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Carol Tyler
Carol Tyler (C. Tyler) is an award-winning American cartoonist, painter, writer, educator and comedian best known for her autobiographical stories that reflect her struggles and triumphs as an artist, worker, wife, daughter and mother. The legendary cartoonist Robert Crumb describes her work as... show more



Carol Tyler (C. Tyler) is an award-winning American cartoonist, painter, writer, educator and comedian best known for her autobiographical stories that reflect her struggles and triumphs as an artist, worker, wife, daughter and mother. The legendary cartoonist Robert Crumb describes her work as having "...the extremely rare quality of genuine, authentic heart." Cartoonist Chris Ware refers to her as "...one of the true greats of the original Underground Comix generation."Born on the north side of Chicago in the 1950s, Carol Tyler was the middle child in a working class Catholic family. Taught by nuns from K-12, she graduated from art school in Tennessee and then received an MFA in painting from Syracuse University in the 1980s. While in graduate school, she became interested in sequence and narratives.Aline Crumb was the first to publish her work in Weirdo Magazine beginning in 1987. In 1988, Tyler was awarded the Dori Seda Memorial award for Best New Female Cartoonist. Her work has been nominated for 10 Eisner Awards 2 Harveys, 2 Ignatzes and she's been a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Tyler was also named on the list of the Top 100 Cartoonists of the Century.For over two decades, her work has appeared in various publications like R. Crumb's Weirdo, the L.A. Times, Twisted Sisters, Wimmens, Kramers Ergot 7, the Yale Anthologies and other publications too numerous to mention. Ms. Tyler's latest book is the monumental 'Soldier's Heart: The Campaign To Understand My WWII Veteran Father, A Daughter's Memoir.' It is the complete, redesigned single volume of the 'You'll Never Know' trilogy. This spectacular work, which took a decade to write and draw, chronicles her search for the truth about what happened to her father during World War II and the damage his war had on her life. Douglas Wolk of the New York Times writes: "It's impossible not to compare 'You'll Never Know' with Art Spiegelman's 'Maus,' the first great graphic novel about what happened to a cartoonist's father during World War II. They're very different sorts of books, though, in both their means and their ends. 'Maus' is largely Vladek Spiegelman's own testimony amplified by the book's abject, minimal style and the allegory of its cat-and-mouse imagery, and is only secondarily about its creator's relationship with his father and his struggle with the enormity of his topic. Tyler's book is a vivid, affecting, eccentrically stylish frame built around a terrible silence." 'You'll Never Know' was released in three installments: 'Book I: A Good & Decent Man' in 2009. 'Book II: Collateral Damage' in 2010. 'Book III: Soldier's Heart' in 2012. Note the subtitle of Book III, 'Soldier's Heart,' which appropriately became the title when all three volumes were combined into one big book. 'Soldier's Heart' includes many extras, including additional 50 pages. The series received and Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council.Carol has two solo short story collections, The Job Thing (1993) and Late Bloomer (2005), both published by Fantagraphics. Studs Terkel called her first book The Job Thing "A Beaut!" And Andrew Arnold of Time magazine said, "While graphic novels have educated, entertained and provoked their audience over the course of their brief history, rarely have they inspired hope. Yet, that is exactly the effect of Carol Tyler's work... She leads by example."Tyler lives in Cincinnati and teaches a very lively and popular class on comics, graphic novels & sequential art at the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. Ms. Tyler is also a Residency artist in the Arts Learning Program with the Ohio Arts Council.

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Melody Murray's Books
Melody Murray's Books rated it 14 years ago
I enjoyed this as much as the first, maybe even more. I really like Tyler's illustrations, they telegraph her emotions in a way that matters more to me than the technical aspects of the craft. I like the way she weaves the current story into her dad's backstory, and the way she is able to make the e...
Melody Murray's Books
Melody Murray's Books rated it 14 years ago
8/2011-Stet.4/2010- Graphic novel/memoir in which Tyler attempts to get some information from her dad regarding what happened to him during World War II. It also spends some time on Tyler herself in the present as she deals with her husband's infidelity. I found her insights to be poignant and incis...
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