On HU
Featured Archive Post: Jason Michelitch on Eddie Campbell’s After the Snooter.
Me on how Peter Jackson is too twitchy and so made Frodo paranoid and stupid.
Alex Buchet with a survey of the cartoons of G.K. Chesterton.
Ng Suat Tong on how the EC Comics are still not very good despite Eddie Campbell’s protests.
I compare Billie Holiday and Jack Kirby since Eddie Campbell asked me to.
Christopher Gavaler on the original Iron Man and other war machines.
Eddie Campbell on plot summaries and Nicki Greenberg’s graphic Hamlet.
Robert Stanley Martin explains why he prefers Eddie Campbell as a cartoonist to Eddie Campbell as a critic.
Jones, One of the Jones Boys pisses on Eddie Campbell from the heights of Mt. Parnassus.
Our weekly music sharing post features Uriah Heep’s Bird of Prey.
Utilitarians Everywhere
Bunch of articles at the Atlantic this week:
I confess that I’m a lazy parent.
I stage a cage match between Betty Friedan and Anne Bronte.
I ask why no one calls Beyonce is a genius.
I review Hitler’s Children, a documentary about the descendents of notorious Nazis.
At Splice Today I compare the shaming of Minami Minegishi of AKB48 to the shaming of Ann Wilson of Heart.
Also at Splice I review the soundtrack to Berberien Sound Studio.
Other Links
Apparently Wertham fudged his data.
Tom Spurgeon with a nice brief review of a T.Rex gag book.
Alan Jacobs on why he doesn’t like Watchmen.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy on rich girls and unpaid internships.
Laura Hudson on the (lack of) women in Star Wars.
This Week’s Reading
Kind of a crazy week; I didn’t manage to read much. Read this mediocre book about US involvement in Afghanistan that I’m supposed to be reviewing. And just started a collection of Anna Akhmatova’s poetry.
” He can only do intensification of a single mood, and that mood is one of brutality.”
This may or may not be true but he can’t plausibly blame Moore for the rest of the comic book industry. Things would’ve turned out that way with or without him.
My fav this week is Ingmar Bergman’s “Face to Face.” Yes, two hours plus of psychodrama a la “Persona.” But at least it’s well-executed psychodrama, schtick or no schtick.
Oh, I’m so glad you gave Anne a try! I really enjoyed your essay on Friedan and Bronte.
If you end up reading Tenant, I’d be very interested to hear what you think of it. That one is my favorite. It has such different ideas than most of the books from that era, and such rich emotion.
I’ve mostly been listening to murder mysteries this week. I inhaled all three Ben Aaronivich Peter Grants (really, really good) and then began the Royal Spyness series. The latter are frothy and light and deeply silly, and sometimes I fast forward a lot, but they don’t require much attention, so they’re good for listening to while I’m working on figuring out some art stuff.
I also finished the recent Elementary episodes, the latest Inspector Lewis, and bounced hard off an Inspector Morris audiobook (Daughters of Cain).
We recently saw the “Daughters of Cain” Inspector Morse TV adaptation.
…And a few weeks ago, the quite nicely done “young Inspector Morse” mystery: http://seattletimes.com/html/television/2018555089_endeavour30.html .
So much for congratulating the art form of comics as having achieved “respect” in the culture at large:
“BAM! WAP! KA-POW! Library prof bops doc who K.O.’d comic book industry” ( http://news.illinois.edu/news/13/0211comics_CarolTilley.html )
Really like your AK48 article! Have been talking about this with friends here and here (and shared your article at the second link). There’s definitely been a kind of consumer rage backlash, and a “WTF Japan” or (more nuanced) “WTF otaku idol nerds of Japan” thing going on.
Mike, How was the Morse Daughters of Cain TV version? I tried the audiobook, but just couldn’t get into the reader.
Thanks Subdee! Glad that article made sense to someone whose knowledge of idol culture is greater than mine.
This week, I finished reading Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box, which was a pretty entertaining ghost story of a book. If you’re into that sort of thing, I’d recommend it, although I haven’t read enough horror fiction to say how well it holds up within its genre.
The only other thing I consumed this week that I wanted to point out is the Youtube series “Sex House”, which was produced by The Onion. I’m late getting to this one, since I think it’s at least six months old, but I thought it was really hilarious, starting out as a pitch-perfect parody of the “lock a bunch of people in a house and watch them hook up with each other” genre of reality show but quickly devolving into degradation and horror, each episode topping the last in the awful things that happen to these poor people. Like the best of The Onion’s content, it’s both a really funny parody that nails the details of what it’s spoofing, but also something that makes the viewer question the purpose of why we find these things entertaining and the motivations of those who profit from them. I really dug it.
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vommarlowe says:
Mike, How was the Morse Daughters of Cain TV version?
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It was well done, as all those TV “Morses” tend to be; I’ve not seen that particular book at the local libraries I frequent, so can’t judge whether it was “done justice” to…
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Matthew Brady says:
This week, I finished reading Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box, which was a pretty entertaining ghost story of a book. If you’re into that sort of thing, I’d recommend it, although I haven’t read enough horror fiction to say how well it holds up within its genre.
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That was great — a real “grabber” of a premise and start — though it lost some steam as it went on. His “Horns” ( http://www.amazon.com/Horns-A-Novel-Joe-Hill/dp/B006J3V2PE , http://tinyurl.com/b36esp4 ) was nifty, with a nicely satisfying, oddly poetic finale.
Can’t say I’m the biggest horror reader; I’d say it holds up well for what I go for, “mainstream horror” á la Straub, classic King…