Virtual Memories Show #199: Michael Tisserand
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“I always feel like Herriman’s a a step ahead of me. When I read Krazy Kat I think I know what I’m reading; the next week I read the same strip and I realize I’m reading something different than I thought I was reading.”
For our 199th episode, Michael Tisserand joins the show to talk about his fantastic new book, Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White
“Herriman treated language as something that wasn’t up to shouldering the kind of burdens that we put on it.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Michael Tisserand is a New Orleans-based writer whose most recent book is Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White — the first full-length biography of cartoonist George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat . His other books include The Kingdom of Zydeco and Sugarcane Academy: How a New Orleans Teacher and His Storm-Struck Students Created a School to Remember. Michael’s work has appeared in the Oxford American, The Nation, The Progressive, and on WBEZ-FM Chicago. The former editor of New Orleans’ Gambit Weekly, Michael’s eleven-part Katrina series “Submerged” was published in alternative newsweeklies across the country. He has appeared on “To the Point” and was a frequent guest on Philip Adams’ “Late Night Live,” and can be seen in the documentaries Dear Mr. Watterson and Zydeco Crossroads. Michael is represented by Gary Morris at the David Black Agency.
When not writing, Michael coaches scholastic chess and organizes the annual New Orleans Chess Fest, and is a founding member of the Laissez Boys Social Aide and Leisure Club, a Mardi Gras parading organization. Michael lives in New Orleans with his wife and children. He happily answers emails at michael@michaeltisserandauthor.com.
Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at the Mr. Tisserand’s home in New Orleans on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones
, the joys of drawing with a six-foot pen, just what Art is there for, and more! 
in 1992. A newer collection of these comics was published as 
.
in 2004. The 2010 Frank story 
won The Stranger’s Genius Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for that year. Woodring has published two more FRANK books, 
, and 
. His newest book is 
in 2005), and the sculptures, vinyl figures, fabrics and gallery installations that have been made from his designs. His multimedia collaborations with the musician Bill Frisell won them a United States Artists Fellowship in 2006. He lives on Vashon Island with his family and residual phenomena.
(Drawn & Quarterly)! We talk about those aforementioned pleasures, the boredom of the modern flaneur, his evolution from genre fandom to “literary comics” (my awful term, not his), the danger in comics becoming over-academic, the challenges of writing a world history, and more! 
, 
, 
, 
, and 
.
(Drawn & Quarterly), and developing a post-optimistic view of the future. We get into his drawing and storytelling influences, how he got a weekly gig doing literary gags at The Guardian, why he likes doing illustration work, the time he melted down when he met his comics-idols, how he got his first New Yorker cover, the two key elements of productivity for all artists and writers (coffee & walking) and more! 
and 
!)
(Center for Hellenic Studies Press, 2016). Glynnis’ background is in art and art history: a BA from University of Oregon, a BFA from the Pacific NW College of Art, and MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Tufts University. During a Fulbright fellowship to Cyprus, she published a book of paintings, Archaeology Lives in Cyprus, and a book of cartoons, Cartoons of Cyprus. She spent almost 10 years working as an illustrator on archaeological projects and excavations in Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, Israel, and Lebanon, and continues to work in Greece. She began a doctorate at the University of Wollongong in Australia, but instead of finishing, married the famous archeo-musicologist John Franklin and had some children (now in school). She has exhibited paintings in Boston, London, Nicosia, Wollongong, at the Laura Russo Gallery in Portland, OR, and in Burlington, VT, where she now lives. She teaches a course in Comics at the University of Vermont and drawing at Champlain College. Glynnis is a member of the NY-based web comic collective 
(Fantagraphics). We sat down at her home in Cincinnati to talk about her perspective on the book now that it’s in her rear-view mirror. We also talk about the glass ceiling for female cartoonists, what it means to be a parent first and cartoonist second, how her dad’s PTSD affected so much of her life, how she drew the last part of Soldier’s Heart in hospital rooms, going on food stamps in the midst of this project, her struggle to retain her hippie-ish enthusiasm during a period of heavy loss (4 family members and 3 close friends in 4 years), and how she broke into a frat-house to steal post-party empties for recycling. It’s a fun, deep conversation with a master cartoonist (even when it borders on Gil-as-therapist), so 
(1993) and 
(2005), all with Fantagraphics Books. Professor Tyler teaches Comics, Graphic Novels & Sequential Art at the University of Cincinnati and is also a Residency Artist with the Ohio Arts Council.
feeding into a 
digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a 
. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Photos of Ms. Tyler by me.
and 
– Posy Simmonds
– Posy Simmonds
– Gustave Flaubert
– Thomas Hardy
– Alison Bechdel
– Raymond Briggs
– Charles Dickens
– John Updike
– John Updike
and his new book 
(Abrams Comicarts). In this live podcast, we talk about that transition, how he became political years after being a political cartoonist, the impact of Ohio’s rustbelt disintegration on his worldview, and the surprise of his success in Europe. How do you go from garbageman to winner of the Angouleme prize? Find out from Derf Backderf in this week’s Virtual Memories Show! 
(SLG Publishing, 2010). He followed that with the international bestseller, 
(Fantagraphics). This new 200-page work chronicles Bill’s mother’s affair with the cartoonist Lawrence Lariar, and explores notions of family, infidelity, art, vanishing New York, the transience of reputation and memory, and of course, comics. The book is so significant that I decided to have two separate sessions with Bill, one to discuss his background and his comics history, and the other to focus on Invisible Ink. In part 1, we tackle Bill’s discovery of underground comics and the scene in ’70s San Francisco, his fine art education, the inescapable importance of Robert Crumb, his collaboration with Art Spiegelman on Arcade magazine, how he wound up with a syndicated daily Zippy comic strip, his rediscovery of diners, muffler-men, and roadside advertising icons, his surprisingly youthful audience, the responsibility of blowing up his readers’ minds, and more! 
