On HU

We started off the week with Andrew Farago’s discussion of Popeye in multiple media.

Matthias Wivel examined Breugel, Rembrandt, and Crumb’s Genesis.

Ng Suat Tong discussed The Playwright by Daren White and Eddie Campbell.

Caroline Small discussed Ivan Bilibin’s illustrations for Russian folktales.

Robert Stanley Martin argued that Popeye shouldn’t be canonical.

I analyzed one of Rembrandt’s Biblical illustrations.

Peter Sattler criticized the insufficient literalness of R. Crumb’s Genesis.

And we have an index of the entire Genesis roundtable.

And here’s a doom metal mix if that sort of thing appeals.

Utilitarians Everywhere
At Madeloud I discuss some of the best releases by the Japanese psych-rock collective Ghost.

And also at Madeloud I contributed an appreciation of the Bangles reunion record to this discussion of counterintuitively good albums.

On HU

This has been a chaotic week for me, and so things are a little out of sync. Thanks to both our readers and guest posters for bearing with us. And thanks to Caro for keeping the trains running on time.

This week has mostly been devoted to our Popeye roundtable. There are going to be a couple more posts in the roundtable next week by Andrew Farago and Robert Stanley Martin.

Sunday incidentally will also see the delayed but much anticipated post in our series on Crumb’s Genesis by Matthias Wivel.

Utilitarians Everywhere

I have a post on Splice Today about my enthusiasm for the Bangles

That’s the point of pop music in some sense, though; it’s addictive. Not like heroin that’ll land you in prison with the cool kids, but like sucking down a bagful of jelly bellies and then feeling sick and ridiculous before going out and buying another one. And part of the addictiveness and the ridiculousness is, really, that it’s jelly bellies; they’re right out there. Everyone can do it. It’s not a subculture you can call your own; it’s pop—it belongs to everyone. The Bangles don’t give you any cred. Everybody loved them and that was the point, and now everybody’s moved on and if you still love them you’re either remembering your youth or (like me) you’re subject to a meaningless and harmless idiosyncrasy. The ingratiating hooks are there to be ingratiating. What else could they be for?

Also at Splice I have a short essay about E. Nesbit’s wonderful Book of Dragons.

At Comixology I writer about the Oprah comic book.

With comics, I’m never taken aback by lousy quality. After all, most things are lousy — maybe comics are a little worse than everything else, but not enough to squawk about. But the marketing confusion in even comics that have no point other than their marketing: I can never get over that. Why churn out this horrible Oprah Winfrey piece of dreck if not to make money? And how can you make money if you don’t even know who you’re trying to sell to? I mean, I bought this in a direct market store. What are they doing even selling it through the direct market? What venue could they find where folks would be less likely to pick this up?

Other Links

Tucker’s Comics of the Weak this week is one of his all time all times, I think.

And Tucker and David Brothers are blogging their way through some interesting looking Black Panther stories. Good week on the Factual Opinion!

On HU

Erica Friedman started the week by asking a bunch of creators and cartoonists why they made art.

For his first official column, Alex Buchet looked at some inaccuracies in Harvey Kurtzman’s war comics.

This is a delightful con wrap up by Kristy Valenti. The comments are even funnier.

Richard Cook continues his look at the Silver Age Flash.

I made fun of R. Crumb’s Genesis, particularly his floating bearded heads.

Vom Marlowe looked at the illustrated children’s book series Billy and Blaze.

Caroline Small compared Crumb’s Genesis to work by Howard Finster and Basil Wolverton.

I reprint an old essay about war in literature.

And here’s a random download mix with Thai music, funk, ZZ Top, and maypole dancing.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Splice Today I reviewed Kelis’ new album.

Flesh Tone isn’t horrible. It’s just anonymous—which is perhaps even more depressing. Kelis’ distinctive, not-quite-ready-for-primetime voice is processed into bland submission, and the Neptunes’ unique production is replaced with third-drawer dance-floor dreck. The lyrical nuttiness of Kaleidoscope is entirely gone; instead we’re left with groaners like “Just like the sky on the 4th of July/you make me high.” The low point is probably “Song for the Baby,” the cheery sentiments and perky beat of which put Kelis dangerously close to Amy Grant territory. There’s a bitter irony too in “Scream,” where Kelis insists, “You’ve won the right to scream and shout.” Unlike on Kaleidoscope, Kelis does not in fact scream. She barely whimpers.

