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Posts matching tags 'comics'




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American web comic author Brian McFadden takes his country to task for not going metric:

Anyone with even a tiny math and science background will tell you that the metric system kicks the shit out of our current system, which is a bastard cousin of the long-gone British Imperial system. Dumb America’s stubborn refusal to adopt it is almost as embarrassing as their opposition to health insurance reform.
Only the United States, Burma, and Liberia aren’t on board. Antarctica is also gray, but only scientists are down there, and I’m sure they aren’t using pounds and ounces to weigh penguin shit.
Once health care is sorted, could the next front line for America's progressives be adopting the metric system? Will we see teabaggers and right-wing talk-radio blowhards declaiming the Satanic nature of the metric system and spouting non-sequiturs about the Biblical foundations of pints and pounds (to paraphrase a Texas congressman, "if English measurements were good enough for Jesus, they're good enough for me!")?

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McSweeney's Internet Tendency has a detailed interview with underground comics author Daniel Clowes, in which he sheds light on his early career with Cracked! magazine (which he describes as being like methadone for MAD Magazine addicts, and reels off a comprehensive list of various MAD clones and their nebbish mascots), the genesis of Ghost World and its making into a film, the art of writing/drawing comics, and numerous other things:

I used to tell people I was a "comic-book artist," but they'd look at me as if I'd just stepped in dog shit and walked across their Oriental rug. I never knew what to call myself, but I was always opposed to the whole "graphic novelist" label. To me, it just seemed like a scam. I always felt that people would say, "Wait a minute! This is just a comic book!" But now, I've given up. Call me whatever you want.
Whenever a musician isn't happy with the quality of an early record and records it again with a "better" band, it's never better. It's like when Paul McCartney re-recorded "Eleanor Rigby" in the [1984] movie Give My Regards to Broad Street. Did "Eleanor Rigby" need to be re-recorded? The original work is connected to a specific moment of time; it's never going to become "better." Even when I do a new cover for one of my old books, it always seems sort of condescending to the material.

You just mentioned a movie I'm not familiar with: Scarlet Street. What is it about?

It's a strange movie. People always think of film noir as a genre of violent action. To me, noir is more about a state of anxiety and profound loneliness − an awareness of the quotidian grimness of the postwar world. Scarlet Street is about a poor, ugly loser [Edward G. Robinson] who gets hoodwinked by a horrible woman and her pimp, almost willingly so, since even this cheap thrill is preferable to his emasculated existence with his harridan wife.

The original version, directed by Jean Renoir, is even better. The [1931] movie is called La Chienne, which translates to "the bitch." I'm not even sure "the bitch," in this case, refers to the prostitute as much as life itself.

I never really considered Ghost World to be a teen film. To me, it was more about these two specific characters working through something −l something very personal to me. I wasn't necessarily trying to communicate with teenagers, and I never really imagined they would be as much of our audience as they have.

(via Boing Boing) comics creativity daniel clowes film hollywood interview mcsweeny's 0


The recent Cat And Girl is an apposite comment on reactions to the death of the People's Prince of Pop:

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The Sound of Young America podcast has an audio interview with Adrian Tomine, talking at Seattle's Bumbershoot festival about his recent graphic novel, Shortcomings.

(via Boing Boing) adrian tomine audio comics podcast 0


Google are apparently working on a new web browser. Named Chrome, the browser is designed more like an operating system which happens to be based on web technologies like DOM and JavaScript than a traditional browser; different pages are separate processes (and about time, too) and privileges are compartmentalised to fortify security. Meanwhile, the web rendering implementation is based on WebKit (the Apple/KDE open-source web engine), with a JIT-compiling JavaScript engine optimised for application from a Danish company named V8 (I wonder how it compares to Apple's Squirrelfish and Mozilla's new engine). Alas, there's no code available (and the URL given returns a 404); instead, Google have given us a beautifully drawn 38-page comic by Scott McCloud, illuminating the technical innovations and the reasons for them, in great detail and with no small amount of humour:

That's all the detail that seems to exist so far. There is a possibility that it's just an elaborate feint; Google could, in theory, have paid McCloud some huge sum to draw a comic to specification, peppered with technical versimilitude, purely in order to send Microsoft/Apple/Yahoo!/whoever's development teams on a wild goose chase. Though I suspect that there is an actual product there. For one, Google are known to use WebKit on Android. More importantly, though, a browser designed as a web application operating system (with the expectations of performance and stability that implies), rather than an information viewer with programmability grafted on as an afterthought (as is the case with current browsers), would line up rather nicely with Google's strategy to make the web into a first-class application platform.

There are no details on what platforms Chrome will run; it is open-source (and other projects, or those willing to fork those, will probably have a field day with this), and the comic does mention Windows in one place, so presumably a Windows version is planned. I'm guessing that Google aren't doing this to help Microsoft sell Windows licences, though, so presumably this is not the only version planned. A Linux desktop version, running on top of X, is probably likely. Another possibility is it running over something lighter than the average Linux desktop, making a robust web-browsing appliance on which the browser meets the conventional definitions of an operating system; either Android or some other lightweight OS.

