May 2013
5 posts
9 tags
I'll come running back to you
Nate Powell’s breathtaking sketches for a now-dormant Sam Cooke graphic biography (via Locust Moon Comics). Would love to see this come to fruition. Last year, I wrote for PopMatters about The Silence of Our Friends, a graphic novel about 1960s-era civil rights tensions that Powell worked on with Mark Long.
Via Locust Moon Comics, Philadelphia
8 tags
7 tags
7 tags
Brown, blue, and gold in graphic novel 'Babble'
Comics artist Bryan Coyle drafts recollection and current day settings in a new, visually striking graphic novel called Babble with the use of powerful aesthetic shifts. Read my PopMatters piece on this book.
8 tags
“At night we and our neighbors showed up at one another’s doors, drank beer...”
– This was Williamsburg. Tom McGeveran, Capital New York
April 2013
8 posts
10 tags
Poor Charles Dexter Ward
Action-packed comics don’t often owe to depictions of characters sifting through moldy correspondence, deciphering archaic language, and unlocking mantras typically reserved for cellars or graveyards. Read my piece on H.P. Lovecraft’s/Ian Culbard’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward for The Comics Journal.
4 tags
While different creators have added new layers of mythology to the character, the best writers know that Swamp Thing is driven by one fundamental principle: Nature is scary. The world of plants is alien to mankind, and in that unknown there is plenty of potential for fear.
The AV Club’s Oliver Sava on Swamp Thing.
6 tags
6 tags
9 tags
Reporter Gay Talese's South Jersey roots
The folks at Vol. 1 Brooklyn were kind enough to feature my recent PopMatters post on Gay Talese over at their website. Back in March I wrote about Talese’s South Jersey roots and that crazy outline for his famous Esquire story.
Vol. 1 Brooklyn produces original fiction, literary-minded events, blogging, features, and thoughtful criticism. Check ‘em out.
James Burke, New York City,...
7 tags
“At least 265 of up to 482 people who the U.S. intelligence reports estimated the...”
– Obama’s drone war kills ‘others,’ not just al Qaida leaders. Jonathan Landay, McClatchy Newspapers
5 tags
11 tags
Comics journalism from the Congo
After a six-week trip to the Congo in 2010, reporter David Axe developed a long magazine article that would eventually serve as a script for Army of God: Joseph Kony’s War in Central Africa, a work of graphic journalism. Illustrated by Brooklyn, New York-based comics artist Tim Hamilton, Army of God tells the story of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group, a morally corrupt militia that has moved...
March 2013
4 posts
7 tags
“Suckers,” a new crime webcomic at Trip City, moves fast—Eric Skillman’s narrative packs three panels in per page at most, with only a handful of pages going live online for each installment. That’s a lot to sort out in such quick chapters, but it’s done well. Read my short post on “Suckers” at PopMatters.
3 tags
“I am trying to imagine a white president forced to show his papers at a national...”
– “The Good, Racist People.” Ta-Nehisi Coates, The New York Times
4 tags
The work of illustrator Wesley Allsbrook
I was digging around a bit on illustrator Wesley Allsbrook’s site this morning after I’d noticed her illustrations in a forthcoming New York Times magazine story. Wild, wandering linework — distinctively comics-influenced. Really great stuff.
6 tags
Underground comics as the roots of 'Archer'
In the March issue of Harper’s (not online), writer Charles Bock discusses FX’s animated series Archer. Bock blogged about Archer for the magazine’s newly redesigned website, citing the show’s roots in underground comics like Mad, EC’s horror stuff, and the work of Robert Crumb.
(In Archer’s) mixture of the crude and whimsical, it goes well beyond anything...
February 2013
7 posts
8 tags
Claustrophobic horror in Hannah Berry's 'Adamtine'
Following the perpetual rainstorms that soak the private investigator who mopes through her debut, 2010’s Britten & Brülightly, Hannah Berry’s Adamtine is a smaller, slimmer volume. It’s a modern tale and is far more claustrophobic than Britten‘s somber murder mystery, which is told in the shadows of towering buildings or from directly above, as if we’re monitoring restaurant meetings from...
7 tags
New evidence undermines "facts" in Capote's 'In...
New evidence from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation calls into question some of the claims made in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. From the Wall Street Journal:
In researching “In Cold Blood,” Truman Capote received first-class service from the KBI and Mr. Dewey, its lead detective on the case. Mr. Dewey gave the author access to the diary of 16-year-old Nancy Clutter—her final...
11 tags
9 tags
“One reason why LeDuff alienates some journalists is that he gets involved with...”
– “Motor City Madman (on journalist Charlie LeDuff’s memoir.” Bill Shea, Columbia Journalism Review.
14 tags
Hubris documentary, critical of Bush's case for...
At Mother Jones, David Corn writes about a new documentary film called Hubris — it’s hosted by Rachel Maddow and based on a book by Corn and Michael Isikoff that offers “a behind-the-scenes account of how Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their lieutenants deployed false claims, iffy intelligence, and unsupported hyperbole to win popular backing for the invasion (of...
6 tags
Comics Bulletin on 'Revival'
Excellent piece by Nick Hanover at Comics Bulletin on Revival (Image Comics) draws parallels between the current comic and smart French horror film They Came Back. I’m feeling the same way about this book. Check out Hanover’s piece now.
8 tags
“The slaying outside the McDonald’s would remain one of the open cases....”
