Barbara Brandon-Croft pictures (and Sarah Boxer and Big Planet Bethesda)

from last night at Loyalty Bookstore. My pictures are here and Bruce Guthrie's are here.

Meanwhile, last weekend Sarah Boxer signed her two Shakespeare parodies in Bethesda.

And Big Planet Comics in Bethesda has reopened to the public, 7 days a week.

Feb 12: Sarah Boxer is Presenting The Shakespearean Tragic-Comics! This Sunday!

  "Comics artist Sarah Boxer has broken codes and recast couplets, exposing the great William Shakespeare to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." 

– Steve Heller, Print Magazine

"Beyond charming—a labor of love and a complete pleasure."

– Gish Jen, author of The Resisters

Cartoonist Sarah Boxer will present her Shakespearean Tragic-Comics, Hamlet: Prince of Pigs and Anchovius Caesar: The Decomposition of a Romaine Salad 

Sunday, February 12, 2023, noon to 4 pm 

Gallery B, 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E, Bethesda, MD 

  At 2 pm, Harry Cooper will ply Boxer with questions about her books. Before that, the hosts of the exhibition will ply you with wine & snacks. If you can’t make the event & want to buy Boxer’s books, they’re on sale at Politics & Prose in DC, the Drama Book Shop in NYC & Bunncoco Press bunncoco@gmail.com. Amazon sells digital copies. And there’s more about Boxer’s books here: https://sarahboxer.weebly.com/ 

Sarah Boxer interviewed by Steve Heller

The Daily Heller: Hail Anchovius Caesar, the Greatest Romaine of All [Sarah Boxer]

By Steven Heller

The Daily Heller March 22 2022

https://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/the-daily-heller-hail-anchovius-ceasar-the-greatest-romaine-of-all/

Peanuts at 70 panel

Peanuts at 70

Sarah Boxer, Jonathan Lethem, Clifford Thompson, and Chris Ware, moderated by Andrew Blauner.

•Dec 16, 2020

Library of America

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne_aXsQcJhI

LOA Live: A conversation with Sarah Boxer, Jonathan Lethem, Clifford Thompson, and Chris Ware, moderated by Andrew Blauner. In 1950 Charles M. Schulz debuted a comic strip that is one of the indisputable glories of American popular culture—hilarious, poignant, inimitable. The "Peanuts" characters continue to resonate with millions of fans, their beguiling four-panel adventures and television escapades offering lessons about happiness, friendship, disappointment, childhood, and life itself. Andrew Blauner, editor of the LOA anthology "The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life," joins four distinguished contributors to the collection for a seventieth anniversary conversation reflecting on the deeper truths of Schulz's deceptively simple strip and its impact on their lives and art and on the broader culture. Presented in partnership with Peanuts Worldwide and the Charles M. Schulz Museum.

Dec 16: LOA LIVE: Celebrating the Peanuts gang at 70

No images? Click here LOA LIVE Join us for our final online event of the year         Peanuts at 70: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and The Meaning of Life A conversation with Sarah Boxer, Jonathan Lethem, Clifford Thompson, and Chris Ware; Andrew Blauner, moderator     In 1950 Charles M. Schulz debuted a comic strip that is one of the indisputable glories of American popular culture—hilarious, poignant, inimitable. The Peanuts characters continue to resonate with millions of fans, their beguiling four-panel adventures and television escapades offering lessons about happiness, friendship, disappointment, childhood, and life itself. Join editor Andrew Blauner and four distinguished contributors to the LOA collection The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life, for a seventieth anniversary conversation reflecting on the deeper truths of Schulz's deceptively simple strip and its impact on their lives and art and on the broader culture.       Wednesday, December 16 6:00 – 7:00 pm ET REGISTER Presented in partnership with Peanuts World Wide and the Charles M. Schulz Museum       RELATED TITLE   Hardcover • 352 pages List price: $24.95 Web Store price: $18.95 Use coupon code LIB2020 today or tomorrow to receive 15% off the Web Store price: $16.11 The Peanuts Papers Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life Edited by Andrew Blauner In The Peanuts Papers, thirty-three writers and artists demonstrate just how much Peanuts means to its many admirers—and the ways it invites us to ponder, in the words of Sarah Boxer, "how to survive and still be a decent human being" in an often bewildering world. Featuring essays, memoirs, poems, and two original comic strips, here is the ultimate reader's companion for every Peanuts fan.       Image, above: Charles M. Schulz at his studio drawing table in 1978. (CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images)

New from Sarah Boxer - Lynda Barry reviewed and President Poo

Back to the Drawing Board

Sarah Boxer

September 24, 2020 Issue

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/09/24/lynda-barry-back-to-drawing-board/

Making Comics

by Lynda Barry

Drawn and Quarterly, 199 pp., $22.95 (paper)

and for her new scatalogical political cartoon visit her Instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/boxer.sarah/

