Yearly Archives: 2011

Superheroes in Speedos

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[Mildly NSFW]

I spent part of my New Years weekend at my brother’s house, digging through his big box o’ comics and trying to determine which ones were mine. As it turns out, my adolescent self bought every X-Men comic ever published. And I mean all of them, even the Gambit series (and I don’t even like Gambit!). Fortunately, my embarrassment was somewhat diminished when I realized that my brother had even worst taste (lots of early Image Comics). The great find of that evening was the Marvel Swimsuit Special from 1992. Neither of us admits to buying it (I accused him, he accused me, so things go) and I don’t remember ever reading it.

Cover by Marc Silvestri

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Toth, Internalized

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by James Romberger

Since I am precisely the type of brutally obsessive yet overly sensitive observer that qualifies me to write for The Hooded Utilitarian, I am unable to ignore a few references I have seen online to my “fannish adoration” of the work of genius cartoonist Alex Toth. Answering them also gives me the opportunity to address some critical shortfalls that I have seen in the literature about Toth.

I do feel that Toth’s work is head and shoulders above that of most artists who have worked in the medium thus far. I and many other artists find Toth to be a great teacher. It is instructive to figure out how and why his odd approach works so well. Artists may not see his art in the same way as someone who is not an artist, but there are also many, many non-artists who appreciate the depth of Toth’s skills—and some who do not.

A critique that is often leveled at Toth should be dispensed with. Unfortunately, in order to appreciate his work, one must overlook the quality of the writing in most of the stories he drew. That can be said for every four-color comic book artist that worked with writers. But some seem to blame the artist for this. Even though Toth had higher artistic standards than his contemporaries, he was not any more responsible than they were for the texts they worked with. If not for bad scripts, there would be no Toth comic book art and in fact, there would be no comics at all.

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Lies Real Enough to Love

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In Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film Solaris the first glimpse we catch of the titular planet is in a film of a film of a film. The pudgily somnolent hero, Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis), bores us by being stolidly bored himself as he watches the film of the testimony of Henri Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky), a space pilot who way back when saw a giant space baby in the fog above the ocean of Solaris — a giant space baby that was not, we repeat not, cribbed from 2001, damn it, we swear. Young Burton in the film stutters and drones his way through a foggy mire of drab description while an older, balder Burton fusses and twitches, occasionally skipping ahead as if to taunt us with our inability to do the same (or, in the era of DVDs, to goad us into doing so.) Eventually the young Burton in the film cues another film, on which is no baby, but just more foggy mire. Young Burton stutters, old Burton twitches, Kelvin somnolents, and the film ends, and the film ends, and the film trudges wearily on.

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Utilitarian Review 1/8/11

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On HU

Erica Friedman talked about her love of manga audio drama CDs.

Robert Boyd tried to figure out why Jaime Hernandez’s original art sells for the prices it sells at.

The mysterious internet troll Cough Syrup talked about Jason Overby and the Cocaine Modem.

Caroline Small and I discussed Gilbert Hernandez’s Human Diastrophism.

I looked at one panel from Ariel Schrag’s Likewise.

Vom Marlowe wished there weren’t so many zombies.

I talked about philosophy and film.

Next week: James Romberger looks at the personal reasons he is so drawn to the work of Alex Toth and Jack Kirby; Ng Suat Tong looks at Mezzo and Pirius’ King of the Flies; I look at the films in Solaris; Kinukitty on yaoi and more.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Splice Today I the Lovers and the tyranny of best of lists.

Not that I’ve anything against Kanye; I still haven’t heard that album, but “Monster” is a great song. More power to him and Nicki. It’s churlish to sneer at late capitalism when you’re mired up to your neck in late capitalism. The Internet that lets me instantly download albums by Sarah Vaughn or Esoteric is the Internet that makes it possible for everyone on earth to simultaneously speak Robyn’s name at the end of the year. For that matter, I love Robyn, just like I’m supposed to. If the world’s at your fingertips, then you shouldn’t be upset if you can’t detach your fingertips from the world.

At the Chicago Reader I have a brief blurb about an MCA exhibit focused on Chicago comics artists.

At Madeloud I review a new album by French black metal group Murmuure.

Other Links

The big news around these parts is the big new blog at tcj.com. The Panelists include Jared Gardner, Isaac Cates, Derik Badman, Charles Hatfield, Craig Fischer and Alex Boney. They’ve had a great first week, so go over there and check them out if you haven’t already.

Tom Spurgeon has a fascinating interview with Dirk Deppey over at the Comics Reporter.

Michelle Smith and Melinda Beasi have a fun column about visual duds.

I Flicker Therefore I Am

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This article first appeared at Splice Today.
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A substantial portion of Descartes’ Discourse on Method is devoted to explaining why discussing his ideas with other thinkers would be useless. Instead, he concludes, his interlocutors could best contribute to the advancement of knowledge not by talking to him, but by “contributing to defray the expenses of the experiments that might be necessary.” Don’t criticize; just send money.

Which just goes to demonstrate that, from the beginning of modern Western philosophy, philosophers have not held a very high opinion of criticism, language, or philosophy. Descartes denigrated philosophical discourse in favor of experiments; Kierkegaard denigrated it in favor of faith; and now John Mullarkey denigrates it in favor of film.

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There’s zombies in my yarn

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Intro

A couple of years ago, I was in a van full of librarians, being whisked in air conditioned splendor to the convention hall at ALA. I got to talking to my seatmate, a public librarian, and she told me that the most interesting thing she’d heard so far was that zombies were going to be the next vampires.

(Proving yet again that librarians know everything.)

I frowned at her and said something like ‘No way’, and she said something like ‘I know, hard to believe but it’s coming’, and we went our separate ways, each armed with logoed bags to pick up enough sample books in the hall to weigh down a small truck. (ALA has so many sample books for free that they set up special mailing-home stations so people don’t have to keep hauling the books around; unfortunately, I didn’t notice these until later, so I only got two boxes worth of books.)

A small incident in a professional context, two years ago, but I was thinking of it recently as I was discussing some comics.

I’ve never been a big fan of scary horror. I enjoy the occasional foray into serious horror, as a genre, but mostly I prefer comedic horror. I only saw the Shining by accident. A roommate told me it was funny and talked me into going to see it on the big screen for a dollar. By the end, I was huddled under a coat, levitating with panic, jumping at noises and peering through my fingers. Funny my ass. (Bitter? Me? Never!)

But I loved Evil Dead, and I’ve seen not only Blacula, but Blacula 2 (bka Scream Blacula Scream), and all of the movies with the plucky German Shepherds who turn into vampire dogs (hey, it’s a mini genre, and they have cute ears, don’t judge me OK). I also enjoyed the early Anita Blake books, which were rather comedic in their zippy, plotty way, and I even sat through Howling: New Moon Rising, although I demanded that my hosts supply me with spirituous liquors if they were going to continue to subject me to it.

So I should be an ideal candidate to jump on the zombie train.

Except….

I’m burned out already.
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One-Panelist Criticism: Likewise

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If you’ve seen the tcj.com homepage recently, you know that we’ve been joined here by a spanking new blog called The Panelists, featuring Derik Badman, Charles Hatfield, Jared Gardner, Alex Boney, Craig Fischer and Isaac Cates (my apologies if I forgot anyone!)

To kick off their blog, The Panelists are doing a round-robin where each of them look at one panel from a comic of their choosing. It seemed like a fun idea, so I thought I’d flagrantly rip them off participate as well in the friendly spirit of interblog amity.

So here we go.

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