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Wednesday Guest Post: This Week's David Heatley Cover

Filed under: The Squib Report Tagged: art, comics, covers, David Heatley, poetry

Martin Schneider, our trusty Squib Reporter, writes:

Our friends over at FLOG! (that's Fantagraphics' blog) are excited
about David Heatley's cover this week. Heatley's work is very interesting. He had a running series in the Fantagraphics anthology Mome called "Overpeck" (soon to be a full-fledged graphic novel) that was a somewhat surrealistic treatment of childhood and suburbia; it would merit the term (David) Lynchian. Heatley's contribution to McSweeney's 13, the vaunted comix issue edited by Chris Ware, was called "Portrait of my Dad"; it was about as unflinching and profoundly moving as contemporary comix get.

Heatley's Achilles' heel, if he has one, is that the drawing isn't always very pretty. When I heard that The New Yorker had commissioned a cover from him, I confess my first thought was to wonder whether, stripped of narrative and the latitude to be so powerfully affecting, Heatley's work would function well in that setting. Having now seen the cover, I'm happy to see that it's very good.

A reader adds: Just a few days ago the Poetry Foundation's website published Heatley's comic-strip adaptation of a poem by Diane Wakoski, the first in a series inviting cartoonists to adapt poems of their choice from the Foundation's archives.

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Emdashes, founded December 2004, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages. Learn more about us and our contributors.

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A few clips

Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
Review: The King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
Review: Does The New Republic's recent redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
Proposal: A more attractive MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands (for Print)
Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)

More clips.

Tell me more

They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.

Primary sources

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Edited by Martin Schneider, designed by Pretty, and illustrated by Inkleaf. Additional drawings by Carolita Johnson. Kissable pencil girl by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.

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