The highly esteemed Lynda Barry recently released What It Is, a combination of coming of age artistic autobiography, ruminations on art and creativity, and imaginary instruction manual for novice storytellers and artists. It’s a lovely looking book, as always impeccably produced by Drawn & Quaterly.
Barry has a highly developed aesthetic sense; the lavish collage […]

Tom Spurgeon of the indispensable Comics Reporter did something interesting yesterday. He put out an open critical challenge: ‘What is Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen about?’ Lots of comics readers and critics, including yours truly, have responded, and a good number of the answers are interesting, either in themselves or in what they tell […]

The picks of the week from around the web.
The Underground Hip Hop Collection. Check out this cool blog offering lots of great hip hop, especially from the early 90s, when hip hop was experiencing the kind of optimism combined with trepidation of becoming a major pop culture phenomenon. An astonishingly creative period. Bonus for comics […]

Just finished Dash Shaw’s Bottomless Belly Button, which I picked up after having been following the online serialisation of the still-in-progress “Bodyworld” for a while. Shaw is good, and he seems to really be hitting his stride. One thing is dropping a 700-odd page comic seemingly out of the blue, another is for it to […]

Den danske tegner Rikke Lindskov Loft, alias ‘Gwennafran’, har netop postet et indlæg ovre på Seriejournalens board, hvor hun kommenterer dele af den etablerede danske tegneseriekulturs forsømmelse af den nye mainstream: mangaen. Ansporet af Simon Petersens kommentar i sin seneste klumme om, at de unge manga-inspirerede tegnere glimrede ved deres fravær på forsommerens tegneseriefestival Komiks.dk, […]

The picks of the week from around the web.
L’affaire Siné. This is a good article on the firing of cartoonist Siné from French bi-weekly Charlie Hebdo, apparently over insulting the son of President Sarkozy, followed by allegations of anti-semitism, and provides some context to us who are puzzled how a magazine known as a bastion […]

A good deal is being written about the entertaining but rather haphazardly structured and at times unintentionally puzzling summer event from Marvel, Secret Invasion, but I haven’t seen anyone mention the one thing that immediately bothered me about the series: the completely unassuming and natural way in which the superheroes kill the Skrull enemies en […]

Isaac Hayes is gone. And not to Phoenix, this time. It’s a hard goodbye for this listener. Inspired by the great artists who sampled him — Public Enemy on “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”, Big Daddy Kane on “Smooth Operator”, The Jungle Brothers’ on “Behind the Bush”, Massive Attack on “One Love”, Compton’s […]

Andy Konky Kru has posted the following links to the Platinum Age Comics list concerning Joseph Franz von Goez’ 1783 comic Leonardo und Blandine, which I mentioned here the other day. One is an abstract from a conference on music theatre and opera at CUNY. It runs:
Thomas Betzwieser (Universität Bayreuth), Body and Gesture in 18th-Century […]

For those wishing to know more about the background of the madness unfolding in Georgia at the moment, this is a good article.

The picks of the week from around the web.
Lots this week:
New York Times: “The Trolls Among Us.” Great article on professional internet trolls. Whither Stewart Brand?
KRS-One & DJ Revolution: “The DJ”. Legendary MC Kris Parker is sounding better than he has in a long time on this sequel to his classic track “The MC”, breaking […]

For lige at trutte i mit eget horn, vil jeg anmode læsere af Weekendavisen om i denne uge at kaste et blik på den originale, danske version (med mindre revisioner) af min herværende artikel om Sebastiano del Piombo, og samtidig varmt anbefale at se den store retrospektive udstilling af hans værker, der pt. er […]

Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

Classic EC Comics artist Jack Kamen has just passed away at the age of 88. Although always understandably regarded as the weakest of the EC Artists, he was the most subversive in some ways. His wholesome illustrative style, and perennially healthy looking, mannequin-like characters doing nasty things to each other, in themselves act out a […]

Andy Konky Kru has posted the entirety of Joseph Franz von Goez’ 1783 comic Leonardo und Blandine over on his indispensible site for pre-modern and early modern comics, Bugpowder. And It’s a treat: while by no means great art, its tight sequencing, relying on histrionic moment-to-moment renderings of the characters’ love and grief, is fascinatingly […]