Sarah Boxer on Person Place Thing - Episode 299 (with Jill Sobule)

Sarah Boxer emailed me a few days ago, and I apologize that this fell in the cracks -

This podcast, episode 299 of Randy Cohen's show, Person Place Thing, featuring me and Jill Sobule, was recorded in New York City, on February 13, 2020, B.C. (Before Covid). https://personplacething.org/episode-299-sarah-boxer/

Jill had just come back from Thailand with a cough. Yet we hugged. That used to be a thing. She lost her voice and got it back. We knew she would. The audience was packed like sardines into the auditorium of NYPSI, the NY Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. We talked, we laughed, and we sang within spitting distance of one another. True story. What we had that evening is part of a lost world. 

You can hear it any time as a podcast at PersonPlaceThing.org (go to the archive; it's under the Bs for Boxer). Or download it free at iTunes.   

I am staying at home at sarahboxer.weebly.com. 

But my books are still out and about, on Amazon, at Politics and Prose

https://www.politics-prose.com/search/site/sarah%20boxer 

and at IP Books https://ipbooks.net/?s=sarah+boxer&post_type=product 

Stay well, stay sane, stay at home! xo, Sarah

Small Press Expo (SPX) 2019 day 2 in photos

As far as I could tell, SPX was a success again this year, although that varies for individual cartoonists of course. Raina Telgemeier brought in a big crowd of youngsters, but I didn't see a lot of them walking the aisles after waiting on line for her. Actually I never saw her either. Chris Ware also had long lines.

Ann Telnaes and Teresa Roberts Logan (smiling as usual)

Michael Wenthe at Cartozia Tales

John Patrick Green with an advance copy of his new comics series

Jamie Noguchi working on an exciting new project

Drew Weing

Joey Weiser

Matt Bors of The Nib

Carla Speed McNeil

Sarah Boxer, who tabled with her son (not pictured)

Paul Kirchner

Bill Campbell of Rosarium Publishing

And some mid-day crowd shots....

Sarah Boxer's new book reviewed

The Freud Rabbit

Sarah Boxer's whimsical cartoon novel puts a bestiary of human frailty on the psychoanalytic couch

By Michael S. Roth

July 23, 2019

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/287694/sarah-boxer-freud

Mother May I? at Politics & Prose!!! Today, 1 pm!

From Sarah Boxer 

I'll be presenting my two psycho-comics at Politics & Prose today, Saturday, July 13 at 1 pm. Start your engines! See you there!

Sarah

https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/sarah-boxer-in-floyd-archives-psycho-bestiary-and-mother-may-i-post-floydian-folly 

If you can't come, I will still sign your books!  

https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781949093186 (Floyd Archives)

https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781949093179 (Mother May I?) 

June 17: Sarah Boxer booksigning in Denver

Sarah emailed: "I'm doing a book slide-talk at Tattered Cover LoDo  (short for Lower Downtown) in Denver (my hometown) on Monday June 17 at 7 pm."

She'll be in DC at Politics and Prose in July.

Meet a Local Cartoonist: A Chat with Sarah Boxer

Boxer and Powder Wash

by Mike Rhode

Earlier this year, Sarah Boxer interviewed Jaime Hernandez at Politics and Prose bookstore. Until that evening, I had no idea that she lived in Washington (as she's a regular writer for New York-based publications), let alone that she was a cartoonist. We chatted briefly, and she's answered our usual questions -- extremely well as you'd expect from a professional essayist.

What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

I do long-form comics (books). Since I don't like drawing human beings, all my comics have animals rather than humans in them. And most of them play as much with language and ideas as with line. In fact some of my comics, particularly my psycho-comics, Mother May I? and In the Floyd Archives, both have footnotes. And I've recently finished Hamlet: Prince of Pigs, a comic-books version of Hamlet; it's full of visual puns, beginning with the fact that Ham-let is a little ham, a pig!

Tomorrow, June 8, is the publication date for Mother May I?: A Post-Floydian Folly and the date for the republication of In the Floyd Archives: A Psycho-Bestiary. I'll be at Politics and Prose on July 13 at 1 pm.

How do you do it? Traditional pen and ink, computer or a combination?

I've worked mostly in pen or pencil in smallish (8x5) Strathmore notebooks. But recently the difficulty and expense of transferring paper to a publishable digital form makes me think I need to give up pen and paper. This upsets my son, who is also a cartoonist and insists that paper and pencil are best. But I find drawing on a tablet relaxing. It's easy to erase and fix small details and work on nuances of facial expression. The only snag was once losing all of my saved drawings on a Samsung Tablet. I have since switched tablets.

When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

I was raised in the 1960s and 1970s in Colorado and published my first comic (a single panel of an elf in a snowstorm) at age 11 in my local newspaper.

