Most of these books haven’t actually been published in 2008. But, I read them in 2008 so they’re here.
The Red Atlantis by J. Hoberman. It’s been less than 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union and it’s cultural output already resembles impenetrable artifacts from an ancient lost civilization. This book is a great archaeology of Soviet culture in general (and Soviet cinema in particular) refracted through the prism of an American film critic.
Schulz & Peanuts by David Michaelis. A towering figure like Charles Schulz will have his life written (and re-written) several times over and I look forward to future efforts. This one was very readable if somewhat controversial. It was especially interesting to get a glimpse of Schulz’s Minneapolis and St. Paul‚Ķ even if it meant weeping over so many great things the Twin Cities lost to time and the automobile.
The Weapon Shops of Isher by A.E. Van Vogt. A sci-fi novel by the author the the amazing Slan that takes the right to bear arms to an insane extreme. A kind of libertarian dream/nightmare where individuals are protected by magical all-powerful weapons (which can be used in defense only) against the entire might of an interplanetary empire.
The Crack in Space by Philip K. Dick. This was the secret history of the US 2008 election written by a precog in 1966. An African-American runs for the presidency of the United States and promises to solve the world’s problems by opening up a space-time rift. Sound like Obama?
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. This Road is hard to write about. I think I agree with Steven Shaviro that it “actively repels commentary.” Still, it lingers in my head so it makes the list.
Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling. This one was a genuine surprise to me. I was aware of Bruce Sterling more as futurist and commentator but I’d never read his science-fiction before. Now I plan to read more. Data havens, ubiquitous networking, single cell protein cheaply mass produced in “vats swarming with bacteria” (aka. scop), nuclear terrorism, mysterious insurgency manuals, etc. The novel felt really relevant to the current world wide situation despite having been published in 1988.
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray. This is an extremely anti-utopian book. John Gray lays out the case that much of the evil done in the the world is done in the name of the greatest good. The “utopian” projects of the 20th century turned into minor apocalypses in the hands of Hitler, Stalin, Neocons, etc. It’s hard to disagree with him… for the most part. While reading this book one gets the idea that John Gray takes all the utopian sounding rhetoric (for example of Neocons’ project of global capitalist gunboat democracy) at face value, as genuinely utopian, instead of a cynical ideological ploy to mask imperialist projects. In the book he calls for more dystopias (1984 etc.) because utopias have gotten us so consistently in trouble. I would say that it’s precisely utopias that are missing today. We have no problem with imagining apocalyptic futures, but we have lost the ability to imagine positive alternatives to the dystopia of now.
Which is why I enjoyed In Defense of Lost Causes by Slavoj Zizek so much. He takes the exact opposite position to John Gray and argues for the triumphant return of the universal. Actually, I shouldn’t say that I didn’t enjoy Black Mass, I did. But it was a very antagonistic enjoyment.
Next: Blogs
Category: Nostalgia
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Looking Backwards 2008: Books
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Looking Backwards 2008: Comics
I’ve never done a ‘Best of‚Ķ’ list on this blog, so I decided to do one. I’m not going to limit myself to comics (though this post is about comics) and I’m not necessarily going to limit myself to stuff that came out in 2008. This list will be a little more personal and will include older items that I became aware of in 2008 as well. Hopefully this will create some interesting resonances and juxtapositions.
Dash Shaw. He was one of the big stories of the year with the expansive and amazing Bottomless Belly Button book. For me, much more revelatory were the short stories that ran in Mome and Bodyworld the web comic. They were bursting with experiment, invention and idiosyncratic-and-brilliant use of color. The amount of great work that Dash was able to produce last year was breathtaking. It’s really fun seeing an an artist in the moment and 2008 was definitely his moment. I fully expected to read an interview with Dash where he explains his creative process thus: “I sit in my studio. My head is on fire with ideas. I explosively materialize amazing comics ex-nihilio directly with the power of my mind.”
Acme Novelty Library #19 by Chris Ware. I’ve definitely started taking Chris Ware for granted over the last few volumes of Acme Novelty Library. They were all of such high quality and consistency that sometimes it was hard to get excited about the next Acme installment (oh what charmed lives we lead!). “What? Another great comic by Chris Ware? Sure, whatever.” Acme 19 wasn’t really that different, but the fact that the first half was a visceral science-fiction horror story makes you kind of stand up and take notice.
Mister Wonderful by Daniel Clowes. It’s hard for me to be objective about Dan Clowes comics so I won’t even try. His serial in the New York Times was brilliant from the start. Nail-biting cliff-hanger every week! In what was essentially a romance comic!
Powr Mastrs Vol. 2 by C.F. I could say a lot of similar things about C.F. that I said above about Dash Shaw. But to me his work doesn’t have the same kind of frantic energy that Dash’s does. In fact his comics seem to have a kind of languid pace, as if C.F. has a different, slower conception of time‚Ķ at least for me.
