Category Archives: Series

Utilitarian Review 10/30/10

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On HU

Domingos Isabelinho looked at Otto Dix’s bookDer Krieg.

New columnist Stephanie Folse talked about the BBC crime drama New Tricks.

Ng Suat Tong talked about the accomplishments of the Comics Journal.

Ng Suat Tong compared the workings of the visual art market to those of the original comics art market.

I wrote a longish essay about Moto Hagio’s story Iguana Girl.

Jones (One of the Jones Boys), did a two part guest post on visual aliens — characters drawn in a different style from their surroundings. Part One Part Two

Utilitarians Everywhere

For Splice Today I wrote an essay on Faith Evan’s new album and torch songs.

For Madeloud I sneered at Sufjan Stevens’ new album.

Other Links

A couple people pointed out this interesting post about where Marston and Peters try to figure out how to draw Wonder Woman.

Shaenon Garrity has a great post about Michael O’Donaghue’s over-the-top-exploitation comic Phoebe Zeit-Geist.

And I’m really into Rye Rye at the moment.

Moto Hagio: “Iguana Girl”

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I’m blogging my way through Fantagraphics’ Moto Hagio collection, “A Drunken Dream.” You can read the whole series of posts here.
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In reviews of Drunken Dream, “Iguana Girl” is generally pointed out as the highlight of the collection along with Hanshin: Half-God. The two stories are similar in a lot of ways; both involve sisters, one beautiful, dumb, and beloved, the other (our heroine) homely, smart, and despised. And both are engaged with ideas about self-image, femininity, gender, and identity.

Hanshin, as I said in my review, is more a poem than a story. It raises questions deliberately to leave them unanswered — the narrator’s self is ultimately her lack of self. The identity she finds is that she does not know who she is: herself, her congenital twin, or the space left between her and her sister when they are separated.

“Iguana Girl”, while using a more arresting gimmick than “Hanshin,” ends up being a more conventional (and to my mind a less interesting) story. The plot focuses on Rika, a child whose mother sees her as an iguana from the moment of her birth. Rika’s perceived ugliness makes her mother hate her; she much prefers her second daughter, the lovely (and rather dumb) Mami. Rika sees herself as an Iguana too, though everyone else sees her as a beautiful girl (and eventually as a beautiful young woman).

The problem here is the same one that dogs many of Hagio’s stories — a lack of characterization resulting in glibness.

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Original Art: Human Nature

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The differences between the worlds of comics and fine art would appear to be pretty obvious, but my recent reading of Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World suggests that  these differences might be less than they would appear, the great leveler in this instance being human nature.

Taking in subjects like a high end contemporary art auction, self-absorbed art students at a “Crit” session, the strange world of Artforum magazine and a trip to Takashi Murakami’s studio, the entire experience of perusing Thornton’s book was not unlike reading about the decline of civilization (Western in this case but the values are universal); a kind of journal describing that surge of decadence which sometimes marks the end of empire.

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Utilitarian Review 10/23/10

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On HU

Kinukitty reviewed the yaoi manga How to Seduce a Vampire.

Andrei Molotiu examined how it changes our view of comics to see original comics art in a gallery context. (This is the first in a new series edited by Derik Badman reprinting academic articles and essays.)

Richard Cook examined 80 years of Asians on mainstream comic book covers.

I talked about Moto Hagio’s short story Angel Mimic.

Vom Marlowe talks about the novel Blackout by Connie Willis.

Caroline Small discusses Alexis Frederick Frost’s wordless minicomic Voyage.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Madeloud I review doom metal band The Body’s album All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood.

Other Links
I quite like science blogger John Horgan.

This article, with Sesame Street appearances by Destiny’s Child, Stevie Wonder, and Paul Simon, is great.

Moto Hagio: “Angel Mimic”

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I’m blogging my way through Fantagraphics’ Moto Hagio collection, “A Drunken Dream.” You can read the whole series of posts here.
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Hanshin: Half-God and A Drunken Dream were both more plot hole than story; odd broken fairy tales with glimpses of trauma breaking through the prevailing aphasia. They’re unique, bizarre, and lovely.

