Virtual Memories Show 681:

“The creation of culture is what marks us as human beings, and the fact that everybody has that desire connects us to each other.”

With his amazing new book, THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL: The Secret Prison History of American Music (WW Norton), author Colin Asher explores how the criminal justice system changed the course of twentieth century music. We talk about how Elmo Hope’s Sounds from Rikers Island album inspired the book, how he chose the five artists to focus on — Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur —, the history of the carceral state, criminality and the popular images of Black and white “outlaw” artists, and how many artists’ careers were shaped, derailed, inspired by prisons. We get into the tightrope act of using Johnny Cash as a counterpoint to the racial dynamics of the book (as well as the work Cash did for prison reform), why he had to close the book with the story of Tupac and his mother, Afeni Shakur, and how hip-hop developed in response to America’s mass incarceration movement, how the philosophy of incarceration shifted from rehabilitation to punishment, Musicambia‘s work to bring music education into prisons, and what it means to pursue the arts for personal growth, even when you’re on death row. We also discuss how some arts writing can suck the joy out of the arts, why he prefers discussing art in relation to society rather than in relation to other works of art, why he made playlists for The Midnight Special, how playing vinyl records makes music a choice instead of wallpaper, the “burn the world down and replace it with an utopia” phase of his youth, the secret origins of his writing career, his dream projects (incl. the novel he’s noodling on), and more. Give it a listen! And go read THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL!

“The problem isn’t that Johnny Cash was granted any sort of grace from the law, it’s that everybody isn’t granted that sort of grace.”

“If I’m beating the drum for a cause, it’s that music makes people better, that the skill of learning an instrument is going to make people more productive outside. That may well be true, but my core belief is that it doesn’t matter.”

“In my 20s I did a bunch of working-class jobs — bike messenger, drove a truck, worked in a warehouse — and at some point people stop taking you seriously if you have no education at all and look like you make 12 grand a year.”

“Three things I know a good deal about: literature, music, and politics, specifically political conflict. . . . I’d love to write a book about people who dedicate their lives to political movements and then outlive those movements.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Colin Asher is the author of THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL: The Secret Prison History of American Music. He also wrote Never a Lovely so Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren, a literary biography written as a work of creative nonfiction. That book was celebrated in The New York Review of Books, the New Yorker, and the New York Times Book Review, among others. It was named “One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2019” by Apple Books, a “Book of the Week” by Publishers Weekly, and an “Editors’ Choice” selection by the New York Times Book Review. Both Publishers Weekly and Booklist gave it starred reviews.

Born in Morgantown, WV, and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Colin dropped out of high school and spent a decade in California, working as a bike messenger, stocking shelves in a warehouse, and driving a truck. Eventually he started working in homeless services, then enrolled in the City College of San Francisco. Later, he received a Bachelors of Science from Northeastern University, and a Master of Arts from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Despite the fact that he wrote a book about musicians, Colin has no musical talent – but that didn’t stop him from spending one of the best years of his life playing in a band with Spencer Ackerman.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at my home on a pair of Shure Beta 58A microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Colin by Nora Carroll; photo of us by me. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 661:

“It was a really fulfilling thing, as an artist, as a journalist, to feel like I was carrying these people’s stories, that I was representing them, bringing out who they were, and that they were trusting me to give them a voice.”

Comics journalist Josh Neufeld joins the show to talk about the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the legacy of his fantastic graphic reporting of the lives upended by that catastrophe, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge (Pantheon). We talk about his new ‘zine followup, Beyond A.D., how the storm inspired him to become an emergency response volunteer and what he learned when he was stationed in Biloxi, what it was like to learn journalism and reporting on the fly and integrate those with his comics storytelling skills, and why his goal with A.D. was to make a people’s history. We get into how he viewed the anniversary, whether he’s gone back to New Orleans since reporting on it, and how he stayed connected with his subjects after the project and what it was like putting the anniversary ‘zine together. We also discuss his comics upbringing, what it was like drawing for Harvey Pekar after years of American Splendor fandom, how constraints can lead to greater creativity, how neither of us have the lying gene necessary for fiction, his interest in graphic medicine and how that shapes his recent comics, the difference between journalism and nonfiction, a couple of my Small Press Expo anecdotes, how Michael Jordan’s minor league baseball experience helps explain why comics people (usually) treat newbies well, and more. Give it a listen! And go read A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge and Beyond A.D.!

