I saw this nifty logo a few days ago:
Ever since then, I've been wondering: is it too early to order a bumpersticker? (I know it won't be accurate until 20 January, but it would be fun to have one ready for action on the morning after Election Day...)
Children's author/illustrator Maurice Sendak came out yesterday, and I was wondering if he plans to revise and reissue some of his classic stories. Perhaps he could begin with this one:
WHERE THE WILDE THINGS ARE
"And now, let the Wilde rumpus start!"
(Oh, who am I kidding? Sendak's publisher would yank that book off the shelves faster than DC recalled the latest issue of All-$t@r Batman...)
The talented Jessica Hagy nails the GOP's head-in-the-sand theory of sex education:
If it works for the Palin family, it should work for everyone...right?
Carlin, John, et al. Masters of American Comics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005)
Masters of American Comics is the catalog of an exhibition (from UCLA's Hammer Museum, LA's Museum of Contemporary Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, The Jewish Museum, and The Newark Museum), and it sits quite nicely alongside other overviews of the field such as the three Smithsonian volumes (The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics, and The New Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Stories) and the recent anthology from Ivan Brunetti.
The master artists selected for this book are:
• Winsor McCay (Little Nemo)
• Lyonel Feininger (Kin-der-Kids)
• George Herriman (Krazy Kat)
• E.C. Segar (Popeye)
• Frank King (Walt and Skeezix)
• Chester Gould (Dick Tracy)
• Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon)
• Charles Schulz (Peanuts)
• Will Eisner (The Spirit)
• Jack Kirby (everything)
• Harvey Kurtzman (Mad)
• Robert Crumb (Zap, Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat)
• Art Spiegelman (Raw, Maus)
• Gary Panter (Jimbo)
• Chris Ware (Acme Novelty Library, Jimmy Corrigan)
The only choice I question is the inclusion of Gary Panter. While I don't wish to slight either Panter or his art, I can think of many artists--Cliff Sterrett, Burne Hogarth, Hal Foster, Carl Barks, Walt Kelly, Alex Toth, Steve Ditko, Jim Steranko, Neal Adams, Barry Windsor-Smith, Vaughn Bodē, Craig Russell (my personal favorite), Dave Sim, Frank Miller, or Bill Watterson--who are far more deserving of the title "master." (In fact, those are fifteen masters whose work could easily fill a sequel to this book.) The Atlas Comics list of "The Top 100 Artists of American Comic Books"--which omits foreign artists, underground artists, and comic strip artists--gives an idea of the breadth yet to be covered by future exhibitions and their catalogs. (Alex Raymond, Al Capp, Jack Cole, CC Beck, Wally Wood, Gil Kane, Joe Kubert, Garry Trudeau, Michael Gilbert, Bill Sienkiewicz, Mike Mignola, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Joe Sacco, and Adrian Tomine would be good choices for a third volume...)
The first half of the book is devoted to John Carlin's essay covering all fifteen artists; the second half consists of essays by other writers covering each artist in turn. The entire volume is well-illustrated throughout, with selections ranging from preliminary sketches to finished art to the published works. Some of the Little Nemo strips still seem cramped at full-page size--slightly more than 9"x12"--and would have benefited from being printed on fold-out pages; McCay's artwork is so detailed that anything less than tabloid size is an unfortunate compromise.
This 328-page large-format hardcover book was $48 when it first hit bookstores three years ago, but can now be found in remainder bins for $10. If you're at all interested in graphic fiction, go out and pick up a copy right now! I might not recommend this book for a comics neophyte, but it's a great coffee-table book that could start some conversations. Regardless of the artistic sensibilities of your house-guests, there should be something in here to catch an eye and spark a thought. This image from Art Spiegelman is one of many such potential conversation-starters:
I mentioned someecards a few weeks ago in this post; here's another of their great images (h/t: Wil Wheaton):
(Click here to see the final panel...)
Watchmen geekery: Check out the movie posters compared to the original comic-book ads by Dave Gibbons (h/t: flavordav at LJ scans_daily).
