Marv Newland burst onto the animation scene nearly 40 years ago with his oddball student film Bambi Meets Godzilla. Since then, his subversive, raunchy, and surrealistic short films have earned him and his studio International Rocketship worldwide notoriety. S.W. Conser catches up with Marv in Vancouver BC, on the final leg of the Words & Pictures road trip. Originally aired October 31st.
Platform International Animation Festival Did you know that the biggest animation event in the country is happening this summer, and the host city is Portland? Tune in to Words and Pictures to hear the preview from event organizers, Marilyn Zornado and Shawn Bowman. Originally aired April 24th.
S.W. Conser hosts a discussion with sculptor Joe Liptak about an exhibit on Viewmasters that the 3D Center is mounting. Also an episode of History Detectives coming up in June takes place at the 3D Center.
Words & Pictures welcomes celebrated stop-motion animator Teresa Drilling. Dividing her time between Portland and London, Teresa has brought alive characters for Aardman Animation ("Wallace and Gromit"), Sesame Street, and most recently, the American version of "Creature Comforts," airing on network TV this summer. Plus, she's got a lot to say about Jungian archetypes. No, seriously.
Special for the Platform Animation Festival - originally aired on Words & Pictures on June 26, 2007
Scott McCloud, the author of the landmark work "Understanding Comics" rolls into town on a 50-state lecture tour exploring the art of visual storytelling.
Special for the Platform Animation Festival - Originally aired on Words & Pictures on June 26, 2007
Rose Bond and Dryden Goodwin introduce the free animation installations that have been appearing in the Pearl District during the Platform Animation Festival. Rose is a celebrated local animator and visiting artist Dryden Goodwin has been featured at the Tate Modern Gallery.
Award-winning authors/film historians Amid Amidi & Jerry Beck have been rescuing forgotten animation from archives and festivals and collecting it on their website Cartoon Brew Films. S.W. Conser and Bill Dodge catch up with Amid and Jerry following their appearance at the Platform International Animation Festival.
Hundreds of artists, writers, and self-publishers converge on Portland State University every August for the annual Zine Symposium. Organizers Claudia McBarron and Patrick Devine offer a rundown of this year's events, joined by local cartoonist Erika Moen.
Academy Award-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom recently jumped into the director's chair to create the animated short "Lifted" for Pixar. Gary hosted a screening at this summer's Platform Animation Festival in Portland, and has plenty of stories about finding soundtrack material in the strangest of places.
Words & Pictures takes a loving look back at the brilliant and quirky UPA studio (started by Disney strikers after WWII) with animation historian Tee Bosustow. Tee's father Stephen helped found the haven for artists and oddballs, many of whom ended up blacklisted during the McCarthy red scares of the 1950's.
Mike and Laura Allred, the award-winning team behind such offbeat comics as Madman, The Atomics, and Red Rocket 7, sit down with Words & Pictures host S.W. Conser to discuss contemporary art, dream inspiration, and film adaptations of their work. Recorded during the 2007 Stumptown Comics Festival.
Alternative cartoonist and writer Carol Lay, creator of Story Minute and Waylay, sits down with Words & Pictures host Bill Dodge during the 2007 Stumptown Comics Festival.
Up-and-coming Portland cartoonists Ryan Alexander Tanner (creator of the Xeric grant-winning comic Television) and Farel Dalrymple (author of the graphic novel Pop Gun War and artist for Marvel's offbeat title Omega the Unknown) share stories of building collaborative art scenes in Portland, perpetrating media hoaxes, creating comics for the Rose City Rollers, and occasionally managing to break into the big time.
Bill Dodge ventures out on the streets of Portland for a live Christmas morning conversation with Philip Barasch, author of the painterly graphic short story Cornelius.
Marjane Satrapi's celebrated graphic memoir Persepolis has been adapted into a major motion picture which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. S.W. Conser talks to Ms. Satrapi about animation for adult audiences, Persian art, Iranian politics, and the role of women in bringing about cultural change.
1970's Seattle is the setting for legendary Raw cartoonist CharlesBurns' epic graphic novel BlackHole that concerns the the universal and very real difficulties faced by young people trying to figure out the opposite sex and other "growing up" issues told with a backdrop of classic film noir horror and incredible detail.
Jim Woodring is responsible for some of the most mind-bending art and stories in the alternative comics scene, and his new book Seeing Things collects the most recent of his iconic imagery and nightmarish narratives. Jim is joined in the studio by Bob Rini, co-founder of the Seattle cartoonist collective Friends of the Nib.
