linkmachinego.com

15 February 2015
[comics] New Yorker Covers You Might Have Missed … a gallery of astounding Chris Ware magazine covers.
6 February 2015
[comics] The Quotable Alan Moore … a collection of Alan Moore quotes … ‘Eventually you’ll use everything. You usually put them in some kind of code unless you’re doing a straightforward biography. There’s things I did like ‘A Small Killing’. The central event in that was a boy burying some bugs in a bottle. I did that when I was 8 or 9 and it haunted me. In ‘Big Numbers’ the writer was me, not exactly, but there was enough experience. I borrowed voraciously from my friends lives, sometimes that can feel a bit dodgy. These people, they’re your friends and they’ll pour out details of their lives and part of your brain is this cold vampiric thing writing it all down to use later. I can’t help it I’m a writer.’
23 January 2015
[moore] Twenty-two comic books Alan Moore was looking forward to in 1988 Part 1 | Part 2
19 January 2015
[moore] Why has Nick Griffin ripped off the ‘V for Vendetta’ logo for his new party? … Life imitates Alan Moore again… ‘We attempted get in touch with Griffin to get a comment on this and he told us to ‘do one’ and accused us of being part of the ‘zonist media’.’
17 January 2015
[moore] Poet has first book published thanks to old school pal Alan Moore‘The book includes a seven page foreword by Alan in which he says Dominic’s “words speak of an almost-gone emotional reality, a since subsided proletarian warmth, an honesty entirely unafraid of sentiment, a great clarity of the heart.” In Spring Lane School there is a noticeboard displaying laminated pictures of Alan and Dominic to encourage the pupils which they are both very proud to feature on.’
12 January 2015
[comics] Paul Gravett interviews/profiles Dylan Horrocks‘I remember when photocopying machines became plentiful (and cheap) in the 1980s, which led to a blossoming of the small press, mini-comics and zines. It felt like a revolution. But the internet takes that to a whole nother level. Not surprisingly, many publishers and retailers are struggling to adapt, but the main thing for me is the explosion of new and incredibly diverse artists who are embracing comics and are taking them in countless new directions online. Living in a tiny country at the bottom of the world, I’m especially conscious of the possibilities opened up by the internet to empower previously marginalised artists and writers: not just in terms of nationality, but also gender, sexuality, ethnicity and more. Not that everything’s peachy, of course. Governments and corporations are doing their best to bring the internet under their control, and things are changing quickly. Interesting times… The other huge change in comics since the days of Pickle is the rise of the graphic novel. Twenty years ago, the idea that comics would be regularly reviewed in classy literary journals and nominated for major book awards seemed as utopian as Hicksville. I still find it hard to believe. And I still love finding some strange little hand-stapled mini-comic at a local zine-fair….’
11 January 2015
[comics] Legendary Cartoonist Robert Crumb on the Massacre in Paris‘Liberation called me and said, “Crumb, can you do a cartoon for us? About what you think about this, you know, you are a major cartoonist, and you live in France.” So I thought about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I’m doing the dishes, or whatever, I was thinking, “What should I do for that cartoon…” I had a lot of ideas. Other people come up with these, you know, clever cartoons that comment on it, like…This one guy did a cartoon showing a bloody dead body laying there, and a radical Muslim standing over him with a Kalashnikov, saying, “He drew first!” Stuff like that. That’s good, that’s clever, you know, I like that. But, me? I gotta like, you know, when I do something, it has to be more personal…’
10 January 2015
[comics] Dylan Horrocks on Depression, Magic Pens and Tasteful Comics Porn … interview with Dylan Horrocks on his new comics Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen … ‘The book is partly a kind of experimental laboratory, where I create a series of situations fraught with moral complexity and then see what happens when I drop certain characters into them. Every now and then, I try taking a clear position, to see how that feels. But I always tried to undermine, question or challenge those positions at the same time — by surrounding them with the very pleasures they were condemning, or by allowing a sense of unease to creep over the reader. I wanted to build a big, fun, slightly-dangerous adventure playground, where I could play around and push my own limits, even if things got a little scary at times. Hopefully a few other people will enjoy playing there too, and if we’re lucky we might learn something about ourselves and each other. Well, that was the idea. But I’ll settle for getting a few laughs. The central question, in a way, is asked out loud by Sam halfway through: “Do we bear a moral responsibility for our fantasies?” The book sets out to have a conversation about that question.’
5 January 2015
[comics] Ed Brubaker Looks Back At Batman Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 … Brubaker is interviewed by Chris Sims … ‘I was at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and [DC Executive Editor] Mike Carlin was there. He had been reading the flats of Scene of the Crime when they were coming in because he was a fan of Michael’s — my whole career is based on editors being fans of artists that I’ve worked with. So Mike Carlin came to me and said “Why don’t you try and write something for the DCU?” And I said “I don’t think I have any ideas for superheroes.” [Laughs] This is fifteen years ago, and I can look back on it now and it’s funny that I would’ve said it, but at the time, I really didn’t think I could do anything like Batman, and he said “Well, if you can write a mystery comic, you can write Batman.” So he just insisted that I do something, and I went home and sat around trying to think of a pitch for a one-shot, and they were still doing Elseworlds at the time, so I pitched Gotham Noir. Which was how I ended up getting hooked up with Sean Phillips, too.’
1 January 2015
[comics] Happy New Year … 2000AD Prog 451 cover for The Ballard Of Halo Jones by Ian Gibson …

