On HU
Me on some unexpected facts about penises.
Me on Pretty Woman and hating Richard Gere rather than Julia Roberts.
Me on pulp and genius in Joe Sacco, and on whether that’s a good reason for comics journalism.
Richard Cook and I liveblog the last Presidential debate, and are depressed.
Jacob Canfield on the lazy criticism directed at Johnny Ryan and Benjamin Marra.
Ethan on the advantages of comics journalism.
Kailyn Kent on the unconvincing gimmickry of Chris Ware’s Building Stories.
Me on Clark Kent becoming a blogger and the virtues of mainstream comics pandering.
Sarah Horrocks on Druillet’s Salaambo.
Me on the different sizes of the Stepford Wives.
Vom Marlowe on Worsted, a webcomic about knitting.
Me on how atheists can be sexist assholes too.
Utilitarians Everywhere
Bunch of pieces at Splice:
On undecided voters maybe not mattering.
On NPR being useless on the election.
On Marty Robbins and nice cowboys who shoot you.
On Richard Moudock, power, and rape.
Other Links
Craig Fischer on Building Stories.
Emma Woolley on being constantly harassed as a teen girl.
Mary Williams on the war on 12-year-old girls.
This Week’s Reading
Finished Henry James’ The Golden Bowl, started Ronald Firbank’s “Vainglory”, and am rereading Phillip Pullman’s Grimm Fairy Tales for a review.
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Below is a puggle, which is apparently what you call a baby echidna. Cute!
Eeeee! Look at the little fella. Very cheering after all that grim!dark stuff.
In addition to the Worsted For Wear stuff I reread for review, I read a bunch of articles about murder ballads for the editing I’m doing (helping the boss with her journal). I also read a little about the dmca library of congress stuff. Going to ask my coworker in Open Access about it later, as some of it makes zero sense to me.
I also worked on my Yeats’ Wild Swans at Coole comic. I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m rendering the feel of autumn at all. I have an idea about the swan wings, but I keep worrying that if I get the numbers wrong, it will interfere with people’s enjoyment. Bah.
Anything interesting in the murder ballad articles? Were they critical analysis, or more ethnographic?
The murder ballad article that I’m actually editing is terrible, but the articles I found (in order to correct her ridiculously wrong citations) were pretty great. Some are critical analyses, some ethnographic, and some historical. The coolest part so far has been emailing the Bodleian (!!) for a copy of a broadside in their collection.
I’ll hunt around and find the cite for the most interesting article and pop it in here–there’s some really neat stuff.
Still reading the really long book on the history of Dungeons & Dragons and war games/role-playing. Interesting though a bit long-winded and at times repetitive (needed better editing).
Caught up on Artforum just in time for the new issue to arrive. I am thrilled to discover a Twombly show will be up in NYC when I plan on going up for the Brooklyn Comics fest.
Reading the French translation of Shirato’s Kamui-Den. I’m about 1000 pages into the third of four 1500 page volumes. It feels like the longest most complicated comic ever, but it’s also nicely drawn and engaging as a narrative. Shirato is really interested in class divisions and the oppression of the peasants by the lords/samurais. Of course he throws in a little ninja mystery too.
Finishing up Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins, and Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, by Sean Howe.
About to start The Garlic Ballads, by Mo Yan, and What’s the Matter With White People?, by Joan Walsh.
I’m reading Pogo vol. 1 and The Galley Slave, a novel of 17th century Slovenian barbarity by Drago Jan?ar (so far there aren’t any galleys but there are inquisitions, desolate mountains, slime-saturated bog-neighboring churches, drunken arguments and oaths, and lots of schizophrenic superstition/skepticism).
I also re-watched Rosemary’s Baby (pretty good) and about half-way through my wife pointed out how similar the feminism was to that of The Stepford Wives. Maybe everyone other than me already knew this but both novels were written by Ira Levin.
Hah! I was just thinking they were similar, but hadn’t realized they were by the same person.
“Shirato is really interested in class divisions and the oppression of the peasants by the lords/samurais. ”
Did he abandon that thread with his later work? Because the stories that Eclipse published seemed more like straightforward mainstream samurai stories than anything with political subtext. Well executed, but simple. God, I would kill for an English translation of those French volumes. Is that his entire ouevre?
Yes, Rosemarie’s Baby is the last really interesting Polanski film, in my book.
