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wysiwygmarketing necesitaba un nuevo diseño de página web y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 27 diseños de 9 diseñadores freelance.
Bombshells Pin Ups
http://www.facebook.com/bombshellgirls This is a website redesign project for bombshells.info "Bombshell Pin Ups" is company name and brand image that is defined by: themed photo shoots of the 1940's-1950's time period. Their photo's have a lot of World War II influence and very heavy RETRO theme. The site is being redesigned to showcase a more modern and professional website look-and-feel and incorporate some new website technology. This web design has to really tell a fun retro story. Some ideas are, Old Time (Retro) Drive-In Movie Theater, Old time Drive Up Burger Joint, Antique Gas Station Setting, etc. We are open to other fun neat Retro ideas just as long as the concept tells a fun story. Some elements will be brought to life with Flash after your design is approved.
The main target audience is women of all ages that want to experience this fun and very glamorous photo shoot experience. Bombshells has also expanded it's product line to teenage girls and even doing some Duets for the guys and gals.
Attached are some Wireframe examples. However, you have creative flexibility to modify these wireframes as needed. The main goal is really creative a very fun Themed Story that can be utilized throughout the site.
We are primarily concerned with the home page design concept with this project. However, the home page look-and-feel will need to be followed throughout the other areas of the website.
Some images are also attached that contain the bombshells logo and some additional files. Please review the http://www.facebook.com/bombshellgirls to get a feel for what this business is all about.
Also, The wireframes may not reflect this... But please try to incorporate a nice big Footer section that really has a life of its own to incorporate Social Media links and other types of information.
Attached with this brief is a zip file containing a creative brief word doc that also has our technical requirements similar to what will be sent to our development team. These sections can be used for our Concept Navigation Elements.
http://www.bombshells.info site currently down so we are very eager to get this design completed ASAP. MAKE SURE TO TELL A STORY in your design. Think RETRO :)
http://www.Targetscope.com - Targetscope is a piece of paper with a picture laid on it and the girl
is part of the stationary. That makes sense to me.
http://www.mediaboom.com - Media boom is
various postcards of city scenes like a newspaper stand and then it
moves across the city to focus on elements you would find in a city.
the billboard and then a newspaper flies in. It all flows and makes
sense to me.
http://www.Level2d.com - It is a gas station with a billboard in the back
and an old sign pointing to the gas station. The font is retro. The
paper is faded. The gas station looks three dimensional not just cut
out if that makes sense. it tells a story. It makes sense. It keeps
with the era. The colors match the era and the theme. I know I said
our colors are hot pink and turquoise, but if we incorporate those,
they will need to be faded and vintage looking.
http://www.Bombshellbeauties.com - Bombshell beauties is a film reel. everything is displayed on the film. All the way through it keeps the retro feel.


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Nike, USA Basketball Seek To Repeat Gold Standard For 2012 Summer Games
November 5, 2009: Nike has signed a multi-year extension with USA Basketball that will expand and enhance the company's commitment to the men's and women's national team programs and ensure that it would be with the program for the 2012 Summer Games in London. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Nike, which has been a partner of USA Basketball since 2006, said it would continue to serve as the exclusive oncourt and apparel provider of the men's and women's national teams. However, under terms of the new deal, Nike also becomes the official compression supplier of USA Basketball via its line of Nike Pro Combat products. Nike will also support all national teams represented by USA Basketball, including USA Basketball junior and developmental teams.
Nike's original deal included the USA Basketball men's and women's national teams during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, where both squads won gold medals. The new deal will cover the 2012 Summer Games in London, which is just under 1,000 days away. The 2016 Summer Games will be held in Rio de Janeiro.
The men's team held a mini-camp in Las Vegas over the summer that was attended by such NBA players as Kevin Durant, Rudy Gay, Eric Gordon, Derrick Rose, Greg Oden and O.J. Mayo. Among the players expected to compete for spots on the 2012 Olympic team are LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade.
"Nike has been an ardent supporter of USA Basketball and a key contributor to developing the values of teamwork and dedication that the men's and women's National Teams exhibited during the Games in Beijing," Jerry Colangelo, USA basketball chairman, said in a statement. "The long-term expansion of our partnership has helped make our teams stronger and we look forward to working together with Nike to achieve new heights both on and off the court for years to come."
Nike will promote its brand and products through USA Basketball-themed events, media, advertising and promotions. Nike will also now serve as the on-air presenting partner of USA Basketball exhibition games broadcast in the U.S. Last year, Nike was presenting partner of the five-part series, Road To Redemption, which aired on ESPN2 and documented the USA Basketball men's senior national team's preparations for Beijing; featured USA Basketball displays in its retail stores and online; and opened a grassroots fan museum, "The Commitment Gallery" in Harlem, New York.
"We are honored to extend our partnership and further our relationship with USA Basketball," Lynn Merritt, director global basketball sports marketing for Nike, said in a statement. "We were pleased with our association and involvement with USA Basketball, and to share in the success of the Beijing Olympic gold medal team. We will provide innovative products that will assist the USA Basketball team members in future World Championship and Olympic competition as they attempt to equal the standard of achievement realized in Beijing."

subset: commoncrawl


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Door to door transportation for K-12 students appears to be a compassionate policy from a society that values both students and education. That may be the intent, but Minnesota's transportation mandate ultimately takes money from classrooms to subsidize our inefficient, post-WW II development pattern. In the end, it also devalues traditional, neighborhood schools in favor of the remote, campus-style facilities we now build. A Strong Towns approach would be dramatically different.
My family and I were heading into town for swimming lessons on Saturday when I drove by one of the old elementary schools I went to as a kid. It's name -- Lincoln Elementary -- tells you that it is old. Back in the day, we used to name schools after people we admired. Today we name them in cheerful commemoration of the places we had to destroy in order to build them. For instance, the newest school in my district is called Forestview, the construction of which required the clear cutting of a forest across from my old family farm (took out a couple of my old tree forts in the process). In the neighboring school district they have Eagle View Elementary. The only eagles you will ever see there were built by the Chrysler motor company in the 1990's.
There are many other differences that are more significant, but for today I want to focus on transportation. Busing is something that the students that used to attend Lincoln school did not need, but which the children of Forestview must have.
Understand that my parents still live on the old farm, and they are the house closest to Forestview. Since they could not not walk there safely on a school day, it is fair to say that few children could. That is not to suggest that Lincoln Elementary is safe. It is not. The street outside the front door -- literally feet from the door - was made into a highway. It is a chicken or egg argument as to whether the drop in enrollment at Lincoln was the cause of or a byproduct of the neighborhood becoming inhospitable for families. Either way, Lincoln is now closed—the playground soon to be turned into a parking lot (a higher use, by local standards).
So like most districts across the country, especially those in small towns or suburban areas, students arrive at their local school by bus or by car. A few will walk. In fact, my school district's policy is to only pick up those students that live further than a mile from their school. This was increased from a half mile a couple of years ago as a cost-cutting measure. We have written about the glaring inequity and perverse incentives of this system before.
Like nearly every American school district, ours is struggling with how to do more with less. And not just more, but much, much more. And not just less, but much, much less. This is not a post about education policy, but conservative columnist George Will made some amazing points when praising the efforts of Obama-appointed Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Improving the educational performance of our youth in an age of austerity may be our generation's defining challenge.
A new idea for school busing
Here's an idea I'll toss out from the Strong Towns mindset: How about we rethink our approach to busing?
Again, I'm not trying to get into a broader discussion on race. I'm not thinking that big. If you want to knock me down for my ignorance, please do. But hear me out first.
The State of Minnesota -- and I suspect this holds for most, if not all, states - requires school districts to provide transportation to all students in their district. The districts are given money for this undertaking. The mandate is fairly loose — at least loose enough that districts can exempt some kids who live close and charge fees for kids involved in activities that ride on alternative schedules. Nonetheless, if a child wants to ride the bus, the school has to pick them up and drop them off.
As school budgets have been squeezed, districts have found creative ways to shift funding from transportation into the classroom. Such tactics have drawn the ire of an organization called MN2020. They wrote a report calling for the establishment of a separate fund for transportation that could not be shifted to other causes:
Our latest report, Wrong Way: Minnesota's School Transportation Funding Disparities, explores how disinvestment forces district administrators statewide to either siphon funds from transportation to pay for basic needs or shift classroom dollars to cover getting students to and from school.
District leaders make budget-balancing decisions that include adopting four-day school weeks, cutting routes which lengthens time spent on buses, adding a fee or outright eliminating transportation for after school activities and increasing the distance from school that the district offers busing.
But, respectfully, what if MN2020 has it wrong? What if we went the other way and shifted all transportation funding into the classroom? What if we ended the mandate for schools to provide transportation?
If you look at the MN2020 report, districts that have neighborhood schools in higher density, walkable areas actually have a surplus in transportation spending they can use for other needs. In contrast, large rural districts and suburban/exurban districts run huge deficits, taking money from the classroom to fund transportation.
Let's ask a pointed question: How many of the students in those rural, suburban and exurban districts live and work on farms? In other words, what percentage of their parents must be located in a remote area for their livelihood?
I don't know the answer, but my experience here in Minnesota tells me it is a very small percentage. I'd guess less than 3%. This means the remainder live far from school due to personal preference. In the free market, they have selected a remote location that requires school districts, mandated to provide transportation, to take money from classrooms to pick up and drop off their kids.
This is an important observation. By mandating that school districts provide free transport to all kids, regardless of any other circumstance, we have created a situation where parents do not have any incentive to consider the true cost of their choice when they decide where to live. They can live two blocks from school or twenty miles from school, the cost to them is the same: nothing.
What if we asked those non-farm parents to pick up the tab? What if that money could be redirected to the classroom? Using my local school district as an example, the numbers could be huge.
In 2011 [when this article was originally written] we were going to spend $3.4 million in transportation costs. That seems in line with the costs reported in the MN2020 report. With a starting teacher in the district making roughly $41,000 in salary and benefits [in 2011], we could add over 80 new teachers right now if we stopped subsidizing transportation. That would be a 20% increase in staffing, potentially a game-changing amount.
Here's my proposal: What if we abolished the mandate that schools provide transportation to all students, but required them to still provide it to children that lived on farms (or whose families had careers that required them to live in a remote location)? For all other children, transportation would be provided as a fee-for-service offering. We then subsidize children from poor families (many of whom live close to the old schools anyway).
Besides the fact that it is nearly politically impossible to get people to pay for something they have been receiving for free, what are the objections?
It makes no sense that we continue to abandon neighborhood schools in favor of these remote campuses that require every child to be bused to. The only reason this continues to happen is that we've made transportation a sunk cost -- money a district has to spend regardless -- and so the cheapest way to do it is to make it efficient at a grand scale. In the meantime, the transportation mandate is simply another perverse incentive for people to make lifestyle choices that ultimately have huge, financial costs to us all.
Here's your money. We just need the courage to start building Strong Towns.
A different version of this essay was originally published in 2011. Top photo by PRA


