The Comics Observer

Moore's Eno interview

2005-02-04T10:40:00.000-08:00

An interview of Brian Eno by Alan Moore for BBC Radio 4 is available here until next Thursday.

Also, last week's interview of Alan Moore by comedian Stewart Lee is now available as a transcript here (link via David Simpson).

Eno: [...] this is a big interest for me, lyric generators. That’s something I’m working on at the moment.

Moore: Really?

Eno: Yeah, I think that’s... Lyrics are really the last very hard problem in music. Software -and hardware- have changed the rest of music dramatically in the last thirty, forty years. It’s very very easy to make pretty good music. I could take anyone in this room and within two hours we could make a pretty good piece of music. I mean, pretty good isn’t very interesting, but pretty good is possible.

But writing songs is just about in the same place it was in the days of Chaucer. Apart from hip hop: hip hop is the only sort of breakthrough in a way -rap. Because it breaks away from the strict adherence to melody and beat structure and so on. But the problem of how you write a song that is in any way original is a really interesting one, I think. [...]

Moore: I’m fascinated by this idea of a lyric generator, because it’ll probably just, like, make me completely redundant and ruin my plans for a contented retirement. How far are you along with it? [laughs]

(transcript by moi)

Trollop trio

2005-02-02T23:53:00.000-08:00

Sequential Tart has recently uploaded, among other items, the following three interviews: Jessica Abel on La Perdida, Josh Neufeld and Sari Wilson on travelogue A Few Perfect Hours, and Sean Bieri, Trisha L. Sebastian and Carla Speed McNeil on mini-comics porn anthology Smut Peddler.

[Smut Peddler] is a controlled group effort. It evolved out of a lot of grumbling from some talented folks: most porn, especially in comics, is lame. What do you do if you don't like what's out there? Get busy.

Link via Thought Balloons.

Four profiles

2005-01-30T20:21:00.000-08:00

Time profiles Paul Hornschemeier, Marjane Satrapi, Rieko Saibara and Joann Sfar here.

After her series about losing $500,000 in illegal mah-jongg became a hit, she went on to cultivate her personal style of manga (the Japanese term for comics), which now has many imitators. Says Saibara: "People who can draw well are too proud to do anything, and many of them are still starving artists."

Cover to "Bokunchi" by Rieko Saibara.

Link via Thought Balloons.

Art Spiegelman documentary

2005-01-29T16:11:00.000-08:00

Franco-German arts channel "Arte" broadcast a documentary on Art Spiegelman two weeks ago. Two short clips from it -one on part of his creative process and another on comics' place in the US' culture and its possible usefulness as a "gateway drug into literature" for children -are available here. Click on the "Extrait video" 1 and 2 links, "haut-debit" for high speed or "bas-debit" for low. Both clips are in English with French subtitles.

Thanks to FuFu.

Alan Moore interview

2005-01-26T18:50:00.000-08:00

Alan Moore will be interviewed tomorrow by comedian Stewart Lee on BBC Radio 4. The interview will then be available on the site for one week.

Link via Mikal/BugPowder.

David Mamet, cartoonist

2005-01-25T21:50:00.000-08:00

Not content with being a filmmaker, playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer and poet, David Mamet is now also a cartoonist.

As a cartoonist, Mamet trades in sick jokes and truly terrible puns. Example: "Dean Martin at the Aquarium": A male figure seen from behind, facing a toothy, snakelike water creature behind glass, thinks, "That's a moray."

Probably the only thing that Mamet's film and theater works have in common with his cartoons is an interest in making us wince or guffaw or roll our eyes involuntarily. They offer him, besides distraction, one more way to reacquaint us with our own unwanted visceral knowledge of the world.

Link via The Comics Reporter.

Johnny Ryan interview

2005-01-25T18:25:00.000-08:00

Johnny Ryan is interviewed by G4techTV here.

Have you ever pulled back on a comic that you thought might be going too far?

Usually, when I’m drawing something and I’m thinking, “Gosh, maybe I shouldn’t do this,” that’s usually when I think, well, I guess I should do it. Because if I'm thinking I shouldn't do it, then I should actually do it -that’s sort of what makes it fun. After you do something like that, you’re thinking, “Wait till people get a load of this. There’ll really be a big stir.”

Link via Jenny Nixon.

James Sturm and the Center for Cartoon Studies

2005-01-23T13:49:00.000-08:00

The Boston Globe profiles James Sturm, founder of the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. See also its profile of the Center from three weeks ago.

Sturm's school will take its lead from "cartoonists who consider themselves artists rather than just craftsmen," he says. "I see it as an Iowa Writer's Workshop or New York University Film School equivalent to cartooning. We're geared more towards the auteur."

Links via Thomas James Appel and Jeff Mason.

L'ascension des comics

2005-01-22T20:23:00.000-08:00

Rick Moody reviews David B.'s "Epileptic" in the New York Times, as well as providing insights into the ever-increasing literariness of comics.

Link (registration required).

It's not uncommon now for readers of literature to admire Chris Ware or Julie Doucet or Joe Sacco or Joe Matt with a partisan vigor formerly reserved for renegades like Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan. Among the reasons for this popularity is that comics are currently better at the sociology of the intimate gesture than literary fiction is.

Link via Thought Balloons.

Tintin -preferred by right-wingers?

