9 August 2005
[comics] On “Liberality” for all — Tom covers an neo-conservative comic called Liberality For All in which Sean Hannity, G. Gordon Liddy (!!) and Oliver North fight ultra-leftism, the United Nations and of course Osama bin Laden … ‘…I’d like to introduce you all to the future of literature for kids – Liberality, an American Neo-Con comic book in the vein of The Authority’
1 August 2005
[comics] A Comic Book Hero — profile of Dan Clowes from the Guardian … ‘I would never trust anyone else to work with my artwork. I can’t relinquish absolute control. I have an OCD [obsessive compulsive disorder] thing about having drawn every single line in every one of my comics. The great appeal is to be able to say, I did this whole book all by myself. It’s a little module that I created.’
29 July 2005
28 July 2005
[movies] V for Vendetta Trailer — it doesn’t look as bad as League of Extraordinary Gentlemen… Alan Moore on the V for Vendetta Shooting Script: ‘They don’t know what British people have for breakfast, they couldn’t be bothered. ‘Eggy in a basket’ apparently. Now the US have ‘eggs in a basket,’ which is fried bread with a fried egg in a hole in the middle. I guess they thought we must eat that as well, and thought ‘eggy in a basket’ was a quaint and Olde Worlde version.’ [via Pete’s Linklog]
27 July 2005
[bell] Steve Bell: Uneasy Rider [Related: Archive of Steve Bell’s Cartoons]
14 July 2005
[comics] Tony and George G8 Comic – Page 1 – Page 2 — from Sean Phillips and Mark Millar … [via Do You Feel Loved]
[comics] The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick — comic strip by Robert Crumb from Weirdo #17 … ‘It is an interesting graphic interpretation of a series of events which happened to Dick in March of 1974. He spent the remaining years of his life trying to figure out what happened in those fateful months. You will find all 8 pages of this story here.’
13 July 2005
[comics] Ask Mefi: What’s a good place to start for indie comics? … ‘I’d recommend ordering the free Fantagraphics catalogue.’
[comics] Acme Novelty Archive … ‘This site is an unofficial database of the works of Mr. F.C. Ware, proprieter of the Acme Novelty Library.’
11 July 2005
[comics] Desolation Jones #1: Author’s Commentary — Warren Ellis on the first issue of Desolation Jones
27 June 2005
[comics] Fleep — great online comic – worth checking out … ‘[Fleep’s] about a boy who wakes up in a telephone booth which has been mysteriously sealed in an envelope of concrete. Using only the contents of his pockets (two pens, a paperback novel, three coins and 20 ft of unwaxed dental floss) our hero must fashion and execute an escape plan before he runs out of oxygen.’
25 June 2005
[comics] Edison Hate Future — archive of odd little webcomics published by Warren Ellis on his blog … ‘edison look detached and amused, like he cope fine with constant horror and heartbreak of world…’ [via Robot Wisdom]
24 June 2005
[comics] Warren Ellis Interview — comics-related interview from Londonist … ‘I jumped into the net feet-first in the 90s, and the handheld is very much my outboard brain now. I’m answering these questions on it, in the pub.’
23 June 2005
[comics] Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein — web page with comparisons between Lictenstein’s work and the original comic images. Dave Gibbons on Roy Lichtenstein: ‘…Lichtenstein’s copies of the work of Irv Novick and Russ Heath are flat, uncomprehending tracings of quite sophisticated images … the original artists have translated reality into clear, effective compositions using economical and spirited linework.’
[comics] War Of The Worlds Webcomic — nice looking adaptation by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli.
21 June 2005
[comics] Flog Blog — Fantagraphics gets it’s own blog. Gary Groth, Kim Thompson and Eric Reynolds are posting and they’ve got photos from the set of Art School Confidential including snaps of John Malkovich, Dan Clowes and Terry Zwigoff. Groth: ‘This is exciting. My first blog. I’m not a fan of convention diaries, which seem like some lazy fanboy genre written by useless old hacks like Peter David to fill space, serve up one’s ego and act like reg’lar folk all at the same time – but it doesn’t have to be!’
