Tom Spurgeon interviews Matthew Silady on his MFA program at the California College Of The Arts. 

I met Matt in 2006 at an Isotope party when I visited San Francisco for the first and, unfortunately, only time. He gave me copies of the brilliant Homeless Channel, which if I recall was very much in style with—probably came out around the same time—as Jonathan Hickman’s The Nightly News. Silady’s dialogue really reminded me of Sorkin, but not in the Bendis-way of imitating Sorkin dialogue.

Anyway, I don’t really remember if there was anything that Matt may have mentioned regarding comics curriculum at the time I met him, but I remember him being a public school teacher and leaving it to work on comics. We caught up a few times over the years, once at Wizard World Chicago and at a later NYCC, but I haven’t seen or heard from him in quite a long time.

I really hate that about my life in this sense: great people who do interesting work and because we’re not in the same geographic circle but in the same kind of professional circle we don’t really get to talk that much. It’s a shame, but it’s my own fault that I don’t pay better attention. I knew he was doing something with college-level comics teaching, but I never took a deeper look mostly because things are constantly busy and one can only focus on so much but, yeah, I’m generally disappointed with myself. He’s a good guy and I’m really glad this program is taking off. There needs to be more programs like this in the university atmosphere and I feel like there is a growing community of college-based comics programs/classes developing around the country and I’m glad to be doing my very small part in the Adirondacks. 

Hopefully, the next time I’m in San Francisco I’ll be able to catch up with him.