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Two more, by request:

CUT THE UNFUNNY COMICS, NOT ‘SPIDERMAN’

I can’t believe that you’re cutting “Spiderman” — the only comic strip in the Globe, except for “Doonesbury” half the time, worth reading. Do think again in making way for what sounds like one more jejune set of unfunny panels pitched at the nonexistent (or at least nonreading) X-generation.

And what ever happened to “Mac Divot” — the most helpful set of golf tips I ever read?

JOHN UPDIKE
Beverly Farms

And:

The encounter, when all was said and done, had been no stranger than those in ‘Krazy Kat,’ which had given me my first idea of the American desert.

I remember really enjoying reading the Spider-Man comic strip in the early ’90s, but mostly in a kind of stupefied amazement at the lengths it took to stretch out a single plot point from Monday to Saturday (presumably so Sunday-only readers wouldn’t get lost). I wonder what Updike saw in it, assuming his letter wasn’t a put-on. I was just a stupid kid at the time, so maybe I was missing something…

[Thanks, Jeet.]

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In the imaginary interviews I sometimes have with The Paris Review I have happily envisioned myself making long heterogeneous lists of predecessors in answer to that inevitable question: I’d say, “My lasting literary influences? Um—The Tailor of Gloucester, Harold Nicolson, Richard Pryor, Seuss‘s If I Ran the Circus, Edmund Burke, Nabokov, Boswell, Tintin, Iris Murdoch, Hopkins, Michael Polanyi, Henry and William James, John Candy, you know, the usual crowd.”

That Nicholson Baker likes comics is no shock, I know, and I promised I wouldn’t post any more of these things unless they were interesting, but I like this quote enough that I don’t mind being a hypocrite.

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I never read Batman, never read Superman, never read Flash. I didn’t read comic books. There was one time my mother was going to have to be gone, so she made me heat up a Swanson’s fried chicken TV dinner. I wanted to read something while I was eating, it was some cartoon, I can’t even tell you what the comic book was. Oh, I also watched Clutch Cargo, but I have no idea who this Curious George guy was. Now I do. I’ve seen the pictures of Curious George, everybody is telling me about Curious George. So I wish to apologize to both Senator Obama and Senator McCain. It was not my intent to bring dishonor and guttural utterances into this campaign. … In fact, I can tell you, I have never seen a cartoon starring a monkey, unless there was one on the Flintstones, but I think those were dinosaurs and alligators.

Via Radosh.net.

[Limbaugh caricature by Steve Brodner.]

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Joe Strummer reading Dick Tracy

view it here

pause at 2:06

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When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamed has come true a hundred times.

Elvis spent the three weeks before the tour in California, mostly relaxing in Palm Springs. The first day he was back, on October 19, he picked up twelve pendants he had ordered from Schwartz-Ableser Jewelers in Beverly Hills. There was one for each of the guys to match the prototype he and Priscilla had sketched out at the conclusion of the tour. … Elvis had been wearing it himself for the last few weeks — a fourteen-karat gold necklace that came down in a V to a zigzag lightning bolt framed by the letters “TCB.” It was the lightning bolt that compelled attention, an image that had captured Elvis at an early age, when it symbolized the transformation of everyday human being Billy Batson into superhero Captain Marvel in Elvis’ favorite action comic book.

Much more on the connection between comics and Elvis, who died thirty years ago today, can be found here.

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A liberal activist group is urging Republicans to repudiate a comic book being touted by conservative evangelist Jerry Falwell that portrays Michael Dukakis as a supporter of witchcraft and bestiality.

Falwell is urging his followers to paper the political landscape with copies of the 30-page book, titled “Magical Mike: The Real Story of Mike Dukakis.” Among other things, it depicts the Democratic presidential nominee in a dress, wig and pearls.

“The last thing the Bush campaign, the Republican Party and the presidential campaign need is the distribution of 10 million copies of a comic book that’s chock full of enough intolerance to offend just about everyone except Jerry Falwell,” John Buchanan, chairman of People for the American Way, said Friday.

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How Jack Kirby helped the CIA rescue Americans from Iran.

(via The Jack Kirby Comics Weblog)

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As Japan sheds its postwar pacifism and gears up to take a higher military profile in the world, it is enlisting cadres of cute characters and adorable mascots to put a gentle, harmless sheen to its Self-Defense Forces deployments.

“Prince Pickles is our image character because he’s very endearing, which is what Japan’s military stands for,” said Defense Ministry official Shotaro Yanagi. “He’s our mascot and appears in our pamphlets and stationery.”

Such characters have long been used in Japan to win hearts and minds and to soften the image of authority.

(via Making Light)

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The great caricaturist Drew Friedman has contributed a typically excellent strip to the New York Observer this week, about the guilty pleasures of great literary figures. In the process, he touches on a Vladimir Nabokov anecdote you may remember from here a while back. Funny stuff.

(Via Bookninja.)

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Let’s talk about your schooling. Why did you flunk out in 10th grade?

I think it was pure boredom. I loved girls [smiling]. I loved comic books. And for reasons I don’t understand, I was pretty lazy.

Incidentally, I don’t think I’m going to do very many more of these, except on the rare occasion that I come across something particularly interesting and/or surprising.

I don’t want to get too “Up With Comics” or anything, you know? And that was becoming a distinct and imminent danger.