I love this little joke from Gotham Central #10! I was looking to see if I could get the second installment of Friday (it's out at my brother's library, but not on Hoopla at my library), and when I searched for Ed Brubaker I found this book and read the first eleven issues yesterday. It's really good - Batman sometimes makes a brief appearance, but usually you'll see only his foot or his silhouette as he's making an exit. I really enjoyed the second story arc with the Firebug and the unsolved murder (which also has a great joke): Another thing that I liked about Gotham Central is that it focuses on the Major Crimes Unit (abbreviated as MCU, which my brain always reads now as Marvel Comics Universe, oops), and so when cops from other departments fail to solve a robbery they just say it was Catwoman and then the case gets pushed to the MCU (who knows it wasn't Catwoman). It's a good time, for a police procedural. The art is great, also - when you read a lot of superhero comics, there are a lot of comic book artists who basically draw the same features on everyone and it's up to the colorist for the reader to tell them apart. Michael Lark, however, does a terrific job - different faces, different body types, I really like how he draws Sergeant Davies. Sometimes he's a little heavy with the brush in some panels, though, and the reader loses clarity from expression, but it's better than flipping back and forth wondering which character is which because they all look alike.
Speaking of clarity of expression, I'm still reading Love and Rockets, just bouncing around from issue to issue at the moment because I'm looking at the way Jaime Hernandez draws expressions. As a kid I read a lot of Archie comics and that influence is apparent in the expressions (Archie makes a cameo backstage at a wrestling match in one issue, iirc), so I've been reading a lot of those, too, just to look at the expressions - the older Archie stories are more expressively drawn, but luckily the digests have a range of stories from different time periods. Have a happy Friday!
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I woke up today on the wrong side of the bed and I'm ready for naptime. Last week I read Love & Rockets Volume 9: Esperanza and it was, for some reason, wildly depressing and I wound up leaving work early. I mean, it's terrific. I had mainly read the earlier Locas comics, so I was looking for this volume because I knew about Vivian 'Frogmouth' Solis but had never read a story with Frogmouth in it. (Volume 9 is her debut.) I love Jaime Hernandez so much and I'm not sure why this collection made me so sad. I guess, like Maggie, I am also getting older. I finished the first arc of Fatale, which is kind of an occult horror/crime story by everyone's favorite crime writer Ed Brubaker. I like it all right, but I'm not sure if I will keep going - I probably will just to find out the secret of Josephine - I'm sure that part of this is purposeful, but I have a really difficult time keeping the Characters That Are Not Josephine straight in my mind. Everyone in this book is expendable, and almost everyone dies in some horrible way, so it's hard for me to keep track of which man it is that's dying in that particular issue and why or if it matters. In the first issue, there is a murder in which the murder victim is posed to look like the tarot card The Hanged Man, and there are some other references to blood magic, but unfortunately the occult aspect of the story is kind of vague by the end of the first arc. Maybe all of that will be explained in the next story arc. After finishing that first arc of Fatale I tried to get into some Phantom Lady as a palate cleanser. A lot of people actually die in Phantom Lady, which I guess is the pre-comics-code world for you. I like that she has a little black light mirror that blinds people. I'm surprised that no one recognizes her, especially her boyfriend, because she has no mask or anything to conceal her identity, she just changes from street clothes into her skimpy costume. I guess they're banking on the idea that debutante and senator's daughter Sandra Knight wouldn't wear something that scandalous. And, of course, her outfit is quite scandalous - one of the covers was featured in Seduction of the Innocent. (This is how I know about Phantom Lady - her famous 'headlights', as Dr. Wertham put it). A very cool design element of Phantom Lady comics is the opening page will be in a monotone, either blue or red: It's very striking and beautiful!
Phantom Lady was illustrated by Matt Baker, who is considered one of the first (if not the first) African-American comic book artists. I don't know a lot about him, but it's something I discovered while looking into the history of Phantom Lady! You can read more about him here and here. Hello! It has been a long time since I have updated, mostly because no one really reads this blog except for maybe three people. And I am one of those three people.
