the tune you'll be humming forever
I am having a fantastic day. My life and moods have been really swingy lately, and I need to see to that, but this is one really great upswing.
I went to see an exhibit at a small local gallery, with omnia_mutantur and her husband. It was seriously nifty; a small room full of photos of women (of all ages and sizes, though ethnicity was extremely limited) with tattoos. The photos, women, and ink were all beautiful (in many ways, not all conventional) It was inspiring (I want, so badly). I was encouraged to see the local tattoo parlor I've been researching listed in the thank-yous on the artist statement.
Also, we visited their local comic shop, in Union Square. I'm a loyal regular at the Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square, but it's nice to see all the local options, and this one was pretty fantastic. (Spacious, friendly staff, excellent selection.) I wound up picking up Comic Book Tattoo. When I first heard about this, it struck me as an expensive and pretentious vanity project, and honestly, it probably is. However, it also contains some really gorgeous and diverse art, and some intriguing stories (though I know less about the latter; I still need to read them), both by creators I adore and some who are completely unknown to me. I've been disappointed in the Flight anthologies, but this strikes me as something like what I wanted from Flight. It set me back a bit, tsk . . . but I'm being so good about getting my comics from the library lately, it's just one slip.
Then we went back to K & J's new house, did the tour, and curled up to watch a History Channel documentary on the superhero genre in comics. It was pretty impressive, actually, considering the amount of material it had to cover in a short time, but it really got me thinking.
I've recently embarked on a mission to do some essential reading in my "field" lately, aided by my new library card . . . I finally read The Dark Knight Returns, the first volume of The Maxx and Planetary, and I have Blankets to read next. After that I plan to start in on The Spirit (Eisner's original), The Authority, Preacher, reread Watchmen and Jimmy Corrigan, finally read American Splendor, Black Hole . . . and so on. Most of the ongoing series that have kept me so occupied for the last few years (largely Vertigo titles) have ended, and it's good time to really sink my teeth into the works that have and are shaping comics as they are today.
And I'm left with a lot of conflicting thoughts. I grew up on superhero comics, then moved to some more independent/"serious" work (with a very brief dalliance with manga); for a few years, I actively dismissed and badmouthed the superheros. Now I'm coming into a new appreciation of that genre, and of its historical and thematic importance; I am, however, sort of struggling with the current accepted "greats" (both the "parents" of Vertigo/the most celebrated works of the contemporary mainstream, and of the leading lights of the indie/graphic novel/autobiographical contingent). I've started to really crave scholarship about this stuff . . . I miss school more right now than I have in two and a half years. (Except that I was never in school for this. The only thing I want to be in school for now is comics: primarily from a vocational angle, but the academic/critical one is looking increasingly appealing as well.)
I think I'm going to want to try and write more about comics in the future. (You never know, with me: I have ten thousand projects at once, and I often don't finish any of them. But I feel as though I have some essays, or at least questioning posts, brewing.) I also think I may go back to my recommendation project of last year; I kept mentioning titles to omnia_mutantur, which she hadn't read, and well. I can be a resource, and would like to be!
I should probably go to the grocery store now, but I think I'm going to go curl up with some movie or other, and draw.
I went to see an exhibit at a small local gallery, with omnia_mutantur and her husband. It was seriously nifty; a small room full of photos of women (of all ages and sizes, though ethnicity was extremely limited) with tattoos. The photos, women, and ink were all beautiful (in many ways, not all conventional) It was inspiring (I want, so badly). I was encouraged to see the local tattoo parlor I've been researching listed in the thank-yous on the artist statement.
Also, we visited their local comic shop, in Union Square. I'm a loyal regular at the Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square, but it's nice to see all the local options, and this one was pretty fantastic. (Spacious, friendly staff, excellent selection.) I wound up picking up Comic Book Tattoo. When I first heard about this, it struck me as an expensive and pretentious vanity project, and honestly, it probably is. However, it also contains some really gorgeous and diverse art, and some intriguing stories (though I know less about the latter; I still need to read them), both by creators I adore and some who are completely unknown to me. I've been disappointed in the Flight anthologies, but this strikes me as something like what I wanted from Flight. It set me back a bit, tsk . . . but I'm being so good about getting my comics from the library lately, it's just one slip.
Then we went back to K & J's new house, did the tour, and curled up to watch a History Channel documentary on the superhero genre in comics. It was pretty impressive, actually, considering the amount of material it had to cover in a short time, but it really got me thinking.
I've recently embarked on a mission to do some essential reading in my "field" lately, aided by my new library card . . . I finally read The Dark Knight Returns, the first volume of The Maxx and Planetary, and I have Blankets to read next. After that I plan to start in on The Spirit (Eisner's original), The Authority, Preacher, reread Watchmen and Jimmy Corrigan, finally read American Splendor, Black Hole . . . and so on. Most of the ongoing series that have kept me so occupied for the last few years (largely Vertigo titles) have ended, and it's good time to really sink my teeth into the works that have and are shaping comics as they are today.
And I'm left with a lot of conflicting thoughts. I grew up on superhero comics, then moved to some more independent/"serious" work (with a very brief dalliance with manga); for a few years, I actively dismissed and badmouthed the superheros. Now I'm coming into a new appreciation of that genre, and of its historical and thematic importance; I am, however, sort of struggling with the current accepted "greats" (both the "parents" of Vertigo/the most celebrated works of the contemporary mainstream, and of the leading lights of the indie/graphic novel/autobiographical contingent). I've started to really crave scholarship about this stuff . . . I miss school more right now than I have in two and a half years. (Except that I was never in school for this. The only thing I want to be in school for now is comics: primarily from a vocational angle, but the academic/critical one is looking increasingly appealing as well.)
I think I'm going to want to try and write more about comics in the future. (You never know, with me: I have ten thousand projects at once, and I often don't finish any of them. But I feel as though I have some essays, or at least questioning posts, brewing.) I also think I may go back to my recommendation project of last year; I kept mentioning titles to omnia_mutantur, which she hadn't read, and well. I can be a resource, and would like to be!
I should probably go to the grocery store now, but I think I'm going to go curl up with some movie or other, and draw.