Comments on: La-da-da-da-Daa

By: slolernr

slolernr — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 18:51:41 +0000

That was teh awesome, except that the Superman at 1:28 looked annoyingly like John Kerry.

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 01:25:43 +0000

bob is just upset because I don’t like Victor Mature movies.

By: bob mcmanus

bob mcmanus — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 01:06:45 +0000

“Who are you people?”

They are a lost generation, Gary. “The generation that forgot Fauvism.” it will be called. They were right to try to ban the damn things in the fifties.

By: theogon

theogon — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 01:05:38 +0000

John, dear, you’ve put me in geek heaven. This is why I visit this site.

By: Gary Farber

Gary Farber — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 00:10:00 +0000

Jeebus, you make me feel stupid. I look forward to the day I can afford to get video over the internets. I thought Ghost World was a great comic and a great movie.

Beyond that, if I had the bucks, I might like that stuff.

I remember why I stopped being able to buy comics: when they started costing more than twelve cents a piece. Who could follow the stuff, other than by borrowing, and such, after that? Who are you people?

By: Hazyl

Hazyl — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:40:44 +0000

Manga? Anime? Miyazaki? What do they have to do with fight-scenes in American comics? Or did you mean Flight? Speaking of which, some of the Flight artists have webcomics that are actually much more interesting than their work in the anthology. Kean Soo's Jellaby and Hope Larson's Salamander Dream are really charming (both are available here), Kazu Kibuishi's Copper is quietly brilliant and Derek Kirk Kim has been producing some of the best comics around for quite some time now. Oh and hello all! It's my first time posting a comment here though I've enjoyed readinging this blog for some time now. The Mieville seminar was brilliant.

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:43:00 +0000

I recently saw that Gorey has two new compilations. How did that happen without me noticing?

By: Ted Friedman

Ted Friedman — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:20:23 +0000

Thanks for the link – I love that video! It’s a great mixture of ironic detachment and heartfelt emotion – a postmodern mix I’ve always been a sucker for. The video works a lot better than a recent attempt at an “adult” Superman comic that got a lot of press: It’s a Bird by Steven Seagle. While that chose an autobiographical meta-route, “Superman Lay Broken” just digs deeper into the heart of the mythos. There’s an earnestness about it underneath the irony that reminds me of the great run Scott McCloud had on Superman Adventures, a kids-comic spinoff from the Saturday morning cartoon. Actually, Bruce Timm’s designs and Paul Dini’s scripts for those cartoons also often captured this delicate pop blend of self-aware iconography.

By: Ben Alpers

Ben Alpers — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 15:58:00 +0000

For those interested, Scott McCloud's introduction to the first Flight volume can be found here (thanks to the Internet Archive).

By: Maria

Maria — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 15:19:01 +0000

I went to Gothic Nightmares, too. I was a bit stunned by how puerile it all seemed. I'd take the Watchmen over it any day of the week.

By: Kip Manley

Kip Manley — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 14:16:37 +0000

Blame manga, too, but also anime, especially that darn Miyazaki, and even the Disney revival that started with Little Mermaid and ended wherever it did: Lion King, some would say, though I'm grumpy, and usually insist on Ashman's death. (Also, blame Brad Bird; Iron Giant was far, far more successful than Warner's accountants will ever know.) There's a number of Pixar animators in the Flight crew. —The strong roots in animation, I think, have a lot to do with how they can sidestep the cruft of comics qua Yankee comics and cut straight to the iconic heart of the matter. Anyway, think of Flight as maybe the Metal Hurlant of its particular revolution: awful pretty, thin on story, a few too many bits about conventionally pretty girls, mostly notice served that even more astonishing things are going on around it. —I'd link to Scott McCloud's intro to the first volume, where he elucidates his tribal theory (of comics, but also); it seems to have fallen off the web. So here's an old post quoting it at some length; and here's a photo of the placemat he sketched for us in San Deigo, which is pretty much identical to the one he sketched in Seattle that's mentioned. (The Griemas stuff is, by the way, a gloss.)

By: SusanC

SusanC — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 11:34:35 +0000

Yes, that video is very cool.

I recently went to the Gothic Nightmares exhibition at Tate Britain. It’s quite startling how many of the comic book cliches were already present in William Blake and Henry Fuseli – skin tight costumes, fight scenes …

I blame the Romantics.

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 09:36:04 +0000

Yep. Puny little J&B link didn’t do the trick. Try again.

By: rilkefan

rilkefan — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 09:07:17 +0000

Saw that a long time ago, so it's got to be a little bit viral - oh yeah, here. So much for my objection.