So, as soon as I started my podcast project “I’ll Follow You,” I knew with absolute certainty that I had to have today’s guest on, preferably sooner rather than later. I’m absolutely thrilled not just to have him on for this wonderful chat, but also to be able to introduce him and his work to those of you who may not have had the pleasure of knowing him–yet.
Today I’m so excited to welcome to the show Dr. Gene Kannenberg Jr.
(You can stream our chat via the embed here, on Anchor, or pretty much anywhere else you source your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and Google Podcasts.)
Gene is a cartoonist living in Evanston, Illinois. His comics, mostly abstract with asemic writing, include Qodèxx, Space Year 2015, and The Abstract Circus. His work was included in the Minnesota Center for Book Arts’ 2017 exhibit “Asemic Writing: Offline & In the Gallery” and also appears in the book Abstraction et bande dessinée, produced by the ACME Comics Research Group at the University of Liège in Belgium.
Gene received his PhD from the University of Connecticut in 2002, and he has served in the past as Chair of both the International Comic Arts Festival and the Comic Art & Comics section of the Popular Culture Association. His book 500 Essential Graphic Novels was published by Collins Design in 2008.
Gene is currently the Research and Media Assistant at the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University, where he has curated two exhibits on comic art.
As we allude to later in the conversation, Gene moved to Illinois in late 2014, and it was one of those rare examples of a later-in-life instant friendship. Just like, “yep, you’re my people.” He had gone to grad school with my partner Brian Cremins (whom we also allude to later in the conversation), and pretty much from the moment he signed the lease on his apartment, he was showing up at our gigs and taking the best photographs of us playing music, inviting us out to excellent readings and film screenings, and just generally being a key part of our urban family. We also collaborated together on a modern take on the Book and Record set with his project Qodèxx, an abstract graphic novella for which Brian and I composed the soundtrack. (You can read a bit more about my thoughts on making the album here.)
So, pardon all the giggles and excited blathering that you’ll hear from me here–it really does come from a place of extreme warmth and affection for Gene and our friendship and of course my enthusiasm for his work. So now to let him speak more for himself, here’s my conversation with Gene Kannenberg.
SHOW NOTES
Find Gene online at comicsmachine.com or follow him on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. His academic and research-oriented site http://comicsresearch.org/ is still available online as well.
The quote from Dan Snaith comes from his October 2014 interview on The Quietus:
Stephen R. Bissette is a comics artist and editor known for his work with Alan Moore on Swamp Thing. He now teaches at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont.
Charles Hatfield is Professor of English at California State University, Northridge, the author or co-editor of four books in Comics Studies, curator of Comic Book Apocalypse: The Graphic World of Jack Kirby (CSUN Art Galleries, 2015), and founding President of the Comics Studies Society.
Tom Spurgeon was an enormously influential comics critic who recently and unexpectedly passed away at the age of 50. The New York Times published an obituary for him, and Douglas Wolk’s stunning remembrance of Spurgeon’s importance is on The Comics Reporter here.
Brian Cremins’s book Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia is, as Gene describes it, “the most readable academic book I’ve ever read in my life….It’s a beautifully written book.”
Gene’s asemic tribute to The Who’s iconic Maximum R&B image appears in the zine Satan Is My Father: A Zine about Forgotten, Misremembered, and Nonexistant Bands.
The Chicago Artists Chorale’s concert In Other Words was held on May 16, 2017.
Stream Music for Qodèxx on Bandcamp here.
Gene’s piece “Riddle 93 (Reconstructed)” was published in the Summer 2019 Issue 15 of Court Green.
Check out a short video of Gene’s handmade book “A Nameless Land, A Timeless Time!” (Tribute to Steve Ditko) here.
Check out Shawn Sheehy’s pop-up books here.
The video of Gene’s pop-up tribute to the first Peanuts comic strip is here.
Queen of Peaches 