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For two weeks last summer, the library I was working at did not have the use of their air conditioning system due to some remodeling that was being done. As a book restorer, it is important that I actually repair books rather than worsen their condition. This immediately proved to be impossible as the temperature in the building was pushing the high 90's and my hands were sweating all over the books I was working on. Moisture in any form is the arch-enemy of books…unless of course you're writing them, in which case booze can be your greatest ally (same with Rants). I tried using paper towels, beach towels I brought from home, sweat bands, and Robert even suggested I put some Old Spice High Endurance on my hands. Needless to say none of this worked, and as a last resort I went to see a doctor to see if there was anything I could do. The doctor informed me I had SPEWS, Sweaty Palms and Excessive Wetness Syndrome, and that there is really nothing I could do.
Flash forward to this summer. By all accounts, Brian Brohm's improvement from last season has been less than significant, and he is attributing it to having sweaty palms. To combat this, he is wearing gloves. I'm no persperologist, but I can say that his symptoms of overly sweaty hands sounds a lot like a case of SPEWS, and no glove, not even this magical one, is going to stop it. As a fellow sufferer of SPEWS I can fully relate to what Brian Brohm is going through. Society looks down their dry noses at people with sweaty palms, always considering them to be feeling guilty of something or feeling overly nervous. This is far from the truth, as I am in fact ridiculously confident in myself, and I think Brohm is too. Just read his comments after a less than stellar performance against the Browns. This guy is not nervous and doesn't feel guilty for throwing two picks (they really weren't his fault anyway). The only thing he is guilty of is being born with three times the number of normal sweat glands on his hands, shame on you all for criticizing and making fun of a man's medical condition.
I'm glad I could help shed some light on Brohm's predicament and open the eyes of Packers' fans. Support is the best way of overcoming SPEWS…that, and a waist band towel and wrist bands made of ShamWows! Seriously. It worked for me. Replace after each quarter, Brian, and you should fine…I just don't know if the glove will work against SPEWS. Best of luck.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
SPEWS Is No Laughing Matter
5 comments:
My cousin had SPEWS really bad during puberty his freshman year at Manawa. But, he was all state at wrestling too that year. I think the intense sweating had something to do with it (helps to escape holds, etc.), because he was only a .500 wrestler the rest of his high school career. Never thought about it until now.ReplyDelete
Maybe Brohm should start jerking it more. Doesn't that give you hairy palms or something?ReplyDelete
Stay classy, D, stay classy.ReplyDelete
Why doesn't he get one of those sleves like ahman green??ReplyDelete
He tried it, it slid right off. True.ReplyDelete
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Steps and Reps
- Town Square Community Center 492 Hill Street Green Lake, WI, 54941 United States (map)
Fitness Trainer, Pam Alf is back by popular demand to offer Steps & Reps on Tuesday mornings. This class is geared towards women who are middle aged and older looking to improve their cardiovascular endurance and muscle strength through a cardio and weightlifting.
A drop-in rate is $5.00 is available or $60.oo for the full series. Fees can be paid directly to the instructor. No pre-registration required.
- Posted in Wellness
- Tagged pam alf, fitness, wellness, green lake, steps and reps


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How Cold Is It Really In America?
We have been pretty lucky so far this winter - since we don't live in the North East and haven't had to deal with a Polar Vortex! We haven't had sub-zero temperatures or even very many days of frosted windows. So how cold is it really in America?


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How are my transfer credits evaluated?
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Every weekend, The Eye of Photography dedicates itself to the portfolios of its readers. By publishing the best portfolios, the magazine enables photographers around the world to show case their photographs. To participate, please send your portfolios to email@example.com with: – A series of 12 to 15 photographs (jpg, 72dpi 1024 pixels) – A Text about the series with a Title (English and French...
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This weekend only, until Sunday, February 24th, the Google LG Nexus 4 is free on contract with T-Mobile after a $ 50 mail-in rebate card. The Nexus 4 is still one of the best Android phones available right now, and is without a doubt the best route to take if you want to experience Android exactly as Google wants. The free on contract Nexus comes with 16GB of on-board memory, as well as the usual quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 8 megapixel camera and 4.7-inch 1280 x 769 display.
While it seems a portion of the American market is finally beginning the transition from the post-paid two year contract phone model over to no-commitment prepaid offerings (just look at this T-Mobile growth), there are still millions of contract subscribers out there. If you happen to be one of those people who have been eyeing the Nexus 4, and youâre looking to sign on with T-Mobile, then you couldnât have picked a better time.


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Boys Basketball: Amity Spartans Win Housatonic Division Title
By PHIL BRODSKY
Orange Live Sports Writer
Sponsored by Maid Brigade of Derby
With Thursday night's 75-60 home victory over Shelton, the Amity boys basketball team improved its Southern Connecticut Conference—Housatonic Division record to 7-1 (13-4 overall) and clinched its first Housy title since the 2006-2007 season. In addition, his three point play with 2 minutes, 18 seconds left in the game, gave Spartan senior Zac Campbell 1001 career points. He became the ninth player in Spartan history to score over 1000 career points and the first Spartan to join the 1000 point club since Bob Coppola in 1999. In addition to his 22 points, Campbell also grabbed a game-high 12 rebounds.
"We knew that if we beat Shelton, we'd finish 7-1 and win then Housy, but we really didn't talk about it," Coach Jeff Nielsen said. "After our poor offensive effort against Hamden earlier in the week, we wanted to focus on ball movement, sharing the ball, finding the open man, and scoring easy baskets."
The score was tied at 11-11 with 3:28 left in the first quarter when Campbell, Gardner Broderick, and Dave Ryan canned consecutive drives to give the Spartans a 17-11 lead that they never yielded. Campbell closed out the opening session with a three at the buzzer that extended that lead to 20-12. Playing one of their best quarters of the season, Amity netted eight of its 14 shots (57%) and outrebounded the Gaels 10-7.
One minute into the second quarter, Gardner Broderick cashed in on a steal, was fouled and added a free throw that gave the Spartans a 25-12 advantage. When Broderick followed that by scoring off a perfect feed from Ben LeVine to complete a 16-1 run and extend the lead to 27-12 with 4:45 left in the first half.
Christian Federici (who cashed out with a team-high 14 points) scored on a put back that drew Shelton within eight points (32-24) with 1:07 to go, but consecutive lay-ups in the final 35 seconds, enabled the Spartans to walk off with a 36-24 advantage. Amity ended the first half hitting 15 of 29 shots (52%) while the Gaels were good on 10 of their 23 tries from the floor, but also missed nine of 12 from the foul line.
Following that red-hot start, Amity came out stone cold in the second half, missing eight of its first nine shots.
According to Nielsen, "Shelton went to a zone defense at the start of the second half. Instead of taking the ball inside, we began to settle for perimeter jump shots. Finally, we got back on track, took the ball to the hole, and maintained our lead."
Despite their frigid second half start, the Spartans hung onto their commanding lead as Shelton scored only one field goal during the first half of the third quarter. With 38 seconds left and his team still trailing 48-37, Ben Malay swished a trey. Shortly thereafter, the Gaels' Casey Belade gunned home a three ball from deep in the corner to make it a 10 point game (50-40).
Midway into the final session, LeVine made successive pin-point feeds inside to Matt Lettick (16 points,) and Remi Farrell. Those easy scores enabled Amity to make it 60-45 and put the game out of reach.
Nielsen added, "Tonight, we played one of our best games of the season. Our defense was the best it has been. In addition we got inside and hit the glass hard. Our offensive rebounding was excellent tonight and gave us a lot of scoring opportunities."
Amity narrowly outboarded the game, but outgunned Gaels 32-31 but also connected on 31 of its 66 shots (47%) while Shelton netted 23 of its 51 tries (45%). The 7-1-, 3-5 losers were good on only 10 of 19 from the foul line, compared to Amity's 11 of 17 performance.
In addition to Federici's 14 points. Michael Davis dropped in 11 points while Malay and Craig Packnick each tallied 10 for Shelton. Packnick also grabbed a team-best seven rebounds.
While most of the attention was focused on Campbell, Nielsen also made special note of Broderick's 19 point-five rebound performance.
He said, "Gardner is very smart and smooth inside with a very soft touch. His big key to success is his ability to score easy baskets from down the paint. Tonight, he got us off to a good start."
Amity is at Hand on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
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DescriptionThe IPv4 protocol continues to be valuable in the modern workplace and this course will get you completely up to speed with it. More than just becoming comfortable with the IPv4 protocol, you'll also be prepared for any networking certification or Computer Science degree exam, or even Cisco certifications.
Details & Requirements


