Walks Amongst Us

Another Roz Chast that's also about Google. March 22nd issue.

That Feeling

By Christoffer Zieler in From Wonderland With Love: Danish Comics in the Third Millennium.

Poor/Broke Richard

Bright almanac: from The Many Lives of Benjamin Franklin by Aliki.

Sad catalogue: Ruben Bolling in Harper's June 2009.

E Pluribus Unum

One should really check out "A Dream To Have In Heaven" (Tengoku De Miru Yume – 天国でみる夢) by Maki Sasaki, Eggbert by Laf, and "The Rise of the Corporate-American" by Tom Tomorrow.

Gags

From Kyle Baker's Plastic Man: On the Lam!: a gag per panel. Something to aspire to.

Cliffhanger

Prince Valiant is bewitchingly understated at times. Once again: brutality deflates.

Two Funnies

Two cartoons this evening. The first is an historical scrap from the life of fictional explorer Chance Oxblood by Grant Reynolds from his Comic Diorama: Collected Comics. The second is by best-of-the-bunch Roz Chast from the 30 November 2009 issue of The New Yorker. I've tagged "faces" so pay deep attention to those. Enlarge both for the reading.

Define.
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Coming soon: an eating-my-shoe post and a rare color image.

Cultivar

(From Jules Feiffer's Ronald Reagan in Movie America. Enlarge.)

Norm MacDonald roasts Bob Saget: "Bob has a beautiful face, like a flower -- yeah, cauliflower. No offense, but...your face...looks...like a cauliflower." Reagan's Feiffer-made face looks like the Grinch made out of broccoli. So it's plainly obvious why I have quoted Norm MacDonald on Bob Saget.

Fumbling Loggerheads

I regret that I've seen so little of Tony Millionaire's work save for this, a Sock Monkey story, and his recent piece about Iron Man battling criminal cold cuts in Marvel's Strange Tales #2. This is "The Bat-Man" written by Chip Kidd in DC's Bizarro Comics.

I could inhabit those nostrils.

Sexless Doom Disco

$0.12 got me The Beezer Book 1979. Forgot how much I love neurophysiology.

The Spitting Image

From a 1978 parody of Hamlet in Cinemastock Tome 1 par Gotlib et Alexis. I was red-cheeked in front of stacks and stacks of BDs in Old Quebec. Bought this to help change my life. I don't speak French but I think this joke is un joli coup.

Yo Teach Time

... help here, guys, I can't very well do this on my own. Anyone? Thoughts on the Wife of Bath? Know anyone like her hahaha? No? No. Tiffany, did I see your hand raised? No? No.

(From "Bizarre Wars" by Duffy and DeStefano in Bizarro Comics.)

Gern Blanston

(From Daniel Clowes' Ice Haven. Enlarge!)

Both justifications and mock-justifications for comics are by now de rigueur, pro forma, old hat, a dime a dozen. They go hand-in-hand with comics creation like parsley and sage. It's good to see Clowes take a piss out of the old thing. And on the next page is the name he settles on:

Herpes Not So Simplex

(From Matt Groening's Love is Hell.) Most of Groening's strips are lists spread across panels going for the ever-reliable cumulative effect. In this single panel -- this cartoon -- you'll probably read the "mmm nice" last. It's less of a restriction than the others but still banal as hell. There's just no hope.

August Hobbyhorses

I think a good portion of this month's posts will be about Comedy or Silence. Already begun the first, after a fashion, but would like to look at: lightheartedness, bait and switch, Mutt and Jeff. We'll also see if I can avoid resorting to Michael Kupperman. And silence: the no-words type and others.

Let's start with both.

(Attributed to Rolf Pielke from The World on Sunday collection.)

Just Because

(From The Goon #32 by Eric Powell.)

Newspapers

DC's Wednesday Comics premiered this week and it was a newsprint blast. And big! Full of "bright, kinetic fabulism" (to quote David Hajdu on late 30's comics), with only a couple of duds. It carried me back to a book called The World on Sunday edited by Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentano, also big, which collects the garish, aesthetic treats of Pulitzer's Sunday World from 1898-1911. I chuckled at this comic called "'Teddy' Roosevelt in War and Peace" by Walter Hugh McDougall. Apologies for the just okay scan. Click to enlarge.

I'm on a BIG COMIC kick right now thanks to DC. Gearing up to read Seth's George Sprott.