Why are you in Washington now?  What neighborhood or area do you live in?

I moved from New York to Washington eleven years ago with my husband and son, because my husband, Harry Cooper, got a job as the curator of Modern Art at the National Gallery. We now live in Cleveland Park, not far from the zoo, so I have lots of live models.

What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

I was raised on Peanuts and went to college in Krazy Kat. Seriously, though, I don't have a lot of formal training in cartooning. I remember taking only one cartooning class, at Parsons. (R.O. Blechman came to speak to us.) But I've done a lot of life drawing (at the Art Students League, Parsons, the New York Academy of Art).  By far, the most absorbing drawing instruction I ever had was the Drawing Marathon at the Studio School. (I wrote up my experience in The New York Times.) I remember that one of the huge drawings I made over a week's time had a little cartoonish figure up on a ladder and Graham Nickson, the teacher who led the crits, asked, pointedly, "What happened here?"

Mother May I? page

Who are your influences?

I wouldn't call them influences, but the cartoonists I admired most as a kid were Charles Schulz, William Steig, Saul Steinberg, R.O. Blechman, JJ Sempé, and George Herriman. Ach, I see they're all men! I wish I could change history, but I can't.

If you could, what in your career would you do-over or change?

I guess I'd be born a boy. 

What work are you best-known for?

If anyone knows me for my comics, it's got to be for my first psycho-comic, In the Floyd Archives: A Psycho-Bestiary, based on Freud's case histories, which Pantheon published in 2001. (It's now being republished.) But it's likelier that people know me for my writing. I was at The New York Times for 16 years. There I was a photography critic, book review editor, and arts reporter. And since all my editors at the Times knew I especially loved comics, I got to write the obituaries for Saul Steinberg and Charles Schulz. I also got to interview Art Spiegelman when the second volume of Maus came out. And I got to sit in William Steig's orgone box. 

As a freelance writer, I still often write about comics. Last year I wrote an essay for The Atlantic about why it's so hard for cartoonists to lampoon Trump, and this October my Atlantic essay "The Exemplary Narcissism of Snoopy" will appear in the book The Peanuts Papers. I have also written quite a lot about comics for The New York Review of Books. My first essay there was on Krazy Kat and my most recent piece there was a review of Jason Lutes's epic, Berlin.

What work are you most proud of?

I'm most proud of my new psycho-comic Mother May I? I like that it's loose and rigorous at the same time. And I am tickled beyond belief that both Alison Bechdel and Jonathan Lethem are fans of it! I'm also proud that some selections from my first tragic-comic Hamlet: Prince of Pigs were published by the NYR Daily.

What would you like to do or work on in the future?

I'm looking forward to diving into drawing my next Shakespearean tragic-comic Anchovius Caesar: The Decomposition of a Romaine Salad, in which Julius Caesar is an anchovy and all the action takes place underwater.

What do you do when you're in a rut or have writer's block?

I write when I have drawer's block; and I draw when I have writer's block.

What do you think will be the future of your field? 

Mother May I? page

I think the future of comics is online. The experience of trying to get a nice clean copy of Mother May I? set for publication made me realize that I need a very good tablet with a pen, so I don't ever have to go through the copy process again. That's how I composed Hamlet: Prince of Pigs. I find using a tablet very liberating. It's easier to change little expressions on the faces of my characters. It's nice not to have a lap full of eraser dust. And in the end, it's much easier to get my comic to a publisher or printer!

What local cons do you attend? The Small Press Expo, or others? Any comments about attending them?

I go every year to the Small Press Expo with my (now 15-year-old) son, Julius Boxer-Cooper, who's also a cartoonist, and this year I am sharing an exhibitor's table (or rather a half-table) with him. In school he hands out zines -- or, as he calls them, cackets (short for comics-packets) to his classmates. Here are his words of wisdom for would-be cartoonists:  "If you're going to be a 'zine cartoonist, then you're going to have to get used to seeing your comics torn, crumpled, thrown on the ground, thrown in the recycling, or thrown in the trash with strawberry or raspberry Gogurt that's a few weeks old dumped over them." I admire his toughness! And his comics! 

For our debut at SPX, Julius and I are working on our first collaboration -- a comic called Corgi Morgue, which is about a corgi (that's a dog) and his wife (also a dog) who run a morgue for animals and also serve Indian food, particularly coorgi murgh, to their grieving clients.

Boxer & Jaime Herandez

What's your favorite thing about DC?

I love that the museums, the zoos, and many of the musical performances are free. I'm proud of the protests against our horrible president. I also love the racial openness and relative harmony of DC. They are rarities in this country.

Least favorite?

I despise our very orange very nasty President in the very very white White House.

What monument or museum do you like to take visitors to?

I love taking people to the East Wing of the National Gallery, especially the rooms devoted to Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.

