On HU

Erica Friedman looks at incompetent competence in the novel Wicked City: Black Guard.

Alex Buchet attempts to connect Ezra Pound and Kevin Bacon.

Matt Seneca interviews CF.

Ng Suat Tong reviews Oji Suzuki’s “A Single Match.

I discuss the lame bad boys of Groundhog Day and From Dusk to Dawn.

Caroline Small talks about the unsatisfying futurist nostalgia of Pascal Blanchet’s White Rapids.

Marguerite Van Cook discussed the limitations of the video art of Bill Viola.

I looked at some crappy floppies by Morrison, Bendis, and Straczynski.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At comixology I talk about the opening chapter illustration in the Wizard of Oz.

That’s the first page of the first chapter of The Wizard of Oz, written (of course) by L. Frank Baum, and illustrated by W.W. (William Wallace) Denslow. As you can see, Dorothy is leaning on the first letter of her own name, standing beside a Kansas wheat stalk. She stares into a mysterious fairie twilight…and not coincidentally, also seems to be staring into the book itself, with its own mysterious fairie treasures. Dorothy is about to enter the story, and she’s also the story itself; she’s an image and a name. You can’t show her without showing the start of the book.

At Splice Today I talk about Chicago’s lame response to the recent blizzard.

And also at Splice I review the new Iron and Wine record.