I Got So Much Culture On My Mind 02: feh.
April 27th, 2012 by david brothers | Tags: faith erin hicks, fbb4l, humberto ramos, paul jenkins, sts-I’m slowly getting into Michael DeForge’s work. It’s weird and a little out of my wheelhouse of cusswords and violence comix, but I like how creepy and weird and John K his style gets sometimes. He’s put Kid Mafia #1 online for free, asking only that if you read and enjoy it, you kick him fifty cents via Paypal. I read it, I liked it, and I paypaled him fifty cents in Canadian dollars. If you like it, you should do the same.
I like this idea, and I hope more cats who produce minicomics start doing this. I’m not much for paper books and totally fine with making it rain via Paypal. Hopefully you are, too!
–I did a podcast with Chris Eckert from Funnybook Babylon about our comic book origins. I really like this photoset he made for the chat, which really says it all:
Is it any wonder my taste in comics turned out like it did? That Batman cover is crazy, though. I also spill the beans on the time I had a nightmare about Terry Kavanaugh, which is one of the stupidest things that has ever happened to me. We talk a lot about Image comics, too. I guess I hadn’t realized how fundamental their stuff was for/to me until this chat, so it was nice to look back and sort of reconcile what I like now with what I liked then.
-Michael Peterson and Kevin Czapiewski have launched Project Ballad, a webcomic about a girl named Kendra Price, RPGs, and maybe… video games?? Start reading it here. It’ll update Monday-Wednesday-Friday from here on out. You should read it. I am.
-I watched Lena Dunham’s Girls, but I don’t really have a thinkpiece in me like the rest of the internet. I hated it, basically, because the experiences and people I watched on TV were so completely and utterly alien to my experiences. Like, magic, kung fu? I can buy that. Asking my mother for eleven hundred bucks a month to pay my rent while I douchebag around town? My mom would die laughing and then haunt me for the rest of my life, telling me to get a job in between ghostly guffaws. So yeah: not for me.
-I watched Frederic Jardin’s Sleepless Night
A lot of Sleepless Night takes place in a nightclub, but it never dragged the movie down like every other nightclub scene does for me.
Sleepless Night reminded me about Fred Cavayé’s Point Blank
-My man Sean Witzke put me onto Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, which is a… some type of band. Rock? Noise? Whatever. I really like “Hoshi Neko,” but the entire album is pretty good.
I don’t really have the frame of reference to describe it in proper terms, I guess, so I’m going to copy & paste from their blog:
YT//ST was founded in late 2007 by performance artists alaska B and Ruby Kato Attwood, born from the ashes of the late Lesbian Fight Club. Armed with mixed-race identities, mad illustration skills and a whole pile of home-brew junk electronics, alaska and Ruby wrote and performed the first mini ‘Noh-Wave’ Opera, ‘YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN I’ in April 2008. YT//ST continued to perform short homebrewed operas, eventually forming a network of Asian and Indigenous artists through collaboration and formed the current YT//ST collective.
They have this weird multi-disciplinary sound, sort of dissonant but appealing at the same time. The vocals sound like they’re coming in from a distance, or through a filter, and instruments sound like they fade in and out of the mix as needed. I dunno, I could keep putting words that don’t quite fit on it or you can listen to “Hoshi Neko” and “Reverse Crystal//Murder of a Spider” and hear exactly what I mean. I bought the album and it was more than worth my time.
–This guy Boulet is so good. I love this strip about childhood dreams, too.
-Philip Bond is still drawing spacegirls.
-Faith Erin Hicks is great. I think she’s super interesting as a person, going by her essays on making a living in comics & animation and whatnot, and of course she’s scary talented. She’s got a Tumblr now, which includes this great picture of Liz Sherman from BPRD:
I really really like this. Liz’s bored expression, which extends to the lazily arcing cigarette smoke, is pitch-perfect. Even the lazy posture, starting from her bent left leg on up. But, and maybe this is weird, my favorite part is Hicks’s signature. “feh.” is the best signature since Walt Simonson’s dinosaur. Someone should do one of those knock-down, drag-out, ultra-long, “here are all of my opinions on every subject ever” interviews with Hicks. I bet it’d be a great read.
