Episodes
Tom Scioli is co-writing, drawing, coloring, and lettering the monthly comic book series, Transformers vs. G.I.Joe. His other comics include Godland, American Barbarian, Final Frontier, and Myth of 8-Opus. Ed Piskor is the author/artist of the Hip Hop Family Tree – a weekly comic strip on Boing Boing and an ongoing book series that chronicles the history of hip hop in comics form. He is also the creator of Wizzywig. They share a studio in Pittsburgh. We visited their studio to talk about...
Published 08/23/14
Published 08/23/14
Tell Me Something I Don’t Know is Boing Boing’s podcast featuring artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creative people discussing their work, ideas, and the practical side of how they do what they do. The animation project Giant Sloth, starring Paul Giamatti, could be described as Night at the Museum meets Eraserhead. In this episode, we discuss the making of this animated short with its creator, Paul Hornschemeier. He tells us how the cast came together, what the transition from comics...
Published 06/23/14
Vanessa German is a multidisciplinary artist and poet. She has done TEDx talks at MIT, Harvard, and Pittsburgh. She lives in Homewood, a Pittsburgh neighborhood that The Rachel Maddow Show called, “One of America’s Most Violent Neighborhoods.” In response to that violence, German began inviting children to make art with her on her front porch. This club quickly outgrew her front porch and she found an empty house and dubbed it ARThouse. You can donate to her project here. ARThouse is...
Published 05/20/14
Nicole Georges is a cartoonist, writer, winemaker, teacher, aerobics instructor (?), and pet portraitist. When she was a child, Georges’ mother and family told her that her father died when she was a baby. When she was 21, a palm reader told her that her biological dad was still alive. She called conservative talk show host Dr. Laura for some advice. She chronicles what happened next in her graphic memoir, Calling Dr. Laura. Based in Portland, Georges has been making comics and zines...
Published 04/16/14
Two years ago, we recorded a conversation with 16 year-old high school student. Not someone famous, but someone who is, to you, a random teenager. So that he could feel free to speak candidly about friends, school, and culture, we gave him the pseudonym Teenager X. He told us about being more tech-savvy than his teachers, he described his hectic schedule, he vented frustrations about learning to drive, and shared a funny anecdote about being kicked out of an online Metal Gear game. Two...
Published 04/04/14
Stephanie Buscema is a painter, illustrator, cover artist, and comic book artist. She studied cartooning and illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In our conversation, she tells us what it was like to grow up with artist role models in her family. We discuss the influence and importance of illustration greats Mary Blair and Marie Severin. Stephanie walks us through her process for creating killer Red Sonja comics covers, and talks about the benefits of working on a variety of...
Published 03/05/14
Bill Boichel is the owner and proprietor of Copacetic Comics, one of the greatest comic books stores ever. They are located in Pittsburgh, PA, and specialize in independent comics, music, film and literature. Bill has worked in comics retail for over 35 years, and has seen comic books go from disposable entertainment found on newsstands to an art form that is now accepted in galleries, museums and universities. In this episode, Bill discusses the significance of Carl Barks and his impact on...
Published 02/21/14
Elana Schlenker is an independent graphic designer and art director based in Brooklyn. Print magazine honored her on their 2013 New Visual Artist list - a prestigious annual distinction that recognizes the industry’s top 20 creative talents under the age of 30. Schlenker is the publisher and creator of Gratuitous Type, a pamphlet of typographic smut. This episode, we ponder the phrase “unspecialized practice” and try to decide if it’s a positive description for one’s work. We consider the...
Published 02/04/14
This episode is brought to you by Audible, the leading provider of audiobooks. Download a free ebook, on us, and get an extended free trial of the service by using this link. Tell Me Something I Don’t Know is Boing Boing’s podcast featuring artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creative people discussing their work, ideas, and the practical side of how they do what they do. In episode 22, we speak to Eric Shiner, Director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. “To Give Voice to...
Published 01/24/14
Tell Me Something I Don’t Know is Boing Boing’s podcast featuring artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creative people discussing their work, ideas, and the practical side of how they do what they do. In episode 21, we speak to multi-disciplinary artist John Peña. Each day for the last five years, he has made a drawing about some aspect of his day. He calls this project Daily Geology, and presents it online in a form that resembles a webcomic. We talk with John about how he makes a living...
Published 01/07/14
In this episode of Tell Me something I Don't Know, we speak with Joseph Lupo, a printmaker and professor at West Virginia University. His work focuses on how writers and artists communicate through comics. For more than a decade, he has deconstructed and examined a single volume of The Invincible Iron Man comic book: Volume 01, Issue 178, published in 1984. "It is a different kind of superhero issue for a few reasons," says Lupo. "For one, never in this story does the superhero Iron Man ever...
Published 12/11/13
Cartoonist Ed Piskor’s latest book, The Hip Hop Family Tree (Fantagraphic Books) collects his non-fiction comic strip history of Hip Hop, serialized weekly here on Boing Boing. The Hip Hop Family Tree follows the success of his debut graphic novel last year, Wizzywig (Top Shelf Comics), the tale of a computer hacker. Piskor has a special knack for creating comics that appeal to audiences beyond those of us who frequent comic book shops and bookmark webcomics for daily reading. We caught up...
