The following essay was originally written for, and published in, The Comics Journal #300 in 2009, as a special instalment of my Euro-Comics column “Continental Drift”; it was subsequently published on TCJ.com, but on a particular iteration of that website which is no longer online. I therefore now reprint it here in minimally edited form,…
It’s been a week and half since the big show, but I still think this year’s Ping awards deserve a few words for what little international audience this site still has after months of hibernation. The Ping awards is an annual set of awards given to comics in Denmark in the manner of the Angoulême…
Over at Hooded Utilitarian, the latest installment of my very irregular column, DWYCK, focuses on recent media controversies in Sweden over representations of race: Stina Wirsén’s empoyment of pickaninny stereotyping for her childrens book and film character Lilla Hjärtat and Makote Aj Linde’s infamous cake installation at Moderna Museet in Stockholm earlier this year. The…
Yesterday I received the sad news that the great oak of Danish art history Erik Fischer has died. More thorough obituaries will surely be forthcoming, so I just want to note briefly how important his work and example has been to myself as an art historian. Fischer’s distinctions and honors are many: among other things,…
I’ve been on a bit of a Tribe quick this last week, culminating Saturday at the Brooklyn Hip Hop Festival, where Q-Tip was the headliner. It was a bravura set by a born performer: Tip’s clear delivery, whether rapping, singing (weakly, but charmingly) or beatboxing, coupled with a tighly-knit band animating the Tribe compositions with…
Around ten-and-a-half years ago, in April of 2000, the first issue of Rackham was released to a mostly indifferent Danish audience. The comics market had been in a slump for a decade, very few comics of interest were being published, the underground was struggling to find its sea legs after years of neglect, the comics…
Så er denne signatur atter kommet hjem fra Roskilde Festivalen i god behold. Som sædvanligt med følelsen af at være totalt mørbanket efter dage med musik og fest i overdådige mængder, og med farvelråbet “vi ses til næste år!”
I meant to write some words on the passing of the great Belgian cartoonist last week earlier, but then figured that since I was going to Paris over the weekend, I’d pick up a couple of his classic comics to reacquaint myself with some of those stories that meant so much to me as a…
Tegneserie-, SF- og spilbutikken Fantask overgår til ny ledelse pr. 1. oktober. Det er netop blevet annonceret, at stifterne Rolf Bülow og Søren Pedersen fra den dato trækker sig som ledere og overdrager faklen til Marit Nim, der efterhånden har arbejdet i butikken i 14 år og har administreret spilafdelingen en væsentlig del af den…
Isaac Hayes is gone. And not to Phoenix, this time. It’s a hard goodbye for this listener. Inspired by the great artists who sampled him — Public Enemy on “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”, Big Daddy Kane on “Smooth Operator”, The Jungle Brothers’ on “Behind the Bush”, Massive Attack on “One Love”, Compton’s…
This 2006 essay, posted here to supplement the review of the Spring 2008 Titian show in Venice, is an attempt, firstly, to analyze the loose finish of Titian’s late pictures as a natural development in his art with roots as far back as the beginning of his career, and, secondly, to provide a contemporary theoretical…
Gary Gygax, who just passed away, changed my life. Indirectly but still. He was one of the great imaginary enablers of our time. His creation, along with several others, not so much of Dungeons & Dragons itself, but of the role-playing game as an immersive storytelling form, has been central to the development of my…
This essay was originally published in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Comix — on the contemporary intersections between comics and the fine arts — at Brandts klædefabrik, Odense (Sep. 22 2007 — Jan 6 2008). Now that the exhibition is over, it is presented here in a slightly edited version. The catalogue is available in…
This season’s commonly one for retrospection, and appropriately I’ve lately been reminded of one of my youthful follies, a road not taken. An old friend, Anders Bøgh, has unearthed one of the comics he, I and two of our classmates did back in fourth grade, from whatever bottom shelf of lost recollection he keeps (PDF…
I’ve only just now been made aware that the great Renaissance scholar Konrad Oberhuber passed away on September 12, aged 72. I never had the pleasure of meeting the by all accounts charismatic and gregarious scholar, but have found great inspiration — and also at times frustration — in his work. It’s sad to see…