On HU

We started the week off with Richard Cook’s discussion of the story of St. Catherine from the Big Book of Martyrs.

Ng Suat Tong skewered Usamaru Furuya’s Genkaku Picasso.

Sean Michael Robinson discussed the child porn conviction of Steve Kutzner.

Vom Marlowe reviewed Allie Brosh’s webcomic Hyperbole and a Half.

And finally I discussed Manny Farber, termite art, white elephant art, and Galileo.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Comixology I talk about Escher, time, space, and Dr. Manhattan.

Of course, you don’t really need to make a choice for one or the other. The title of the piece may indicate that there are a bunch of reptiles here, but much of the enjoyment of the image — and of Escher’s work in general — is the sense of moving pieces caught in a pleasurably regimented dance. Even if it’s not technically one reptile moving, the individuals are nonetheless interchangeable. You know that the reptile climbing the triangle is going to get to the top of the D & D die and that it’s going to blow smoke out of its nose when it gets there just as its predecessor did. The reptile blowing smoke will climb onto the little cup; the reptile on the cup will crawl back into the abstract pattern. Whether the image is showing a sequence as a comic would or merely implying it, the point is still that time and identity are flattened out across space.

At Splice Today I review Cool It!, a movie about the dangers of overreacting to climate change.

Cool It has more ambitions than merely setting the record straight on global warming, though. One of the talking heads that Cool It drops on the unsuspecting viewer notes with the slightly condescending chuckle of the large-brained that Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, was a “great piece of propaganda.” No doubt it was. So is this. Cool It uses, in fact, many of the same hagiographic tactics as its more famous predecessor. We see Bjorn biking healthily through Denmark, chatting earnestly with impoverished children in third world nations, and puncturing bloviating politicians with his rapier wit. We get porn-movie close-ups of his book as voiceovers speak sternly of its controversial and brave counter-intuitiveness. The movie even trots out Lomborg’s Alzheimer-afflicted mother for a few scenes—because nothing adds depth to a wonk’s character like a little family tragedy.

Other Links

Suat pointed out to me this really interesting article in praise of abstraction at Comets Comets by Blaise Larmee.

VM wanted to let folks know that the anatomy book she reviewed a while back is now downloadable.

R. Fiore has a beautifully snide article up about Drew Friedman.

And this is from Wax Audio, who is a fucking genius.

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.