Tag Archives: metropulse

Utilitarian Review 1/9/10

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On HU

Lots of bytes through the sluice on HU this week.

To start off, I sneered at the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and wondered about Fantagraphics’ marketing policy (Fantagraphic marketers showed up to explain in the comments.)

I denounced Lady Snowblood, movie and comic, on the grounds that they are evil. Suat came back with a lengthy defense

I defended blogging and even got all emo about it. In another meta moment, I defended my right to think Ganges is boring and sneer at other comics critics and spit bile more or less indiscriminately, damn it.

Kinukitty reviewed the yaoi Dining Bar Akira.

Richard kicked off a new series, Anything But Capes, in which he looks at genres other than super-heroes. He started off by looking at the state of Barbarian comics.

Suat reviewed Ooku, which he doesn’t like as much as me.

I explained what my son has and has not learned from Peanuts.

Vom Marlowe drew a comic expressing her disinterest in X-Men Forever.

And this week’s music download features lots of doomy drones and other metal. (Last week’s, if you missed it, features Thai country music (Luk Thung.)

Utilitarians Everywhere

My enthusiastic review of Dokebi Bride is up on Comixology this week.

That departure, I think, points to the core knot at the heart of Dokebi Bride. The book, like many ghost stories, is about grief and dislocation and how the two circle around each other like black, exhausted smudges. The first volume opens with Sunbi’s father carrying her mother’s ashes back from the grave; that volume ends with the death of Sunbi’s grandmother, who raised her and cared for her. The central loss of a parent, and therefore of self, returns again and again through the series, a literal haunting. Sunbi can’t function without putting the past behind her, but the past is everything she is — she can’t let it go. When a fortune teller offers to read her future, Sunbi rejects the offer angrily. “No, I don’t want to know about my stupid future!” she bites out through her tears. “Just tell me what all this means to me! Tell me why they’ve all died and left me, why they’re even trying to take away my memories!”

On Tcj.com I reviewed Strange Suspense: Steve Ditko Archives Volume 1.

Did you read that whole thing? If you did and you enjoyed it, you’re a hardier soul than I. “I got my letter and then I thought about my letter and then I thought about my letter some more and then I used a metaphor: ‘leaden feet’!” That’s just dreadful. And, yes, that’s the one romance story in the book, but the horror and adventure comics are not appreciably better; there’s still the numbing repetition, the tin ear, and the infuriating refusal to finesse said tin ear by leaving the damn pictures alone to tell their own story.

Bert Stabler and I talk about Zizek and art over at his blog Dark Shapes Refer.

I like the idea that you need a transcendent background in order to appreciate, or even allow for, multiplicity. I’m thinking about this a little bit in terms of culture and art, and the impulse that I think most everyone has to want people to consume/listen/read/whatever the right thing. It seems like that’s coming from a place where the transcendent is material; that is, your worshipping the art itself, therefore moral choices become essentially consumer choices. Alternately, you just cut culture and morality apart altogether, and argue that neither has anything to do with the other. Whereas if you have a transcendent ground of some sort, you can say, well, culture connects up to morality and or important things in various ways, and you can talk about it in those terms, but choices about art are not in themselves good or evil.

On Madeloud, I review the soundtrack to the BBC miniseries Life on Earth, which profoundly affected my life when I was, like, 8.

Over at Metropulse, I have a review of avant Japanese guitarist Shinobu Nemotu’s Improvisations #1.

At the same site there’s also a review of the slab of black doom that is
Nihil’s Grond.

At the Chicago Reader I review the fairly amusing gimmick book Twitterature.

Other Links

I enjoyed Tucker Stone’s Best of at Comixology, especially since he picked the right thing for book of the year.

Ta-Nehisi Coates explains why he wants to be able to check “Negro” on his census form.

And finally, Johanna Draper Carlson has a nice summation and round up of links relating to the devil’s bargain between MOCCA and Archie Comics.