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Born in Buenos Aires, Guillermo Guerrero began his professional career in 1938. He initially was the assistant of Lino Palacio for a period of 9 years. His first comic was 'Villa Mosquete, 1625' and it was published in the newspaper Diario La Razón. In 1947 he joined Guillermo Divito's team of artists for the magazine Rico Tipo. He remained with this magazine until its demise in 1973.
Guerrero has additionally contributed to magazines like Don Fulgencio, Bicho Feo, El Laborista, El Hogar, Mundo Deportivo, Antena, Tip-Bits, Campeón, El Trencito, La Revista Dislocada, Tibor Gordon, Popurrí, Figuritas, Avivato, Bomba H, Afanancio, Piantadino, Loco lindo and Picardía y Petitera.
Mosca Kid (Lupin #217, October 1983)
A pilot himself, Guerrero is best known as the creator of 'Lupín, el Piloto'. The character first appeared in Capicua y Piantadino magazine in 1959, and later on it got its own title. He has created comic characters like 'Leré Leré', 'Tatita', 'Riverito y Bocarin', 'Canelón el utilero', 'Rubita', 'Tanguito y Langosta', 'Al Feñique', 'Piedrito y Saurito', 'Lupin, el piloto' and 'Moscakid'.
Piedrito y Saurito (Lupin magazine #218, November 1983)


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Linear Lighting Overview
Armstrong Ceilings and XAL Lighting present the new integrated lighting system that integrates perfectly to create a monolithic linear ceiling design. Easy to install from below and zero plenum interference.
Symmetry is beautiful.
Armstrong and XAL Lighting are making it easier than ever to create inspiring ceiling designs with higher ceiling heights, zero plenum interference, and on-center discontinuous layouts that provide clean, modern aesthetics. Our integrated system design allows the new high-performance XAL LENO Zero Plenum LED luminaire to be installed from below to eliminate ceiling rework when specified with factory-finished Armstrong ceiling panels and the Prelude 15 XL2 suspension system.
The new XAL Leno Zero Plenum luminaire integrates with the Armstrong suspension system to provide:
- Discontinuous on-center linear lighting layouts – Inspiring symmetry to match your building design.
- Zero interference - Eliminates interference with mechanicals in the plenum.
- Zero construction coordination - Install from below to speed construction.
- Verified lighting parametrics and visuals - High-performance, energy-efficient LED lighting for any space.
Application Areas
- Meeting Room
- Office
- Open Space


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PTSD duplicate
KEVA planks, the military and PTSD
We honor our service members who sacrifice for the good of our nation. KEVA is proud to be a small part of the solution for soldiers who have suffered emotionally or physically from their service. Contact us for more information about Therapeutic uses of KEVA planks.
Extremely Helpful During
Therapeutic Sessions
"I need to thank you for the set of KEVA planks you gave me to try out with our Service Members. [At the American Art Therapy Association Conference] They have been extremely helpful during therapeutic sessions, particularly in building rapport (nice pun) and with those who are working on dexterity, as well as the occasional Service Members who are resistant to the art initially. I have some pretty incredible photos of the things the Service Members have built. I even had to set up a special session with a Service Member that involved a ladder and a hard-headed goal of reaching the NICoE ceiling. Haha.
Anyway, I definitely plan on ordering one of your big bins of planks and thank you for your attendance at AATA and recognizing that KEVA Planks may be a beneficial modality for this population.
Hope you are well and I would love to be in touch."
M. Walker, MA ATR
Art Therapist/Healing Arts Program Coordinator


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well, hello everyone!
yes, i am still alive!
i have received some kind, concerned emails
asking of my whereabouts lately
and wondering why i haven't updated my blog
in sooooooooo long
well, honestly...
i don't have a good excuse at all my friends
truth be told... i had a lot on my plate
and one of the first things that i removed from my plate was my blog
i know... bad blogger
but hey! here is a quick run down
of what's been happening in my little corner of the world
these past few months
i turned 35!
yes, i am officially over the hill (or was i already? and just didn't know it?)
and i feel good about it
my first born, my zoe
turned 8 years old!
yes, 8....
she is still the sweetest little girl i know
with the biggest sweet tooth!
she has been wanting an American Girl forever
so that's what we did for her birthday
and pretty much
we have just been enjoying summer and all it has to offer
we have been camping
berry picking
taken multiple trips to the waterslides
have gone on numerous ice cream dates
watched some fireworks
and had a picnic lunch
we pretty much have checked off every single item on the girls' summer list
we hope to wrap up this wonderful summer with our annual trip to the fair
happy week friends and thank you so much for the concerned emails, tweets
and messages
ps. i may not have time to update my blog regularly.. but you can find me here
on instagram
it's a lot easier to update more regularly because it's instant and mobile!


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I want to know how i can save the path of an moving object for certain period of time (80 second for example) using GPS/GSM shield from arduino??
if i want to print this data (path) out from Arduino Mega2560, is it possible
and how ?
I'm not sure if there is an SD or others
but if i want to record or save the data on microcontroller (of Arduino mega2560)!!
and about output the data (path), how to take it as hardcopy ? (maybe first using Serial.print())!!
I want to save once a second continuously for 1 minute totally, and yeah i know that its bunch of discrete latitude and longitude values


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Attention liberals: Get ready for your "Exorcist" moment, courtesy of Sarah Palin.
The ex-Alaska governor told Fox News' Sean Hannity Wednesday that she expected her critics' "heads are just going to be spinning" over her anti-PC take on the Fort Hood shooting – namely, that authorities should have "profiled" accused gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to prevent the November 5 attack that killed 13 people.
She added that she wasn't shy about calling the violence a "terrorist act."
"I think that there were massive warning flags that were missed all over the place and I think that it was quite unfortunate that, to me, it was a fear of being politically incorrect to not -- I am going to use the word -- profile this guy -- profile in the sense of finding out what his radical beliefs were," Palin said.
"Now, because I used the word 'profile' I am going to get clobbered tomorrow morning," Palin continued. "The liberals, their heads are just going to be spinning. They're going to say 'she is radical, she is extreme.' "
Palin's Fox stop was her latest high profile appearance since kicking off her "Going Rogue" book tour this week with a series of TV interviews and signings in conservative battleground states. Her "Oprah" appearance earlier this week boosted the show's ratings to their highest point in two years. ABC has been doling out snippets of Palin's interview with Barbara Walters since Tuesday.
In an interview with conservative news website Newsmax, Palin didn't shoot down the idea of a 2012 Palin-Beck ticket, praising Hannity's bomb-throwing Fox News colleague, who might be the only person in America who makes liberals angrier than Palin does.
"I can envision a couple of different combinations, if ever I were to be in a position to really even seriously consider running for anything in the future, and I'm not there yet," Palin told Newsmax. "But Glenn Beck I have great respect for. He's a hoot."
After making their heads spin on Hannity's show, Palin likely had her liberal critics scratching their noggins when she finally disclosed her regular news reading list. Last year, she famously fumbled the question when it was posed by CBS host Katie Couric, leading critics to ridicule her as ill-informed. But when asked the same question a year later by Hannity, Palin listed three regular sources:
A. Newsmax.
B. Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman – a Wasilla-based newspaper published three times a week.
C. The Wall Street Journal – that's right, fancy-pants.
On Hannity, Palin also spoke out about her feud with David Letterman. The late night host apologized earlier this year after his joke about Palin's young daughter getting "knocked up" by Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez bombed, but has since resumed targeting Palin with monologue jokes.
"It's sexist and it's — it exploits an innocent child and — and I don't think it's cool," Palin said. "I don't think it's funny.
"I'm not out for vindication. But I'm thinking practically, economically, in — in terms of David Letterman, is that I don't want to boost his ratings. So, no, I have no desire to."


