Rumbling in progress

The Catastrophe Shop

is back up for one last round.

What Happens Beyond Death?

One for the ages! from one of the greatest blogs on all civilized planets, Pappy's Golden Age fanzine.

On Account of the War

-Frank King
April 8, 1917
April 22, 1917
April 29, 1917

UPDATE:
Commenter Scott remix.

Best Reality Based Work

Ganges 2

It's done, but it won't be out till March 2008.

Talking Heads

Someone should make a program that automatically selects the talking heads--just the heads--of people on CNN and fuzz out all the background bustle and sexy graphic framing and the maddening crawl and DOW Jones numbers...

Literature is not Comics

Here's a link to an interesting San Diego Comic Con panel, "Comics are NOT Literature." The link will expire at the end of September, by which time we'll apparently be hearing all about what a great idea it would be to kill tons of Iranians. It's an interesting panel. It has its dull directionless times, which is par for the course, but overall gave me a lot to think about. I wish someone would write those ideas up. I agreed with whoever said it's basically identity politics. The formal issues are interesting to a point but beyond that it's about economics and accidents of history. I always think most issues or questions, especially about words, would be better attacked by cutting to the chase and being pragmatic about it. What needs to be done and said to keep things healthy and diverse and thriving? So I was like "right on" when Dan Nadel were talking about how applying words like "literature" to comics is less about how well or not the label fits, and is more about speaking the language one needs to speak to gain institutional support (major gallery collections, major library collections, grants, academia) etc. Nadel says something like "the lack of institutional support is the major problem comics have faced in the 20th century." But we're getting there. Of course institutions bring their own set of problems too... There's other good stuff in there too, and the panel reflects a spectrum of approaches people take--from Nadel's "I don't even think of it as reading" to folks who come from the literary side.

Astrona

-both of these by Chris Foss.
From a huge selection of these radical paintings
over at Astrona: Space and Astronomical Art Journal.

Inspired by Graphic Novelist

(Looks like a skull, doesn't it, and the lightning looks like the track of a tear.)

and

"It is surely an act of unfairness to judge graphic novel culture on the basis of a movie, one made from a story that meant to be a novel and was only a graphic novel incidentally.

Still.

One gets the sense that Neil Gaiman's rep as a genius must somehow be a reflection on the subculture that has so elected him."

-Joshua Clover reviews Stardust. Isn't that strange and scary–the idea that people think there's such a thing as "graphic novel culture" and that these movies reflect it?