Archive for November, 2007

Say it with pictures

Saturday, November 24th, 2007

I’ve blogged before about instructional and awareness comics that my friend Tom Furtwangler has produced over the years, often in collaboration with soon-to-be well-known alternative cartoonists, such as Jason Lutes or Dean Haspiel.

This time, we present a two-page comic that Furtwangler did together with Scott Faulkner about how comics can be used in awareness and grassroots campaigns. It reminds me of the pamphlets and posters the Finnish World Comics group publishes for projects in the third world, most notably in India and Africa.

I quite often worry about spending so much time on something as trivial as comics, and so it is really heart-warming to see my favourite medium also being used for good causes.

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Fleer Comics

Friday, November 23rd, 2007

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Two rather exquisite Fleer comic ads, from Big Town #1 (1950) and #20 (1953), respectively.

25 Years of Arte 9

Thursday, November 22nd, 2007

Fermín Solís made this illustration to celebrate Madrid comic store Arte 9’s 25th birthday. I’m not sure about the Tintin dude, but I do like the Batman in this picture.

Carrot Shark

Thursday, November 22nd, 2007

Eli Kochalka, age 4, and son of James, is guest cartoonist on The Daily Cross Hatch. I like it - it’s good to see that imagination in hereditary !

Daniel Torres

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

The great Daniel Torres (not the actor), on the cover of the “Zero” issue of Spanish comics magazine Viñetas (thanks, Joan) .

La Toile

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

I’ve been spending a lot of time on scans daily lately, since I find it quite amuzing to read other people’s thoughts and impressions of comic imagery, while I see the images themselves. It’s a live slide show at best, another link dump at worst.

This Cobweb story was originally created for an issue of Tomorrow Stories, but apparently the world’s occult cycles are also very much in tune with today’s intellectual rights. So DC axed it, and it popped up in a Top Shelf anthology later. And now it’s here for you to enjoy.

Van Dongen in NRC

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

Peter Van Dongen, mentioned before, did this incredible portrait of Dutch poet Remco Campert for the NRC-Handelsblad issue of november, 11.

(thanks, mom)

League of Extraordinary Freelancers

Monday, November 19th, 2007

Yesterday on The Simpsons : Art Spiegelman, Alan Moore and Dan Clowes appear at a cooler comics store than Comic Book Guy’s. More pictures at scans_daily.

Children’s Rights

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

The Flemish Agency for Children’s Rights published its yearly report yesterday. The sad news is that they once more received more complaints than the year before. The good news is that Nix did their website (with his cute-but-creepy heroes Kinky and Cosy).

How to solve our constitutional crisis ?

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

Nero decorated

As we speak, Belgium has been without a government for more than 150 days. The fact that most of my countrymen don’t really seem to care (except for the fact that prices are starting to rise noticeably) is probably the most pathetic aspect of this drama.

Anyway, let’s not forget that we have been longer without Nero in our newspapers, and that self-same Nero celebrated his 60the anniversary last month (Nero, by the way, who is probably the only newspaper strip character actually having a plaque next to his door saying “newspaper strip character”).

Which prompted our King to ask him for help. And so it happened, as presented by cartoonist chameleon Dirk Stallaert in a special issue of De Standaard

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