text:
History: 2011 – Present
Status: Active
Style: Hard Rock
Roxy, Eve, Taly, Astrid and Kery are all maidens whose veins are filled with the energy of distortions. Recently, the band embarked on the natural evolutionary turning point, inspired by experiences on stage and off, ventured into writing original songs, which are offered among the successes of the Runaways on stage. Latterly, Jam joined the band on drums, replacing Astrid, so now the new line up is ready to set the stages on fire!
In March, 2014 the Demo ROAD TO LURZ (recorded with Astrid on drums in October, 2013) is finally available!
Follow them to the… "ROAD TO LURZ"… THEY'LL DRIVE YOU WILD!
Valentina Cellini (EVE): Lead Guitar
Martina Zoccolini (ROXY): Rythm guitar
Erika Bastianelli (KERY): Bass guitar
Laura Tirelli (JAM): Drums


text:
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! This year really has been wonderful and I have so many things to be thankful for: my dear husband whom I love with all of my heart, our sweet new puppy (and my first EVER), Tate, our family, great friends, our health, and this lovely little blog of mine that has brought so much richness to my life. I am so thankful for each and every one of you. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with the people you love!
Image Credit: emersonmade


text:
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December 21, 2007
CR Holiday Interview #6: Tim Hodler on the Year in Art Comics
Despite having worked on some of the initial issues of
The Ganzfeld
, the writer Tim Hodler didn't show up on my radar until the debut of
Comics Comics
, kind of an ad-less
Comics Buyer's Guide
if the Spiegelman/Mouly
and the Claremont/Byrne
had switched commercial and cultural places 25-30 years ago. Hodler's writing on comics is smart and to the point. It isn't designed to get himself over with a perceived audience. It's not a wedge to get the author's foot in the door for a career writing comics. He doesn't rant, or even vent. What he does is carefully analyze each book in a way where it seems as if he's come to every comic he talks about with wide-open eyes and a complete lack of agenda or obvious bias. I was pleased that he decided to talk to me a bit about himself, his work and the year in art/alt comics now fading. -- Tom Spurgeon
Where the heck did you come from? Suddenly I turn around and you're writing and you're married to a prominent alt-cartoonist and you're working with
. What did I miss? I take it you're an artist, or that you've done art?
You didn't miss much, really. I'm not an artist at all, outside of the occasional mindless doodle, though I've taken a few courses in drawing here and there. Besides the handful of short comics stories I did as a child, the only comics I've ever published were two stories I wrote and drew in college for my school's student-run annual comics anthology,
. Both of them were pretty awkward and sophomoric, though people seemed to think they were funny at the time. I was going for a
Doug Allen
type of vibe, and was very proud to have successfully figured out how to use a brush.
I attended
Washington University in St. Louis
, where I majored in English literature (thesis on
D.H. Lawrence
) and minored in religious and film studies. That's where I first met a lot of the people who I still know very well, including my wife
Lauren [Weinstein]
and my
Comics Comics
Dan [Nadel]
In my senior year, I became the editor of the aforementioned
, along with another good friend, Patrick Smith, and we actually published Lauren's very first comic strips. At the time, I was also the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper's weekly entertainment magazine,
, where I published and edited an early column by Dan called
Hey Kids! Comics!
, in which the young legendary anthologist- and publisher-to-be regularly and strenuously promoted the idea that comics weren't just for children anymore. (I should dig some of those old articles out and post them on the
Comics Comics
blog to embarrass him some time.) I also asked a really funny guy named
Marc Deckter
to draw a comic strip for the magazine which I thought was hilarious, though many people seemed to find it idiotic. This fueled my youthful imagination with the idea that Marc was the
George Herriman
to my
William Randolph Hearst
. (Last I heard, Marc's now working for
John Kricfalusi
, by the way, which is perfect.)
After I graduated, I moved to
New York
and worked in the book publishing industry for a couple years as a scouting assistant, which allowed me the opportunity to read literally hundreds of terrible and not-so-terrible not-yet-published novels (one of our clients was
Oprah Winfrey
, which meant I got to read a lot of empowering stories about recovering from domestic abuse). Dan and Patrick moved to New York the following year, and in 1999, the three of us co-founded and edited
The Ganzfeld
, which, if you haven't read the first issue, was much different then than it is today. We wrote almost all of the contents ourselves (I did most of the unbylined "humor" pieces), and Patrick drew a really amazing wordless comic -- somewhat reminiscent of a collaboration between
Jim Woodring
Richard McGuire
-- that I still hear admiring comments about from cartoonists to this day. Patrick's gone on to do some very remarkable work in painting (
) and on the Web (
), but apparently got comics out of his system in one go. His new stuff is so great that it's had to fault him for that, but I'm still sorry I never got to read any more of his comics.
Anyway, we got a surprisingly positive and welcoming response to the first issue of
The Ganzfeld
, but due to various creative disagreements about the direction of the magazine, the partnership broke up. Patrick left after the first issue came out, and I left shortly before we finished putting the final touches on the second. At the time, it all seemed like a monumental tragedy, but I think it worked out in the end. We were all young and stupid (well, Patrick wasn't). Dan ended up turning
The Ganzfeld
into a fantastic publication of a much more professional and impressive kind, and it eventually led him to PictureBox and all of his various other endeavors. I left book publishing at around that time, and have since worked as a writer and researcher for New York and Details magazines. Also around that time, Lauren was pitching an animated series to
, and she asked me to help her write it. Nothing ever came of the series (more proof of my Midas touch), but it led to us getting married in 2005, so that was good. Around then, Dan and I patched up our differences, which by that time seemed petty and unimportant, and Dan generously asked me to start contributing to
The Ganzfeld
again, specifically pushing for a long story on
Steve Gerber
. That ended up not seeming appropriate for
The Ganzfeld
, but by that point,
Comics Comics
had been born.
Can you describe your comics reading from the point it intensified until now? Did you grow up reading comics and the move into different types of comics like a lot of readers? Is there a comics reading experience that you remember as being particularly important in terms of still having a echo effect today?
You shouldn't ask that question unless you have a lot of time to kill... I was one of those kids who year after year, when assigned to write a research paper or something like that, would always find an excuse to make it about cartooning. I think I wrote the history of comics five or six years in a row for different classes. (It helped that I moved a lot as a child, which helped me to cover my tracks.) I'd check out every book of and about comics from the library over and over again, which gave me a somewhat skewed sense of the form. Because for some strange reason, despite how much I loved comics in general, I very rarely read actual current comic books. I didn't grow up following
Bill Sienkiewicz
Kevin Nowlan
the way Dan and
Frank [Santoro]
did. For the most part, the only superhero comics I read were the ones my mother bought me during long trips or when I stayed home sick from school. Most of the superhero comics I read came from the historical reprints at the library, so I've read many more Golden and Silver Age Superman and Batman stories than I have stories from when I actually grew up. (I'm more nostalgic for work by
Curt Swan
Dick Sprang
than I am for work by
John Byrne
or someone like that.)
After the library, probably the most important source of comic-book reading for me was a big metal bucket of old comics I found in the basement of my grandparents' farm in Kansas. The bucket was filled to the brim with great 1960s comics owned by my father and his sisters as children, and I used to read them over and over again every summer when we visited. There was lots of
(which I loved),
Harvey Comics
romance comics
(not my thing then), and best of all at the time,
. It was pretty great to read those incredibly bizarre stories about time travel, UFOs, flying dogs, and monsters all converging on a farm in small-town Kansas, all while staying up late at night with a flashlight in a spooky basement bedroom on a farm in small-town Kansas.
Other than that, I was a huge fan of newspaper strips, particularly enjoying
Dennis the Menace
(for a while, I used to clip out and paste the strips into a scrapbook),
Bloom County
(I collected all of the books and read and reread them unendingly),
The Far Side
(ditto), and
Calvin & Hobbes
(ditto). I got a subscription to
at 12 or so, and read every issue to pieces for years. I also used to love
, which gave me my first exposure to people like Daniel Clowes and Peter Bagge. It's funny the stuff you can get exposed to as a child through comics. Because no one back then thought of comics as anything other than kids' stuff, the cartoon books I checked out from the library introduced me to things like
Little Annie Fanny
Harvey Pekar's
American Splendor
long before I had any way to understand them.
In high school, I finally started checking out current superhero comics, starting with the
X-Men Classic
reprints of
Chris Claremont
and John Byrne's run, and soon branching out into
The Dark Knight Returns
, etc. Once I started buying things like
Arkham Asylum
Bernie Wrighton's
The Cult
, I began feeling disillusioned with superhero comics, and moved on to more sophisticated stuff like
Neil Gaiman's
. I think I read
for the first time around then, too.
It's hard to remember if I've got the chronology exactly right, but I was a huge fan of
The Simpsons
back then (I'm one of the few people in the world who prefers the very early, very raw seasons to what came later -- it felt closer in spirit to
Life in Hell
to me), and I remember buying a stand-alone promotional magazine for the show that included a "top 100" list by
