Today at the Journal, Tegan checks in with her take on Days of Hate, a new Image series from Danijel Žeželj & Aleš Kot. Things get political because they have to. And then some!
I keep circling around like a falcon in the proverbial gyre to try and get my arms around this comic. I spend all day watching the news and reading the news and listening to the news and discussing the news – everything is bad, yes, but more importantly things feel very desperate. There’s something in the air, I don’t know whether it’s even good or bad, but – if you’re trapped on the inside here in Fortress America it feels like we’re stuck in the middle reel. We’ve had tons of exposition. Every conflict is established. Everything is always happening and nothing changes. Tension keeps ratcheting ever skyward on every side and nothing changes. It’s the strangest feeling. We’re stuck in the Dragonball-Z of governmental crises.
Next week, we'll have an interview with Aleš about the series. But that's not all we've got for you today. Prepare yourself for the weekend with Paul Tumey's latest installment of Framed!, which includes a detailed look at To Laugh That We May Not Weep: The Life and Times of Art Young.
This is, after, all, work by a cartoonist who went to hell, artistically speaking, not just once, but three times! This is the guy who experienced what for many would be hell on earth, being put on trial for sedition (twice!) with the possibility of years of imprisonment. Undaunted, or perhaps just worn out from drawing his thousands of cartoons, Young famously dozed off in the courtroom during one of these trials. Whether or not you agree with Young’s politics, who could argue with the sad-beautiful reflections found in his gentle work? Art Young’s cartoons are some of the most complex, some of the richest, most original, most refined, most personal art I’ve ever experienced. To Laugh gives us the chance to have that experience. By presenting this work in a beautifully designed compilation, we can finally linger over it, take it in, and expand our understanding of what cartoons can do, and perhaps should do.
From there, Paul goes on to commit multiple cardinal sins of list-making, including praising a book of criticism (HISS) and then concluding his list with trying to convince you that a book written by the She-Hulk guy was better than Judge Dredd: Every Empire Falls, which is so absurd that when I contacted Charles Soule (my wife's godfather and a close personal friend), and he told me I was legally allowed to edit that part out of Paul's list! (Charles Soule is a lawyer, as well as the guy who they made write the Old Man Logan comic.) I would have made those edits but I got so caught up in re-reading Every Empire Falls--the second best comic to have been released in 2017--that I stopped feeling angry and just felt sad.
