Next weekend I’ll be visiting Oslo to attend its Comics Expo (OCX) for the third time. I can’t wait — they seem really to have upped the ante this year, with an ambitious program and an impressive roster of guests that includes such luminaries as Joost Swarte (who did the festival poster, above), Chris Ware,…
Look, I’ve really been trying. Not only was I prepared to like Game of Thrones when first I sat down to watch the opening episode of HBO’s series last year, I’ve come back to it several times, figuring I might have missed something, since so many people of generally discerning taste have been raving about…
The latest issue of Print Quarterly (vol. XXIX, no. 2) features an article by yours truly on the Titian’s woodcut St. Roch (above). I went full retard on this, getting my fingers dirty in the Venetian State Archive and such. You should check it out. Here’s the opening paragraph: Titian’s designs for woodcuts of the…
We must gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people… Remember, we have not established a revolutionary value system; we are only in the process of establishing it. I do not remember our ever constituting any value that said that a revolutionary must say offensive things towards homosexuals, or…
The Triumvirate in Boston Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese at the MFA in Boston, 2009. Need we say more?
As the stray reader might have noticed, the blog has been dormant for a while here, feeling the effects of pressure elsewhere. I can’t let the passing of Adam Yauch, aka. MCA of the Beastie Boys pass in complete silence, however. I refer you to the New York Times obituary for the lowdown on his…
The week in review Vacation and work have kept me away for a while, a will probably continue to do so for a little while yet. While in Boston, I checked back on one of the city’s premier cultural institutions. The new wing of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is emblematic of museum…
For the past three weeks, the Danish comics site has been remembering comics legend Jean Giraud/Moebius’ passing with articles, essays, reminiscences from a number of Danish creators, and — most interesting to a non-Danish reading audience: drawn homages. Go here for a panoply of drawings on “The Theme” by Denmark’s finest. Above is Jan Solheim,…
Hello and welcome to the Kolor Klimax press pack! Thanks for clicking in and for your interest in the book! Below you will find links to hi-res images from the book, ready for publication, as well as other resources that might be helpful. Please let us know if we can help you with anything else.…
Kolor Klimax — Nordic Comics Now, the big fat anthology of contemporary Nordic comics that I’ve edited for the Finnish comics initiative Nordicomics is now available for order from its publisher Fantagraphics Books, as well as on bookshelves all over America and worldwide (theoretically, at least). Above is the publisher’s promotional video. See photos from…
The week in review The passing of Jean Giraud is the passing of one of the great cartoonists and visual artists of his generation. It had become easy to take the enormously productive artist for granted, even to bore of him, what with him performing well below his own best a lot of the time…
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…
Kramers Four Our 2003 take on the seminal comics anthology, written as it was happening!
At Nightfall Sebastiano del Piombo as seen at the grand retrospective in Rome/Berlin