I have been reading a lot of comics lately, so let me tell you about what I've been getting into. ♡ My coworker loaned me a hardcover biography of Jack Kirby, which has been very inspirational but also kind of sad in terms of how much Jack Kirby got the fuzzy end of the lollipop. I started reading superhero comics in the '90s, but also bought vintage comic books from the antique store (mostly '70s era Wonder Woman and the third volume of Marvel's Red Sonja), so the Kirby influence was evident in what I was reading - I mean, I was renting the VHS tape of How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way from Blockbuster, and Marvel was reprinting the old Kirby comics around the late '90s as well. The art in the biography is terrific so I picked up a secondhand copy to use as a reference and I'm waiting for it to get here. Jack Kirby was wildly prolific and there were several projects that he was involved with in one way or another that I wasn't familiar with - one was a comic called Black Magic (or True Amazing Accounts of Black Magic) and another was The Strange World of Your Dreams. I love comics from the 1950s, and these two titles are okay, but they do not compare to another comic that I was reading pretty recently from the '50s whose title now escapes me. Many of the titles are very similar, so it's hard to remember if it was Strange or Weird or any number of synonyms combined with Tales or Stories or another similar synonym. ♡ Hoopla recommended Batman:Noel, which had very lovely art and opened up beautifully with a snowy Gotham city scene. The art was more realistic for a Batman book, which is something that I don't always care for, but it was very well done and I think that having a realistic style contributes to how horrifying Batman villains can be. Both the artist and the colorist deserve every accolade. It was an interesting take on A Christmas Carol. I liked that Batman was gradually coming down with walking pneumonia because he is, after all, a human being who gets sick. Not enough sick days in superhero comics in my opinion. ♡ After Batman:Noel, I read Catwoman: When In Rome, which was fine. I liked that the artists were inspired by fashion illustrator Rene Gruau when making this book - I really love Rene Gruau's illustrations, and it goes well with the mood of the character of Catwoman and her glamorous lifestyle. The book looks as though it was done either with watercolor or ink wash - there was a little feeling of not quite being comfortable with the drawing style, which is more of a vibe and difficult to explain. Because it's based on this illustrative work of Gruau, things are a little more stylized, but not as stylized as the art of, say, Darwyn Cooke. The storyline was all right, a little mob story, a little weirdness with the Riddler. I read that first and then went on to Batman:Hush. Batman:Hush was terrific. I was trying to piece together who did it and why the whole time and never got it until the end. It really involves all these different villains in amazing ways without feeling too forced (this was how I felt about Wonder Woman & Justice League Dark: The Witching Hour), is just a wonderful detective story, we have some very good spicy moments with Bat & Cat, it's a great story by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee's art is fine. Jim Lee is someone I definitely looked up to in the 90s when he was super popular with the run on X-Men and then with his work at Image, but today I'm just like, Oh this is Jim Lee and everyone looks the same. The only way you can distinguish between Jim Lee characters is basically the coloring, everyone has the same body structure and facial features, especially the ladies. They are all babes, but they look exactly the same. Anyway, if you like Batman, this was a really good one. I don't even think you would need a firm grasp of continuity - things are pretty well explained if some of the context is unclear. ♡ Even though I have been reading all these fun Bat & Cat comics, I have also been doing some indie reading. Hoopla had the Madman collection and I started on that because I never had read Madman back in the '90s. I knew of it, but had never actually picked it up. It's very much a fun indie comic of its time, just a zany romp with competing mad scientists and Madman himself, who is a reanimated zombie in a superhero costume who uses weapons like lead-filled yo-yos and a slingshot. It's fun. You can't take it too seriously. ♡ I REALLY LOVED indie comic Hell Phone by Benji Nate. I can't wait for the next installment! I must know what happens. Cute art, engaging storyline, fun friends in adorable grave robbing outfits. It's a must. It had a blurb from Liz Suburbia, and it's in a similar vein to Suburbia's comic Sacred Heart, which I also really liked. I read Hell Phone on hoopla, but it is also available to read on WebToons. Good-bye, Camp Q, merry Camp Q. Good-bye, plain unwholesome food, good-bye Charlie boy. David Sedaris did a signing and my brother went because I lost my signed visual compendium in my last move. I am getting ready to move again, after a whole roller coaster of a week that ran me through the gamut of human emotion and also through the wringer. I'm headed home and I'm very pleased, because I was staring homelessness directly in the face for a hot second. Here's what I have been into lately. The Wojnarowicz documentary was absolutely amazing and part of the reason it is so wonderful is that David Wojnarowicz was so prolific in terms of the recording of his own life