By Cory Doctorow at 6:08 am Thursday, May 24
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Artist (and Boing Boing favorite) Molly Crabapple is just as clever with crowdfunding as she is with a Sharpie. For her 28th birthday, she Kickstartered the budget for a week locked in a NYC hotel suite whose every surface was covered with drawing paper. She spent the resulting "week in hell" drawing over every inch of that paper. The art she produced is documented in Week in Hell, a lovely slim volume from IDW, which features spiffy photos of Crabapple's work, some notes on the production, and a hell of an introduction by Mr Warren Ellis. It's a great look inside an utterly gonzo project.
Art of Molly Crabapple Volume 1: Week in Hell
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By Cory Doctorow at 6:29 am Monday, May 14
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Forming is Jesse Moynihan's ultra-weird graphic novel about the creation of the universe, filled with cursing, inexplicable violence, grotesque sexual acts, and primitive and strange illustrations. Set in the "Third Age of Total Bullshit," the story tells the tale of powerful aliens who visit Earth in the time of giants, set up camp in Atlantis, and enslave the indigenous giants to mine rare minerals for the galactic empire. These aliens are also involved with Noah, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Lucifer and the Archangel Michael, and a cast of personages more obscure and weird than any book of the apocrypha.
To understand Forming (assuming "understand" is the correct verb here), picture some lost Gnostic text translated by Jay (of Jay and Silent Bob) at his cussin-est, under commission by a delusional would-be cult-founder who cut his teeth on the work of Fletcher Hanks and who really liked drawings of weiners and boobies.
Moynihan walks a fine line between "weird" and "incomprehensible" and between "clever" and "dumb," and manages to stay on the right side of it through almost every one of these bizarre, demented panels. I can't say that I've ever read anything quite like this (though it did call to mind the weirder bits of The Incal). I'm glad I did.
Forming is published by London's NOBROW, whose books are fantastically well-made, beautifully cloth-bound and printed on high-quality, sustainably produced paper (they also publish the much-more-kid-friendly Hilda comics). It's a quality product.
Forming (Amazon)
Forming (Nobrow)
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By Cory Doctorow at 10:49 am Sunday, May 13
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Oh that scamp. Poor Mom. Check out that beatific expression.
Mother's Day
By Cory Doctorow at 9:07 pm Friday, May 11
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Harry Clarke's 1919 illustrations for Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" are absolutely wonderful, some of the best Poe interpretations this diehard Poefan has seen. 50Watts has them at super-hi-rez, too. Looks like you can buy a 2008 facsimile edition for about $26.
Harry Clarke, Illustrations for E. A. Poe
(via How to Be a Retronaut)
By Cory Doctorow at 1:52 pm Friday, May 11
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DeviantArt's ~AgarthanGuide created this Maurice Sendak/Avengers mashup: "Two things on my mind today: RIP Maurice Sendak. Yay Avengers. Okay- I put together some wallpapers using the original- I tried to make them as big as possible and cover the major aspect ratios. You can download them here. Enjoy!"
Avengers on Parade (RIP Maurice Sendak)
(via Super Punch)
By Cory Doctorow at 5:10 pm Wednesday, May 9
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Thing-a-day guy Noah Scalin sez, "Artist Betsy VanDeusen created this wonderful Star Wars-ified version of a classic Elvgren pinup as part of her yearlong daily project!
You can see the rest of her work on her blog, and read a recent interview about her project on my own blog."
She explains, "Starting on 2/27/2012, and working through 2/27/2013, I intend to work on my art daily. It will all be tied in to the "Retro Pinup" theme somehow. The important thing to me is the daily practice of working. I'm not necessarily interested in creating "finished pieces" on a daily basis (Taking a work to completion may take the accumulated efforts of a week, a month, or more- if the piece demands it). I just have so many ideas that I never follow up on, and this project gives me the incentive and excuse to focus on those ideas on a daily basis."
The Princess Leia Pinup.
(Thanks, Noah!)
By Cory Doctorow at 9:00 am Friday, May 4
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There are some who'll say that X-Ray Specs illos are the zenith of old-timey kid-targeted comics advertising. Those people are wrong. Cardboard spaceships, with their Voyage to the Mushroom Planet promise, are so far beyond anything ever drawn in service of X-Ray Specs that the championship is easy to perceive. This thing is pure desiderata pheromone.