17 June 2005
[morrison] The Annotated Flex Mentallo — notes analysing Grant Morrison’s comics about the Man of Muscle Mystery … ‘Only a bitter little adolescent boy could confuse realism with pessimism.’ [via Neilalien]
16 June 2005
[comics] Marvel Value Stamps — an unofficial look at a (in)famous promotional stamps campaign for Marvel Comics from the seventies … ‘The program destroyed the value of countless Marvel comics of this era, and missing value stamps are the bane of serious Bronze Age collectors. But if you were of a certain age when the program began, you may have feelings of nostalgia for these little stamps, despite the horror they wreaked on your collection.’ [via Metafilter]
15 June 2005
[film] ‘He’s not a god – he’s human’ — Christopher Nolan discusses Batman Begins … ‘So what is his take on the material? With the polished ease of a man who has been through a thousand pitch meetings, Nolan explains his idea. “The origin story was the bit that had never been told. I wanted to try to do it in a more realistic fashion than anyone had ever tried to a superhero film before. I talked a lot about films I liked, particularly the 1978 Superman, which is the closest thing to what I proposed. Obviously, some of it is dated, but it’s an epic film, with a certain realistic texture. I wanted to make the Batman epic you expected to have been made in 1979.”‘
13 June 2005
[comics] The Mindscape of Alan Moore Trailer … ‘I believe that our culture is turning to steam.’ [via Alan Moore Fan Site]
[comics] Dave’s Long Box — well done comic review blog … ‘I’m going to review my comic book collection and you’re going to like it!’
2 June 2005
[comics] Around the (Comics) Blogosphere — linklist and roundup of comic blogs.
31 May 2005
[comics] Cerebus Notebook #1 — some scans from Dave Sim’s notebooks which he used whilst creating Cerebus …
27 May 2005
[film] Black and white and Bloody — interview with Frank Miller on Sin City … ‘Sin City has little in common with the garish, effects-driven superheroics now associated with the genre. It plays more like the film noir equivalent of Pulp Fiction; a trio of macabre, interlinked tales set in a stylised world where men are honourable brutes, women are deadly lingerie models, and the only proper way to deal with a paedophile is to shoot his nuts off. It’s not what you’d call politically nuanced, but Miller is unashamed and unapologetic. “Cartoonists’ dirty secret is that we tend to come up with stories that involve things that are really fun to draw,” says Miller.’
24 May 2005
[comics] Jamie Hewlett’s Common People Comic — Pulp’s song converted into a comic … ‘I think all pop hits should have comic adaptations; in an ideal world I would have a copy of Rob Liefeld’s Shake Ya Tailfeather: The Graphic Novel in a frame on my wall.’
[tv] Holy villainous villains, Batman — Guardian’s Newsblog on the death of Frank Gorshin (the Riddler from the Batman TV Series) … ‘Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is about a pair of Jewish cartoonists in 1940s New York, and identifies a crucial truth about comic-book superheroes. These great Wasp icons were actually born out of a working-class, immigrant mindset. They were the dreams of influence and invincibility that came out of the heads of working-class scribblers still trying to get a toe on the ladder. Whether wittingly or not, Gorshin’s Riddler acknowledged these roots. His intelligence was the intelligence of the kid hustling for nickels. His villainy was that of the streetwise con-artist with a deck of playing cards in one pocket and a pair of knuckle-dusters in the other.’
22 May 2005
21 May 2005
[film] Watchmen – Will we be watching it after all in 2006? — Filmrot on the problem of bringing Moore and Gibbon’s Watchmen to the screen … ‘Unlike Alan Moore’s other notable ‘superhero’ comic The Extraordinary League of Gentlemen, Watchmen is not a romp. It is rich in the superhero tradition and has a sense of humour that happily makes fun of the genre but just as the iconic cover image is a smiley face, it is a smiley face with the blood of a hero smeared across it.’ [thanks Stuart]
16 May 2005
[comics] Londonist interviews Nathaniel – a Comic Shop Employee … ‘Q: Who’d win in a fight: Fathers 4 Justice or Justice League of America? Why? A: The Justice League of America would win. They’ve got superpowers whereas the Fathers 4 Justice are just normal men in costumes. It’s obvious when you think about it.’
[comics] Comics Recommended by Alan Moore … On Marshal Law: ‘If Watchmen did in any way kill off the superhero – which is a dubious proposition – then Marshal Law has taken it further with this wonderful act of necrophilia, where it has degraded the corpse in a really amusing way.’
14 May 2005
[comics] Proud Member of Warren Ellis’ Holy Slut Army … Ellis: ‘It was one of the more genuinely disturbing moments of my life, seeing people walking around wearing them at Dragon*Con last year?’
12 May 2005
[comics] My Mom was a Schizophrenic — Chester Brown’s comic-strip on the history and medical classification of Schizophrenia …
10 May 2005
[comics] Stories, Drinking And The World — Warren Ellis on Stories, the World and Comics … ‘For me, writing happens on my own. It’s exactly the same as a ritual, or sitting down at a campfire, or initiating a vision state in silent darkness. It has to come from me and the spaces in my brain. And that’s one reason why I stay in comics. Any other visual narrative medium is hopelessly compromised by committees and executives and notes and queries. In comics, it’s just the writer and the illustrator and the editor. You only have to get two other people, at most, on the same wavelength as you. And you get to speak in a mass-communication medium — where the sales are still better than genre novels or indie music, in many many cases — without filters. You get to say what you meant to say.’
