It's a new week. Ken Parille leads us in with an essay on one of my favorite comic book artists: Pete Morisi.
Although many artists struggle with the comic page’s limitations as a static, silent surface, Morisi harmonizes with newsprint’s inert pulp essence. His peculiar genius lies in the way he seems to disrupt our desire to glide across a page. While it’s hard to talk about the specific effect that images have on us, many of his panels feel calming, almost a little hypnotic and “sculptural” to me, working against the animation that Seth rightly sees an important feature of narrative comics.
In fact, Morisi’s characters often resemble a drawing of a sculpture of a person, rather than a “direct” representation; and many of his horror comics feature sculptures in the panels’ backgrounds and margins.
Elsewhere in the world:
Tom Spurgeon interviews Noah Van Sciver.
The ebook comics company Graphicly has been folded into the print-on-demand service Blurb, leaving some questions.
Will Eisner's M-16 manual.
David Carr at the NY Times on the ongoing Hachette/Amazon stand-off.
Not-comics: Critic and poet Rene Ricard's memorial gathering.