– “Anatomy of a Heroin Ring.” Mick Dumke, Chicago Reader
January 2013
4 posts
10 tags
Abbey Road sessions: The Zombies
When British pop act the Zombies arrived at Abbey Road Studios in June of 1967, the Beatles had just finished wrapping up the sessions for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. When those reportedly agonizing hours of tape splicing and manual scissor edits adjourned, the Beatles left a number of instruments behind. Among them was a Mellotron, an early 1960s era keyboard that offered sample...
6 tags
7 tags
Sean Ford's strange and beautiful 'Only Skin'
The woods in Sean Ford’s comic Only Skin border a simple, recognizable American town. There’s a post office and a diner. Members of the community amble about, fill up at the local gas station, and nod knowingly at each other on the empty streets. At night, they experience strange dreams and file into council meetings to sound concerns about neighbors who have recently gone missing in...
8 tags
December 2012
7 posts
5 tags
The Internet loves a (comics) list
My knowledge of small press comics publishers is very limited — good news, though: Broken Frontier’s managing editor Andy Oliver has an insightful “best-of” digest of UK small press comics, which is built-out with a great deal of links to publishers and more. At Thirteen Minutes, the reliably sharp Justin Giampaoli has his own “best-of” comics list that...
9 tags
7 tags
On 'Stumptown: Vol. 2' & Emily Carroll's weird...
At The Hooded Utilitarian, comics creator James Romberger (see Post York) discusses “freedom from…(the mainstream’s) collective product that is actually primarily intended for adaptation to other forms,” and highlights a number of independent books that challenge the norm. Romberger cites the work of Greg Rucka and the new volume of Stumptown, which is being published by...
6 tags
“In comments which legal experts and campaigners described as “deeply...”
– “US military facing fresh questions over targeting of children in Afghanistan.” Karen McVeigh, The Guardian
9 tags
8 tags
Truman Capote, a "human tape recorder" in Brando's...
In the new issue of Columbia Journalism Review, Douglas McCollam writes about a night in January of 1957, when The New Yorker sent Truman Capote to profile Marlon Brando.
Two nights after arriving in Japan, Capote showed up at Brando’s door wearing a tan cardigan and carrying a bottle of vodka for what in Brando’s estimation was to be a quick dinner and an early night (indeed, Brando...
8 tags
'Think Tank' brings the drones program to comics
“I build things the military uses to kill people. What you see on CNN is such a sanitized version of things. They can’t report the truth. No one would believe it.”
In a monthly comic called Think Tank from Top Cow, a scientist named David Loren is pulling out of his highly regarded role as a covert weapons developer. The first trade collects issues 1-4, and it’s out this...
November 2012
13 posts
6 tags
4 tags
“This was a New York that was in truth probably not so wonderful to inhabit. Had...”
– “Here Is New York.” Helena Fitzgerald, The Rumpus
6 tags
NYT, NPR, PW sift through 2012's comics
The New York Times sifts through some 2012 graphic novels/trades and offers a respectable holiday gift guide. Picks include Jeff Lemire’s The Underwater Welder (one of my favorite books this year) and Darwyn Cooke’s Parker: The Score, about which I’ll agree with writer George Gustines that if you’re into really stylish heist/crime stories, then the three-volume set...
9 tags
6 tags
“But when I met my wife—I actually came out from California to go on our first...”
– Artist and writer Adrian Tomine talks to The New Yorker.
4 tags
At Macmillan’s Criminal Element site, Wired.com’s Corrina Lawson throws a bit of light on an Ed Brubaker Batman story called “Made of Wood,” which appeared originally in Detective Comics in 2003. The artist on that one was Patrick Zircher, who is now working on Valiant’s Shadowman. You can find “Made…” paired with the main story in the...
7 tags
Lots of plastic in 'Great Pacific'
Writer Andy Khouri at Comics Alliance discusses Great Pacific, a new environmental science- and science fiction-driven monthly from Image Comics, as well as “the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a massive, miles-wide pile of manmade plastics, chemicals and other debris floating in the Pacific Ocean.” I picked this book up today, and it appears to have promise, not least of which in...
8 tags
Politico's "highly toxic, incestuous variant of...
Alex Pareene discusses Politico’s disdain for substance or investigative journalism in The Baffler:
Nevertheless, there is a specific Politico ethos, a worldview, and a style of writing and reporting that sets the Harris-VandeHei collaboration apart from the institutions the paper grew out of. It’s a product of the worst of Washington in a particularly awful era for Washington. In this...
7 tags
6 tags
“At this point, there’s wide agreement that the GOP faces a profound demographic...”
– “The Long Shadow of George W. Bush,” Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect
3 tags
7 tags
Fox "News" campaigning nationally for GOP
“According to a Media Matters review, at least 32 Fox News figures have backed Republican efforts in more than 300 instances during the 2011-2012 election cycle. The Fox News personalities have campaigned for Republicans nationally and in more than 40 states.”
“30+ Fox News Hosts and Contributors Who Are Campaigning for Republicans,” Eric Hananoki, Media Matters
See also...
9 tags
Short news roundup: Hurricane Sandy (NYC, NJ)
New Yorkers: Governor Cuomo waives fees for today’s commutes (The New York Times)
The East River Ferry returns with limited service (Transportation Nation, WNYC)
Sea Gate, Brooklyn hit hard during Sandy (NY1)
Owner of Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn tells of narrow escape from flooded basement (The Brooklyn Paper)
Round-up of Staten Island death toll, damage (SI Live)
Storm...
October 2012
12 posts
7 tags
“Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bengali descent who has now denounced...”
– “Informant: NYPD Paid Me to ‘Bait’ Muslims,” Adam Goldman & Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press (See also my earlier post on the NYPD’s worthless surveillance program)
(H/T Samuel Rubenfeld)
9 tags