“A.D. for me as a comics journalist was the sweet spot because so much of it could be told through action and dialogue.”

“I’m not the greatest journalist in the world; I’m certainly not the greatest artist in the world. But I can combine the two of them pretty . . . okay.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest, in his own words

I am a cartoonist who works primarily in the field of nonfiction comics, specifically as a comics journalist. I’m the writer/artist of the Eisner and Harvey Award-nominated A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, and the Xeric Award-winning graphic travelogue A Few Perfect Hours (and Other Stories from Southeast Asia & Central Europe). I am the illustrator of the New York Times bestseller The Influencing Machine: Brook Gladstone On the Media. I was a longtime artist for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, and my art has been exhibited in gallery and museum shows in the United States and Europe.

Follow Josh on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded in a hotel room during the Small Press Expo 2025 on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on the same setup, since I’m sitting in a hotel room in Frankfurt right now. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Josh by someone else. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 652:

“I want the reader to feel like they were there, like it’s a sketchbook from that moment in the book.”

It’s been a year since his last episode, so what’s artist Dmitry Samarov been up to? Plenty! We talk about his new project of redesigning and illustrating public domain books, why he started off with the White Whale itself, and why Babbitt was next in line, what the common themes are among the six books he’s illustrated since this project began, and how it all ties into his reaction to the 2024 election. We get into what it’s like working with publishers after controlling his own books for years, how he discovered James Hogg’s The Suicide’s Grave on SOME OTHER PODCAST (okay, it was Beyond The Zero), how he’s exploring visual interpretation and different tools with each book, and how this project has him reading and rereading differently than he used to. We also talk about how he looks back at his art in the wake of his self-monograph, how he got into a relationship with someone after a long time solo (after a showing of why Cronenberg’s not-good The Shrouds), what other books he’s considering illustrating, his new series of ‘zines about bookselling, the joy of Moby Dick‘s tangents, and more. Give it a listen!

“This is all the fun parts of making books like I did before, except without the writing.”

“I’ve always worked from life, so whatever’s going on in my life will impact the art.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Dmitry Samarov paints and writes in Chicago, IL. Follow Dmitry at his site and through his weekly newsletter, and buy some books from his Ebay shop.

Go check out our conversations from 2014, 2015, 2018, 2020, lockdown, 2021, 2022, and 2024.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. All art by Dmistry Samarov. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 639:

“My comics have never been about me in the way that memoirs or diary comics are about the person. They’re snapshots, things I want to remember. It’s a way of looking at life that isn’t about identity.”

She may be able to quit cartooning (for a while), but Keiler Roberts can’t quit The Virtual Memories Show! With her wonderful new book, PREPARING TO BITE (Drawn & Quarterly), Keiler returns to comics with a collection of (mostly) hilarious vignettes about domestic life, middle-age, the impact of her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, and having too many pets. We talk about why she walked away from comics and how she came back, how she avoids memoir in favor of memory (and humor), how she still has anxiety over drawing but is way too tired to have social anxiety anymore, and why she branched into kitschy craft-modes that no one would mistake for art. We get into why she wants her kid to read her journals when she’s gone, how MS taught her how to be bored, how men have no idea what perimenopause is like, what it means to be the best appointment of her doctors’ day, and the reward of teaching comics to her friends and her mom. We also discuss how Karl Stevens helped her back into comics with this book (& encourages her in every other artistic idea she has), how weird it is to see two of Karl’s super-detailed pages beside her sparse drawings in Preparing To Bite, and why she loved collaborating with her brother on the grownup fairytale Creepy. Plus, she teaches me the difference between living more and doing more, and I read you guys a Rilke poem in the intro. Give it a listen! And go read PREPARING TO BITE!

(And go listen to our 2017, 2020, and 2021 conversations!)

“I just thought, ‘I don’t care how much I hate this process, how hard it is, I have to do something that feels like it’s mine.”

“I feel like my life is a lot more satisfying than it was when I was a lot more busy.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Keiler Roberts makes autobiographical comics. She is the recipient of the Cartoonist Studio Prize and the Ignatz Award. She has taught comics at The School of The Art Institute in Chicago. She lives with her family and too many pets in Evanston, IL.

