The Cartoon Issue Is One for the History Books

Vermont punches above its weight in all sorts of things: craft beer, cheese, lefty politics, exceptionalism. But there’s one arena in which the state shines bright but has yet to fully receive its flowers: cartooning.

We know of no stats to back this up, but we’d wager Vermont boasts a higher concentration of cartoonists per capita than anywhere else in the country — maybe anywhere, period. Some of that is thanks to the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, which for two decades has been producing world-class artists — several of whose work you’ll find in this issue. But Vermont has been a cartooning hotbed for much longer than that. Just ask our reigning comics czar, Stephen R. Bissette.

Earlier this year, the Eisner Hall of Famer and Swamp Thing artist was named the state’s sixth cartoonist laureate. In a Seven Days interview, Bissette said his primary goal during his three-year tenure is to produce a history of cartooning in Vermont, one he says stretches back well over a century. His own 50-year career could occupy a good chunk of that volume, alongside those of local luminaries such as Ed Koren, Alison Bechdel, Harry Bliss, James Kochalka, Frank Miller and many others.

Speaking of history, Bissette’s laureate predecessor, Tillie Walden, just released a stunning graphic novel, Charity & Sylvia — a 200-year-old queer love story based on the real lives of two Vermont women. Reviewer Franky Frances Cannon, an illustrator with Vermont ties herself, called Walden’s artistry “innovative and original”.

As evidenced by Walden’s book — or, if you missed it, the New York Times Magazine’s astonishing “Visions of America” series last month — cartoons are a great vehicle to bring stories from the past to life. In this issue, journalist Ken Picard and cartoonist Josie Psimer teamed up to explore the history of an unusual statue in Wallingford, “The Boy With the Leaking Boot”. Food writer Melissa Pasanen and artist Emily Rhain Andrews dug into the lasting impacts of Italian immigrant farmers in Colchester. And cartoonist Glynnis Fawkes illustrated the history of the long-delayed Champlain Parkway in Burlington, which finally opened last week.

For a bite-size take on more recent history, check out music editor Chris Farnsworth’s thoughts on journalist Mark Pendergrast and cartoonist Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr.’s new comic book, Donald Trump: The Man Who Would Be King.

But comics can also be used to tell current stories. To wit, visual art editor Alice Dodge and cartoonist Clover Ajamie collaborated on one about a statewide quilting initiative that aims to connect both colorful fabrics and Vermont’s LGBTQ communities.

Of course, comics are also excellent tools for spinning more fantastical yarns. In the music section, Farnsworth and artist Ethan Slayton uncover previously unrealized links between important moments in pop music history and sightings of Champ.

Those links were “unrealized” because, well, we made them up. However, we imagine Slayton drew at least some inspiration for his depictions of Lake Champlain’s mysterious serpent from Bissette’s work. In the world of monster comics, few are as influential as Bissette — save, perhaps, for his old friend Rick Veitch, a former Vermont cartoonist laureate himself.

So we asked Veitch’s son Ezra to draw this week’s cover. In a tribute to Bissette, Ezra riffed on the artist’s iconic Tyrannosaurus rex from his soon-to-be-reissued comic Tyrant, as well as a 1980 cover of a cult favorite flip-book, Dr. Wirtham’s Comix & Stories, on which his dad and Bissette collaborated. Talk about comics history.

The original print version of this article was headlined “Drawing On History | The past is present in the Cartoon Issue”