GRAPHIC NOVELS AND NON-NOVELS @ KGB: 3/6/9 @ 7PM.

NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies and KGB Bar present a panel of comics writers and artists who will discuss graphic novels and what American Splendor writer Harvey Pekar has called “graphic non-novels”—memoirs in the form of book-length comics. Think Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Alison Bechdel's Funhouse.

Autobiographical comic books and graphic novels can easily bring out the self-indulgent navel-gazer in writers, so it's a pleasure to find writers and artists who rise well above that tendency discussing their craft.

Case in point: Jessica Abel's Artbabe captured the restless ennui that came with being a young urbanite in the 90's, yet she managed to do it with a narrative pull and visual flair that was always a little more assured than the characters seemed to be about their own lives. She's recently worked with her husband, cartoonist Matt Madden, on a textbook about comics called Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, which is appropriate since she teaches at the School of Visual Arts.

Dean Haspiel will also be on the bill. Haspiel is perhaps best known for illustrating other people's (Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Ames) autobiographical tales, but he is also quite adept at writing his own stories—both  fiction and non. He's a busy man; in addition to creating his own print comics, Haspiel has launched ACT-I-VATE.COM, a consistently engaging showcase for emerging comics artists and writers. Gabrielle Bell, whose work can be found in the excellent Fantagraphics comics collection Mome, rounds out the bill. You should go.

Graphic Novels and Non-Novels
March 06, 2009
KGB Bar
85 E. 4th Street
7:00pm—9:00pm