Live Free or Blog La-Z
by T. Hodler
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
I had planned a better post, but scanning problems are delaying things a bit, so here’s a few links to tide things over.
You know, there’s a prominent comics link-blogger who likes to go on and on about how hard it is to put these things together, but based on my limited experience, it actually seems like a great and incredibly easy way to post stuff online, even when you’re busy with a day job, a baby, election day, scanner foul-ups, early morning meetings, etc. If I was actually paid to do this every day, I bet I could get a routine going with my RSS feeds where it took me less than an hour to round up links to all of the “important” comics blogosphere blogonet sites every morning. Kind of fun!
1. Austin English is a great guy and all, but he has weird ideas about what’s ugly and what isn’t. (And seems to compare Denny O’Neil favorably to R. Crumb, an aesthetic crime that should not go unpunished. (Jk Austin! Sorta.))
2. I knew about Talking Lines, but didn’t realize there was another interesting looking new R.O. Blechman book out.
3. Birthday tributes to Steve Ditko weren’t even a dime a dozen yesterday, unless you pay way too much for your internet service, but this one, despite its brief length, was particularly provocative and original.
4. Naoki Urasawa talks process. [via]
5. A too-rare interview with Peter Blegvad appears in the new Believer. [via]
[UPDATE: And I didn’t realize it when I originally posted, but the issue includes a TON of good comics material that I should have mentioned.]
6. Almost every post Jog writes these days is worth linking to, but since everyone already reads him anyway, what’s the point? That said, this review of J.H. Williams III and Detective Comics is unusually thorough and well-wrought, even for him.
7. And here is an insightful appreciation of last week’s Chris Ware New Yorker work. Click on it; it’s not boring.
8. Finally (but not leastily), for those of you who didn’t notice, this weekend brought the grand debut of our newest online team member, the great Jason T. Miles. Please make him welcome and stay tuned for more. I don’t want to ruin his next post by giving anything away, but it sounds pretty awesome.
That’s it. I hope you found at least most of those worth reading. Nothing is more annoying than linkblogs full of garbage. On second thought, I have to admit that maybe this isn’t that easy to do exhaustively if you hope to maintain any kind of quality control. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding less and less of interest in the actual comics blogosphere blogonet these days. Writers outside it seem more thoughtful lately. Still, ninety minutes tops.
Labels: Austin English, bloggers, Chris Ware, Denny O'Neil, J.H. Williams III, Jason T. Miles, Jog aka Joe McCulloch, linking to stuff when you have nothing to say, Naoki Urasawa, Peter Blegvad, R. Crumb, r.o. blechman, Steve Ditko
I think English is just being unclear. I am not sure what he is saying about the modern world. So much art (particularly film and photo) celebrates the beauty of the city. Crumb stands out by showing what telephone lines and pavement should look like to us. Does English think that this is a cliche stance on modernism? How could he?
Linkblogging is easy.
Which writers outside the comics blogosphere would you recommend, Tim?
Well, you've always made it look easy, Sean! Which I mean as a compliment.
I will need to think before offering any recommendations, though. (I should have thought before writing that final paragraph.)
It's more nonsense from English. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but nice people can spew nonsense.
time will vindicate me!
remember, i'm saying crumbs execution /aesthetic is way better then denny's. just that the ideas behind those particular pieces are similarly half-baked.
i think crumbs piece is more "easy" than cliche.
If things turn out the way you predict, it will vindicate DEVO.
Also, I don't think execution and aesthetics are easily separable from "the ideas" as you do.
But thanks for being a good sport!
"blogosphere" count: 2
Good catch, Will. I fixed it.
Austin's remarks about the Crumb piece remind me of an accusation that used to get hurled a lot when I was in art school – "it's just a one-liner", meaning art that had a simple, easy meaning, as opposed to work which had many possible readings ("polyvalence" was the favorite term).
I think Austin is right in one sense – the Crumb piece feels like an illustration of an environmentalist slogan and that's how it seems to get received – but I wonder if that's how Crumb himself really meant it. I suspect he'd feel more at home somewhere in the middle of that sequence than at the beginning.
I think he's confusing how he imagines other people might read that Crumb comic — like a really basic, drippy environmental message— for what Crumb might've intended. We know, based on a lot of his other work, that his overall sensibility just doesn't square with those easy notions.
He has some kind of dumb ( in my opinion) political and social ideas, but they aren't in a vaccum.It's not so simple.
It's based on his other work that it becomes obvious that Crumb is making a aesthetic critique—at the very least, a design one. He basically talks about this in the movie, about how he has a friend goes around taking photos of junk like wiring with him. His tone makes it clear that he feels pretty un-sympathetic towards it.
the strip is a loaded argument…unlike, for me, ALL his other work, which I love and find full of rich insights.
A friend e-mailed me yesterday to point out that the first paragraph of this blog post has become a Rorschach test for the so-called "top three" link-bloggers: Heidi got defensive, Spurgeon ignored it, and I swiped a link and gave a trackback.
That'd be cute if it were true.
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/otbp_dear_james/
You also mentioned it more directly here, Tom, though you may have forgotten it.
This is how dumb I am: It didn't really occur to me that it might be a bad idea to mock "prominent comics linkbloggers" until about a day after I posted.
We're not exactly talking about where angels fear to tread, but still.
Yeah, God knows we have the power and all that.
You're right, maybe I'm not that dumb.