Clickable
Links to good criticism, reporting, etc.
COMICS
Comics journalist Jess Ruliffson is telling the stories of veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. I wrote about her award-winning work.
Via Comics and Cola, writer Zainab Akhtar posts a discussion of Polina, by French comics creator Bastien Vives — English translation out now (Jonathan Cape Graphic Novels). This book looks beautiful, and Akhtar's review is deep and eloquent. There is a short critical piece at The Economist, too.
Sean Ford's new issue of Shadow Hills is out. My post on the creepy first issue.
Writer Rob Clough looks closely at the great "loosely autobiographical" Paul Joins the Scouts.
Your post-Winter Soldier film reading list, via The Underwire.
At The Comics Journal, a long look at/history of Brandon Graham's Multiple Warheads.
Out now in paperback: Joe Sacco's/Chris Hedges' important Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt from NationBooks. My 2012 preview piece.
Author, journalist Will Potter looks at the "sympathetic characters & inspiring heroes" of Liberator, a new Black Mask Studios comic.
MUSIC
This Strand of Oaks song is nuts. "Every lyric...either a direct thought or a direct event. It's exactly my life." My friend Ben wrote about the song, and incidentally, he was inspired to write a song of his own after having heard it.
"RZA didn’t let the Clan hear even a snippet of 36 Chambers — not even their own verses — until it was completed."
On "rehousing and reorganizing" Fugazi tapes from "a jumble of crusty Case Logic boxes."
NEWS, REPORTING
A New Yorker deep dive on Chris Christie from Ryan Lizza. Related: When Christie cancelled tunnel project, he dumped 6,000 construction jobs and $600 million in federal money had been spent. I did a little digging on that because it only got a mention or two in Lizza's piece.
Invasive species like the Asian long-horned beetle cost the U.S. more than $137 billion per year.
On the Santa Monica drug rehab program that became a weird and vindictive cult.
Pacific Standard contributing writer Jared Keller on anxiety, city life, and the potential for "a coming urbageddon of sorts."
Photographer Paul Raphaelson goes inside Brooklyn's Domino Sugar Factory.
Glad to have checked out an excellent Longform podcast with recently departed journalist Matthew Power (RIP). Power died on assignment in Uganda.