Funnybooks, funny and otherwise.
There seems to be an audience that demands everything be explained to them; that everything be easy. And I don’t think that’s doing us any good as a culture. The ease with which we can accomplish or conjure any possible scenario imaginable through CGI is almost directly proportionate to how …
I was just checking my files, and amazingly, this little dandy has never appeared on my website, residing only in the archives of Von Flue Art Studios. And folks, even though it is a cartoon about a video game character from several years ago, it deserves better than that. I …
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. (Elie Wiesel) I’m not especially familiar with the work of Scott Kurtz. Cursory investigation reveals that his webcomic, PvP, is quite successful, though, which may explain why …
The bosses of our mass media — press, radio, film and television — have their aim of taking our minds off disaster. Thus, the distraction they offer demands the antidote of maximum concentration on disaster. (Ernst Fischer) Just a quick one tonight, inspired by Sony Pictures’ firing of Dan Harmon. …
The evolution — the mere existence — of comic strip collections is a pretty curious phenomenon. Comic strips are the very definition of disposable pop culture; they are and almost always have been one-shot gag delivery systems designed to be forgotten five seconds after they’re read. The dramatic narrative strips of …
Some time ago, a friend of mine was discussing the painful direction criticism has taken in the internet age. He suggested, in a bit of phrasing that has struck me as extremely perceptive ever since, that part of the problem is that people no longer approach art with any sense …
Gotham’s Crown Point Currency Exchange is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is why Julian Gregory Day is there. “I don’t sleep much anymore,” he explains to the man in line behind him, an army-coated Croatian with a bandage on his ear through which fresh blood …
Dear geeks, Congratulations! It is my understanding that you have taken over mainstream culture recently, and while this has caused consternation in certain quarters, I am the magnanimous sort, and besides, whenever someone says the words “culture war”, my eyes glaze over like a Honey Baked Ham. It has, however, …
Comics fans are hardly unique in having a standoffish relationship with the medium they love. (They are probably outpaced by sports fans in terms of the distance between the product on display and the character of the culture that has grown up around it, but that’s another story.) Every genre, …
All-Story magazine, October 1912. First appearance of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan of the Apes”. Art by Clinton Pettee; text available as an e-book here.
Nobody has suffered today like I have suffered today, unless they also read the entirety of the shitty Libertarian webcomic Roswell, Texas by L. Neil Smith. Allow me to share with you some of its insouciant crappiness in the form of a list. 1. The comic is set in an …
No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn’t understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language; but rather at someone who tampers with their own language. The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition — always new books, new programs, new …
In the real world, a skeptic is someone who, faced with a lack of convincing evidence, does not believe in the existence of the supernatural. She is, in short, someone who believes the evidence of her own eyes, and if tasked to explain the presence of vampires, unicorns or Jehovah, …
My contributions to the most recent Comics Panel at the AVC: Metalocalypse: Dethklok #1, JLA/The 99 #1, 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking; and Genius Isolated: The Art and Life of Alex Toth. Stick around for a headache-inducing argument about Stan Lee in the comments section! …
I know you’ve all been waiting for high-larious chat transcripts about increasingly, and gratifyingly, obscure comic artists from Calamity Jon and myself. Well, wait nae langer. Jon: It’s not that Rob Liefeld is drawing a story about Zombies fighting Jesus which I found surprising. Because, come on, the intellectual dearth …
