Buttercups

Note to world: David Troupes has begun drawing Buttercup Festival again. Yay Dave! This is by no means an insignificant event.

I had been reading Buttercup Festival for years, and was downright shocked when it quite suddenly ended, my online comic evenings changed forever. I think one of the reasons that I like it so much is how it starts out comparatively trite to slowly become a work of genius. I could keep linking awesome strips all afternoon, but go to the site and read them all instead.

I am still miffed by the fact that my beige Buttercup Festival t-shirt got lost. I never lose clothes like that. It is not like I went out dressed one day and then came home topless.

Genius

Quick tip: Girl Genius

I have no idea how I managed to miss it. I must be retarded or something, because I have loved the art of Phil Foglio since the heydays of Magic: The Gathering and I managed to miss this comic for seven years. Anyway. Girl Genius is a fantabulous webcomic which is not only beautifully drawn, it has a great, Miyazaki-esque steampunky story as well. Check out the rad goggles in their online shop, too. They come in brass or black.

Speaking of that, reading Girl Genius reawakened my love for clothes and trinkets in the combination brass and brown leather, 1800s sci-fi style. I started looking on eBay, but somehow ended up buying these old military (or so the seller stated - but I think they might be for welding) goggles instead.


Yay! High fashion!

Something is Rotten in the Land of Comics

I have been a comic aficionado for a long time. I read Courtney Crumrin, The Far Side, The Walking Dead, Captain America and everything in between. I guess it started in my early teens when I started reading manga, especially Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed, Black Magic) and Rumiko Takahashi (Ranma ½, Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku) but also artists like Buichi Terasawa and of course I read Kozure Okami by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima. I sort of drifted away from the manga somewhere around the time when Quake, booze, ladies and rock 'n' roll became more interesting, although I did read Sandman and a few other comics an adolescent goth kid is expected to like. However, I rediscovered comics as a pastime a few years into the new millennium, when a large screen and a fast Internet connection led to the possibility of downloading or reading online before buying. Since then I have found quite a lot of fabulous comics on the net which I wish I had discovered sooner, such as Bone, Hellblazer and Preacher, or the ones published online, such as Sluggy Freelance, Dinosaur Comics, Buttercup Festival (RIP), Death to the Extremist (RIP) and many others.

Anyway, my point is, I read a lot of comics nowadays, even though the fact that my happy days as a student are over means I have had to cut down a bit on my reading. However, I have some major issues. The following pertains to US comics in particular, and the reason that I get so irritated by it is that these comics are generally the best ones in other respects. What I am so damn tired of is that most comics geared towards people older than ten years share a few very sucky traits which I will be going to whine about to a greater extent in future posts; extreme emphasis on the female body and T&A in particular (granted, there is quite a high level of exploitation of the male body too, but not to the same extent), blatant and often overtly stupid political references and world-changing events in every damn issue.

I thought I would start my whining about the extreme sexification of comics. A good example (as in an otherwise pretty good comic) would be the 18 issue Emma Frost series released by Marvel, starting in 2003. It is about a young woman coming to terms with her superhuman powers, her dysfunctional family and bits about boys and betrayal, too. It is rated PG+, yet the cover of the first issue (drawn by the very talented Greg Horn) still portrays somebody who, for lack of better words, sort of looks like a sad and expensive prostitute. This is despite the fact that the protagonist in the same issue looks quite different. Let us take a look (for review purposes only, of course, I am not trying to infringe on somebody's copyright here).


Another funny thing is how the Emma Frost in the comic is called "flat-chested" by one of her peers. As you can see in the picture above, she is the girl in the foreground, this is sort of... weird. It further shows a detachment from reality which is even worse than that of the fashion industry, even though its effects are probably much smaller.


In this particular series, the covers, like the one above, suddenly become dramatically better after issue seven, or perhaps I should say more fitting, even though the same artist is drawing them. Not that they all lose their sexual innuendo, but they give some sort of a glimpse of what the comic is about, rather than being nothing more than bait to make people pick up the comic (I could say the same thing about c.

Most comics are also rife with pretty stupid things that show that the authors are not entirely in touch with reality or do not care. Granted, they usually portray vividly imaginative scenarios, but in those cases where they are supposed to show another version of the "real world" as we know it, they often miss such obvious things like how a man's suit or shirt is buttoned (that is, the button is sewn onto the right side, not the left) or how a certain group of people generally behave. For instance, here is a very good example:


Who the hell wants something sewn by starving Cambodians in sweatshops if they are as rich as this family is portrayed to be? They could, and would, know good tailors.

