Lynda! Lynda! Lynda!

Nothing is better than when a million interviews have run with one artist and then one comes out and simply knocks you off your feet. Ladies and gents, I present Sean Rogers of the Walrus in conversation with Lynda Barry:

The Walrus: The last time we spoke, you told me about [Simpsons creator] Matt Groening’s Life in Hell strips, so I went and pulled his books from the library and read everything. It’s so great.

Lynda: Because of the success of The Simpsons, this huge contribution to the history of “our” kinds of comics has just been pushed aside. When I [guest edited] The Best American Comics, I included him, and there were fights about it!

The Walrus: And that was his best work in so long — the stuff with his kids.

Lynda: We see The Simpsons, and it has twenty-six writers and animators. But that strip is just Matt. There’s a couple other cartoonists who I feel never made it into the history of how comics were done. There was a group right before Matt and I started who were in the Village Voice--Jules Feiffer, Mark Alan Stamaty, and Stan Mack, who did Real Life Funnies. And I finally met him and he doesn’t look anything like he draws himself, which I thought was hilarious. There’s all these people who were in the early National Lampoon — but now it’s as if they do not exist…. When people say, “You’re one of the first women cartoonists,” I say, “Nooo, there was Shary Flenniken and M.K. Brown and Trina Robbins.”

[Instead we hear about] the underground stuff, with all the guys with their dicks out — which, right on, I’m all about it. I was on a panel with Chris Ware and Kaz and Dan Clowes, and we got to ask each other questions, and one of the things I said was, it always blows my mind why [male] cartoonists always have to draw themselves jacking off with a giant dick and then looking really sad afterward. But then I went up to my room and drew myself with a giant dick jacking off and looking sad afterwards and I totally understood.

More here.

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