and times. We have his journals, tape journals, collages, paintings, videos; footage of the band he played in, his answering machine tapes. It's sad, it's lovely, magnificent. I'm so grateful that all of these tapes have been preserved so that he can narrate his own life even after his death. (The thirty-year anniversary of his death is approaching, on July 22nd.) I check out anything that looks interesting at work and Friday was one of those things. It's a very engaging story with mystery-solving teens, and I always love a good mystery-solving teen (key word here is good - there are plenty of mediocre mystery-solving teen tales). I like the 1970s style world they're in and the dynamic Teen Detective names. This one ends on a cliffhanger and I can't wait for the next one. Another comic I've really enjoyed lately is Harrow County. The picture I've used here is the first TPB, which caught my eye because I thought it was a reference to hag-riding. It's a really lovely comic that's done in ink and watercolor - the artist actually uses waterproof ink and watercolors OVER the ink, which I thought was absolutely unreal. There are a number of fun witches, monsters, curses, and magic that happens all in this little farmland setting. What I like about both Friday and Harrow County is that there are little sketches and thumbnails and things like that in the back - I love little behind the scenes glimpses at how artists work on composition and character creation. There's an arcade here in Lexington and it has a lot of old games I had not heard of (Gorf??), but my new favorite is Crystal Castles. I had never heard of Crystal Castles, because I didn't have an Atari growing up (and didn't know anyone who had one). I still don't really know what I'm doing or what's going on in this game. The trees chase me. The bees chase me. There's a witch. I pick up little dots. Are they tabs of LSD? Is that why trees are chasing me? I don't know, but it's a good time. I'm actually brainstorming out a piece for the first time in a while. It's strange, because in the past I've just sat down and let them come out and haven't fiddled with them too terribly much. This one, I think, might be a little different, but I don't want to over- or under-work it...I guess we'll see how it turns out.
I have a perhaps-not-startling confession to make that the only news that I look at is a) what's on my twitter timeline b) the "LIS news and views" newsletter that one of our professors puts out, and c) ARTnews Daily. The benefit of ARTnews is they have a weekly newsletter that comes out on Wednesdays called How I Made This, which is much more interesting to me as an artist than, say, some art collector that I never heard of dying.
This week in How I Made This is the hyper-realistic colored pencil drawings of Cj Hendry. What most interested me about this article was that Cj Hendry organizes (and finances, though this part was not more detailed) her own exhibitions - her exhibition for her Rorschach show was set in an immersive white custom bouncy house - and that has me thinking about how to step further outside of the traditional gallery model when considering how to show work. I think the extra special touch for Rorschach was the little wristbands - it ties the whole exhibition together. Hyper-realism is always something that tempts me but the temptation never stays. I am too impatient, I think. When I was in undergrad I was in the Art Barn spending weeks on some pencil drawing of birds in a nest that I never finished. Now I'm absolutely beside myself if I can't get something finished in one sitting. Ah, well... The above is a panel from my sketchbook that's from 2010. When I was a kid, my parents divorced, and my dad compensated by sending me care packages full of comic books from the local store in LA. (It's actually, I found out, the same store whose owner had a comic book themed wedding back in the '90s, when things like that were still pretty unusual. I was so impressed when I found out, because there had been a photo of the happy couple in Wizard magazine.) Some time in middle school I started reading Marvel comics and collecting trading cards. Eventually my single issues were all sold or given away, excepting the single issues I have of Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise. It's hard to justify dragging the long, heavy comic book boxes along from state to state. And even though I still read comics and still liked superhero comics, it's the Disney comics I read as a kid that really stuck in my mind. Underground comix artist Victor Moscoso talked about Carl Barks in a long interview he gave to Gary Groth of The Comics Journal: "None of the other artists that did the duck stories came anywhere near him. I didn’t know his name — Crumb told me his name. We were talking about it and he was very knowledgeable in comics, so I asked him, 'Hey, who was the good duck artist?' That’s how he was known: the good one. And he says, 'Carl Barks.' That was the first time I ever heard the name, because they were all signed 'Walt Disney.'" (I had never heard of this particular distinction before I'd read this interview - by the time I was old enough to look back on duck comics, Carl Barks was already a known name - so imagine how surprised I was when I googled, in quotes, "the good duck artist" and google just immediately returned "Carl Barks" as a result.) I was on the hunt for a couple of Christmas themed Donald Duck stories I'd remembered as a kid. This is not one of them, but it is a stellar example of