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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2009 20:07:27 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 2, 2009 20:29:22 GMT
Actually, there were quite a few attempts to keep this sort of thing from warping young minds. I remember scoffing at that as a kid, but looking at some of these images with the eyes of an adult, I can see why there was concern. 1954 ushered in the Comics Code. For more on that: www.google.com/search?gbv=2&hl=en&q=comics+code&btnG=SearchOne of the greatest books ever printed was the Smithsonian collection of newspaper comics. They also have a collection of comic book comics. If it's even half as good as the newspaper collection, it is definitely worth owning: fanboyfables.blogspot.com/2008/08/smithsonian-book-of-comic-book-comics.html. Garnered from the 'net -- some kinky bits: "Spurt"?
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Post by bixaorellana on May 3, 2009 16:05:42 GMT
Years ago I had a copy of this wonderful book, which introduced me to the joys of historical comic strips. Today while browsing through an old copy of The New Yorker, I found several reviews of books on specific strips and artists: Father of the Comic Stripby David Kunzle (Mississippi; $25) Frequently cited as the inventor of the comic strip, Rodolphe Töpffer, a Swiss teacher whose artistic vocation had been thwarted by poor eyesight, started producing his whimsical pictorial narratives, in 1827, for the enjoyment of friends. But, after Goethe praised the strips, Töpffer was emboldened to publish them, and they became wildly popular. The strips develop from satire—“Monsieur Jabot” concerns the disastrous affectations of a would-be dandy—to something far more bizarre: in “Monsieur Pencil,” a dog trapped atop a telegraph pole brings Europe to the brink of war. As Kunzle notes, the apparently casual style of the drawings masks considerable sophistication. Late in life, Töpffer produced an essay expounding a theory of the doodle, and demonstrating that, to a viewer, even an approximately drawn face seems to possess character. ♦Also by David Kunzle: Rudolphe Töpffer: The Complete Comic Strips Link shows other books about comics. < circa 1830! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Life, in Picturesby Will Eisner (Norton; $29.95) Eisner’s career encompassed much of the history of comic art, from the birth of comic books, in the nineteen-thirties, through the contemporary efflorescence of the graphic novel (a term that Eisner popularized with the 1978 publication of “A Contract with God”). Creating the detective feature “The Spirit” in the nineteen-forties, he developed a flexibility of page layout that married visual complexity to storytelling sophistication. Late in life, inspired by the autobiographical focus of R. Crumb, Eisner began publishing stories based on his own life. The five pieces collected here include evocative accounts of suffering at the hands of anti-Semitic bullies in the Depression-era Bronx, and of early adventures in the comic-book industry. Whatever the subject, Eisner manages a light touch: every page is sure-handed, carried out with subtlety, grace, and wit. ♦ < this book is credited as being the first graphic novel, a term Eisner helped popularize. For more views of his art: www.willeisner.com/biography/index.html----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Complete Dream of the Rarebit Fiendby Ulrich Merkl (Merkl; $114) The surreal inventiveness of Winsor McCay, a cartoonist best known for “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and the animated film “Gertie the Dinosaur,” surfaced earlier in a weekly black-and-white strip that ran in U.S. newspapers between 1904 and 1913. In each episode, a new character is caught in an escalating tangle of weirdness: a man practicing for a golf tournament watches as the ground beneath his ball grows into a volcano, which then erupts; a Wall Street secretary swallows her gum, triggering a chain reaction that collapses the world financial markets; a woman standing before a gallows to witness her mother’s hanging finds that her husband can’t contain his glee—until, in the final panel, they awaken. Merkl, an art historian, archeologist, and bibliophile, has lovingly assembled the most complete and scholarly collection of these strips to date, reproducing McCay’s phantasmagoric art at, or near, full size. ♦Web page here. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Complete Terry and the Pirates, Volume I: 1934-1936by Milton Caniff (IDW Publishing; $49.95) In this ground-breaking adventure serial, a pair of eager Americans, a boy named Terry Lee and a young fortune hunter named Pat Ryan, land in China to search for an abandoned mine and quickly find themselves facing a succession of gangsters, warlords, pirates, and femmes fatales up and down the coast. Period colonialism and chinoiserie occasionally combine for some awkwardly overheated depictions, but Caniff visualized his setup—Robert Louis Stevenson by way of the pulps—with a cinematic flair that remains thrilling because it is played straight. Ryan, a two-fisted, often shirtless he-man, exhibits an arrestingly sexual chemistry with various bad girls. ♦Post-WWII funny papers readers will identify Milton Caniff with the Steve Canyon strip.
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Post by Nic on Jul 10, 2009 3:19:03 GMT
Here's a couple of my favourites from K2's side of the pond.
Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec
Corto Maltese: one of my all time favourites.
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Post by Nic on Jul 10, 2009 3:23:36 GMT
Damn. Screwed up the links...
Corto Maltese: one of my all time favourites.
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