Bryan Talbot: The Naked Artist. Comic Book Legends

Comics artist and writer Bryan Talbot (The Tale of One Bad Rat, among other things) has written a book compiling a huge load of gossip about comics biz people, mainly British comics creators and US. superhero creators. It's both anecdotes he's got first-hand knowledge about and those that are the stuff of legend, told and retold among the professional brotherhood. Some of them are a bit meh, some are absolutely brilliant, but most of them are at least entertaining, or even highly entertaining.

You'll learn what can happen at signings – especially if you bother Simon Bisley too much – and what happens it you foolishly offer British comics creators free drinks, and why it's in many cases probably better to just immensely enjoy reading the work of your favorite comics writer rather than actually palling around with him.

My favorite anecdote in this volume isn't all that funny, though. It has The Question artist Denys Cowan having made loads and loads of money selling art and doing sketches at a San Diego Comic Con, and deciding to pay off the hotel bill with some of that cash rather than carrying all of it around.

Having paid the bill, Cowan goes back to his room to pack up his bags. After a while, he hears an odd sound outside his room, so he opens the door to check it out – staring straight into the barrel of a Highway Patrolman's gun.

Denys Cowan is black, you see, so when he showed the hotel that he had a lot of cash, the conclusion they reached was: drug dealer. It took Cowan twenty minutes to convince the officer that his earnings were legit.

Anyway, the book also carries illustrations by by Hunt Emerson, whose Firkin the Cat and especially the excellent Lady Chatterley's Lover are highly recommended, and who's characteristically funny here as well. Recommended.

I did this!

It's in sale right now, I think.

Parasites, moochers, generations of utterly irresponsible people...

Why my dream vacation isn't going to the U.S. anymore, but rather visiting Versailles or the museums of London, or something. Too many crazies and, well, creeps get a too free rein in their politics and media.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

(This has to be one of The Daily Show's better efforts – although, in fairness, with that kind of fodder the satire practically writes itself. And I have to wonder, do these right-wing bloviators have any sort of shame whatever? I mean, any?)

Lewis Trondheim: Little Nothings Vol. 4. My Shadow in the Distance.

Lewis Trondheim is one of the modern biggies in French comics, and justly so. Not only is he very productive, he also maintains a high quality on his output. He may be best known for his Dungeon series, but he has done so much more, in a variety of genres (indeed, even the Dungeon series may perhaps be said to contain several different genres). The Little Nothings (Les petits riens) series collects his autobiographical, comics-format blog posts in a 126-page books.

The theme for this book – a theme is discernible – is Trondheim's travels to various comics events all over the world and his parallel problems with polyps and the nasal and even eye complications they cause, eventually leading to an operation. Trondheim tells about his various worries (especially in connection with his health problem and the unpleasant operation) and reactions to the vicissitudes of life and travel, and also references the somewhat odd discussions he has with colleagues on the science of zombies – like how could zombies survive if they went for cows instead of people and how Peyo's The Black Smurfs was in fact the first "living dead" story.

These one-page little vignettes are drawn in a simple, clear style that gets the point across in an effective manner, and beautifully painted in watercolors. They range from personal semi-philosophical observations to semi-sarcastic comments on everyday occurrences and set-backs. A lot of it concerns Trondheims own little neurotic tendencies; my favorite is probably his running gag about how he while packing for each voyage feels that he's getting to be a rather experienced, savvy traveller, and how he then invariably fails to pack something he needs to bring with him. (Yes, I do in fact at times get some almost Peanuts-ish vibes from this book, why do you ask?)

In fact, I love this – it's simple and clear (due to a combination of the ordinary-life subject matter and the clear line drawing style) and beautiful while not lacking depth (those lovely watercolors… plus some of Trondheim's observations are quite good). It's also at times quite charming, and a joy to read. Warmly recommended.

Get a peek at the contents via Amazon.

Mattias Elftorp: Våra gator... ("Our streets...")

This is a 16-page mini-comic under Seriefrämjandet's Dystopi imprint. In it, Elftorp's heroine Information has taken some heavy drugs and hallucinates that she's flying during a "Reclaim the Streets"-type event. The police arrives to break up the event, and TV sets start raining down from the surrounding skyscrapers, putting a swift end to the police effort. The end.

The results, apparently a good thing in Elftorp's world.