The other option, of course, is that this is an elaborate hoax, akin to the Photoshopped "spy photos" of new Apple Mac tablets and other fantastic gear that are a regular feature of gadget blogs. The fact that Google's Chrome page doesn't yet exist (at time of writing) does suggest this possibility. Though this would imply that the hoaxers had an enormous amount of time on their hands, excellent comic drawing skills and an uncanny mastery of the drawing style of Scott McCloud.

Update: Google have confirmed Chrome. It's initially a Windows product (presumably to win market share before IE8 comes along and shuts off Google's oxygen with its advertising cookie blocker), though Mac and Linux versions are in the works. The Windows version will apparently be out tomorrow.

(via /.) chrome comics cs design google javascript scott mccloud tech vaporware web 3









Essentialist explanation of the day:

A kiwi is like if a hamster was a fruit
(From here)

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This week, Perry Bible Fellowship commemorated the (upcoming) sixth anniversary of Edward Gorey's death by doing a strip in his style:

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The latest addition to the Belle & Sebastian lifestyle-experience empire is a graphic novel. Titled Put The Book Back On The Shelf, it comes out in February (one week before their new album) and features stories titled after (and presumably inspired by) Belle & Sebastian songs, written and illustrated by various sequential artists. The only name that immediately rings a bell is Laurenn McCubbin (co-author of "Lazy Line Painter Jane"), who I think is one of those freaky fetish-goth authors Warren Ellis hangs around with or something, and who also did the cover art. (I was hoping they'd get Daniel Clowes or Dorothy Gambrell or someone to contribute to it, but you can't have everything.)

(via bowlie) belle & sebastian comics indiepop 0








Today's hack of the day: Turn your ham(p)ster into a fighting machine:

(via jwz) comics hamsters 0


Everybody Loves Eric Raymond, a web comic for penguinheads, involving Richard M. Stallman, Linus Torvalds and Eric S. Raymond living in a shared house.

And then there's Buzz Aldrin's Conspiracy Smackdown:

(via bOING bOING, reddragdiva) buzz aldrin comics conspiracy theories eric raymond geek humour linux open-source 0



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(via jwz) amusing comics nancies surreal 0





The latest web comic is H.P. Lovecraft's The Nameless Dread:

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This week's A Softer World struck me as particularly lovely. (JPEG link).

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An amusing take on the evolution-vs.-"intelligent-design" debate. (via Toby)

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Art Spiegelman, the author of Holocaust graphic novel Maus, has tackled September 11:

"The work is on my feelings towards the hijacking and then the hijacking of the hijacking by the Government. I'm not so sure The New Yorker is being complacent. I'm sure I'd be welcomed back once I had found the right medication."
Spiegelman's new book is sure to cause as much, if not more, ruckus as MAUS. It depicts a government out of control, or, more chillingly, totally in control. "They had an agenda already on their mind before September 11," he says. "Drying up funds for health and education and moving the funds upward to the rich, all made more implementable by the war in Iraq."

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New World Disorder has some unintentionally brilliant found hip hop lyrics. A representative sample:

we like all you ladies Lookin Sexy with a pepci
So dont look like your pussys tight man you know me
we can do it all night tell the brake of Dawn
But dont get me rong in the morning you got
Leave cause my mother will Bitch at me

Oh, and also via NWD, the latest Trucker Fags in Denial cartoon is up.

comics found found poetry hip-hop jim goad teenage trucker fags in denial unintentionally hilarious 1


A Softer World is a 3-panel comic strip (for want of a better word) made with digital photographs and overlaid text, and can be beautiful, poetic, poignant and at times twisted and disturbing. A lot like life, really. (via DPH)

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Jenny Everywhere is an attempt at an "open-source" superhero, i.e., a character whom anybody can use in stories. bOING bOING says that this is "like League of Extradorinary Gentlemen without the 75-year copyright interregnum". Which she is, except for the fact that she lacks the makings of a compelling character. She's a little too flawless and politically correct. In fact, some of the Jenny Everywhere comics have the blandly inclusive, committee-designed feel of a community health pamphlet or something.

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The latest instalment of Patrick Farley's mega-doovy webcomic Spiders is up. It's set in the parallel universe where a forward-looking, technologically savvy Gore administration (!) wages war against terrorists with open-source distributed robots and Ecstasy bombs -- only it gets weirder than that. The visuals are amazing, making full use of the web, and referencing everything from Illuminatus! to Fight Club to rave culture (though mostly in the visual style). And it doesn't use one jot of Flash -- it's all inline images. Don't miss it.