Matt Groening
. [
You can find a typo-ridden reproduction of the list on the sidebar of this Web page
] I'm the type of person who will take a list like that and try to track down everything on it, and this was the motherlode. Groening introduced me to many amazing artists and things here, not just cartoonists like
Lynda Barry
Peter Bagge
, and Jim Woodring, but many oddball movies, books, and music it might have taken me years to learn about otherwise. It didn't take me long to track down every issue I could find of
(my local comic-shop owner kindly neglected to ask for proof of age), and it was all downhill from there.
Actually, I could easily keep going from there -- I haven't mentioned tons of stuff that had a major impact on me, from
The Comics Journal
, and
Bill Blackbeard
's anthologies to
Paper Rodeo
-- but your readers' eyes were probably glazing over a few paragraphs ago, so I'll cut it off now before I really wear out my welcome.
You talked a bit in one
Comics Comics
post about learning a lot from letters page of alternative comics. How specifically was that experience valuable to you? Was it just in their recommending other comics?
I might have used a little bit of hyperbole in that post, but the letters pages in
, and
Love & Rockets
did have a huge effect on me. When I first started reading those comics, I hadn't even heard of
The Comics Journal
looked irredeemably stupid to me even as a child), and as I'd never been to a really good, well-stocked comics store, I was barely aware that the alternative comics scene even existed. I certainly had no idea of the extent of it. Most of the books I'd checked out from the library made no more than passing mentions of the underground comics world, and I had only a vague awareness of
. Bagge, Clowes, and the Hernandez brothers all ran really great letters pages and supplemental material, leading me to discover everyone from
Chester Brown
Julie Doucet
to I don't even remember. Everyone, it seems like.
So it was mostly the recommendations, I guess, but also the way they seemed to open up a secret world, full of weird, interesting people who knew all about weird, interesting (and important) bits of culture that no one else around me had ever heard of. For whatever reason, I've always been attracted to the esoteric, and the letters pages and editorial material in those comics gave me a passkey to a world I'd never realized even existed. I was also amazed at the way these cartoonists responded to their readers -- these were regular, funny, smart guys, people like me and my friends. I'd always thought artists were some kind of alien creature before. It was a really appealing concept to a nerdy teenager who didn't feel like he was really a nerd.
How did
Comics Comics
start, exactly?
According to Dan, it had its earliest origins during a long, semi-intoxicated conversation he and Frank had at Dan's apartment after a long comics-buying spree around Christmas of 2005. Apparently, in Dan's words, they started talking about how no one ever wrote about the "retarded" comics they liked, and half-seriously decided to start a fanzine about them. A few months later, Dan, Frank, and I went to one of those sort-of-depressing Big Apple comics conventions in Manhattan, and it was really amazingly fun. I'd never met Frank before, or anyone like him, really, and it was a complete trip watching as he and Dan sought out the best tables full of old obscure comics, most of which were incredibly cheap because the vast bulk of convention attendees had no interest in them. (The most popular table there allowed attendees to get their picture taken with two half-naked non-celebrity young Asian women. Very creepy.) Anyway, it was a great time. Dan and Frank have forgotten more about comics history than I'll ever know, and they're really inspiring to listen to. They don't think about comics in the same way most people do. I think maybe a week or two after that, Dan asked me to come on board to help edit Comics Comics. It all came together really quickly at that point.
How do you see the magazine's mission as distinct from everything else that's out there? I'm particularly interested in why you felt a new magazine was necessary instead of your guys offering your voices through other outlets, blogs or a column in an existing magazine?
I don't know if we really care so much about being distinct as a specific goal, except in as far as we want the magazine to honestly reflect our tastes and interests, rather than just cover whatever comics are the toasts
du jour
. For the most part, we've tried to avoid covering the big names that already garner most of the coverage in the wider world these days, the Cloweses and
s and
s and
s (though we've written about all of them at least tangentially on either the blog or in the magazine, so it's not a hard-and-fast rule), not because they aren't deserving, but because so much has already been written. They certainly aren't our primary focus, anyway, and when we do write about them, we try to do it from new angles. We also try not to restrict ourselves to comics that are published during a certain period, as most magazines are more or less forced to do by the market -- we don't need a "hook" to write about
Frank Miller's
or Alex Raymond's
Secret Agent X-9
Wally Wood's
if we feel like it. Finally, we try as hard as possible to include as many pieces and articles by actual, working cartoonists as we can. That's a really important one for us.
As far as being a magazine instead of a Website goes, we never really even considered it. I mean, all three of us have been influenced and inspired by zine culture, and making money wasn't really a priority. Originally, we were being published by Laris Kreslins, formerly of
, and
Comics Comics
was intended to work in a similar way to Arthur: as a free advertiser-driven magazine given away in record stores and coffee shops and clubs and places. Surprisingly, advertisers didn't seem to think articles about
Ogden Whitney
Dick Ayers
were going to appeal to the hip young people with money to spend, which led to some problems, and then Laris ran into some difficulties with his partners at
and had to bow out, so after the first issue, Dan decided to publish
I think we all really like having something down on paper in any case; it feels more real than a web site, even though far fewer people probably actually read it. It's also makes it easier to include new comics and art, and publish it on a large scale. We would probably never have gotten to see
Justin Green's Perpetual Calendar
if we'd been online-only -- that alone is a good enough reason to my mind. We started the blog solely as a way to promote the print version of the magazine, and possibly drum up some more advertiser interest back when that was still a concern. The blog's turned out to be a lot of fun in the meantime, though, and ironically, is now probably better known than the magazine itself. That's okay.
I'm not sure how long we'll be able to continue with this format in the current market (though sales have been very good, all things considered), and we've had some very tentative discussions about eventually moving to a more book-like perfect-bound format that could get us into more standard bookstores, but for now we're going to keep doing it for as long as we can. That we've gotten such a positive response so far has been extremely gratifying.
Oh, and I just realized I didn't answer the part of the question you're particularly interested: why we felt like we had to start a magazine of our own instead of working within existing publications. I can't speak for Dan and Frank, but I don't think it was for any grand kind of reason other than being able to do whatever we wanted without feeling like we had to answer to anybody else. That's why we didn't make any major changes after the first issue made it clear that advertisers weren't going to be interested. I wish I had a nobler answer, but I think that's it -- we just didn't want to be practical about it. And other than distribution issues, there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it this way.
If Rich Kreiner's recent review of
Comics Comics
in the
Comics Journal
was too kind
, what would you say he was too kind about? Where do you see the publication improving?
Oh, plenty of things, starting with my writing, which isn't nearly as incisive as I'd like it to be. I think our line-to-line editing has improved with each issue, but we haven't been as consistent with that as we should've been, which is especially apparent in the first issue. We've gotten better each time out, but we still have a ways to go before every story is at the same level of quality. I've also been amazed that no one has criticized the number of typos and production errors in the second issue, which I almost can't look at without feeling ashamed.
Commentators have generally been far kinder about our ideas and supposed originality than I think we deserve, too, which may say more about the low bar in comics criticism these days than it does about
's actual quality. In general, I think it all needs to be a lot tighter than it is right now. It would also be great if we could attract a few more regular contributors with interesting voices (we've been very lucky so far, but we still need more). I think it might be fun to have some angry, controversial columnist (one that's actually smart and on point, I should clarify) who gets the whole comics world talking and arguing with every issue. In the meantime, I'm glad that it's improved with every issue, but it's important that we don't stop trying to improve. I'd also love to hear more from our readers about what they'd like to see. We'll probably ignore any suggestions we don't like, but it couldn't hurt.
This makes it all sound like I'm down on our magazine, but I'm really not. I think the combination of our three sensibilities makes for an interesting mix -- we have similar but not identical tastes and bases of knowledge, and three very different ways of thinking about comics. Being a cartoonist, Frank obviously has a firm grasp on the actual mechanics of making comics, and very strong opinions on artistic methods that are rarely widely discussed. Dan's got an encyclopedic knowledge of comics and design history, and is never afraid to take provocative, controversial opinions. Sometimes he can seem a little flippant, and it gets in people's noses, but there's almost always a very smart, well-considered basis to what he's saying. What I mean to say is that Dan's not only knows what he's talking about, but he's almost always right, too. And it's been wonderful working with so many accomplished, talented artists. Writing in the same pages as
Kim Deitch
or Peter Bagge or
Gary Panter
