On the site today:
Ken Parille returns with an excellent multi-level historical reading of the first two panels from Charles Burns' excellent new book The Hive. Ken's essay nicely exposes the multi-layered nature of the book, which Grace Krilanovich nicely sussed out on this site. Here's Ken:
In a graphic novel, each panel participates in a complex dialogue with other panels. It’s also part of a larger historical conversation involving hundreds of similar panels from earlier comics. These contexts — the comic itself and the comic-in-history — lend each image interpretive resonance and possibility.
And elsewhere:
The internet was ablaze over the weekend with Grant Morrison's point-by-point commentary on an article that mentions how he and Alan Moore don't like each other. Or something like that. If you're still reading this blurb then you probably already know if you want to click through, in which case, hey, you'll soon know more than I do about the whole thing. It made for entertaining reading in the sense that I find relationships played out at comic book conventions and in letter columns pretty entertaining! In fact, I sort of wish more cartoonists would settle personal relationships in public. It used to be commonplace at ol' TCJ, but now we have to rely entirely on the over-50 crowd (like our man Dave Sim) to re-up on the personal public drama. Ah well. A boy can dream.
Still further into the internet we find an interview with BCGF partner and now new publisher Bill Kartalopolous.
In other publishing news, as you probably know, Arthur Magazine is coming back, and now the web site is back online.
There are not enough comics equivalents to the kind of books mentioned in this essay about "supplemental work", and I love them all. Off the top of my head I can pine for books collecting essays and miscellany by Patrick Rosenkranz, R. Fiore, Carter Scholz and so many others. Basically TCJ functions as one giant supplemental work which we can never seem to mine enough.
Finally, I like the frequency with which I see new material from Simon Hanselman. It means not all of it has to be great and I can just enjoy the ongoing process in real time. Very satisfying.