Published 12/07/13
Jacq Cohen is the publicist of Fantagraphics Books. Before that, she was an assistant publicist at Dark Horse Comics and interned at Top Shelf Comix. Fantagraphics Books has been a proponent of comics as a legitimate form of art and literature since they started publishing the Comics Journal in 1976. Since then, they’ve published some of the greatest cartoonists in history including George Herriman, Charles Schulz, Carl Barks, the Hernandez Brothers, Robert Crumb, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes,...
Published 11/21/13
Cartoonist Farel Dalrymple began his comics career as part of the Meathaus gang - a loose collective of artists from the School of Visual Arts around the end of the 20th century (Brandon Graham and James Jean know the secret handshake). His work includes Pop Gun War, illustrating Jonathan Letham’s Omega the Unknown, the webcomic It Will All Hurt on SG12, and the newly released Delusional from Adhouse Books. He has been nominated for Eisner Awards, received a Xeric Grant, and earned a Gold...
Published 11/05/13
Bill Shannon is a multidisciplinary artist based in Pittsburgh. In 1992, Shannon attended the The Art Institute of Chicago, earning a BFA in 1995. In 1996 Shannon moved to NYC and immersed himself in the art, dance and skate cultures of Brooklyn and Manhattan. Over the past two decades, Shannon's installations, performances, choreography and video work have been presented nationally and internationally at numerous venues, festivals and events including the Sydney Opera House, Tate Liverpool...
Published 10/17/13
Peter Bagge and Evan Dorkin began making alternative comics in the 1980s. Peter Bagge began his career on R. Crumb’s Weirdo magazine as a cartoonist and then editor. He created Neat Stuff and Hate for Fantagraphics Books along with works for DC Comics, Marvel, and Dark Horse including the titles Yeah! (with Gilbert Hernandez), Apocalypse Nerd, and Other Lives. His latest work is the biography, Rebel Woman: The Margaret Sanger Story. Evan Dorkin is best known for Milk & Cheese, Dork, and...
Published 09/24/13
Frank Santoro is a Pittsburgh-based cartoonist. He self-published his first major work, Storeyville in 1995 while living in San Francisco. Upon its republication twelve years later, Tom Spurgeon wrote, "Frank Santoro's Storeyville may be the book of 2007, which is doubly amazing when you realize that it may have been the book of 1995 as well." After spending time in the New York art scene, where he painted and assisted painter, Francesco Clemente, he returned to making comics in the early...
Published 09/04/13
Rob Liefeld is the creator of Deadpool, Cable, X-Force, Youngblood, Supreme, Bloodstrike, Prophet, and Glory! He founded Image Comics in 1992 with Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Jim Valentino, and Marc Silvestri. Currently he oversees the Extreme Universe titles at Image. Follow Rob on Twitter @robertliefeld and see more of his art on robliefeldcreations.com.
Published 08/24/13
Shelton Drum is a first-generation outlier in the world of comics retail and convention organizing with his Charlotte NC store, Heroes Aren't Hard To Find, celebrating 30+ years in existence and Heroes Con growing stronger over a similar span of time. The TMSIDK gang traveled to Heroes Con 2013 to record the show live and the conversation spans the history of comics from the mid-60s forward through the eyes of a store owner who's seen it all.
Published 08/13/13
Jon M. Gibson is the co-founder/co-owner of iam8bit -– a production company, creative think tank, art exhibition, and gallery space in Los Angeles. iam8bit’s projects include a music video for Radiohead, A Really, Really Brief History of Donkey Kong for the King of Kong DVD, Street Fighter Club, a custom vinyl picture disc for Tron Evolution, and marketing and artwork for Mega Man 9. After the success of the initial iam8bit shows (hosted at Gallery Nineteen Eighty Eight), they opened their...
Published 07/26/13
Dan Nadel is the publisher of PictureBox - primarily known for their art and comics work. He wrote Art Out of Time: Unknown Visionary Cartoonists 1900-1969 and Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures. He has edited books on Gary Panter, Rory Hayes, and Mark Newgarden. He co-founded and co-edited The Ganzfeld and Comics Comics. He currently co-edits the online Comics Journal. Nadel has curated shows in Tokyo, Paris, LA, and NYC, including the first major Jack Kirby retrospective, the House...
Published 07/05/13
This is episode 9 of Boing Boing's Tell Me Something I Don't Know podcast. It's an interview show featuring artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creative people discussing their work, ideas, and the reality/business side of how they do what they do. John Porcellino is the creator of the long-running, self-published mini-comic series, King Cat Comics (celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2014). His books include Perfect Example (Highwater Books, Drawn and Quarterly), Diary of a Mosquito...
Published 06/20/13
This week TMSIDK host Jim Rugg is in the hot-seat talking about his new project SUPERMAG -- a glossy, full-color magazine-format homage to the graphic design and comics of the 1990s - published by Adhouse Books. It's a one-man anthology inspired by work like Dan Clowes' Eightball, Dave Cooper's Weasel, David Carson's Raygun, and David Mazzucchelli's Rubber Blanket. Tell Me Something I Don't Know is produced and hosted by three talented cartoonists and illustrators: Jim Rugg, a...
Published 05/28/13
This is episode 7 of Boing Boing's, Tell Me Something I Don't Know. It's an interview podcast featuring artists, writers, filmmakers, and other creative people discussing their work, ideas, and the reality/business side of how they do what they do. Jeff Smith began writing, drawing, and publishing Bone in 1991, through his company, Cartoon Books. He championed self-publishing in the 1990s with other independent cartoonists known as the Spirits of Independents and continues to self-publish...
Published 05/07/13