The cartooning duo Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot are amongst the most remarkable emerging talents on the Francophone comics scene. A two-headed cartoon beast, theirs is an organic collaboration, melding writing and drawing. Their comics are possessed of a strong experimental formalism — elaborate analytical constructions, in which characters move and interact for our entertainment,…
This interview with Chester Brown, who is currently garnering much attention for his extraordinary new book Paying for It, was conducted at the 2004 MoCCA Arts Fest in a small storage room where they kept the boxed-up Harvey Awards, a couple of hours before the ceremony was to start. Brown had recently released the collected…
The picks of the week from around the web. This is a well-written piece on the sometimes hermetic and puzzling vagaries of art world authentication. It doesn’t change, however, that there is no way the Buffalo Pietà at its center was painted by Michelangelo. Look at it. The provenance may be compelling, though the argument…
I heard Gil Scott-Heron performing live once, in Copenhagen back in 1999 or thereabouts. It was a disheartening experience. Sitting at his keyboard, hair greasy, clothes filthy, almost falling asleep mid-song at several points, he was clearly far gone. Everyone was sitting down, even as he was performing some of his most rousing tunes. I…
Congratulations to Nicolas Winding Refn for winning best director at Cannes. Well done, I’m looking forward to Drive, just as I hope to catch Terence Malick’s Palm-winner Tree of Life. I did however find shameful Refn’s callous disavowal — he was “repulsed” — of his mentor Lars von Trier’s extremely ill-advised, but ultimately harmless comments…
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. I There is an extraordinary moment near the beginning of Chester Brown’s historical reconstruction, Louis Riel: the newly, ad hoc-elected…
The picks of the week from around the web. The Daily Show on the “Common Controversy,” parts one and two. Wednesday, Jon Stewart performed an epic takedown of the ridiculous hype machine that is Fox News. Extra hilarity ensured by the fact that the source of it all is one of the most anodyne rappers…
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,…
Growing Up Wrong Andreas Gregersen on Daniel Clowes’ Ice Haven and The Death Ray
Apart from hopefully lining his wallet a bit, Dan Clowes isn’t doing himself any favors by repackaging this story. His most lightweight effort in more than a decade, it was a pandering trifle to begin with and it only suffers from being given the book treatment. Originally published in the New York Times Magazine in…
No longer the World’s Most Wanted Man. Let’s hope for a future where he’s no longer wanted by anyone. Steve Bell cartoon from 2006.
I have a perfect memory of sitting in my tiny New York room in the winter of 2003 overlooking a snow-covered Sakura Park, reading Krazy Kat, a cup of steaming coffee at my side. This memory now prompts a quiet, heartfelt “Thank you, Bill.” For those of you who read Danish, here’s my obituary at…
So, still reeling a bit from the move and all the new stuff that’s happening elsewhere, but I did get the time to drop in for the MoCCA Arts Festival at the Armory last Saturday. I particularly enjoyed it as an opportunity immediately to get acquainted with the New York comics scene and meet in…