Utilitarian Review 7/24/10

On HU

This week started out with Suat’s reply to Ken Parille’s discussion of R. Crumb’s Genesis.

Then commenter/guest blogger Alan Choate replied to Suat.

And Suat replied to Alan. (Alan is planning a guest post for next week as well.)

Also this week, I talked about Gary Groth, Victorian dresses, and comics criticism. A huge comments thread resulted.

Kinukitty complained about the lack of sex in Otodama.

Richard Cook complained about the excess of nostalgia in Flash Rebirth.

I discussed Marston/Peter’s original Wonder Woman 21 in terms of doll stories and atomic silliness.

And Caroline Small posted a gallery of images from John Vassos’ Ultimo.

Also, this thread about elitism and standards and aesthetics and ethics just kept going, with Domingos Isabelinho, Matthias Wivel and Charles Reece weighing in.

Utilitarians Everywhere

I look at some crappy super-hero comics at Splice Today.

Marvel has ret-conned and alt-universed Spider-Man so many times it’s a wonder poor Peter Parker has enough brain cells left to pull his red tights out of the way when his nether web spinner incontinently dribbles. In theory this story is about an exact duplicate who’s replaced our favorite web-slinger, but I prefer to think that it’s just the same old Peter bashed one time too many in the head by the latest creative team and trying desperately to recover.

I’ve got a short note about Peanuts in Shaenon Garrity’s discussion of comics that make people happy.

At Madeloud I review the latest blackened doom slab from Ruins of Beverast.

At the Chicago Reader I have a brief blurb about an exhibit on good design.

I haven’t managed to read this yet, but Matthias Wivel has a massive discussion about Renaissance drawing at his site.

Other Links
I liked David Hadju’s take on Harvey Pekar, though it would have been nice if it had been a little longer.

In the interest of inter-blog amity, I thought I would point out that this piece by Tim Hodler raised some interesting questions.