fanboy ecstasy
Three trailers online.
April 30, 2005
November 22, 2004
two new purchases
Persepolis 2, by Marjane Satrapi
In the Shadow of No Towers, by Art Spiegelman
May 1, 2004
sparrow's fall
Last fall I started picking up the free copies of the locally produced comic "Sparrow's Fall" available at the Broadway Cafe. Somehow, I recently learned that the creator, Parrish Baker, has his own blog. You can read some of his work for yourself on this page and this page. I think it's great stuff.
April 19, 2004
comic art at mizzou
Well, this is news to me:
Since the late 1980s, the [Special Collections division of the University of Missouri-Columbia Libraries] has been involved in building a collection of cartoon and comic art that's used by scholars, students and comic enthusiasts of all ages. The Comic Art Collection, which includes original comic strip art, animation cells, printed comic strips and books about cartooning and graphic novels, originated from a number of MU alumni, faculty and library staff members.
V. T. Hamlin, creator of Alley Oop and Mort Walker, creator of Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, are MU alums. Art Stack, an underground cartoonist perhaps most famous recently for his work on Harvey Pekar's Our Cancer Year, was on faculty in the MU art department.
March 29, 2004
honour among punks
I recently purchased a copy of the graphic novel Honour Among Punks, by Guy Davis and Gary Reed. The story is set in an alternate reality where 20th-century England basically never left the Victorian age because World War I took place on much lesser scale and World War II never happened. Technology did not advance as rapidly because, to quote the introduction, "there were no great wars to propel the development of new weapons and all the ancillary benefits that come from military research." In other words, it's like steampunk in reverse. I've just started the book (airplane reading, so I don't know when I'll have time to get back into it until the semester ends), and it's a little rough around the edges in terms of storytelling, but it's fun.
Guy Davis is one of my favorite artists, and I first became addicted to his work when reading the now dearly departed Sandman Mystery Theatre, back issues of which are available in many comic book stores at bargain prices. You should buy them in the groups of four issues by which each story arc was published. It looks like Honour was Davis' first published work, and as the five "acts" progress, one can watch his style mature and evolve. Davis creates incredibly detailed panels with lots of cross-hatching, and yet sometimes things are suggested by a few simple lines rather than delineated fully. Davis' work is in the same vein as work by the much more famous Frank Miller, but I think Davis tends to work on more interesting projects.
March 27, 2004
friday night in boston
I'm pressed for time, but here are two quick stories from last night. Hopefully I'll have time later for more detail:
- From Catherine Rodriguez, who organized the SHARP panels at this year's ASECS, I learned that eighteenth-century authors Fanny Burney and Hannah More made appearances in Wonder Woman comics as "wonder women of history."
- When our group left McCormick & Schmick's last night, one of our party was complaining about the waiter as we waited on the sidewalk for a cab. The service was fine, I thought, although a little disorganized. However, a man walked up to us and said, "Excuse me, sir, are you talking about this restaurant? I'm the manager." It was a little disconcerting because he was kind of aggressive, and I was worried at first he was going to defend the honor of his establishment through fisticuffs. But it turns out he just wanted to give us $50 in gift certificates (!). Not wanting to get our server in trouble, we assured him that we were talking about a different restaurant, but obviously he didn't believe us.
February 28, 2004
roadtrip
With many of my colleagues from the four U of M campuses, I am in Columbia, Missouri this weekend attending the Teaching Renewal Conference as part of the year-long New Faculty Teaching Scholars Program. On the food front, I had a nice soy latte at the Lakota Coffee Company, some great slices at Shakespeare's Pizza, and breakfast at Waffle House. We also managed to get in a few games of pool last night at Billiards.
Update: We also took a quick trip to the Rock Bridge Memorial State Park, home of the Devil's Icebox, a geological formation caused by an underground river gradually eroding limestone until a sinkhole is created. Climbing down into the Icebox on a warm late-winter day, you find that the temperature drops significantly, a few patches of ice and snow are still present, and you can see your breath. On the drive out to Columbia, we saw a deer at the edge of a forest, and on the way home we spotted a flock of wild turkeys resting in a field. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the statue of Beetle Bailey to be found on campus; cartoonist Mort Walker is a Mizzou alum.