roma★
RMH
oozey mess
if i look back, i am lost
ojovivo
YOU ARE THE REASON
No title available
$LAYYYTER
we're not kids anymore.
titsay
AnasAbdin
Misplaced Lens Cap
art blog(derogatory)
styofa doing anything
Claire Keane
JBB: An Artblog!
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
No title available
Sade Olutola
wallacepolsom
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Ireland
seen from Spain
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from T1
seen from Luxembourg
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
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@tradewaiting
French-Iranian author and illustrator Marjane Satrapi, best known for the book and film “Persopolis”, has died of "sadness", members of her
This one hurt, her work had such a profound effect on my life, thoughts, and politics.
May her memory be a blessing
Oh man, this is shocking to me. Persepolis was so influential to me and I've seen people quote her without even knowing they were doing so. Rest in peace
There's this really obscure forgotten DC hero named the Heckler, who's basically buggs bunny as a superhero, not having any powers or physically strong, but just really good at pissing people off until they accidentally deal with themselves.
Now they're interesting, but the REAL star of the show is one of his villains, John Doe the Generic Man, who's this guy in a stark white suit with flat pink unshaded, untextured skin with no features or anything who talks like chatGPT and has black text over his face that explains what he's feeling at the moment. That guy is fucking fascinating.
I first heard about this guy from the "League of regrettable superheroes" Books, (The supervillain one, obviously) and He stuck with me because its such an interesting concept. not only is HE generic, but he has the power to make anything he TOUCHES generic too. I never actually got to experience his whole deal as an actual character, since this was just an info book that tells you about the character, so seeing these panels it really cool.
that reprint of pug davis that removes the homophobia is rebecca sugar's worst moment, the original is so aching
the difference in impact is crazy...
another thing that's sad about this choice is that it really detracts from the tone and punchiness of the climactic scene; in the original pug is very obviously about to call blouse a slur again, but with the word cut from the earlier scene it's not clear he would have said anything harsh at all
in a "this is about my experience navigating a world in which my peers would regularly use homophobic slurs" way, despite the explicitness of this theme being cut in the release this forward was written for
Sainte Esconde des Mystères, une confidence pour une prière
Sainte Esconde des Secrets, montre moi ce qui est caché
My comic La Langue des Vipères was released this week in bookstores in France, Belgium and Switzerland !
This beautiful trailer was created by my friends at Potto Collective : @lholmesharfang , Luc Armanet, @noctambuleur , @estellito , @nomnomsandwich , @shliten, Matthieu Chavane and Fanou Lefebvre
The Artemis II images are making me emotional for a lot of reasons but one of them is:
From "The Eve of Judgement Day" by Robert L. Reiner, sequential art historian, exhibitions curator and defender of banned books:
In the March-April 1953 issue of the comic book Weird Fantasy, an astronaut named Tarlton is sent to evaluate a planet for inclusion in the Great Galactic Republic. He finds a world which is designed based on Earth’s history, values, and legacy, and populated by sentient robots segregated by color. The robots are identical in every other way. After a thorough review of the education, living conditions and treatment of the “inferior” blue robots, he concludes that this society needs to evolve further to join. The orange robots protest, not understanding where they fell short. But Tarlton assures them that there is reason for hope. Tarlton explains that his world had had a similar history but in time was able to move forward and mend its ways. When the astronaut returns to his spaceship and removes his helmet, we see that he is a Black man. The story, Judgment Day, was a bold and potentially suicidal move for a comic book publisher. In a medium which more often would feature a muscular white super-hero or a funny cartoon animal, Entertaining Comics (EC) placed in one of its science fiction comics a tale in which the only human being is a Black man.
For those wondering - Amazing Spider-Man Vol 1 #338 (Hobgoblin sprays Spider-man with poison) and #339 (Doc Ock reveals the poison only becomes lethal when combined with cocaine).
this is canon now btw
@oh-tobeafrog thank you for inspiring me with this galaxy brain take on my two favorite marvel heroes :)
original post here
Moon Knight by Mike Kaluta
anyone remember what these things are called like little cartoony expressive doohickies i think they have a real name but i can’t remember
im not fucking crazy.
if i have one more person say sparkles on this post im gonna blow i swear to god
They're squeans I'm pretty sure! If they pop like that anyway. But the term for this kind of "symbol to refer to the general vibe of something in art" is called "Emanata" because it emanates from a person or object.
what the fuck. comics are magic
I know I absolutely promised no April Fools stuff, but the Library and Archives of Canada announced their major acquisition of the declassified journals and military records of Canadian supersoldier James “Logan” Howlett and I think it’s the best thing I’ve seen all week.
