DWYCK « The Hooded Utilitarian

December 20, 2011
By Matthias Wivel
Columns, Dyspeptic Ouroboros, Slow-Rolling Orientalism
84 comments

DWYCK: Open Sesame

Parts of the comics intelligentsia seem to be developing an unhealthy obsession with ideological readings of comics.

DWYCK: Sacred and Profane Love

Form and spirit in Chester Brown’s “Paying For It.”

Dominique Goblet depicts her father as a late medieval Madonna, nurturing his child, right hand in blessing. Drawn on disparate, pasted-together pieces of paper accompanied by shakily calligraphed Gothic handwriting, it is simultaneously a mockery and an illumination.

January 25, 2011
By Matthias Wivel
Blog, Columns
22 comments

DWYCK: Jimmy Corrigan’s Spectacular Reality

It has now been over a decade since Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan – The Smartest Kid on Earth was published in collected form, and almost two since he first drew the character in a number of short strips in the Chicago weekly New City. Through the nineties, as it was being republished for the first [...]

DWYCK: Critiquing a Lively Art

For this column, I’d like to return to the subject of comics criticism. A while back, HU hosted a Popeye roundtable, which raised some interesting general questions, but seemed to stop from lack of enthusiasm before it went very far. Not being in a position to contribute at the time, I would like to resurrect [...]

September 12, 2010
By Matthias Wivel
Blog, Columns
23 comments

DWYCK: Ishoku

A boy emerges from the sea in the shadow of a C-47. He presses his right arm against his side where a deadly jellyfish has torn apart one of his veins. Whenever he releases the pressure, blood trickles to the cold ground, which he treads like a sleepwalker, searching for a doctor to help him.

July 11, 2010
By Matthias Wivel
Blog, Columns
32 comments

DWYCK: The Dreams of Children

The mellow mood of being on holiday has made me decide to shift tack from the more theoretical stuff I’ve been on about and instead dig into my archives for a post about a comic I love, and which despite its great fame bafflingly still seems virtually unknown in the English-speaking world. The article is [...]