Also on Splice, I talk about Kierkegaard, Abraham, puritanism, and aesthetics.

This shouldn’t be particularly surprising. If there’s one tendency in Protestantism that’s stronger than the loathing of aesthetics, it’s the veneration of the same. The Bible, after all, is a series of tales. Kierkegaard sneers at aesthetics because he takes them so seriously. The problem with stories is not that they’re stories, but rather that they’re not the one story. It’s because he loves the tale of Abraham so elaborately that Kierkegaard denigrates other narratives as sentimental balderdash. Sci-fi jelly creatures attacking—that doesn’t have the terror, the sorrow, the human interest and moral power of Abraham walking to the mountain to slay his son. Away, then, with the jelly creatures! Puritan philistines are just particularly foul-tempered critics; their iconoclasm is just one long bad review.

Other Links

Roland Kelts is writing some interesting stuff about the fate of manga in the U.S. over at tcj.com.

And in my continuing pursuit of blog amity: Jeet Heer’s piece on Harvey Pekar is balanced and thoughtful.

Caro put me onto this really pretty great Newsweek article about Lily Renée

Derik Badman has a thoughtful assessment of Ben Schwartz’s Best American Comics Criticism.

Announcement!

Alex Buchet, who wrote a lovely series on Tintin and racism last month, is going to be joining us as a regular columnist. His column will be called “Strange Windows” and will run the first Monday of every month except when it runs at sometime different because our scheduling is wiggy. In any case, we’re very glad to add Alex (who resides in Paris) to our multinational cast, and look forward to his first column (on Harvey Kurtzman’s war comics) which will run later this week.

On HU

Last week on HU began with Domingos Isabelinho’s discussion of the boys’ comics of Argentinian comics writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld.

Ng Suat Tong looked at whether or not the interviews of Gil Kane could qualify as criticism.

Richard Cook continued his look at Silver Age Flash comics.

As part of our slow-rolling roundtable on R. Crumb’s Genesis, Alan Choate offers a lengthy defense of the book (to enthusiastic plaudits form Jeet Heer, Matthias Wivel, and others in comments.)

Also, at his own site, Ken Parille discusses some further thoughts on Genesis.

And Ng Suat Tong offers a brief reply to Alan.

Vom Marlowe finds a mainstream comic that does not suck and there is much rejoicing.

And Caro talks about what comics can learn from film archivist Henri Langlois.

Also, because you demanded it an evil metal download!

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Splice Today I discuss the new Angelina Jolie vehicle Salt.

Perhaps this ties in to the most unexpected result of having a female protagonist: it seems to have completely drained all the sex from the film. The film is amazingly circumspect; Jolie is dressed sensibly throughout, and even at times (as when she disguises herself as a man) more than sensibly. There are no sex scenes, and barely even any romance—there’s one mildly intense kiss with her husband, but that spy-thriller staple, the seduction of the enemy, is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps part of the problem is the old double-standard; men can seduce lots of women and that makes them rakish; if Jolie were falling opportunistically in bed with the enemy in order to manipulate them, her character would be far less sympathetic. So instead the film opts to make her traumatized, humorless, and almost neutered; she might as well be in some sort of earnest movie of the week weeper.

Other Links

What the rest of the world thinks of Comic Con.

On HU

This week started out with Suat’s reply to Ken Parille’s discussion of R. Crumb’s Genesis.

Then commenter/guest blogger Alan Choate replied to Suat.

And Suat replied to Alan. (Alan is planning a guest post for next week as well.)

Also this week, I talked about Gary Groth, Victorian dresses, and comics criticism. A huge comments thread resulted.

Kinukitty complained about the lack of sex in Otodama.

Richard Cook complained about the excess of nostalgia in Flash Rebirth.

I discussed Marston/Peter’s original Wonder Woman 21 in terms of doll stories and atomic silliness.

And Caroline Small posted a gallery of images from John Vassos’ Ultimo.

Also, this thread about elitism and standards and aesthetics and ethics just kept going, with Domingos Isabelinho, Matthias Wivel and Charles Reece weighing in.

