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Friday, August 27, 2004
artblog site feed:
thanks to brad searles for helping us get our xml site feed going to enable all you lazy blokes using feedreaders to aggregate blog content.
click the xml link below for the feed -- i'll post a permanent link somewhere this weekend for reference.
posted by peter! 12:01 PM EST permalink
the portland scene:
the portland mercury on some of the newer faces to hit the portland comix landscape...
"What [Sarah] Oleksyk immediately intuited about Portland took me two years of living here to figure out: besides being home to larger comic book publishers like Dark Horse and Top Shelf Productions, Portland has a fiercely strong, astonishingly creative, and fanatically devoted independent comic book scene--one that somehow remains just under the city's cultural radar..."
[looking forward to visiting portland for the labor day weekend, btw.]
posted by peter! 11:50 AM EST permalink
hutch owen unmarketable:
also coming this november, tom hart's latest hutch owen collection from top shelf productions...
"This graphic novel collects the all-new travels and travails of Hutch Owen, the outrageous homeless rebel that battles the corporate forces that control our lives. Included in this volume are: Public Relations, where Hutch is pitted against the Worner company and a PR firm bent on redesigning the World Trade Center Site; Aristotle, in which Hutch winds up in Worner's employ as a slogan writer; and many more. Don't miss this politically astute and heart-warming farce." ($14.95, 208pp, SC, ISBN 1-891830-55-4, Diamond: SEP042964)
posted by peter! 11:43 AM EST permalink
lackluster world:
currently in the september previews catalog for a november release...
"Lackluster World is a humorous and somewhat disturbing dark satire about newspaper journalist and albino, Fahrenheit Monahan. At his own birthday party, his aggressively fundamentalist brother and sister, Kelvin and Celsius, thrust him past his limits of social tolerance. Consequently, Fahrenheit no longer has patience for the lackluster world he lives in and devises a plan to change it... before it changes him."
more information, including a 16-page preview at lacklusterworld.com.
posted by peter! 11:34 AM EST permalink
Thursday, August 26, 2004
stealth tribes:
the guardian on stealth tribes, the upcoming graphic novel from warren ellis and colleen doran.
"If you like your grown-up thoughts laced with the blackest humour, pop culture references and set in a dark, dystopian near-future, Warren Ellis is for you. Bursting onto the scene in the wake of the mighty Alan Moore, Ellis is one of the brightest young British comic geniuses. He has more than 30 feature-length comic books behind him and his Global Frequency is about to become a TV series. Here, we present an exclusive, uncoloured glimpse of his latest work. Stealth Tribes is tentatively scheduled for spring 2005."
posted by peter! 10:19 PM EST permalink
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
rent girls:
laurenn mccubbin spotlighted in the san francisco chronicle...
"Laurenn McCubbin has, admittedly, a pretty great job. Not many people can boast that they get paid to do what they love, on their own terms, in their own way. Then again, not many people get to draw naked women for a living.
"McCubbin, illustrator of Rent Girl and co-author/illustrator of XXXLiveNudeGirls, lives and works in a loft space in Oakland. In Rent Girl, the collection of autobiographical stories written by Michelle Tea, McCubbin's art distills Tea's descriptions of her experiences as a call girl into graphic tableaux. In her signature style, a layered approach full of watery shadows and strong lines, the women of Rent Girl are frequently seen facing the viewer directly while engaged in sexual acts, showing the contradictions between what they're doing and what they're feeling..."
and her rent girl collaborator michelle tea...
"Novelist Michelle Tea wears her difficult past like one of her multicolored tattoos: It may have caused her pain, but now she can point to the rather dazzling results. The onetime prostitute and drug abuser smiles with the radiance of Miss America as she greets participants of her monthly Radar Reading series at San Francisco's Main Library..."
posted by peter! 11:01 AM EST permalink
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
apparat unveiled:
here's the covers to the four apparat books coming this november from warren ellis and avatar comics. click on the thumbnails below for larger pics.
