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…..

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.