Lights, please ( Read more... )

I'm not an expert on the subject, but Jaime Hernandez does pretty good sex scenes in Love and Rockets; the people in them seem like real people, not pron stars. (Some of them are even fat!) However, for those of you who thought bad sex was confined to books, check out the least appealing liplocks in comic books at Read more... )

One of the tests of any great comic artist--like any great actor or comedian--is the ability to use silence. Two of my current favorite comic artists, Jaime Hernandez and Eric Powell, can both use silence brilliantly. To show what I mean, here are some panels with my favorite characters from each strip. Both series of panels tell a story, and ( Read more... )

I've gotten back into comics in recent years after a long time away from them, and I've discovered some fine new things. I'll always love the great stuff of my childhood--Peanuts, Pogo, Asterix, Mad--but the best of the new stands comparison with it. This best includes Queen and Country, Hellboy, Kate Beaton, Empowered, the new Batwoman, much of ( Read more... )

This one's for you, inkwell_bkstr.


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Soupy Sales is dead.

Why are we losing all the good ones?


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What's this about that bubblehead Monroe? She couldn't act, she was dumb as a post, and she didn't wash. Kim Novak had far more of the classic noir look. Eat your heart out, Warhol.


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Here is one of the great noir covers of all time:


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I am now teaching a college course about the American Civil War. More than half of my students did not know who Abraham Lincoln was. I repeat, MORE THAN HALF OF MY STUDENTS DID NOT KNOW WHO ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS. And some of them didn't know who Washington was, either ( Read more... )

As part of my continuing dialogue with inkwell_bookstore on this subject, I thought I would once more proclaim the work of one Fred Fixler. Who he, you ask (in your Harvey Kurtzman way ( Read more... )