Utilitarian Review 1/2/10

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HU Elsewhere

HU took last week off, but I still had a few pieces up elsewhere around the webs.

I snuck in to the tail end of Tom Spurgeon’s holiday interview series over at the Comics Reporter with a discussion of the Elephant and Piggie children’s book series. (Update: Tom informs me that there’s another week of interview left, apparently — I am in the middle, not at the end at all.)

I don’t think it’s an issue of seeing it in the context of comics; Willems’ work is comics. He uses cartoony simplified animal characters and makes extensive use of comic tropes like motion lines and speech bubbles. The narrative is entirely advanced through sequential action; the movement and words of the characters directly tell the story; it’s absolutely not text with illustrations. Some of the chicken books even use panels. The only reason you wouldn’t call it a comic is because it’s not sold through the direct market, basically.

The second half of my survey of Thai Luk Thung videos is up on madeloud.

Still, there are other approaches. For example, there’s Por Parichart’s “Krai Sak Kon Bon Tarng Fun,” or “Someone on a Path to My Dreams.” It basically follows the usual luk thung formula — with a slight conceptual twist. Luk thung is often referred to as “Thai country music” because its audience and lyrical themes are both mostly rural. However, “Krai Sak Kon Bon Tarng Fun” is unusual in that it actually sounds like American country music. The band hits a Nashville groove like they’ve been listening to Hanks and Merles all their lives, while Por, the singer, imitates Dolly Parton down to the breathy yodeling quaver. And as for the video — well, the set designers appears to have seen Hee Haw.

Also on Madeloud, I have a review of a reissue by shoegaze legends Teenage Filmstars.

And at Metropulse I review the blaxploitation comp “Can You Dig It?” and the gospel comp “Fire In My Bones.”

Other Links

There are a couple of amazing essays by former Utilitarians up on tcj.com. First, Tom Crippen has a spectacular essay about Alan Moore and geekism. And then Bill Randall has an equally spectacular essay about the odd progression of manga in America. You really need to go read both of them; they’ve both kind of outdone themselves.

Also on tcj.com, Steven Grant has a brief, acerbic, and hysterical take on the Spirit pop up book.

Then Shaenon Garrity has an even briefer, even more acerbic, and even more hysterical take on Acme Novelty Library #19.

I enjoyed Chris Mautner’s discussion of Scott Pilgrim, a comic I’ve never read but am now thinking I should.

The one-woman comics-news dervish that is Brigid Alverson has a thorough round-up of this year’s manga news over at Robot 6.

Utilitarian Review 12/26/09

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A little quiet this week, what with the major holiday and all. Still, we blogged away…

On HU

We started out the week with a return to my halcyon days of writing scatological prose-poems.

Kinukitty posted about the joys of reading yaoi novels on the Kindle.

Vom Marlowe reviewed How to Draw Manga: Ultimate Manga Lessons Vol. 5: Basics of Portraying Action.

I sneered vigorously at Chris Ware’s Halloween New Yorker cover. If the comments to the post aren’t sufficient, there’s also a thread on the TCJ message board devoted to the topic.

Richard discussed his reaction to the first volume of Lone Wolf and Cub.

And finally this week’s download included no Christmas music at all.

Utilitarians Everywhere

Over on tcj.com, Suat reviews Suat on Carol Tyler’s “You’ll Never Know”

Written in 1994, Carol Tyler’s “The Hannah Story” was a tribute to her mother, Hannah, and her strength in dealing with her in-laws as well as the death of her daughter, Ann. Despite the intervening years, Tyler’s sensitive “voice” remains easily recognizable in her latest book, You’ll Never Know.

At madeloud I have up the first of a two part series on Thai luk thung music videos.

Even more flamboyant is “Arom Sia” by actress and singer Apaporn Nakornsawan. The title means “Sick of It All,” and indeed the performer appears to have become so disgusted at her romantic troubles that she has turned to super-villainy, luring the Justice League into some sort of catastrophic defeat at the hands of a gay pride parade.