Miller, Frank & Jim Lee. All-Star Batman and Robin, Volume 1 (New York: DC Comics, 2008)
For a more modern take on Batman than that of the Moore/Bolland tale The Killing Joke, I checked out the first collection (issues #1-9) of the Frank Miller/Jim Lee All-Star Batman & Robin series. Miller has taken his perspective on the beginning and end of Batman's career (Year One and Dark Knight, respectively) and applied it to his nascent partnership with Robin. The series begins about a year after Year One, just before the murder of Dick Grayson's parents, and shows us how Batman befriends the young orphan and begins transforming him from an grief-stricken gymnast into a costumed crimefighter. William Gatevackes reviewed issues #1-3 for PopMatters, and faulted Miller's characters:
"The book is filled to the brim with one negative character after another, which wouldn't be a problem if they were developed more and written better. But instead of being hard-boiled, they're half-baked."
I have to give some weight to his complaint, because Miller's characterization is pretty thin even after a half-dozen more issues (although the denouement after issue #9's tussle with Green Lantern is a good omen). His scripts give us a cocky and borderline out-of-control Batman, who often seems as dangerous and unbalanced as his opponents. He's almost a caricature of the Dark Knight Batman, as this much-publicized (and mocked) exchange from issue #2 shows:
Perhaps because this particular usage garnered so much attention, "goddamn" was re-used many times later in the series; here is the funniest example (from issue #7):
It's as good an illustration as any that Miller doesn't take the series so seriously that he omits levity from his script. The humor--such as Wonder Woman's over-the-top imperiousness, for example--clashes somewhat with Miller's noir-ish narration, which works less well here than in his previous books. The typographic and color changes between characters serve to differentiate the changes in narration adequately, but the characters themselves are still far less fleshed-out that they should be by this point in the series.
Despite penciller Jim Lee's superstar reputation, the art doesn't grab me the way it apparently does so many comics fans; it's well-finished by Scott Williams and sublimely colored by Alex Sinclair, but it strikes me as rather sterile. (Not that the pools of blood from Dick's parents--or the numerous flying teeth and broken bones from the many fight scenes--are sterile, but most of the art just doesn't involve me emotionally in the story.) Van Jensen's review at ComicMix echoes my assessment:
The biggest problem here really is the creative team, as Lee's art represents the superhero norm. His clean, highly detailed and gregarious style evokes the action-heavy, reader-friendly adventure comics. There is nothing dark or edgy about his work, and so paired with Miller's script it creates a sense of cognitive dissonance. These two do not match.I can only wonder if Miller's script would be more effective paired with his art, all harsh lines and heavy contrasts. His successes have all come in books that he's either drawn himself or teamed with a similarly gritty artist.
Despite my complaints about the book, I'll still be queued up to buy the second volume as soon as it's released. Miller and Lee haven't created the perfect Batman story in All-Star Batman and Robin, but it's compelling enough to command one's attention.
Russian novelist and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died at the age of 89. Although awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, Solzhenitsyn did not receive his award until being charged with treason and exiled from the Soviet Union upon publication of his magnum opus The Gulag Archipelago several years later. Solzhenitsyn's undelivered 1970 lecture meditates on capital-A Art, with this wonderful passage:
It is we who shall die - art will remain. And shall we comprehend, even on the day of our destruction, all its facets and all its possibilities?Not everything assumes a name. Some things lead beyond words. Art inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual experience. Through art we are sometimes visited - dimly, briefly - by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational thinking.
Like that little looking-glass from the fairy-tales: look into it and you will see - not yourself - but for one second, the Inaccessible, whither no man can ride, no man fly.
