New Books: A Tallon Anthology, Tyler’s Ephemerata, Karasik’s Complete Hanks
Here’s a really wonderful book: a (sort of) biography of New Yorker cover artist, Robert Tallon, published in 2024 by the National Museum of American Illustration & The American Illustrators Gallery (edited by Andrew Goffman).
Mr. Tallon, who died in 2015, published thirty-three New Yorker covers, from the issue of December 9, 1974 through the issue of March 28, 1988.
The book also serves as a biography, with a brief history (we learn, for instance, that although Mr. Talloon did a lot of circus type drawings, he’d never been to a circus). There’s also a section devoted to the work of artists who Tallon found inspirational: Julian De Miskey, Paul Klee, Alajalov, and Steinberg.
Besides being a cover artist, Mr. Tallon was an excellent children’s book author, and, as you see on the cover, an illustrator. You can see his New Yorker covers on his website (link above by clicking on his bolded name and on the Conde Nast store here.
–About the September 22, 1986 New Yorker cover shown above: the book tells us that “the painting was done on newspaper print. Its loose red lines were drawn directly from a makeshift pointed squeeze bottle.”
***
Just out from from Fantagraphics, Carol Tyler’s The Ephemerata.
Though not a New Yorker contributor, Ms. Tyler’s work has been of special interest (to me) as she’s part of a small subset in the wider cartoonist community: a cartoonist married to another cartoonist. She, and her now late husband, Justin Green were the focus of a wonderful addition to the not-very-extensive video library about cartoonists lives, Married To Comics (it arrived last year. Spill readers may remember that I wrote about it).
In Ms. Tyler’s Ephemerata: Shaping The Exquisite Nature of Grief (Fantagraphics) she explores loss — a great deal of loss. Her graphic handling of her narrative moves the reader at a very fast pace; the drawings themselves are free-flowing and sketchbook-like, unrestrained by the somewhat standard graphic novel format of box after box after box. I can’t wait for her promised second volume.
Out November 4th, and also from Fantagraphics, Turn Loose Our Death Rays and Kill them All!: The Complete Works Of Fletcher Hanks, edited by Paul Karasik (a New Yorker cartoonist since 1999).
I’ve a soft spot for comics — they were, other than Dick and Jane readers, the first things I read. Fletcher Hanks’ work, thoroughly covered in this volume, brought me back to the days of wildly inventive drawing. The artistry Mr. Hanks brought to his work is extraordinary (it is noted in the book that Hanks was responsible for all of the work on his drawings).
This volume is quite simply a must-have for those who love comic book art.