Monday, July 24, 2017

Intro To My 31 Favorite Comics Post Series


 Geneviève Castrée, wraparound cover of Lait Frappé, January 2000.

Why 31? That's an odd choice of a number, but the explanation is easy to guess, I guess...Instead of replacing a title in my list I decided to include both choices, hence, 31.

As some of you probably know, I divide the field of comics in two: 1) an expanded field and 2) a restrict field. While the former includes Goya's The Disasters of War or Hokusai's 100 Views of Mt. Fuji or Picasso's The Dream and Lie of Franco or Philip Guston's Poor Richard, the latter is what we usually consider as comics. Don't get me wrong, I don't see any reason to discard any of the above or Masereel's cycles as comics, but I decided to be conservative, just this time. Besides, those comics don't need my pathetic p. r....

I also want to address a well deserved word to those choices that aren't included, but could very well be: what can I say, this is basically a futile and pretty random game, so, mistakes are made. As I said before, I enjoyed the company of such luminaries as Ed Brubaker and Debbie Drechsler lately and I'm sure that I would enjoy and should include a lot more like Geneviève Castrée, for instance...

I'm a perfectionist and that's both good and bad. It's good for obvious reasons, it's bad because it may block you. As I said before I'm highly dissatisfied with the way all this occurred in the last two months, and, consequently, I should call it quits, but a promise is a promise, so, this time I will not let myself be blocked. There's no looking back, now...

Finally: all these choices are obviously limited by my own limits: there are a lot of languages that I can't read, there are a lot of comics that I have never even seen. Of one thing you may be sure, though: I bought them all. In my opinion the moment a critic accepts a book from a publisher s/he ceases to be a critic to become another cog in the prop machine.


Tuesday, July 11, 2017

I'm Back - Sort Of... Coda

Couldn't resist giving you this beautiful page.


Ed Brubaker (w & a), David Lasky (c), Lowlife # 5 (July, 1995).

I'm Back - Sort of...

So, almost 50 days have passed...

Below I'll tell you: 1) what should have happeneed and 2) what really happened during that time:

1) I should have layed down a list of my 25 favorite comics and, since I read some of them years and even decades ago, I should have reread them. Plus: when in doubt I should have reread some of the books or stories that weren't included on my list and see if I wanted to replace an item or a few items...

2) I layed down a first draft of my list, but couldn't stop at 25 and, so, now I have 30 items listed. I reread Summer of Love by Debbie Drechsler and reread a few pages of Daddy's Girl, also by Debbie Drechsler. I also reread a few pages of Speak Low by Montesol and Ghost World by Daniel Clowes. That's it, I guess...
Today I tried to read A Complete Lowlife, by Ed Brubaker, but my eyesight isn't in the best of shapes right now, so, I gave up (even so I liked "Secret Hours"). I almost forgot, but I reread At the Seams, also by Ed Brubaker and I liked it too. 

Now, what, then?...

For starters, I still haven't closed my list. I find it an impossible task and I'm more and more convinced that, to do it properly, it's a full time job. I simply don't have the time nor the inclination to do so. This doesn't mean though, that I give up. If I can't do it properly I must rely on my dim memory...

That's it, I guess, but I have a

PS I'm reading the essay "I Will Not Bow: Analysis of the Feminine Refusal of Hegel's Master-Slave Dialectic in Inuyasha," by Robyn Johnson, in IJOCA (International Journal of Comic Art).
At some point she sez:
Manga is a much more sophisticated form of literature than recognized[.] [...]
She then goes on analysing Inuyasha by Rumiko Takahashi. This is unfortunately a typical reaction among comics critics: they say that comics are a sophisticated art form (sorry for the twisted grammar) and then they prove it pointing at trash.