Today on the site we have Sean T. Collins on Kjersti Faret's Danny Boy.
Why is a comic a comic and not some other thing? This question tends to get brandished most frequently in the direction of high-concept genre comics that one suspects were created because access to the big-budget filmmaking industry eluded their authors. But it's worth asking about most any comic, no matter the form of artistic expression that comes to mind when contemplating the alternatives. Is it a series of astutely composed images separated from illustration only by a sketched-in narrative skeleton? Is it an essay in comics drag, the art that should carry it serving as little more than glorified gutters between panels of the text where the authors' attention truly lies? Does it describe a thought the intensity of which masks its banality -- the kind of thing better left a private journal entry than offered for consumption as a comic to the world?
In creating Danny Boy, a comics adaptation of the lilting Irish ballad -- its melody the traditional "Londonderry Air" from present-day Northern Ireland, its lyrics written by English barrister Frederick Edward Weatherly in the 1910s, its presence ubiquitous among communities of Irish ancestry throughout the English-speaking world -- cartoonist Kjersti Faret makes the implicit argument that the comic serves a purpose the song does not or cannot. That, of course, is a tough row to hoe.
And elsewhere:
The New York Times on Bill Mantlo, Keith Giffen and the rights issues around superhero films.
The great artist Jess, known to comics people for his Tricky Cad series, was born yesterday. Here's a good place to start.
-Cranky art critic alert! I love cranky people. Another cranky person: artist Randy Queen, who is doing battle with Tumblr critics.
-Here are some really fantastically repulsive comics from the Children of God church.
-I wonder if anyone at Marvel thought this tweet might be, I dunno, totally offensive given Brian Wood's self-confessed sleazy/actionable behavior? Whatever, it's cool, bro!