April 1, 2016 – Gatineau, Quebec – Library and Archives Canada (LAC)
Library and Archives Canada (LAC) acquires the declassified journals and military records of Canadian supersoldier James “Logan” Howlett.
Logan was born in 1882 in Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada, to wealthy landowner Elizabeth Howlett and her grounds-keeper Thomas Logan.
Logan’s journals provide valuable insight into his early life in Canada, including work as a miner in a British Columbia stone quarry, a fur trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and a homesteader in the Canadian Rockies. His military career spanned multiple conflicts, making his personnel records an unprecedented study in Canadian military history. Logan was gravely wounded in action many times, and gained a reputation as a gritty survivor.
Quick Facts
WWI: Captain in the Canadian Armed Forces (Devil’s Brigade). Fought at Ypres in 1915. Wounded by a sword through the chest.
WWII: Returned to the Devil’s Brigade in the Second World War, as an allied spy and paratrooper for the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion during the Normandy landings on D-Day.
Cold War: based in Ottawa and Calgary, worked for both CSIS and the CIA.
Logan later changed his operative name to ‘Wolverine’, and worked with various NGOs.
Facebook. Website.
A Garden of the Spheres by Linnea Sterte
Long in the works (since at least 2021), A Garden of the Spheres is an epic – and stunningly beautiful – work of comics fantasy, of the world-building, science-fictional variety. The world Sterte has built for us here is a world of gods and monsters, one that evokes our pre-industrial past, when humans lived more in harmony with nature, while simultaneously embodying a magical and mythical halcyon age where occurrences and abilities that we, today, would call supernatural are simply presented as de facto, and so constitutes an alternate, fantastical history, a kind of “never was”.
This volume is her most substantial work to date, running 336 pages, craft printed on a choice of papers perfectly suited for the work, which allow the colors to recede or advance, to simmer or pop, so as to best convey the moment and mood, all signature bound in a softcover with French-flapped dustjacket; and it's only "Book One".
Available HERE
Just in case you were curious I have lots of my original art available on the @thebeguiling art store. Link in my profile. If you happen to live in Toronto, Canada area you could pick it up person and save on $hipping.
1. Michael Chabon’s the escapist pin up DARK HORSE COMICS
2.RICK REMENDER and @jomeopena ‘s 7 to ETERNITY variant cover IMAGE COMICS
3.-5. GRANT MORRISON story for??? I know this was printed somewhere but I don’t remember getting a copy of it. 🤷🏼♂️ I’m a fan of the writer and was pleased I got the opportunity to collaborate
6.RAFER ROBERTS excellent comic GRUMBLE cover
7.page from currently out of print THE WRENCHIES 2014
8.cover to an issue of my 2018 @imagecomics series PROXIMA CENTAURI
9.an EMILY POP GUN WAR page in Delusional published by @adhouse 2013
10.a collaborative page (pre text added) with @rickremender for the @thoughtbubblefestival comic book. 2012? Or somewhen around then.
Magik by Farel Dalrymple
Hey Look At This Comic: Quincy
I can't remember the exact jumps it took me to get to Quincy. I know the starting point: Randy Milholland's guest appearance on Behind the Bastards for a couple episodes on Dennis the Menace. guests on that show tend to be a bit of a live studio audience, there to go "wow" and "yikes" and "[noise of discomfort]" at the right moments. not Milholland, who knows his comics history. boy, I would listen to a whole podcast of him just talking about newspaper strips! anyway, I don't think he mentions Quincy while talking about integrated casts in newspaper comics, but someone he did mention sent me off on a search and someone else mentioned Ted Shearer's Quincy, and well.
you can see, right, why this comic Got Me so fast? what a cartooning style! I'm not going to dwell on Shearer's history--you can read the Comics Journal article on him just as well as I can summarize it. I want to talk about how Shearer draws.
it's hard to do that without reference to other comic strip artists, in particular, standing as foils for Shearer's style. Ernie Bushmiller of Nancy fame is maybe the paragon of an ultra clean iconic style, where everything is almost like the platonic cartoon of what it is. (I've seen Schultz placed in this tradition as well.) not Ted Shearer's work. everything's got little flourishes and elaborations and bends and variations in outline. his comics jiggle. there are times when I'm not totally sure at a glance what his marks are meant to represent, which is a problem if you think the highest calling of comics is to relay information clearly, and a lot less of a problem if you're in love with the sheer artistry of mark making. look at that snowball fight comic, for example, and the wild mess of lines, or the way Quincy's shoes and socks are sketched, in the last panel of the letter to the president comic, with just a few confident pen blotches and a bunch of negative space. even when it's economical, it somehow feels so unsatisfied with the schematic, always searching for a way to make the objects feel a little off kilter, a little dynamic.