Moore, Alan & Brian Bolland. Batman: The Killing Joke (The Deluxe Edition) (New York: DC Comics, 2008)
In honor of the new Dark Knight film--featuring Heath Ledger's final (complete) film role--I revisited a classic from the Batman comics canon: the Alan Moore/Brian Bolland tale The Killing Joke. The newly recolored hardcover "Deluxe Edition" may seem unnecessarily extravagant at $18 for a 46-page story, but its brilliance outweighs its brevity. Van Jensen's ComixMix review says:
The Killing Joke is without question one of the greatest encounters between Batman and his nemesis, and the real reason is that the story serves both as a zenith for the Joker's depravity and for his pathos. [..] It makes a Joker that's more real, and more terrifying.
The Killing Joke isn't nearly substantial enough to be classified as a graphic novel, but it's a very successful short story and a great example of what talented creators can produce within the comics medium. (This edition also includes an 8-page Batman tale, "An Innocent Guy," from Batman: Black & White. Bolland wrote, drew, and colored this story; it fits well with The Killing Joke, and helps add a little more bang for the buck in this slim volume.)
I read the new Killing Joke side-by-side with the original version, and noted a few minor artistic revisions: the yellow oval around the symbol on Batman's chest is gone, and Bolland admits that "every page has something slightly different on it from The Killing Joke of 20 years ago" (such as the inclusion of a new background figure in one of the panels--can you find it?). Heidi MacDonald discusses the coloring at Publishers Weekly, and Jon Haehnle has several well-chosen recoloring comparisons here. My favorite compare-and-contrast example is this one from the Joker's origin sequence:
While John Higgins did a dramatic job with the original colors, Bolland goes for more contrast (and for bleeding eyes, as many observers have noted):
I'm largely a fan of the newer, more subdued color scheme, although Higgins' more expressive work on the original wasn't bothersome either then or now. Bolland's scene-to-scene transitions remain some of the best I've ever seen, being almost uniformly excellent. Here are the two transitions (pp. 6-8) which bookend the Joker's flashback from his purchase of a dilapidated circus to an incident with his wife about a failed nightclub gig:
After she consoles him, the Joker snaps back to the present:
The first and last panels of the story are identical, which ties the story together nicely. (I wish the Deluxe Edition had preserved the original use of the rain-puddle image on the endpapers, rather than using sickly green.)
Is The Killing Joke the perfect Batman/Joker story? No, although it's one of the best I've ever read. Batman's reaction on the last page nearly ruined the ending of the story for me, seeming quite out of character. <SPOILER> A silently dismissive response from Batman would have been more appropriate and would have echoed the tale's opening in a very intriguing manner. However, doing so may have required changing the story's title.</END SPOILER> The overall excellence of the rest of the book is still thrilling and explains why I--and, apparently, many others--still hold The Killing Joke in high esteem since its initial release two decades ago.
I would have more trouble believing that it's really been twenty years since The Killing Joke came out, but that same time period also saw the Grant Morrison/Dave McKean Arkham Asylum, and the Frank Miller/David Mazzuccelli Batman: Year One story. (Miller's seminal The Dark Knight Returns is slightly older at 22 years; without the reinvigoration of the Batman franchise provided by it--and, of course, by The Killing Joke--we may not have seen the 1989 Tim Burton film or any of its successors.)
The legacy of Bob Kane lives on!
[chronology errors fixed]
This interactive Venn diagram from Slate shows the power of information design to illuminate the Bush scandals:
Very well done...bravo!
Seemingly lost in the Joker-worship and box-office-gross-hype for The Dark Knight is the trailer for Watchmen that preceded it. Like many (most?) other comic-book geeks, I loved the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons Watchmen graphic novel. The choice of Zack Snyder as director for the Watchmen motion picture is potentially problematic given some of the issues with Frank Miller's 300, but I was nonetheless excited by the costume designs released a few months ago. The Watchmen trailer (released last week) looks quite spectacular, and gives me hope for a good film:
Entertainment Weekly's "Exclusive First Look" cover story displays an array of adjectival effusions about the book
• "the smartest, most subversive superhero story ever created"
• "Watchmen is many things -- a jittery expression of Cold War anxiety, a chilling meditation on human nature, an intricate murder mystery"
• "a piercing deconstruction of superhero mythology told with a sophistication unprecedented for the genre"
but more interesting is the link from the EW website to iTunes, where you can download the complete first issue of Watchmen done in "motion comics" style. Jamie Trecker at Newsarama eviscerates the animated-comics attempt, calling it "simultaneously beguiling and repellent...it's as mesmerizing as a car crash." I wouldn't quite equate it with a disaster, but it's an artistic failure even if it fulfills its purpose as a marketing tool.