DC Kirby Reprints. Fourth World. Omac. The Demon. I’m a huge Jack Kirby fan and DC has finally done something right with these reprints. I recommend these mostly on the strength of the packaging. Gone is the super glossy paper & inattentive re-coloring of the DC Archives brand of volumes. The pleasingly uncoated paper makes these books feel like a bunch of original comics were bound between a hard cover. Remove the dust jackets for maximum effect. If you’re a Kirby fan these are great books.
Thorgal by Rosinski & Van Hamme. I’m really happy that Cinebook is putting out these comics in English. I think these are some of the best Erich Von Daniken influenced “Ancient Gods from Space” sci-fi comics out there. Polish-born Rosinski is one of my favorite comics euro-realists and he will be the focus of one of my Comics in Poland posts in the future. This material is mostly older (70’s & 80’s) but is still crackles with that Heavy-Metal-like energy.
Travel & The Garden by Yuichi Yokoyama. Yokoyama’s work was a revelation in 2007. It’s no different this year. I will have more to say about his books in an upcoming post.
American Flagg! By Howard Chaykin. I wasn’t as happy with the production of this collection. Though from what I understand Howard’s originals from that time period are very difficult to to work with in the digital age. Still it made me appreciate American Flagg! again! This was inventive sci-fi from the Soviet era and one of the first comics to get me to read something other than Marvel or DC. Chaykin’s art is at it’s peak. This book prompted me to dig into the piles of comics I still have lying around my parent’s basement to see what other Chaykin stuff I still have. I read his mid-80’s re-vamp of The Shadow which was ok, but it reminded me of the follow-up Shadow series created by Andrew Helfer, Bill Sienkiewicz and Kyle Baker. It was a great black comedy series with exceptional art. Bill Sienkiewicz was at or close to his peak and I think this may have been the series that introduced Kyle Baker to the world. One of the very best comics series of 1986-87. The last issue has a heartbreakingly amazing never-fulfilled cliff-hanger. I hope the never published subsequent issues exist somewhere in the legendary comics library in Hicksville. It’s worth seeking out ’cause it’ll probably never get reprinted.
Good-Bye by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Impeccably produced by Adrian Tomine this is the third volume of short Tatsumi short stories. I think it’s the best volume so far. This is really revelatory work. Tatsumi really shows off the possibilities of the comics short story. It really makes me excited to see the next volume to come out this year.
Next: Books -
Lazy New Year
The first post of the year is always difficult to write. The winter holidays induce a pleasant haze of idleness. Returning to daily work or regular blogging seems somehow absurd. I already miss the late breakfasts, lazy lounging and the somnolent pleasures of heady reading during winter afternoons… on the verge of falling into a brief nap… the book heavy in your hands…
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Dramatic Resurrection
I was sad to see the Drama Magazine fold up a couple of years back. I never really got around to writing an obituary… and it looks like I may not have to. Sort of.
This has probably been online for some time. Still, it’s pretty cool: the entire run of the magazine is now available as free PDFs! It was a cool mag, fantastically designed (each issue better than the previous) with a great 2-color comics section. I had the privilege to contribute to the last 4 issues along with such great cartoonists as Vanessa Davis, Zak Sally, Matthew Thurber, Dash Shaw and many others. RIP The Drama. Long live the Drama. Nothing stays dead for long. All that is solid melts into air. Internet immortality and all that…Still, I’m going to treasure my hard copies that much more. Thanks to Joel & Travis for asking me to contribute and for being such gracious editors.
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Mobile Photography Nostalgia
My dead Sony Ericsson T-610s soul taken by the Nokia 6300.I don’t take very many pictures with my cellphone. But, occasionally it is the only tool available to record a moment in time. Usually the picture is forgotten as soon as it is taken. When my trusty Sony Ericsson T-610 died a few weeks ago I was compelled to take a look at the pictures I’ve taken with it during the five (!) years it served as my phone. Its camera wasn’t great and the pictures were very low resolution… on top of that, I’m not a great photographer. But the grainy, low-quality images have already acquired that warm and familiar sheen of nostalgia… the same kind of sheen that we experience listening to vinyl records or cassette tapes or playing old arcade style video games (Galaga!). A long time ago I posted a small set of pictures from the old phone when it was still new to me. Now I’ve added a bunch more to that Flickr set. Take a look.
http://www.flickr.com/badge_code_v2.gne?count=5&display=random&size=t&layout=h&source=user_set&user=26713448%40N00&set=72057594061502665&context=in%2Fset-72057594061502665%2F My new phone (Nokia 6300) looks a lot like the T-610. I admit that I bought it mainly on the strength of that resemblance… but… I find its new interface a little too slick, its memory bigger than necessary, its photos are bigger but not better, etc., etc… already I’m missing the relative clunkiness of the old phone knowing full well I’ll have the same nostalgic feelings for the new one in five years time.