How about a favorite local restaurant?

I'd rather eat in New York. 

Do you have a website or blog?

I wrote a book about blogging and how I'd never do it, Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web. So now I feel I have an obligation never to blog. But I do have a website. It's sarahboxer.weebly.com . 

(updated 6/8/19 with Mr. Cooper's name and correcting the SPX quote)

PR: Two Sarah Boxer books published in June

International Psychoanalytic Books  ipbooks.net  BOOK NEWS     

Press Inquiries     Tamar Schwartz    psypsa@aol.com     917-547-8054

 

For Immediate Release:

Publication Date: June 8, 2019

 

A NEW EDITION OF SARAH BOXER'S FREUDIAN FUNNY

 

 IN THE FLOYD ARCHIVES: A Psycho-Bestiary  

 

AND ITS BRAND NEW POST-FREUDIAN SEQUEL

 

 MOTHER MAY I? A Post-Floydian Folly     

 

WILL BE PUBLISHED TOGETHER IN JUNE BY IP BOOKS

 

PRAISE FOR MOTHER MAY I?

                    

Hilarious and terrifying … smart and silly. The constant barrage of puns is  brilliant. OMG! Me Little and Little Hans are brilliant, hilarious characters. … Such darkness and such lightness, so edifying and so absurd!

 -- Alison Bechdel

 

A kooky and witty illustrated tale that's full of intelligence and educational value. -- Kirkus Reviews

 

Having adored The Floyd Archives, I can't say enough how thrilling it is to see the  bestiary ride again, into the forests of Klein and Winnicott-the-Pooh… sorry… the atmosphere of free-association is infectious.

--  Jonathan Lethem

 

PRAISE FOR IN THE FLOYD ARCHIVES

If Freud had a bad dream, it would probably be Floyd ... A wildly clever collection in which little animals stand in for Sigmund Freud's most famous cases and for the doctor himself. -- Jenny Lyn Bader, New York Times

 

Boxer belongs to the line of erudite, intellectual cartooning exemplified by Jules Feiffer, David Levine and Edward Gorey … Funny and disturbing at the same time. -- Jeet Heer, The Comics Journal

 

… hysterically off-kilter… --  Kirkus Reviews

 

As the story unfolded, it got funnier and funnier, and funnier and funnier. Suddenly it was very painful. -- David Levine

 

 

What is the In the Floyd Archives?

 

In the Floyd Archives (ISBN 978-1-949093-18-6, 160 pp. $17.95) is a graphic novel, drawn and written by Sarah Boxer, lightly based on Freud's famous case histories – the Wolf Man, the Rat Man, Dora and Little Hans. The psychoanalyst, Dr. Floyd, is a bird. His patients are troubled mammals: Wolfman is a passive-aggressive wolf with identity issues, Rat Ma'am, an obsessive-compulsive rat, Lambskin a deflated lamb, and Bunnyman a paranoid rabbit. In the Floyd Archives, a comic with footnotes leading back to the Freudian sources, is for aficionados of Freud but also for those who love a wildly inventive comic with a deep and disturbing undercurrent.

 

What is Mother May I?

 

Mother May I?  (ISBN 978-1-949093-17-9, 188 pp. $17.95) is the sequel to the comic In the Floyd Archives. In this hilarious and terrifying riff on the works and lives of the child psychoanalysts Melanie Klein and D.W. Winnicott, Dr. Floyd's abandoned patients take a turn with Melanin Klein, a small black sheep who adores talking about ta-tas and widdlers. Klein is joined by her three little kids – Melittle Klein, a bitter kitten, Little Hans, a rambunctious bunny, and Squiggle Piggle, a pig whose tail creates expressive pictures when pulled. Mother May I?, a comic with footnotes, is for those who wonder whatever happened to psychoanalysis after Freud was gone, for those still working out things with their mothers, and for those who appreciate a comic romp with a dark edge.

 

Who is Sarah Boxer?

 

Sarah Boxer, writer, cartoonist, critic, is a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and a critic who writes for The New York Review of Books, The L.A. Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The Comics Journal, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Photograph, and Artforum. She published her first cartoon in a local Colorado newspaper at age 12. For many years she worked at The New York Times as an editor, critic, and reporter. Boxer's essay on George Herriman's Krazy Kat, "The Cat in the Hat," was featured in Best American Comics Criticism. Her essay "Why Are All the Cartoon Mothers Dead?" was anthologized in Rereading America. Her piece "The Exemplary Narcissism of Snoopy," will appear this year in The Peanuts Papers. Born in Denver, Boxer lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband, son, and two cats. There she is at work on a series of tragic-comics, including, Hamlet: Prince of Pigs (part of which appeared on the NYR Daily website) and Anchovius Caesar: The Decomposition of a Romaine Salad.

 

 

 

sarahboxer.weebly.com