BU Today feature: Drawing Out the Punch Line
This article was originally published in BU Today on November 8, 2019. By Joel Brown.
Comics fans might think that publishing gag cartoons in the hallowed pages of The New Yorker would be the apotheosis of a career. Paul Karasik has a lot more going on.
“Most cartoonists in the history of cartooning are notable for creating one character or one comic strip or working for one comic book company for their lives, doing the same thing every day,” says Karasik, a College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts visiting lecturer, sitting in his classroom at 808 Comm Ave recently. “The great cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller [Nancy] started being a cartoonist when he was a teenager and died in his studio with his pen in his hand at age 82. I could never do that. It’s just not in my temperament, and my skill set is more varied than that.”
Karasik publishes single-panel gags in The New Yorker, but he’s probably best known in the world of comics for cocreating, with David Mazzuchelli, the graphic novel adaptation of Paul Auster’s book City of Glass, named by Comics Journal as one of the Best Comics of the 20th Century. With his sister, Judy Karasik, Karasik created The Ride Together, a Brother and Sister’s Memoir of Autism in the Family, winner of the Autism Society of America Best Literary Work of the Year. He won his second Eisner Award (given annually for creative achievement in American comic books) last year for How To Read Nancy, a scholarly book about Bushmiller’s work and the language of comics, cowritten with Mark Newgarden.
After earning a degree in graphic design from the Pratt Institute, Karasik studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City when comic giants Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner (for whom the Eisner Award is named), and Art Spiegelman were on the faculty.
At BU this semester, Karasik is teaching the course Drawing into Animation, intended to guide students through storyboarding and scripting, from informal sketches to full narrative graphic novels. The dozen students’ multi-panel “how-to” comics, some helpful, some funny, and some both, are on display outside his classroom. (He also teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.)
Karasik will discuss his career Friday, November 8, at 6:30 pm, at WBUR’s CitySpace, in an event called Under the Influence of Comics: A Look Back with Paul Karasik. In this illustrated lecture, he’ll describe how his reading of comics shapes his making of comics.
“People will get a glimpse at a different way of being a cartoonist,” he says. “And there’s a little bit of backstage-at-the-comics, where I will show specific images that influenced my thinking.” BU Today spoke with Karasik about his work and his CFA class.