–Powerhouse blogger Kate Dacey is curating a Manga Movable Feast on Viz Signature, which may well be the best comics imprint since the glory days of Wildstorm. The MMF is a collection of reviews, criticism, and just content in general, all on the subject of Viz Sig’s fantastic catalog. I’m not sure if I’ll have time to contribute this time (my motivation for everything these days is on approximately a negative thousand million, but it’ll pass. I’ve been working on this simple post since Wednesday, ha ha), but I did pick Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond Vizbig 9
-I’m probably going to pre-order the super deluxe funcrusher plus monster package of El-P’s Cancer 4 Cure (that title!!!!!) and Killer Mike’s RAP Music. I love those guys, and dropping 85 bones on their work doesn’t seem like a huge extravagance. I’ll have to wait to see how next payday shakes out, though. I definitely want the vinyl of both. I just have to make sure the math makes sense. It may be smarter to just order Cancer 4 Cure
-Paul Jenkins and Humberto Ramos have a kickstarter going for their book Fairy Quest. Here’s a video:
And a widget:
I like these guys, especially when they work together. I’m going to kick some cash their way come payday, too.
-Here’s a couple STS videos I liked. I like how regular the video for “Good Intentions” is. It’s just a bunch of guys hanging out and doing things. It fits the theme of STS’s Goldrush, too, which is laid back flips of established songs. And STS is a spitter, too. Always a treat to hear a new verse.
-Tucker’s Comics of the Weak is still the best post every week. He’s got Jog and Abhay backing him up this week, plus Nate Bulmer, so maybe you should get down or lay down. Also, I vote you don’t get to make the Holocaust into a pithy comeback in your stupid fight comics. Been there, done that.
-Next week: I’ve got my uzi back, you dudes is wack, face it, the Wu is back (hopefully, but if the Celtics beat the Hawks on Sunday, I may spiral back into the Pit of Depression)
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And here, I thought I was the lone Paul Jenkins fan these days. Glad to see he’s doing something outside the Big Two.
Thanks, David!
We’re really proud of the comic, glad you’re reading – and glad you’ve written a piece for us before!
Girls is weird, yet I like it specifically because it’s such an alien existence to any I’ve ever known. It has an awkward black humor to it that I’m able to groove on, which is surprising because I hate every single character on the show. I don’t know if it’s something I can stick with, but the first two eps held my attention.
I find Girls really exciting but I can’t think of another sitcom that I like that’s occupied that space as well. Other people have wrote about this, but situation comedies about the sexual disappointment of women in their early 20’s…? That’s an alien experience that I find interesting, especially because it’s one that doesn’t get talked about that often.
I can see how the callowness of spoiled youth stuff is hard to take (though I think it’s a pretty old theme)– plus, the show’s super-white so if someone were to argue it’s this year’s Mind of the Married Man, I wouldn’t be all put out, by it. But I don’t think it’s a universal show on purpose, at least. I’ve met those kinds of people and I know they’re out there. If they can make it funny…
But what I’m most excited by is the Apatow influence– there’s a kind of comedy he’s been associated with, that made me a fan of his work to begin with, and that he can’t really do as much in movies or hasn’t, which is comedies that are like… sad, creepy comedy? It’s basically cringe humor, I guess, but less broad than the Gervais and post-Gervais kind– like, really humane and affectionate cringe humor. Freaks & Geeks, Undeclared — there aren’t a lot of shows mining that kind of comedy. The crappy guy going “Want some gatorade?” at the beginning of that second episode– that’s not really a JOKE but I find that really funny and it felt true and I don’t know another show on right now that could’ve done that moment… Besides Louie which can do anything.
But maybe I’m forgetting a bunch of shows. Most sitcoms– and I LIKE sitcoms– just seem comparatively way more up and happy at their core; I like that Girls feels really down and sad at its core. Also, one week in, it’s made for a nice double-feature with Veep which I thought was really, really terrific (e.g./i.e. Matt Walsh). But there’s only been two– so maybe it’s too early to say.
I Hated Girls, but I must admit it had a funny moment or two. I just cant relate to what white chicks go through, i must not be human :negativeman:
I like Girls a lot, I can not lie. Veep, however, I find to be almost offensively toothless. Wow, everyone in DC is a monstruous, self-absorbed prick who doesn’t care about anything. Real sterling insight there.
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Man, the point of GIRLS is that they’re supposed to be completely, comically reprehensible. They’re terrible people who you should want to hit in the head with a frying pan, and that’s hilarious. Completely intentionally so.