[comics] Ask Mefi: Who are the worlds greatest comic book artists? … ‘The fact that nobody has mentioned Kirby yet is inexcusable.’
4 May 2005
[comics] Preview of Desolation Jones #1 — from Warren Ellis and J.H. Williams III.
26 April 2005
[ads] London Review of Books Personal Ads … ‘The LRB’s own Son of Jor-El, stuck in the Phantom Zone of the personal ads for three years now. Reckon I could still lick anyone of you wusses. Man, 36. Alone. Tonight, and very possibly forever. Box no. 07/12’ [via Yoz]
[comics] Graphic Novels for Snobs — Ask Mefi discuss Graphic Novels … ‘People keep telling me that certain graphic novels are masterpieces, but when I read them, I don’t like them. I keep wondering what their criteria are for judging a book a work of genius. Do they mean “it’s a masterpiece compared with other comic books” or “it’s a masterpiece compared with any work or literature”? Because I don’t care how something ranks within the comic-book world. I just want to read good stories. I’m convinced there MUST be good stories in graphic novel form.’
25 April 2005
[comics] Classic Comic Ads … ‘These ads are as much a part of the history and lore of comic books as the stories themselves. What kid did not order or dream of ordering such classics as Sea Monkeys, Polaris Subs or X-Ray glasses that we saw in the comic books.’
24 April 2005
[comics] Planetary Preview — PDF of the preview comic that Warren Ellis and John Cassady produced for Planetary.
[movies] Sin City Expands Digital Frontier — Wired Reviews Sin City … ‘While [Sin City] could induce nightmares, it is also, in its own way, sweetly nostalgic. This is a film that loves artifice the same way that Singin’ in the Rain did. Singin’ in the Rain, along with many films noir and various other stage-bound Hollywood movies, used two-by-fours and gallons of paint to build its glorious unrealities. Sin City instead uses pixels…’
23 April 2005
[comics] Warren Ellis: ‘I fully expect the film version of WATCHMEN to be a fucking musical.’
22 April 2005
[comics] The Comics Bubble and the Burst — Metafilter discuss the comic book speculation bubble of the 1990’s. ‘…I sold hundreds of copies of Harbinger #1 (Valiant Comics) for more than a hundred bucks a pop — and you can pick them up for near cover price these days. I was a bastard. I knew and understood the fanboy mentality perfectly, and to this day I feel no guilt about it.’
17 April 2005
16 April 2005
[movies] The Man Who Shot Sin City — Wired Magazine on how Robert Rodriguez brought Sin City to the screen. ‘…small details like Sin City’s signature “white blood” proved to be an effects challenge. Regular movie blood didn’t cut it. Instead, the crew used fluorescent red liquid and hit it with a black light. This allowed Rodriguez to turn the blood “white” in postproduction. Likewise, the novel’s few splashes of color proved troublesome. Yellow and green react with green screens, causing color to spill into the background and making them impossible to separate. So during shooting Rodriguez painted the villain, Yellow Bastard, blue – and then colored him yellow in post.’
13 April 2005
[comics] Unintentionally Sexual Comic Book Covers … ‘I can only imagine the condition of a society in which a comic featuring wet, well-trimmed, virile young man gazing romantically in a monkey’s eyes could be published without raising some serious red flags.’
11 April 2005
[comics] Katsuhiro Otomo Interview — the Onion AV Club interviews the creator of Akira … ‘I can’t create a movie by myself. It is worthy only because many staff bring new ideas and techniques. I think the appeal of being the director is to encounter such new things, which I don’t possess. It is absolutely wonderful to create something new based on teamwork. It is something that I couldn’t appreciate in my cartoonist days.’ [via linkbunnies.org]
[comics] Pleased to meet you, Reverend, your cousin is insane — on meeting a relative of Dave Sim … ‘”We’re not really in touch,” Chris said. “Is he popular?” “That’s kind of hard to answer,” I said. Your cousin is a total freakin’ genius but he’s batshit insane and did a 300-issue comic story about an aardvark with a sword crossed my mind. Thankfully, my brain had spooled back up to speed…’
7 April 2005
[comics] Frank Miller On-Line — comprehensive list of Frank Miller / Sin City links.
1 April 2005
[comics] Sin City Comic-to-Screen Comparisons — Compare Frank Miller’s comics with the upcoming Movie … ‘Not an exact match by any stretch, but the mood is there…’ [via Waxy]