The picks of the week from around the web. Li Se on the proposed South African media bill. As good a critical overview as any I’ve read on the ANC’s latest media clampdown in disguise. Sam Lipsyte on Wilson. A fine review of Dan Clowes’ latest comic. One of the few I’ve read that seems…
Drake vs. B.o.B On Drake, B.o.B and the rapper/singer. Part 2 here.
Roskilde 2010: A Look Back The Bunker at the Roskilde Festival 2010.
Over at The Comics Journal I now have a review of the book-of-the-year candidate by Nadia Raviscioni up. Go, read.
As explained here the other day, there’s currently a public debate raging in Denmark about drawn and animated child pornography, triggered in part by the opening of an exhibition on the topic in the city of Odense, in part by the conviction in Sweden of a manga translator alleged to have possessed drawn images of…
This Sunday saw the fourth Comics and Beats event in Copenhagen. Organised by the Danish Comics Council, it is a live drawing event where cartoonists improvise to music provided by a DJ and prompts given by the audience and the MC. This time, it took place as part of a charity event in Copenhagen’s Fælledpark,…
The highly publicized child pornography conviction last month of a Swedish translator, for possessing manga which allegedly depicted sexualised minors or minors engaging in sexual acts, is but the latest manifestation of a debate concerning what constitutes child pornography that has been going for a number of years. The chairman of the Swedish Comics Society,…
For those in the Copenhagen-Malmö region, I recommend checking out the exhibition Mutant Pop, now open at the Loyal Gallery in Saltimporten, Malmö. It is curated by Joe Grillo (it’s his work above) and Laura Grant of Dearraindrop and includes work by a host of talented artists, amongst them Mat Brinkman, Brian Chippendale, Ron Regé…
“Think, for example, of Northrop Frye. Frye’s is now a name that you never hear mentioned but which was then everywhere. CS Lewis, who is now famous for fairy stories, was then famous for being a scholar. Tolkien too was famous for being a scholar, not for elves and so on. There is no prestige…
Lige en kort notits: jeg har i længere tid gerne ville anbefale Anikonisme, en af de tegneserier Simon Petersen har lavet til det i øjeblikket tørlagte Serieland. Det er måske Petersens mest ambitiøse tegneserie til dato og en af de eneste danske tegneserier, der er gået ind i den sprængaktuelle billed- og integrationsdebat. Petersen forsøger…
Over at Hooded Utilitarian, my monthly column this time is an extended piece on the art historical antecedents of cartooning, with special focus on Robert Crumb’s adaptation of Genesis, and with reference to Bruegel and Rembrandt, plus a bonus discussion on the different meaning-making properties of text and image. I hope you’ll check it out,…
Who Is Harvey Pekar? Thoughts on the late Harvey Pekar’s work
Further to my article of last week on the two new rapping and singing Wunderkinder, B.o.B and Drake, I just wanted to add a few comments about the reception of their debut albums and what it might say about hip hop criticism today. My colleague over at Rapspot, Toobs, dug both albums (warning: Danish), preferring…
I was just reminded today of how depressingly treacherous it has become to navigate the Mohammed cartoon affair and its religious-cultural discontents. The day before yesterday it was reported worldwide that the upcoming memoirs of ‘Bomb in Turban’ cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, Manden bag stregen (‘The Man Behind the Line’), would be published with the cartoon…
“I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me. Rage would be beside the point for the same reason. Instead, I am badly oppressed by a gnawing sense of waste. I had real plans for…