Today on the site:
Mr. Matthew Thurber gives us much to be thankful for in his review of Adult Contemporary by Bendik Kaltenborn.
The amazing cover image of Bendik Kaltenborn’s Adult Contemporary depicts a ‘man’ in a pink suit with a elegant line that becomes bolder as it leads your eye down to his ochre paws. This man is a fancy blonde. He is made up with a circle of dark blue eye shadow and a delicate lipsticked frown surrounded by a thin Van Dyke. Their sex unclear, they nevertheless comport themselves with absolute dignity…
The book’s french fold reveals a white kid glove, pearls and cigarettes, the luxurious accessories of this post-gender businessperson.
On the flip side of the french flap we behold, from the viewpoint of a frightened bumpkin, a huge Ogre, also blonde, lips covered in blood (another kind of lipstick?) as he munches on a severed human leg. The Ogre’s huge wang dangles.
Definitely a male.
With these first images, in his first solo book for an English language market, Kaltenborn signals his main themes: masculinity, role playing, culture and savagery. This book is about surfaces — of society, of business, of the costumes we wear and the language with which we try to disguise our foolishness. To be an Adult Contemporary is to act a charade in Kaltenborn’s world. The performance can be dignified, silly, or both. But the flip side of the man… is the Beast!!!
Elsewhere, odds and ends abound, I guess.
I'm kind of obsessed with this story, which has nothing in common with comics besides neglect and awesomeness.
A comic strip goes up on a wall in the Bronx to comment on/protest against gentrification.
I enjoyed Heidi's report from a new New Jersey comic book convention. I miss going simple cons like that, and I especially miss the old cons at the Penn Hotel maybe... 10 years ago? Even that recently you could walk around and there'd be Dick Ayers across from S. Clay Wilson in an empty room.
Good little report here on what is, indeed, a gem of a museum in downtown NYC.