   
Ellis on FRANK IRONWINE, featuring art by Carla Speed McNeil:
"The crime pulps were possibly the most influential of that whole publishing movement. Raymond Chandler. Dashiel Hammett. People who changed the face of literature published in the crime pulps. As pulps faded away, the crime writers moved to books rather than comics, and on from there to Hollywood. Crime is the map we build our houses around. Everything's based on crime. This is how Frank Ironwine sees the world. New York's built on the bones of the people who were murdered to make it happen. There are no new crimes in New York City, not really. They've all happened before, and understanding their patterns is a step towards understanding the city. But no crime is ordinary."
Ellis on QUIT CITY, featuring art by Laurenn McCubbin:
"The aviation pulps were the first to fade from memory. AIR WONDER STORIES. G8 And His Battle Aces. Dusty Ayres And His Battle Birds. Not just combat pilots, but adventurers and heroes, fighting strange wars in the air. From a time when flight was still a little like magic, and aviators were heroes. They were an elite group, brave and skilled, technological explorers. The aviator hero couldn't survive the future, of course. Pilots are no longer rare and remarkable creatures. Like all great leaps, they became old ground. And so has Emma Pierson. She's the truth and the metaphor, and the classic pulp adventure story thrown into reverse. She's the aviator heroine who's turned her back on it all. She's quit and gone home. She actually thinks she can go back to her old life, and that nothing's going to follow her. And she's almost right."
Ellis on SIMON SPECTOR, featuring art by Jacen Burrows:
"Doc Savage, man. The Shadow. The Spider. They were the guys. The antecedents of the American super-heroes, and sharing something of a tone with the British stuff too. These were the guys who didn't screw around. They were stinking rich, mad as arseholes and so bored or otherwise up themselves that they couldn't help but run around and get entangled with bad guys. And did they turn the bad guys over to the cops? Did they hell. They shredded the bad guys with hails of bullets, often from machine pistols they designed themselves to kill the bad guys more quickly and more messily. At best at BEST they abducted the bad guys and performed back room brain surgery on them to Make Them Better Citizens. And then they'd go home to play the violin badly, shag their secret mistresses and, in Doc Savage's case, play with a little box of vials that even as a kid I was convinced contained drugs of some kind. For those of us who loved the pulp heroes, but thought that back then things were a little too coy and way too white, I give you Simon Spector: superhuman detective adventurer who is also, frankly, here to take drugs and kill people."
Ellis on ANGEL STOMP FUTURE, featuring art by Juan Jose Ryp:
"I love the science fiction pulps. Always have. I own dozens of sf pulps from the 30s, and books of their covers. The sf pulps still survive today, in the shape of monthly digest-size magazines. But they don't have the true spark of madness in their covers, and rarely in their content. You could look at those old covers and see people opening up the throttle and just letting rip, getting as crazy as possible, just for the hell of it, just for the art and the sound of it. Ryp is the spiritual heir of those early sf pulp artists working at the upper limit of imagination and endurance, filling every inch of his pages with exquisitely illuminated insanity and producing it at almost impossible speeds. Me and Ryp, making some noise. Angel Stomp Future now."
posted by peter! 10:19 AM EST permalink
adi's corner: my name is modesty
Here's one for all you pulp fans:
An almost unknown curiosity: a MODESTY BLAISE prequel movie made in Eastern Europe by Tarantino and Miramax years ago to exercise their option to retain the rights for another year. Directed by Scott Spiegel, who has a kind of non-career as a director, since he only seems to work when his friend Tarantino puts him up for something, like he did on FROM DUSK TILL DAWN 2.
Of course, a MODESTY BLAISE movie series will not be made now because Miramax lost the option, in spite of people like Mike Marshall Smith and Neil Gaiman having written scripts.
MY NAME IS MODESTY is basically MODESTY BLAISE: THE BEGINNING.
The big surprise is: it's not bad at all.
Set in the casino in Tangiers where the teenage Modesty worked as a croupier for a gangster who took her in, years before she met Willie Garvin. When her boss is murdered and the casino staff taken hostage, Modesty plays a game of roulette with the leader of the gang, who's really more interested in playing emotional strip poker with her, making her tell him where she came from, which leads to flashbacks of fairly faithful depictions of her years as a war orphan who met a professor in a refugee camp. And if you know Modesty Blaise, she's really playing for time, and she has a few more cards up her sleeve.
The cast are total unknowns, and the extremely slender Alexandra Staden turns out to be totally believeable as a steely and calculating Modesty Blaise who will take over a small criminal network and become the boss of The Syndicate.
