Showing posts with label cartooning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cartooning. Show all posts
Saturday, October 3, 2026
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Monday, January 19, 2026
Jack Kirby's Memories of New York Tenement Life
A panel from Jack Kirby's late-in-life autobiographical story "Street Code", showing the claustrophobic tenement family room he grew up in, alongside a panel from an early '40s Newsboy Legion story he wrote. Kirby was always drawing upon his life experiences in his work.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Monday, March 31, 2025
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Bat-Manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan, by Jiro Kuwata; Edited by Chip Kidd
Chip Kidd's gorgeously designed, oversized collection of Jiro Kuwata's Bat Manga! is a delight. Spawned in Japan during the success of the 1966 U.S. Batman television show, Kuwata's Batman series - which he wrote and drew - takes place in an alternate reality than either the U.S. Batman comics or the Batman show. Thankfully, his work is better, more arresting and idiosyncratic than any American Batman material being created at the time.
Once given the assignment, Kuwata, who had previously co-created the popular 8 Man, wished to draw his Batman series for Shonen King in the style of then-current DC artists, but had no time to attempt to emulate the American Batman look. That's lucky for us, because one of the wonderful aspects of Kuwata's Batman is that it looks like mid-'60s manga. With only infrequent appearances of butler Alfred and Commissioner Gorden, Kuwata's Batman takes place in its own, hermetically sealed universe: it's only Batman and Robin against an array of mostly original villains. These include Lord Death Man, who continually arises from death, Go-Go the Magician, the shape-shifting Clayface, Professor Gorilla and, best of all, the science fiction-steeped The Man Who Quit Being Human, a burgeoning mutant who poses a critical threat to not only Batman but humankind.
Kuwata's Batman uses time-honored manga storytelling techniques to present narrative in a more highly sophisticated way than U.S. comics at the time, slowing down to present snapshots of places and time passing. The usually B&W art is reproduced in all its various textures and states of decay. The book is supplanted with many examples of Japanese Batman merchandise (which Kidd collects), historical background and an interview with Kuwata (who died in 2020). The serialized stories are often incomplete, but the regular rhythms of the narratives are so repetitive (in a good way) that the reader won't regret the missing links as they otherwise might. Bat Manga! is highly recommended.
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Tuesday, December 26, 2023
Sunday, November 12, 2023
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Wednesday, June 7, 2023
Monday, June 5, 2023
Friday, April 14, 2023
Saturday, April 1, 2023
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Tuesday, February 21, 2023
Recently Read: Credo: the Rose Wilder Lane Story, by Peter Bagge
Rose Wilder Lane was a free soul, a proto-feminist, a proto-libertarian, partial author of the Little House books and much more. Her amazing life (starting on a dirt poor De Smet farmstead, as described in Laura Ingalls Wilder's posthumously published The First Four Years) has been documented many times and ways (including Lane's autobiographical works) and is intrinsically fascinating. Here it gets the Peter Bagge treatment and, being a fan of both the Little House books and Bagge's work, I had high hopes for this book.
I was first surprised by Credo's diminutive size. When I first began reading Bagge's work, in 1985, it was being published magazine size. Later his work was published comic book size. Here it's published less than 7" x 9". What's next - postage stamp size? Bagge's lettering and art seemingly haven't been altered to accommodate the smaller size, either, making the work small, cramped and just plain hard to read. The font size used for the introduction practically requires a magnifying glass. Really, Drawn and Quarterly? Couldn't you give a great cartoonist a chance to shine?
Bagge's cartooning is as fun and expressive as ever, capturing the ever-shifting emotions and agendas of a person famous for their mood swings and short attention span. The drawing is excellent. The pacing, though... I would have loved to see the story slow down enough for longer dramatic scenes. As it is, the (only 72-page) work feels like a picaresque travelogue, one that checks off a list of chronological events, but doesn't delve deeply into any of them. It's a lost opportunity because there are so many events in Lane's life that could benefit from the kind of wry but respectful observations I've seen in earlier Bagge fiction.
Bagge's afterward, on the other hand, is a wealth of great resources for further study of the people Rose journeyed with, with fun and insightful observations and commentary. For Bagge fans and Lane fans, the book is a must, despite its faults.
Saturday, November 26, 2022
Sunday, October 9, 2022
Friday, July 1, 2022
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