On HU

This week started off with Erica Friedman talking about the Bechdel test and manga.

Alex Buchet wrote about fairy tales and silhouette art.

Ng Suat Tong reviewed Ma Li and Chen Uen’s popular Taiwan comic Abi Jian.

Richard Cook talked about gender in Final Fantasy XIII.

I discussed Alan Moore and the fans who hate him.

I talked about Moto Hagio’s short story Hanshin: Half-God.

And I reviewed Jim Collins’ Bring On the Books for Everybody.

Oh, and I think I’m going to stop with the music downloads. It’s been fun, but there’s not a ton of interest, and I spend too much time on the blog as it is!

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Splice Today I have an article encouraging gay teens to drop out of school.

Nonetheless, I find the message in the videos I’ve seen frustrating. Yes, it’s good for kids to know that things will improve. But high school isn’t a force of nature. It’s not a hurricane, or even acne. It’s not unavoidable. If high school is making your life miserable beyond all endurance—so miserable that you’re seriously considering killing yourself—then maybe you shouldn’t wait two or three years for your life to get better. Maybe you should just drop out.

Also at Splice Today I have an essay about the I Spit on Your Grave remake, feminism, the end of politics, and Funny Games.

The remake follows through on the group dynamics to some extent—the guys egg each other on; they bring Matthew along to lose his virginity, etc. But it abandons the effort to make the men appear like just folks. Ironically, the director Steven R. Monroe gives one of his characters a video camera, and we see some of the rape through the lens. This is an obvious effort to implicate the viewer, but in fact, this version of the story is much less accusatory than Zarchi’s original.

That’s because, instead of seeing the rape as a result of standard male group dynamics, Monroe tries hard to de-collectivize the guilt. In Zarchi’s version, the men were typical guys, and the rape, too, was therefore typical—a possibility for any man. In Monroe’s version, on the other hand, the rapists are individual monsters, a much less frightening idea.

At Madloud, I discuss 15 or so of the 15,000 covers of “Summertime.

This is fascinating, in a Hey! -that’s-Barry-Manilow-defecating-on-my-porch! kind of way. Philadelphia studio musicians turn Gershwin’s mournful lullaby into a giant lounge turd, complete with smooth-jazz intro and half-assed crappy disco cheese funk. For the full effect, imagine Paul Robeson dancing in a conga line with a white shirt open to his navel. Or, you know, don’t.

Other Links

Alex’s post reminded me of this awesome fairy tale resource.

I haven’t seen the Social Network, but the trailer looks terrible. I was pleased to see Jezebel buck the conventional wisdom and eviscerate it.

And this is several years old, but still an interesting article, on sexual harassment online.

On HU

To start out the week kinukitty reviewed the yaoi manga Hiro Madarame’s Scarlet.

Ng Suat Tong discussed Jacques Tardi’s It Was the War of the Trenches in comparison to other war narratives.

Richard Cook looked at the DC comics that came out in the month he was born, September 1980.

Alex Buchet continued his series on comics and architecture with a discussion of comics creators who also did architectural projects.

Sean Michael Robinson wrote a lengthy article on the Choose Your Own Adventure series.

I explained why I didn’t like the first four stories in Moto Hagio’s Drunken Dream.

And for your download, a collection of torch songs.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Splice Today I review Justin Townes Earle’s latest album.

At Madeloud I have a review up with Jake Austen about his work producing Chic-a-go-go, Chicago’s all-ages public access dance show.

On tcj.com, Matthias Wivel reviews Ulli Lust’s “Heute ist der letzte Tag vom Rest deines Lebens.

Other Links

Matt Seneca talks about a Gary Panter panel and the ways of realism.

Karen Green has a thoughtful article about what is and is not propaganda in comics.

Groovy Age of Horror is the best there is at what it does.

Submit to the Hooded Utilitarian!

