I just wanted to take the time slight belatedly to acknowledge the 40th anniversary of Garry Trudeau’s now classic newspaper strip. I don’t see any need to list Trudeau’s accomplishments (Gary Willis provides a fine overview at the NYRB), nor to add much to the accolades that it has received, but merely wanted to emphasise…
This is part of a Metabunker series celebrating a great decade in comics with Rackham by reprinting select reviews of the decades’ best comics from the Rackham archive, along with a number of new pieces. By Julie Paludan-Müller Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is one of the most touching pieces of exile literature in recent memory, and…
This is part of a Metabunker series celebrating a great decade in comics with Rackham by reprinting select reviews of the decades’ best comics from the Rackham archive, along with a number of new pieces. Kramers Ergot #4, edited by the cartoonist Sammy Harkham, is an artistic and stylistic statement of a kind rarely seen…
This is part of a Metabunker series celebrating a great decade in comics with Rackham by reprinting select reviews of the decades’ best comics from the Rackham archive, along with a number of new pieces. By Thomas Thorhauge “Striking terror. Best part of the job”, says Batman somewhere in the first chapter of Frank Miller’s…
Over at The Comics Journal, I now have a report from last weekend’s Helsinki Book Fair online, in which I do some half-baked theorising about the artistic successes of Finland’s comics scene. Hop to it! More photos from the fair and around Helsinki, including the show of contemporary Sotuh African art (featuring Bitterkomix) currently running…
This week and next, we have a roundtable discussion on Charles Hatfield’s 2005 book Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature going over at Hooded Utilitarian. My post just went up and is the fifth in the series, following Noah Berlatsky, Robert Stanley Martin, Caroline Small, and Derik Badman (plus an interlude by Ng Suat Tong). Charles…
This is part of a Metabunker series celebrating a great decade in comics with Rackham by reprinting select reviews of the decades’ best comics from the Rackham archive, along with a number of new pieces. Between April and May 1993 the UN Security Council decided to establish a number of so-called “Safe Areas” in war-torn…
Primært til vore norske læsere: i denne uges udgave af Morgenbladet kan man finde min anmeldelse af den store Bronzino-udstilling i Firenze, som jeg besøgte for et par uger siden. Artiklen er endnu ikke tilgængelig online, men bliver det vanen tro på et tidspunkt. Køb og læs i mellemtiden avisen! Detalje fra Bronzinos Portræt af…
Tomorrow, I’m off to Finland for the Helsinki Book Fair, where there will be a substantial comics presence. Making up for missing the recent Helsinki Comics Festival, I’m looking forward to meeting the Finnish cartoonists present, as well as to see the apparently substantial contingent of international authors, primarily Scandinavian, who will be converging there,…
This is part of a Metabunker series celebrating a great decade in comics with Rackham by reprinting select reviews of the decades’ best comics from the Rackham archive, along with a number of new pieces. On the first page of the story we meet the author and his brother. The former is visiting his parents;…
I was in Florence for a couple of days last week to see the two big art shows they have on at the moment — the Bronzino exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi and the Caravaggio and Carravaggeschi show, which covers three venues (Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti and the Villa Bardini) and closes next Sunday. I’ll write…
At HU I have a post up about the classics — specifically Popeye (with Buster Keaton thrown into the mix) — and notions of high and low culture, including ample quotation from pioneering pop culture critic Gilbert Seldes. Check it out.
I have a review of Ulli Lust’s great Grand Tour diary up over at TCJ. Check it out.
The Cambridge Film Festival is on at the moment and last night I attended one of its main events — a live interview with director Stephen Frears, followed by a screening of his latest film Tamara Drewe, adapted from the graphic novel by Posey Simmonds. It was a good time — Frears mixed self-deprecation and…
When I was in Denmark a few weeks ago, I got the chance to cross the sound to Malmö and see the Dearraindrop-curated Mutant Pop show at Gallery Loyal there. I took a number of photos, which you can see here. It was fun, but I’m somewhat sceptical of this contemporary iteration of post-pop art.…