Category Archives: comics
Checkin' in with Dave Sim's glamourpuss
Way back in May of 2008, I wrote a bit about Dave Sim’s glamourpuss– as you’ll note, it’s a mostly complimentary review appreciative of the project’s complexity. More than a year later, I continue to collect the title– in fact, … Continue reading
Agar Agar in… The Harem of Bacchus
Agar Agar in “The Harem of Bacchus” by Albert Solsano. From Dracula Magazine, 1972. Remarkably, even in context, it don’t make a lick more sense. Collected in TPB by Warren Publishing. Whose offices were located at 145 East 32nd Street. … Continue reading
Introducing the New Teen Swinger: Romance Comics in the Summer of Love
Well, well, looks as though I am running par for the course in my persistent inability to update my blog and/or complete a series of posts. I do have a final post from the Comic Con about 3/4ths written. I … Continue reading
come up and see me some time, sailor
A thing to do: Saturday, July 25th, 2009. San Diego Comic Con. 2:30-3:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #12: Poster Session — Want to go in depth with a comics scholar? On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday the PowerPoints of the poster … Continue reading
Teen-Age Love #61 (1968): Meet Jonnie L♥ve and the Hippies
Having received a cache of Psychedelic Romance Comics, a sub-genre that I appear to be inventing, I thought I’d post the best of the new acquisitions– Teen-Age Love #61: I don’t have a lot to say about this story; its … Continue reading
Secret Romance #48 (1980)
Okay, I own it, so why not? Here we go– Secret Romance #48, a true relic. According to Dan Stevenson’s invaluable list of romance comics, after Secret Romance #48, the last of its series, only about ten more individual issues … Continue reading
Love Diary #99 (1976)
After my last two posts on the topic of counterculture bleed into Romance Comics, and my broad assertions as to the slow death of the genre at Charlton, I thought it might behoove me to post an example of how … Continue reading
For Lovers Only #61: In Search of Love (1971)
After my last post, wherein I rambled about the slow bleed of counterculture imagery into Romance Comics, I thought it might behoove me to post an example. I’ve chosen a story from my own modest collection– Charlton’s For Lovers Only … Continue reading
Heart Throbs #92: The Nights That Never Ended (1964)
If 20th Century narrative taught us anything, it’s that people’s respectable facades are lies constructed to hide a bitter core of resentment, malice and disquieting interests. And hey, I’m no diff– I got my own weird kicks, and the one … Continue reading
god hates us all: the owl ship lands in hollywood
Pictures of what I assume is the US premiere of Watchmen at Grauman’s Chinese. This is the second time that I’ve been in the presence of the movie’s big stupid prop Owl Ship. My first time was at the San … Continue reading
note from san francisco
Everything is the same, nothing is new. The city as an unchanging entity. Or as W. Axl Rose once sang, way back before he had the therapy you’re soon to hear on Chinese Democracy, “The streets don’t change / but … Continue reading
Final Words on Steve Ditko
For someone with an interest in the work of writer and artist Steve Ditko, the last year has been a bonanza of material, culminating in Blake Bell’s Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko and a new publication released … Continue reading
Insanity from Above, Filth from Below: A Freaked-Out Report on the San Diego Comic Con 2008
Last summer, when I attended the San Diego Comic Con, I was struck by its blankness– there was literally nothing that required photography and nothing, after the cease of the spectacle, that was worth remembering. My sum total of purchases … Continue reading
Dave Sim’s Judenhass and glamourpuss #1
I’ve purchased two comics in the last month. Both were written and drawn by Dave Sim– glamourpuss #1 and Judenhass. glamourpuss is a series of photorealist images– sourced from fashion magazines and early, classic comics– combined with a Parody of … Continue reading
I Laughed at The Great God Pan!
Special thanks to Dave for supplying the following pages from Tales to Astonish #6 (1959), a Jack Kirby 4-page story entitled, “I Laughed at the Great God, Pan!” I’m fascinated by early representations of mythology in American cartoons and comics– … Continue reading
Thoughts on the visual style of From Hell
Huzzah to Craig Fischer & Charles Hatfield for inaugurating a series of monthly articles on the work of Eddie Campbell. Readers of the blog and friends of the blogger know too well my abiding interest in Campbell’s output– Alec: How … Continue reading
COMICS: Welcome Back, Frank. Says New York City.
Though I rag on mainstream comics, there is much to be said for spectacle done proper. Serialized superheros are the last vestige of the pulp press, and at their best, offer a genuinely unique low-to-middle-brow pleasure of installments on the … Continue reading
COMICS: An appreciation of Steve Ditko's Mr. A
The best writing on the web about Steve Ditko’s Mr. A are here, here, and here. If you have no idea who the hell Steve Ditko is, or what Mr. A is, these posts are the place to start. They’re … Continue reading
COMICS: If only Rick knew… it's him that I've loved all along! But how can I hurt Gary?
One of my more recent and disquieting obsessions has been a certain vintage of Romance Comics. I’m not going to bore anyone with a history of the genre, so let’s simply state that for three decades, comics publishers put out … Continue reading
memories of you drop off like flies, some days I'm glad, not right now
From Captain Marvel Adventures #43. Blackhead removal. New science, Bob helps Jim submit to Honey’s vanity. Jim gets married. Is it this easy? Thanks to Vacutex! “Remove Ugly Blackheads Or No Cost.”
COMICS: AN IDIOSYNCRATIC EXAMINATION, PART FIVE (Interlude of the Superheroes)
With a few exceptions, Superhero Comics worked best, and made the most sense, in the Silver Age. Although the genre was born decades earlier, it was a product of the Pulp Era of magazine publishing, and the early work, while … Continue reading
COMICS: AN IDIOSYNCRATIC EXAMINATION, PART FOUR (A jaunt on the high seas of art with Captain Eddie Campbell and How To Be An Artist)
As I’ve mentioned ad nauseum, I have a long and abiding love of the autobiographical work of Mr. Eddie Campbell– a man perhaps forever followed by “the artist best known, along with writer Alan Moore, for creating From Hell.” I’ve … Continue reading
COMICS: AN IDIOSYNCRATIC EXAMINATION, PART THREE (30 Days of Night, five minutes of sorrow)
There’s probably a very dense and boring book published by Fantagraphics tracing the development of Cinematographic Technique in comics– beginning surely with E.C. and the endlessly flogged “Master Race” of Krigstein– but I think it’s fair to say that the … Continue reading
COMICS: AN IDIOSYNCRATIC EXAMINATION, PART TWO (in which we examine Phonogram)
Is there such a thing as an Ideal Comic, and would anyone be foolish enough to try defining it? Sure, why not? Here’s a working definition: “A narrative which functions most perfectly within graphic illustration.” Clunky, but it hits the … Continue reading
COMICS: AN IDIOSYNCRATIC EXAMINATION (part one)
Over the last few years there’s been so much upper middle class blather about comics as fine art that it’s overshadowed a far more significant development: the embrace of manga by the West’s 13 year old girls. In the not … Continue reading
darkness on the edge of town
Amongst the comics cognoscenti, such as it is, there’s been yet another iteration of endless debate as to What Are Good Comics and Can’t They All Get Along brought on by Heidi McDonald’s slightly incoherent but well meaning post on … Continue reading
Wrasslin' with Cerebus: More Dave Sim
I consider Cerebus to be the single most illustratively innovative comic in the history of the form. If there is/was another series as consistently successful at expressing ideas with such elegance, I should very much love to know its name. … Continue reading