(One aspect left unmentioned is the implication of the episode's 25-minute running time. The pacing was pretty much spot-on, which when applied to the 12-issue series would yield a five-hour film. One wonders what Snyder will cut from the novel--and restore for the Director's Cut DVD?--in order to keep the film's running time under 3 hours.)
At 3:33pm local time (UTC+1) today, an organ in Halberstadt Germany changed from one chord to another. The musical piece being played, John Cage's "As Slow as Possible," began nearly seven years ago and will continue for the next six centuries. Dale McGowan explained this unusual musical performance to his young daughter Delaney this way:
"It started playing seven years ago on September 5th, 2001. But the music starts with a rest -- a silence in music -- so the first thing you heard was nothing! For twenty months!""Haha! Weird!"
"And right in the middle of that silence -- you were born."
"Awesome," she whispered.
She was right. Somehow, juxtaposing her birth and that silence was awesome. Even better: The bellows sprung to life on that day in September, and pumped away for twenty months as the only sound in the church. Once again, music without music.
"Then one day in the middle of the winter, when you were one and a half, the first notes started to play. Hundreds of people gathered in the little church to hear the notes start. Most of the time, though, the notes are playing with no one there. Little weights hold down the keys. Then every two years or so, it's time for the notes to change again, and people come from around the world to hear it."
"And it's still playing right now?"
"Yep, it's playing right now. And here's the thing: It will be playing on the moment you graduate from high school and when you graduate from college. It will be playing when you get your first job, when you get married, and when your kids are born.
"The music that started the year you were born will still be playing at the end of your life. It will be playing when your grandchildren are born and when they die, and their grandchildren, and their grandchildren, and on and on, for 639 years."
McGowan mentions a NYT piece that's useful in a factual way, but isn't nearly as inspirational as his post. Thanks to his thought-provoking post, I now want to make two musical pilgrimages to Germany: the first to experience Wagner's entire Ring Cycle at the Bayreuth Festival, and the second to visit Halberstadt for a chord change in Cage's "As Slow as Possible."
I'm late in posting this, but I didn't want to let it slip:
Alison Bechdel has a four-page graphic essay in the latest issue (the 1000th, celebrating "The New Classics") of Entertainment Weekly. It's a nice piece on the subject of compulsory reading, which she posted here on her blog. Also interesting to fans of the graphic form is EW's list of "The 100 Best Books of the Last 25 Years." EW is generally friendly to graphic novels, and this list is no exception; here are the six that made the list:
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
While I've only read a smattering of the text-only books on EW's list, I'm 5-for-6 with the graphic novels (I would be batting 1.000, but I've only read parts of Sandman). EW might have considered a few others as well:
Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo)
Barefoot Gen (Keiji Nakazawa)
Black Hole (Charles Burns)
Blankets (Craig Thompson)
Bone (Jeff Smith)
Cerebus (Dave Sim/Gerhard)
Dark Knight (Frank Miller)
From Hell (Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell)
Love and Rockets (Los Bros. Hernandez)
Palestine (Joe Sacco)
Sin City (Frank Miller)
Understanding Comics (Scott McCloud)
V for Vendetta (Alan Moore/David Lloyd)
300 (Frank Miller)
Wordle uses Java to generate an image from whatever text you input (h/t: Yet Another Comics Blog). It's basically a tag cloud, but cooler because it's more configurable (you can change the font and the colors, vary the number of words and the layout, etc.). Here's Bertrand Russell's "Why I Am Not a Christian" all Wordle-ified:
Kudos to developer Jonathan Feinberg for generating such a delightful typographic time-sink!
