Sunday, January 18, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
Lutes
Here's an interview with Jason Lutes in which he talks about his experiences with superhero comics, contemporary graphic novelists, and his own work.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Amy Bennett: At the Lake
This Saturday at Richard Heller's gallery in Santa Monica, CA, Amy Bennett's exhibition of paintings titled At the Lake begins. Amy and I will be in LA for the opening (5-7pm Saturday, Jan. 10). If you are in the Los Angeles area, please, come see the work. The show will be up though Feb. 14th.
There are some preview images of the show up at Heller's site. If you click on the images the scans are actually quite big.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Beheadings
Although this essay about Kramers Ergot 7 makes a few claims I disagree with, the writer takes an unusual approach to criticism, one that examines interesting similarities and differences between a few recent mainstream comics and the art comics anthology KE 7:
"And I think it's worth exploring "Kramers Ergot" through the lens of the typical comic book reader -- the one who reads a pile of superhero comics each month -- to look at how a generic DC book and a generic Marvel book may or may not intersect with the admittedly ambitious scope of the Buenaventura Press project. "
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Holiday Anxieties
From Nancy and Sluggo, February 1957 - the issue number is faded in the indicia, but it is from #140-149. Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Re-Order Peanuts: Xmas
This month, the Wendy's "Kids' Meal" comes with one of five different Peanuts toys (which also can be purchased separately). This week's toy (at least in my town) is the "Build Your Own Comic Strip" game.
It comes with a three slot 'picture frame' and six two-sided strips (a total of twelve three-panel strips). The instructions encourage you to break the perforated strips into separate panels and create your own Peanuts.
Thus:
Random sample:
Flume Misc.: What's Current?
*Jaime Hernandez interview in the current issue of Nude magazine.
*Adrian Tomine's 'Wish List' in the current issue of Ready Made.
*Chris Ware story in the Fall 2008 issue of VQR.
*Daniel Clowes and Miranda July contribute to the current issue of Found magazine.
*Kevin H. cover on LCRW.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Liquid Liquid at Santos Party House 11/19/08
Was lucky to see Liquid Liquid play at Santos Party House the other week in New York. A longtime dream come true--amazingly incredible show. Even heard some unfamiliar songs which was a surprise. Someone put up a nice clip of Cavern from the set that night, posted here below:
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Hi, folks! I'm just getting ready for the Giant Robot Post-It Art Show on December 13th. I sure hope I can remember!
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Abner Dean's "Funny Side Up"
In 1940 Abner Dean was hired by United Features to do a cartoon similar to Grin and Bear It by George Lichty, who had recently left the syndicate. Dean’s gag panel, which he named Funny Side Up, followed the template of Lichty’s: a single-panel humor strip with no recurring characters, drawn in ink and shaded with crayon (a shading technique that Dean seldom used).
In 1941 Dean wrote of the “ordeal” of creating over 300 Funny Side Up cartoons: “for the greater part of the last year I was doing a daily and Sunday feature. . . . It appeared in over a hundred papers, was a wonderful experience in discipline, but proved to be not sufficiently rewarding mentally to justify spending the next five years as its slave. After about ten months of a night and day routine I decided to abandon it and return to the work that syndication had forced me to leave.” “I’m still unsettled in my work,” he continued. “I’ve experimented a great deal and gone off on many tangents which justify themselves, but I haven’t yet found the balance between the well known economic structure of things and the work I want to do. I find time occasionally to paint and experiment in clay, but the demands of commercial art are so great and lead so far away from the purer forms that I don’t believe a compromise between the two is ever possible. Those who pretend it is are perhaps over-stating their validity in one or the other."
["It's funny . . . I can dance this way all night and my feet never get tired."]
["The senior class at Yale voted him 'most likely to succeed' . . . so who was I to stop him when he tried to kiss me!"]
["Wrap up the price tag . . . If she likes that I'll come back for the necklace!"]
To my knowledge, the above three cartoons have never been reprinted in any form - the one at the top of this post is the only reprint I have found. (I apologize for the microfilm quality of these images.) Dean is not know for this type of cartoon, but rather for the kind you can see here, which he published in book collections released after Funny Side Up.
Dean revived the Funny Side Up name for filler material in at least two United Features-owned comic books during 1943: Sparkler Comics and Tip Top Comics. It's nice to see Dean's work in color and on newsprint:
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Welcome Ivan!
Cartoonist, writer, professor, and comics guru Mr. Ivan Brunetti has joined the Blog Flume! Look forward to posts from him in the near future.
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