It’s what you have been waiting for! Two more pages of On Beyond Zarathustra! (When oh when will Z stop talking already? Not soon, it seems!)
Two pages isn’t much. Let me recommend some other comics I’ve been enjoying. But first, let me muse briefly on the culture of serial comics. In Olden Times there were newspapers, and I do miss the Funny Pages. Even “Beetle Bailey”. (It just has to be a page. It doesn’t have to be funny.) I also miss reading the better sorts of comics we got in the alt free weeklies in places I used to live: Chicago, the Bay Area. I miss “Ernie Pook’s Comeex” and “Life In Hell”. I don’t miss newsprint, per se, although the smell and mess is nice; but I miss that you get it regular, a bite at a time. The web is full of good comics of course, and some great ones. I miss “American Elf”. There’s “XKCD” and “Hark! A Vagrant” and “Penny Arcade“. It’s not like I can’t just bookmark and RSS feed to keep up with more. But I often don’t. I feel that my happiness suffers ever-so-marginally, for lack of daily comics. So I’ve taken to Tapastic as a convenient comics aggregator. It wants to be the YouTube of comics, which ain’t it. And they want their mobile thing to have some keys&coins micropayment system I think is never going to fly. Either that or I’m very confused. But for the simple yet satisfactory purpose of building your own Funny Pages, for daily consumption – it’s pretty great. If your series has, like, 200 episodes, the thing remembers where you left off. A bookmark! How convenient. Without further ado, some comics I’ve been enjoying.
First a pair that are perhaps inspired by that “Over The Garden Wall” ‘everyone’s noses are magenta triangles’ aesthetic that’s going around. And/or by “Adventure Time” – “The Last Giant”:
And – this one is really good! – “The Legend of Val”. Don’t let the magenta noses fool you! This ain’t just for kids, I am impressed by it’s capacity to start weird and just keep dialing it up.
If you loved Samurai Jack, there is a very reasonable chance that you will really like “Hunter Black”:
Also, “JensK”. Not quite a gag strip, not quite “Slice of Life”. I like the gnarly watercolor Quentin Blake-ish style.
{ 7 comments }
kidneystones 07.01.16 at 12:41 pm
Geoffrey Hill is dead.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/britains-greatest-poet-geoffrey-hill-dead-at-84/
Adam Roberts 07.01.16 at 1:55 pm
You’ve seen this? Something in the water at the moment, perhaps.
http://www.neatorama.com/2016/07/01/Strong-Is-The-Force-Of-Course-Luke-And-The-Little-Green-Man/
John Holbo 07.01.16 at 2:43 pm
Ha! The trick with writing like Seuss is that you have to keep it up!
Fun fact: one of my original plans was to retell “Call of Cthulhu” as “Well, what would you do if Cthulhu called YOU!” A Cat In The Hat parody. But someone already did something close enough:
http://drfaustusau.deviantart.com/gallery/32992770/The-Call-of-Cthulhu
His poetry limps at points, but the basic conception is sound.
PJW 07.01.16 at 7:31 pm
I would love to see you try Blood Meridian!
Doctor Science 07.02.16 at 4:09 pm
I’m just here looking for someone to explain the Australian election.
Ragweed 07.05.16 at 1:49 pm
John – totally off-topic, but there is a Trump is a Nietzchian article in the NYT. I would love to read your response.
John Holbo 07.06.16 at 5:02 pm
Ha, good question Ragweed. I’m on the road right now but, short version: Trump is like N’s ‘blond beasts’ from Genealogy. That is, he’s pre-Christian. Wehner discusses him as if he’s a post-Christian Nietzschean. Nah, that credits him with too much inwardness.
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