If you're a data visualization junkie like I am--if you appreciate well-designed information graphics, drool over HistoryShots posters, and worship at the altar of Edward Tufte--then you should check out the Flowing Data website. As they put it:
FlowingData explores how statisticians, designers, computer scientists, and others are using data to help us understand more about ourselves and our surroundings.
There's plenty of good design there: the kind that clarifies and enhances information, rather than distracts from it. (I added FD to my RSS reader immediately upon seeing it for the first time.)
This triptych made be laugh, but I think Pope Ratzi is superfluous:
The contrast between Obama and McCain is wonderful, and I would *so* buy that as a t-shirt!
Teach the Controversy has some subtly hilarious t-shirts (h/t: Jim Downey at Unscrewing the Inscrutable and PZ Myers at Pharyngula) which parody the anti-science mentality that urges us to "teach the controversy" where none exists. This Satan-burying-fossils-to-deceive-us design is my favorite:
While you're there, check out Amorphia Apparel and Science! as well; there are many more clever designs, such as this one:
Here is a classic Tom Toles cartoon (h/t: Bay of Fundie, who makes sport of the wingnuts who claim that "Obama is the Anti-Christ"):
Obama has a new website, Fight the Smears, (h/t: Sarah Lai Stirland at Wired) that looks to be a rapid-response way to squash the Swift-Boat-style lies as soon as they begin circulating.
I wish his campaign good luck in trying to stay ahead of the slime...
...and then I tell myself, "I should blog that." So now I have:
If you found that as funny as I did, visit Ironic Sans for more.
Thomas, Roy. Stan Lee's Amazing Marvel Universe: Listen to Stan Lee Comment on 50 Legendary Marvel Moments (New York: Sterling, 2006)
The combination of text by Roy Thomas and audio annotations by Stan Lee in Stan Lee's Amazing Marvel Universe covers many highlights of Marvel's stable of superheroes, from the beginning (Ditko's Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, Don Heck's Iron Man, Bill Everett and Wally Wood's Daredevil) through the middle period (John Buscema's Silver Surfer, Steranko's reinventions of Captain America and Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, Neal Adams' draftsmanship on The Avengers' Kree-Skrull War) as well as some later pieces (Frank Miller's revitalized Daredevil and Moebius' Silver Surfer).
Much of the artwork in this book was created by one artist who doesn't get nearly enough credit among all the Stan-Lee-centric hype: the incomparable Jack "King" Kirby! Without Kirby, most of Marvel's early successes (The Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor, Sgt. Fury, The Avengers--including the return of Kirby's 1941 co-creation Captain America--and The X-Men) would have had a far less dynamic existence, if any at all. Stan Lee, always the company's voice--literally, in this book--received the King's share of the credit, despite Kirby's irreplaceable visual contributions and often unrecognized co-writing.
Milo, George. The Comics Journal Library, Volume 1: Jack Kirby (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2002)
One attempt to correct the historical record is the first issue of The Comics Journal Library series, which focuses on Jack Kirby's contributions. Without Kirby, it is not unreasonable to suspect that there would likely be no comics industry today. After his first two decades in the industry--including his co-creation of Captain America--Kirby was responsible for most of the 1960s Marvel pantheon (listed above) as well as a great deal of early-1970s work for DC (OMAC, Kamandi, The Demon, and his epic The Fourth World), a triumphant return to Marvel (The Eternals, 2001, Machine Man, Devil Dinosaur, Black Panther) and some later work for Pacific Comics (Captain Victory, Silver Star) in the 1980s.