Follow Keiler on Instagram, Bluesky and Blogspot. And go listen to our 2017, 2020, and 2021 conversations!

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Keiler by herself; drawing of Keiler by Karl Stevens. Photos of her & her sister were her sister’s idea. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 634:

“You could tell a story about the history of comics, and drawing, and even music through Crumb’s life.”

Author and curator Dan Nadel joins the show to celebrate the publication of his amazing new biography, CRUMB: A Cartoonist’s Life (Scribner). We get into Robert Crumb‘s significance in American art, comics, and culture, Dan’s first experience with a Crumb comic (it was an ish of American Splendor), the challenge of capturing the underground comics scene of the ’60s & ’70s, and what it took for him to get over the “R. Crumb” persona and realize how integrated Robert’s personality is. We talk about Crumb’s role as nexus in the history of comics, the book’s focus on Crumb’s drawing and how different tools opened him up artistically, what it means to see Crumb as part of tradition and not just a conceptual outlier, how his Crumb differs from the Crumb of Terry Zwigoff’s documentary, and the one detail he’s still dying to find out about Zap Comix. We also discuss Dan’s comics and art upbringing, how he found his place as a publisher then gallery & museum curator, how he was affected by the death of Crumb’s wife Aline in 2022, how his museum experience prepared him for writing about the racist and sexist aspects of Crumb’s comics, the only cartoonist biography he could tackle after Crumb, whether Crumb’s Book of Genesis succeeds as comics, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read CRUMB: A Cartoonist’s Life!

“I’m not a believer in a lot, but I’m a real believer in art.”

“One of the challenges of a biography like this is that a lot of the people are dead, and a lot of the people were high.”

“The last thing I wanted to do was colonize Crumb’s life.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Dan Nadel is a writer and curator. His previous books include, It’s Life as a I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940–1980; Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence, 1945–1976; and Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900–1969. He has curated exhibitions for galleries and museums internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, UC Davis, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is the founder of PictureBox, a publishing and packaging company that produced over one hundred books, objects, and zines from 2000 to 2014, including the Grammy Award–winning design for Wilco’s 2004 album A Ghost Is Born. Dan is the curator-at-large for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Dan’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Dan by Beowulf Sheehan; photo of Aline & Robert Crumb by me. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 631:

“I’m not a sociologist, I’m not a political scientist, I’m not a historian; I’m just a writer and half a thinker.”

Author David Shields returns to the show for a conversation about his new documentary, HOW WE GOT HERE, and the companion book, HOW WE GOT HERE: Melville plus Nietzsche divided by the square root of Allan Bloom times Žižek squared = Bannon (Sublation Media). We get into how the world moved from the death of God to the death of essence to the death of truth, and how deconstruction, once the province of left-wing academia, was weaponized by right-wing authoritarians for political aims. We talk about how much blame he bears for all this with his 2010 book Reality Hunger, how it feels to be a radical with deep skepticism of radicals’ language, his affinity for Werner Herzog’s notion of the ecstatic truth in documentary films, what he learned from interviewing nonfiction writers about the nature of truth, and how he feels about going to his first WWE event. We also discuss nonlinear warfare and the endless deconstruction of reality, how writing can “build a bridge across the abyss of human loneliness” (per DFW), what he’s learned from the collaboration of making documentaries, his fixation on hamartia (the tragic flaw), Walter Benjamin’s notion of pursuing the truth even if we’ll never reach it, bringing the public, social and personal worlds together in his writing, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read HOW WE GOT HERE: Melville plus Nietzsche divided by the square root of Allan Bloom times Žižek squared = Bannon and A Christian Existentialist and a Psychoanalytic Atheist Walk Into a Trump Rally!

(And go listen to our 2019a, 2019b, and 2020 conversations.)

“‘How did we get here?’ is the precondition for the question, ‘How do we get out of here?'”

“Exploring my own weaknesses is my thing.”

“The New York Times is an interesting tracer dye for what the Overton Window of discourse can accept.”

“The president fascinates me as a personal essayist gone wrong.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

David Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-five books, including Reality Hunger (which, in 2020, LitHub named one of the most important books of the past decade), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and PEN USA Award), Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity (PEN/Revson Award), and Other People: Takes & Mistakes (NYTBR Editors’ Choice). The Very Last Interview was published by New York Review Books in 2022.

