyone knows that Chris Ware and Charles Burns and Dan Clowes are great,… [more]
Dino of Two Worlds: Dean Haspiel’s Action Autobiography
One of the weirdest comics experiences I’ve ever had was reading Jack Kirby’s “Street Code”, an autobiographical tale of his past that was reprinted in the intriguing STREETWISE collection a few years ago. Kirby wrote… [more]
Bugjuice and Bebop: Steve Lafler’s Musical Comics
Steve Martin once noted that “talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” It’s difficult to make interesting statements about music without losing hold of the essence of the art itself. It’s even more difficult… [more]
MoCCA 2005: Ten Great Mini-Comics
The vast majority of my purchases at MoCCA were minicomics, seeing as how I order what I want from the larger publishers through my local comic shop. (Someone give me a gold star.) Readers only… [more]
MoCCA 2005: On the Floor
MoCCA is held in the gorgeous and historical Puck Building, once the home of a beloved early 20th century periodical devoted to humor. It’s in the heart of New York’s trendy NoHo district, replete with… [more]
MoCCA 2005: Move On Up
The 2005 MoCCA (Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art) Festival in New York was held on June 11th and 12th, and once again the event was a success in the face of a brutal heat… [more]
Artists to Seek out at MoCCA ’05
The fourth annual MoCCA Art Festival is coming up this weekend in New York City. Last year saw the festival truly mature into a well-organized event that still captured the quirkiness that its eclectic guest… [more]