What is difficult to quantify even from a career this long--and a list of successes this extensive--is the extent of Kirby's indelible influence on the comics medium. Frank (Sin City) Miller takes a stab at it in "God Save the King:"
In the history of American comic books, there has been no single talent of greater importance and influence than that of Jack Kirby. It would be impossible to exaggerate his contribution to the evolution of the superhero, or to calculate exactly how much he personally advanced the art form. [...] Single-handedly, he developed the visual dialect, tone and spirit of the modern superhero comic. He brought a sense of operatic drama and mythological scope to a genre that was fat, bloated, old and dying. It could easily be argued that his vigorous creative lifeblood kept the comics industry alive through decades of editorial infertility, apathetic management and dwindling distribution.(pp. 96-7, Frank Miller, The Comics Journal #105, February 1986)
A compilation of interviews with Kirby and essays on his work, this volume is illustrated quite liberally with Kirby's artwork: The Fantastic Four and The Fourth World are featured most heavily, along with a smattering of early work, sketches, and the pencil images from "Street Code," Kirby's autobiographical story about his childhood in New York's Lower East Side.
In a very real sense, every comic-book shop in America is a shrine to the legacy of Jack Kirby; these two books--one more so than the other--help to show why.
The webcomic Overcompensating has a great cartoon today; here's the first panel:
Click here to read the rest!
Darnall, Steve & Alex Ross. Uncle Sam (New York: DC Comics, 1998)
http://www.amazon.com/Uncle-Sam-Steve-Darnall/dp/156389436X/
In honor of Memorial Day, I'm looking back at Uncle Sam, the two-issue 1997 mini-series by Steve Darnall (writer) and Alex Ross (artist) that took on the issue of American patriotism in an engaging and thought-provoking way. (The two issues were collected in both paperback and hardcover volumes.) The collections feature a six-page essay from Darnall and four pages of Ross' sketches and supplementary paintings. Greg Plantamura's annotations to Uncle Sam (parts one and two) may be useful for many (most?) readers who are overwhelmed by the numerous historical quotations and allusions.
Ross renders the title character very closely to that of James Montgomery Flagg's iconic "I Want You" military recruiting poster, which is an appropriate choice for a work this laden with symbolism: a lawn jockey lectures Sam about lynchings, and he has discussions with the living representations of Great Britain, Soviet Russia, and his American predecessor Columbia. This passage (pages 37-39, click to enlarge) shows the electoral celebration of Senator Lou Cannon (modeled after Rush Limbaugh) and the effect of his transparent doubletalk on Uncle Sam and other protesters:
As edgy as the book itself is, I suppose it's not too surprising that the editors didn't push their audience a little farther by including this Ross image of Uncle Sam from The Village Voice (19-25 November 2003):
(Ross has a sketch of it here on his website.) It's a beautifully direct image that carries a great deal of iconic weight; if it were offered as a poster or a t-shirt, I'd definitely buy one (it appears to have been sold as a 500-copy print, but I've never seen one for sale).
The question of what constitutes patriotism is the heart of the book, as this must be considered by the reader before the book's final pages of dueling Uncle Sams--and thus dueling conceptions of patriotism--can be understood. The patriotism of Uncle Sam is often--as in the Village Voice cover--a provocative stance, a challenge for us to live up to the ideals that our founding documents espouse. It thus denies the flag-waving, slogan-chanting, lapel-pin-wearing, deity-praising, jingoistic pseudo-patriotism that is often served in its place by politicians, pundits, and their media allies.
Not that this will come as a surprise to any reader of the book, but the following exchange from The Comics Journal (#223, May 2000, pp. 38-73), fixes writer Steve Darnall's and artist Alex Ross' position on the political spectrum:
[Chris] Brayshaw: Uncle Sam has what I would identify as a stridently leftist political viewpoint, which is one that I have some small sympathy to. Is it an accurate reflection of your personal politics or of Steve Darnall's personal politics?[Alex] Ross: Yeah, we're pretty much lefties. But at the same time, we've been caught in arguments with people who have said that this is too much leftist rhetoric. When we will say, "Wait a minute. Every historical issue that we bring to bear in that story, everything that we show you, that's all a part of real history." (p. 52)
Leaving aside the issue of history and its interpretation, Uncle Sam is not without its flaws. While Ross' panel design is very effective, his page design is somewhat less so; it's as if, by way of analogy, his design thinking often stops at the atomic level and rarely considers the larger molecular issues. This may partially be a result of his decision to use full-bleed images as page backgrounds rather than the white of the paper; for most artists, the white gutters between panels serves to simultaneously separate the panels from each other and unify the page as a whole.