Carl Barks' gorgeous lettering: I absolutely adore his lettering. It is so crisp in this story. I love the little flair on the "n" in "in" on the title card. Even the word balloons themselves are gorgeous. What I was looking for was a story called "Letter to Santa", which was originally published in Walt Disney's Christmas Parade #1 back in 1949. (This story has been republished in the collected Carl Barks hardcovers - it's in Trail of the Unicorn, which is Volume 8.) Michael Sporman uploaded the recolored version onto his blog, in two parts, so you can read this wild story if you want to - part one is here and part two is here. (There's no "next post" navigation on his blog that I could find, so it might be easier to navigate like this.) It's so good, like most of these comics are, and it's perfect for the holiday season. (I was really more of a fan of Donald than Mickey, but Mickey Mouse did have some good detective stories. I really enjoyed the Thirteen Ghosts story and the one about Kali's Nail. I don't think a lot of people understand how often Mickey Mouse has a handgun in the comics - and uses it!) Victor Moscoso is also terrific. I didn't realize how much his work influenced mine until I started re-reading Zap. As a teen, I'd scored some issues from a friend of my stepfather ("Don't tell your mother you have these," he said), so I must have had them somewhere back there in my brain. Here's one of Moscoso's pages from Zap Comix #2: Victor Moscoso is absolutely a professional and if you love art shop talk like I do, that long interview I linked above is just fantastic. I think often about his application of color theory to concert posters and his references to Josef Albers.
By the time R. Crumb had asked Moscoso to do Zap, Victor was the oldest of the underground artists and he already had a family, so it's funny to read his reactions to the other Zap stories: "...I thought the taboos were all illusions, until Crumb did 'Joe Blow.' Then I realized, OK, you can chop off a guy’s penis and eat it. That’s all right. But you can’t fuck your children. There are limits in this civilized society." I had an idea for a new mask, which, at the outset, could've been finished tonight; however, I don't think I have enough paper in the colors I want to do what I was envisioning. Also, I started cutting into the cardboard to make some elements fall away and others come forward, and it made me think about Rammellzee.
The first time I'd heard of Rammellzee, I think he had already passed on (he died in 2010). It may have been the April 2011 issue of Juxtapoz - the Art in the Streets issue. I was so entranced by the full-body costumes he'd construct - to this day I'm longing for available space to allow me to create and store something similar. (Even in my most recent move, a month ago, the masks could've wound up being a casualty. I threw out all my scrap cardboard.) Although the article from Juxtapoz is not on their website, this feature from The New Yorker is very good. Street Art NYC has some good photos of Rammellzee's work here. I was lucky to be able to see 'The Equation', which featured his letter racers, in 2012. It's unfortunate that we don't have more of Rammellzee's work out in the world; he was very prolific in multiple forms, and I wish he was more celebrated. Just from what little information I know about him as an artist, I'm so astounded by his mind and his creativity. It's very difficult for me to work from scratch, and Rammellzee was out here building whole worlds, probably inventing concepts that we'll never get to lay eyes on. And I think we're poorer for it intellectually! Long live Rammellzee. My day has been kind of like this Juxtapoz cover (which I think about Often), but instead of dragging everyone by their hair to listen to Lady Gaga, I want them to look at the art I found today. It's really been a good Monday. First up are the hair miniatures of Melanie Bilenker: These are so amazing that they make me want to scream into the void for hours. The Vogue article has a mini-history of Victorian mourning jewelry AND a timelapse gif of Melanie creating one of these pieces, which is a joy. Cleveland-based artist Wadsworth Jarrell has a book out now about the AfriCOBRA collective, which he helped found: “White people know what they did to us," he said, explaining his artistic philosophy. “We don’t have to put it on canvas. They made slaves out of us. What are we going to do, make paintings of slaves in the field and somebody standing over them with a whip? That’s not inspiration. Painting is supposed to be inspirational.” The Smithsonian Institution has made millions of its images open access. One can search for particular items, or browse through some of the featured items - it's absolutely delightful, and for the most part, the descriptions are present and fascinating. I especially enjoyed the various bouquet holders, courtesy of the Smithsonian Gardens: Look at this absolutely stunning sculpture, The Death of Cleopatra, by Edmonia Lewis - the first professional African-American sculptor! This is amazing and also huge! I can't wait until the pandemic is over so I can see it in person. I could go on, but I'll leave y'all with this quilt by Viola Canady that evokes the look of a stained-glass window: That's just phenomenal! Definitely take the time to look through what the Smithsonian has available. I have a new sketchbook and I should go work in it, but - last thing! - Dr. Martens is putting out a Keith Haring collection. Oh man. Maybe it's time...for boots.
