HU News
James Romberger’s awesome collaboration with Wallace Stevens from HU’s illustrated Wallace Stevens roundtable was selected as a notable comic of the year in this year’s Best American Comics anthology. Regular contributor Derik Badman also was selected for his comic Badman’s Cave. Congratulations to both of them!
On HU
Subdee on how she would love Bakuman except for that one thing.
Conseula Francis on why she hates Watchmen.
Vom Marlowe on the misguided craft of Alex Ross.
Melinda Beasi on why she hates the Kim Dong Hwa’s Color Trilogy.
Sean Michael Robinson on hating the collection, not the collector.
Matthias Wivel on the New Yorker’s legacy of mediocre cartoons.
Jones, One of the Jones Boys explains why there can’t be a worst comic ever — and points out many comics that are nonetheless quite bad.
By popular demand (more or less) we have an ongoing thread on whether Cerebus is the worst comic ever.
Me on Nana #22 and the worst comic being the one that doesn’t exist.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At Splice I talk about Chris Connelly and nostalgia for cassettes.
At Splice I make fun of the Economist’s vapid knee-jerk bipartisanship.
At Splice, I urge panicking Obama supporters to chill the fuck out.
Other Links
Martyn Pedlar on Theo Ellsworth’s The Understanding Monster.
This Week’s Reading
Lilli Carre’s Nine Ways to Disappear, which wasn’t bad, but a little disappointing; Jeffrey Brown’s Darth Vader and Son, which wasn’t great, but more enjoyable than I expected; Philip Core’s Camp: the Lie That Tells the Truth, which is amazing; Aubrey Beardsley’s “Under the Hill”, and started Kate Soper’s “Humanism and Anti-Humanism”.
Did you see the preview of the new Carré collection from Fantagraphics? Undecided on whether I’ll get it, but I’m tempted.
This week’s reading:
-Finished “Cerebus the Barbarian Messiah” a collection of essays about Cerebus. Some are pretty lame, most aren’t very academic and lack a theoretical apparatus, but Eric Hoffman (the editor) has a great long bio-biblio essay. There are also some good essays on gender/sex in the series which aren’t all about the “Sim is a misogynist” issue, but take intriguing readings of the way the gender is used in the series itself.
-Rereading (from long ago) Bruce Sterling’s “Islands in the Net” one of those late 80’s cyberpunk novels that takes place in the near future. It is at times both comically out-of-date and oddly prescient. One of the big plot impetuses involves a drone attack/assassination. Stylistically it is so much about description, objects, styles. Very Balzacian in some ways, took me a while to get used to that.
-Started reading Ware’s “Building Stories” the other day. A box of differently formatted/bound comics. So far the ones I’ve pulled out to read are all pages I’ve seen before in various places, but I’m enjoying seeing how they interact with each other. I really like the everyday-ness of it, so far there are not any big plot points, rather it’s all about a life across a period of time.
I got the Chris Ware and was annoyed by its packaging…but haven’t started reading it. I’m about 2/3 of the way through the Rushdie memoir instead…and read some short stories by Stephen Crane, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, blah blah
The various sizes and formats are kind of annoying. I started with the more book-like ones (one of which is basically Acme Novelty 18, and one of which is the collected NYT pages).
Derik, I haven’t seen the new collection, but I will probably get it. I like her work a lot.
There’s one great comic story in that nine ways to disappear, but a lot of them are too default magical realism for my taste….
“magical realism”
Boy, it’s been a while since I heard that phrase. Never cared much for Marquez anyway.
read amphigorey and amphigorey too, la perdida, and finished reading vol.3 of the IDW li’l abner reprints and fantagraphics’ final reprint of krazy kat sundays. started reading Marc Singer’s monograph on Grant Morrison
I just finished reading Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?, which I generally liked, although not as much as Fun Home (I expect this is/will be a common reaction).
I read Darth Vader and Son a few weeks ago, and it’s cute and kind of funny, but very, very nerdy. Pretty much every page is a reference to some line or scene from the movies, or even aspects of Star Wars fandom, like a joke about Greedo shooting first. My wife thought it was cute, but I suspect she didn’t get more than 25% of the jokes. Also, it’s a crazy quick read; it probably takes less than five minutes to get through.
It’s nerdy, and also hallmark-card sappy in a lot of ways — but, you know, it’s a funny idea and several of the jokes made me laugh. And my son loves it.
How’s Marc Singer’s book, Jones?
really enjoying it so far. it illuminates the Morrison comics I’ve already read, and makes me interested to read the few I haven’t; it’s also almost convinced me to reassess The Invisibles — almost.