At Splice Today I talk about the overcarbonated new dolphin show at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium.

The most heart-tugging moments in the show, though, involve not the cute penguins, nor the noble hawk, but rather the trainers. Demoted from educators to props, they are ruthlessly dressed up in penguin suits or decked out like British hawkers or hoisted up on pulleys and dropped from a height into the water. Yes, they seem cheerful enough about it in general but good lord-it all seems like a rather cruel punishment for the comparatively minor sin of being a zoologist.

Over at Bert Stabler’s blog we continue our conversation about the book of Job, and discuss Stanley Milgram’s experiments, among other things. The quote below is from Bert.

Basically, if you lose everything for no moral or practical reason, whether it’s because God decides to destroy your life arbitrarily or because he can’t stop bad things from happening or because it’s part of some grand scheme for the betterment of the universe, we cannot ultimately hold God to account. He’s God, he’s not a limited being with petty motives. God is like a petty dictator, but he’s also not. He’s not a transparent, contingent demiurge– he’s a remote yet ubuquitous source of energy.

And at metropulse I contributed to a pretty entertaining best of music list.

Other Links

Tom Spurgeon’s been doing a bunch of interviews with critics about some of the best or most influential books of the decade. I think my favorite so far is his discussion with Kristy Valenti about Little Nemo.

Shaenon Garrity has an interesting discussion of manga translation issues on tcj.com.

And finally, I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I often disagree with Jeet Heer on most everything. I have to say, though, that this essay about representations of homosexuality in classic comics is pretty great from start to finish. The essay carries a lot of learning very lightly, and includes a number of zingers, most notably: “Like most professional moralists, Bozell has no real sense of history: he’s a traditionalist with no grounding in the past.” Andrew Sullivan linked to it, and deservedly so.

Utilitarian Review 12/12/09

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Utilitarian Review is a weekly round-up of post on HU, links to other things I or other bloggers have published this week, and some random links as well.
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On HU

This week started off with my discussion of the great surrealist artist Leonora Carrington and her drawings for the novel “The Hearing Trumpet.”

Kinukitty posted a lengthy appreciation of Tomoko Hayakawa’s The Wallflower.

Richard Cook posted a review of Brian Azzarello and Victor Santos’ Filthy Rich.

Ng Suat Tong talked about the original art market for comics.

And finally Vom Marlowe reviewed the first volume of Adam Warren’s Empowered.

Utilitarians Everywhere

At Comixology I have a longish review of Yuichi Yokoyama’s Travel.

In Yokoyama’s work, too, the viewpoint swoops and swerves, now with a skier on a high mountain pass, now underneath the train. There is certainly a celebratory, joking tinge to Yokoyama’s impossibly mobile camera. But there is also something ominous. In one sequence from the book, our protagonists’ train passes another going in the opposite direction. A whole page is devoted to the faces on the other train. They are shown in four tiers of three blocks each; all are streaked with violent motion lines; all are the same shade of grey as the window frame, all stare intently outward at the viewer. The scene is oddly disturbing; the repetition of the faces, the repetition of the expressions; the lines going through them, the grid — it’s dehumanizing, as if the faces are not people at all, but manikins, or masks.

On the TCJ.com main page I reviewed Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku: The Inner Chamber.

At Splice Today I reviewed Arie Kaplan’s book about the Jews and comic books, from Krakow to Krypton.

Over at the Knoxville Metropulse I reviewed the new Animal Collective ep, Fall Be Kind.

At Madeloud I reviewed Miranda Lambert’s Revolution.

In the hidebound print-based media department, I have a couple of album reviews out in the latest issue of Bitch magazine.

And former Utilitarian Bill Randall has a review on the tcj.com main page of the hipster mess that is I Saw You.

Other Links

Matt Thorn has a withering essay about how much current manga translators suck.

Shaenon Garrity has a post on the Tcj.com main page about Power Girl’s explication of her boob window. I also enjoyed Shaenon’s post about Fumi Yoshinaga.

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