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Little Tijuana
One of my favorite places in Minneapolis before I left for New York was Little Tijuana a little Tex-Mex place open until 3 am daily. The best part was always the paper table cloth and tons of crayons. A few months ago I decided to move back to Minneapolis. Now I can again experience the nearly forgotten pleasure of drunken crayon scribbling in the early hours of the morning. I know there are plenty other places out there that let diners doodle before a meal. For me, Little Tijuana is still the best.
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Kajko i Kokosz in the Uncanny Valley
One of my favorite comics growing up was Kajko i Kokosz (I’ll have more about the comics and their creator Janusz Christa in my future ‘Comics in Poland’ posts). I just stumbled on a trailer (high def, youtube) for a CGI movie version of the comics. It looks like it’s relatively well made, with some pretty big stars used as voice talent. Unfortunately it suffers from the ‘uncanny valley’ effect.
The uncanny valley effect describes the way positive emotional response to human-like robots (and other entities like zombies, cgi-humans etc.) turns into strong repulsion as their appearance gets closer to our own. The chart above illustrates the effect. This is something that plagues a lot of CGI movies like The Polar Express and Final Fantasy.
Generally the effect is referred to when looking at humans, but I think the effect can also be applied to originally 2 dimensional cartoon characters who become translated into the (virtual) reality of 3D through the magic of computers. Once they are translated into 3 dimensions, all of a sudden the characters have to acquire additional properties like motion, weight, etc. In 3D space they may have to be seen in angles never shown in the 2D space of comics. In Kajko i Kokosz the 3D models try to be extremely faithful to the comics characters, but end up looking very creepy, unnatural…
… and positively evil!
I haven’t actually seen the entire movie, so I’ll reserve judgment as to it’s quality. But if the trailer is anything to go by, the great characters that I (and other kids) grew up on, are not in this movie.
But what about the kids who will first see Kajko i Kokosz (or any other character) as a CGI puppets? Will they find the comics versions somehow creepy? Can the Uncanny Valley effect work in reverse? If we grow up surrounded by close approximations of ourselves, will we be shocked by our own mirror image?
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Comics in Poland
I stumbled on an interesting post about Polish comics and comics scene. It’s really just a brief overview of some of the current books found on the shelves of Polish comics stores.
Actually I wasn’t even aware that Poland had any comic-book stores. When I lived there in communist 80’s the only way to get comics from newsstands with very erratic delivery schedules. Instead of going to Catholic school classes, I would always stalk the newsstand in hopes of getting my hands on the latest issues of Swiat Mlodych, or Fantastyka.
In the 90’s, when I’d visit Poland after my family had moved to the US, it always a chore to find a place that would have a decent selection of comics material. Albums and collections were rare in bookstores, and pamphlet comics would frequently sell out quickly at newsstands. Flea markets (especially the Gdansk flea market during the Jarmark festival) would often be the best places to find older and even recent material.
In the near future I hope to do a more detailed look back at the comics I read and collected when I lived in Poland in the 80’s.
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Proto Trans-Alaska
As I started to compile my notes on Trans-Siberia, I realized there was still a couple of things left unsaid about Trans-Alaksa. If you haven’t read the first batch of Trans-Alaska notes, you can catch up here.
Trans-Alaska was a very formless book. It was done without preparation and ‘straight to ink’, without any pencilled art. It’s title was a kind of last minute tribute to a series of dreams about Alaska that I had in the mid 90s. Those dreams inspired an attempt at a 24 hour comic. Instead of producing a 24 page comic in 24 hours, I made a 10 page comic in 6 hours.
That comic saw ‘publication’ in my last (semi) regular mini-comic Reduction #7. The story, titled ‘Slow’, was quickly forgotten. Recently, I re-read the story and I realized that ‘Slow’ was in effect the blueprint for the entire Trans series!
panel from Slow
For those of you interested, I’m posting the entire story here. Also, for those of you that still care about physical objects, a limited number of copies of Reduction #7 are available from me at robot26.com. It’s pretty embarassing stuff so don’t laugh! 😉
It’s pretty clear that a most of the ideas in the Trans books were already in ‘Slow,’ though in a very unformed fashion. It’s definitely stuff I was thinking about back then, but for one reason or another (working to pay the rent) I put that stuff on the back burner. Even some of the visuals are very similar. I guess I’m just a cheap copy of myself!
panel from Trans-Alaska -
My First Animated GIF
I just found the first animated GIF I’ve ever made! Circa somewhere around 1996-1997… I’m not even sure anymore. Click on the image to see it in it’s original full screen glory!