Happy New Year!

25 December 2014
[xmas] ‘Jingle Bells, Batman Smells-‘

Batman Slapping Robin At Christmas Meme

21 December 2014
[comics] The Sensual Santa‘Be a Sensual Santa! It’s Contagious!’

The Sensual Santa By Dan Clowes

14 December 2014
[comics] Judenhass … Dave Sim’s comic about the Holocaust is now available in the public domain. Download from the Judenhass website or Sequential.
12 December 2014
[space] NASA’s Other Peanuts Traditions … a look at the history between NASA and Charles Schulz’s Peanuts … ‘NASA asked Schulz for permissions to use his two famous characters as call signs for the [Apollo 10] mission, something the artist considered a highlight of his career. Some of Schulz’s friends brought up the “what ifs” – what if the mission failed and a crew of dead astronauts was forever synonymous with his characters? Schultz replied simply that if the astronauts could risk their lives on the mission, he could risk his characters. Charlie Brown and Snoopy became semi-official mascots for Apollo 10, even though they weren’t included in the official mission logo. People brought Snoopy dolls in to NASA to lay on top of the crew’s simulators. Apollo 10’s LM is still flying. The crew burned all the LM’s fuel after rendezvousing around the Moon to send it into a wide solar orbit. British astronomer Nick Howes is trying to find it.’
4 December 2014
[comics] Graphic Novels for People Who Aren’t into Superheroes … Great list of comics to look up if you fancy a graphic novel or two (or three or four).
28 November 2014
[comics] Demon … check out this compelling new webcomic from Jason Shiga. Recommended.
26 November 2014
[comics] Alan Moore’s Southern Comfort … Pádraig Ó Méalóid post scans of an obscure early Alan Moore comic for 2000AD and explores if it was rewritten … ‘So, decide for yourself: is this the work of the greatest comics writer of our time? Or is it only partially his, or has the art been changed so much from his original script that it has got lost under there?’
24 November 2014
[comics] Canadian cartoonist Seth Interviewed‘I try not to worry too much about meaning with what I’m doing, because I think meaning is accumulated or accrued from just doing it. It builds up its own meaning. I think that might be the bad legacy of modern art, the concern about ‘what does it mean?’ I don’t think that’s important to the artist. The artist kind of knows what it means, but it’s up to other people to determine that.’
20 November 2014
[moore] Alan Moore’s Brought To Light On YouTube … Alan Moore performs Brought to Light, his history of the CIA. … ‘This is not a dream.’
19 November 2014
[comics] Steve Ditko Doesn’t Stop: A Guide To 18 Secret Comics By Spider-Man’s Co-Creator … a guide to the the semi-obscure comics that Steve Ditko has produced over the last few years … ‘The Avenging Mind may be a 32-page comic book, but the vast majority of its space is occupied by Ditko’s prose. That’s right. Steve Ditko has a reputation for being an inscrutable recluse, but the hardcore fan knows that he’s published tens of thousands of words’ worth of essay communiques with the outside world. (Plus, he’s in the phone book.) In 2002 a number of these articles were collected into Avenging World, a 240-page codex arcana of words, drawings and comics, all dedicated to detailing the artist’s deepest thoughts on art and life — heavily informed, as you’ve heard, by the works of Objectivist fountainhead Ayn Rand. Avenging World is the Ditko bible. It is not easy reading — due in no small part to Ditko’s determination to isolate, highlight, whittle down, specify his terms in a synonymous manner across strings of repetitive declarations, as if to foreclose on the possibility of ambiguity by stating every possible legitimate variation on a thought. Nevertheless, everything Ditko is “about” is contained therein. And fundamental to Ditko’s worldview is the notion that art should serve not as an idle distraction, or a mirror of its times, but as an active inspiration to the betterment of humankind.’
3 November 2014
[comics] Wonder Woman’s Secret Past … the fascinating true story of Wonder Woman’s origins … ‘The much cited difficulties regarding putting Wonder Woman on film—Wonder Woman isn’t big enough, and neither are Gal Gadot’s breasts—aren’t chiefly about Wonder Woman, or comic books, or superheroes, or movies. They’re about politics. Superman owes a debt to science fiction, Batman to the hardboiled detective. Wonder Woman’s debt is to feminism. She’s the missing link in a chain of events that begins with the woman-suffrage campaigns of the nineteen-tens and ends with the troubled place of feminism a century later. Wonder Woman is so hard to put on film because the fight for women’s rights has gone so badly.’
30 October 2014
[comics] Take 3 panels: Tintin: The Castafiore Emerald … a look at 3 panels from one of the greatest comics ever published Herge’s The Castafiore Emerald … ‘The humour in The Castafiore Emerald is key; the mystery/adventure secondary for a change, and this is one of the more overt panels which makes that tone apparent. Here the Captain’s fears and irritations are manifest in dream form: Bianca and the parrot she gifted him amalgamated into one being, while he’s naked and vulnerable in the front row at the opera, with all the little tuxedo-ed parrots (birds of Bianca’s feather) looking seriously on. This is how the Captain sees Bianca: all puffed out plumage, screechy, essentially rather ridiculous. Herge was woefully inadequate when it came to the inclusion and representation of female characters in Tintin, and there is a reading of Bianca here that doesn’t help his case: a demanding, diva of a woman who schemes and tricks him into a non-existent engagement, the first of which he learns when reading a newspaper. However, essentially Bianca is what we would today term ‘fabulous…”
27 October 2014
[comics] For Peace! Fire!!