2005-01-22T16:49:00.000-08:00

According to a survey produced for French newspaper "Dimanche Ouest-France", more French right-wingers (28%) prefer Tintin than do French left-wingers (18%). He was also found to be the French's favorite comics character (22% of people surveyed), followed closely by Asterix (20%).

Link (article is in French)

Beowulf

2005-01-22T13:17:00.000-08:00

Neil Gaiman explains the upcoming "Beowulf" film's genesis here.

Roger's a little downcast about not directing "Beowulf", though, so I've just agreed to go somewhere odd and write another film (a remake of a film I love, but wouldn't mind updating) with Roger for him to direct. (If I say "in my copious spare time", can we all agree that it should be read as if someone had actually invented the sarcasm mark as a unit of punctuation, and that "in my copious spare time" can be assumed to be inside sarcasm marks?)

Fantagraphics' plans for 2005

2005-01-21T19:29:00.000-08:00

Eric Reynolds, Fantagraphics' Director of Promotions and Marketing, reveals some of their planned 2005 releases at The Pulse, as well as discussing some of the problems alternative comics face in the comics market.

"It's incredibly difficult to 'break' new talent on the alternative side of things, because the apathy at the direct market level for new periodicals is at an all-time low," continued Reynolds. "The stakes are so low, it's almost impossible to debut a new series by a new artist and hope to grow the numbers."

Blank canvas syndrome, Lascaux-style

2005-01-21T12:30:00.000-08:00

"Hunter and Painter", a fifteen part newspaper strip by Tom Gauld which recently appeared in the Guardian, has been compiled on this site.

Link via M. Campos.

Webcomic collectors

2005-01-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

Webcomics are beginning to attract collectors.

Jail sentence for cartoonist

2005-01-20T22:03:00.000-08:00

A Greek court has sentenced Austrian cartoonist Gerhard Haderer to six months in jail for his satirical take on the life of Jesus.

The book's Austrian author Gerhard Haderer did not attend the trial and the court suspended the sentence, which he would have been able to pay off with a fine had he been in court.

The book's Greek publishers and four local booksellers were acquitted but the court upheld a ban on "The Life of Jesus," which was removed by police from book shops in February 2003 on the orders of the prosecution.

Archer Prewitt interview

2005-01-20T20:44:00.000-08:00

Archer Prewitt is interviewed in the Guardian.

Wilderness conjures and sustains an atmosphere of foreboding that is frequently overwhelming. "That's great. I'm glad," Prewitt laughs. "And I'm always pleased when people tell me how upset they get when they look at Sof'Boy.

"I don't mind it being a quick read, and quick, fun slapstick," he continues. "It doesn't have to have great depth for everyone. But through the time that it takes, maybe things come out in the details.'"

Link via BugPowder.

SpongeBob music video uproar

2005-01-20T18:43:00.000-08:00

Conservative groups are accusing a music video featuring SpongeBob SquarePants and other children's TV characters of being a vehicle for pro-gay propaganda.

We see the video as an insidious means by which the organisation is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids," Paul Batura, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, told the New York Times.

Zak Sally

2005-01-20T07:40:00.000-08:00

Possibly soon-to-be no longer obscure minicomics creator Zak Sally is profiled and his work reviewed in the latest Comics Journal.

Like much of Sally's dreamy and inventive work, "Vomit" is unlike anything available in comics, with an ingenious wit more reminiscent of the film "Being John Malkovich" or the nightmarish prose fiction of George Saunders.

Link

Coffee and comics

2005-01-19T19:48:00.000-08:00

Article on cartoonist Christian Cailleaux (his site is in French but has plenty of samples of his art to look at).

Cailleaux also works with pencils, inks, watercolours, acrylic paints and even instant coffee. Pointing to a set of drawings done while visiting some French-speaking countries in Africa, he reveals that he used Nescafe to create different shades of brown.

Alex Gregory interview

2005-01-19T19:25:00.000-08:00

Cartoonist and TV sitcom writer Alex Gregory is interviewed in the New Yorker here.

Talk a little bit about your other job, as a writer for TV: you’ve worked on “Late Night with David Letterman,”“King of the Hill,” and others. How do the two professions interact? Do some failed TV lines become captions, or vice versa?

It has to do with the skill of learning how to punch a line, of using the minimum amount of words, and always delaying the twist till the end. So the caption for a great cartoon frequently comes in the same kind of zingery form as a TV-sitcom line.

New Los Bros Hernandez interview

2005-01-19T17:18:00.000-08:00

New Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez interview by The Onion, viewable here.

O: At what point did you begin to get the sense that you could do more with these people and places you'd created than just tell little short stories? When did you start conceiving work as lengthy and complex as "Human Diastrophism"?
GH: That evolved organically. I just felt ambitious at the time. I felt I could tell any story I wanted. We had our readership. The issues were selling well. I felt like challenging myself and challenging my readers with something darker and heavier. I don't know how to explain it, because I'm not a political person. I have two political stories, and that's it: "Human Diastrophism" and "Poison River".

Firefighter cartoon causes controversy

2005-01-19T13:16:00.000-08:00

An editorial cartoon criticizing some Sacramento firefighters by playing with iconic images from the World Trade Center attacks and Oklahoma City bombing has caused nationwide outrage.

Name change

2005-01-19T13:01:00.000-08:00

I've decided to change my blog's name from "The Panelopticon" to "The Comics Observer". The old blog only has one day's worth of entries not posted here but, if anyone's interested, can be found here.