For a few years in the ’90s, I wrote weekly comic book reviews which I published online in the Usenet rec.arts.comics groups and CompuServe’s Comics Forum. As I was one of only a handful of women reviewing comics at the time (I remember there was me, Johanna Draper and Denise Sudell online and of course Maggie Thompson in print), my "Pen-Elayne For Your Thoughts" reviews were noticed and commented on fairly frequently, both by other readers and by the professionals who worked on the books I discussed. (My review of a Legion annual prompted the book’s inker to email me, and a couple years later we were married.) It was a cool self-publishing gig which led to all sorts of goodies, from being "recognized" by name at conventions (especially helpful when working the Friends of Lulu booth) to being sent freebies and previews to drum up interest and get the comment threads going (about the actual story rather than the anticipation thereof).

I cherished my interactions with pros, particularly artists. Writing I understood. I’d been a writer for decades, I intrinsically got the process. But art — here was a foreign realm, one to which I could never hope to aspire. These folks created magic that I’d never hope to duplicate. I felt a driving need to at least familiarize myself with the hows and whys of graphic sequential storytelling. After all, I reasoned, if you take into account time spent in the actual creation of a comic book story, the art is far more than half of what goes into it. Every line on the page has a reason to be there, and I wanted to find out what it all meant.

In order to do so, I needed to cultivate an artistic vocabulary.

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The work of two of America’s most significant cartoonists, Bill Mauldin and Jules Feiffer, will be the subject of a major exhibit at Chicago’s Jean Albano Gallery.

Feiffer is the former weekly editorial cartoonist for the Village Voice and Universal Press Syndicate. One-time writer of Will Eisner’s Spirit (and Eisner’s long-time assistant), Feiffer’s cartoons appeared in Playboy magazine and The New Republic. A noted playright and movie scribe Carnal Knowledge, Popeye, Oh! Calcutta!, and my favorite, Little Murders), his most recent novel is A Room With A Zoo, published by Hyperion. His earlier work is being reprinted by Fantagraphics.

The late Bill Mauldin was the long-time nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist headquartered at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Chicago Sun-Times. Perhaps best known for his World War II panels featuring Willie and Joe (to be reprinted in their entirety by Fantagraphics early next year), Mauldin also had a career as an actor, appearing in the movie The Red Badge of Courage, among others.

The exhibit, History Revealed: Jules Feiffer and Bill Mauldin, will run at the Jean Albano Gallery, 215 W. Superior in Chicago from October 26, 2007 to January 6, 2007.