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New Zealand cartoonist Dylan Horrocks made the most of his first trip back to the U.S. in many years, stopping by the fabled Politics & Prose Bookstore for a talk and signing before hitting the 21st edition of SPX and moving to Desert Island Comics in Brooklyn, with stops in Boston, Chicago, the Center for Carton Studies in Vermont, and elsewhere, including the inaugural Cartoon Crossroads Columbus festival in Ohio last weekend. He is in the States promoting the soon-to-be-released Incomplete Works (Alternative Comics) and his recent graphic novel Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen (Fantagraphics), which he said came out of the frustration he felt after his a sting writing commercial comics, most notably Batgirl for DC.
It was Horrocks' first SPX appearance since 1998, the year his breakthrough work Hicksville (Black Eye Comics, later reprinted by Drawn & Quarterly) was first published. In the 17 years since, much has changed in the comics industry and with Horrocks himself.
In a 2013 interview that ran on the website missfiocchetti.com, Cornell had this to say of interviews: "One day a guy wrote me a message on Facebook. He told me he was a fan interested to make an interview in a Starbucks. I acceded to met him and when I arrived there I found some kind of crazy ex convict trying to steal [sic] me with a fork."
Interestingly, Cornell seems to be drawn to Friedman's work of the 1990s, including the work he was doing for Topps at that time, like the Toxic High bubblegum card series, rather that his earlier stipple style or current painting/portrait work. Friedman's Toxic High work was done under the direction of fellow cartoonist Mark Newgarden, who also appears to be an influence on Cornell's current work. In particular, Newgarden's Little Nun comics from the early 1990s, pantomime strips that were a stylistic synthesis of Otto Soglow's Little King and Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy, contain the same shock value done with deadpan technique that is found in Cornell's current work. Indeed, Cornell's gag panel strip/painting below may be seen as a direct nod to Newgarden, whose 2006 collection of work was titled, We All Die Alone (Fantagraphics). As does the "Big Nose" panel below it to anyone familiar with Newgarden's work.
Today, Cornell's six-panel, wordless strips are painted with watercolor or acrylics and are also reminiscent of the minimalism of Bushmiller, an artist who, in the words of Nancy historian Newgarden, "'dumbed down' his gags to the barest essentials, resulting in a strikingly austere visual language." In a way, Cornell's work is like Bushmiller's--if Bushmiller was rude and worked in six-panel pantomime, as he is and does in this often bootlegged strip from 1961 below:
While he has done some illustration work for print publications such as the ones shown above, he says he is planning to stick with his own work for now. He did two illustrations for The New York Times last year, one of which was accepted--the one below was to illustrate the current New York City subway crisis of "manspreading"--and the other one rejected.
"One was published, the other one was totally a mess," he said of his work for the Times. "They didn't like what I had sent, and I think it's because I'm not good at it. I don't know how to transform ideas from others to good illustrations, and I prefer to do my own stuff." While his work is widely available on the internet, as well as in his two color books, Mox Nox (Fantagraphics) and Zonzo (Fail Better Press), he still finds that his audience expects him to create a certain "type" of work. His work often crosses the boundary of what may be considered "good taste," and can be offensive to some. A Google image search of Cornell's art brings up the following categories: Comics, Real Life, Artist, Face, Jesus and Bathroom.
"I am always working for others... I have a public, too," he said, referring to his online fans. "You have your own personal work, but you have to deal with some public. So it's not your stuff. It's always a fight... I think it's a bit funny to have these people trying to tell you what to do. I tend to do not what they want. Maybe for those people who [do not] have humor, then maybe it's just not for them."
Regardless of who the work is created for, an awful lot of people are interested in Cornell's comics. He has more than 2.5 million followers on Facebook, 214,000 fans on Twitter, and many more social media fans on various platforms such as Tumblr. I don't know what his audience demographics are, but I do know that as a 51-year-old who has been reading comics steadily since the age of three, I like his work quite a bit. So does my 16-year-old son, who has never read a comic in his life. Why does my son--and his friends--enjoy Cornell's work? "Because it's fucked up."
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