Category Archives: Blog

God of Cake: VM on yet another wacky webcomic

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As y’all know, my taste is a teensy bit bizarre eccentric, and I’m an utter snob extremely picky about art, but I have this fondness for art that expresses emotion well, even if it does so in ways that are technically unsophisticated, because I am strange like that.

Yes, yes, I’m aware that I made terrible fun of a harmless comic about pants not that long ago, to the horror of many and to accusations of intellectual dishonesty, but what can I say?

I am helpless in the face of this comic, because it makes me laugh like a hyena on nitrous oxide.
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Illustrating this article might make me a criminal

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“Steve Kutzner Pleads Guilty to Simpsons Porn.”

“Man Faces Ten Years in Prison for Downloading Simpsons Porn”

“Former Teacher Pleads Guilty to Possession of Obscene Visual Representations of Child Sexual Abuse.”

(c) Nonrequired Element of Offense.— It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist.              –Title 18 U.S.C. 1466A

When I first read the United States Attorney’s Office- District of Idaho’s press release regarding Steven Kutzner, the 33 year old former middle school teacher who pled guilty to “possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children,” specifically images involving Simpsons characters having sex, I was shocked. How can possession of images of fictional characters engaging in fictional acts be a crime?  How dangerous is a drawing?  What’s the legal status of Harry/Draco fan art?  Could every comic reader in possession of Lost Girls, Alan Moore’s and Melinda Gebbie’s ode to childhood, loss and sensuality, be in danger of prosecution?

Well, the answer is no, except when it’s yes.

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She’s just not into you, Max

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I’m continuing my read through the “Big Book of Martyrs,” a collection of short biographies of – you guessed it – martyrs. The comic was written by John Wagner in colloboration with numerous artists. Last week, I read the entry on St. Olaf of Norway, who never behaved like a saint and didn’t actually die as a martyr. For this week, I read about a saint who didn’t persecute pagans, but was instead persecuted by them (assuming she actually existed).

As the legend goes, St. Catherine (early 4th century A.D.) was born into a wealthy family in Alexandria, Egypt. At a young age, she converted to Christianity and declared that she was “married” to the Christ-child. She was attactive enough to catch the eye of the Roman emperor Maxentius, but she rejected his advances. In an effort to win her over, he sent philosophers to convert her back to paganism, but she convinced them to convert to Christianity. This didn’t go over well with Max.

Artwork by Robin Smith

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Utilitarian Review 11/14/10

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On HU

Erica Friedman began the week with a discussion of the Bechdel Test and the manga Silent Mobius.

James Romberger wrote about the late horror comics of Alex Toth.

I used Laura Mulvey’s gaze theory to talk about Moto Hagio’s story “The Willow Tree.”

Richard Cook discussed St. Olaf’s appearance in the Big Book of Martyrs.

Vom Marlowe reviewed James Love’s Bayou.

And we finished the week out with the conclusion of our roundtable on Charles Hatfield’s Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Charles himself has two posts (about his writing and rethinkings of his book, and about Gilbert Hernandez) and I had a reply because I’m incorrigible — and there are some spirited debates in comments as well.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Splice Today I review some Roger Corman produced Alien knock offs just released to DVD.

But what’s most notable about these movies is not who gets killed, but who doesn’t. Because the greatest thing about Alien, the thing that gave it its real bite (as it were) wasn’t the gruesome beauty of its special effects or the brutal claustrophobia of its mise en scene… Or, okay, it was those things, I’ll admit. But it was also its twisted ruthlessness. Alien looked like a sci-fi film, but it walked like a slasher. Everybody in that movie was ruthlessly humiliated—especially the brave het heroes, who ended up raped, impregnated, violated, and dead, dead. The only one who gets out alive was that uber-final girl, Ripley, who was hard-assed and butch as hell, and when she left she didn’t need no stinking man, because (as I mentioned) all the men were dead.

Also at Splice I reviewed a new album by Eurodisco weirdos Majeure.

Long before Westerners had discovered philosophy, or even consecutive thought, the ancient Mayans were predicting a day in 2012 when Hegel’s brain would be uploaded to rotating satellites, creating a dialectical Skynet which would order the crucifixion of all humans and then broadcast impenetrable prose to their rotting corpses. Scientists today still wonder at the perspicacity of these ancient cultures, which—using nothing but the basest computers woven out of specially prepared obelisks—managed to predict the bloody demise of the hidebound print-based media, the rise of the cyborg antichrist Ke$ha, and the reverse rapture of materializing silly-bands which are even now drowning the world in a multi-colored kaleidoscope of hollow Platonic forms.

At Madeloud I reviewed Antony and the Johnsons new album.

Also at Madeloud a review of some depressive mopey but chimey black metal by Happy Days and Eindig.

Other Links

It’s good to be reminded now and then that before Gary was beloved and respected he was really, really, really loathed. (Our own Alex Buchet comments extensively on the very rancorous thread.)

Shaenon Garrity has been on fire recently. I kind of have no interest in ever reading Scott Pilgrim, but this review is awesome.

Blog vs. Professor vs. The Internet

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I thought we’d end (for now anyway!) the roundtable on Charles Hatfield’s Alternative Comics by highlighting some moments from comments.

Steven Samuels:

When I think of Gilbert Hernandez, I don’t exactly think of lusty, go for broke cartooning. What he does do is write these potboiler scripts where the characters are put through the wringer. It’s more for the service of the storyline that for the sake of unleashing the id. And yeah, like I said, he does experiment quite a bit but the final results are quite often mixed. It usually feels quite dry to me. For me, real unrestrained cartooning would be from the likes of Crumb, Gary Panter, a lot of the Zap Comix guys, Fletcher Hanks, Jack Cole, Kirby. That said, though, I did like his surreal story from last year’s Love & Rockets #2, probably the only experimental piece of his I’ve ever liked.

Nonetheless, you make the same mistake as Daryl when you object to his work being judged to the same standards as literary novels. He’s been making literary novels for twenty five years. And the results have been no better than mixed.

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Blog vs. Professor: On Surface Pleasures and Digging Oneself Deeper

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We’re coming to the end of our multi-week roundtable on Charles Hatfield’s book Alternative Comics. Yesterday, Charles wrote a post defending Gilbert Hernandez from…well, mostly from me and Robert Stanley Martin. In this post I’m going to try to clarify my position somewhat, and also try to tie this discussion into why I thought it was a good idea to do this roundtable in the first place.

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Charles spends much of his post defending Hernandez’s use of fetish and pin-up imagery. He says:

I’m not going to argue that Gilbert’s above or beyond the pinup. Essentially I’m arguing here that Hernandez approaches self-parody, that the aesthetics of that passage, indeed of Poison River as a whole, are baroque, self-reflexive, and frankly decadent (in several senses), and that what he is doing with the Maria-fetish can best be understood in terms of the book’s overall agenda. Arguments like these—that such excessive, disturbing, and arguably self-mocking elements have some value other than masturbatory or shock value—depend on the arguers’ shared knowledge of the larger context of the work, so I don’t know how to explain or defend my argument to one (Noah!) who admits not having read the work in question. We’re at an impasse.

The page that this debate has centered on is here:

The page in question: from Poison River

So, let’s start by looking at that page for a second. Then, if you would, answer this question. Suppose Gilbert Hernandez put that page up for sale at auction. Do you think the price would be higher or lower if Maria’s breasts were half the size?

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