Pop Culture Diary: This Week's Reviews, Reads and Roundups: Kim Deitch 'How I Make Comics,' More

What I've Been Into...

"How I Made Comics" by Kim Deitch. A creation from veteran underground cartoonist Deitch, this isn't a typical how-to-draw tutorial. 

In fact, beyond a couple of lines of straight-forward pieces of advice (this is the brush I use, avoid getting trapped by substance abuse), Deitch instructs in a purely oblique manner, demonstrating by doing.

The book is a collection of surreal, connected stories that show Deitch incorporating various inspirations into his cartoons—a love of 1930s animated cartoons and vintage Krazy Kat toys, his real cats, his dad's love of drawing and his mom's involvement in sci-fi fandom with the likes of Forrest J. Ackerman—to develop an odd, but finished, product.

You won't learn to draw a figure by penciling ovals and cones, but you will get some insight into how a creator creates.

Order via Bookshop.org.

Quick Links:

Radio Times: "70 Up," a "final" entry in the series of documentaries tracking a group of children from the time they were 7 in the 1960s is set to air next week in the U.K.

Down the Tubes: A new book collects articles and comic strips from a long-running Goon Show fanzine.

Variety: A new documentary about Pete Towshend explores the musician's moody, poetic side.

R.I.P.

Comics/pulp historian and writer Will Murray.