Really enjoying Arvo Part’s Portrait CD. Wrapping up Aline Kominsky-Crumb’s “Love That Bunch.” Painful, funny and cringe-inducing all at once. Also really enjoying Hans Hess’ “George Grosz” book.
Steven: I guess he did abandon that in later series (I’m about 70% through Kamui-Den and it is still very prominent). All I’ve seen of his work is Kamui-Den that I’m reading now and those Viz translations which were from a later sequel series. Kamui-Den is his major work from Garo magazine. He did work before that and did work after (including a few Kamui sequels).
I have a couple volumes of Ninja Bugeicho, a ninja series by him from the late 50s (I think?). If you want a quick/somewhat accessible sense of the art and plot of that earlier series you can try to track down the kamishibai-style ’67 film, directed by Nagisa Oshima.
My favorite Polanski is The Tenant (1976), and I like at least a few other later ones too so I disagree that he stopped doing interesting work after Rosemary’s Baby.
I just started reading Mark Siegel’s Sailor Twain: The Mermaid in the Hudson. I also watched Hellraiser 2 the other night, since I’m trying to get in a few scary movies at Halloween-time.
Ugh, I read a few of those links about 12-year-old girls and such, and now I’m depressed. God, what a disgusting world we live in. I’m not looking forward to when my daughters get to that age.
Matthew Brady, no one asked but here’s my take on Hellraiser 2. What’s yours?
Let’s try that again…
http://butdonttrytotouchme.blogspot.com/2009/09/and-to-think-i-hesitated.html
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Matthew Brady says:
Ugh, I read a few of those links about 12-year-old girls and such, and now I’m depressed.
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I’ll take your word for it!
Just finished Sissy Spacek’s delightful autobiography, “my extraordinary ordinary life.” Where she mentions how Loretta Lynn (whom she played in “Coal Miner’s Daughter”) was married at 13.
Lynn elsewhere described how her wedding night was a disaster; she freaked out and barricaded herself behind a locked door.
“I thought it stayed little, and…”
Having behaved atrociously, Polanski’s kept doing fine films; am reminded of Salieri in “Amadeus” traumatized at how God could give talent to…unworthy persons. (Egon Schiele was involved with underage girls; pedophile filmmaker Victor Salva did fine work in “Powder” and “Jeepers Creepers”…)
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Caravaggio was known to have had a vicious temper and the passion in his paintings was often reflected in his life. An early notice was published on him in 1604 which stated how “after a fortnight’s work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him”. In 1609 he was charged with murder, having fought his opponent over the score of a tennis match.
Accused of murder, Caravaggio fled Rome and went into hiding…
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http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/old-masters/caravaggio.htm
Oh, just remembered a favorite Polanski story. ‘Way before his legal troubles, he applied for membership in an exclusive European skiing club. There was a secret ballot taken — with white balls covertly to be dropped in a bowl to admit him, black balls for “no”– and due to his generally outrageous rep, he was denied membership.
Polanski asked a friend who was a member, “How many votes were cast against me?”
“Did you ever see…caviar?“
Aaron: I like your take on both Hellraiser films (well, the first two, anyway; I don’t think I’ve seen any of the others, except maybe one of the sequels, called Hellraiser: Generations, I think, that I watched years ago on cable. It was all right). The first one was definitely more effective, but they both had their moments, especially in the way they sexualized their horror, making people with their skin flayed off alluringly sensual and lingering on the viscous parts of the exposed bodies. The most effective scene in the sequel was probably the bit in which one of the rooms in hell had beds that kept sliding out of holes in the wall, with female bodies writhing erotically under sheets (which sort of resembled body bags) on the beds, but covered with blood, making for a gross necrophiliac combination. Both films suffer from becoming action spectacles in their climaxes, which cheapens the unknowable horror of hell, making it a threat that can be solved by manipulating a demonic Rubik’s cube or just outrunning the waves of evil. That sort of thing is probably necessary, but if you’re going to sell hell as an inescapable realm of suffering (although I guess there are several people who do escape, so maybe that’s not the case?), the movie should end with everyone meeting a horrible end as a true nightmare of what is to come for everyone after they die (or are dragged into a nether dimension after delving into supernatural affairs in which man should not meddle). That’s not really what these movies are about, since they kind of squeeze themselves into a Hollywood slasher formula, but that’s what I would prefer, even if it’s easier said than done.