For Peace! Fire!!

25 October 2014
[comics] Batman’s Greatest Escapes … A collection of Batman’s best disappearing acts from Comics Oughta Be Fun.
24 October 2014
[comics] The Secret History of John Constantine … a look at the past and future of John Constantine‘Bissette claims he asked Moore to let him create a character that looked like Sting. The series’ editor, Karen Berger, told me it was Totleben, who had been wowed by Sting’s portrayal of a possibly demonic con-man in the 1982 film Brimstone and Treacle. Moore told The Comics Journal that he granted the artists’ wishes just for the hell of it. And so a nameless Sting-esque character popped up in a crowd shot in Swamp Thing No. 25. That could’ve been the end of it. But Moore saw the potential for “something more than that.” Moore had been mentally toying with the traditions of English mysticism (though he was still a few years away from identifying as a practitioner of magic). But he was also fascinated by cartoonist Eddie Campbell’s character Dapper John, an archetypal English “wide boy” — a man who takes unreasonable chances and gets by through resourcefulness and smooth talk. He decided to do something previously undone: craft a wide-boy mage.’
15 October 2014
[comics] Netflix unveils first look at new superhero series Marvel’s Daredevil‘Daredevil certainly feels like it has potential. Even though existing shows like Arrow and the recently launched Gotham have already staked out street-level superhero territory, there’s a richness to the character, who wrestles with Catholic guilt over his vigilantism, and a confidence to the execution that suggests Daredevil could cross over to non-comic fans looking for a stylish crime story.’
14 October 2014
[comics] Alan Moore Talks About His Influence Upon Comics‘I mean, I’d like to think that if I’ve shown anything, it’s that comics are the medium of almost inexhaustible possibilities, that there have been…there are great comics yet to be written. There are things to be done with this medium that have not been done, that people maybe haven’t even dreamed about trying. And, if I’ve had any benign influence upon comics, I would hope that it would be along those lines; that anything is possible if you approach the material in the right way. You can do some extraordinary things with a mixture of words and pictures. It’s just a matter of being diligent enough and perceptive enough and working hard enough, continually honing your talent until it’s sharp enough to do the job that you require. I hope that if I had any sort of benign legacy at all, that that would be it, but I don’t know, I think that my legacy, some days, like I say, I think that my legacy is more likely to be a lot of humourless snarling, sarcastic psychopaths, but that’s just on my black days, pay me no mind.’
4 October 2014
[comics] Marvel by Moebius. … a gallery of Moebius’ wonderful view of various Marvel characters.
30 September 2014
[comics] Nine Comic Books About Jim Gordon And Gotham City Police … a list highlighting some interesting Batman comics … ‘Gotham Central – While the series has great stories like “Soft Targets” and and “Half a Life” — and while the entire series delivers the gritty-crime-in-a-superhero-universe feel that the show aspires to — Gotham viewers will probably be most interested in checking out “Unresolved” (Gotham Central #19 – 22 and handily available in paperback), a story that focuses on Harvey Bullock. At the time, Bullock had been kicked off the force in disgrace after taking the law into his own hands, but the unfinished business of a brutal case involving the Mad Hatter and the Penguin pulls him back in and shows just how far he’s willing to go in the pursuit of justice.’
29 September 2014
[comics] Trash! … an early, little-remembered Alan Moore fumetti comic from 1982.
26 September 2014
[batman] How To Kill The Batman Book … a striking fake book cover.

