Clickable
Reading, reading, reading: A round-up of links to recent things I've read.
COMICS, GRAPHIC NOVELS
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer has a graphic novel out this week — it's his first. The New York Times has a review and images, and The Comics Journal posted an "expanded intro and afterword" to his 1965 book, The Great Comic Book Heroes.
Thoughtful context, great visuals here from New York's Abraham Riesman in this Frank Miller slideshow of "Sin City" comics.
In case you missed it, this is how Marvel serves the female comics readers who are "looking for content they can relate to."
I liked Nick Hanover on "The Fade Out," a promising noir from Image Comics.
Here in NYC, The Society of Illustrators is going to feature the work of "underrated" comics artist Dick Dillin.
"Hunger House," a new comic from Borderline Press, "grips and chills, pace increasing to the end," writes Richard Bruton at the Forbidden Planet International blog.
One of my favorite comics this year — Mimi Pond's Over Easy (Drawn & Quarterly) wins PEN Center USA Literary Award.Good Hooded Utilitarian critical piece -- with lots of interesting visuals -- on Isabel Greenberg’s The Encyclopedia of Early Earth.
Comics Alliance on new graphic novel ApocalyptiGirl, "the story of a woman called Aria (and her cat Jelly Beans)."
Chris Mautner talks to author, professor David Ball about Critical Approaches to Comics Artists.
Comics creator Eleanor Davis talks to the Los Angeles Times about her new collection.
Looking forward to checking Jason Sacks's new book, American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1970s. See an excerpt at Comics Bulletin, where Sacks is EIC.
"I hate hobbits, dragons, and the walking dead" | Michael Dooley's "Designer's Guide to Comic Con."
Wide-spanning and extensive Los Angeles Review of Books analysis from Anne Elizabeth Moore of Paul Gravett's Comics Art.
Via Broken Frontier, Box Brown's 'New Physics' looks marvelously designed.
My Chicago Reader piece on his graphic novel Andre the Giant.
Dark Horse collects grim 'Murder Book' series from Ed Brisson and co. I wrote about Brisson's series in 2012 for PopMatters.
FILM
The last film that frustrated me to no end was Shutter Island -- I was mad for months -- but this might be good.
"I'm tired of hearing about how great Dr. Saperstein is!" -- Indiewire's "Classic of the Week" is Rosemary's Baby.
MUSIC
Blondie's Chris Stein "used a kitchen that he shared with Debbie Harry in NYC as a makeshift dark room to develop photos."
At Narratively, W.M. Akers on Philadelphia trumpeter Lee Morgan's death, whose first Blue Note contract yielded six LPs in a little over a year.
"The glue on the original master tape of The Beatles’ debut was seeping through, making playback difficult."
Guitarist, critic, producer Lenny Kaye on exotica (and if you haven't heard Arthur Lyman's Hawaiian Sunset, do it today).
An epic hip hop year in 1994: Illmatic, Blowout Comb, Endtroducing..., Ready to Die, and more.
Dave Davies: "(The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society) was obscure the week it came out."