The Complete Jack Survives

"He trained to be a painter, then at some point in his career he felt the fine art world was too limited. Painting of the 1950s and 60s was too limited to contain his intentions. Jerry wanted to tell stories in a way that transcended the academic disciplines. He has a highly sophisticated approach to picture-making, but he’s also interested in using compositional ideas to tell stories. Many are veiled autobiographical stories about growing up in upstate New York. That’s the theme of Jack Survives . Jack is based upon his father. Some autographic writing is driven more by text, some is driven more by pictures. Jerry Moriarty is picture-driven. His text is terse, stripped-down language, like dialogue in a play. Imagine if Beckett made a comic strip, and you’ve got the concision and humour of Jerry Moriarty. In America, the tradition of newspaper comics aimed at a general audience started around 1895. In 1939 the comic book began, aimed at adolescents and kids. Comic books gave the form a bad name. Much of what was done was simplistic hackwork with a strong violent streak. People trying to use the form for serious literary and visual stories had a hard time finding an adult audience. In the 1970s a lot of oversized visual magazines, like Interview and Wet , were published in America. Art Spiegelman had the idea of packaging picture stories in a format that had connotations of visual and literary sophistication. RAW didn’t look like a 10-cent comic book. It attracted people who read Interview magazine – graphic designers, artists. When the package changed, people looked at what we did differently."