[cartoons] Tom Lets Out Weary Sigh After Walking Into Kitchen and Noticing Cheese Grater Isn’t Part of the Matte Painting … ‘Viewers of Tom & Jerry, while still eager to see Tom get hurt, were sympathetic to how resigned he was to his fate. “Don’t get me wrong, that cheese grater looked gnarly and he absolutely had it coming,” cartoon enthusiast Katie McLaughlin said of Tom, whose only crime was trying to catch a pest that lives in the walls and eats his owners’ food.’
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[ideas] 100 Little Ideas … A collection of ideas explaining how the world works. ‘Fact-Check Scarcity Principle: This article is called 100 Little Ideas but there are fewer than 100 ideas. 99% of readers won’t notice because they’re not checking, and most of those who notice won’t say anything. Don’t believe everything you read.’
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[tags: Fun, History, Mac][permalink][Comments Off on Run Flying Toasters in your Browser!]
25 December 2023
[batman] The best Christmas rom-com is actually Batman Returns … Another look at Batman Returns as a Christmas Movie. [See also: 75 thoughts I had while watching Batman Returns, The World’s Greatest Holiday Movie] ‘Batman Returns goes out of its way to establish rom-com lore, like the idea that no one should be alone at Christmas, especially Batman. Think Christmas time can be hard for single people? Think about poor, rich Bruce Wayne! He’s an orphan! He’s so alone! It also plays with the idea that there’s no better time to tell the truth than at Christmas. Movies always tell us that Christmas is the time we let our masks fall and our guards down. In Batman’s case, this means it’s the perfect time to admit that you love, or, at the very least, are a little horny for, one of your enemies – who also might be your soulmate (yes, this applies to many Batman villains).’
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24 December 2023
[movies] Just How Rich Were the McCallisters in ‘Home Alone’? … ‘He noted that in Hughes’s teen films – including “The Breakfast Club,” and “Pretty in Pink” – class tensions are also often prominent and drive the story forward. “His stories usually favor the perspective of the working class kid or the poor kid who is trying to gain access to a wealthier peer group, for instance,” Professor Bulman said. “But in ‘Home Alone,’ it’s unmistakably a victory for Kevin as a child, but also Kevin as a rich kid defending his impressive fortress.”’
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22 December 2023
[fun] Brickception … If you’re lucky, it’s the last working Friday of the year so why spend some of it playing this crazy version of Breakout.
[comics] Ian Gibson, 1946-2023 … Comic artist Ian Gibson’s obituary from the Comics Journal. ‘Always an independent-minded artist, which got him into hot water with more than one publisher, Gibson treated Moore’s scripts with much less reverence than one is used to see, as detailed in Thrill-Power Overload: “I had already got into the habit of deconstructing a script and putting it back together in a way that would be visually more effective. I tended to take Alan’s verbose ramblings with a pinch of salt and do it my own way!” Originally planned for nine ‘books,’ only three were completed before Moore cut ties with 2000 AD over royalty and ownership disputes, never to return. It is a testimony to the sheer quality of these stories that the magazine, even when bought out by video game company Rebellion, resisted the temptation to continue Halo Jones with other creators.’
[2023] John Crace on the Villains of 2023 … ‘Suella Braverman — First, we had her enthusiastic support of the Rwanda policy. The idea of sending small boats refugees to a country that has been deemed unsafe by the United Nations. So far, no refugee has yet been deported to Rwanda. So that worked well. Then she acquired a barge that turned out to be riddled with legionella. So far, only a handful of people have been housed there. It turns out that Braverman is good at talking about new ways to be unpleasant to foreigners, but less so at turning it into a reality.’
[xmas] The experts: money gurus’ 20 failsafe, frugal tips to keep Christmas overspend at bay … ‘Don’t throw money at the problem – “Sometimes I buy things just so I can close the tab on my phone,” admits Seal. The increased mental load in December means “there are so many decisions to be made, so much Christmas admin to do” and it can be easy to throw money at the problem so that it is one less thing to worry about. “Quite often, I think we spend money so that we can file things under done,” she says.’