Basically, the ideational content of the book is that a) it's right to take over the streets for what you want to do, regardless of what the authorities or other people inhabiting the city think or say; b) taking drugs will make you feel like you're flying, and doesn't have any discernible averse effects other than perhaps not being able to react quickly enough when the police arrives; c) using extreme, quite likely lethal violence against the police is A-OK.

In other words, it reads like a parody of violent and stupid anarchism, but unfortunately, Elftorp seems to be quite sincere. More's the pity.

Even though a questionable – to say the least – content can't be redeemed by a skilled execution, looking at the style to find something worth praising in this book, I find nothing. The art is sketchy and, to be honest, looks like crap, and the writing is ponderous and trite – "A powerful voice screams out its anger and its hope for fundamental change", which quite frankly isn't any more sophisticated prose than I'd expect from a moderately talented high school student.

So what you get is basically egotism combined with drug  propaganda and a vote in favor of extreme violence. Anti-recommended.

Horst Schröder: Framtiden i serierutor ("The future in comics panels")

I've previously reviewed Horst Schröder's book about the earliest U.S. newspaper comics, De första serierna (The earliest comic strips). This is the second volume in what was intended as a series of books on comics history, and which also became a series of books on comics history – but unfortunately only a series of two.

Schröder has a background in history of literature; his doctor's thesis was about American science fiction literature, so he has a solid knowledge base on this subject, and he starts off the book with an essay on the sci-fi genre. He then proceeds to present quite a bunch of sci-fi comics, according to the model established in the previous book: about five pages per strip, giving a short description and some analysis – often incorporating a political perspective – and some pictorial examples.

Schröder presents strips like Buck Rogers, Jeff Hawke and Valerian and Laureline, as well as works by creators like Basil Wolverton, Jack Kirby and George Metzger, and he does it well. He writes a crisp, lively prose (probably aided by some editorial assistance from fellow comics expert Göran Ribe), and is clearly knowledgeable about his subject. There are still remnants of a 1970s, somewhat naive leftism/Marxism in his analyses (the book is from 1981), but that's just about the only thing I can find to complain about. This book sets out to introduce a bunch of sci-fi comics to an interested public, and that's what it does – well. If you read Swedish and like comics, it's well worth your time, and it's a shame that it became the last book in what could have been an excellent series.

Recommended.

Back from the comics store, part 2

I've been remiss at updating the blog recently – quite a bit of work and school and a spot of asthma has gotten in the way of that. I'll try to rectify things with a bunch of reviews later today.

Hate and fear as a business model

Shorter Bryan Fischer (Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association): "See, I'm only talking about the extremist Muslims. But no moderate Muslims exist at all. Thus, all Muslims must be under surveillance, and stopped at the borders."

"Why do these mosques have to be infiltrated and monitored? Because the mythical 'moderate' Muslims aren’t reporting dangerous Muslims to authorities in sufficient numbers to make a difference. By their silence, they are complicit in the deeds of others. 


Of course, most Muslims in America  do not want to blow up innocent people. They are not the Muslims we have to worry about. According to recent polling data, 81% of America’s Muslims do not support violent jihad. The disturbing truth here is that means 19% of America’s Muslims do. If there are roughly 6 million Muslims in America, this means that 1.2 million followers of Allah in the United States right now are perfectly happy with the prospect of innocent Americans being blown to bits in the name of Muhammad.


If there truly are “moderate” Muslims in the U.S., then job one for them is identifying and reporting these 1.2 million ticking time bombs to authorities. If they won’t, then we must monitor them all.  (...)


On my program this week, retired Gen. Jerry Boykin, one of the original Delta Force members, said clearly that we must secure our borders to deal with the threat posed by Muslim immigration and we must stop the building of mosques. He believes that Islam has no First Amendment protections because it is not a religion so much as a totalitarian ideology that is utterly hostile to Western values."


Note also how for Mr. Fisher, when one Muslim is guilty of something, if other Muslims didn't discover his crimes and turn him in, they're all guilty. Anybody care to apply that particular form of jurisprudence on their own nationality, or ethnic or religious group?


No, I didn't think so.

Back from the comics store, part 1

A helping of classics, plus a book with interviews with "hot" cartoonists.

My t-shirts, part 46: Actually bedsheets

Snoopy bedsheets. How could anybody resist?