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Über-misanthrope Jim "Answer Me!" Goad's new contribution to underground comics: Trucker Fags in Denial, co-authored with Jim Blanchard. With other episodes linked to from here. (Apparently it's soon to be a comic book from Fantagraphics, assuming they don't go under.)

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This week's Cat and Girl is quite amusing.

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An interesting article about Jack Chick, author of numerous Christian Fundamentalist crackpot tracts and ironic inspiration to several generations of underground comics artists, including Daniel Clowes and Robert Crumb.

When Clowes, whose screenplay for the indie film Ghost World received an Academy Award nomination, was in college, he read 80 Chick tracts in one sitting. "By the end of the night I was convinced I was going to hell," he says. "I had never been so terrified by a comic book."
The movie will consist of a series of oil paintings that the camera will dramatically pan across to give the appearance of movement. Carter has completed most of the paintings, which are being stored in the offices of Chick Publications. Fans have encouraged me to try to see them. Kurt Kuersteiner, Web master of the Jack Chick Museum of Fine Art (an online fan site that carries news and reviews of nearly all of Chick's works), describes them as modern masterpieces. "There is this beautiful picture of people languishing in hell, with a dragon's head blowing hot flames," he says.

(Hang on, isn't "Kurt Kuersteiner" an alias used by SubGenius church figure Janor Hypercleats?)

comics daniel clowes jack chick psychoceramics religion religiots robert crumb subgenius 1



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An interview with Dorothy Gambrell, who draws Cat and Girl and The Four Fours.

DG: Are the proletariat cool? Or is talking about the proletariat cool? I'm interested in culture, in society I have generally found that politics are not nearly as important as politicians claim they are. Unless, of course, Politics starts running around the room waving its arms and shouting incoherently, as it's been doing lately. I haven't considered myself political in the past, but I can see people around me becoming much more political. I wouldn't be surprised to soon find myself among them.
What does bother me are trends disguised as inevitabilities like, say, marriage, or having a full time job. There are lots of excellent reasons to have a full-time job money and stability and getting out of the house - and there are lots of good reasons to not have a full time job - like owning your own time. If you choose to make that trade off, between stability and time, time and money, that's fine, but I do feel that a lot of people never realize that there was a choice to be made.

Incidentally, there won't be any new issues of Cat and Girl for a few weeks, because Dorothy has gone to Australia, of all places.

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Superidol, a new comic-book story by Warren "Transmetropolitan" Ellis, is now online. (via bOING bOING)

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The latest webcomic from e-sheep, the creators of the excellent The Man Guy I Almost Was and Delta Thrives: The Spiders, set in an alternate universe where the dot-com golden age never ended, and a humanist west under an idealised Al Gore fights the Taliban with open-source robots, benevolent AIs and Ecstasy-laced marshmallow drops. It's a sort of cyberhumanist utopian war on terrorism, diametrically opposed to Bush's secret government and ideology of Biblical Fascism and "total information awareness".

It may not be particularly plausible (for one, I doubt that machine-man Gore would have possibly been anywhere near that cool), but it looks pretty doovy. (via 1.0)

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An absolutely gorgeous 3D-rendered webcomic speculating on what blogs will be like in the distant future. Though in some ways it has that early-90s cyberculture/teledildonics vibe, back when technology was going to bring the singularity and disembodied virtual sex was supposed to be the new LSD or something. Still, for us in the year 2002, living under the threats of Al-Qaeda dirty bombs, home-grown totalitarianism and war without end, and the prospect of a locked-down, censored, end-to-end rights-managed Internet being more a tool of corporate control than personal liberation, it's a nice bit of utopian retrofuturism, a vision of a future from a different timeline. (via rebecca's pocket)

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Web comic of the day: Cat And Girl, which is what it sounds like. Cuter than Pokey the Penguin, and no less philosophical. (via Lukelog)

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I recently received in the mail Issue 1 of a self-published comic titled The Warstorm, by an outfit calling themselves Chrome Fetus. It is about a God-fearing old man named Henry Carver, whose passion is writing and illustrating a lengthy book he calls Tales of the Lillian Girls (if that sounds familiar, it is because it takes a lot from the story of real-life outsider artist Henry Darger, of Vivian Girls fame). The preview issue of The Warstorm looks pretty interesting; the graphics and writing are impressive (though don't expect Vertigo gloss), and the story itself looks quite interesting. It will be interesting to see how this evolves in future issues.

(Aside: I like the way a bug in the JavaScript implementation of Nyetscape 6 puts those GeoCities ad boxes at the bottom of the page, where you don't even waste consciousness on them.)

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Shutterbug Follies, a pretty nice web comic about a girl who works in a photo developing shop, and some of the things she sees. (via bOING bOING) (I once met someone who worked in such a shop; she saw a lot of amateur pornography, of varying degrees of twistedness, from customers who mostly believed that no-one looks at the photos. Then again, she worked in Prahran.)

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