check out that first strip there, the one about where Quincy's granny frets over the neighboring building getting demolished, because it's crucial infrastructure for her clothesline. I just paged through a collection of Bloom County I have cause I was like, well Berkley Breathed has pretty dynamic panels too right? nope! Bloom County has a dynamic brushed style that feels similar to Shearer's style, but the panel compositions and the arrangement of characters and camera and environment are typically much more static. even Calvin and Hobbes, aside from the often completely crazy sunday strips, tends to have compositions that might employ a closeup or a distance shot, but tend to have relatively cohesive shots. this three panel strip starts with a panel where Quincy, instead of standing static, listening into the phone call, seems to pop in from the left, tie fluttering with movement. (also, scope the nice tilt on that lampshade, echoing the angle of Quincy's body!) panel two seems to pull out to an unmotivated ultra long shot, that not only gives us the apartment buildings but the fence partly blocking the view! Quincy's environment is so packed that there's no room for the kind of clear view of a building you might get in a Nancy strip. and then the point of that long shot is revealed in the final panel, a CRAZY dutch angle on the two leaning out the window towards the other building, as Granny reveals the other side of her washing line is going to get torn down. to accentuate this, the sheets on the line billow, again at an angle counter to the window, Granny, and Quincy.
Shearer seems never content to just have a series of characters in situations talking to each other. his viewpoint is always swinging around, his characters always turning to show new angles of themselves. the letter comic here is the most conventional strip of the lot and even this has only two relatively similar poses. all three standing poses are in wildly different positions and angles, front, then spinning to the side, then back, tilting left, tilting right.
he also has this tendency to have characters pop up almost as though they can see the camera. it's not enough that a straightman in Quincy should turn to the audience--they tend to pop towards the foreground. in that clothesline comic, Quincy doesn't look to Granny but to us, as though inviting us to join him in wondering about the phone call that has Granny so worried. in the composition of that circus comic, Shearer finds room for the characters, despite the size of the animals, at the borders of the comic, and is willing to embrace way more pronounced perspective than I'm used to seeing in daily gag strips to do it. look at that kid just sorta peeking over the bottom edge of the frame in that last panel! there's other comics of his where inexplicably another kid in Quincy's class, for example, will just pop their head up in the last panel, somehow accentuating the punchline with their non sequitur appearance. like real kids, Shearer's kids are unruly. like a real poor urban area, the very material of the landscape is unruly.
that TCJ article lays out what Shearer's motivation may have been, for such a vibrant and lived in strip:
"My first idea is to get people to like Quincy, to get them involved with the character, and then they can see for themselves the broken-down home, the torn sneakers, etc. Then perhaps readers will say, ‘Gee, maybe we can help.’ Or even the poor white can say, ‘Gee I went through this same thing myself.’"
that approach can only work because of the detail Shearer's panels overflow with. one more comparison: don't Shearer's landscapes sometimes feel a bit like George Herriman's wobbly, shape-filled landscapes in Krazy Kat? just, less weird cacti and more scrungly fire hydrants and snaggle-toothed fences. the move from panel to panel doesn't always make diegetic sense, much like the landscape moves around Krazy, but it's so lush that in total it creates a place that feels lived in, enough that it still connects with me 40 or 50 years later. that seems a testament to Shearer's strategy, and probably has some lessons for the Clarity of Communication school of comics theory.
it all adds up to a work that should be in the pantheon right alongside someone like Bill Watterson. I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about Shearer, though. the broadest history I have--Harvey's Art of the Comic Book--doesn't cite him; nor Wolk's Reading Comics. like a lot of histories, Gardner's Projections loses track of newspaper strips sometime between the rise of Stan Lee and the rise of Comix With An X. some of that's the way the history's been canonized, but some of the way the history's been canonized is surely due to institutional racism and the pinning of the modern Art History of Comics on white men like R Crumb.
what Quincy deserves is a way of following it now... but that's not an infrastructure I can imagine anyone is interested in building. sites like comics kingdom or gocomics have snubbed rss technology for presumably the same reason social media increasingly gates all content from non-users: gotta juice the numbers and make sure direct access is the only business in town. which is sorta bizarre when it comes to a strip like this because who is signing up for a comicskingdom account, sitting down, and reading through a decade of Quincy strips? if they're already just putting the lot online for free (which, hey, I'm grateful for that, especially from a historical access perspective!!), why not set up a way to cycle through that history in a feed, shipping out the strips in the format they were meant for: something you'd see daily? but, I'm the weirdo who thinks basically the whole internet should be embracing a more broadcast syndication model. at least the comics are readable online, which means that maybe bit by bit Ted Shearer's work can get the wider cultural attention something this virtuosic deserves.
this post originally ran on Cohost on Jul 31, 2024. you can read more reviews in the Hey Look At This Comic tag and support me on Patreon.
