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Review: The Crackle of the Frost
Lorenzo Mattotti and Jorge Zentner’s The Crackle of the Frost begins with a separation. Over the course of three pages, the protagonist, Samuel Darko, recounts the circumstances under which he breaks...
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Best Online Comics Criticism 2012 – 4th Quarter Nominations
(A call for nominations and submissions.) This is the final list of nominations for 2012. The judges are now deliberating on the nominations and we should have the list of articles with the highest...
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Heart of Thomas, Heart of Tedium
[Those looking for background details and a synopsis of The Heart of Thomas can do no better than to read Jason Thompson's review.] In the opening pages of The Heart of Thomas, the eponymous object of...
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The Comics Journal and Eddie Campbell: In Defense of Shit and Poor Logic
Once upon a time, there was a bastion of comics criticism which, it has been opined, stood against the hordes of barbarians trumpeting the works of John Byrne, Todd McFarlane and assorted other...
View Article“I prefer him as a cartoonist”
The talk of many in the comics community this past week has been Eddie Campbell’s essay “The Literaries,” which was posted at tcj.com on February 6. The main target was Ng Suat Tong and his essay...
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The Blind Men and the Elephant
Hanabusa Itcho, Blind Monks Examining an Elephant. Itcho, by the way, not Hokusai, contrarily to popular myth, coined the word “manga.” Speaking of stories… you know the parable: the blind men feel...
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Opera as Drama as Comics
The index to the Comics and Music roundtable is here. ______________________ Representations of music in comics are plentiful but few practitioners have attempted to reproduce the quality of music on...
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The Freewheelin’ Daredevil
The Comics and Music roundtable index is here. ______________ In his notes on Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Born Again, Brian Cronin writes: “And it all ends with a likely Bob Dylan...
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Hawkeye: Best Superhero Comic of 2012?
Hype always works on me Even when I know the ultimate source of it all is as sick as a demented chimpanzee, I still get sucked into it. The straw which finally broke the proverbial camel’s back this...
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Best Online Comics Criticism 2012 – The Final List
Late is better than never. Presumably. The truth is that I almost chucked this whole thing into the trash heap because of a number of last minute exits from the voting process. I lost 3 judges in the...
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Good Dogs and Fickle Gods
[Spoliers throughout] Twenty years is quite a length of time in the world of comics but it has been nearly that since Graham Chaffee last published a comic. Some old timers do remember him however,...
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Utsubora: The Erotic Exigencies of Authorship
“Utsu…means “depression” or “melancholy.” Tsubo…mean “urn.” …in addition to connotations of a hinter emptiness, the title strongly echoes nouns with a contrary impression of crude vitality… Utsubora...
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Thunderjet! Revisited!
All text from The Korean War: A History (2010) by Bruce Cumings Scans taken from Frontline Combat #8 by Harvey Kurtzman and Alex Toth. A story based on fact…. ______________ Curtis Le May …said that he...
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Comics and the Indispensability of Kitsch
“The dream has grown gray. The gray coating of dust on things is its best part. Dreams are now a shortcut to banality. Technology consigns the outer image of things to a long farewell, like banknotes...
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The Death of the Cartoonist: Simplistic Comics Econs Version
A fellow comic art collector sent me a link to an auction for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer cover a few days ago. Cover to Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Oz #1 (without title overlay) Autograph covered by...
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xkcd: On Time and Twinkies
The world of comics may seem like a pint-sized planet but news still takes some time to travel from one point to another. Often (and almost paradoxically) the more popular a comic, the less likely its...
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Island of Sex, Panorama of Empire
A review of Suehiro Maruo’s adaptation of Edogawa Ranpo’s The Strange Tale of Panorama Island Synopsis (spoilers throughout) An unsuccessful author named, Hitomi Hirosuke, has visions of creating the...
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Film to Comics: Lessons from Daniel Clowes’ Justin M. Damiano
Justin M. Damiano was first published to limited notice in The Book of Other People (ed. Zadie Smith; full comic at link) in 2007. Its existence was jogged back into my memory by James Romberger’s...
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Tropic of the Sea: Not the way to remember Satoshi Kon
A review of Tropic of the Sea The manga is by Satoshi Kon and that’s probably as much information as most people will need to make a purchasing decision. The forgetful will receive this gentle...
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The “Last” Outsider Cartoonist and the Ku Klux Klan
I ask Aline… “Well, he is a sexist, racist, antisemitic misogynist,” she says. Does he agree? “Oh, I guess all that stuff is in me, sure. I wouldn’t say I’m an out and out racist or proud or amused by...
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