Comics

Remember a couple years back? I made some sort of a kind of a graphical fiction, Squid & Owl?

I made it into a book. Mom liked it a lot! A few other people did, too. Fast forward a couple years: Comixology comes along, and it’s a great platform for digital comics. And, finally, they started allowing independent submissions. And, long story short, they accepted Squid & Owl and now it’s sitting proudly in the Staff Picks section. Only 99 cents! 106 pages. Such a bargain! You should buy it. You should give it a lot of stars. Help me achieve the fame I so richly deserve.

(Speaking of which: it’s getting harder and harder to impress my 11-year old daughter, but this time I did it. Because Atomic Robo is on Comixology, and she really, really likes Atomic Robo. So I must be cool.)

I’m reading a book on Mannerism [amazon] and stumbled on a pair of amusing quotes. The first, from Alberti’s On Painting (1435) really ought to be some kind of epigraph for The Hawkeye Initiative. (What? You didn’t know about it. Go ahead and waste a few happy minutes there. It’s hilarious. Now you’re back. Good!)

As I was saying, here’s Alberti, warning us that, even though good istoria painting should exhibit variety and seem alive with motion, you shouldn’t go all Escher Girl boobs + butt Full-Monty-and-then-some:

There are those who express too animated movements, making the chest and the small of the back visible at once in the same figure, an impossible and inappropriate thing; they think themselves deserving of praise because they hear that those images seem alive that violently move each member; and for this reason they make figures that seem to be fencers and actors, with none of the dignity of painting, whence not only are they without grace and sweetness, but even more they show the ingegno of the artist to be too fervent and furious [troppo fervente et furioso].

On the other hand, here’s a quote from Pietro Aretino, praising Vasari’s cartoon of “The Fall of Manna In The Desert”:

The naked man who bends down to show both sides of his body by virtue of its qualities of graceful power and powerful ease draws the eyes like a magnet, and mine were held until so dazzled that they had to turn elsewhere.

There’s no accounting for taste. [click to continue…]

You can download the first issue for free here. You can buy the rest somewhere like Comixology (I’m going to!) or get it from Amazon (although they appear to be out of stock). [click to continue…]

Couple weeks back BoingBoing had a guestpost by Maja D’aoust, praising the undersung artistry of Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest. I think this is right. Elfquest doesn’t get the credit it deserves. Proto-American manga, early independent comics self-publishing. Why doesn’t everyone who prides themselves about knowing comics feel obliged to have read a bit of Elfquest? I’m sure this is due in large part to geek culture bias in favor of fanboyish – as opposed to fangirlish – productions. (Dumb guy stuff can be the greatest stories ever told. Everyone knows that. But dumb girly stuff generally can’t catch a break. Chick lit just isn’t cool.) So I’m glad to see new Pini stuff presented on BoingBoing. More power to them!

Anyway, I bring a unique perspective to this issue because my daughters forced me to read them most of the online archive of Elfquest in nightly audiobook installments. (I think I managed to convince them to let me give up after “Two-Spear”.) I have seriously read a lot of Elfquest out loud, dude. And the main thing I learned is: it’s written quite well, as comics go. My daughters have also made me read them other comics. X-Men, Fantastic Four, Teen Titans. Most of that stuff doesn’t read out at all well, and very little reads out as well as Elfquest. Also, Elfquest is the sort of thing that you might think would be – erm – a bit inappropriate for really young children, what with high elves mating with wolves and all that. But if you’ve already read the kids Greek mythology – and a bunch of other mythologies I could mention – you know there’s no problem here, so long as you are judiciously indefinite about the mechanics of it, as the Pinis are. (There’s nothing explicit in these comics.) Little girls are uninterested in sex but are interested in babies, and animals, so stories in which strange creatures have hybrid family trees are interesting to them. It doesn’t end up being any more squicky than reading them D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths. (Not that I’m recommending you read your kid Elfquest, High Ones preserve us! That was a chore.)

It’s not the case that comics work as audiobooks to the extent that they are good comics, of course. Zoe is down with flu at the moment and I tried reading her some Tintin but it doesn’t work. Hergé is so good at storytelling in pictures that it’s hard to get the pacing right. Also, it sounds strange to read Snowy’s lines out loud. (Snowy ‘talks’ more than almost any other character, what with all those little asides.)

Atomic Robo reads out really well, on the other hand. As audiobook comics go, Robo is tops. Zoe gives it two thumbs up.

All Stan Lee stuff is just terrible. As Harrison Ford said to George Lucas: you can write this stuff, but you can’t say it.

A family friend, Susi, just turned 90. Since I’m home in Oregon, I attended the B-Day party. Her Jewish family got out of Germany in ’39 and she found herself a teenager in the US. Got an education, got married, raised a family. She was – is – an artist, and she ended up teaching. But she worked as a gag strip cartoonist in New York, from ’46 to ’50. I’m interested in the history of comics, so she loaned me a rather large file box (which I am being very careful with!) Lots of old clippings, old battered bristol board with typed captions taped on. Neat! [click to continue…]

Following up Henry’s post, my Dark Knight Rises take is this. The Nolan brothers are determined to make some kind of serious, dark, brooding, non-fascistic moral sense of Batman, and that’s just flat-out impossible. Can’t tell it that way without the basic story logic boxing you into a place you don’t want to be (as Henry says, there’s too much baked in the cake). If what the world needs is masked vigilantes behaving in this crazy way, then fascism needs a serious look-in as a political philosophy. But what we should really conclude is not that the moral sense of the film is fascist – or even aristocratic. Rather, we should conclude that the film makes no moral sense whatsoever. It conveys no moral message. It’s morally illegible. Lots of explosions and fighting. That’s it. [click to continue…]

