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Check out Alison Bechdel’s review of Jane Vandenburgh’s A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century: A Memoir in this weekend’s New York Times Book Review. Bechdel is an artist and cartoonist, and so composes the review in a milieu that makes sense to her. Highly recommended.
Man, there’s been a lot of discussion online about the WATCHMEN movie/book! It’s exhausting keeping up with all of it. But to facilitate our discussion today, here are some of the more… let’s say interesting… ones.
To start us off, here are the awesome (and awesomely dense) opening credits to the film. The company that made the credits posted this to the Web, but then took it down. It’s still around, though, if you look for it.
And while you’re watching the credits obsessively, looking for every last detail, this post might help you find a few tasty tidbits.
Charlie Jane Anders opines on the reasons why the movie felt flatter than the book. For Anders, it’s the difficulty of expressing the mindset of the Cold War years. An interesting read.
Jive Tarken, on the other hand, says both the strengths and weaknesses of the film are due to its closeness to the original book. Also a good read.
And if you want to read a nice rant about how the new ending ruined everything, John Patricelli has just what you’re looking for. (And if you play a druid in World of Warcraft, you really should be reading John anyway.)
Not everyone is happy with the changes to the movie. Here’s one concerned reader/viewer sharing his thoughts:
And if you’ve been bitten by the grown-up-comic bug, Graeme McMillan has some suggestions about what other comics you should check out.
Really, truly, finally… Hooray, kids! The Saturday Morning Watchmen are here!
Here’s a link to an article we’ll discuss in class today:
http://io9.com/5148753/uclick-for-iphone-will-make-comic-books-obsolete
The UClick people (and the IO9 writer) seem to think that this is a good thing. What do you think?
Here’s a great video from a few years ago with Understanding Comics creator Scott McCloud talking about comics and our relationship(s) to and with them. It’s a fun watch. If you haven’t read the book yet (it’s our next class book), it will give you a little insight into where he’s coming from. If you have read the book, it’ll be a nice supplement to what you’ve already read.
Enjoy!
I know, I know, you guys are going to think that I’m Dr. All-PETA-All-The-Time, but I’m not. Really. It’s just that this rejected superbowl ad from PETA is practically awesome.
In class we’re reading and talking about multimodality — using more than one way of communicating in a single message. This ad, obviously, combines images with sounds (I know I’m supposed to think “generic hard-core sexiness, but I keep hearing the air-guitar riffs from Wayne’s World) and text (in a shaky, all-caps format that really tries to be more sext than text), to promote the vegetarian lifestyle.
Obviously, lingerie-wearing she-vegetarians are far too sexy to be broadcast on America’s favorite spectacle of big, beefy men trying to get good, solid, hard contact with each other in an ecstatic frenzy to get control of each other’s balls.
But come on, PETA. This is really, really, ridiculous. Where are the sexy underwear-ing he-vegetarians? And while the “Sexy Sausage” ad isn’t bad, it’s not the same thing. Especially as the chosen veggie delivery guy is … less than attractive. Even by bad 1970s porn standards. (Wait, how many ways is that last sentence fragment redundant and/or oxymoronic? I lost count.)
And if you check out the PETA site, be warned: the “Milk Gone Wild” ad is… pretty disturbing.
(X-posted to Digital Digressions)
Behold Spike, the makeup-wearing punk sea kitten:
But what does this have to do with Illustrated Novels? And what’s a sea kitten, anyway? (Kinda looks like a bluefin tuna, to me.) Click the link below to read all about it.