Utilitarians Everywhere

I look at some crappy super-hero comics at Splice Today.

Marvel has ret-conned and alt-universed Spider-Man so many times it’s a wonder poor Peter Parker has enough brain cells left to pull his red tights out of the way when his nether web spinner incontinently dribbles. In theory this story is about an exact duplicate who’s replaced our favorite web-slinger, but I prefer to think that it’s just the same old Peter bashed one time too many in the head by the latest creative team and trying desperately to recover.

I’ve got a short note about Peanuts in Shaenon Garrity’s discussion of comics that make people happy.

At Madeloud I review the latest blackened doom slab from Ruins of Beverast.

At the Chicago Reader I have a brief blurb about an exhibit on good design.

I haven’t managed to read this yet, but Matthias Wivel has a massive discussion about Renaissance drawing at his site.

Other Links
I liked David Hadju’s take on Harvey Pekar, though it would have been nice if it had been a little longer.

In the interest of inter-blog amity, I thought I would point out that this piece by Tim Hodler raised some interesting questions.

On HU

Matthias started the week off with a discussion of the Argentine comic strip Mafalda by Quino.

I wrote about the aphasiac power fantasy of Gantz.

Richard Cook talked about Wonder Woman, new costumes, and patriotism.

Suat wrote an extensive post comparing R. Crumb’s Genesis to other works of Biblical illustration.

Vom Marlowe discussed the squick factor in Mick Takeuchi’s Bound Beauty.

And I returned to my Bound to Blog run through all of the Marston/Peter Wonder Womans with a discussion of Wonder Woman #20.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At his own blog the Metabunker, Matthias Wivel provided a balanced appreciation of Harvey Pekar.

He hasn’t always been served equally well by his collaborators and seems to have been somewhat insensitive to the visual side of comics, leaving too many of his stories to the deadening hands of mediocre artists. But when it worked, it worked beautifully: notably Frank Stack brought the emotional turmoil of Our Cancer Year (1994) to life, and Crumb of course animated Cleveland and its inhabitants as only he could. A case in point is the story “Mr. Lopes’ Gift” (1978), which suggests a whole life in the fragments given us by Pekar. Crumb’s portrayal of a man he had probably never seen is empathetically real, providing the world for us to read in furrowed brow of this construct.

On Tcj.com, Matthias wrote about David Prudhomme’s Rebetiko.

As chance would have it, I have two articles up this week about the television show Bones. First at Comixology I talked about an episode focusing on super-heroes.

Superheroes are sometimes regarded as modern day myths; archetypes harking back to ancient heroes like Gilgamesh who famously wore his underwear on the outside and engaged in curiously vigorous male-bonding activities with his youthful ward Enkidu.

Gilgamesh aside, though, the whole ancient myth thing is maybe obscuring the fact that superheroes have much closer cousins than Hercules. Cousins like, for example, Sherlock Holmes. Absurdly dedicated, supremely skilled guardians of right who bring evil-doers to justice — switch the moustache for the helmet, or even just paint the first on the second, and how much difference is there really between Iron Man and Hercule Poirot?

And at Madeloud I talk about the black metal episode of Bones.

Also at Madeloud I review an album of Nigerian disco.

Finally, as I mentioned yesterday on the blog, Caro had an extended, um, discussion with the folks over at Comics Comics yesterday. Tim Hodler and Frank Santoro were part of the back and forth, and I burbled some too. Here’s one of the less incendiary bits from Caro:

I’ve heard and read this argument many times — that comics generate medium-specific, unique “new insights and ambiguities” that are comparable to those of fine art and literature. I’ve heard it over and over from the writers here and from other enthusiasts about the artistic possibilities of comics. But when critics like Suat put these comics in specific, detailed, analytical conversation with the high bar set by fine art and literature, they generally fail to measure up. And they generally receive comments, like the ones Ed Sizemore made over on HU, that the comparisons are unfair. This is contradictory: either comics are good enough for the comparisons and will stand up against them, or they’re not. Critical evidence tends toward “not.”

Other LInks

Kristy Valenti has an interesting article about volume and women in comics.

From Bookforum, I think this is a good, albeit short, review of Best American Comics Criticism.