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Michael Avolio on Satrapi and the Potential for Collaboration
posted April 24, 2005
 

Michael Avolio
Via The Internet

Mr Spurgeon,

I've not seen the new Marjane Satrapi book, either, but regarding that criticism you mentioned from Crispin -- it sounds to me like the old "cartoony art is childish art" saw. I don't care about moles wandering around faces if the art is evocative and appropriate. Eddie Campbell's Graffiti Kitchen story "looks rushed," too, because Campbell put it down in ink without pencilling it, and it makes the story all the more intimate and immediate, as if we're reading his journal while the story unfolds. That art style, perhaps sloppy or unprofessional at first glance, helps make Kitchen one of Campbell's best works. Crispin argues Satrapi's art isn't appropriate to the second part of Persepolis, but there are many who would disagree, and I expect the same will be true of Embroideries. (I often LIKE seeing uncorrected smudges and ink bleeds, especially in a time where so many comics, with their computerized colors and lettering, are so slick they're as soulless as a modern pop album.) Anyway, that's my partially-informed (I've seen Persepolis but not Embroideries) opinion.

On a side note, it seems Satrapi is being labelled the next spiegelman by people who only know him from Maus. She's very talented, but she's not experimenting with the form the way he has throughout his career.)

As far as the idea of getting better vs getting an artist, I guess it would depend on how much better you need to get vs how easy it would be for you to get an artist, as well as how much control you want vs how much you like to collaborate with others.