A collection of graphic narratives from one of the most influential
and respected visual artists of the past half century
Talking Lines is the first-ever comprehensive collection of the work
of R. O. Blechman, one of the most prolific and influential visual
artists of the twentieth century. His graphic stories are at once
jocular, wry, and profound. Blechman ruminates on such various topics as
nuclear weapons, war, wiretapping, Christopher Columbus, Leo Tolstoy,
William Shakespeare, and Virginia Woolf. His stories have appeared in
the seminal magazine Humbug (edited by Harvey Kurtzman), The Nation,
Nozone (edited by his son, Nicholas Blechman), The New York Times,
and The New York Times Book Review.
Blechman is a modern master of all things visual whose timeless
intellect and stripped-down artistry propels his nonstop relevancy. He
is one of the few artists who has been able to balance the commercial
and the artistic. In his polished and unparalleled career, he has been
heralded as one of the great cartoonists, the author of one of the first
modern graphic novels, an Emmy and Cannes Film Festival award-winning
animator with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, a Hall of
Fame art director, and even a blogger for The Huffington Post.