On the Mickey Mouse Plot

comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism, current affairs

Today’s arrest of two men suspected of planning to kill cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose, and to bomb the newspaper’s headquarters — apparently dubbed the ‘Mickey Mouse plot’ by their peers — all for the publication of those twelve dumb cartoons is a disquieting reminder that the madness continues.

It is also interesting to see how free speech fatigue is creeping in. In contrast to the last time a murder plot against Westergaard was apparently uncovered, in Februrary 2008, the major Danish newspapers have agreed not to republish any of the cartoons. This, naturally, is immediately being framed as a free-speech issue, which I guess is understandable with Yale University Press’ recent academic censorship in mind, but also somewhat tiring.

In February 2008 seemingly everyone in Denmark, including the Metabunker (although we quickly recanted), published the Bomb in the Turban, more as an act of solidarity with the beleaguered cartoonist than as documentation. This happened immediately, before anyone could be sure that there was anything to the plot alleged by PET, the Danish intelligence services (come to think of it, it seems we still cannot be sure to what extent the three men arrested posed a threat to Westergaard, since PET has kept pretty mum about the whole affair). In other words an understandable and to an extent sympathetic, if rash reaction.

The decision not to republish this time around is also understandable, even commendable, and should not be compared with YUP’s shameful decision. The cartoons have already been published ad nauseam and there seems little point in continuing to do so every time the case takes a new, exasperating development. Responsible free speech is also knowing when to speak.

Women in Comics in Cambridge

comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism

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This past Sunday saw a conference on Women in Comics at Murray Edwards College here in Cambridge. Organised jointly by the college and the particularly strong contingent of comics scholars at the University of Glasgow, it presented a full day’s programming of papers and artists’ talks to go along with an already planned exhibition by organiser and artist Sarah Lightman.

The main draw, certainly, were the artists’ talks. Melinda Gebbie spoke passionately about her career in comics and her work on Lost Girls in particular.

Picks of the Week

comics and cartooning, current affairs

“Another gunman in the passenger seat turned and stared at us as he gripped his Kalashnikov rifle. No one spoke. I glanced at the bleak landscape outside — reddish soil and black boulders as far as the eye could see — and feared we would be dead within minutes.”

— David Rohde

The picks of the week from around the web.

  • New York Times. This week’s Pulitzer bid comes from David Rohde, whose five-part account of seven months spent as a hostage of the Taliban is gripping, necessary reading.
  • The latest in cartoon-fed free speech discourse. This seems a pretty solid, trenchant piece on the recent Yale controversy, which reveals interesting details that were previously unknown to me, while this is a rather disturbing notice of recent US legislation in the area that drowned somewhat in the newsfeed din this week. (Thanks Tom, Dirk).
  • Comics criticism. This great piece from Jog on the 70s exploitation flick of Mr. Natural and the Freak Brothers is top notch, and this blast from the past from Gary Groth is definitely worth (re-)reading, while our Danish readers should not miss Benni Bødker’s excellent review of Asterios Polyp.
  • Finally, I found this personal reminiscence from Ernie Colón on recently deceased cartoonist veteran George Tuska very touching.

    • Dave Gibbons til Komiks.dk

    comics and cartooning, hype & linkage

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    Ja, så har de gode folk bag komiks.dk afsløret endnu en udenlandsk gæst til næste års festival (21-23 maj, 2010), og det er ingen ringere end Dave Gibbons, der animerede klassiske 2000AD-strips som “Rogue Trooper” og fik Watchmen helt op at ringe med sine fuldkomment kongeniale tegninger og siden har stået for solide mainstreamtegneserier af forskellige slags. En mand med indsigt og stærkt fortællerinstinkt — det kan kun blive godt!

    Pressemeddelelsen kan læses her. Check dette korte Bunker-indslag om Watchmen, og husk at trekløveret Ware, Clowes og Burns også kommer til festivalen.

    Picks of the Week

    comics and cartooning, culture, current affairs, film, tv, video, hype & linkage, pictorial arts

    Obama’s career up to now, lucky as it was, had been wanting in singular achievements for which he alone was responsible. His experience seems not to have taught him the law of natural selection in politics by which majorities are put together out of remainders. Any act that achieves something concrete will leave small multitudes of the disappointed keening but unheard. There are hurt feelings in politics, which only time can cure if anything can. This is a truth now staring at Barack Obama, on several different fronts, but he does not accept it easily. His way of thinking is close to the spirit of that Enlightenment reasonableness which supposes a right course of action can never be described so as to be understood and not assented to.

    — David Bromwich

    The picks of the week from around the web.

    Backlash week here at the Bunker.

  • London Review of Books: “Obama’s Delusion”. David Bromwich presents a thoroughly pessimistic assessment of the Obama adminstration’s performance so far. An interesting analysis of how centrist politics function in the warped context current political discourse, which points out a number of depressing compromises Obama has had to make to keep it together.
  • Wall Street Journal: “Media Moguls and Creative Destruction”. Former WSJ publisher and Dow-Jones VP L. Gordon Crovitz on how digital is changing the game for media. Nothing terribly new, but interesting to see a major media player describe how everything he knew to be true maybe isn’t anymore.
  • The Daily Telegraph: “It couldn’t get worse for Damien Hirst”, Mark Hudson reviews the reviews of the current Hirst paintings show at the Wallace Collection and cautiously predicts a change in the public attitude to celebrity art. Some of the points may be overstated slightly, but it’s nevertheless an well-conceived critique.
  • The Groovy Age of Horror: Interview with Benjamin Marra. Following up on aspects of the New Action Panel at SPX, Marra elaborates upon his notion of comics as low art in an essentialist mission statement that should ruffle some feathers. There’s hell of a lot to disagree with in what he says, but it’s an interesting development in the ongoing art-comics backlash.

    • George Tuska RIP

    comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism, journal

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    The great American journeyman comic book artist George Tuska has passed away at the age of 93. Tom Spurgeon’s obit is your one-stop for info (update: Mark Evanier now has a fine piece up too), but I just wanted to pay my respects here.

    I always associated Tuska’s style with toughness. There was a visceral quality to his draughtsmanship. His work spans almost the entire history of the comic book and there’s tons I have never seen, but some of my favorite stuff by him are the Captain America stories where he worked over Kirby layout (Tales of Suspense #70-74, 1965-66) — the King’s raw power and fluid storytelling rendered in long, resilient brushstrokes. A strange, rough break with the beautiful work by Kirby and Giacoia/Ayers that dominated that great run of comics, but still memorable. His subsequent work on Iron Man (#5-25, 1968-70) was also a high point, even if somewhat knocked off Gene Colan’s great example; strangely frenetic storytelling (nothing ever seems to be entirely at rest in those drawings) given an elegant less-is-more counterpoint by the inks of the great Johnny Craig.

    Rest in Peace.

    …Oh, another thing.

    The Fingerprint of a Master?

    commentary and criticism, pictorial arts

    museo-ideale-leonardo-cp-53.jpgJust a short update on that gorgeous drawing, which is gaining recognition as a Leonardo at the moment, and which I wrote about briefly earlier this year. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse once again to run a picture here.

    Apparently, a forensic art analyst, Peter Paul Biro, has now found a fingerprint on it that he says corresponds with prints found on Leonardo’s unfinished Saint Jerome in the Vatican.

    I don’t know. There are still too many mysteries attached to this sheet for me to quite buy it: unusual support (vellum), unusual technique (coloured chalks), no provenance, and even the slightly too spectacular prettiness. But many people who know much more about Leonardo than I, including Martin Kemp who’s quoted in the article, seem to concur, and it is an extraordinarily fine-looking work.