COVID Check-In with Karl Stevens

Virtual Memories Show
COVID Check-In: Karl Stevens

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Cartoonist Karl Stevens checks in from Boston, to talk about how his life hasn’t changed all that much during the pandemic (outside of one COVID case in his co-op). We get into how he’s trying to find unique humor for gag comics, and playing mix-and-match with The New Yorker‘s unofficial list of humor topics, his deep dive into Jack Kirby’s 1970s comics, having his new book postponed until next spring, the festivals and conventions he misses most, his reflexive morning click on comicsreporter.com almost 6 months after Tom Spurgeon‘s death, and more. Give it a listen! And go check out Karl’s New Yorker comics!

You can listen to all these COVID Check-In episodes at The COVID-19 Sessions.

Listen to the conversation! Then check out the archives for more conversations from The Before Times.

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About our Guest

Karl Stevens is a graphic novelist and painter. His first book, Guilty, was published in 2004 with a grant from the Xeric Foundation. He is also the author of Whatever (2008), The Lodger (A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, 2010), Failure (2013) and The Winner (2018). His comic strips appeared in The Boston Phoenix between 2005 and 2012 until an incident with an advertiser resulted in the strip’s cancellation. The realist comic artist has also co-produced the Phoenix comic “Succe$$” with Gustavo Turner. In 2016 The Village Voice began running his cat comic strip “Penny”. Stevens’s work appears in select art galleries and he has published numerous cartoons in The New Yorker. He was recently commissioned to produce a comic to celebrate the Gardner Museum’s Botticcelli: Heroines and Heroes exhibition.

Credits: The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Karl by him. It’s on my instagram.