I didn’t think comics should have to credentialize themselves or apologize for being comics. Over the last couple of years, however, I’ve been reading some illustrated sequential tomes that actually seem like novels.

Most recently, I picked up David Small‘s memoir Stitches. Not only was it fantastic, it felt like I had read a novel: the detailed evocation of place and time through little details; the powerful, painful moments of childhood torment; the powerful characters; and the sense it left me with – I absorbed and appreciated much of its greatness, but I will be coming back to read it again.

But here’s what floored me. I read the whole thing in 45 minutes.

This is not meant to belittle the book. It’s fantastic.

The art is great. Small is largely known as an illustrator of children’s books. He marries a fantastic gift for faces and expression with a very cinematic sense of perspective, framing and storyboarding.

The story is gripping and rewarding. It was powerful, and I’ve been thinking about it all day… since reading it last night in 45 minutes.

There is now so much amazing illustrated work being published across so many genres, choosing to read literary fiction almost seems spoiled to me – like watching a silent movie.

Go get Stitches. Treat yourself.

(If you need more convicing, David Small’s website has more art, interviews, etc. to give you the flavour of it.)

It’s basically twitter with music: your feed is a constantly-updating playlist. I like music from all over the spectrum, so the people I listen to have pretty diverse taste. I’m currently listening to 60 people, of whom probably 15 are active daily, and at any given time I might be on at the same time as five or six.

It’s an amazing exercise in not-quite-randomness.  I get everything from lo-fi indie to 80s hardcore to techno washing over my eardrums in a glorious mix. Depending on my mood, and the mix of people on at the same time as me, I can focus on one genre for a night, or just bounce all over the place.  I get introduced to great new music every day, and sometimes get the joy of  introducing someone to a favourite of mine.

Even those friends with whom I share a major overlap in musical taste probably only like about 50% of the same stuff I do, so it’s pretty fantastic to swap tunes with people who share not only my taste, but my mix of tastes.

As a medium, Blip is interactive, but not really conversational. Between that and the fact that the content is pretty much completely confined to one topic, I have finally found a social network on which I feel absolutely no need to self-censor. I may not want to bore my friends with my professional life or feel the need to update my work colleagues about my weekend, but I am completely comfortable blipping Hank Williams, Radiohead and The Stooges in the same night – plus five other artists  you haven’t heard of (and I hadn’t two hours ago).

This thing is cool. Very cool. Maybe too cool.

I suspect Cylons are involved.

26 fantastic illustrations. Check ‘em out.

Props to Phronk for this link.

No, I haven’t joined a cult.

I did make a bit of a pilgrimage on the weekend, though.  Toronto’s FanExpo is a number of geeky conventions all housed under one roof : Comics, Gaming, Sci-Fi, Horror and Anime.

The crowds were insanely dense (estimated 70,000 over the weekend) but amazingly well mannered and chipper (despite many folks spending hours in various lines).  The whole celebrity/autograph thing was kind of underwhelming (not really a letdown as I had no huge expectations) and the shopping was… well, shopping.

More entertaining were the costumes.  They ranged from entertainingly bad to slavishly accurate, funny to frightening, and everything in between.  My favorites were the low-tech Star Wars crew including a garbage can R2 and Darth Vader using an old cassette player as his chest “control panel.”

The real highlight for me though, was meeting and talking to some amazing comic artists.  First I stumbled across an artist whose work I had long admired but who I didn’t even know by name.  Attila Adorjany does illustration for games, but (I discovered) also does webcomics, paints, and doodles like a mofo.

While I pored over original sketches from his work on the card game Inn-Fighting, Attila told me about getting gagged by Lucasfilm attorneys, his webcomic, and the financial risks of spending so much time at conventions surrounded by tons of cool ways to blow your money.  I encourage you to check out his site or his photostream.

A friend had asked me to say hi to Michael Cho – a name I recognized as being a comic artist, but that I wasn’t really familiar with.  Holy crap!  He is now one of my favorite artists.  I was completely blown away by the fantastic two-colour prints he had there.  Not only were they some of my favorite characters, they were also rtraction’s corporate colours.  Clearly it was a sign for me to buy three for my office. When I got home and checked out more of his stuff on his site I was even more impressed.  Now I need to get some of his work in comic form.

Both Attila and Mike are Ontario talent – and there were sooo many other local artists at the con with fantastic work on display, it was really impressive.  Too many to mention…  but I will leave you with one more of my favorites, a Hulk/Bluto mash-up courtesy of Darryl Graham.

]]> http://chrismcinnis.ca/cantankerousape/2009/09/01/all-hail-the-creator/feed/ 0 http://chrismcinnis.ca/cantankerousape/2009/07/22/favorite-shorts/ http://chrismcinnis.ca/cantankerousape/2009/07/22/favorite-shorts/#comments Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:48:55 +0000 chrisM http://chrismcinnis.ca/cantankerousape/?p=78 (AKA Cartoon Hour)

I’ve been scouring the web (and my memory) for a while now, trying to find some of my all-time favorite animated shorts. Each of these is great in its own way – although admittedly they will not be up everyone’s alley. My taste in animation tends provoke either “that’s awesome!” or “what have you been smoking?” Hopefully your reaction is the former.

Sub

by Jesse Schmal

When this first came on screen in the theatre, I went “ugh”.

The visual style initially reminded me of those interminable 1970s NFB shorts that they showed at school. The teachers always got us excited about seeing “a cartoon” and then showed us some dreary, unfunny piece of Canadian content. “Sub” reminds me visually of those, but it’s much weirder, and much funnier. You may not think it’s going anywhere at first…the humour is kind a slow simmer, but stick with it. It builds to an amazing conclusion in the final minute.

Little Cow

by Laszlo Kollar & Igor Lazin

OK, this is all about the audio, but if it doesn’t make you laugh…there should be an awrd for vocals this crazy.

Balance

by Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein

This is a vertiable antique, but I never get tired of it. It is so German, in so many ways.

At The Ends of the Earth

by Konstantin Bronzit

This is another “slow builder”. Enlarge it to full screen – there’s a lot of great detail. I love the mix of Warner Brothers style slapstick with Rowan Atkinson Pacing. Some nice potty humour in there as well.

Tango

Zbig Rybczynski

Often imitated, but never duplicated, this one is amazing mostly for its context. In the days of digital production, there would really be little remarkable about this. But in 1982, made by hand, it was quite a masterpiece of planning, synchronization and editing.

Unlikely Covers

I love when someone pulls a great song out of one sphere of music and into their own. Sometimes a great cover leads me to appreciate the songwriting of an artist I had never really paid attention to, like Warren Zevon covering Prince’s Raspberry Beret. Sometimes the brilliance of a cover is the way the song has been translated to a different genre,  like Luther Wright & the Wrongs’ brilliant take on Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd (which happens to come from their hugely enjoyable album, Rebuild the Wall, which bluegrassifies Floyd’s whole album song-for-song). The joy of a cover can come from an unlikely pairing that  works better than would seem possible, suchn as Johnny Cash doing Hurt, originally by Nine Inch Nails. Now granted, Bob Rock was intentionally feeding Johnny an eclectic mix of songs to cover on those last few albums, but the power of the sone and the lyrics about addiction gain a real beauty and gravitas when sung by a man in the last years of a long, troubled life.  

My final and favorite example of what makes a great cover song is when an artist finds a song that so matches their persona, it seems like the song should have been theirs in the first place. I never, ever tire of hearing the Ramones rip out the theme from the 60′s TV theme to Spider-Man.

Two minutes of joy.