Interviewing Landis Blair, Illustrator of the upcoming graphic novel release THE HUNTING ACCIDENT: A True Story of Crime & Poetry

Follow the tour all week long!

7/10 – YA Bibliophile interviews Shannon Hale

7/10 – Fiction Fare interviews Tillie Walden

7/11 – A Backwards Story interviews Landis Blair

7/11 – Bluestocking Thinking interviews Mike Lawrence

7/12 – Book Crushin interviews MK Reed

7/12 – Miss Print interviews Scott Westerfeld

7/12 – Ex Libris Kate interviews Box Brown

7/13 – Love Is Not a Triangle interviews Nick Abadzis

7/13 – I’d So Rather Be Reading interviews Alison Wilgus

7/14 – The Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia interviews Molly Ostertag

7/14 – Adventures of a Book Junkie interviews Nidhi Chanani

 

 An Interview With

LANDIS BLAIR

AUTHOR BIO: 

Landis Blair is a pen and ink illustrator, known in the independent comic scene for his cross-hatched drawings and delightfully morbid picture books. He is currently based out of Los Angeles, California, where he is illustrating a forthcoming book on death as well as several stories of his own. 

You can find Landis on 

Website | Twitter  | Instagram  

Tell us your first memory of reading a comic or graphic novel.

My first memories of comics are of reading them in the Sunday newspaper. My family didn't subscribe to any papers but my grandparents did and every Sunday we had lunch at their house. As soon as I would walk in the door, I would rush to find the newspaper and dig out the comics from the stack of advertisements. I would find a corner to immerse myself till being begrudgingly forced out of that world to the lunch table, where my family would tease me for having a charcoal coloured nose from sniffing the newsprint. 

What's your favorite comic or graphic novel, and what do you love about it?

I would have to say that BLANKETS is my favourite graphic novel. I grew up in the same religious denomination that Craig Thompson did and I was subsequently shocked to discover this beautiful comic describing, in such a poignant way, someone breaking out from that worldview. In some sense, BLANKETS helped me process my own breaking out while it was still happening. The fact that the book is so honestly and impeccably drawn only further cemented these feelings. 

 Tell us a little about your upcoming graphic novel

THE HUNTING ACCIDENT is based on a true Chicago crime story from the 1930s and involves blindness, literature, prison, and the imagination. Essentially, it is a confrontation between light and darkness and how they can each conceal the other. 

BONUS: What comic or graphic novel are you reading now?

I'm currently reading Winschluss's PINNOCHIO, Chris Ware's BUILDING STORIES, and the Flight anthologies.

~*~

O F F I C I A L   I N F O:

Title:  HUNTING SEASON
Author: David Carlson
Illustrator: Landis Blair

Release Date: Sept. 19, 2017

Publisher: First Second Books / Macmillan

 

SUMMARY:

As a child, Charlie Rizzo had been told that his father lost his vision in a hunting accident. It wasn't until Charlie found himself in a jail cell for his petty crimes that he learned the truth.  

Matt Rizzo was blinded by a shotgun blast to the face while working for the mob. Just a teenager and newly blind, he began his bleak new life at Statesville Prison. It was there that his life and very soul were saved by one of America's most notorious killers: Nathan Leopold. 

From David Carlson and Landis Blair comes a moving biography of a remarkable man whose journey from despair to enlightenment mirrored the great works of western literature that ultimately saved him. 

~*~