Another follow-up to the last two posts about body images and beauty ideals. [click to continue…]

The Awl has an interesting piece about papercraft in prison. Obviously that’s the sort of thing boingboing would link to. Next week: prisoner-modded ‘steampunk’ shanks, stylized prison-breaks as YouTube responses to OK Go videos, and associated ‘yardsourced’ projects (Clinkstarter), with all the (brass) trimmings: ‘Help me fulfill my dream of building a giant dirigible in solitary confinement!’ ‘Help me turn my cell toilet into a working trebuchet!’ On a more serious note, the article neglects one of the most notorious episodes in prison papercraft history, from Action Comics #267: [click to continue…]

A follow-up post, I suppose. This sequel to the original 40-worst Liefeld drawings post is a wonder and a public service. But here’s the thing: like all good people, I love Jack Kirby and loath Rob Liefeld. But most of the criticisms of Liefeld – namely, it’s so, so anatomically wrong! – could be applied to Kirby. Why do all his characters look like someone poured a pot of ink down their foreheads? What are those things on the women’s cheeks that might be cheekbones but aren’t? But in the one case I feel affection and admiration, in the other, contempt and revulsion. [click to continue…]

Oh joy! “Gerald McBoing Boing”! “Rooty Toot Toot”! And thirtyplus other titles, many of which I’ve never seen! All these lovely old UPA cartoons are finally available on DVD – UPA: The Jolly Frolics Collection [amazon]. And, while I wait for my copy to arrive, I am reading When Magoo Flew: The Rise and Fall of Animation Studio UPA, by Adam Abraham. Obviously you’ve got to be a bit of a fanatic to want to read a whole book about UPA (but at least the Kindle edition is inexpensive, I see.)

You can read a short version of the UPA history on Wikipedia. Really short version: UPA was founded by disgruntled former employees of Uncle Walt who pioneered some simplified techniques while working for Uncle Sam, which – admixed with artistic ambition and modernist design sensibilities – led to some great animation. Then there was the Red Scare and they got into the Godzilla business and … well, more of a whimper than a bang. Ah, well. [click to continue…]

On the one hand, I’m glad DC is bringing out volume 1 of Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane [amazon]. I’m glad, too, that they aren’t bringing it out until after X-Mas. That way, I can’t give it to Belle as a present, which would be unwise. On the other hand, I can’t help thinking that an even better book might collect just the covers of all 137 issues, cataloguing all the ways in which – due to being too fat, or a ghost, or due to Pat Boone, or a lead cube on her head, or being a giant, or very small, or too highly evolved, or having over-educated green ape feet – Superman’s girlfriend [UPDATE: girl friend!] serially failed ever to become his wife, or even his girlfriend, I think. Fortunately, the internet provides. I don’t think I’ve ever actually read an issue of Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, but I can’t believe it could be as much fun as the covers promise. [click to continue…]

This conversation actually happened at our house just now. In truth, I was first lying in bed with the laptop and then addressing John from a somewhat lascivious position difficult to illustrate with stick figures. No, now you’re imagining something worse. Anyway, I think the xkcd couple should be able to afford a better desk and computer by now. Little thing that pulls out for your keyboard? What is it, 1996?
“I thought of the title! And I helped with Photoshop!”–John.

The question came up in comments to the sf and fantasy top 100 thread: take such debates seriously? Or not so much? Admittedly, it’s kind of like comics fans arguing about which heroes/titles deserve a reboot. (via Comics Alliance)

UPDATE: to judge from comments, some readers may have missed the point of the comics forum post, or failed to click over. The lengthy thread consists entirely of comics fans arguing self-righteously, enthusiastically, angrily, but above all, knowledgeably, about non-existent comics. They really keep the ball going.

“Alls I know is that if they manage to bring back Captain Hayseed and the Ramblin’ Rangers, I’m gonna Freak. Out. Molterstein’s run on that in the 50’s shaped my childhood. Too bad they can’t bring back Tony Modigliani for art, but I heard after that fourth lightning strike, his art really went downhill.”

“If you look at the shifted continents promotion where it says “worlds will change” you can see Hayseed’s symbol of the Haymaker where Asia should be. I bet it gets tied into the Century of Peril series though and Jason Tooth is writing it.”

Well, if you aren’t reading all the posts and comments about same-sex marriage over at the Corner – but why wouldn’t you be? wow, K. Lo – maybe you would be interested in some YA comics. Mercury, by Hope Larson, and Anya’s Ghost, by Vera Brosgol. I really have only one complaint, and it concerns Hope Larson’s art. When she draws people running … oh, I’ll just show you.

The right arm and the left leg should be forward. Or left arm and right leg. Opposites. She’s a good cartoonist. As Scott McCloud says in his blurb: “The best work to date from a powerful cartoonist.” So there! So I don’t know why she draws people running in this strange, unnatural way that the human body would never move in. The rest of the art is fine.

On we go. I bought both books for my older daughter, who is almost 10 – and for me, who am I kidding! Turns out they’re a bit too much for her. Somewhat mature teen themes – maybe PG-13 – also murder and ghosts. She can read them next year, or the year after. (Your 9-year old daughter might be harder-boiled than mine. I couldn’t say.) Well, I enjoyed them. But they sort of had the same plot. I’ll explain under the fold, thereby semi- but not really spoiling the plot(s). [click to continue…]