But Doctor, I’ll Get Out of It!
by Dan Nadel
Friday, January 21, 2011
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Now THAT is an angle.
Goaded by Santoro I had planned to write a post on Jack Kirby’s collage work. Lucky for you, I didn’t. Instead I have this:
1) My biggest comics thought in the last week has been about Deadpool. I read issues 1 and 3 and was “dismayed” by its transparent attempts to shock, it’s sub-Apatow humor, and cynical Tarantino x 10000 retread of outre tropes and “dirty” sex jokes anchored by some deeply strange but very uneven artwork and not any kind of satire and certainly not good comics. It’s trying to be funny, but instead, like Lapham’s Stray Bullets, it just makes the motions of a genre without having any gravitas or unique ideas underpinning it. So naturally I wrote a heartfelt email to Jog pleading with him to explain to me why I should care about this series. Why? He didn’t try to convince me. But I do find Baker’s artwork interesting because, as Jog said in his email: “My interest is mostly in seeing Baker contort his weird digital style into something increasingly po-faced and funny in the ‘funny pictures’ sense. I like that Deadpool constantly looks like an action figure – it feels like a presence that needs to exist on the Marvel scene, which is heavier than ever on posed, ‘realist’ shiny art.” Yes, with this I agree.
2) I have yet to see this posted anywhere, but here’s the Wall Street Journal weighing in on the recent upheavals at L’Association. It offers a pretty good overview and ties in the OuBaPo comics movement, which I’d never really considered in this context. I kind of love the Jerry Lewis reference in the headline while also hating it, but mostly because the confluence of Jerry Lewis and comics makes me think of Bob Oksner, and that makes me smile.
3) Over on Facebook someone posted a bunch of Neal Adams Ben Casey Sunday pages from 1964. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them and, man, is there some amped-up drama in there. I hadn’t realized that Adams was working those massive figures and impossible angles so early. It’s Stan Drake on steroids and I like it.
And that, my friends, is that. Happy weekend!