Finished a sketchbook this week! Another one is on the way, although I'm nervous about it because I haven't used this type before and it's not spiral-bound (I couldn't get another one of this same kind, which I really liked). I guess we'll see how it goes! I have omitted a couple of pieces here for various and sundry reasons. My astrologer sent along something that was inspirational, and I'm keeping it under wraps for the moment. Sunday is my social day of what amounts to about five hours of Zoom meetings. My Religion adviser from undergrad, Dr. Cath, hosts a Zoom meeting in which she shares her screen and we all go on a virtual gallery tour and look at art. Last week we were at the Uffizi for The Divine Comedy Illustrated by Federico Zuccari - we did Inferno then - and today we did Purgatorio and Paradiso. It's been inspirational in several ways, mainly the sparse use of color in Inferno, followed by the brown ink washes of Purgatorio and a return to color in Paradiso, with added color in the final illustration. We've also been interested in how Zuccari defines the action in the illustrations - rather than Dante and Virgil appearing in the middle of an action, Zuccari draws them at the foot of the mountain, ascending the mountain, and at the top, all in one drawing, and often this action is occurring from right to left. Also, Zuccari depicts Dante's dreams in a circle above the sleeping Dante. The Pugartorio and Paradiso segments also have text within the illustration, which also made us all think of comics. I had written down "Philip Roth" in my sketchbook while I was reading The Creative Habit, as he's mentioned in the final chapter, and then today I found American Pastoral in a Little Free Library. Another Little Free Library find: The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai. I also ordered The Lonely City, something that's been on my wish list for a while, after Austin Kleon featured it on his blog.
Luckily, this year seems to not be flowing at the breakneck pace of last year. At least, it seems slow for now. That may also be due to spending more time working or reading than refreshing the bird website. It's a good feeling. "I know there are artists who like music in the background while they work; they use the music to block out everything else. They're not listening to it; it's there as a form of companionship. I don't need a soundtrack to accompany my life. Music in the background nibbles away at your awareness. It's comforting, perhaps, but who said tapping into your awareness was supposed to be comfortable? And who knows how much of your brainpower and intuition the Muzak is draining?" - Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit I had been picking away at The Creative Habit for quite a while, but I finally re-read and finished it on Monday. I really enjoyed it and very much recommend it. Lately I have been thinking about this quote above, because I do listen to music quite a lot when cleaning or in the studio or just generally. This week, though, I have been working without it. It's an interesting change. I do feel a bit more focused, I don't feel the loss of background ambience, I have just been fully engrossed in what I've been working on. I actually finished a sketchbook yesterday! I think I'm going to do a weekly roundup of what I've worked on that I'll post on Sundays. Piggybacking from the last post, where I linked an interview with author George Saunders where he talks about social media, here's an interview with artist Tishan Hsu that also touches on how humans and technology interact: Even in the mountains, then, the artist felt watched: by the sites he visited, by the phone he took to bed. “They actually have cognitive psychologists helping them design this software so that they know what will pull you in,” Hsu said. “We need to stop and think about what it’s doing to us and our bodies. So in a way that’s what my work has been trying to grasp. I would say, whether people connect to my work — I think I’m really just trying to ask the question, ‘What is really happening?’” This is something we've discussed in classes: how easy it is for us to forget that there are always human beings behind everything that's programmed. Sometimes we long for this ideal of impartial computerized decision-making, but human beings themselves are not impartial, and have hidden or overt biases - these can all be reflected in a program that we might believe to be free from human error. More inspiration for the week:
♡ This Artists' Questionnaire on Caroline Kent, who uses cut paper instead of an initial sketch for her abstract paintings ♡ Social distancing, 432 years ago (I was just telling my cousins that I would love to have a six foot long pole that I could hit people with if they got too close to me in line) ♡ The work of artist Ellen M. Blalock. Amazing, beautiful, heart-rending. (I'd rather look at her quilts than look at Red Composition.) |
AuthorArtist, essayist, divinity school dropout. Here for a good time, not for a long time. Archives
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