The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, Shields—a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions—has published essays and stories in New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, Yale Review, Salon, Slate, Tin House, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Believer, HuffPost, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Best American Essays. His work has been translated into two dozen languages.

The film adaptation of I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, which Shields co-wrote and co-stars in, was released in 2017 (available now as a DVD on Prime). Shields wrote, produced, and directed Lynch: A History, a 2019 documentary about Marshawn Lynch’s use of silence, echo, and mimicry as key tools of resistance (streaming on Prime, Peacock, AMC, Sundance, Apple, and several other platforms).

Go listen to our 2019a, 2019b, and 2020 conversations.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at a hotel room in Brooklyn on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of David by Tom Collicott. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 606:

“I start the book out with the statement that somebody else should be writing and publishing this thing, but nobody did, so I had to do it.”

Artist Dmitry Samarov returns to the show to bail me out after a stressful couple of weeks and to explore his fantastic new book, MAKING PICTURES IS HOW I TALK TO THE WORLD, a survey of his art from the ’80s to today. We talk about the process of selecting pieces for the book, what artistic legacy means to him, finding roots of his work in his childhood, and why the notion of ‘progression’ doesn’t apply to his work. We get into the transformative experience of working at Tangible Books and how it’s inspiring his new ‘zine project, why he’s culling a lot of his library and how he’s deciding which books to keep, how his bookshelf paintings started to open him to abstraction, and why literary folks like Magritte but painters don’t. We also discuss our monastic devotion to art and Antonio López García’s devotion to painting his quince tree, why artistic memoirs tend to be no good but why not-great artists can be good critics, what it means to see his own books in thrift stores, how moving some furniture can change one’s perspective, why he’s against starting art with An Idea, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go get Making Pictures Is How I Talk To The World!

“There’s change, but progression implies you start at the bottom and head to the top. There may be that in my work, but it’s not my place to judge.”

“I’ve been trying to reconcile the visual art with the verbal art, but I’ve been drifting back to the visual.”

“My life is laser-focused on getting me to do this work. Everything else is noise and chores.”

“If you lead a life of endless repetition, what you start noticing is these subtle differences.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Dmitry Samarov is a painter and writer living in Chicago, IL.

Follow Dmitry through his newsletter and his podcasts, HU U NO and THAT HORRORCAST, and go listen to our previous conversations: 2014, 2015, 2018, 2020, lockdown, 2021, and 2022.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Dmitry by someone else. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 585:

“Engaging in reading, body & soul, present & past, is an insurance policy against loss.”

With Reading Shakespeare Reading Me (Fordham), professor Leonard Barkan blends memoir and deep reading of Shakespeare’s greatest plays to explore his lifelong relationship with literature and the way(s) we use art to construct our identities. We get into what it means to read, hear, perform, direct, teach Shakespeare, why it took him a lifetime to get to this book, how he contrasts himself with a radically naive reader (and why it’s important to try to capture our naïveté), the gayness of Shakespeare’s two Antonios, the stories he couldn’t tell until his folks were gone, and the role Shakespeare played in Leonard’s gay coming of age. We also talk about Narcissism vs. Wissenschaft, his next book about the WWII loss of 434 paintings by the Great Masters (!), Cervantes’ role as Shakespeare’s literary peer, the on-stage therapy session he held at his career-celebration, and his stint as a theater director and what it taught him about teaching. Plus we discuss the strangeness of King Lear’s opening scene, the eerie humor of Hamlet, the fraught subject of having kids, the glory & limitations of mimesis, how it felt to see his book The Hungry Eye on a bookshelf in The Bear, the lifelong struggle of living up to his promise, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read Reading Shakespeare Reading Me!

“What does it mean to hypothesize that for Shakespeare’s audience for, say, King Lear, they didn’t know what was going to happen?”

“I didn’t want freedom; I wanted acceptance.”

“Making tragedy fun and making comedy profound: that’s the background work you have to do with students.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, BlueSky, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, and good ol’ RSS!

