A 2018 International Design Report From the earliest newspaper strips, comics have always been for kids everywhere. And they continue to delight youngsters all over the world. So here’s a global survey of three of the most visually outstanding graphic novels for kids published in the past year, from China, France, and Italy. • • • My Beijing. Four Stories of Everyday Wonder writer/artist: Nie Jun (Graphic Universe) In My Beijing: Four Stories of Everyday Wonder – original

By Michael Dooley Although Anthony Bourdain died before the release of Hungry Ghosts, he did review and approve the design of the last of his three graphic novels. That’s right: “graphic novels.” This acclaimed writer, chef, and TV host wasn’t only obsessed with cooking. Once an aspiring comics artist, Bourdain also had a passion for the medium in its myriad forms. He loved and collected adventure newspaper strips Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates and Will Eisner’s The Sp

If you’re a fan of Golden Age comic book stories with plenty of action thrills, you should know about the military intelligence officer Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. Here’s how Jim Steranko, Silver Age superstar artist on Captain America and Nick Fury, describes him: “He adventured around the globe, from hunting Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa with famed General John Pershing to fighting with Cossack warriors across Russia during WWI. … As one of the youngest cavalry members

By: Michael Dooley Never mind that comics were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum in 1951, then at the Whitney in 1983 and MOMA in 1990. That’s all so 20th century. Finally, comics have arrived at the city’s coolest venue of all: the New York Transit Museum in downtown Brooklyn! Amelia Opdyke Jones: Quarantine the Gumbug!, 1948, and Keep Your Feet Off The Seat!, 1949. New York Transit Museum, William J. Jones Collection. Gift of William J. Jones and Margaritta J. Friday In

Enter PRINT’s Regional Design Awards for your chance to see your work in an all-new book by PRINT, and to win a Big Ticket to HOW Design Live, a main-stage trophy presentation and other exclusive opportunities on-site, including a lunch date with a HOW Design Live speaker and an invitation to the official Speaker Reception with industry movers and shakers at HOW Design Live. Chris Ware’s Building Stories was one of the best books of 2012. And that’s not just me talking. That’

Special early-bird pricing for HOW Design Live, one of the largest annual gatherings of creative professionals in the world, ends March 15. If it’s a nearly 300-page graphic novel about the history of crossword puzzles, and it’s titled Fun, then it better be pretty damn entertaining. And yes, Italian artist Paolo Bacilieri delivers the fun, both narratively and visually. Also horizontally and vertically: forget strict linear structure, which is just ho-hum. This Fun is vigoro

Ten years ago, Rick Poynor pointed out in Print that “One thing illustration has always lacked, compared to graphic design, is a strong critical framework by which to assess it.” He went on to note that, “Apart from Steven Heller … one would be hard pressed to name a single highly active writer, an expert, primarily identified with illustration as a subject.” Well, all that’s about to change, in a major way. Enter the Douglas B. Dowd Modern Graphic History Library. Mac Conner

Non-warning warning: the following article about a certain Showtime series is spoiler-free, purely because it’s far too convoluted to reveal any actual, meaningful information about what’s been going on in that show. Of course the Twin Peaks cast will be at San Diego Comic-Con in two weeks, as was just officially announced. And that’s because the series has always been about two things. One, it’s been about how everyone and their doppelgänger can authoritatively spout off abo

Cartoonist Will Eisner was such a life force that it’s difficult to believe that he’s not with us to celebrate his 100th birthday on March 6th. For seven decades, he was vitally instrumental in creating and shaping the comic book form, in elevating the quality of its writing and art, in revealing and expanding its graphic potential, in popularizing its respectability on a global scale, and in educating and inspiring generations of aspiring comics artists. And yet he died in e

By: Michael Dooley Photographer Greg Preston is a good-natured, low-key guy. There’s an ease about him that enhances his subjects’ comfort amidst their already-familiar surroundings. It’s visible enough in The Artist Within, a handsome, generously-sized hardcover from 2007 with roughly a hundred “portraits of cartoonists, comic book artists, animators, and others,” as the book’s subtitle has it. He’s captured a broad spectrum of extraordinary talents, from Al Hirschfeld, Jule