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15 December 2023
[comics] Popverse’s best comics of 2023… Some interesting comics in this “Best of” list. ‘If comics could have a ‘great American novelist’ like a Cormac McCarthy, we have that in Emily Carroll. Her 2023 one-shot A Guest in the House paints in broad strokes, being simultaneously deep while also airy – letting me (and you hopefully), find the story for yourself. While some might categorize this as horror, it’s a broader story about the human condition that a label of just ‘horror’ would be limiting.’
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14 December 2023
[comics] Born on the Bayou: An Inside Look at the 13 Pre-Flashpoint Eras of Swamp Thing … A great guide to the many different series of Swamp Thing. ‘In a single chapter, writer Alan Moore un-did all that had come before. Readers had followed Alec’s journey for a dozen years, yet Moore-with artists Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben, Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala-revealed that Alec could never regain his humanity (Edward’s genius notwithstanding), because he’d never had it to begin with. Alec had been dead since day one, and the creature with his memories was a plant that thought itself a man. That revolutionary change carried Swamp Thing to the stars, introduced occultist John Constantine, and culminated in the game-changing reveal of the Parliament of Trees, providing Swamp Thing with a vast elemental lineage that included the original House of Secrets story.’
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13 December 2023
[podcasts] The Banksy Story … A BBC podcast chronicling Banksy’s rise to fame.
[life] 52 things Tom Whitwell Learned in 2023 A list of TiLs. ‘Scientists in Singapore have developed a tiny flexible battery, powered by the salt in human tears, designed for smart contact lenses.’
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[tags: Xmas][permalink][Comments Off on Christmas Links 2023 From Feeling Listless]
7 December 2023
[comics] Best graphic novels of 2023 … Some great comics with mentions of Dan Clowes and Ed Piskor’s Hip Hop Family Tree. ‘Why Don’t You Love Me? (Drawn & Quarterly) follows a couple struggling through parenthood and blagging their way in baffling jobs. British cartoonist Paul B Rainey builds his story from bleakly humorous page-long strips, while the larger question – how, exactly, did these absurdly underqualified people get to where they are? – slowly moves into focus, giving his inventive drama a real emotional weight.’
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6 December 2023
[books] Remembering Iain Banks: a prolific, terrific talent … A look at the legacy of Iain Banks. ‘Ten long years without a new book from him seems illogical, bizarre. After his rug-pulling debut The Wasp Factory brought him early notoriety in 1984, Banks averaged roughly a novel a year for almost three decades. Though he clearly relished switching up his approach to genre, consistent elements of his often swashbuckling style – notably caustic wit, a weakness for wordplay and unwavering socialist politics – made the annual ritual of catching up with the new Banks feel like an ongoing conversation. I miss it. I miss him.’
[tags: 2000 AD, Comics][permalink][Comments Off on Classic 2000AD Covers From Kevin O’Neill]
4 December 2023
[comics] The Ditko Version … A comprehensive look at Steve Ditko’s reminiscences of his time at Marvel in the 1960s. ‘Stan’s synopsis to me did not mention any (two) wrist shooters, or hidden belt, or any specific costume or specific spider-like actions. Those are my ideas and creation.”’
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1 December 2023
[london] ianVisits … A great website concentrating on London news, and things to do and visit around the city.
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[comics] Dave Gibbons – Letterer … Todd Klein provides an in-depth analysis of Dave Gibbons’ approach to lettering comics. ‘WATCHMEN was a groundbreaking project in many ways, including Dave’s suggested storytelling device of making most pages a nine panel grid. Dave also experimented with lettering styles, with Alan Moore’s encouragement. Dave said, “Watchmen was so full, and it was so vital that the lettering read well and didn’t obscure anything important in the pictures, the lettering would be the first thing I would both pencil and ink. Then I would start doing the drawings and make any adjustments so it wouldn’t cut off people’s heads. I really don’t think Watchmen would have been feasible if I hadn’t lettered my own work.”’
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27 November 2023
[comics] Talking to Rick Veitch About Boy Maximortal, Turtles & Swamp Thing … Rich Johnson interviewed Rick Veitch about his latest comic, Boy Maximortal. ‘Over the decades, there have been numerous discussions with, and honest attempts by, DC to not only publish Swamp Thing #88, but to also let me finish my time travel storyline. But something always seemed to derail it. I know there are great people up in DC right now who would love to make it happen. It’s one of those corporate Gordian Knots!’