“Angel Mimic” is, alas, much better constructed. There’s foreshadowing, thematic development, a final shock reveal — in short, all the elements of a traditional plot. As for what that plot is… Joe McCulloch over at Comics Comics has a good summary.

while a double-barreled blast of soap opera sees a suicidal girl hauled off death’s doorstep by a rough but handsome man who *gasp* turns out to be her new biology professor, resulting in detailed, evolution-themed educational segments (not unlike the learning bits in Golgo 13 or a Kazuo Koike manga) inevitably lashed to Our Heroine’s Dark Secret. “I wonder if humans will evolve into angels?” she muses, probably gauging the reader’s appetite for comics of this tone.

Joe’s a kinder man than I, so he doesn’t quite come out and say it, but — yeah, this is godawful. In her better stories, the fact that Hagio’s characters never for a second seem real gives her world an eerie air of unreality, like they’re pasteboard props erected to conceal an abyss. Here, though, more of the cracks are filled in, and Tsugiko ends up seeming less like a mask concealing wells of emotion and more like a hollow doll being pushed by rote towards the inevitable epiphany. There’s initial tension with the man who saves her — he wanders back into her life — they are thrown together by circumstance — they happen to meet her ex — they separate — they come back together — the secret is revealed — happy ending.

That secret (and hey, I’m going to spoil this crappy story now, so be alerted)….

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Permanent Ink: Comic-Book and Comic-Strip Original Art as Aesthetic Object by Andrei Molotiu

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Editor’s Introduction: This is the first of what we hope will be a monthly column, “Sequential Erudition”, which will reprint academic work in the field of comics studies. The numerous discussions around the Best American Comics Criticism volume brought up how divorced the academic writing about comics is from popular writing about comics, not because of style, content, or interest, but because so much of the academic work is not easily available to the average reader (those without access to an academic library). In an attempt to help spread some of this academic work to a broader audience, this column will be reprinting works from journals and other academic venues. If you are an academic who is interested in having his/her work reprinted, please contact me, Derik Badman (email: first name dot last name at gmail dot com). Much thanks to Andrei for agreeing to have his article reprinted. -Derik.

Permanent Ink: Comic-Book and Comic-Strip Original Art as Aesthetic Object by Andrei Molotiu

[Author’s Note, 2010: I gave an early version of this article as a talk at the 2006 meeting of the College Art Association, in a session, organized by Christian Hill, on “Gallery Comics.” Expanded from that talk, the article was then published in the Fall 2007 issue of the International Journal of Comic Art, as part of a symposium on the same topic; hence the references to “gallery comics” in the first section, below. While, as a concerted movement, gallery comics seem more or less to have fizzled since, the notion of combining the comic form with the display context of the gallery wall clearly still informs the practice of many contemporary artists (or cartoonist/artist hybrids), such as Mark Staff Brandl (another participant in the session and symposium), Warren Craghead and, well, me; not to mention many other comics artists who have turned to showing their work in gallery spaces in recent years, such as Mat Brinkman or Ben Jones.

In any case, I mention this original presentation and publication context just to explain some references that might otherwise seem puzzling (Christian opened both the CAA session and the symposium with a presentation introducing the notion of gallery comic; even in the absence of his text, though, I think the definition of this new-ish artform should be pretty clear from my discussion of it); I primarily used the topic to introduce my main subject: the display on gallery and museum walls of comic art that had not originally been intended for this purpose, and how this new display context affected our appreciation of it.

The text below varies in a few minor points from the version published in 2007; in one or two instances I re-thought the wording, and I have also added, in brackets, a couple of notes expanding or correcting some of my earlier claims. -Andrei Molotiu]

While the aesthetics of comics have received increased scholarly attention over the last couple of decades, most of this attention has been paid to comics in their final, printed form, with little of it devoted to original comic art.[1] At the same time, traditional drawings experts have shied away from art that is often seen not as an end in itself but as a tool in a creative process, the end of which is the printed comic. Of course, the lowly status of “popular” culture has also played a large role in this neglect. However, original comic art deserves significantly more study from comics scholars, art historians, museum curators, and even from critics and theorists. I would like to make the case for it by emphasizing the specificity of original art as aesthetic object, and by distinguishing between the aesthetics of the printed comic and those of the actual original-art object, as collected and displayed.

