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Drawing Between the Frames: The Comic Art of David Lasky. Written by Kendrick Goss Growing up I loved cartoons. I loved to read them and draw them. Strips and panels. Bloom County, Doonesbury, The Far Side. Editorial cartoons. I could not stand comic books. Super heroes, monsters, ridiculous teenagers. None of this held any appeal for me. When I met David Lasky, he introduced me to comics the likes of which I had never seen. These comics tackled social injustice, politics, history, and (ahem) adult themes. David's own comics followed his own interests. He drew biographical works on James Joyce and John Lee Hooker (a sample of which can be seen here). He drew a (very) miniature version of James Joyce's Ulysses. After leaving college, he went to Seattle and found a circle of young comic book artists drawing and publishing their own work. In 1993, David won a grant from the Xeric Foundation (established by Peter A. Laird, co–creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) to self–publish his comic "Boom Boom." With this nudge, "Boom Boom" left its "mini–comic" format, put on a color cover and began to take on its mature form as part history, part graphic novel, part surreal cartography. David choose the comic layout of Jack Kirby (creator of the Hulk, the Fantastic Four and Captain America) for the James Joyce biography in Boom Boom #2. Throughout the 90s, Pulse magazine (a publication of Tower Records) published a series of David's comic biographies and musical impressions (a sample appears on his website). These full page cartoons are a collage of image, text and story that stretches the limits of comic art and becomes a kind of visual essay. Those featured included Beethoven, Bob Dylan and legendary saxophonist Lester "Pres" Young. David's contribution to the comic anthology "Two–Fisted Science" chronicles the life of physicist Richard Feynman during his time with the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos National Lab. David continues to push the boundaries of traditional comics in his recent collaboration with humorist Greg Stump called "Urban Hipster" (published by Alternative Comics) which was nominated in 1999 for the Harvey Award for best new series. A sample of David's minimalist adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" can be found here. The one thing I have learned to expect from each of David Lasky's new projects is to expect the unexpected. Nothing is like anything that came before it. From all indications, we have a lot to look forward to. Click here to read an interview with David Lasky. |
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