Cory Doctorow at 7:49 pm • 
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Windowpane is the graphic novel debut from Joe Kessler, one of the friendly fellows working behind the cash-register at London's wonderful NOBROW (about whom we've written lots). It's a collection of short, surreal, dreamlike stories, some more experimental than others, as well as a memoir of the near-death of Reuben Mwara during his boyhood in a Kenyan slum.
Kessler's use of color and the printing techniques he employs (which you can see at his blog are very striking, and the storytelling style is accomplished and sure. A very promising start!
Preview: WINDOWPANE By Joe Kessler
Cory Doctorow at 5:39 am • •
The Couriers: The Complete Series collects four short stories from early in Brian "DMZ" Wood's career, involving a pair of courier/ninjas who run parcels for crime syndicates, shady characters, and other nonstandard enterprises. They're armed to the teeth, hyper-violent, skillful, wisecracking, and remorseless. Think of Kick-Ass crossed with Run, Lola, Run. It's lovely stuff, and the art conveys that Taratino-ey balletic violence in a way I'd never have suspected was possible without actual moving pictures. This is silly and fluffy, but witty and well-told, and it's the kind of stuff you can't stop reading once you've started.
As a bonus for Brian Wood fans, Image Comics has just brought out issue one of Mara, a new, six-issue future-dystopic tale drawn by Jordie Bellaire & Ming Doyle, which starts very strong.
The Couriers: The Complete Series
Cory Doctorow at 5:53 am • •
Stephen Weiner's seminal Rise of the Graphic Novel has had a second edition. Rise builds on Weiner's influential work in cataloging and charting a course through the field of graphic novels for librarians around America and the world, spinning out a compact, fascinating narrative of the history of graphic novels, from the Yellow Kid to the modern explosion of Pulitzer-winning, "respectable," multi-media, highly lucrative graphic novels of today. For such a short book -- 70 pages -- Rise covers a huge amount of ground, from The Spirit to R Crumb, from indie comix to Cavalier and Clay, from Death Note to Understanding Comics and Sandman. Even Boing Boing's own Elfquest gets a chapter.
This is a perfect book for anyone trying to wrap her or his head around the field of comics, a quick and smart overview of the field that spans both decades and genres. Whether you're developing a syllabus, improving your library's collection, or just trying to get a better sense of the field and the good stuff you might have missed, Rise is well worth a read, and worth keeping around afterwards for reference.
Plus: there's a dandy introduction by Will Eisner himself!
Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of Graphic Novel (Second Edition)
Cory Doctorow at 3:00 pm • •
Ann Matsuuchi's paper Wonder Woman Wears Pants: Wonder Woman, Feminism and the 1972 “Women’s Lib” Issue [PDF], published in Monash University's journal Colloquy, looks at the weird history of the Wonder Woman arc that Samuel Delany wrote, which was meant to culminate with Wonder Woman confronting anti-abortion demonstrators, and which was killed by Gloria Steinem, who didn't know where things were headed, but hated the fact that Delany had taken away Wonder Woman's traditional costume.
I came up with a six-issue story arc, each with a different villain: the
first was a corrupt department store owner; the second was the head
of a supermarket chain who tries to squash a women's food co-
operative. Another villain was a college advisor who really felt a
woman's place was in the home and who assumed if you were a
bright woman, then something was probably wrong with you
psychologically, and so forth. It worked up to a gang of male thugs
trying to squash an abortion clinic staffed by women surgeons. And
Wonder Woman was going to do battle with each of these and
triumph. [Samuel Delany]
Delany’s fictional approach here considers, never assumes, the
politics that inform daily life: how we eat, sleep and fuck. These mundane
issues rarely arise in the universe of comic book superheroes. Wonder
Woman faces an immediate need to “sell out” in order to support herself.
The story proceeds in a manner that is at times as blunt and didactic as the
traditional comic books often were, but identity and its formation is
questioned here in a manner tied materially to everyday life. [Ann Matsuuchi]
(
Thanks, Br!)
Cory Doctorow at 5:42 am • •
Lauren Beukes sez, "My South African writer friend Sam Wilson proposed to his scientist girlfriend Kerry Gordon using a comic that he's been secretly collating for the last three months featuring quirky, sweet, wonderful, funny artwork to illustrate the possible futures that might occur depending on whether she says yes or no.