The list of stuff that irritates me goes on and on and on, but then I am quite the whiny type. However, the sexualisation of almost all females except the "extreme nerd" and similar characters sort of bothers me, for real. Even though I do not call myself "feminist" (though I have heard that one has to, on threat of being labeled a fascist misogynist). Because I think that comics can play an important role in the shaping of a young person's (generally male in this case) mind, just like parents, computer games and literature. Of course, I am not advocating censorship here, and I suppose that hot and sexy comics have their place in the world - I just wonder why such a large amount of the mainstream comics have to be like that (I suppose the answer is that they sell much better). I sort of think that the artist should spend at least a few minutes to consider how they would like it if their daughter got silicone implants the size of her head, wore a thong and did sexy posing on the street all the time. Probably not att all, but you never know with comic artists.

Fleshed Out

Quick update: I decided to give Unreal Tournament 3 another go, and a bit of vehicle CTF was actually pretty fun. However, I could not help but compare it to Battlefield 2, for instance, which is largely similar (except for the objective) and much more satisfying. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what I miss in UT 3, but I think it has to do with the fact that it is so damn similar to its previous incarnations.

I did manage to get my hands on a GeForce 8800 GT card, though. It was mostly by accident, really. They had one left in a local shop, so I thought I would get it and see whether it is as revolutionary (in the price/performance department) as previously claimed. Indeed it was! I could run UT 2003 and Gears of War in 2560x1600 resolution with most settings cranked up to max and still get a smooth frame rate. This card is the bee's knees, so to speak, at least for bees on a budget constraint.

This year, my Christmas (or midwinter, for those so inclined) gifts will be pretty much limited to giving a wad of money to Medecins sans frontieres and telling people that the expected socks are instead vaccine in Darfur. So should yours.

During the last week or so, I have been watching the tv-series Dexter, which has previously been recommended to me on numerous occasions, but I am a busy one, so it took some time before I caught up.

Actually, Dexter is awesome. It is probably one of the best longer tv-series (as in more than fifteen episodes or so) I have ever seen. Sure, there are some fantastic shorter ones, but those are usually more like "a movie which we chopped up into several episodes because nobody would want to see it all in one sitting". Dexter, however, works beautifully as a series and it actually gets better over time, with the second season improving quite a lot over the weaker last half of the first one.

Sure, a tv-series about a serial killer is more or less bound to have a number of implausible events due to the fact that people will expect someone to die in every episode. And indeed they do, they drop like flies. However, all that is entirely secondary to the character development. Dexter's personal life is the main focus of the series, and his emotions feel much more plausible than the cardboard characters usually portrayed on tv. This is one of the weak points though - Dexter's development stands in stark contrast with the other characters in the series who, in comparison, get neither the time or the script to become deeper and more interesting. Dexter is not only the main character, but also the narrator of the series, so it makes perfect sense. I just wish they would have either fleshed out (ahaha, that is my funny bone talking) at least a few other characters a bit more or concentrated even more on Dexter (as in not writing as many scenes or side-stories where he is not present).

Speaking of funny bones, I just realized it has been a while since I read Bone. I should do it again, and so should you.

Toothpaste Stays Striped

So, I have been working in the investment banking department of a bank here in Stockholm for a week now. It has been rather tiring, although I guess that could be expected. The time I spent in the office was 70 hours or so, which is approximately the workload I had guessed in advance. However, I had not really anticipated how little leisure time that means. I pity the friend who works 100 hour weeks in London, really. I can only imagine.

On another note, I now know how the toothpaste stays striped! Really, is that not funky? I somehow expect a Dinosaur Comics about it. Read Dinosaur Comics. You must.

I now have two months left as an IBD intern. After that I will either have a very nice job and no spare time, or no job and a very nice spare time. Either way, this summer I have a thesis to write and hopefully enough money to go on vacation in distant lands for a week or two.

Grisly

A bit later than most others, I just watched El Laberinto del Fauno (I have no idea where the "Pan" translation comes from) at the movie theatre. It was very good, but not as great as I had expected it to be. I was told it was a bit of a "horror" movie, but really, it was mostly just a bit gory in places. The one exception would be the monster with the hand-eyes (I will not go into deeper detail, for those of you who have not seen it) which was beautiful, grisly and also somehow immediately drew my thoughts to the book Coraline by Neil Gaiman, one of my absolutely favourite short novels of all time. My main gripe with the film in general was that I did not feel the two stories interweaved as naturally as I might have liked them to, but that is rather subjective, seeing as how others have praised it to no end for just the opposite. Well worth seeing, and it reminded me that Spanish is a pretty language.

