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| Scott McCloud, Comic Pundit | |
Scott McCloud seems like a
force to be reckoned with. Understanding Comics was the book
that introduced me to comics as art, and introduced me to other idea
in art also, like the relationship between abstract and
representational art, and what each type of art appeals to in the
human psyche and condition. He goes in in Reinventing Comics
to describe what needs to be done.
His website has something
truly revolutionary: he continues the work of his books, in online
form, for free, along with other online comics. Reinventing
Comics describes the advantages of this kind of thing: freedom
from publisher (you can be your own publisher online), REALLY low cost
(especially compared to the cost of printing and distributing comics), etc.
His writing is informative and interesting, and will definitely
provide you with ammunition to use against people who associate comics
and comic art with X-Men or Spiderman -- they really can be every bit
as literate and important as a novel, as visually appealing as any
painting.
Scott McCloud's best known actual comic (i.e. not about comics) is
"Zot!" which can now be found online at Comic
Book Resources. There are plenty of interesting comics on his
website to look at also. I really enjoyed
The
24 hour comics: a 24 page comic strip drawn in a single day
(there are plenty of samples of these on the website)
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| Jim's Journal, by Scott Dikkers | |
Jim's Journal is one of my all-time-favorite comic strips. I find
it exceptionally subtle and I always find something new when I read
one of his books again. I admit it takes a while to "get it".
Perhaps you should read several books before making any sort of
decision about how you feel about them. The books are pretty
inexpensive as these things go, which helps. I read the first several
books all at once when I was working at Nortel. Ron Zajac, who was in
charge of me at the time, was so kind to lend these to us and we
passed them around the apartment for a few days. I've read all of the
Jim's Journals by now and own most of them.
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| Jim/Frank by Jim Woodring | |
These were also introduced to me by Ron Zajac, a fellow employee at Nortel at the time.
Woodring has done other works, but I primarily resonate with Jim and Frank.
Jim is
a set of semi-autobiographical cartoons, with the main subject nominally Jim Woodring himself.
These are usually really weird dream-sequence type stuff, all in black and white. Reality
is permeable and there is a tangible fear present in these; not in the sense of horror,
but more the dread you feel when "you know you're about to get caught". I often feel a little
guilty reading these, or somewhat soiled. Reading them late at night has a severe impact on
me.
The Frank comics feature a lovable-furry-animal type character who seems to be in many
ways a very "simple" character. His motivations often seem transparent, but the stories introduce
very complex situations that are often hard to decipher. These cartoons are usually wordless
so it's even tougher to figure out what's going on here. Despite the cheery look of Frank,
many things that happen in the stories are graphically grotesque depictions of physical
harm to characters in the stories, usually in a dark form, completely unlike the good natured
destruction common in Roadrunner or Bugs Bunny.
from Scott McCloud, author of
Jim Woodring may be the most important cartoonist of his generation. The Frank stories
are masterpieces, each and every one. Read them. Re-read them. Re-re-read them. Every cell in
your body will remember this spellbinding, visionary work.
Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead
Jim Woodring patrols the border between cuteness and horror. Never have four fingers
in white gloves seemed so chilling.
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| Red Meat by Max Cannon | |
Red Meat is one of those great comics that has to be experienced,
not described. I remember driving around my home town with a friend
of mine, Curtis Klager, when he was trying to describe it to me.
"It's these sort of wholesome-looking, black and white people." He
says "There are always three frames and the scene pretty much stays
exactly the same from frame to frame, with minor facial movements,
etc. Often the subject of the conversation is not present or visible.
Usually in the first frame they'll say something, then pause a frame,
and then say something else. It's hilarious." I was dubious. But I
finally did read some of them in the Dallas Observer, a rather
vitriolic independent newspaper available on college campuses and
popular college hangouts everywhere in Dallas. And I Love It.
Every character in this strip is fantastically rich and unexpected.
The whole point of the cartoon, in my eyes, is to present the viewer
with a set of images and then a set of contradictory texts. How could
a smiling milkman be SO violent and sadistic? How could a
pipe-smoking dad be such an alcoholic and abusive father. And how
could this all be so FUNNY? It reminds of of some of the stories out
of , especially the
short story Music for Lovers where a doting father speaks about his
teenage daughter:
"Two years ago, when Dawn was 15, she fell off the
roof. Don't look at me. I have no idea what she was doing up there.
I thank god she landed on her feet. I found her staggering across the
lawn and was troubled by her ankles. They felt puffy to me, so I set
them and applied two fine casts, which it turned out, were a bit too
tight. Eventually I was forced to carry her to the hospital where
some power hungry surgeon decided that he needed to amputate both her
feet. I am still convinced that her feet were that color not because
of gangrene but because they were dirty"
or consider this brilliant quote from Parade which is the story that
got me hooked on Sedaris right away
"I accidentally swallowed Mike Tyson's false teeth. I can't believe
it! They were gold, but money isn't the issue. Between the two of us
we could buy gold teeth for every man, woman and child with the gums
to accommodate them... I've been waiting for days, but they still
haven't passed. They have to come out sooner or later, don't they?"
Sedaris is great, you should read all his stuff too. And listen to
"This American Life" which often
stars Sedaris and is great to boot.
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| Cerebus, by Dave Sim | |
Cerebus was introduced to me by my second roommate here at UTD, Tony
Cooper. He had the first several books in "phonebook form" which was
many episodes in one book (like the ones listed below). The newer
ones that he had were in issue-form, since the phone books probably
weren't available then. Tony was really into comics and had a lot of
neat stuff, some of which I really liked, some of which I could
take-or-leave. I really took to Cerebus, though, as did some of my
other friends at the time, such as Lee Baugh.
A little quote from Dave Sim about drawing B&W comics:
Even the most widely-known and well-thought of
black and whites are selling in the low ten to twelve thousand range. It is not a get- rich quick scheme. The first five years that I did Cerebus I could
have made more money baby-sitting (that isn't a joke). Five years. Think about it.
What a bloody shame... a lot of blood/sweat/tears/fluids went into
that and I loved it. Me loving it just couldn't personally help Dave
Sim make as much as a babysitter.
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| Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes | |
I recently went to see "Ghost World" at a local movie theater. At the
kind of movie theater that I didn't really know existed any more: a 2
screen theater in a tiny little strip mall. How things have changed.
I thought the movie was enjoyable and well done, if a bit depressing.
The main character Seymour reminded me of myself a little bit. This
is probably true of pretty much anyone who liked the movie though --
since they're somewhat likely to like comics, and as such can relate
to liking something, or a set of things, that most people think is
more or less worthless. It's always a little discouraging to love
something that most people don't give a second thought about, and not
care much about what society as a whole thinks is worthwhile.
Anyhow, after seeing the movie, I wanted to see what the graphic novel
was like. It was pretty good. There were a few things about the drawing
style I didn't like, largely how it was a black and white, but had occaisonal
splashes of blue, which I found a bit annoying. It's worth a read, and you
can find it at amazon or Fantagraphics,
a publisher of many fine comics. You can even get an Enid doll from Fantagraphics,
although I don't think I'm enough of a fan to get that.
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