On HU
Featured Archive Post: Caroline Small interviews Nina Paley on copyright and free culture.
Me on some of the great musical guests on the Batman TV show.
We’re having our 5th year anniversary, and celebrating with a month long roundtable in which people write about the worst comic ever (or the one they dislike the most, or that they think is most overrated.) I started the celebration off with an explanation of Why I have chosen hate.
Bert Stabler on how twee ate Chris Ware.
Me responding to Heidi McDonald by arguing that negative criticism isn’t really all that popular. (I may need to eat my words, though; this week’s hatefest has gotten a huge number of hits by our standards.)
Matt Brady with 8000 words on the crappiness of Blackest Night.
Kate Dacey on Gandhi: good man, terrible manga.
Jones, One of the Jones Boys and I discuss whether you should hate the comic reader or just the comic.
Alex Buchet on Spirou and Fantasio’s racism for kids.
Matt Senece defends the outsider art genius of Geoff Johns.
Johnny Ryan on every autobiographical comic ever.
And you can keep track of our entire hatefest with our constantly updated Index of Hate.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Chicago Reader I review Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen’s new book “Darkest America” on black blackface minstrelsy.
At Splice I review Wu Tsang’s film about an LA trans bar.
At Splice I explain that political spouses are career politicians.
Other Links
Erica Friedman on Yuri coming of age.
And Erica again with an introduction to the study of Yuri.
Brian Hayes on what’s wrong with HU’s anniversary of hate.
Wonder Woman’s sneaky dance plot.
Glenn Greenwald on Democrats parading Osama Bin Laden’s corpse.
This Week’s Reading
I finished Henry James’ “The Portrait of a Lady” (Italians aren’t to be trusted — who knew?), read Stanley Hauerwas’ “The Peaceable Kingdom” about Christian ethis, read Julia Kristeva’s essay “Stabat Mater” which I’d sort of hoped would be better, and just just started rereading Thomas Hardy’s “Wessex Poems.”
The great black blackface performer Bert Williams.
Oh no, everybody seems to be that busy with hate, there isn´t a single shared reading experience right now!
Lovechild that I am I just finished Jeff Lemire´s Frankenstein story arc – amusing stuff, but no big deal. Looking more forward to his Underwater Welder, which was in the mail yesterday.
Read an issue of German comics magazine Reddition about Fumetti and learned a lot about Italian artist Dino Battaglia.
Take a look at his impressive work “Totentanz”, excerpts from it can be watched here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHENrchO6Iw
Furthermore I read some specialist literature about assisted pressure controlled ventilation for working purposes.
yeah…maybe people are just tired of the reading list already?
Anyway…assisted pressure controlled ventilation. Maybe we should do a roundtable on that….
A roundtable on APCV? Good Lord (choke)!
Anyway, if it´s done in a my-people-were-fair-and-had-sky-in-their-hair-way I´m with you.
Tyrannosaurus Rex reference! Yay!
I´m just trying to increase the number of comments so someone might get curious about what´s going on here and drops a few reading experiences while being around.
But Bolan, yesss!
(And mind the educational reference either.)
Oliver: thank you for reminding me that I own that Battaglia comic. I’m going to fetch it now, thanks again…
Hum… great Alter Alter issue: it also has the always impressive Andrea Pazienza, but, best of all, the issue includes a comic and a text by Renato Calligaro (about poetry, art, and comics).
i am reading a collection of Bioy Casares’ shot stories called Histórias Fantásticas (it is a brazilian version), not sure what is the english equivalent. Some stories are ok, but once you get the pattern that he usually works, it becomes a little boring.
A couple weeks ago i read Ernesto Sabato’s The Tunnel, Tove Jansson’s True Deceiver and Raduan Nassar’s Um copo de cólera (not sure if it has english translation).
I just read Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World, which was mostly really interesting, especially for its glimpses into the world of art dealing and collecting.
I also just read Aidan Koch’s brand new The Blonde Woman which is quite lovely.
Also working on a history of haiku/haiga from Stephen Addiss. I think it’s going to be too light on the haiga part, but otherwise it’s interesting so far.
“yeah…maybe people are just tired of the reading list already?”
Not tired, just reading something much more boring (advanced math text book) and slow (difficult) for school. It’s cutting into my reading time so I won’t have much new to add on a weekly basis. I finished The Elizabethans and Homage to Catalonia (found it a bit of a chore to get through, unfortunately). Continued Some Facets of King Lear. Started Union Dues by John Sayles and Immortal Lycanthropes (YA novel written by a friend of mine), Hal Johnson.