I also read a comic called The Nightly News, which more or less felt like a sort of terrorist propaganda. It made me just slightly uncomfortable, which I think was its exact goal. "The Voice" goes on about the concentration of power, media conglomerates; mostly the usual "easy reading" politics found in many comics for grown-ups (not "adult" comics, that is) and the solution according to the protagonists (or antagonists, as the case may be) is, firstly at least, to kill journalists. I will have to try to find more issues of it to see what it is really about. Either way, I am very unimpressed with the way they handle (real-world) statistics, especially one about the share price of the company producing Ritalin. I will show you later.

The Damage Done

Today brought with it the quintessential The Sisters of Mercy-experience. I finally got my The Damage Done / Watch record! I spent far too much money on it, and my only consolation is that I can probably sell it for around the same price, should I later on understand the mind-boggling stupidity of paying a week's wage on a 7" vinyl that will never be touched by the needle. It must be those collector genes activated, much like love can make almost anything seem like a good idea.


There it is, the first single by The Sisters of Mercy, about as old as me and a fairly crappy recording. However, the lyrics were really very good, compared to those of most other bands in general, and for a first single in particular. What irritates me with a lot of bands is the "angsty fifteen year-old" syndrome and/or just plain bad lyrics. In some cases, it is so bad that I cannot even stand listening, even if the singing and music is good. Never with the Sisters, though, especially from Alice onward.

I also went shopping for cheap book sale stuff and came home with a Lena Ackebo book, a story about Jean Paul Gaultier's career and some odd little book about various political factions in Iran.


Lena Ackebo is one of my favourite female cartoonists and, perhaps not surprisingly, one of my favourite cartoonists in general. For some reason, there are either very few women (notable exception: Chynna Clugston) who manage to release good comics to the general public, or I just have a problem appreciating them. Maybe there is a male hegemony in the comics industry, or society brings up boys to be more interested in comics, hence a smaller population of female cartoonists? Anyway, I have no problem at all enjoying Ackebo's comics, much more for her storytelling and structuring than for the art, admittedly. Actually, the art put me off a bit at first, but I have come to appreciate it with time.


This is a picture from the Jean Paul Gaultier book by Colin McDowell. Some of the stuff in it is totally insane, which is really what I like about Gaultier. There were books about most other fancy designers, but apart from the one about Roberto Cavalli, I found none I really wanted.

Oh, and before I forget. I just read the first 22 out of 24 issues of Girls by the Luna brothers, and I have no idea how I have managed to miss it until now. It is a fantastic comic, if you are not put off by rather graphic violence and nudity. These, however are definitely not what makes the comic interesting. Like any good zombie comic (which it is not, but closely resembles) such as The Walking Dead it is all about what people do together and to each other in a time of crisis. Anyway, I really, really suggest you get it now. It is that good.

Another recommendation while I am at it: The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster. Quite strange and not really exciting as such, but I am almost finished with it, and hitherto, I really like it.

The background at present is a modified version of some William Morris design I found on the web. Morris was a 19th century British artist (chiefly within tapestries and textile) whose designs I really love. Google Image Search is great for finding his art, and it is available in numerous museums. He was a poet and a very early socialist writer, too, but I cannot say that I know much about either of those careers.

Comics

Rigt now, I am watching some kind of horrendous anime called DearS. The English dubbing is awful and so is the original Japanese voicetrack. Add to that stupid sex jokes and that typical absence of actual animation, and it is just like so many other bad anime series out there. I want more Miyazaki, or, lacking that talent and budget, at least more stuff like Lain, Witch Hunter Robin, Wolf's Rain, Haibane Renmei, Last Exile... Talent! Hello?

You may take those implicit recommendations at face value, the above series are really very good, especially Lain.

And now I turned dear DearS off.

Speaking of drawings, I generally prefer them sitting still, except when it is a cheap money-saving trick. That is, I like comics, even though the word is so strange nowadays, what with most comics being full of death and despair. Anyway, in the last few years, I have read through such a shitload of comics that I am a bit ashamed of myself. I could have learned a new language or raised children - maybe even saved the world or something. But no, I have been reading all the Dark Horse and Vertigo stuff, plus a lot of other comics of the same ilk. I cannot say I have not enjoyed it, though, even if some of them were really a waste of time. I mean, stuff like Preacher, Black Hole, Y the Last Man, the Vertigo Pop miniseries are positively brilliant whereas comics such as Spawn are rather tedious in the long run. Maybe, however, the authors did not intend for someone to read 200-ish issues in three days.

Anyway, the recommendations from last week's reading are I Paparazzi, WE3, Tell Me Dark, Tattered Banners and Seaguy. They are good to a rather varying degree, with the last two being discordianismly absurd, the first nightmarishly absurd and the
other two being horrible tales with comparatively happy endings, which I happen to like.