About our Guest

Leonard Barkan is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton, where he teaches comparative literature, art history, English, and classics. His many books include The Hungry Eye: Eating, Drinking, and the Culture of Europe from Rome to the Renaissance (Princeton, 2021), Berlin for Jews: A Twenty-First-Century Companion (Chicago, 2016), Michelangelo: A Life on Paper (Princeton, 2010), Satyr Square: A Year, a Life in Rome (FSG, 2006), and Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (Yale, 1999), which won prizes from the Modern Language Association, the College Art Association, the American Comparative Literature Association, Architectural Digest, and Phi Beta Kappa.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at Leonard’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photos of Leonard by me. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 558:

“As I started working on Monica, everyone around me started dying in succession, and that drastically changed the course of this book.”

With MONICA (Fantagraphics), legendary cartoonist Daniel Clowes has pushed the limits of his storytelling and art to make one of the great graphic novels of the decade. We sat down during CXC weekend to talk about this amazing, haunting, hilarious book and how it grew out of his attempts at trying to figure out his childhood, the ways in which MONICA is haunted by the deaths of cartoonists Richard Sala and Gary Leib (oh, and those of Daniel’s brother and mom), what art, community and mortality have come to mean to him, and how certain panels took him 5 years to draw. We get into what he’s learned from using multiple genres within a single book, the artists who influenced him and the ones he had to escape, the 7-year gap from his previous book, PATIENCE, and what’s changed, and his late-stage depression at finishing MONICA. We also discuss how he was always awaiting the shift from pamphlet-comics to hardcover original books, how thankful he was to not be good enough to get work at Marvel or DC in his youth, what it’s like writing and drawing his books without any editorial input, his only takeaway from writing for movies, the Americanness of his comics, why he prefers drawing over writing even though A) he’s a really good writer and B) would never draw from someone else’s script, the only advice he would ever give young artists, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read MONICA!

“I’m a non-spiritual person in every way, except somehow the art has a spiritual quality to it.”

“It feels like time is compressed and I’m going through the same process. After I finish each book, I feel like I’ve done something very new and different and really expanded my horizons, and then I always I’ve done the same book over and over.”

“All I ever wanted in my life was stability & normalcy.”

“When I write comics, I’m writing only because I want to be able to draw something. The writing is no fun; I just have to do it and get it to the point where I’m comfortable with it.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TuneIn, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Daniel Clowes is a Harvey, Eisner, Ignatz, and PEN America Literary Award Winner whose comics and graphic novels have been translated into over 20 languages worldwide. He is also an Academy Award nominated screenwriter (for Ghost World), and retrospectives of his work have appeared at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Oakland Museum, and the Wexner Center in Columbus, OH. He lives in Oakland, CA, with his wife and child.

Follow Daniel (sorta) on Twitter and Instagram.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at the Hotel LeVeque on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4 digital recorder & interface. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photos of Dan by me. It’s on my instagram.

Virtual Memories Show 545:

“There’s probably a memento mori that runs through all my work, including The Fate of the Artist & The Second Fake Death of Eddie Campbell. The reminder that life is short and don’t take it for granted.”

With the publication of The Second Fake Death of Eddie Campbell (Top Shelf), the great cartoonist Eddie Campbell brings his decades-long autobiographical comics project into the COVID era. In this return conversation (go listen to our 2018 episode & our 2020 COVID check-in) we talk about the meta-narratives that haunt his books, the culture of masks that prompted his latest work, how it felt getting back to making long-form comics again, and whose idea it was to publish this one like an Ace Double along with the revised version of The Fate Of The Artist. We also get into how he learned to make art with computers and how that learning curve accelerated when he was making the color version of From Hell, the temptation to revise past work, why his last two major autobio books involve his fictional death, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read The Second Fake Death of Eddie Campbell!

“The pictures in my head all those years ago were in black pen & ink. Ideally, the pictures in your head are slightly ahead of what’s possible. You picture things that are going to challenge you.”

“At every minute of the day, I’m working on a story.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TuneIn, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Eddie Campbell has been making a living from comics since the 1980s. He is best known as the artist of From Hell (with Alan Moore), and made a splash with Bacchus, whose monthly comic ran for 60 issues. His semi-autobiographical concoctions however form his favorite strain of his own work. The former material was gathered in Alec: The Years Have Pants, all except the full color book The Fate of the Artist and his all-new book, The Second Fake Death of Eddie Campbell.

Follow Eddie on Twitter.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Zoom PodTrak P4. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Eddie by someone else. It’s on my instagram.