Anything, Everything, or Nothing At All

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

Leopard v Crocodile!

[Mark Sullivan (Vertiginous Mod)]

Luke Blanchard said:

The troubles of a cartoonist, from Captain Easy, 1953.

Hee, hee...just got around to looking of this. It reminded me of Alan's observation in another thread: I think there's only one sentence in the whole strip that ends in a period. Most of them are exclamation points, the rest ellipses.

[Luke Blanchard]

By Leslie Turner, who had been Roy Crane's assistant and took over Captain Easy and Wash Tubbs after him.

[Luke Blanchard]

The 1946 Comics Calendar

[Luke Blanchard]

Casper, before Harvey.

Published by St. John. Toonpedia's article on Casper is here.

[The Baron]

Hmmm....

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

I just received the following in a campus-wide email:

The Honors Student Council and Memphis Reads invites the U of M community to a free screening of Persepolis on October 21.

Many of you have read or will read soon this year’s Memphis Reads’ selection, Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis. In 2007, Satrapi, with Victor Paronnaud, wrote and directed an animated film based on her book. Thanks to the Office of Student Activities and the Honors Student Council, we will be showing the film twice on October 21 at 12:40 p.m. in Rose Theater and at 7:00 p.m. in Mitchell Auditorium. The event is free to all students, faculty, and staff.

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

This image accompanies this article.

[Luke Blanchard]

The Fred Kida art in this Airboy story is lovely.

[Luke Blanchard]

A story from Jerry Grandenetti, in his Will Eisner style

[Luke Blanchard]

I've known Frank Godwin principally as the artist of Connie. I've just learned from this page on his work that he did some Wonder Woman stories. The GCD credits him with the stories from Comic Cavalcade #2 (rather than #3) and Sensation Comics ##17-19, 21. The preview pages for the third Wonder Woman archive at DC's website are from the story from #18.

Incidentally, is anyone else out there interested in this kind of thing?

[Dagwan]

Every time I hear Jon Stewart introduced at the start of the Daily show, I'm surprised, and somewhat disappointed, that it's not a 6-foot-tall black ex-soldier wielding a power ring.

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"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -Groucho Marx

Check out the Secret Headquarters (my store) website! It's a pretty lame website, but I did it myself, so tough noogies

Listen to WOXY.com, it's the future of rock-n-roll!

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[Luke Blanchard]

I've been listening to a podcast by Mark Steyn on the songs of Johnny Mercer, in which he discusses the problem of performing a song that has become over-familiar. His take is the singer has to find a way to sing the song "so that people hear it again for the first time as it were".

This could have some application to the handling of familiar superheroes. The creators' problem is to find a way to show the audience the strength that is there, in a way that makes the character seem fresh; or (where the creator likes the character, but its success has been limited) to bring out what he sees in the character. In the latter case there might be a need for some recasting the character - e.g. a new costume - to overcome what has kept it from being successful in the past.

On the other hand, attempts to get back to the essence of a character can be reductive. It takes more than a central character to make a series, so the other stuff isn't necessarily baggage that can be thrown away without diminishing it. Also, the very earliest version of a character is not always the best.

Anyway, the alternative is remaking the character over into a new character. Since a character may be made over into a completely different character,(1) the question with this approach is whether it wouldn't be better to create a wholly new character - whether this wouldn't set the imagination free more. On the other hand, modern readers seem to prefer even new characters to have connections with the existing universes.

(1) "I am CETCHUHP, the tyrant of TAMAHRTOSAURS! All who hear my name tremble in fear! Worlds cannot sate my lust for blood! I eat puppies! But you once knew me as - JIMMY OLSEN!"