Comic Art Originals as Gallery Comics

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Utilitarian Review 10/16/10

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On HU

Matthias Wivel praises both pop and Popeye.

Sean Michael Robinson talks about his experiences making 24-hour comics.

Derik Badman has translated an article by French creator Fabrice Neaud about Aristophane’s Conte Domoniaque.

Ng Suat Tond discusses original art by Jaime Hernandez.

Vom Marlowe reviews Dungeons & Dragons #0.

Caroline Small discusses Frank Kermode, James Sturm, writing and reading.

And I started a thread to talk about what should and should not have been included in the Best American Comics 2010.

Also at HU, we’ve started using Read More cuts. I’m hoping this will make the blog a little easier to navigate. If you have thoughts on the change, please let me know in comments.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At The Chicago Reader I review the Neil Gaiman edited Best American Comics 2010.

Certainly there were loads of Sandman spin-offs. DC has, following Gaiman, shown some interest in fantasy-oriented series—the currently ongoing Fables for example—and independent titles like Gloomcookie and Courtney Crumrin followed a goth-oriented, female-friendly path. But these efforts were marginal. Overall, post-1990s, the mainstream comics industry first drifted and then scampered towards massive, complicated stories mostly of interest to a male, continuity-porn-obsessed fanbase. Gaiman moved on to writing novels (notably, sophisticated fantasies like Neverwhere and Coraline), and the formula he created was largely ignored. Instead of creating goth comics for girls, American companies chose to stick with insular cluelessness and let the Japanese have the female audience. Manga comics, especially those aimed at girls, exploded in popularity here. And that, in case you were wondering, is no doubt why the Twilight comic adaptation isn’t drawn by homegrown artists like Jill Thompson or P. Craig Russell or Ted Naifeh but by Korean illustrator Young Kim, in a manga style.

At his blog, Bert Stabler and I debate Funny Games, I Spit on Your Grave, horror and evil.

Bert: Everyone loves being blamed for their privilege, EXCEPT when it’s by someone who shares (and exceeds)that privilege. Basically, the beauty of Funny Games is that of a vulture feeding in the desert, not a cockfight. It’s not a guilty pleasure that excuses itself with self-awareness– it’s bloodthirsty pornography that reminds you that actors in pornography have actual lives.

At Splice Today I have an essay about Manny Farber and Paul Feyerabend and termites and Galileo. Unfortunately, they kind of chopped off my original ending, making me sound more sincere than I am. This is the original conclusion; imagine it’s there if you click over to read the essay.

Ultimately, Feyerabend concluded that his wish for a new insect view of the world was “just another example of intellectualistic conceit and folly.” Farber, too — in true termite-art fashion — disavowed his essay on termite art. Demanding an end to white elephants is a white elephant way to behave; ultimately termites to stay termites must eat themselves. What they leave behind them is, perhaps, a small space filled with meaning — the not-termite, trumpeting its victory.

At Comixology I write about Quentin Blake’s amazing children’s book, The Story of the Dancing Frog.

The picture of Gertrude picking up the frog is both moving and goofy. Gertrude is half in the water, her facial expression hard to read. The trees form an arch overhead, and her dress is pulled back by the water. It’s a ritual and sensual scene, like a rebirth or a wedding. The frog, on the other hand, is clearly not quite up to the role of Prince — it looks helpless and bizarrely cheerful with its googly eyes and gangly body, no more aware of the affection it’s inspired than an infant. Its obliviousness, though, only makes the moment more poignant. Without knowing it, it is both lost husband and child that never was, a lifeline that cannot possibly bear the weight put upon it.

And finally at Madeloud I have an article about musical guest stars on the 1960s Batman TV show.