Uncle Sam is, on the whole, a satisfying book. Ross' rendering is first-rate, his color sense is delightful, and he has produced (with writer Steve Darnall) a solid piece of storytelling that doesn't sacrifice the dramatic for the didactic. Ross turns our national icon into a superhero of sorts, but one thoroughly humanized by the struggles of the preceding centuries rather than being blinded by them.
links:
Nate Solloway's review of Uncle Sam at Sojourners
R.C. Baker's "American Gods" from the Village Voice
We all know that Bil Keane's Family Circus comic strip is a waste of ink and paper, but these two sites (The Other Family and The Free-Floating Dysfunctional Family Circus) improve his trite hackwork immensely. A big tip of the hat goes to Bay of Fundie for mentioning (here and here) these great parodies...I wish the actual comics pages in the newspaper were this funny!
Today is Free Comic Book Day:
Free Comic Book Day is a single day when participating comic book shops across North America and around the world give away comic books absolutely free to anyone who comes into their stores.
Go to the FCBD store locator to find a participating retailer; visit them to receive one of these comic books, which are reviewed here by Douglas (Reading Comics) Wolk.
On the way home, you could stop by a movie theatre to see Iron Man, which is already garnering some solid reviews (check out Gizmodo for an example). It appears to be a banner year for comic-book movies, with The Incredible Hulk (13 June), Hellboy II (11 July), and The Dark Knight (18 July) on the way. ComicBookMovie has more news about big-screen comic-book stories, but remember two things: the movies wouldn't exist without the comic books, and there is a lot more to the comics medium than superheroes.
Visit your local retailer to find out more.
...and Jonathan Yeo has the picture to prove it (h/t: PZ Myers at Pharyngula):
Artist/sculptor Pete Goldlust does some nice work, but his carved crayons are simply enchanting (h/t: Andrew Sullivan). While I appreciate the variety of his intricate carvings, my favorite is the homage to Brancusi's "Endless Column," entitled "Endless Crayon:"
Russell, P. Craig. Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, Vol. 1: The Selfish Giant & The Star Child (New York: NBM Publishing, 1992)
Russell, P. Craig. Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, Vol. 2: The Young King & The Remarkable Rocket (New York: NBM Publishing, 1994)
Russell, P. Craig. Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, Vol. 3: The Birthday of the Infanta (New York: NBM Publishing, 1998)
Russell, P. Craig. Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, Vol. 4: The Devoted Friend & The Nightingale and the Rose (New York: NBM Publishing, 2004)
Russell's art beckoned to me from the bookshelf where this set has been sitting for some time; I was finally unable to resist. These four volumes collect seven of Oscar Wilde's nine fairy tales:
Opus 33. The Selfish Giant (1992)
Opus 34. The Star Child (1992)
Opus 37. The Young King (1993)
Opus 38. The Remarkable Rocket (1993)
Opus 44. The Birthday of the Infanta (1997)
Opus 49. The Devoted Friend (2004)
Opus 54. The Nightingale and the Rose (2004)
The series is not yet complete; the two remaining tales ("The Happy Prince" from Wilde's book of the same name, and "The Fisherman and His Soul" from The House of Pomegranates) will reportedly appear in a fifth volume. After that, I hope for an omnibus collection of all five volumes in order to have all of Wilde's delightful tales--with Russell's peerless art--within one binding. At well under 200 pages, it should not be prohibitively expensive, even at this large 8 ½"x11" size.
Each of the stories is well-drawn, well-paced, and--not surprisingly, considering their provenance--well-written. Russell wisely stays close to Wilde's words--the silent dream sequences from "The Young King" are the most substantial departures--and has adapted the tales to the comics medium with his characteristically solid storytelling technique. Russell's layouts are never flashy or bombastic, but do exactly what they should do: tell good stories. His dramatic sense never falters, and his linework never fails to delight.