is really a great thrill.
How would you describe your general critical outlook when it comes to comics? What generally interests you, what makes a good work a great work, or do you even have standards that work that way? If it helps, is there a cartoonist or work or a few cartoonists and works that you champion that you feel maybe not a lot of others support with your passion?
I'm generally not the type of person who has a single over-arching theory or definition that I use to judge different kinds of comics. A
Johnny Craig
crime comic works in a different way than a
Harvey Kurtzman
Will Elder
humor story does, and the humor story works differently than a science fiction story by Wood, and it seems to me that any successful example of any of these three types would work for some very different reasons -- and that's all without leaving the realm of EC Comics!
Generally, though, I think I look for a few things: (1) writing that doesn't insult my intelligence as a reader, (2) art that serves the story's purposes (this obviously works differently with wordless and primarily art-driven comics than it does in other cases, but it's still a general principle for me – the art and the writing should not be working at cross-purposes), (3) work which reflects the personality of the creator(s). There's probably also a (4), (5), and (6) that I can't think of now, but basically I like comics that can make me laugh, feel, or understand something I hadn't thought of before. Or that simply marvel at the skill it took to make me laugh at, feel, or understand something I
thought of before. Those are good comics. A great comic is one you can read and re-read and continue to re-read and always find something new in it. I feel like this is an unsatisfying answer, but a satisfying answer would be different for every comic.
As far as the last part of your question goes, the aforementioned Will Elder gets plenty of lip service, but I wish more modern-day cartoonists followed his example in terms or how he actually worked. I count his stories as among the best of all time, so incredibly dense with detail and life and exuberance. There's so much in every panel, and he utilized the comics medium to its fullest extent, telling stories in a way that could never be told in any other form. His sense of timing alone is marvelous. But it's really the density that I love. There are a few contemporary cartoonists who seem to have really gotten what Elder was doing and have adopted some of his techniques (Clowes, Crumb, etc.), but not nearly as many as I personally would like to see. Of course, there's more than one way to tell a comics story, and I wouldn't want everyone to go down this road, but I still wish it wasn't quite so untraveled.
Do you really look like
Walter Becker from Steely Dan?
Sean T. Collins is the first person
who has ever said so
, at least to my knowledge, though I guess I can sort of see it. Becker's got at least twenty-five years on me, for what that's worth. Anyway, you can judge for yourself --
here's a photograph taken recently by a stranger on the subway
(By the way, despite Lauren's comment to that post,
Gene Wolfe
is only one of my favorite writers, not my absolute top pick, which varies from day to day -- today, I'd probably go with
Stanley Elkin
. Also, and this is not really important, but I don't recommend the particular novel I'm reading in that picture, which is Wolfe's first and weakest.
The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories
(not a typo) is great, though.)
What are a few of the best comics that you read this year? Why?
I've made it a general unwritten policy not to talk too much about PictureBox books on the blog or in the magazine, but Dan's had such an amazing year that it's more or less unavoidable this time around.
Cold Heat
New Engineering
Powr Mastrs
: these would all be book-of-the-year candidates for me if I was the type to pick a book of the year.
Powr Mastrs
especially struck me as maybe my favorite full-length debut in an extremely long time. I haven't been that enthralled by sheer storytelling talent and invention in years. There were some great comics in the latest
as well, and I love
Matthew Thurber
Jon Vermilyea's
Cold Heat Special
was terrific, too, and I can't wait to read future stuff by him. I liked his
Princes of Time
as well, though I think that might be too old.
I think both Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez have been doing incredible work in the past few years, and 2007 was no exception.
Love & Rockets
was one of the series' strongest issues ever, in my opinion, and Gilbert's output in particular this year has been simply amazing -- I can't really understand how he can maintain such a high level of quality in so many different titles (
Chance in Hell
Speak of the Devil
). I think people have unfairly overlooked Peter Bagge's
Apocalypse Nerd
, which got better and deeper with every issue, and eventually turned into something unique and darkly funny -- it's the best thing he's done since the regular
series ended. I'm also a big fan of
Richard Sala
, and am really following
in its serialized form.
Gabrielle Bell
's new issue of
was terrific -- it's great to see her stretching out and telling different kinds of stories.
is starting to come into its own -- I'm still not a fan of everything in it, but it's gone from a maybe-if-I'm-flush purchase to a regular one.
The free comic book day giveaway from Lynda Barry
was a must-read, for certain. And after a somewhat slow start, I've found myself pretty caught up in
Mr. Wonderful
serial in the
What else? I'm sure I'm forgetting at least half-a-dozen things, even without mentioning all the amazing reprints (
Fletcher Hanks
Krazy Kat
Dick Tracy
New Gods
Devil Dinosaur
Little Lulu
, et cetera) we're blessed with these days. There are many more of those I could name. (I would like to get the
Amazing Fantasy Omnibus
for Christmas.) I haven't read a lot of the comics that came out this year that I might have wanted to cite if I had (I haven't had a chance to read
Elvis Road
, for example, or the new Chris Ware books that just came out, or most of the
First Second line
, among many other things.) Guilty pleasure-wise, I don't think it came out this year, but I really enjoyed the first paperback collection of
, which is kind of totally stupid, but also manages to capture the kind of goofy rapture I remember from old superhero comics better than anything I've seen from the Big Two in a long time. I'm not sure if later issues keep delivering the goods, but if they do, and this interview was taking place a month or two in our future, I'd probably list it, too.
I want to draw you out a bit further on some of the following.
First up:
Dark, confounding, exhilarating, intense, inspirational. I think it's one of the most strikingly intimate autobiographical comics ever I've ever read, and it's going to be copied a lot in every way but the ones that count. Readers new to Chippendale are probably better off starting with the more immediately accessible
, but they definitely shouldn't skip this one. And when they do read it, they shouldn't worry about getting everything right away -- it doesn't take long to get past the learning curve, but there's no real way to avoid it, either.
Exit Wounds
I was really surprised how much I liked this, as it seems like so much art about politically charged subjects like this one potentially is bog down in polemics. The actual book couldn't be further from what I expected. It's really well done. I love [Rutu] Modan's drawings and her use of color, and all of the subtle background details. She has a great sense of character, and the dialog never felt false to me. I did think her narrative control faltered just a bit in the final chapter, as evidenced by the sudden intrusion of a lot of unnecessary first-person narration that felt out of place after the graceful storytelling that preceded it. All the same, this was a really impressive, compelling, funny, and humane book. I will read it again, and buy her next book for sure.
What about
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier
I think nearly all of the criticisms people have made of this book are true (though not always relevant), but I still really liked it. It's not a perfect book by any means, and it won't convert anyone who doesn't already like Alan Moore, but it might convert someone who doesn't already like the League. Not all of Moore's literary pastiches work (the
Fanny Hill
chapter in particular felt forced to me), but it reads like Moore was more engaged with the writing of it than in anything I've seen by him in a long, long time (I should admit that I couldn't make it through
, and couldn't bring myself to spend $75 for
Lost Girls
), and he finally follows up here on the multimedia innovations I've been waiting for ever since Watchmen. The first two volumes of the
are brisk, impressive thrillers, but they're not much more than an uncomplicated comics version of what writers have been doing in prose for a long time (see Philip Jose Farmer's
Tarzan Alive
and Kim Newman's
Anno Dracula
for two recent and prominent examples). In this book, for the first time, it felt like Moore was trying to dig deeper (bringing in inspirations like
Virginia Woolf
was a good idea), and exploring the subtextual implications of his project that he'd previously more or less ignored. I think a lot of people criticizing this book have misunderstood it. If it was meant to be a self-contained epic, they'd be right--the ending would be unsatisfying and self-congratulatory. But it isn't self-contained; it's a source-book, a summing up, and an intermission before the real story starts. It made me want to read the next chapter.
Shaun Tan's
The Arrival
This is a very well-executed book that explores the immigration experience through such a simple and powerful metaphor that makes it very easy to understand why it's struck such a chord with readers and reviewers. At the same time, the fantastic art elements used to depict the alien society are a little off-putting to me in their
- and
Griffin & Sabine
-like whimsy. (It's interesting to compare this book to the sequence from
where Hot Potato goes to Japan -- it's strangely similar in some ways there, though Chippendale's imagery is far less comforting.) The photo-referenced art also feels a little too on-the-nose to me (thought that might be Frank's influence talking), and in general, it feels just a little less complicated in its conception than it should be. At the same time, I think there's a very plausible argument to be made that these were appropriate choices considering the audience Tan was writing for, and on a panel-to-panel level, it's really expertly done. This isn't the kind of book I would buy for myself, but it's the kind of book a lot of other people will love, and they won't be wrong to do so.