How To Kill The Batman

19 September 2014
[movies] How ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Went From In-Joke to Blockbuster … on the comic book origins of the TMNT franchise … ‘The Turtles literally started out as a joke. Co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were comic-artist wannabes when they spent a November 1983 evening doodling the masked, weaponized reptiles to entertain themselves. Each adjective in Turtles’ title represented a hot superhero-comic trend at the time — mutants were the stars of Marvel’s Uncanny X-Men; DC’s New Teen Titans had teenage protagonists; and future Sin City impresario Frank Miller had stuffed his groundbreaking run on Daredevil full of ninjas. By throwing it all together atop a funny-animal framework — which, from Carl Barks’ Donald Duck to Steve Gerber’s Howard the Duck, had long been a route to comic-book gold — Eastman and Laird simply obeyed the Spinal Tap doctrine of cranking it to eleven.’
13 September 2014
[comics] The Moon Knight Portfolio … another gallery of art by Bill Sienkiewicz and Christie Scheele from 1983.
7 September 2014
[comics] Bill Sienkiewicz’s Moon Knight … gallery of art from Sienkiewicz’s mid-80’s run on Marvel’s Moon Knight.
6 September 2014
[batman] XombieDIRGE: ‘I can take you as far as Blüdhaven, after that your on your own.’

Batman Hitchhiking

5 September 2014
[comics] The Unlikely Rise, Fall, And Rise Again Of “Viz” Comic … profile of Viz from Buzzfeed … ‘Some of the best-loved characters have changed in line with society. Student Grant, a nerdy university stereotype, began to feel outdated. (“They’re customers now,” says Dury.) Roger Mellie was just a sweary TV presenter; now he’s a way to satirise recent media scandals (at the time of writing Ian Botham’s Twitter account has recently posted a picture of an erect penis, and Thorp and Dury are going to have Roger’s do the same). Others remain a constant: Sid the Sexist is still yet to lose his virginity, and Fru ‘T’ Bunn remains a sketch about a baker who makes his own sex dolls…’
30 August 2014
[comics] Dave Sim And Gerhard: Aardvarks Over The UK … Dave Sim interviewed during a tour of the UK in 1993 … ‘The original idea for Cerebus was simply to do a more interesting comic book. I wanted to do something that had adult values applied to it, as opposed to just doing something along typical comic-book lines. You know, “let’s do a superhero ‘cos they’re selling okay”. And the further along I’ve gone, the more I’ve tried to do something that makes me happy, something that is satisfying to me. I enjoyed superheroes the same as any twelve year old, when I was twelve, but I’m almost forty now, so I put things into Cerebus that I’m interested in now!’
28 August 2014
[comics] After His Public Downfall, Sin City’s Frank Miller Is Back (And Not Sorry) … fascinating profile of Frank Miller …

