Likeness of Leonardo?

commentary and criticism, pictorial arts

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Last weekend, the discovery of what is claimed to be a new Leonardo drawing was announced on Italian TV. With the help of digital imaging, it has emerged from behind the text of the “Codex on the Flight of Birds”, held at Turin. The proud discoverers suggest that it is actually a partial self-portrait, citing its likeness with the famous so-called Self-Portrait of Leonardo (we actually do not know who it depicts), also at Turin. The likeness is striking and its appearance on an original a manuscript sure makes it sound bona fide.

There is every reason to be sceptical, however.

Hype: Continental Drift

comics and cartooning, hype & linkage

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Allow me briefly to toot my own horn: This month’s issue of The Comics Journal (#296) sees the debut of my regular column on European comics, “Continental Drift.” (More importantly, it also has interviews with Lynda Barry, Dash Shaw, Frank Quitely, Mike Luckovich and David Hajdu!).

I guess it’s inevitably my attempt at filling the big shoes left by Bart Beaty, whose “Eurocomics for Beginners” ran in the magazine for years and as a whole must be counted as one of the seminal early texts on the New Wave of European comics of the 90s (which led to his fine book on the subject). Wish me luck…

The picture above is one of the colour pages from the comic of the year, Emmanuel Guibert’s La Guerre d’Alan volume 3, which was also published in English by First Second, but unfortunately in drab grey tones.

Danske Tegneserieskaberes fonds første uddeling

comics and cartooning, journal

danske_tegneserieskabere_logo.jpgForeningen Danske Tegneserieskabere har netop for første gang uddelt af de midler, foreningen gennem årene har modtaget i form af CopyDan-penge fra danske tegneserieudgivelser efter fondsmodel i stedet for den tidligere benyttede “beløbet-divideret-med-antallet-af-medlemmer-og-uddelt-til-selv-samme.”

Tremandsudvalget, der bestod af Peter Kielland, Lars Horneman og Jan Kjær uddelte i alt kr. 345.000 i denne omgang — efter sigende et særligt højt beløb, da der ikke har været uddelinger af nogen art i flere år. Modtagerne kan ses på Foreningens hjemmeside.

Bunkeren ønsker dem alle tillykke og held og lykke med arbejdet!

Picks of the Week

comics and cartooning, current affairs, hype & linkage

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The picks of the week from around the web.

  • Bloomberg: “In Geithner We Trust Eludes Treasury as Market Fails to Recover.” Interesting critical portrait of Timothy Geithner, the US Secretary of the Treasury, by Yalman Onaran and Michael McKee.
  • Cold Heat. Ben Jones and Frank Santoro have put the first four issues of their currently-paused comic online for your reading pleasure. I’m really looking forward to reading this once it comes out in its full-length, collected glory
  • ASIFA: Milton Caniff Steve Canyon originals. Everyone has linked to this already, but these reproductions from the original strips are just too scrumptious to pass up.

    • Scans Daily No More?

    comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism, current affairs

    The fabulous online comics community Scans Daily has been shut down, one assumes by its host LiveJournal. The reason, apparently, was copyright infringement — ie. posting scans whole issues or close to whole issues of new comics on the site. Seeing some of his work there got comics writer Peter David riled, and he informed his employer Marvel Comics, but he won’t assume any responsibility, saying that the plug was pulled before anyone could have acted on his complaints. Presumably, LiveJournal have been receiving similar complaints for a while and decided that this couldn’t go on. But really, I have no idea.

    Whatever the reason, this is a real pity. Scans Daily was a great resource, both for getting people stopping by excited about comics, keeping them entertained, and providing amazing new discoveries, especially of older, hard-to-find stuff. I’ve greatly enjoyed lurking there, and have linked to their posts more than once here from the Bunker. Like this poster, I hope LiveJournal or whoever is responsible will reconsider this decision.

    Picks of the Week

    comics and cartooning, current affairs, history, hype & linkage

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    The picks of the week from around the web.

    Long time since last picks. Haven’t had as much time to surf as normally. This week, however, I have a bunch of comics stuff on my mind.

  • Du9: “Sibylline retrouvée” & “Le Grand recit fantastique.” Fine two-part article by David Turgeon on the never collected, late Sibylline stories and of the late great Raymond Macherot. Also, Turgeon goes into even more detail on these late stories here. Let’s hope they will eventually be collected.
  • Golden Age Comic Books: “Came the Dawn” — Frank Frazetta’s bootylicious, unfinished adaptation of one of the hokier Al Feldstein/Wally Wood EC shockers. Flawed in so many ways, yet so opulently disarming.
  • Arthur: Interesting interview with Marc-Antoine Mathieu, the author of the mind-bending Julius Corentin-Acquefaques books and the recent Museum Vaults. He is one of the important voices in the New Wave of French-language comics of the 90s but is strangely overlooked today.
  • Bonus: Dette var jo i øvrigt ugen, hvor to medlemmer af Blekingegadebanden leverede deres dybt anakronistiske Blast from the Past. Uden at ofre ét eneste ord på det mord og de mange psykiske traumer de var skyld i. Peter Øvig Knudsen var heller ikke begejstret for denne deprimerende, men ikke uinteressante zombie-manifestation.

    • Reads: Christopher Hittinger

    comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism

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    I really should start paying more attention to online comics. Last fall I picked up the 2007 French book edition of Christopher Hittinger’s Jamestown because I found the drawings thrilling at first leaf-through. I’ve only now managed to read it, and I enjoyed it immensely. Turns out, of course, that it’s been available online since 2006. I’m sure I’ve even seen it linked to in several places, without taking notice. Lesson learned for this paper generation relic, I guess…

    Anyway, I found this comic exciting on several levels. It’s a retelling of the first English colony in Virginia in the early 17th Century, the people involved and conflicts both internal and external, with the native Americans on whom the colony was dependent — complete with the Pocahontas story and all. Superficially it’s pretty straightforward, narrating the facts almost like a school textbook, but even if the prose is mostly utilitarian, Hittinger manages beautifully to make history come alive.

    Innocent Abroad

    comics and cartooning, commentary and criticism

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    Winshluss’ Pinocchio was the big buzz book of the Angoulême festival this year and it came as little surprise that it ended up taking the Fauve d’Or award — the festival’s prize for comic of the year, and one of the greatest distinctions of its kind. It’s an impressive package — a large hardback book printed on thick, matte paper with relief printing and gold leaf on the cover. Impeccably designed, if somewhat indebted to the Ware school of production design, it is simply an immensely attractive comic.

    More than anything else, however, this has to do with the art within. Winshluss has long been an energetic draughtsman, merging the subversive sensibilities of the underground movement with a palpable sense of punk abandon that owes more than a little to the great bad-taste humorist Vuillemin. The result are gruff cartoons, grimy with saturated brushwork, that refreshingly tend to reach beyond the comfort zone of the artist, resulting in a kind of frenetic energy of invention that is both spectacular and moves the story along with humour and efficiency.

    This time around Winshluss may have bitten off more than he could chew, however.