Sparring with Gil Kane: Debating the History and Aesthetics of Comics

Gil Kane was the quintessential Silver Age artist, who (along with Carmine Infantino and Joe Kubert) creatively revitalized mainstream comics in the early 1960s. But Kane was more than a comics storyteller. His was a questing mind, determined to probe the aesthetics of his craft and demand greater creative maturity from an industry that churned out habitually formulaic, complacent, and relentlessly commercial product.

Long before cultural critics and academia embraced comics as a genuine form of artistic and literary expression, Kane recognized the unrealized potential of the medium and advocated for this vision. In a series of remarkably candid and insightful discussions with other comics artists and writers over the years, Kane examines the fundamentals of the form itself, praises the virtues of individual creators, and challenges the industrial standards imposed on artists that he felt held them back from telling innovative stories.

Sparring with Gil Kane collects the artist's most significant public-and private-exchanges with a wide variety of some of the most historic and ground-breaking artists who ever worked in comics, including Hal Foster, Walt Kelly, Noel Sickles, Harvey Kurtzman, Bill Everett, Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson, Jean-Claude Méxières, Robert Crumb, and more! This collection also includes a rare 1971 roundtable conversation about the shortcomings of the comics industry, featuring such working professionals as Will Eisner and Stan Lee.

Author: Gary Croth (Editor)
Artist: Gil Kane
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books, 2018
Number of pages: 307
Format: Soft Cover; Black & White illustrations
Size: 8" x 5" (195mm x 135mm)
ISBN: 1683960718
Condition: F - Fine
Code: GKSPAR