Junji Ito's The Lighthouse

 It's satisfying to see Junji Ito adapting The Lighthouse. It's only a preview of two pages of the full adaptation of the comic distributed in theaters when The Lighthouse is released July 21st. 

Moebius with David Lynch at a printing press in Paris. 2013

 

This seems from around the time David Lynch did Idem Paris. 

Idem Paris has been on Youtube this whole time, yet i've still not seen it. 

Interview with Alan Moore by Daniel Whiston. 2002

 2002 interview with Alan Moore by Daniel Whiston. 

Moore mentions Brian Eno. I need to dig deeper on any more mentions Moore has on Eno's Oblique Strategies. 

Captain Marvel & Proust

That Batman Does Dostoevsky post has been popping up in blog posts for months, but when i was trawling through the past week's comics, i caught something a lot more subtle (for comics anyway,) but just as peculiarly literary. I was reading the new Captain Marvel comic to find a scene in which a SHIELD agent meets with Iron Man telepathically. Yep, it's a comic. They meet inside of a memory of the agent, and in it, she's the size of a child, in the home of her French grandmother. She and Iron Man sit around chatting, eating cookies, and remarking on how good they are, with the agent adding something about they are just the way that she remembers them.

No, it's not much, but it seems an obvious and gratuitous Proust reference and it's funny to see it in a mainstream underwear pervert comic. Since the whole comic's theme dwells on memory, i'm wondering if it's about more than the cookie.

Never read Proust myself. Never seemed like my cup of tea, even though Pamuk and Vila-Matas adore him.

Judex

Why is Batman laughing? When a post starts with a question about Frank Miller's All-Star Batman, i really wasn't expecting it to go such fantastic places, back to Judex (who i haven't heard of) and Fantomas (who i have.) Just awesome.

Obviously i need to track down the Judex serials. If they inspired André Breton and Luis Buñuel, they're good enough for me.

comics and music

I'm so absurdly late on this that's it's nearly pointless, but i just saw this X-Force cover for the very first time. I read all of the X-force/X-statix in trade paperback


Tea and oranges? Is this a reference to Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne"?

Since Mr. Sensitive is essentially a stand-in Kurt Cobain, is this his Leonard Cohen afterworld of "Pennyroyal Tea?"

Yeah, probably... i just often see connections that aren't there though.

animated Jim Woodring

One of these videos i've seen before. Although the effort is appreciated, the motion and sound do very little for me. The stillness of the frames of the Frank comics that is unnerving all by itself, making them seem even more like dream fragments.

cannot get much more pulpy than comics

I love that Ed Brubaker & Matt Fraction are drawing from pulp traditions, like referencing relatively larger-than-life historical figures to flesh out the story. Immortal Iron Fist #7, the Pirate Queen of Pinghai Bay obviously was inspired in part by the real pirate queen Cheng I Sao. Brubaker's Wu Ao-Shi is a very different character after all. She's an Iron Fist, not a ruthless, somewhat innovative businesswoman.

It kind of has the feel of a more noble version of entry from a book like A Universal History of Infamy. Most cool.

Casanova

Casanova is pretty damned awesome. This morning, whilst the server at work was down, leaving me with nothing to do except twiddle my thumbs, i chose to read digitalized comic books instead. I've been reading some comic blogs lately, and lurking on ILC... Casanova gets a lot of love out there. I'm already sympathetic to Matt Fraction's work as the bastard actually has me reading a damned Punisher comic. I've always loathed Marvel's Punisher, but the new incarnation of War Journal piqued my interest... the series knows that the character is silly in his brutishness, and uses it to good effect, without getting anywhere near the kind of pathetic machismo that Ennis bathes in. With Fraction involved with The Immortal Iron Fist as well, i'm now all-too-earnestly following any work of his i can get my hands on.

The first reference point for me is Elektra: Assassin, which was my first memorable introduction to S.H.I.E.L.D. (I still have not gotten around to Steranko's Fury stuff.) Even though Frank Miller makes me feel icky nowdays, there's still a certain fondness for this series, as it had a cult-like following in my high school. Unlike the canon Marvel universe, S.H.I.E.L.D. had a decadent and weird feeling to it, as a super spy agency should have, lab assistants grown in vats, rogue cybernetic chopshops, and saturated with completely amoral characters. Yep. Casanova makes some obvious S.H.I.E.L.D. homages, and they feel more like the Elektra: Assassin than the ones in the jumpsuits mucking about with Captain America and the Avengers. Bah... it openly tips its hat when asking what the opposite of an Oedipus complex is, then dismissing the Elektra complex, as despite the homages, it's a very different comic.