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23 November 2023
[books] The Composites … A Tumblr page that showcases composite sketches of literary characters created using law enforcement software. Below is Annie Wilkes, from Stephen King’s book Misery.
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22 November 2023
[crime] Burke and Hare… and Knox … Today, I learned about Robert Knox, the anatomist who enabled the murderers Burke and Hare. ‘Edinburgh was then a world center of anatomical study. To meet the demand, a number of anatomists lectured outside the university. The most popular of these was one-eyed Robert Knox, renowned for both his lectures and his scathing criticism of his competitors and society at large. Hundreds attended his lectures. It was his school that purchased the victims of Burke and Hare, some still warm, for £8-10 each. (This was big money for the shilling-scant). Knox’s students actually recognized some of Burke and Hare’s victims, including prostitute Mary Paterson and the amiable street wanderer “Daft Jamie” Wilson. Yet no questions were asked about the bodies.’
[tv] Channel 4’s Partygate docudrama is well worth streaming. Review: Partygate review – a giant, exploding grenade of a TV show … ‘Partygate shares one of the key qualities of The Thick of It, which is not just portraying political professionals as unpleasant, interchangeable idiots but showing them playing their own private parlour game, never giving a thought to how policy affects people. Aside from when someone has to reply to the public’s tweets asking if they can have a Christmas party – absolutely not, the wonk responds, struggling to type because he’s hungover from a Downing Street Christmas party – the wellbeing of the masses does not intrude.’
[comics] The long and complicated guide to collecting Charley’s War … A thorough guide to the publishing history of Charley’s War. ‘The first world war series (I’m glossing over the second world war series here) originally ran for 293 episodes in Battle from 6th Jan 1979 [issue 200] -26th Jan 1985 (that’s a total of 316 weeks so not many weeks missed) and charted the hellish story of world war one from the perspective, not of an officer and a gentleman, but rather from the viewpoint of an underage working class lad who joined up to ‘do his bit’ for King and country. The story is rightly regarded as both an anti-war classic and a high-water mark in British comics. Let’s start with the most recent reprints and go backwards from there…’
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[tags: Movies, TV][permalink][Comments Off on Four Things That Traumatised Me for Life as a Child…]
15 November 2023
[movies] We Almost Got a Superhero Movie from The Exorcist Director William Friedkin … ‘In 1975, four years after the release of The French Connection, William Friedkin revealed to a reporter the inspiration for the film’s celebrated car chase scene. It was the cover of a comic book: a man runs terrified on elevated tracks, just a few steps ahead of a train. He is handsome and athletic. Save for a domino mask, he is dressed like a classic Hollywood detective, in a blue suit and loose tie; he bears no resemblance to Gene Hackman’s slovenly everyman “Popeye” Doyle. The cover was from The Spirit, a comic that ran as a seven-page newspaper insert throughout the 40s and early 50s. The series, created by Will Eisner, was admired for its black humor, innovative compositions, shocking violence, and its setting in a precisely realized urbanscape. “Look at the dramatic use of montage, of light and sound,” Friedkin told the reporter.’
[lovecraft] Phoning It In: 4 Times H.P. Lovecraft Tried To Describe An Unspeakable Cosmic Horror But Basically Just Described A Goose … ‘It walked upright like a man, yet it was clearly a beast. The thing’s leathery feet did not have the normal five toes that we humans have. It had FEWER than that. It had THREE toes. And yet, I hesitate to even call them ‘toes,’ for each digit was connected to each other by some sort of skin-like film. It was like some perverse spider had spun webs between each toe for some inscrutable reason known only to the mad gods that dream their furious dreams on the remotest fringes of forgotten galaxies.’