I should probably recuse myself from discussing this, what with Frank being my colleague and all, but since you asked, it's hard not to take the opportunity to plug this book, because it may be the one that made the biggest impression on me all year. I missed it 12 years ago in its original newsprint form, but don't mind so much, because I might not have been ready for it then. I might not have been ready for it this year either, for that matter, if I hadn't forced myself to read it just because Frank's such a great guy (and because I liked
Cold Heat
so much on re-readings). As Chris Ware recounts about his own experience with the book in his introduction, I found myself similarly disappointed when I first started going through this book. The drawings seemed sloppy, the characters indistinguishable, and it felt like nothing was happening. However, this is one of those cases where you have to let the book teach you how to read it (see
, above). By the time I'd raced through the first half, I was surprised to find myself really caught up in it, and with the intensely emotional experience of the protagonist. My reading pace slowed down considerably throughout the second half, and I decided to start all over again at the beginning before I finished, because I didn't want to get to the end. It's kind of astonishing to me how guys like Frank and Brian C., who have really absorbed the methods of mainstream comics down to the marrow of their bones, can seem so capable of ignoring all the standard rules of comics storytelling and build up entirely new ways of making comics -- and still make it work. This book in particular should put the nail in the coffin of people who talk about "cold" formalism in today's comics.
Speak of the Devil
I enjoyed the first two issues of this, but wasn't quite as enthusiastic about it as Frank was in his review of the series. After the third issue, though, I was completely on board. That didn't really surprise me, because it's been my experience with many of Gilbert's serial efforts -- each installment builds expertly on the ones before it, and the almost subliminal plot threads (often astonishingly visible in retrospect) build up in a way that allows for shocking (and yet inevitable) climactic scenes. It's too early to pass final judgment on this yet, of course, but there aren't many cartoonists I trust more in terms of delivering the perfect ending.
I think this is the best comic story that Adrian Tomine's done to date -- it works really well in both its serialized and collected form, features characters who are often jerks but who are also believable and interesting, and shows just how much a cartoonist can do with the most basic tools of the comic book form (regular grid, the perfectly placed panel image, simple recurring motifs, subtle facial expressions). As with
Exit Wounds
, I felt like the final chapter suffered a little bit, this time from a romantic rival who seemed to have stepped right out of High Fidelity and an ending that didn't quite feel earned. But there was too much good in this for me to write it off. Tomine's so understated and subtle that he's easy to underrate -- his storytelling skills are formidable, but he rarely if ever draws attention to them. This is a book that repays rereading, so even though it's flawed it counts as a big success for me.
What is your take on on-line comic strips in general, and specifically
's #1 graphic novel of the year,
I don't follow very many online comic strips, which is probably my loss, though most of the ones I have seen are either terrible or are devoted to subject matter I'm not really interested in (a comic strip about purchasing and playing video games would have to be
good to keep me focused). The only two I currently read on a regular basis are
, both of which I've only been following for a few months. On a good day,
is tremendously funny, though to call it the best "graphic novel" of the year is pathetic, considering what a strong year it's been. I don't love Onstad's art, but it does the job, and he has a great gift for characterization and dialog, probably the two most important elements in a serialized humor strip. It's not all awesome, though, and I thought
the strip he did that apparently made every blogger on the internet have an orgasm
was one of the most obvious and lame jokes I've ever read.
makes me laugh at least once a week, and I have a feeling that as I become more familiar with it, I'll be laughing more often than that. I don't know
that well yet, though I've been ignoring links to it from bloggers for quite a while now. The stick figures put me off for a long time, but it can be pretty clever. Some of the computer-based humor flies right past me, so it's currently still on probation in my Google Reader feeds. I also used to enjoy
Perry Bible Fellowship
when it ran in the
New York Press
, but I stopped reading that paper years ago, and always forget to bookmark the online strip. I think I'll do that now.
I'm sure there are other good online strips worth following (especially if I was a hardcore gamer), but I'm kind of happier not knowing about them for now, for no other reason than that I'm not exactly wanting for reading material these days.
Can you talk about any experiences you've had with manga, how much of it you read, and what you like? Was there anything in 2007 that stood out? Why?
I do like manga a lot, though I've probably read less this year than I have in years past, for some reason. I loved Yokoyama's
New Engineering
(which Dan published), Tezuka's
Apollo's Song
Ode to Kirohito
(I also own
, but haven't read it yet), and liked
. I can't remember if the second volume of
Barefoot Gen
was reprinted this year or last, but I loved that, too.
Dragon Head
The Drifting Classroom
are okay, but didn't do it for me to the point where I wanted to keep going with them.
Yokoyama's like nothing I've read in comics before -- almost clinical in its humor and conception. As I posted on the blog a while back, I think Tom Kaczynski nailed it when he compared it to the appeal of
J.G. Ballard
's early science fiction. What can I say about Tezuka? I've enjoyed his comics for years, but only started to really get his work on a more than superficial level once Vertical started publishing
. I also bought and read
Astro Boy 2
this year, because I heard that it was the inspiration for
Urasawa's not-yet-published-in-English
-- and found it tremendously fun. If I had more money and was 20 years younger, I would start at the beginning and plow right through all the volumes. Maybe I'll buy it for my future kids.
has so far been compelling enough for me to stick with, but I've gotten to the point where I'm not into serial-killer thrillers unless they offer more than clever genre mechanics anymore.
shows hints of being more than that, so I plan on keeping up with it for now. I've also read many volumes of the incredibly violent quasi-medieval fantasy
this year, but I plan on writing about it for
Comics Comics
4, so I'll save my thoughts on that one.
Basically, I have nothing but respect for manga, but I don't feel any sense of personal duty about keeping up with it, either. I can easily imagine feeling otherwise if I was 12 years old and had just discovered it, though.
Is there anything your found disappointing this year, or completely ignored? What about completely misunderstood?
I completely ignored almost all of the DC crossover nonsense, most especially
and whatever its follow-up was called (
?), except for the first three issues of this new
Ra's Al Ghul
crossover, which I picked up because I thought I'd check in and see how
was doing. I don't get the appeal of these books at all, and I think Batman and Ra's Al Ghul are completely workable characters as far as pulp serial figures go. Most of DC's current output seems like stilted nonsense to me, like … what's that television show about the beautiful blonde medical coroner who's psychic and investigates crimes committed by rich people who lead hidden double lives at the S&M dungeon (which the camera lovingly lingers on far past the point where it makes dramatic sense)? That's what DC seems like to me right now, only all the characters are wearing funny tight clothing and masks. I'm sure I'm missing a few good books they are publishing, but I can't find them. Oh, I do like
All Star Superman
(the only Grant Morrison book I've really liked all the way, though even that isn't much more than good escapist fun), and I've been enjoying the train-wreck qualities of
All Star Batman & Robin
despite my better judgment. I have ignored
in general for years. In 2007, I've ignored almost all of Marvel's current output as well, though I think they do have a few decent books. I also ignored all news of comic-book-related toys, sculpture controversies, posters, "lifestyle" magazines, and speculation about movie casting.
I was disappointed by the
Wally Wood
Wally's World
, which was written in a very pedestrian style, and featured the most lackluster Chip Kidd cover design ever. I kind of don't believe he actually designed it, but that's what the book says. Wood deserves better. I was also, not disappointed exactly, but underwhelmed by
Thierry Groenstein's
System of Comics
. It's a fairly interesting piece of semiotic theory, if that floats your boat, but it had been hyped for so long as the greatest piece of comics criticism ever that I couldn't help feeling a little let down when it didn't change the way I think about comics forever. I also felt a little disappointed by
Rick Veitch's
, simply because it didn't make me laugh, though it may have improved since I dropped it after the first few issues. I may try and catch up with that when it's collected.
I don't know how much you follow industry matters, but is there anything about the changing publishing landscape that interests you as a critic? For one, the Hernandez Brothers said goodbye to the serial comics form, which seems hugely symbolic. Do you think comics are healthy? Does it matter how they're published?
Well, the Hernandez brothers will still be telling serialized stories, right? Just with larger chunks in bound volumes? That was my understanding, but it wouldn't be the first time I got something like that wrong. Still, I get your point, and as a lot of people have noted, it seems pretty huge. Canaries have been dying in the direct-market mineshaft for years now, but when
Love & Rockets
goes, it does start to feel like there's probably not many more safe areas in the mine at that point. It's definitely the end of an era. It seems pretty obvious that for a variety of reasons that you're more knowledgeable about than I am
