The Work I’m Most Proud of Visually to Date

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Written By Alex Eklund

Written By Alex Eklund

I didn’t want to say anything until I had the physical copies in hand, because nothing in comics is real until it exists on paper at least in my head, but the project I’ve poured the most time, energy, and borderline‑unhealthy perfectionism into finally came out two weeks ago. It’s the fifth‑anniversary issue of Athenaeum Comic Art, Sean Watkins’ labor‑of‑love operation that has quietly built one of the most interesting rosters of cartoonists working today.

The idea for the anniversary zine started with Sean and my collaborator Colin Blanchette. They brought me in once they realized they needed someone foolish enough to obsess over page layouts for months at a time. I was thrilled. I’ve been a long‑term admirer of Matthew Allison, Alison Bechdel, Caroline Cash, M.S. Harkness, Trung Le Nguyen, and Noah Van Sciver — but over the last few years, Sean’s increasing stable of other artists have become just as compelling. One of the first pieces I received was the cover by Lee Lai, an inspiring work that captures the cartoonist’s eternal compulsion to get ideas onto the page, whether alone or in a collective. The alternate cover by Tom Manning was equally striking; Manning is one of those artists who somehow improves with every new piece, and I’ve stopped pretending to understand how.

This book went through at least five different versions — both in small tweaks and full reconstructions. Entirely different page layouts, swapped‑out art, reordered sections, all in service of finding the right balance between celebrating the creators and honoring the institution Sean has built. We refined it again and again, the kind of obsessive iteration that would make sense only to people who have spent too much time staring at InDesign grids at 2 a.m.

Halfway through the process, Colin started the project which became Die With Your Mask On #4, which meant the two books started talking to each other. I experimented more with lettering in the Athenaeum book, which pushed me to try new titles and techniques in Mask. And when I realized I needed to step up my game to properly present Michel Fiffe’s inventive page layouts in Mask, it gave me the confidence to highlight some of Sean’s artists in ways I wouldn’t have dared before. These two projects sharpened each other, iron on iron, until the work finally felt like it spoke for itself.

Sean has already talked extensively about the project, and I even tried to join him for a YouTube discussion before technical issues intervened (because of course they did). If you’re a comic art collector, I genuinely hope you pick up this book. I think the world of Sean’s cartoonists, and this issue offers a strong glimpse of what makes his roster so distinct.

As Sean told Colin and me, this book is meant as both a reflection and a business card, a statement that Athenaeum is here, will continue to be here, and will keep highlighting the diverse, idiosyncratic voices that make comics worth caring about.

 

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