For a brief time in the 1990s, independent American filmmakers were suddenly important—or, at least, they were getting attention for their work. In this pre-Netflix era, when movies still seemed more like an art than a...
Features
Coury Turczyn
The self-made animator: Joel Trussell’s unlikely start in the cartoon business
How do you become a professional animator? The typical first step, after graduating from art school, may be to relocate to Los Angeles and start networking. And then do lots and lots of begging for work. But if moving...
Yee-Haw Industries’ “new church of typography” sparked a letterpress renaissance
Sadly, Yee-Haw is no more. The print and design shop—among the first of several boutique printers in the mid-’90s to rescue letterpress machinery and type libraries from oblivion—called it quits in 2012. Some of...
Tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain’s mastery of Indian drumming resonates in American culture
As a child of seven years, Ustad Zakir Hussain would begin his days at 2 o’clock in the morning when his father would wake him for drumming lessons while everyone else in their home slept. They would talk about drums...
Interviews
Q&A: Michael Schlesinger, writer/director of the 1930s retro comedy ‘The Misadventures of Biffle and Shooster’
In an era when streaming media has made every piece of old celluloid new again, it may finally be time for the art of slapstick to make a comeback. For anyone who grew up watching TV on UHF channels, physical comedy...
Q&A: comic-book artist Johnny Ryan’s “gross-out bathroom retard humor with nudity and insanity”
Johnny Ryan’s comics will probably offend you on several different levels—before you start laughing despite yourself. His Angry Youth Comix takes extreme behavior to such absurd levels that it’s simultaneously shocking...
A day in the life of MAD Magazine
Nick Meglin worked at MAD Magazine for 48 years, working his way up from contributing writer to editor in chief, a position he held for 20 years before retiring in 2004. Meglin led MAD in the post-William Gaines years...
Q&A: cartoon artist Jhonen Vasquez and the return of ‘Invader Zim’
Jhonen Vasquez was born to be a comic book artist—he started drawing as a child and hasn’t stopped since, though it wasn’t his primary career aspiration. He simply enjoys illustrating. His first published comic...
Essays
The legacy of French illustrator Jean Giraud is vast—but difficult to find in print
In 1999, Sony was so sure it was destined to become a Digital Age Disney that it opened its own high-tech amusement park: the Metreon in San Francisco. But what this $85 million “urban entertainment center” with its...
New adventures in hi-fi: the old-fashioned stereo makes a comeback
I’ve discovered the future of home entertainment: hi-fi stereo. It’s a system that involves playing pre-recorded music via gigantic metal boxes that send audio signals through cables (actual copper wire!) to two...
Remember the glory days of SACD? No? Well, maybe it’s not too late…
As Blu-Ray Audio (aka, “High Fidelity Pure Audio”) completes its swan-dive into commercial oblivion (2014-2017, RIP), it may comfort those who invested in this little-known music format that a cult following is just...
Superhero vs. autobiographical comics: the eternal debate continues!
text by Coury Turczyn and Matthew Everett / illustrations by Travis Gray