's market dominance and policies being a major one), this is a far from healthy time for pamphlet-sized comics from small publishers. Gemstone seems to be another apposite example.
I'm not well enough informed to do more than parrot the conventional wisdom on how
are doing in terms of serial-comic publishing, let alone Dark Horse and Image, but it's obvious that nearly everyone smaller than that is getting crushed. Dan's had to cancel the serialized versions of
Cold Heat
, and it doesn't seem like
Drawn & Quarterly
are doing very much in this form any more either (excepting the
Ignatz line
and a few stray titles). I don't know -- the signs in general look bad. I wish I had something smarter to say about it, but I don't.
Does it matter? I don't know. The pamphlet-style comic book is a pretty amazing thing, perfectly priced and sized for casual reading. I will personally be very sorry to see it go, and I hope that artists will find some way to continue making them. Even if the format disappears completely, I don't think that will mean the end of comics in general by any means, though (not that anyone's suggesting that), any more than the end of serialized prose literature meant the end of written fiction. It just means there will be a different market, which will encourage different kinds of comics. In fact, in the end, I imagine it will probably lead to more interesting and different new kinds of comics, just as it did with written fiction a century ago. There weren't that many novelists like
Charles Dickens
who really knew how to utilize the serialized form to its fullest extent, just as there aren't many cartoonists like the Hernandez brothers who can do it that well with comics. This is the optimistic way of looking at it.
On the negative side, longer books mean longer periods without pay for cartoonists, since making comics is so much more work-intensive than writing prose. (I bet we're going to start seeing a lot more "graphic novellas," comics around 100 pages or so.) The cost of publishing is also a lot higher for comics, and it doesn't look like there's really going to be an equivalent to the cheaply priced mass-market paperback (outside of manga at least), which probably doesn't bode well for attracting casual readers. Other than hard-core fans, most people, if they buy a graphic novel, probably won't buy more than one or two a year, and it's possible that the market for graphic novels is going to shrink a little at the same time that it becomes more firmly established in the regular bookstore world. This is pretty far afield from my area of expertise, so please feel free to slap me down if I'm being moronic.
How do you set about writing about a comic? A lot of your pieces seem very analytical, step by step almost through a comic where you try to see it with fresh eyes. Is that fair?
I don't know if it's fair or not, but it's definitely a nice thing to say! It's also certainly what I try to do. It's definitely a constant struggle to try and rid myself as much as possible of built-up preconceptions, and write what I really think about the comic, and as simple as that task sounds, I find it an incredibly difficult thing to do. I know I don't always succeed. A lot of people seem to have a tendency to don critical opinions like they're costumes, and there's nothing I hate more when reading criticism than when I read what appear to be parroted, put-on opinions, especially when they're delivered with an air of unchallengeable authority or look like empty posturing. I'm much more interested in intelligent, original thinking about a book or piece of art than I am in a bunch of tired jokes or out-of-all-proportion rants.
Being married to a cartoonist and seeing the incredible amount of hard work that goes into the creation of comics really makes it hard for me to be the kind of person who enjoys trashing art without a moment's thought. There's a
Kurt Vonnegut
quote that gets pulled out a lot, but I think there's a lot of truth to it: "Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae." Substitute "comic book" for "novel" and that's still right on. Of course, there's still a lot of room for criticism short of rage and loathing, but I think it's important (to me) to keep the whole enterprise in perspective. (And also, when a comic is created in such a manner that it's closer to a corporate product than a personal work of art, I feel a lot less conscience about criticizing it.)
I would love it if I were a better stylist and could write with as much elegance and multi-layered meaning as someone like
Guy Davenport
, but I don't really have the chops to write the kind of criticism that rises to that level of art. I do, however, think that criticism that simply and honestly depicts a reader's thoughts about a given piece of writing or art can be fruitful and interesting, too, and that's a more immediately achievable goal. I don't know how much any criticism really matters in the grand scheme of things, but thinking and arguing about stories comes naturally to me, and I enjoy it. I try to take criticism seriously enough to not do a disservice to readers or to the artists I write about, but not so seriously that I worry about doing a disservice to my self-image.
When I read stuff you've written on older comics, it seems like there's a kindness to them considering their roles as historical objects than there might be for similar comics now. Is that a fair assessment? What do you feel about today's mainstream American comics?
I think that is probably more of a fair assessment than I'd like it to be. I don't find a lot of pleasure in holding up a forgotten old piece of trash and pointing out its flaws -- anybody can do that. It's a lot more fun (and potentially profitable) to point out qualities that might have been missed the first time around -- forgotten nuances of artistry or technique that still contain power. On the other hand, regarding comics work that is still fresh and contemporary, I sometimes find it difficult to distance myself enough from all of the corporate marketing to objectively respond to it. That's partly why I don't review a lot of contemporary superhero comics very often. Another, more important reason is that most of that material is already dissected a million times over by a hundred thousand bloggers who care a lot more about the latest incarnation of
Black Panther
than I do.
But I do still like some mainstream American comics. I already mentioned
All Star Superman
, and (if
Dark Horse
Speak of the Devil
Apocalypse Nerd
, and
. I've also enjoyed the two issues of Casanova I've read, as well as stray issues of
Ed Brubaker
Captain America
. Brubaker's an interesting case, as he really seems to have figured out how to deliver the plotting goods, and works well with interesting artists to craft strong, compelling action stories. Sometimes they suffer a little from Hollywood-itis (over-slick plot reversals, under-motivated characterization, etc.), but for the most part I can read his comics without feeling overly stupid. I still don't care much who really killed Captain America, but on the occasions where I find myself idly wondering about it, I know I can pick up an issue and enjoy it. And as I already said, he works with good artists who know how to serve the story. The art and writing go hand in hand, which is unfortunately rare enough now to be remarkable. I haven't read enough of
Matt Fraction
's work to really comment, but he seems like an interesting, smart guy, and I'll probably pick up more of his comics when I see them around.
I'll probably keep giving
Grant Morrison
a chance, too, though I'm not entirely sure why at this point. He's a great example of a writer who does
work smoothly with most of his artist collaborators, which absolutely kills his books for me when he's not working with an artist like
Frank Quitely
J.H. Williams III
, who can pick up the narrative slack. And as I've written before, Morrison may or may not be a great idea man, but he often doesn't strike me as being so great at actually executing the ideas once he comes up with them. Pick up something like
the latest Showcase volume of
Metal Men
for comparison and you'll not only find incredibly bizarre ideas, but you'll also be able to follow the stories and have a lot of fun at the same time. There's no puzzling over, he said what now? That doesn't make any sense! The characters aren't even talking to each other! (Plus, I never get tired of looking at Ross Andru's drawings from that period.)
I'm also liking
Lethem, Rusnak, & Dalrymple's version of
Omega the Unknown
a lot more than I thought I would. There's still plenty of room for it all to fall apart in future issues, but it doesn't have the queasy, slumming quality I usually associate with novelists deigning to write comic books. It's probably not a major work, but it could be the real deal. Paul Hornschemeier's been doing a fantastic job with the color. And I can't wait for Gary Panter's art to start showing up in it.
In the end, what do you think keeps you reading comics, keeps you coming back to them?
I don't know if I could put it into words, any more than I could tell you why I keep reading novels, or watching movies, or listening to music, all of which I enjoy doing just as much as I enjoy reading comics. There's a part of me that feels like art of all kinds doesn't really have any kind of practical justification, that it's simply a way for people to escape "reality" and put off tackling the more earthly problems they face. I don't really buy that art can make you into a better person, or that it will improve anyone's life. I think that I go back to art again and again for at least two contradictory reasons: it does offer an escape from reality, and at the same time it allows me the most direct route possible to help me understand the realities that other people experience. There's no better way I know of into someone else's head. As I said, comics is just one of the arts that I find rewarding, but like painting or music or film, it offers its own nuances and formal advantages that I can't find in any other medium. As long as I'm interested in art in general, I can't see why I'd ever want to give up the particular window offered by comics.
* cover to
Comics Comics
#3 by Sammy Harkham and Guy Davis
* first issue of
The Ganzfeld
* a 1960s-era
* cover to first issue of
Comics Comics
* a Johnny Craig crime comic cover
* cover to
Love and Rockets
Vol. 2 #20
* from
* from
Exit Wounds
* from
LOEG: The Black Dossier
* from
The Arrival
* from
* from
Speak of the Devil
* from
* from
* from
New Engineering
* cover to
Wally's World
* from a Brubaker-written
Captain America
* cover to
Comics Comics
#2 by P. Shaw!
Comics Comics
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