F

1/25/2013

1/13/2013

1/10/2013

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Finished scanning Wild Animals I Have Known.

1/09/2013

Trees of Life (1 of 2)

Here's one of my favorite parts of Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution:

"…the so called quinarian approach to classification that was embodied in the work of British entomologist named William Sharpe Macleay (1792-1840) but taken up almost immediately by others, principally Nicholas Aylward Vigors (1787-1840) and William Swainson (1789-1855) during the 1820s and 30s. They somehow came to believe that living things existed in natural groups of five, that such groups of five are naturally divisible into five subgroups, each subgroup into five sub-subgroups, and so on. Affinities among taxa formed circular chains…Quinarians were also convinced that similarities between taxa based on affinity as well as analogy could be indicated in the same diagram…"

Here are two examples of these diagrams (check the pentagram…evilution):

Another quinarian, “…Swainson devoted several years to the development of a new general classification of animals based on quinarianism, applying it, for example, throughout his two-volume Natural History of Birds that appeared in 1836 and 1837.” Imagine spending years on this. Imagine those wonderful days when everything seems to fit, and the frustration when they don’t. Notice, in the diagrams above, that three asterisks were placed where taxa that "had yet to be discovered.” The “ ule of five” predicts them, so they must be out there somewhere.

Looking for patterns, can't knock it. It's not like they were numerologists or anything. And they were def. way smarter than I am. I’m sure this played out differently in reality than the Borges-lite story in my mind.

The questionable pattern I see reminds me of this post at waggish, the part about Fludd vs. Kepler:

“I too play with symbols and have planned a little work, Geometric Cabala, which is about the Ideas of natural things in geometry; but I play in such a way that I do not forget that I am playing. For nothing is proved by symbols; things already known are merely fitted [to them]; unless by sure reasons it can be demonstrated that they are not merely symbolic but are descriptions of the ways in which the two things are connected and of the causes of these connections.” (Kepler)

Here's the good part. Why 5? Why not 6? or 9? “…As the approach developed and became more widespread, some proponents of circle arrangements were not content to restrict the number to five.” You can see where this is going...

Here are diagrams based on numbers 7 and 10:

1/04/2013

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see all pages here

1/02/2013

Some Flickr Faves Faves

Flickr favorites of:
(be careful, some NSFW)
Tom Gault
Dan Martin
Robert Beaty

12/28/2012

dream 1249447

Had a really tedious, detailed dream last night about Robert Caro's system for doing research for his multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. Other than a piece in the New Yorker and maybe hearing him on NPR once, I have never read or even looked at these books. According to my dream, Caro assigned a number to each bit of information he wrote in his notebooks. So, the color of the necktie that LBJ was wearing on, say, April 16, 1965, was noted and then this note was labeled 1249448, and then who LBJ met with that morning was noted and labeled as 1249449, and the next thing he did that day was 1249450, and so on. I don't understand how this system was supposed to help him write his biographies, but I watched Caro doing this for what seemed like hours, and then I woke up. Thanks, brain.

12/19/2012

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added 6 pages to Wild Animals...

part 1 of "Wully."

12/17/2012

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Bona #1 page 4

see all there is so far at the
Main Bona Post

12/11/2012

Bona 1 pg 3

12/10/2012

Wild Animals I Have Known

I was looking for some good scans of Wild Animals I Have Known on the web, but the only one I could find wasn't very good, so I started scanning my copy and will be putting those here. I only have a few up now, but I'll let you know when there's more. (If you know of some good scans online please let me know.) This is a pretty great comic book drawn by LB Cole, and the inks still look great in my copy. There's something lost in the scans, though, because the way the dot patterns look on the screen doesn't match the way they look on the paper, but these scans look better than others I could find.

When I post more pages, I'll let you know.

If you scroll all the way to the right there's a "NEXT" in the bottom right corner that will take you to the next set of pages. And I could just post the links here:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Also, if the pages are too big on your screen, you can hold down "command" and press "-" (minus sign) (on a Mac) until you're happy, or hold down "CTRL" and press "-" (on a PC (I think?)). Doing the same with the plus sign will make them bigger.

12/08/2012

Bad IQ

Bad IQ is finished over at What Things Do.

12/04/2012

a cover redraw of Kona #1

See more Bona #1 here

12/01/2012

Used - Acceptable

Here's the cover of the copy of my book that I downloaded off Rapidshare. Thanks to the original uploader. When I see an old, beat up copy of Curses I usually think it looks pretty good, like, as an "object" or whatever, and I'm happy the design turned out that way. I was just in the Elmhurst Library (IL) the other and they had a really kicked around copy. Man, that is a nice library.

11/28/2012

11/27/2012

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Here's page 2 of Bona #1.

See the whole thing below.

I thought about just adding pages to that original post, but then my RSS readers won't see when new pages go up. So we'll try it this way for now -- posting it in both places -- and see how it goes. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

11/24/2012

Bona 1

I re-drew this from Kona #1.

Drawn by Sam Glanzman, written by Lionel Ziprin

This is a available in print in "The Half Men."

11/17/2012

New Book

Leon Beyond announcement

11/01/2012

Friends

10/27/2012

News Etc.

ALLA PRIMA UPDATE
I finished this book many months ago, but as of today, I know of only 10 copies in the English-speaking lands. I had 9 books at SPX which went quickly (Mom got the other one, hi Mom). We’re still trying to figure out how to get more books out of Italy. Shipping costs and large email lag times are among the issues.

LEON BEYOND
The last few installments of “Bad IQ” will be up at WTD soon, and then that’s THE END (seriously!) of the strip in the RFT. Mixed feelings, etc. etc., but it was time to move energy into other things. More news in the coming weeks about the complete collection.

COMICS SKETCHBOOKS
Some of my sketchbook pages are in this new book, which is 350 pages and is fun to look through. The cover design could be better. The pages I sent are from 2009, I think? It’s a good idea to put dates on sketchbook pages. On the other hand you see how quickly time flies, and how so many ideas that once seemed so exciting have been neglected. Why?

SOCIAL NETWORKING
I have had a Tumblr for a little while now, it is here. It makes me feel less lonely and inconsequential when people like and re-blog my posts. I'll take what I can get. For their own reasons, Ted May and Dan Zettwoch have also created Tumblrs -- see here and here. (Ted also has a Pinterest.)

F/R, NEWCON
Some new posts over at the F/R blog and New Construction.

READING
Been reading Shazam! (this series). I started out wanting to look at CC Beck and ended up really enjoying the stories. Otto Binder himself appears in the first panel of issue #1. (Is there a good career retrospective or writing about Binder's work? A list of his best runs?) Today I'm reading "The Man Who Grew His Beard" and it's great.