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In unknown pockets of America, a tiny segment of the alternacomix-loving population are drooling. This is especially true if they've yet gotten their hands on "The Complete Jack Survives", a relatively new compendium of Jerry Moriarty's cult comic series based loosely on his father, the eponymous Jack. The work—much of which originally appeared in RAW, a seminal art-comics magazine edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly—has been lovingly reprinted by Buenaventura Press in a table-sized book, along with reflections and photographs of young Jerry with his father.

As expected, the book comes wreathed in words of praise. In his introduction, Chris Ware named it the most important volume of comic art reprints ever to appear, and called Moriarty one of the "great geniuses of the comic strip" in an interview for the Believer. In the book's preface, Richard McGuire writes that Moriarty's drawings are "as sturdy and dependable as a two-by-four, a vintage car, or a durable appliance," while his words "hang heavy in the air and have the same kind of weight as the drawings."  read more »

Ah, pop-culture canons, how you’ve grown! In the1970s cinema scholars had the Sight & Sound polls, rock critics had the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll. By the 1980s, it seemed that every periodical had its end-of-year lists for not just film and music but television too; today, you can find a new top-ten list on the internet every hour.

Yet there have hardly been any large-scale efforts to define a foundation for comic-book cultural literacy. Douglas Wolk’s excellent 2007 volume "Reading Comics" even takes great pains to avoid such a burden—“I’m more interested in starting discussions (and arguments) about comics than settling them with any kind of self-appointed authority …I’d rather explain what brings me joy about them than endorse them unequivocally.”

The closest thing we’ve had to an authoritative list is the one put forth by the Comics Journal ten years ago. Though full of great work, this list is wilfully elite: there are no superheroes in the top 30, despite that genre’s longtime stranglehold on the medium. But really, that’s okay. It’s a greater service to tell people about Kim Deitch than to reinforce the idea that Wolverine is high art.  read more »

Soft-spoken and bearded, Adrian Tomine was in London this week to sign some books, discuss his comics and a book of manga he is now editing. “Comics are the only thing in my life I’ve spent 32 years practicing,” he told the assembled crowd in a Q&A with Toby Litt, a British writer, at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. “It’s not something you can take a class on how to do. It’s an accumulation of a lot of attempts and a lot of failure.”

Also known for his regular covers for the New Yorker (such as the one dated February 2nd), Tomine got his start as a cartoonist in high school, when he began self-publishing “Optic Nerve”, a thoughtful comic book about awkward adolescence. The somewhat autobiographical series continues to this day, though it has been published by Drawn & Quarterly, an artsy Canadian comic publisher, since 1995. He has released two graphic novels, "Summer Blonde" (2002) and "Shortcomings" (2007), the paperback of which is just coming out this spring. "Scrapbook" features some pre-"Optic Nerve" comics as well as a good deal of his illustrations and commercial work from between 1990 and 2004.  read more »