Category
Comics
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Comics
Thoughts on “Hey Princess”
Just finished reading Mats Jonsson’s Hey Princess (preview here). It’s an autobiographical take on coming of age in late-90s Sweden, often brutally honest, and all the funnier for it. Jonsson’s art is fairly straightforward (I’d say comparisons to Jeffrey Brown would not be out of line), but that seems appropriate for the self-deprecating tone that [...]
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Books, Comics
In Comics: 3 Short Reviews
(All of these were picked up at MoCCA earlier in the month.)
James Hindle, Little Wolves
Cecil Berry, the protagonist of Little Wolves, is a children’s book author in the midst of a creative drought. A thumbnail description of Little Wolves would be to call it his search for inspiration, but that’s a little too neat. [...] -
Books, Comics
MoCCA 2010
Yesterday, I made my way to the MoCCA Festival for the first time in many, many years. (For context: the last time I was there, Craig Thompson’s Blankets was brand-new and Bryan O’Malley’s Lost at Sea was this close to coming out.) Here’s what I ended up getting while there; ah, commerce.
Simon Gärdenfors, The 120 [...]
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Books, Comics
Vampires (what do not sparkle)
I’ve been a fan of Scott Snyder’s writing ever since we took part in a Dollar Store Show reading at McNally Jackson a few years ago. His collection Voodoo Heart is highly recommended — Snyder understands and deconstructs irrational male anger with empathy and precision. Nowadays, Snyder has a Vertigo series in collaboration with artist [...]
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Books, Comics
Reading on Reading: 16 September 2009
Rather than the list of separate items, I’m instead linking to three takes on crime-oriented graphic novels. Two are from writer and filmmaker Adi Tantimedh as part of his Look! It Moves! column – one covering the Vertigo’s recently-launched crime imprint, the other looking at innovation in the form. And at The Savage Critics, Abhay [...]
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Books, Comics, Music
Culture Links: 09.02.09
One: Doug Mosurock, in the process of delivering a contrarian take on Sic Alps, throws in a Kent McClard reference, and the mind of this aging hardcore kid is somewhat blown.
Two: While looking at this article concerning a t-shirt that really shouldn’t be controversial (but was), I was reminded of my own first encounter with [...] -
Books, Comics, Culture, Food, Music
Culture Links: 20 August 2009
One: Via Warren Ellis: Brandon Graham’s impressive King City is making a return to print; there’s a preview here. (I have some earlier ramblings on King City here.)
Two: Also returning: Kat Bakes, with a post about weddings, cakes, and their union.
Three: Shla Scanlon — whose serialized novel I really need to start reading — profiles [...] -
Books, Comics
Writing on Writing: 11 August 2009
One: Alan Jacobs, in a post titled “The Inevitable,” swats away multiple cliches concerning e-reading. It’s something of a response to this Times piece about textbooks. One highlight:
…thinking and explaining can be difficult, which is why most proponents of new technologies fall back on two standard lines: (1) Human Nature Has Irreversibly Changed , and [...] -
Books, Comics, The Thursday Agitation
The Thursday Agitation: Kieron Gillen
Phonogram, the collaboration of writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie, is both a surreal urban fantasy with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music and a detailed critique of the same. Its first volume, Rue Britannia, covered Britpop with side trips into the music of Scout Niblett and the Afghan Whigs. The Singles Club, currently [...]
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Books, Comics, Fiction, Music
“Western Bridges” redux
One followup to yesterday’s post on “Western Bridges”: The story was originally written for a THE2NDHAND “Mixtape” reading held in Brooklyn at Sound Fix. There’s a passing reference to Phonogram in the story — said graphic novel’s theme of using music as a tool for reinvention was something I wanted to tip my hat towards, [...]
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Book Review, Books, Comics
books: aetheric mechanics
Last month, I picked up Aetheric Mechanics, a graphic novella from writer Warren Ellis and penciler Gianluca Pagliarani. I read it within a few weeks of Neil Gaiman’s “A Study In Emerald”, and some comparisons are inevitable: Gaiman and Ellis are both writers who work in multiple disciplines (starting from comics and moving into novels [...]
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Books, Comics, Politics
pre-thanksgiving reading: 2
Over at TNR: Javier Marías on politicians seeming fictional.
And isn’t the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, with his vociferous curses against the United States, the small, fat, childish king who makes appearances in the Tintin and Capitan Trueno adventures? (It’s easy to imagine Chavez dressed in a pointed crown and christening robe and baring his [...] -
Books, Comics
tipping the hat to the nj-born comics/punk rawk duality
At various points in the last year or so, I’ve mentioned my fondness for Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s Umbrella Academy comics. The news, then, that more are on their way definitely brought a smile to my face.
the scowl
Tobias Carroll lives in Brooklyn, New York. He has covered music and books for a number of publications, and his fiction has appeared in THE2NDHAND, 3:AM, Word Riot, and as part of Featherproof Books' "Light Reading" series. He is presently working on multiple projects of varying lengths.
