Comicsgirl

Archive for September, 2004

Jill Thompson is one of my favorite creative people ever.  She’s an amazing, versatile artist who works hard in a male-dominated field (although she said that she feels like the fact she’s a woman never made a difference — for good or bad — to anyone in the comic book industry and I can see that.  The woman can draw and that’s really all it comes down to).

While it’s been out on DVD (and VHS) for a while, Cartoon Network will be showing the Mainframe production of Scary Godmother Halloween Spooktakular this Friday at 8 p.m. EDT.  I couldn’t be more pleased that Jill Thompson’s fabulous work is getting this kind of exposure (despite not being a big fan of Mainframe’s style).  Watch it and pick up some of the Scary Godmother books and comics.  They’re all delightful.

This article (requires subscription, but try Bug Me Not to bypass it) has prompted some debate (mostly at Bookslut and among friends — I’m not trying to claim there’s a widespread outcry over it).  I find it to be ignorant at the very least (The comic League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was not an adaptation of the movie, and if Jeff Danziger had read it, he would have seen how different the two are), but the major flaw in his argument is that stories are stories and novels are always going to be better.

There’s plenty of remarkably talented writers and artists working in the medium of comics.  There’s reasons why people choose to create comics rather than write novels.  They may be unclear, intangible reasons, but there’s something that’s more immediate and personal about comics like Persepolis that can’t be done in the same way in prose.  Danziger’s argument that comics take away the imaginative process of reading is unfair.  Comics give writers an opportunity to have their work be seen the way they want it to be.  I think that’s a great thing.  (I’m not even going to get into his complaint that the art in these comics is severely lacking because I don’t really know where that comes from or what else he wants. No, not all comic art is good, but plenty of it is evocative and amazing.)

I agree with Jessa Crispin of Bookslut’s assertion that someone needs to get him a copy of Understanding Comics.  Or, perhaps, just never let him cover comic books (or “graphic novels”) again.

There’s a fun little commercial for Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse that I’ve seen a couple of times that highlights the “girl power” elements of the movie, comparing Alice’s battle to the day-to-day tasks women have to do. It’s a cute idea obviously aimed at trying to reach out to more than the just the typical demographic for this movie (you know, men 18-34). I never know how effective advertising of this sort is but I appreciate whenever someone sits there and realizes that there’s an untapped audience of women for sci-fi/fantasy/action movies.

We’re fast approaching the third anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and on Sept. 7, Art Spiegelman’s book, In the Shadow of No Towers, will be released.  He responds to both the tragedy and the political environment that followed in series of comics.

Here’s a few links about the work (I can’t promise how long all the links will remain active, and some might require registration):