As this year’s Tour de France rolled around, the Metabunker’s own T. Thorhauge was as usual parked in front of the TV, but contrary to previous years, he this time around went in the footsteps of his avowed mentor Jørgen Leth (pictured) and provided commentary! For your convenience, here’s the collected linkage: July 10: Fausto…
On Thomas’ recommendation, I went and saw The Bourne Ultimatum last night. I now understand there’s been a lot of discussion of it online, with David Bordwell providing a great analysis of especially its “run-and-gun” visual style, as well as commenting further on the claim made by some that it is particularly innovative in this…
Inspired by this blog post, courtesy Con C de Arte, exemplifying Andy Kubert’s consistently unimaginative and chronically lazy approach to grounding his work in any kind of believable reality, I thought I’d supply my own example, from Batman #665, written by Grant Morrison. Just as is the case with his depiction, in Batman #658, of…
David Kunzle deserves a large part of the credit for debunking the myth of the Yellow Kid as the point of origin, and bringing the history of modern comics before Hogan’s Alley to light in a fledgling academic field, dominated for years by collective denial. A substantial part of that effort has been the reintroduction…
When one looks at the top stories in hip hop today, it is no wonder that sales are plummeting faster than in any other genre. While once the media were abuzz with Ice Cube’s at times ill-advised but nevertheless truly provocative statements, Biggie and Pac’s tragic feud which exposed the underbelly of ghetto fame, or…
Jeez, here we go again. Swedish artist Lars Wilks (pictured) has, during the course of the last three weeks, had a handful of drawings, amongst other things showing the Prophet Muhammed as a so-called ’roundabout dog’ rejected from two exhibitions in the province to which he had been invited to participate. A media storm has…
Via Dirk, my attention was called to this analysis of the page pictured at left, from Darwyn Cooke’s characteristically bland revival of The Spirit, issue 5. Now, I guess the criticism of the plot problems in the story is valid enough, although this is a broad, archetypical comic book story, not a realistic one. Cooke’s…
Just got back and have a million things I wanna do here, so what better than to comment on the recently released documents of the settlement between writer Harlan Ellison and publisher Fantagraphics? (the document is available here) Well, I guess there’s lots, but here we go. While it is obviously the most practicable reason…
As a long-time reader and fan of Bart Beaty’s Comics Journal column, “Euro-Comics for Beginners”, today continued as “Conversational Euro-Comics” at Tom Spurgeon’s Comics Reporter, I have been looking forward to Beaty’s book on the new wave of European comics since I first heard he was working on it, several years ago. Now it is…
Yesterday, Spanish Boy Wonder Alberto Contador won the Tour de France. The time trail from Cognac to comics capital of the world, Angoulême, was in reality the last chance to change the top in the general classification (GC). Indeed, this was an exciting time trail, in which the three leading riders rode as though they…
This year, it was 25 years ago that the modern classic Blade Runner first flashed across the silver screen. Just in time for the anniversary, the film has emerged from years of copyright limbo and it has finally become possible for director Ridley Scott to finish a final cut of the film that matches his…
BREAKING NEWS! The maillot jaune is out of the Tour de France! As mentioned in the blog entry below, Rasmussen seems to have lied about his whereabouts in June, and his employer Rabobank has kicked him out! Read the whole story on velonews.com! As I also wrote somewhere below: “Good Lord, when you think there…
Just moments after finishing my last post on le Tour, Alexandre Vinokourov was tested positive for blood doping. Though Vinokourov claims he and his teammates are the innocent victims of a conspiracy, Team Astana has left the Tour (Vinokourov also stated that he has no intentions of wasting time proving he’s innocent…!). Now, some 24…
It never seems quiet on the cartoon front these years. Today cartoonist Guillermo and writer Manel FontdeVila are to appear in court for having depicted Spanish royals, the Prince and Princess of Asturias, fornicating on the cover of last week’s edition of prime satirical magazine El Jueves. Not content to have forced its retraction by…
At least in the Danish coverage of le Tour, everyone’s reporting that viewing figures are dropping massively throughout Europe, due to – yes, you guessed it! – cycling’s doping-infested image. Danish paper Berlingske Tidende also ran an article claiming that the drop in popularity is exacerbated by the fact that a certain Dane is very…