[tags: History, Internet][permalink][Comments Off on Internet Artifacts – A Collection of Internet History]
7 November 2023
[jfk] ‘It splintered our sense of reality’: how JFK’s assassination spawned 60 years of conspiracy theories … ‘As well as the birthplace of modern conspiracy, the Kennedy assassination can be seen as the birthplace of the conspiracy theory industry. Within three years of the event, Mark Lane – a lifelong assassination investigator – had published Rush to Judgment, which questioned the Warren commission’s findings. It stayed on the bestseller lists for two years. More than 1,000 books on the subject have been published since. It soon became apparent that there was more money to be made arguing in favour of a conspiracy than the opposite.’
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“The comics medium is perfect. It is sublime. The comics industry is a dysfunctional hellhole. So why did I want to return to it in this story? Like you say, it’s exorcism. As one of the characters finds in ‘Thunderman’ it’s one thing to quit comics, but quitting comics is a different thing to being able to stop thinking about them. Writing this got an awful lot out of my system. It said a lot of the things that I’d always wanted to say but I’d never really had the right context to say them in.”
[tv] The BBC’s Late Night Horror Was Alleged to Be So Terrifying That It Was Destroyed … Atlas Obscura takes a look at a lost BBC horror drama. ‘Two episodes do, however, appear to indulge in some gore. One is “William and Mary,” a darkly comic episode about a brain kept alive in a jar, based on a story by Roald Dahl. The other, as luck would have it, is “The Corpse Can’t Play,” the episode that surfaced in the 1980s, only to disappear again. Whether fear or outrage or dark forces (or indifference) played a role, Late Night Horror was not picked up for additional episodes after its first run. It was shown again in 1970, after which the network’s rights to repeat the series expired. It is believed that the tapes were erased sometime after this broadcast.’
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25 October 2023
[philosophy] Philosophy Bro … The complicated ideas of philosophy explained simply. Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus”: A Summary: A Summary:‘Look, so, nothing matters, right? Shit’s fucking weird. We all want to know how the universe ultimately works or who’s running the show or whatever, and it turns out – TRICK. FUCKING. QUESTION. No one’s running the show, and the world is unreasonable. Ever had some shit happen to you that made you go, “Why the fuck did that happen? There’s no reason for that.” Turns out, you were right. So our attempts to impose reason on the world will fail. Death and taxes, my friend. Death and motherfucking taxes.’
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23 October 2023
[spy] Lunik: Inside the CIA’s audacious plot to steal a Soviet satellite … The true story of a Cold War heist. ‘The American and the Mexican made an odd pairing. Dean stood half a foot taller than Silveti, and, while his Mexican counterpart was something of a party animal, the American enjoyed coaching his son’s little league team and doted on Happy, his family’s miniature dachshund, who was heavily pregnant. Yet they needed to work together to ensure the Soviets wouldn’t notice a missing spacecraft.’
[comics] John Constantine, Hellblazer, returns to DC in January 2024 … ‘In one of his finest magic tracks yet, John Constantine is back – and has reunited the creative team of Si Spurrier and Aaron Campbell for a new miniseries bringing the character to the U.S. on a mission featuring some very familiar faces for fans of DC’s iconic Vertigo imprint.’
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18 October 2023
[comics] Pen Lettering for Comics … Todd Klein does a deep dive into the traditional ways to letter comics. ‘From the earliest days of creating comics until the advent of all-digital art, the basic tools for artists and letterers remained essentially the same. You need a drawing board with a comfortable chair and an adjustable desk lamp, usually attached to the drawing board with screws or a clamp. You need a T-square to keep things aligned, large and small triangles, masking tape or pins to hold drawing paper, India ink, pens, brushes, pencils, erasers, something to hold clean rinsing water, a rag or paper towels and a wastebasket. There are other useful tools, but those are the basics.’
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10 October 2023
[dna] The Gift … I really recommend this BBC Radio podcast about what happens when home DNA tests gives their users big surprises.
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9 October 2023
[comics] The Man Who Knows Fear: Imposter Syndrome and Horror with D.G. Chichester Long interview with the comic editor and writer as he returns to Daredevil. On the Hellraiser comic:‘ I knew the book was going to work both when the John Bolton cover came in, which John Bolton issue looking up painting flames from Hell. It was beautiful and twisted and erotic, and scary and nasty… and it was the story that the editorial group then said, “You’re not running the story in the first issue. It’s too much. You’re coming in too hot. Take it out of the first issue, run a different story. We’ll run it in the subsequent issue.” I dug my heels in and I said, the book is called Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. That’s what it’s called. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. What the hell did you think you’re going to get?’
