WHAT IT IS by Lynda Barry

The Sunday NY Times had an article on alternative cartoonist Lynda Barry.

Ms. Barry recently gave a class about what she does. Here's a description by the Times' writer Carol Kino:

"On a table behind her she had laid out scores of scribbled 3-by-5 note cards, each of which held a nugget of information that she would relay over the next several hours (like 'Don’t read it over' and 'An image is a pull toy that pulls you'). On the blackboard was a chalk drawing of Marlys, the spunky pigtailed kid protagonist of 'Ernie Pook’s Comeek,' the strip about growing up that made Ms. Barry a star of new-wave comics soon after it began running in alternative weeklies in 1978."

Ms. Barry's new book(full of all new material) WHAT IT IS, describes her process and point of view. PDF preview here.

This is an interesting article because of what it doesn't day: she doesn't stop cartooning when corporate acquisitions of the alt-weeklies in the mid-90s caused her "Ernie Pook's Comeek" to dwindle from 75 papers to only six. She continues to persevere, thirty years later. What it is is persistence!

I have most of her books and I was surprised that most have gone out of print. Here's hoping that, as announced, Drawn & Quarterly will print up all of her work, in sequence, beginning next year.

Ms. Barry's tour schedule includes MoCCA Fest and the San Diego Comicon.