This is well worth a look. It captures the tone and spirit of O'Donnell's stories, which is a minor miracle right there. It only came out on DVD in France, but will now be released in the US in late September.
-- Adi Tantimedh
posted by peter! 10:06 AM EST permalink
one step after another:
this november, from adhouse books...
One Step After Another
by Fermin Solis
"One Step After Another follows the life of a young woman who is just trying to make it in this crazy world. The author/artist Fermin Solis uses bold brushstrokes and minimalist renderings that gives this timeless story a modern feel. Imported from Spain, find out why Fermin Solis just won the 22nd Comic of Barcelona prize."
4-color cover
40 pages
6" x 9" saddle stitched
$5 US funds
Shipping in November
Diamond Order Code: SEP042285
click here for PDF preview
posted by peter! 10:00 AM EST permalink
secret history of the graphic novel:
the summer 2004 edition of indy world has been posted, featuring a historical look at some early "graphic novels" that have influenced the development of the medium, from gustave dore's 1854 work holy russia through martin vaughn-james' 1975 release of the cage. plus: an eight-page preview of brian chippendale's upcoming highwater graphic novel maggots, a look at untranslated european graphic novels, and reviews of recent releases.
posted by peter! 9:53 AM EST permalink
Monday, August 23, 2004
new review: buddha: devadatta by osamu tezuka
"Japan's most influential comics creator, Osamu Tezuka, continues his personal exploration of the story of the Buddha in the third volume of a mammoth manga series. This time around, the main theme is choices. Namely, the choices an individual makes in the face of suffering and adversity.
"Prince Siddhartha has forsaken his kingdom to become a monk. He meets Dhepa, a warrior who has also given up his station to seek enlightenment. Dhepa attempts to teach Siddhartha about undertaking ordeals to strengthen one's spiritual resolve, but for as much as the young prince wants to walk the path of knowledge, there is something inside him telling him there is another way...
"All the charming elements of Tezuka's storytelling from the first two volumes are on display here -- the anachronistic jokes, the Disneyfied animals, the history lessons, etc. This isn't so much an accurate retelling as a modernization, one man's adaptation of a story with great historical resonance to a decidedly 20th century form of storytelling."
(more from jamie s. rich)
posted by peter! 10:54 AM EST permalink
Sunday, August 22, 2004
eighteen hours of flying, three hours of layover, three more hours of weather delays, and i've returned from my pilgrimage to the holy land.
yes, i swiped that photo off the net somewhere. i might have some real pics later in the week. bloggy stuff tomorrow.
posted by peter! 9:41 PM EST permalink
archives:
11/30/2003 - 12/06/2003
12/07/2003 - 12/13/2003
12/14/2003 - 12/20/2003
12/21/2003 - 12/27/2003
12/28/2003 - 01/03/2004
01/04/2004 - 01/10/2004
01/11/2004 - 01/17/2004
01/18/2004 - 01/24/2004
01/25/2004 - 01/31/2004
02/01/2004 - 02/07/2004
02/08/2004 - 02/14/2004
02/15/2004 - 02/21/2004
02/22/2004 - 02/28/2004
02/29/2004 - 03/06/2004
03/07/2004 - 03/13/2004
03/14/2004 - 03/20/2004
03/21/2004 - 03/27/2004
03/28/2004 - 04/03/2004
04/04/2004 - 04/10/2004
04/11/2004 - 04/17/2004
04/18/2004 - 04/24/2004
04/25/2004 - 05/01/2004
05/02/2004 - 05/08/2004
05/09/2004 - 05/15/2004
05/16/2004 - 05/22/2004
05/23/2004 - 05/29/2004
05/30/2004 - 06/05/2004
06/06/2004 - 06/12/2004
06/13/2004 - 06/19/2004
06/20/2004 - 06/26/2004
06/27/2004 - 07/03/2004
07/04/2004 - 07/10/2004
07/11/2004 - 07/17/2004
07/18/2004 - 07/24/2004
07/25/2004 - 07/31/2004
08/01/2004 - 08/07/2004
08/08/2004 - 08/14/2004
08/15/2004 - 08/21/2004
08/22/2004 - 08/28/2004
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