Dark Horse Comics founder Mike Richardson is the special guest of honor at this year's Stumptown Comics Festival. Known for his staunch support of free speech and artistic autonomy, Mike has maintained his Portland roots while blazing new trails in publishing, film production, and licensing.
Newly elected president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, Ted Rall has courted controversy across the globe. He's reported from war zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, stared down right-wing pundits on the Fox News Channel, and written numerous books including Revenge of the Latchkey Kids, Generalissimo El Busho, and the recent Silk Road to Ruin.
Words & Pictures visits the Stumptown Comics Festival and talks with award-winning web cartoonist Nicholas Gurewitch, creator of the outlandish and wildly popular comic strip The Perry Bible Fellowship.
David Malki ! talks about and performs readings from his popular webstrip "Wondermark" and his book from Darkhorse comics titled "Beards Of Our Forefathers" featuring new humorous essays and colleced strips from Wondermark.com
Words & Pictures welcomes guest Mike Konopacki, a labor cartoonist who collaborated with author Howard Zinn and historian Paul Buhle to create a comics version of Zinn's A People’s History of American Empire. S.W. Conser talks with Konopacki about the power of images to raise public consciousness and the challenges of mixing caricature with historical portrayals.
Words & Pictures celebrates 65 years of the UPA animation studio with rare audio clips and stories from the people who were there. Guest Jack Heiter helped animate Mister Magoo, Roger Ramjet, and the forgotten 1960's classic Gay Purr-ee; and animation historian Tee Bosustow is the son of UPA director Stephen Bosustow, who co-founded the studio in the wake of the 1940's Disney strike.
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Bill Plympton pays a return visit to his hometown of Portland as his new short Hot Dog premieres in Mike Judge's upcoming Animation Show (beginning Oct. 26 at Cinema 21). Bill's latest animated feature Idiots and Angels opened to critical acclaim this spring at the Tribeca Film Festival and will be arriving in Portland theaters in early 2009.
Just in time for the 2008 election, investigative reporter Greg Palast has published a comic book, Steal Back Your Vote, with the cooperation of Robert Kennedy Jr. and cartoonists Ted Rall (America Gone Wild), Lloyd Dangle (Troubletown), and Lukas Ketner (Witch Doctor). KBOO's S.W. Conser talks to Greg and the comic artists about steps that citizens can take to counteract voter fraud and suppression.
Words and Pictures presents a compilation of Pacific Northwest cartoonists reading from their works. Guests include Carol Lay, Charles Burns, Jim Woodring, Bob Rini, David Malki, and John Callahan.
Words & Pictures travels north to Bellingham, Washington, to visit Canadian comics and animation wizard Michel Gagne, whose work runs the gamut from the abstract jazz-inspired film Sensology to concept design for Disney and Pixar.
Gagne's bewildering take on the Dark Knight for DC Comics (Batman: Spore) infuriated traditional superhero fans, and his recently unveiled project Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet breaks the mold for computer-based gaming. Recorded with the kind assistance of KUGS-FM Western Washington University.
For more than 40 years, maverick stop-motion animator Bruce Bickford has been constructing dreamlike landscapes and bringing them to life, gaining notoriety in the 1970's as the fertile mind behind the Frank Zappa films Baby Snakes and The Amazing Mister Bickford. The subject of an award-winning 2005 documentary, Monster Road, Bickford still works out of his Seattle studio and has just re-released his surreal magnum opus Prometheus' Garden, which screened at the recent SuperTrash Film Festival.
For the first time in three decades, Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novelist Art Spiegelman (Maus) has gathered his early groundbreaking comics into one volume. The new edition of Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! includes a new graphic memoir opening a window into both a personal and cultural history of the late 20th century.
Art talks with S.W. Conser and Bill Dodge about comics as high art, breaking the media censorship of the Danish Muhammed cartoons, and creating picture books for children and grownups.
Stop-motion animator Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) spent more than three years bringing the Neil Gaiman story Coraline to the big screen. On the eve of Coraline's world premiere at the Portland International Film Festival, Selick sits down with S.W. Conser to talk about art, commerce, and the future of hand-crafted animation.
Who was the real Che Guevara? Idealist? Revolutionary economist? Media icon? In the wake of anniversary celebrations and Hollywood blockbusters, Words & Pictures poses the question toSpain Rodriguez, author of Che: A Graphic Biography, during his appearance at the Wordstock literary festival. Himself an icon of the alternative comics scene, Spain has been an outlaw biker, political correspondent, and creator in the 1960's of the first underground comics tabloid, Zodiac Mindwarp, for the East Village Other.