In the yes column were wonders like riding on dinosaurs, bountiful kitties and becoming rock stars, or the horror of bad parking spaces, squalor and tomatoes on EVERYTHING if she says no (she really doesn't like tomatoes).
It was adorable and of course she said yes."
Best Christmas Present Ever
Cory Doctorow at 7:07 am • •
Redditor Ellepea27 painted this great Calvin and Hobbes illustration on a guitar she's refurbishing with BigWiggly1. She painted it over the course of six hours in one sitting. The idea is to put a clear-coat over it and make it into a playable instrument.
My girlfriend and I are refinishing my old guitar. She did the paint job. (i.imgur.com)
Cory Doctorow at 1:41 pm • •
Scott Edelman sez, "In 1954, a year before to the Salk vaccine was revealed to the world, DC Comics was publishing ads advising kids how not to catch polio., as in this one from Action #196 (which would have gone on sale a couple of months earlier than its September 1954 cover date). The words of wisdom included 'keep clean' and 'don't get fatigued.' They might as well have said, don't be a kid!"
DC Comics wants you to read Nutsy Squirrel … and take these precautions against polio
(Thanks, Scott!)
Cory Doctorow at 7:27 am • •
In the The Law of Superheroes two lawyers called James Daily and Ryan Davidson do a magnificent job overview of the US legal system that manages to be extremely informative and incredibly entertaining, because, as the title implies, they tour the legal system as it would apply to comic-book superheroes.
This is much better than most of those "Physics of Science Fiction"-type books, since the legal hypotheticals that superheroes give rise to, while speculative, are actually just extreme macrocosms for the normal business of the real-world legal system. What better way to illustrate the rules of evidence than to explore whether (and why) things that Professor Xavier read in your mind would be admissible in court and whether Spider Man could testify in his mask? What better way to explore the "functional/informative" split in trademark law than to ask whether Captain America's round shield might be the subject of a trademark, or just the design on its face? What better way to explore corporate law than to explore the sort of legal entity the Fantastic Four and the Justice League of America should look to form in order to minimize liability and streamline their decision-making process?
I've read lots of popular law books, and spent a lot of time hanging around lawyers, and these kinds of hypotheticals are the best way I know of to turn a dry, detail-oriented subject into something fun and engrossing. It helps that the authors are very imaginative and have a seemingly encylopedic knowledge of comics, which leads ask whether Superman's torture at Lex Luthor's hands are assault or cruelty to animals, to investigate the tax implications of immortality, and to find a loophole by which Batman can operate Wayne Enterprise's vehicles in public without compromising his company's ability to file for patents on them (spoiler: he needs to sell them to the military).
This book covers an astonishing amount of ground, but given how long superhero comics have been around, and how many different plotlines they've explored, it's only fitting. From state's rights to torts, from contracts (deals with the devil, anyone?) to what the FAA would have to say about Wonder Woman's Invisible Jet, the authors show real aptitude for legal education and first-rate comics nerdery. It's a delicious combination!
The Law of Superheroes began with the brilliant Law and the Multiverse blog, which I wrote about back in 2010. If you're a fan of the blog, you'll love the book -- and if you love the book, you should really read the blog!
The Law of Superheroes
Cory Doctorow at 5:10 pm • •
Marvel meets Goya in Matt Buck's "Galactus Devouring His Herald," available for pre-order for a $20 11"x7" print now.
Galactus Devouring His Herald (print)
(via JWZ)
Cory Doctorow at 3:22 pm • •
Tony sez, "My dear friend Thien Pham has just released
his first solo graphic novel, Sumo. Thien's work has been previously featured on Boing Boing as he did the illustrations for Gene Luen Yang's
Level Up. His new book,
Sumo, resonated deeply for me, especially in these uncertain times. Figured fellow Boingers might enjoy something positive to stuff in stockings or gift in the office Secret Santa pool."
Xeni Jardin at 2:04 pm • •
Impact Future Media of Montreal claims to have secured "the exclusive IP rights" to the story of anti-virus pioneer and noted crazy person John McAfee, who was arrested in Guatemala and is wanted in Belize over the apparent murder of his neighbor.
