Nearly half a century ago, the UPA animation studio was a haven for misfit geniuses struggling to create relevant cartoon films in the face of political and cultural repression.  Gambling the future of the company on an hourlong television special featuring their most popular recurring character, they created a wildly successful holiday classic. 

The new book Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol: the Making of the First Animated Christmas Special collects long buried archival material into an exhaustive artistic and historical document.  Author Darrell Van Citters is joined by Magoo animator Jack Heiter to tell Words & Pictures listeners the story behind the Magoo story.  Bill Dodge and S.W.Conser host.

For more KBOO audio about the history of the UPA studios, click here and here.

Thanks to Emily Young for her engineering help on this show.

Comics artist  Josh Neufeld met and talked with survivors of Hurricane Katrina while volunteering with the Red Cross in 2005.  The result of these conversations is the graphic chronicle A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, a critically-acclaimed collection of first-person accounts from the Crescent City's various cultures, races, income groups, and neighborhoods.  S.W. Conser spoke with Josh during the 2009 Wordstock Literary Festival.

Special thanks to Emily Young for her invaluable production help on this program.

Lucy Knisley, author of French Milk, and Erika Moen, creator of DAR: A Super-Girly Top-Secret Comic Diary, join Words & Pictures' S.W. Conser to discuss cartoon travelogues, online journaling, collaborative art-making, and the fine line between Renaissance iconography and porn.  Warning: explicit content.

Portland artist Arnold Pander has teamed up with Brother Jacob to create projects as diverse as nightclub murals and erotic short films shot in infrared.  The Pander Brothers' latest releases are the independent film Selfless, an identity theft-themed thriller with an existential twist, as well as the self-published graphic novel Tasty Bullet, about an energy drink with strangely alluring properties.