I've been reading  Wimbledon Green by Seth, a book that he takes considerable pains to point out started as doodling in his sketchbook and is not a serious finished piece of work. I enjoyed it much more than his more polished Clyde Fans. Similarly, Joel Priddy goes out of his way to point out that his classic story The Amazing Life of Onion Jack was thrown together in stick drawings to meet a deadline, before it became (to his slight annoyance) his most celebrated piece of work. Sometimes when you stop trying to polish something on every level and just let it out, it speaks more directly. XTC's records as The Dukes of Stratosphear, thrown together in a hurry and a spirit of fun, sometimes sold better than their official releases, often recorded at vast career-crippling expense in top flight US studios. Is this my excuse for letting the Tiger Lillies release Songs of Love and War with my off-the-cuff busking on it? Possibly. But sometimes art tries to satisfy on too many levels and should settle for just one or two. 

I find good comics fascinating: Ivan Brunetti suggests that the form is just reaching the maturity of middle-age. The last year or two has brought three really excellent anthologies: McSweeney's 13 edited by Chris Ware (from which the other two take much material), Harvey Pekar's The Best American Comics 2006, and Brunetti's Anthology of Graphic Fiction for Yale University Press. All highly recommended. But why doesn't Leviathan make an appearance anywhere?

Reading biographies of cartoonists, it's interesting how many of them play in bands. Perhaps I should join a design collective in retaliation.