Thanks for the MOME essay. Your insights as a fan and retailer are always valuable to me. The comparison to the D&Q showcase is interesting, the big difference of course being the quarterly schedule. The D&Q Showcase has released four issues in four years — MOME has had eight in two. Oliveros can do know wrong when he takes his time with something, and the Showcase books have been no exception. By its very nature, with more cartoonists per issue and a quarterly schedule, I would expect MOME to be a bit less consistent. But I’m glad you’ve noticed the improvement over the last few issues because it’s palpable to me and I’ll stack #8 up against any anthology this year. It sounds like your biggest concern with MOME lies in the serialization of certain stories, which I can tell you is a concern of mine, as well, and always a struggle to balance. Take Woodring for example: my original thought with Woodring’s story, when I first read it, was that it should be its own book, one that has nothing to do with MOME. I mean, it’s a brilliant, 45 page Woodring novella. For whatever reason, though, Jim doesn’t want to publish it as its own book in the U.S. But I felt like the story should be read, so I asked him about running it in MOME, to which he graciously agreed. I considered running the entire story in one issue, but after consulting with Jim and the other Mome artists, it was quite clear that everyone was more comfortable with running it in two chapters than in its entirety. And you know, I can live with two 20+ page chapters. That’s barely a serial.

You made reference to “getting behind things like AT LOOSE ENDS by Trondheim, or the serialised DAVID B stuff… I’d much, much rather each volume of MOME included the whole story from beginning to end to complete the… wholeness… of each volume on the shelf.” Which I don’t completely disagree with, especially since there actually hasn’t been any serialised David B. stuff in MOME! Every David B. story we’ve run has been run in its entirety in one issue. Issue #3 had the complete, 36 page “Armed Garden” and #4 had the complete, 31 page “Veiled Prophet.” And the idea with including those stories was precisely that they might complete the ‘wholeness’ of those issues.

But running Trondheim or Woodring’s stories in their entirety in one issue would completely overwhelm everything else in those issues because of their length. At that point, MOME would really stray off course from what I want the anthology to be. The Trondheim story would have eaten up two thirds of an issue and not left room for much else.

None of your notions of taking advantage of the ‘periodicalness’ are lost on me, it’s something I’ve been struggling with from the get-go, trying to mix things up while keeping things on track at the same time. #8 includes an art gallery by an artist I’ve admired for a long time named Mike Scheer, and I wrote a short intro to his work. Expect to see more non-comics features/interviews, but only so much. The focus remains comics. MOME’s quarterly deadline is its blessing and curse. It doesn’t allow for longer shorts to appear in their entirety like those in D&Q Showcase, but it does have its own unique advantages. Keep reading!

Thanks,

Eric

I’m not sure how much it was ever really just about promoting new talent. The inclusion of artists like Jeffrey Brown from the start speaks to that (Brown is (sadly) probably better known than Trondheim in the US).

I’d love to see your suggestion put into effect, with some more complete stories and fewer (but more consistent) serials.