Jet "Rocket" Space Ship
By Cory Doctorow at 6:00 pm Wednesday, May 2
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Winter the Artist's Link/Charlie Brown shirt design, entitled "A Hero named..." is up for vote on Threadless.
A Hero named...
(via Super Punch)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:26 pm Sunday, Apr 22
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Discovered yesterday at the London Comica Comiket show at the Bishopsgate Institute, Isabel Greenberg's marvellous austerity-ready posh bookshelves, kitchen shelves and mantelpieces, these being long fold-out illustrations filled with fancy items, high-minded literature, and positional goods that you can use to cover up your shabby personal effects and trashy books. Isabel's website is only displaying the bookshelf and kitchen shelf, and not the mantelpiece (which is a shame, because I think it's the best of the series -- I bought one!).
I am working on a series of concertina 'Fold Out-Fold up' products. So far I have a kitchen and a bookshelf. The idea is that you fold them out to cover anything shame full you might have behind. So if you have an embarrassing book case with lots of Mills and Boon or the Twilight books or something, you fold out my book shelf cover and put it in front! The kitchen one has lots of foodie feastables and you can pop it over your kitchen shelf when you have nothing but pot noodles and stale crackers.
Fold Up Fold Outs
By Cory Doctorow at 1:21 pm Friday, Apr 20
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On How to Be a Retronaut, a well-selected slice through the Library of Congress's 2,114 performing arts posters collection, with an emphasis on acrobatics.
Posters for Acrobatics shows, 1892-1903
By Cory Doctorow at 8:13 pm Tuesday, Apr 17
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On the Vintage Ads LJ group, a widescreen, two-page Mary Blair ad for AT&T and Disneyland's Tomorrowland. It's everything I love about Blair's illustration in an x-wide package. There's a 1600px+ wide version that deserves your scrutiny.
Tuesday Two-Pagers: AT&T/Disney/Mary Blair
By Cory Doctorow at 12:21 pm Monday, Apr 16
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Photographer Nadine Boughton has a series of collages called "True Adventures in Better Homes" that combine the muscular he-man (and sultry seductress) cover illustrations from 1950s and early 1960s men's magazines (see Mark's Mean Monkey Monday series) with women's magazines from the same period.
Here is a collision of two worlds: men’s adventure magazines or “sweats” meets Better Homes and Gardens. These photocollages are set against the backdrop of the McCarthy era, advertising, sexual repression, WWII and the Korean War. The cool, insular world of mid-century modern living glossed over all danger and darkness, which the heroic male fought off in every corner.
My intention is to show how the inner psyche reflects the culture at large. I am drawn to the tension of opposites: inner and outer spaces, wildness and domesticity, the sweat and the cool. With a background in psychology, I am always interested in what lies beneath appearances. The predator theme so present in the “true” adventures led me to explore “who” or “what” is breaking through. Whether the metaphor is that of bats or whales, this “other” carries not only our deepest fears but our deepest desires. We meet ourselves.
True Adventures in Better Homes
By Cory Doctorow at 3:17 pm Thursday, Apr 5
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Writer and illustrator Lisa Hanawalt snuck into the New York Toy Fair and wrote/illustrated a very funny, very snarky account of it for The Hairpin. My wife used to go to Toy Fair every year for work, and she always made it sound like a cross between a season in hell and Willy Wonka's toy factory.
The Toy Fair isn't for kids. The show's held yearly at the Javits Center, Manhattan's main convention facility (a.k.a. massive gray box), and it's full of serious adults in business suits with corporate accounts. It's not supposed to be fun. We'll see about that!
Toy Fair badges are only available for pros, so my boyfriend's mom generously registered me and my friend Tim as employees of her chia seed company. My badge says "CHIA POWER/Assistant Buyer." We'll avoid walking by chia products for fear of having to hold our own in a chia conversation.
I want to pretend we're here for legitimate reasons, so Tim and I work out a cover story, "we distribute chia products, but we're looking to branch out into toys and athletics." That totally sounds like a thing, right?
The Toy Fair
By Cory Doctorow at 9:00 am Friday, Mar 30
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The illustration in this 1943 Listerine shaving ad is totally perfect, and really makes the case that the MAD Magazine parodies of old time ads were basically faithful recreations. I love that they gave the guy a double chin.
Listerine Shaving Cream
Hugh sez, "Check out Eric Drooker's latest May Day poster -- he has a bunch that can be