Sure, this week’s Comic-Con in San Diego is the most spectacular annual pop culture celebration in the universe, with hordes of geeks gorging themselves on genre TV and movie factory hype. But graphic designers have plenty of banquets to feast on as well. Just check my “21 Best Comic-Con Artists” list from last year. And 2016’s starter plate includes Howard Chaykin, Denis Kitchen, Chip Kidd, Keith Knight, Kenny Keil, Peter Kuper, Trevor Goring, Marc H. Greenberg, J. David Spu

Subscribe to Print Magazine for intelligent insights into design history and the state of the industry. Sign up today and get a free download—Typography Today. American art had been drawing from Sunday newspaper funnies in various ways long before Roy Lichtenstein’s painted comic books panels Popped onto the gallery scene. In 1950s New York, Robert Rauschenberg affixed Moon Mullins, Gasoline Alley, and Terry and the Pirates onto his paintings and assemblages, recontextualizin

Appropriation art—sampling, mixing, whatever—is as old as the first time some creative person joined together scraps of ephemera into a composition. Fast-forwarding to the 1950s, the standard for comic collage art was set by Jess Collins, a Bay Area bohemian known simply as Jess. Jess meticulously de- and reconstructed Chester Gould’s ghoulishly grim gumshoe Dick Tracy strip into works of jazzy, downbeat visual bop poetry. And now Siglio Press, publishers of an indispensable

You’d never know it from media reports on San Diego’s annual Comic-Con International, but it’s your richest opportunity to discover and explore the creative and artistic heritage of cartoons and vintage comics. For starters, there’s Will Eisner. Last month’s convention had no less than four different panels devoted to the graphic arts innovator and educator whose 1940s Spirit was just the beginning of significant transformations both within and beyond the comics medium. And S

Panel by Panel is a special download from Print Magazine all about comics and their creators. Here, we take a look at the work of some of history’s most iconic comic book artists. Dondi by Gus Edson and Irwin Hasen, April 15, 1962. For many of those of my generation, Dondi was a mainstay, something to look forward to in the Daily News comics section, if you grew up in New York City. The adventures of a World War II Italian orphan adopted by an American G.I., Ted Wills, Dondi

Alice’s admonition “What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?” is particularly true during semester break/holiday vacation season. So let’s kick back and look at some of the year’s more noteworthy cartoon, comics, and graphic novel publications. Our good friend the Daily Heller has already covered some high-profile releases, like Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream and Richard McGuire’s Here. And I’ve been chronicling several as well; in one column I recommend

You can read a full feature story with more true tales in “An Uncensored Look at Banned Comics” in the February “Sex and Graphic Design” issue of Print. Happy Banned Books Week! This year’s focus is on banned comics and graphic novels. Y’know, like Fun Home. The one that provoked pushback in both library and university settings. The one that was created by Alison Bechdel, who just received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship last week. Over the years, Harvey and Glyph Award-wi

Art Spiegelman and other comics artists have illustrated biographies of cartoonists, but always as short one-shot strips. Now, not one but two entire books of this kind have just been released. Together they offer 100 visual takes on significant, and even revolutionary, pioneers in the field. One is an anthology edited by designer/art director Monte Beauchamp, with whom I Blab!-bed in an Imprint feature a while back. The second is by famed comics illustrator Drew Friedman, wh

Peter Kuper’s seen it all. And he wants us to see it, too. So he draws it for us. His visits to Latin America, the Middle East, and beyond have been providing him with perspective and inspiration for World War 3 Illustrated – America’s longest-running radical comic book anthology, since 1980. His various comics autobiographies include ComicsTrips: A Journal of Travels Through Africa and Southeast Asia. And his graphic novel adaptions of classic literature by authors such as F

Stan Mack’s “Real Life Funnies” strip, created in the mid-1970s for the “Village Voice,” presaged the documentary comics of artists such as Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco. And now it appears that his Print feature from 17 years ago also anticipated today’s digital communications environment. Here’s Mack’s personal, behind-the-scenes details about one such story. It involves freedom fighters, street signage, and political and technological revolutions. “In many countries, the In