“This day’s experience, set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside.” –Alice Munroe, “What is Remembered”
In August, we purchased a teeny-tiny drawing by “Hector Mumbly,” which is the children’s book nom de plume of artist Dave Cooper. Here’s a scan:
[Copyright: Dave Cooper.]
The artwork, which is from the Hector Mumbly book entitled Bagel’s Lucky Hat, is 124 mm high x 127 mm wide, red and black ink over printed blueline. The featured character, Bagel, is a mere 25 mm from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail.
The drawing was accompanied by an illustrated thank-you note on standard-size typing paper. Here’s a scan:
Bonus Link:
davegraphics’ photostream - there’s lots of really good (and, sometimes, disturbing) work on display here, including some enlightening step-by-step documentations of paintings in progress.
“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to inform the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who think it’s a joke.” — Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, Trans. Alastaire Hannay (London: Penguin Classics), p. 49.
If Everyone was Listening
by Richard Davies and Roger Hodgson
The actors and jesters are here
The stage is in darkness and clear
For raising the curtain
and no-one’s quite certain whose play it is
How long ago, how long
If only we had listened then.
If we’d known just how right we were going to be.
For we dreamed a lot
And we schemed a lot
And we tried to sing of love before the stage fell apart.
If everyone was listening you know
There’d be a chance that we could save the show
Who’ll be the last clown
To bring the house down?
Oh no, please no, don’t let the curtain fall
Well, what is your costume today?
Who are the props in your play?
You’re acting a part which you thought from the start
was an honest one.
Well how do you plead?
An actor indeed!
Go re-learn your lines,
You don’t know what you’ve done
The finale’s begun.
If everyone was listening you know
There’d be a chance that we could save the show,
Who’ll be the last clown
To bring the house down?
Oh no, please no, don’t let the curtain fall.
ABOVE: “the ultra-limited-edition silkscreen show print… for the Ghost World: Special Edition exhibit opening this Friday, August 29, at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery.”
BELOW: the Ghost World paperback cover, the Ghost World poster, and the new Ghost World: Special Edition cover.
To tell you the truth, I think the Ghost World: Special Edition cover is not very good at all. It’s clearly meant to echo the movie poster, but I think there’s a glaring disconnect now between the typography and the drawing. In the movie poster, the design of Enid’s black and green skirt and the other elements of black clothing, including Enid’s retro black-plastic-framed glasses, connected very nicely with the sinuous black letters of the title, Ghost World. Now, there’s no connection at all, except for the anemic colouring. Also, the figures in the drawing are too stiff. Their shoulders and hips are both square to the viewer and parallel to each other. Look at the figures in the poster. Both have one shoulder higher than the other; and while Rebecca has her hips nearly parallel with the ground, with both legs bearing her weight almost equally, Enid has her hips at an angle, with one leg clearly bearing more weight than the other, as is naturally the case, most of the time, when a person is standing still. In short, insensitive design plus insensitive drawing equals a mediocre cover.
Lynd Ward’s illustrations for Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, are stunning examples of the wood engraver’s art. Nick Mullins has some great examples from the book on his site, but John Lauritsen has them all.
Above: P. 161: The monster strangles little William.
Click the above photo of Blind Blake–the only photo of the musician known to exist–to visit a site offering MP3s of Dry Bone Shuffle (1927), He’s In The Jailhouse Now, Bad Feeling Blues (1927), Too Tight Blues #2 (1929), Southern Rag (1927), Doggin’ Me Mama Blues (1928), Georgia Bound (1929) , Champagne Charlie (1932), and Police Dog Blues (1929). And right click here and select “Save Link As…” to download Diddie Wa Diddie. All of the aforementioned songs are, apparently, in the public domain.
All of us who do creative work, like, you know, we get into it, and we get into it because we have good taste. Do you know what I mean? You want to make TV because you love TV, you know what I mean? Because there’s stuff that you just, like, love. Okay? So you’ve got really good taste and you get into this thing that, that, I don’t even know how to describe it, but it’s like there’s a gap that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, okay, it’s not that great, it’s, it’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. You know what I mean? You can tell that it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase; a lot of people at that point, they quit. And the thing I would just like to say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where, they had really good taste, they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be, they knew it fell short, and, and, like, some of us can admit that to ourselves and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves, but we knew that, it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have, and the thing I would say to you is, everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase, or if you’re just starting off and you’re entering into that phase, you’ve gotta know, it’s totally normal, and the most important possible thing you could do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. You know what I mean? Whatever it’s gonna be, like, you create the deadline. It’s best if you have somebody who’s waiting for work from you, somebody who’s expecting work from you, even if it’s not somebody who pays you, but that you’re in a situation where you have to turn out the work, because it’s only actually by going through a volume of work, that you’re actually going to catch up and close that gap, and the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.
Jon Morris’s “16 Panels That I Don’t Think Work All That Well (But Which People Keep Using Over and Over) (Also, I Couldn’t Think of 22, So Wally Wood Wins)”:
Bonus Links:
Wally Wood’s 22 Panels that Always Work: Unlimited Edition - Joel Johnson outlines the history of the famous 22 panels and offers, for your downloading pleasure, various “high-resolution versions of ‘Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work’ in ‘Unlimited Edition,’ scanned in from the original paste-up.”
“It’s a way of coping with the world. You know, in the same way that somebody copes with it by being a stamp collector or a sports addict or a titan of industry or an alcoholic or something. My way of coping with the horrors of existence is to put my nose to the grindstone and work and not look up.”
I had exactly same feeling reading this piece as I had when I first read Jillian Tamaki’s City of Champions mini-comic and the shorter “comic book” edition of Skim a few years ago, i.e., this is someone to watch!
Self-Portrait with Saxophone is not only my favourite of Max Beckmann’s many self-portraits but also one of my favourite self-portrait paintings of all time. Beckmann’s painting technique, which in his later works can sometimes be a bit messy and offhanded, is beautifully controlled and economical here. The quilted (silk?) robe, which in real life would be soft but sort of slick to the touch, reminds me also of the tough protective skin of a pineapple or a pangolin, though here the underbelly, so to speak, is open and unprotected, with the casual posture, meaty hands, steady gaze, and set jaw of the artist projecting boundless confidence and creative power such that even the ordinarily rigid metallic musical instrument seems to bend and twist in conformity with the artist’s pose and grip rather than vice versa.
Max Beckmann Self-Portrait with Saxophone
1930
Oil on canvas
55 1/8 x 27 3/8 in.
Kunsthalle, Bremen
As of 12 July 2008, my wife and I are the proud owners of the following artwork by cartoonist George Woodbridge:
George Woodbridge (1930-2004) joined Mad Magazine’s “usual gang of idiots” in 1957 and had work in nearly every issue thereafter. He also worked at Marvel during the 1950s on titles such as Astonishing,Battle Action, and Kid Colt.
Click the image to view a larger, more detailed scan of the artwork; the image area of the physical artwork is 9″ x 6″. Click here to view a scan of the image in its original context as part of a piece entitled “Appeals from Charities through History.”
The total price for the artwork, shipping included, was US$55.95. So now we have two–count ‘em, TWO–pieces by George Woodbridge in our modest but growing collection of original comic-book (and other) art.
