Category / Comics

by Edward Champion

The Return of Cracked Magazine

Remember Cracked Magazine? It competed with MAD through a good chunk of the 1980s. In fact, many of the artists and writers who wrote for one magazine would regularly jump ship to the other, depending upon how much money the other outlet was offering. (Don Martin may have crossed the threshold at least six times.) And then Cracked folded and MAD was purchased by Time Warner, and MAD‘s edge was gone, baby!

Well, it looks like Cracked has relaunched — both as a magazine and as a website. Let us hope that it is unapologetically irreverant, reminds MAD of the satirical edge it sustained for so many decades, and forces BOTH magazines to keep each other in check, ensuring that we have two mighty satirical cartoon magazines taking the piss out of any and all targets. Golden age, indeed. Now more than ever, we need it. (via Yankee Potroast)

by Edward Champion

Even Penguins Can’t Placate Their Fear

Berkeley Breathed on Opus strips devoted to reporting: “Yes, and they weren’t appreciated by my clients a year ago. It’s a different time than it was in my prime years, for sure. I can’t even print the word “gay” in my strip without losing clients. To say the least, editors are weirdly on edge right now. I think they’re all worried that they may have to become religious pamphlets in order to survive.”

by Edward Champion

Is It Possible to Kneel In the Voting Booth?

Forget Christopher Walken. The real choice for 2008 is none other than General Zod, who apparently has recovered from his failed 2004 campaign and begun another quest to become “eternal ruler.” Like the White House, there’s a kid’s page, which features such math problems as “If each person on the Planet Houston knows five informants, and it takes ten minutes to relay a report, how quickly will General Zod learn about his picture being defaced in a town of 500 people?”

by DrMabuse

My Head Hurts! Therefore, Comic Books Are Bad!

Proving once again how culturally irrelevant they are, the Book Babes have declared graphic novels as the harbinger of evil. So suggesth one Ellen Hetzel:

I am patiently working my way through two graphic novels, David B?s Epileptic and Marjane Satrapi’s Embroideries, just one more indication in our world that Western culture increasingly depends on visual messages to perceive and understand what’s going on. Do I think this is a good thing? No. It seems like the mind has to be able to wrap itself around abstract ideas in order to reason, and visuals?at least as we know them through TV, movies and advertising?cause us to respond instinctively and emotionally.

Let’s discuss just how profoundly stupid this paragraph is. Consider the following:

First off, if the objection here is over any book medium contains “abstract ideas,” then I suppose we should discount the whole of literature outside of rigid genre-based narratives that offer nothing in the way of ambiguity. Ulysses? Sorry, Mr. Joyce, you’re too “abstract.” Tristram Shandy? Borges? Faulkner? Gaddis? Lessing? Flann O’Brien? Sorry, folks, the mind must “wrap itself around abstract ideas” in order to understand you. We’ll have to throw you into the dust heap. But Dan Brown and John Grisham? Well, you’re part of the literal-minded club. So come on by for some barbeque and MGD.

Second, what specifically is wrong with “visual messages?” Is Hetzel really advocating a culture based entirely (if not exclusively) on words? That’s sure fantastic for the 42 million Americans who can’t read or for quick international symbols that convey a point faster than words. I guess those Egyptians were fundamental dumbasses “wrapping themselves around abstract ideas” when they dared to communicate through hieroglyphics. I suppose Hetzel will be demanding next that we replace erect penises and floppy breasts with great Puritanical raiments of language.

Third, “visual messages” — or, more specifically, mediums that involve visual messages — are not exclusive to Western culture, nor are they as recent as Hetzel suggests. (Get schooled in ukiyo-e, Babe.)

Thus, if I am to understand Hetzel’s argument, it is this:

1. I can’t understand this graphic novel thingy. My head hurts.
2. Well, if I can’t understand it, then it must be fundamentally wrong for everybody! It must be abstract!
3. The cute little comic book thingy is composed of “visual messages.”
4. Since I can’t understand the cute little comic book thingy, therefore anything involving “visual messages” is fundamentally wrong!
5. My head hurts. I’m out of aspirin. This is NOT A GOOD THING!
6. There are other “visual messages” on teevee and advertising.
7. Teevee and advertising are lesser mediums than the book.
8. Therefore, the cute little comic book thingy is a lesser medium.

It’s good to have such circular bullshit come so easily, isn’t it?

I’ve had my problems with the Book Babes before, but I never suspected that they’d serve up such idiotic logic. I’m quite stunned that the Book Standard would allow something so fundamentally moronic to infiltrate its pages.

(via Bookslut)