Once again, Ng Suat Tong has posted an overview of some of the best comics criticism published online in the year gone by over at the Hooded Utilitarian. In previous years, he has gathered differing juries consisting of a fairly wide range of critics, but this year he has dispensed with that in favor of…
In the latest instalment of my irregular column at the Hooded Utilitarian I present a late entry in the debate kicked off last month by Eddie Campbell, with his essay for The Comics Journal, “The Literaries”. In his essay, Campbell took issue with the insistence by some critics not just of comparing the achievements of…
The week in review This week I have a Danish-context comics-related grievance I want to address, so please excuse the shift in language here. International links below! Bogtillægget til denne uges Weekendavis skæmmes af et fejlinformeret og tendentiøst opslag. En ærgerlig plet på en ellers som regel velredigeret og seriøs publikation. Kan det overraske, at…
The week in review Hip hop’s making bullshit headlines again. This time over the reaction to the murder, last month, of Chicago MC Lil Jojo. After news hit that the 18-year old had been shot in a drive-by, his rival Chief Keef — with whom he had been beefing, seemingly in a grab for quick…
Over at Hooded Utilitarian I’ve joined their fifth anniversary hatefest with an extended piece on the cartoons of the New Yorker Magazine. I’ve long wanted to write about what I regard as a bafflingly revered and rather depressing institution in American cartooning, so I was happy finally to get my act together on it. Go…
The week in review Another great drawing by Raphael is coming up for sale. Like the Female Head, which broke all records when it sold for £29 million in 2009, it’s a so-called auxiliary cartoon for his last great, large-scale work, the Transfiguration (begun 1516, finished after the master’s death in 1520) now in the…
The week in review Not much to report from this angle this week, apart from the fact that the Jewish new year reminds me that I’ve been back in the ole home country for over a year now. Last year’s Rosh Hashannah kind of marked a fresh return to new beginnings here and it’s been…
I know, it’s been ages, but I’ve finally written a new installment of my column DWYCK over at The Hooded Utilitarian. This time, I draw upon the great Degas exhibition at the Royal Academy last year to discuss the artist’s inquiry into time, space, and movement and its relation to comics. Go, read. Above: Edgar…
Earlier today I posted an appreciation of the late Moebius’ last great work, Le Chasseur déprime, over at Hooded Utilitarian. Reading that book in the light of his illness and death suddenly seemed to make a lot of sense. It is among his most profound, questioning works — a fitting artistic testament from somebody who…
I used to write a regular column at Hooded Utilitarian called DWYCK. Then stuff happened. And the column didn’t happen, for way too long. But now I’m back! Er, at least for the moment. No, I’ll really make an effort! Anyway, the essay I have up now is on Craig Thompson’s remarkable new comic Habibi…
The Week in Review (a.k.a. the feature formerly known as Picks of the Week). Over at Hooded Utilitarian this week, there’s been an interesting discussion of Orientalism in comics, prompted by the publication of Craig Thompson’s mammoth graphic novel Habibi. It’s an interesting issue and one that warrants attention like Nadim Damluji gave it here,…
My contribution to the Hooded Utilitarian’s International Best Comics Poll is now online in the very last post in the two-week marathon poor Robert Stanley Martin has been conducting over there (ah, the never-ending joy of being last in the alphabet). It has been an interesting project, conducted by Robert with composure and diligence, so…
The picks of the week from around the web. ‘New’ old masters. This seems to be the season of sensational (and ‘sensational’) discoveries. Headlining is the long-lost Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci, which has turned up in an American collection and will be exhibited publicly for the first time at the sure-to-be-unmissable National Gallery…
I have a piece up on Chester Brown’s much talked-about new book Paying for It up at Hooded Utilitarian today. Go check it out.
This is part of a Metabunker series celebrating a great decade in comics with Rackham by reprinting select reviews of the decades’ best comics from the Rackham archive, along with a number of new pieces. Dominique Goblet depicts her father as a late medieval Madonna, nurturing his child, right hand in blessing. Drawn on disparate,…