At the turn of the millennium, Miller and Varley were working on their long-awaited Dark Knight sequel. It was initially hatched as a romp, a reinjection of Day-Glo fun into what had become a relentlessly grim superhero landscape. They were about halfway through the series on September 11, 2001. By this time Miller had moved back to New York, and the assault on his home disturbed him deeply—which again quickly became apparent in his work. In the later issues, Batman decides to let an alien force destroy Metropolis and its citizens, Captain Marvel is killed, and Batman kills a genetically manipulated Robin by hurling him into a lava-filled chasm. “I think there was a PTSD effect,” Varley says of 9/11. “I think many people didn’t get over it, that it will continue to affect their lives forever. And I think Frank is one of those people.”

22 August 2014
[funny] A Very Personal Computer … by Boulet.

A Very Personal Computer

16 August 2014
[films] What author/writer has had the most film adaptations?‘Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, has 100 credits to his name.’
15 August 2014
[comics] Interviews: learning your A, B, Cs … Pat Mills discusses the A. B. C. Warriors … ‘ I think the ABCs is a rare story that endows machines with personality. This has always seemed an obvious thing to do. To treat them like superheroes but in a more rewarding way. They are a metaphor for working class heroes.’
10 August 2014
[comics] The Complete 14 Batman Window Cameos‘A compilation of all 14 window cameos from the 1960s ABC TV series Batman. Almost fifty years later, some of these folks are still remembered today–Others, not so much.’

9 August 2014
[comics] Miliband to show Obama his 2000AD collection … an important question – which world leaders are Squaxx dek Thargo? …

Miliband said: “Barack Obama looks as though he would definitely have been part of my gang at school, The League of Zarjaz Earthlets.

“I may even detach the Space Spinner free gift from issue one for some light-hearted yet reverent fun.”

5 August 2014
[batman] Batman the Redeemer

Batman The Redeemer

4 August 2014
[comics] Dear Hollywood: Stop Using Frank Miller’s Batman Stories As Source Material‘Experimentation is what has kept superhero comics alive from Batman’s first appearance until this year’s Batman Day. Indeed, The Dark Knight Returns and Year One were huge risks when they hit the stands. But on the big screen, DC is beating Frank Miller’s ideas into the ground. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Miller’s twin Batman epics. But there is something creatively bankrupt about studios focusing on them so monomaniacally. As Miller himself once said, “There are 50 different ways to do Batman and they all work.” Our fate is sealed for Batman v. Superman, but we have to imagine a better future. If an ambitious filmmaker wants to make a truly innovative Batman movie, he or she needs to put Frank’s hard-boiled sagas back on the shelf…’
21 July 2014
[comics] Explorers on the Moon 1969 … Tintin and Gang greets Neil Armstrong on the Moon …

Tintin and Gang greet Neil Armstrong on the Moon

15 July 2014
[comics] The Worst Comic Book Heroes That Never Existed … by Michael Kupperman.

Michael Kupperman's The Manister

9 July 2014
[batman] The Real Dynamic Duo: Kane and Finger … Mark Evanier on Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Batman … ‘For those who don’t know: Bill Finger wrote the first Batman story and most of the early ones that established key things about the character and his world. He was a friend of Kane’s and a very good writer, and while Kane argued with some accounts of exactly what Finger had invented, even Bob had to admit that Bill made a vital contribution to the property.’
29 June 2014
[comics] Chris W’s Cerebus Character Index … a comprehensive index of all the characters who appeared more than two times … ‘Missy (52): #114, #118, #124, #136, #141-2, #144-57, #162-70, #173, #191 (flashback), #218 (dream), #230-4, #237-8, #242, #246, #254, #261, #265, #300 (flashback)’
26 June 2014
[comics] Alan Moore Early Career Timeline … … ‘Swamp Thing 24 – Roots (February 1984) … Monster (Scream #1 – March 1984) Boy buries his father, then goes to investigate the mysterious locked door upstairs which his father was killed going up to. Story ends with a to-be-continued, and was picked up by John Wagner – was about a deformed man living in the attic who was gentle but usually homicidal, apparently.’