On HU
Slightly short holiday week this time out.
Kinukitty reviewed the semi-historical yaoi Maiden Rose.
For our Sequential Erudition series reprinting academic articles on comics, Ariel Kahn discussed the role of the gaze in young adult graphic novel.s
Sean Michael Robinson looked at some old books about the art of drawing.
And for the holiday, Alex Buchet posted a gallery of Thanksgiving comics.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At Splice Today I have a short review of The Disappearance of Alice Creed.
Also at Splice, a short review of Ke$ha’s new album Cannibal, vagina dentata and all.
At Madeloud I review some semi-recent mash-ups.
Other Links
Sean Collins’ review of High Soft Lisp touches on some issues that came up in this blog’s discussion of Gilbert Hernandez.
And Charles Hatfield enters the lists on behalf of Joe Sacco against an army of trolls. I don’t really like Joe Sacco’s work much, but Charles is definitely fighting the good fight on this one.
I’ve just read “High Soft Lisp” for the first time, and must say that it is pretty much the nadir of Gilbert’s development towards cynical self-indulgence so far. Even considering his somewhat more vivacious recent work in L&R New Stories, this is distressing evidence of a creator losing his grip. The drawing is weak and the work is mean-spirited and (comparably) shallow in a way that makes one suspect whether Gilbert has, indeed, listened a little too much to his critics. A really depressing book.
Huh; that’s interesting. Listening to his critics in the sense of believing the hype, or do you mean something more specific?
I’m thinking more along the lines of passing from the often smart defiance of earlier times to bitter mean-spiritedness. But I haven’t thought it through, really — only thing I’m sure of is that this is amongst, not just the bleakest, but least inspired, least compelling work I’ve seen from him, and it really is quite depressing to see how he is losing his grip in the drawing here, as well as in L&R New Stories.
Drawing was never Gilbert’s forte, was it?
Well, you can say so, but he still managed to do *a lot with it, and he is a born storyteller. Now, not so much: the linework is weak, at times downright feeble, and the compositions rote, almost formulaic. It still flows OK, but a lot of the joy his cartooning used to elicit is gone.