Hosts S.W. Conser and Bill Dodge sit down with Don Hertzfeldt, award-winning filmmaker and co-founder (along with Mike Judge) of the touring festival The Animation Show. A young animator who embraces the pre-digital tools and techniques of the previous century, Don plunges his simply-drawn yet evocative characters into such poignant, bizarre, and hilarious short films as Everything Will Be Okay and I Am So Proud of You.
Mayor Sam Adams has declared April to be Portland Comics Month in honor of the strong base of independent talent making their home in Oregon. Mike is joined by comics artist and PNCA instructor Neal Skorpen, who is leading a collaborative workshop at Stumptown on The Instant Graphic Novel.
Joanna is the founder of the local animation society ASIFA-Northwest, and Joan is the Academy Award-winning creator of the films Creation and Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase. Their fiercely independent visions can be seen this Thursday evening at the Hollywood Theatre screening Words Worth a Thousand Pictures: Contemporary Animation about Language.
A short story by Seattle cartoonist Jim Woodring about the wonders of childhood and the mysteries of the great wide world is brought to the radio airwaves by director S.W. Conser and the One Take Pony players: David Chelsea, Zoe Loranger, Emily Young, and Mike Russell.
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.
Special thanks to Trillium Shannon for her invaluable production help, as well as Jenka Soderberg and Mimi Villarqui for their excellent translation skills.
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.
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.
Syncopated is a new anthology of non-fiction "picto-essays" created by a broad range of contemporary comics artists, including Alec Longstreth and Sarah Glidden, who join host S.W. Conser to discuss this unique storytelling form.
Award-winning Canadian cartoonist Graham Annable now makes his home in Portland, where he recently drew storyboards for the film Coraline. A leader in the new generation of indy cartoonists, Graham brought together the team behind the comics compilation Hickee, and now brings a graphic sensibility to the short-story form with his critically-acclaimed Book of Grickle.
Portland artist and self-styled "war junkie" Joe Sacco has carved out a niche in the publishing world for his war reportage comics. For twenty years Sacco has plunged into global hot spots to bring back detailed graphic stories of civilian bystanders. His books include Safe Area Gorazde, Notes From a Defeatist, and Palestine, which won him an American Book Award and led to a Guggenheim Fellowship. His latest book Footnotes in Gaza takes us back to the Palestinian refugee camps to reveal first-hand accounts of a massacre that was officially suppressed for fifty years.
Oregon Cartoon Institute founders Anne Richardson and Dennis Nyback are working with cultural organizations around the state to spotlight the historical importance of locally-grown animators and cartoonists. They're joined in the studio by musician Heather Perkins, OCI's artist-in-residence, who is composing an original concert piece inspired by Bugs Bunny and (Portland-bred) voice artist Mel Blanc.
This audio file is the membership drive version of R. Sikoryak's appearance on Words & Pictures. An expanded version of the interview will be added to the site soon.
Distinguished Professor of Education and Fugitive Days author Bill Ayers has teamed up with cartoonist and ex-Portlander Ryan Alexander-Tanner to adapt his groundbreaking education textbook into comics form. The result is To Teach: The Journey, in Comics. Host S.W. Conser asks Bill and Ryan about their struggles to translate mountains of text into narrative art (while avoiding Fox News cameras during the 2008 election); Bill's fights against the No Child Left Behind juggernaut; and the transformation of a famous mug shot into a cartoon icon.
Just in time for the 2008 election, investigative reporter Greg Palast has published a comic book, Steal Back Your Vote, with the cooperation of Robert Kennedy Jr. and cartoonists Ted Rall (America Gone Wild), Lloyd Dangle (Troubletown), and Lukas Ketner (Witch Doctor). KBOO's S.W. Conser talks to Greg and the comic artists about steps that citizens can take to counteract voter fraud and suppression.
Words & Pictures travels north to Bellingham, Washington, to visit Canadian comics and animation wizard Michel Gagne, whose work runs the gamut from the abstract jazz-inspired film Sensology to concept design for Disney and Pixar. 
For the first time in three decades, Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novelist Art Spiegelman (Maus) has gathered his early groundbreaking comics into one volume. The new edition of Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! includes a new graphic memoir opening a window into both a personal and cultural history of the late 20th century. 
Stop-motion animator Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) spent more than three years bringing the Neil Gaiman story Coraline to the big screen. On the eve of Coraline's world premiere at the Portland International Film Festival, Selick sits down with S.W. Conser to talk about art, commerce, and the future of hand-crafted animation.
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