The Ephemerist

If DC ever greenlights a movie based on Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s Arkham Asylum, they needn’t look any further. This Spanish “fake trailer” by Ferran Brooks is simply awesome. And I’m choosing my words carefully.

By carefully imitating the imagery from the graphic novel, Brooks has been able to capture its atmosphere of claustrophobia and mental disturbances. It’s simply one of the best of its kind I’ve ever seen. My only “yeah, but” would be that it just could use that little bit more lighting. But that’s all.

While you’re at it, also check out his trailer to a possible movie based on UK fantasy comic Slaine, The Horned God.

Over on Ethan Persoff’s wonderful site, a bootleg Vietnamese Batman and Robin Comic Book from the 1960’s can be found. This book is clearly inspired by the then popular Batman television series, with an invisible Robin, space ships, villains with gas-spewing skulls on their heads, onomatopaea, totally impossible perspectives and a furthermore unidentified female caped crusader.

(via PCL Linkdump)

Never Been, a nine meter long wordless narrative scroll by Stuart Kolakovic, is now completely available online ! It’s a magnificent tale of loss and regret, beautifully rendered in Kolakovic’s trademark style, combining contemporary cartoon elements and references to traditional art from Eastern Europe.

What’s particularly interesting about this piece, is that it’s essentially one big drawing, in which the different frames that make up the narrative, are flawlessly meshed. Important turns in the story are accentuated by changing the visual direction of the art as well (reminiscent of Scott McCloud’s infinite canvas - Mr. McCloud’s influence is spreading, it would seem). In short, a beautiful piece, that I would very much like to own in hardcopy. Stuart, you know what to do !

College Humor presents the new Dark Knight trailer remade with footage from the Tim Burton Batman film.  Just to make a point : it’s a remake, the same story all over again.  It’s as if the origin of the Joker were told over and over again by continuously new writers and artists — er — oh, wait, they do that as well…

(via /Film)

I received a cute envelope today, containing one empty sheet of equally cute stationary paper designed by none other than Mr. Brian Biggs ! I felt like a schoolgirl, collecting Diddl sheets…

(images altered to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent alike - with thanks to the innocent you-know-who-you-are)

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… why not go all the way ?

(from Emptees - thanks, Ivow !)

Issue 159 of the excellent (free !) Dutch comics review magazine Zozolala features an interesting interview with illustrator and cartoonist Peter Kuper. And on that occasion, Kuper provided the magazine with an exclusive cover illustration.

(ill. © Peter Kuper)

As they say themselves, the World’s Worst Comic Book Museum is dedicated to comics

“dredged from the bargain boxes of Comics shops from one side of the continent to the other, [and] there is hardly a volume in these four boxes for which more than 50 cents was paid. Oh, there is some good reading in there too, as well as mighty bad, for the bargain boxes become home to both ends of the spectrum. Those comics which aim high and hit are often as unsaleable as those which aim anywhich way and wildly miss. Not all of the bad ones display their full badness on the front cover - all of them must be read in full to be truly appreciated. I shall do my best here to provide an overview of the wide range of bargain comics the discriminating collector rejects.”

Judging that they only originate from “Comics shops from one side of the continent to the other”, this is as “world’s” as the myriad of World Series that the US is famous for. But it is a quite entertaining overview, nevertheless.

Update - I just got scolded by the Man-In-The-Know that the above statement is false and based on eurosnobbery and wrong information. For starters, there’s only one American sport that has its “world series” and that’s baseball. And secondly, that world series was not named after it being the championship of the world, but rather the championship that was sponsored by the New York Daily The World. So, here’s to that Man-In-The-Know, who discovered this gem in the first place. Three cheers ! Huzzah !

Washingtonpost.com reports on the works of painter Deena Feigelson Margolis, whose work is on display at the McLean Project for the Arts in Washington.  Called “Four months”, it’s the result of her attempt to make a painting a day for four months, after reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.  Margolis was especially intrigued by McCloud’s discussion of “the relationship of the frame to the spaces between the frames”.

Similarly, since it turned out to be impossible to actually create a pictue every day, there are sporadic gaps in the finished series, representing Margolis most eventful and hectic days.  Paradoxically, they are the elements in the chain that tie the narrative together, and are in a way her best paintings.

Austin Kleon is a cartoonist and poet from Austin, Texas who has a quite original and intriguing way of working. He takes a page from an existing book or newspaper article and blacks out words until he finds a new and hidden meaning in the text, using the block of text as a visual and poetic element, on a par with the actual words.

Some of the results are hilarioius, some are profound and even unsettling, but they are never bland or boring.