LINKS: Greg McElhatton has a nice review of volume four at Read About Comics, as does Joe Palmer at Gay League. The publisher's page for the entire series is here, and an alternate illustrated version is online here.
....until the release of Zack Snyder's motion picture adaptation of the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel Watchmen. Snyder posted some character images this morning to whet our appetites.
After Snyder's elegant visualization of Frank Miller's 300, which I reviewed here, I have high hopes for Watchmen, but also some trepidation that the novel's best qualities may not translate well into the cinematic medium.
update (12:43pm):
Here are the character photos along with images from the novel, for purposes of comparison. (Please, no one mention Mystery Men...)
Many thanks to Jason Kottke for linking to this YouTube video of the Star Wars movie credits done in the style of Saul Bass. (Saul Bass did some of the most memorable film credits ever, including Anatomy of a Murder, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Psycho.)
Great stuff!
The cartoonist of xkcd doesn't know me, but this is nonetheless spot-on:
An article at Create Digital Music titled "Building a Musical Ensemble Out of Ford Focus Car Parts" (h/t: Make Magazine) is a fascinating look at, well, creating music from car parts. Check out the short video (one minute) and the long one (three minutes). It's like a chamber-music version of Stomp:
If Ford would put that much creativity and ingenuity into their cars, their finances might be in better shape...
This two-parter by Chris (Liars for Jesus) Rodda at Daily Kos (here and here) on pending House Resolution 888. What is HR 888? Its page on the Library of Congress website describes its purpose as:
"Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as `American Religious History Week' for the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith."
The resolution's method of "affirming the rich spiritual and religious history" involves a great deal of misrepresentation, as Rodda demonstrates. He analyzes many of the resolution's 75 "whereas" statements, some of which are sourced to prominent Christianist pseudo-historians David Barton and William Federer, and expounds upon the errors in HR 888's treatment of: the Founders' biblical citations, the history of the Liberty Bell, and deity references in state constitutions. Rodda also corrects errors in their use of quotations from Adams, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, and even Herbert Hoover.
This resolution is a nightmare, and Rodda suggests the following action be taken:
Let your representative know that if they do not oppose this resolution, they will either be demonstrating their own lack of knowledge of our country's history, or, worse yet, will be admitting that they are willing to be complicit in the perpetuation of lies in order to further the Christian nationalist agenda.
On a lighter note, this Cectic comic strip tackles the same legislative inanity from a humorous perspective:
Scott Horton writes at Harper's (as does Timothy Noah at Slate) about the history of a painting Bush brought with him from Texas and hung in the Oval Office:
Bush's memo to his staff said this:
When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.
(Charles Wesley wrote the hymn "A Charge to Keep I Have," which Bush used as the title for the "autobiography" that Mickey Herskowitz and Karen Hughes wrote for him.)
Horton and Noah both quote from Jacob Weisberg's new book The Bush Tragedy (which was preceded by this Salon article by Sidney Blumenthal):
[Bush] came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled "The Slipper Tongue," published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors.
Horton concludes:
Bush's inspiring, prosyletizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency.
Also appropriate to mention is the fact that there are 360 days and 2 hours remaining in the Bush occupation, at which time he will very much resemble a smooth-talking horse thief fleeing a lynch mob.
update (10:42am):
Credit should go to Jonathan Hutson, who discussed the painting ("Horseshit! Bush and the Christian Cowboy" at Talk 2 Action) in May 2006--a year before Blumenthal wrote his piece at Salon.
Last night, I received a chain email with some (gorgeous!) images under this heading:
"This is very unique - but seriously..some people have wwwaaaaayyy too much time on their hands...."
The images, two of which I have included below, were described as: "Entries for an art contest at the Hirshorn Modern Art Gallery [sic] in DC. The rule was that the artist could use only one sheet of paper."
I thought many of the pieces seemed rather...similar, so I did a little research online. I found out that they weren't contest entries, and didn't have anything to do with the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum. All of these amazing paper sculptures were created by one person: Danish artist Peter Callesen. Check out his website for more examples of his work.
