Roadstrips

In researching a recent job––creating a graphic novel for Swiss bankers(!?)––I visited the local brainy comic guy near Carnegie Mellon University.

He turned me on to the collection of American artists, who illustrated their childhood memories and adult-oriented antecdotes, illuminate the great American roadtrip, titled Roadstrips.

The essayists and artists comprise a veritable Who's Who of American comics and an excellent primer on delievering powerful and whimsical visual narratives through storyboards.

Together, the stories reveal the bizarre geographies and snarled personal self images for every flavor of American: a Mexican-American punk rocker; an African-American working in an international youth hostel; a Phillipino-American kid fretting over nuclear war; a liberal Jew raising a family in Chicago; or a whitebread redneck turned yuppie who is torn between Seattle and New York.

On Tech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with professional cartoonists Pete Friedrich, Keith Knight and Lloyd Dangle on the technology and techniques involved to create "Roadstrips...A Graphic Journey Across America." [hear podcast]

from Amazon:

The explosion of comic books and graphic novels into the mainstream has demonstrated their universal storytelling power. Roadstrips is a unique comics anthology that takes a fresh look at our definitions of America in an era of upheaval and widespread soul-searching. Like a new On the Road for the 21st century, Roadstrips explores our national psyche through the work of 22 top cartoonists—among them Peter Kuper, Gilbert Hernandez, Jessica Abel,   Pete Bagge, Richard Sala, Brian Biggs, and Lloyd Dangle. Exploring identity on both a micro and a macro level, they illustrate today's post-modern patchwork with bilious narratives, thoughtful tales, and hilarious memoirs. Taken together, their powerful and thoughtful stories create a composite national portrait like few others.