A Certain Tendency in French Comics
Just read Christophe Blain’s latest comic, the western romance Gus. Beautifully drawn, well-told, cool 70s-style colouring, nice poetic mood, utterly unambitious. Blain is one of the most naturally graceful draughtsmen of current French-language comics and amongst the prime movers in what has been regarded as the revitalisation of the traditional album format over the last ten years or so. His award-winning series Isaac le Pirate has been one of the more significant successes of the kind of genre comics for adults that has characterised this “nouvelle bande dessinée.” Yet, his works : for all their grace and charm : are essentially trifles. Why bother putting such wonderful energy into work of so little consequence?
Saw Inland Empire by David Lynch yesterday. I loved it. Probably my favourite since Blue Velvet (no shit). A sprawling spectacle stretching over three hours, and not letting up for a second, it is so loaded with bewildering imagery and ambiguous motifs that one might initially feel distracted from its deceptive simplicity. In a way, it is Lynch’s clearest resounding work since, well, Blue Velvet. Sure, it has all the mindfuck we have come to expect of him post-Lost Highway in spades: analog circularity, dissolution and transformation of identity, ontological sundering of veils, time out of joint, plenty of scotophobic appeal, a Polish Bob, and, uh, rabbits in suits, but at its heart it is a straightforward film about living with the unknown. 
This concludes my 2003 interview with El-P and Aesop Rock. 
This just in: Philippe Val, editor-in-chief of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, who published the notorious Muhammed cartoons from Danish daily Jyllands-Posten – along with a number of others, produced for the occasion – in February of last year, has just been 
This is continuing my 2003 interview with El-P and Aesop Rock. 
To mark the release of New York hip hop veteran, innovator and impressario El-P’s second solo album, and first solo effort in nearly five years, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, the Metabunker re-presents an in-depth interview yours truly conducted with El-P and fellow innovator and Def Jukie Aesop Rock in El-P’s home/studio back in the winter of 2003, originally used for an article in the Danish weekly newspaper Weekendavisen and published in edited form and translated into Danish at 
I hope you are reading Lewis Trondheim’s comics blog 
One of the discontents of art historical connoisseurship is how we, the practitioners, have been trained to hunt for the prototype of any given invention. We are so used to seeing precedents everywhere, even when dealing with some of the most original and inventive artists ever, that we sometimes forget how unpredictable art, and creativity, can be. If an earlier likeness of a given detail in a work of art can be identified, it seems the latter has to derive from it. This sometimes results in daring feats of historical contortionism on the part of scholars trying to establish how the artist can have seen and copied, or at least internalised, the prototype. As if coincidence is impossible and he could not have come up with it himself.
In the wake of the closure and demolition of Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen almost two weeks ago, the streets of Copenhagen have been hit with a wave of political graffiti and street art. Rapspot impressario and photog Klaus Køhl has been around, trying to take it in – check his reportage 
Because I think at least bits of it are worth a second look, this is just to follow up on the discussion about modernism, high and low in art, and how all of this pertains to comics that Comics Journal critic Noah Berlatsky and I, amongst others, have conducted