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[comics] Remembering Joe Matt … Memories from friends including Seth and Chester Brown. Seth: ‘It always struck me as funny when someone would read one of Joe’s comics and get angry. “What a jerk” they’d say, getting all worked up about Joe and his actions in the story. What amazed me was that they were reacting to the work as if they’d just watched a documentary about him. Totally forgetting that this was a work of art by a very calculating and smart artist who deliberately made the choices in the book that caused this reaction. Joe knew exactly what he was doing. He didn’t paint himself as a creep by accident. That was the point. He did everything on purpose. That weird obsessiveness of his made absolutely nothing an accident. Every line, every panel, every exclamation mark was carefully considered (too carefully considered!). He was a master cartoonist and the work shows it.’
[lovecraft] McCallum reads Lovecraft … Three albums of David McCallum reading H.P. Lovecraft stories recorded in the 1970s. ‘As a reading it’s pretty good, slightly edited but with the novelty of allowing you to hear McCallum recite the famous “As a foulness shall ye know them” passage from the Necronomicon. These commissions no doubt came about simply because McCallum was available but his Lovecraft recordings gain a deeper resonance in the light of his later exploits with Joanna Lumley in the haunted corridors of Time. Some of the malign forces that Sapphire and Steel face aren’t so distant from Lovecraft’s interdimensional “Old Ones”…’
[comics] Farewell to a Poor Bastard … Jeet Heer’s obituary for Joe Matt. ‘I got to know Joe Matt while I was working as a journalist in Toronto in the 1990s. I would occasionally write about Joe’s work and also that of his two cartoonist friends Chester Brown and Seth (who sometimes showed up as comic foils in Joe’s work). I had shown my wife, Robin Ganev, Joe’s just published graphic novel, The Poor Bastard. Robin delighted in the book as an accurate portrayal of the dating scene among young Toronto bohemians in the 1990s. Joe’s portrait of himself as a heel impressed her as an essentially accurate rendering of an all-too-common male type. As my friend the journalist Nathalie Atkinson notes, “Many women love Joe Matt’s comics-in part because he confirms everything we suspected.”’
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29 September 2023
[truecrime] A Postmodern Murder Mystery … A great true-crime story from Poland with a useful rule-of-thumb: If you commit murder don’t write a book about it. ‘He made note of the fact that the narrator murders a female lover for no reason (“What had come over me? What the hell did I do?”) and conceals the act so well that he is never caught. Wroblewski was struck, in particular, by the killer’s method: “I tightened the noose around her neck.” Wroblewski then noticed something else: the killer’s name is Chris, the English version of the author’s first name. It was also the name that Krystian Bala had posted on the Internet auction site. Wroblewski began to read the book more closely-a hardened cop turned literary detective.’
[herzog] 10 Underrated Movies Recommended by Werner Herzog … ‘The movie is really a meditation on loneliness, with many of the interviewees turning to their pets for the connection they lack with other people. “Never have I looked so directly into hell,” Herzog said of the film, and he meant it as a compliment.’
[comics] Ed Brubaker remembers Joe Matt … ‘Joe was renting a room in a house and his room was full of big sketchbooks with his newspaper strip collections. That was his big passion right then, collecting Gasoline Alley strips and glueing them into huge books. There’s a scene in BAD WEEKEND where the cartoonist takes his assistant down and shows him the strips he collected his entire life, and that was directly inspired by those big books of Joe’s. He spent countless hours going over those old strips and I’m pretty sure those were hours of childlike joy at the art of comics.’
[comics] A Letter from Joe Matt
… I’ve was shocked to hear the news of Joe Matt’s sudden death yesterday. ‘today i learned that cartoonist joe matt, was found dead of a heart attack yesterday at his drawing desk. he’s only 60 years old, and had been complaining of chest pains for months, but didn’t want to (or couldn’t afford to) see a doctor. fucking america.’