As regular readers have probably noticed, HU has been taking tentative steps away from group-blogness and towards kind-of-sort-of-magazineness. I don’t think we’ll ever abandon having a regular roster of bloggers, but I do hope to continue to get more guest writers.

Which is where you come in. I would love to hear from new writers. If you have an idea for an article, please contact me at noahberlatsky at gmail. The best way to get a sense of what sorts of things we write about is to look back through the archives…but if you don’t see the kind of thing you want to write about there, don’t let that discourage you. We probably just haven’t gotten to it yet!

Also, this seems like a good time to announce that we are planning to debut several new columnists over the next couple of months.

Sean Michael Robinson, a cartoonist and art teacher (who you may remember from this article) will start with a new monthly column next week.

Stephanie Folse (aka Telophase), a former columnist for Tokyopop (and author of this article) will also be joining us as a monthly columnist starting in October.

Artist and critic Derik Badman will also be joining us. Derik is going to be organizing a feature where we reprint academic articles or (if we’re lucky) excerpts from academic books that focus on comics. We hope to run this feature once a month, if we can find willing academics (if you are such an academic, and would like to see an article of your reprinted on HU, please contact Derik Badman: first name . last name AT gmail dot com (no spaces, all lower-case)).

In addition, Domingos Isabelinho, Derik Badman and possibly Alex Buchet are working on some translations of French comic criticism, which we should be publishing over the next few months.

And we’ve also got several interesting guest posts lined up, as well as some roundtables and, of course, our regular bloggers will keep doing our thing. Thank you all for reading and commenting!

On to your regularly scheduled Utilitarian Review….

On HU

We started off the week with a long post by Matthias Wivel about the great mangaka Yoshiharu Tsuge.

Ng Suat Tong followed up with a post focusing on Tsuge’s manga Red Flowers.

Richard Cook discussed his experience at SPX.

Alex Buchet continued his series on comics and architecture, including a gallery and a half of examples.

Vom Marlowe discussed an anatomy book from ImagineFX.

I wrote about Alex Toth, minimalism, and realism, inspired by a post by Matt Seneca.

And death, sludge, doom, and some mud in your weekly music download.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Splice Today I got paid to write poetry! Only five haikus, but still. This is the best one:

Drat. I have no pants.
The days are cold; the nights, cold.
Here I sit. Help me.

At Madeloud I reviewed the new album by the electronica outfit Dead Fader.

At the Chicago Reader I recommended an exhibit of Chinese Buddhist cave art at the Smart Museum.

Other Links

Robot 6 talked to Dirk Deppey about what he read last week.

Melinda Beasi continued the discussion of gender and shojo manga.

I enjoyed Tom Spurgeon’s review of the latest complete Peanuts volume.

And I thought Nicole Ruddick’s review of A Drunken Dream at Comics Comics raised some interesting issues.

On HU

Erica Friedman started off the week by interviewing Comic Fusion’s Stacey Korn about Wonder Woman Day.

We then had a series of posts on comics and architecture, of all things.

Alex Buchet began with the first of a multi-part look running through the month on a comics and architecture exhibit at the French national museum of architecture.

Ng Suat Tong followed up with a look at the role of architecture in Josh Simmons’ House.

Caroline Small wrote about Morris Lapidus, postmodern curves, and the boxy modernism of comics.

I wrote about Alan Davis’ The Nail and why superheroes hate the Amish.

And I disputed R. C. Harvey’s assertion that criticism and art are about making you happy.

Twilight, Shojo, Genre and Gender

Melinda Beasi’s post from last month on Twilight and the contempt for female fans has sparked a bunch of discussion this week.

David Welsh explains why he agrees with Melinda and Melinda adds some thoughts about why it’s wrong to group all shojo titles together. Brigid Alverson argues that the issue is that genre isn’t that good, not that women are held in contempt. And finally Erin Ptah says she dislikes Twilight for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with female fans.

Murder, Misogyny, Multimedia

I’ve got an article about murder ballads up on Madeloud.

