Go to Making Light's front page.
Forward to next post: Shit!
Subscribe (via RSS) to this post's comment thread. (What does this mean? Here's a quick introduction.)
Rick Veitch has a new comic miniseries called The Art of War, part of his Army@Love series. The covers seem (based on the first two) to be parodies of famous paintings. First issue has the Mona Lisa (look at it next to the original to see how the background detail carries over), and the second has one of the best parodies of Hopper’s “Nighthawks” I’ve ever seen. (And I see that the second Army@Love trade is coming out soon, so I should probably go pick up the first.)
I’m not a big fan of Squidbillies, one of the quarter-hour cartoons on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block. I don’t like the writing, or the animation, or the character design. Yet whenever it comes on, I can’t help but look at the backgrounds by artist Ben Prisk. They’re full of chaotic shapes, skewed perspective, and lush, sloppy, saturated washes of glowing color, like stained-glass windows designed by Ralph Steadman. Prisk’s blog, full of paintings and sketches, is inspirational too.
Rod McKie has scanned in some pages from Wally Wood’s old fanzine witzend, including a Steve Ditko Mr A story that starts with a full page of Mr A shouting Objectivist philosophy at the reader. If I were a billionaire, I’d try to get Ditko and Dave Sim to collaborate on a philosophical comic, just for the sheer skull-busting awesome craziness of it.
Mmm...Ditko and Sim...my head is already exploding.
*snrk* "The Rejects" from the witzend scans is hilarious. "Justify that margin." Heehee.
> If I were a billionaire, I’d try to get Ditko and Dave Sim to collaborate on a philosophical comic
That's just about the scariest idea I've ever heard. I'd buy a copy, but I'd keep it in a sealed container so it couldn't talk to my other comics.
When I see "Veitch" I usually think of Tom Veitch and Greg Irons, of "Legion of Charlies" fame.
(They appeared as part of a Martha Stewart contest.)
Question to all copyeditors and proofreaders re: something in that Ditko strip:
Can the word "you've" REALLY be hyphenated for a line break? i.e.:
"...you-
've..."
I love Ditko's work, even when he's drinking the Objectivist kool-aid, but seeing that in one of the word balloons just broke me completely out of the story.
Thanks for the Prisk links! Had never heard of him before this.
My personal favourite Nighthawks reference is in Transmetropolitan.
Bruce Arthurs, I've learned from the WashPost that any word can be hyphenated at any point. I've sort of gotten used to it, but it used to drive me nuts.
Hyphenat-
ion? (It'-
s poetry b-
y any other name. B-
lank verse bei-
ng the only f-
orm I've mastere-
-
-
d.)
All right, sorry to get off topic, but where's the post on the summer solstice, and the wonderful poems pertinent thereto, that I have awaited these 6 months?
The solstice is done.
Already the days grow short.
And it's just as well, because when those (#$ birds start singing outside the window at two-thirty in the (#&$ morning, it wakes me up and TOTALLY (#@ pisses me off.
Oops... so much for haiku.
If I were a billionaire, I’d try to get Ditko and Dave Sim to collaborate
Not sure being a billionaire would help - from what I hear, Ditko reacts to bribery attempts much the same as Mr. A does.....well, maybe a *little* less violently.
If Dave Sim and Steve Ditko made a comic, it would open with Mr A marrying Jaka in a Wiccan ceremony at a Ren-faire outside of San Francisco. For 2,200 pages, Mr A deliberates over whether or not to waive his right to keep his vasectomy a secret from Jaka, with much wackiness ensuing from Jaka trying to sow his seed in her womb. Mr A finally relents and commits to being a father, undoing his painful vasectomy. But before he is ready to make his first honest attempt at fatherhood, Jaka announces that she's pregnant. Mr A confronts Jaka on the rooftop of their apartment building and informs her that he knows he isn't her baby's father, and starts to walk away. Jaka draws a dagger and lunges to stab Mr A in the back, but she trips on the testicles of the true father of her baby, which Mr A nonchalantly dropped as he turned his back on her, causing her to fall from the roof to her death.
#12 - Best. Haiku. Ever. (form be damned!)
Mama Raccoon (out on the deck) actually stopped eating long enough to look in and wonder what those funny strangling noises coming from her pet human were...
ps: Best Solstice present ever: Mama brought her biggest litter ever (five!) up to start eating our bird food Saturday night, and I just finally got to to see them a few hours ago...
Thanks for the Squidbillie's background compliments!
Ben
