The picks of the week from around the web. Music! So as I wrote, good to be back. And there’s a bunch of new, homegrown music out. Up there’s my man Ras Money’s first stab at deejaying on wax. He’s no Sizzla, but he represents his neighborhood Nordvest 2400 fresh as can be. Cop the…
The picks of the week from around the web. Commentary on the Danish election. In my reading on this historic election and the uncertainty it promises for Danish politics, I’ve enjoyed the commentary by Anne Knudsen and Rune Lykkeberg (both in Danish). Austin English interviews Warren Craghead. This interview with one of the most original…
Helsinki. The comics festival here is just starting up and it’s looking good. In addition to the full program of events, signings and parties, the festival sees the European release tomorrow of KOLOR KLIMAX — Nordic Comics Now, an anthology of Nordic comics edited by me and designed by Frederik Storm with invaluable assistance from…
The Syrian regime’s disgraceful behavior is current headline news and the brutal beating by Syrian forces of treasured cartoonist Ali Ferzat the week before last is but one of many horrific examples of its efforts to contain the rebellion there. In support of Ferzat and his beleaguered profession, as well as freedom of expression everywhere,…
The picks of the week from around the web. 9/11: The Winners. The Village Voice‘s muck-raking isn’t always that credible, but this panorama of hucksterism and profiteering off the national tragedy makes for compelling if disconcerting reading. Kirby’s 70th. Jack Kirby interviewed on the radio in 1987, with Stan Lee calling in! Great listening for…
[Bendik Kaltenborn: The Great Underneath]
“Of course London’s riots weren’t a political protest. But the people committing night-time robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. Saqueos are contagious. The Tories are right when they say the rioting is not about the cuts. But it has a great deal to do with what those cuts…
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…
“…when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of…
I visited the small Will Eisner retrospective over at MoCCA on Saturday. It’s a good show, with sections devoted to The Spirit (including all the originals to the classic “Gerhard Shnobble” story from 1948), A Contract with God, Dropsie Avenue, plus a generous selection of other material, primarily from the eighties. Well worth a visit,…
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.
“I heard something recently by Richard Feynman, and he said that understanding the way the universe works is like extrapolating a huge checkers game from a regular game of checkers. Checkers is an easy game to play, but if the board were huge and you had many, many checkers, it wouldn’t be easy to play…
Today I received Favorites, the zine Craig Fischer has put together to benefit Team Cul de Sac’s fundraising to support research into Parkinson’s disease. It’s a great little thing I encourage you to buy and read, and not — really! — just because I have a piece in it on Carl Barks. You see, Team…
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…
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…