And to celebrate, I’ve uploaded a murder ballad playlist including all the songs I mention in the article. Revel in bloodshed!

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Splice Today I review the boring George Clooney vehicle The American.

Shortly thereafter, though, I began to have suspicions. So, as I do when such suspicions occur, I leaned over to my wife and whispered low, “He’s going to be redeemed, isn’t he?”

She looked at me over her glasses with mingled disgust and horror. “If he gets redeemed,” she said sternly, “I’m going to be upset.”

At Madeloud I review Wovenhand’s latest record.

Other Links

I enjoyed this essay by Rachel Manija about why it’s okay to write negative criticism.

And R.C. Harvey has a fun article about Wonder Woman’s costume changes over the years. I love the eagle cartoon.

I don’t know anything about Ke$ha, but this is really funny.

Oh, and Caroline Small is going to be on the critic’s panel at SPX today at 3:00 PM eastern time. If you’re attending the convention, go say hi to her!

On HU

We started the week off with a guest post by James Romberger, who discussed the reasons for and the wrongness of the fact that artists often don’t get credited adequately in comics collaborations.

Melinda Beasi guest-posted about Twilight and the way some women try to distance themselves from fandoms that are too femme.

Richard Cook explained why The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is lame.

Caroline Small reviewed comics and animation by Lilli Carré.

I talked about the eroticization of young Wonder Woman in Marston and Peters’ Wonder Woman #23.

I talked about class in Twilight.

And this week’s download is for Easy Lounging Hippies, featuring the Byrds, the Hollies, John Denver, and Italian soundtrack music, as well as other things.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Comixology I talk about race and blackface in the work of R. Crumb.

In that sense, Crumb’s image for the song could almost be seen as parody; a vicious sneer at Joplin’s blackface pretensions, caricaturing her as both a wannabe black mammy and as the whining white entitled brat looking to the exploited other for entirely undeserved comfort. As I said, it could almost be seen as that — if Crumb hadn’t thrown in another entirely gratuitous blackface caricature in the bottom center panel, just to show that, you know, he really is exactly that much of a shithead.

At Splice Today, I talk about Raymond Williams and the apotheosis of advertising.

Williams notes “Advertising was developed to sell goods, in a particular kind of economy,” but, “Publicity has been developed to sell persons, in a particular kind of culture.” The two are related, the second an outgrowth of the first, and while advertising has (arguably) experienced some setbacks recently, publicity has gone from hulking behemoth to master of the universe. Once professionals organized advertising campaigns. Now those same campaigns are conducted by you and me and everybody all the time with our personal web pages and MySpace pages and YouTube videos and self-Googling. The media consumers have taken the means of media production, and they’ve used it to create a virtual world where identity and consumption are more indistinguishable than ever before.

Also at Splice, I talk about the disappointment that is Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku, volume 4.

For cultural goods, the analogue of planned obsolescence is called, as most everyone knows, “jumping the shark.” The phrase—which itself has jumped the shark—used to describe the moment when any serialized entertainment gratuitously abandons its dignity and begins to suck with an almighty suckage. Think of the episode of The Cosby Show where Cliff gives birth to a hoagie and a bottle of orange soda. Or don’t think of it. I’m trying not to.

At Madeloud, I reviewed the mediocre new album by Plants and Animals.

Other Links

Anne Ishii has a really funny interview with Johnny Ryan about the manga Detroit Rock City.

Tom Crippen has an excellent review of Alan Moore’s new Cthulhu mash-up project.

Via Dirk, Dan Raeburn’s classic comics crit zine, The Imp is now available online.

Tucker Stone and David Brothers continue their very entertaining look at the Black Panther.

Shaenon Garrity has a really superb essay about Cathy Guisewite’s comic strip Cathy.

And this is a fascinating essay about Netflix. I think there are some lessons there about digital for comics companies — not that anyone’s likely to pay any particular attention…..