The Hollywood Reporter has more:
Read the rest
Cory Doctorow at 6:23 am • •
Sweet Tooth" Lemire - http://boingboing.net/2012/12/10/underwater-welder-tw.html" title="Email to a friend/colleague" target="_blank">
Underwater Welder is a stand-alone, haunting graphic novel from Jeff Lemire, best know for his work on Sweet Tooth, a graphic novel I greatly admire (Reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
It's the story of Jack Joseph, a deep-sea welder who works on an oil-rig off the coast of Nova Scotia. He's about to become a father for the first time, but his joy is marred by the looming anniversary of his father's dive-accident death, 20 years before. This tragedy from Jack's boyhood haunts him, overshadowing his impending fatherhood, becoming an obsession. This comes to a head with a deep-sea reverie in which Jack hears a ghostly voice from the past, and passes out.
What unspools is a scary, sad, sweet story, the sort of thing you'd find in the very best Twilight Zone episodes (a comparison drawn by Lost producer Damon Lindelof in his introduction to the volume). Underwater Welder is a much more ethereal, otherworldly story that the fast-paced Sweet Tooth, much more like Lemire's earlier volume for Top Shelf, the critically acclaimed Essex County. But where Essex County left me a bit flat -- too abstract for me -- Underwater Welder is just the right blend of action and abstraction, and greatly enhanced by Lemire's ability to signal movement, time and distance through clever arrangement of his panels on the page.
It helps that this is a beautifully designed book, reasonably priced -- but even if it was a photocopied zine it would still haunt and amaze; and even at twice the price it would be a stone bargain.
Underwater Welder
Maggie Koerth-Baker at 2:42 pm • •
This chart describes the key problem with being Batman — it doesn't take a serious injury to seriously disable you. Your body can rack up big damage over years of repeated small stresses and strains — jumping from roof to roof two or three times a week, for instance, or slamming your knuckles into a bad guy's face every night.
Neuroscientist and kinesiologist Paul literally wrote the book
on what it would take to create a non-superhuman superhero, like Batman. In a post at Scientific American blogs, he explains the major physical impacts of being the Dark Knight. His big conclusion: Nobody could be Batman for very long. And even after they retired, they'd feel the echo of what they'd done to their body every day for the rest of their lives.
It’s hard to gauge the long-term effects of being exposed to these harsh occupations. Looking at NFL players provides another way to get at long term effects. In fact I used the very short average career—3-5 years—of NFL players as a way to estimate Batman’s longevity in Becoming Batman.
Skilled writer Peter King provided an in-depth expose on football players in the Dec 12, 2011 issue of Sports Illustrated. This piece was a follow up look at 39 members of the 1986 Cincinnati Bengals—25 years later—and spanned all forms of injury. But it’s the bodily injuries I want to focus on. In the category of “residual injury” over 70% had at least one surgery during their careers with ~40% having a post-NFL surgery for an injury related to football. Thirty percent had an upcoming surgery. More than 90% of the players said that they had lingering issues arising from an injury derived from their NFL careers.
Probably the most telling “statistic” is that on average these players reported 3 parts of the body that experienced pain each day. That’s a lot of injuries and a lot of discomfort.
Basically, Batman's inner pain isn't just about his dead parents.
Read the rest of the story
Cory Doctorow at 6:17 am • •
This week saw the publication of the seventeenth Walking Dead collection, Something to Fear. Robert Kirkman really is the absolute master of holding out a tiny, frayed thread of hope and then snatching it away from you. For years I've read these books, watching this vivid, gripping world turn to ruin and cruelty and entropy; cheered for the small, bright moments; dared to hope that things were going to improve, the dark give way to dawn.
Yeah, like that's going to happen. If you're following the TV show, you'll have met the Governor, who is a king-hell villain of the first water.
He's not a patch on the bad guys in volume 17.
Further, deponent sayeth not.
The Walking Dead Vol 17: Something to Fear
Previous volumes
Cory Doctorow at 4:02 pm • •
The Hawkeye Initiative is a Tumblr-wide fan-art genderswap extravaganza in which fan-artists redraw highly sexualized images of female superheros, swapping in male superheros and reproducing the original provocative pose (The Mary Sue has the backstory). There's some very good stuff here indeed.
The Hawkeye Initiative