One influence I sensed without actually ever having read the books was Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius. The bastard who turned me onto Elric way back when never did loan me his Jerry Cornelius books, as he preferred to recite them to me, (because he was a masturbatory hoarder who hated to share much with anyone, as his exclusive access to certain books, music, movies, ect. meant that he was in some sense cooler, despite his abysmal hygiene and failure to move beyond rote recital of the material.) I'm afraid to read that stuff now, as i tried to re-read Elric a few years ago, and that didn't turned out too well. Aw, fuck it... if i can still stomach Lovecraft, i can finally experience Jerry Cornelius firsthand.

Gabriel Ba's art is mindblowing though. As much as i can rave about the impeccable influences, the breezy humor, and lean pace, it's Ba's art that makes it work. As much as i love the Invisibles, sometimes the art doesn't quite click with the tone of the plot, which is an unfair criticism in that it was a long-running comic. Ba is style. Comic books are good fun, but i have this odd tendency to follow the work of a writer over that of an artist. Looking at his lines was kind of a thrill unto itself. This has to change, as i will be tracking down his work with his brother Fabio Moon in the coming weeks.

And i confess... i haven't bought a single issue of Casanova yet. I'm one of those downloading scum, except i actually buy the collected books if the book means more to me than an instant discard. I'm getting all twitchy thinking about reading this again without squinting.

the joy of New Skrullicism

This post over on Crooked Timber on New Skrullism is batshit brilliant. I cannot decided whether it reads better as mockery of the lunacy of reading too much into the insane plot machinations of comic books, a dig at the sf/fantasy community for jumping down Anthony Lane's throat, a Borgesian joke thrust upon comics instead of occult and detective novels...

It doesn't make any fucking sense. I love it.

Curses

The last chapter that i had to read in Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics was the one on Kevin Huizenga. I held off on it, as i wanted to read Curses in its entirety before i got Wolk's view on his work. A piece had turned up here and there, so i was interested. "28th Street" had me enthralled.

It kinda turned out that i had read everything in this collection already... damn... It's hard to tell how that happened, as i don't get the chance to read these kind of comics unless i order them as books.

Huizenga makes me feel weird, in a good way. His work fits well with other authors that i use as pillars for my reading. I'm catching the Calvino and Borges reference that i missed before, and am now trying to connect what other authors his thinking has been influenced by.

I read Wolk's piece on him as well last night. I'm still digesting.

Douglas Wolk mania

There's a Douglas Wolk interview over on the Phoenix. I don't think that i've gotten around to explaining just how much i loved reading Reading Comics. Or have i?

He also has a review of Death Note over on Salon, my favorite manga since Planetes... something else i ought to explain, but i have some video to process.... damn it.

Oh yeah... and his blog, Lacunae.

changing my mind about Countdown

I was wrong. The comic Countdown is essentially unreadable.

I knew that it was vastly inferior to 52, but the idea of a weekly comic that tied together other titles was still very appealing. I still firmly believe that great things can come from entertainment deliberately designed to be ephemeral, disposable. It might very well turn out that new, fun ideas might come from trying to undo the crap being churned out in Countdown, and in reading the bad stuff, i'll understand how awful things became.

No. Poor characterization, an incoherent storyline, and very weak attempts make reading this a chore. And yep... i'll still be reading it.

1602 and Captain America

In a moment of insanity, my friend Brandon called me out of nowhere, just to explain his theory of how Marvel is going to bring back Captain America. Brandon almost never calls me, so it left me a little confused as to what catastrophe just happened.

Nope. He just wanted someone to explain his brilliant theory to.

Captain America is dead, but was resurrected, in the alternate timeline of 1602. It almost fits, with timetravel, and his being presumed dead in a future in which superheroes are outlawed. However, a quick check of Wikipedia shows that this Captain America came from somewhere where the Purple Man was president of the U.S.

Damn. Too bad. That had a bizarre WTF appeal. Then again, retcons happen.

The Cosmic Cube resurrection holds.

still waiting for my copy of Reading Comics to arrive

There's a review of it over on Star-Tribune. No matter how big my TBR stack is, it's probably going to bubble to the top.