Little Enid Coleslaw

I’ve been a big fan of Dan Clowes ever since I came across Lloyd Llewellyn (Fantagraphics) around 1985 or 1986. His next ongoing comic book, Eightball, was much more flexible and open-ended, allowing Clowes an opportunity to experiment and grow as an artist, resulting in several excellent “graphic novels,” most notably Ghost World which was serialized in Eightball nos.11-18. In 1997, it was published as a monograph and was both a critical and commercial success, leading to the development of the Ghost World movie in 2001. Director Terry Zwigoff encouraged Clowes himself to write the screenplay (which was nominated for an Academy Award), allowing the film to stay fairly true to Clowes’s original vision. It is very good and boasts a fine cast, including Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson as Enid and Rebecca, with Steve Buscemi as Seymour, the creepy record collector guy. They manage to capture the look and feel of the book although I ultimately think the book is more nuanced and richly detailed. Anyway, during all the hoopla surrounding the movie, the Japanese toy company, Presspop, commissioned Clowes to design a “Little Enid” figure depicting Enid Coleslaw as a cartoony child and it is delightfully weird — the green hair makes things especially bizarre. My lovely wife gave this to me way back then and it is one of my most cherished possessions.

Beavis and Butthead

Speaking of Marvel, they put out twenty-eight issues of the Beavis and Butthead comic book from 1993-1996, drawn by Rick Parker himself. It is really pretty well done in an underground comix kind of way and sometimes laugh-out-loud hilarious – that is, if you think Beavis and Butthead were funny to begin with. Beavis and Butthead would be well into their thirties by now. Wonder what they would be doing? Sounds like a good idea for a great bad movie. Are you listening, Disney?

Bruce Banner is The Hulk

I saw the news today that the Walt Disney Co. bought Marvel Entertainment, Inc. for FOUR BILLION DOLLARS.

Like I said, I don’t collect comic books anymore, but I do retain a fondness for the form and the characters. Marvel revolutionized comics in the 1960s by making their characters more psychologically well-defined and (sort of) three-dimensional. Take, for instance, The Hulk. Mild mannered (repressed) physicist Bruce Banner gets blasted with gamma rays, resulting in the ultimate split personality: the slightest emotional provocation causes him morph into the raging, rampaging, remorseless Hulk. Has there ever been a more blatantly Freudian comic book anti-hero? The Hulk is pure Id. Of course, there’s only so much that can be done with such a conceit, and after forty years, bad TV shows, and even worse movies, I suppose there is not a whole lot more damage Disney could inflict on the franchise. Still, there’s something just wrong about Snow White’s Disney owning The Hulk. FOUR BILLION DOLLARS is a ridiculously huge amount of money, and Disney will do whatever it takes to turn that investment into a hefty profit. Whatever happens going forward, today marks the end of an era.

Batman & Robin

You might be wondering, “What’s with the superheroes?” Well, at one time, I was very into comic books. Of course, I loved comics when I was a child, but I didn’t really collect them. It wasn't until the late-eighties and early-nineties that I got turned on to the work of Frank Miller, Allen Moore, Neil Gaiman, and many others who have now become legendary figures in the transformation of “comic books” into what are now known as “graphic novels.” It was a heady time and there were some really cool comic book stores in Boston which made the whole experience loads of fun. Later on, however, things got out of hand. Cover prices kept increasing and publishers were milking fans for all they were worth with “special,” limited-edition, multi-variation “collector’s editions” and shoddy workmanship. The whole enterprise nearly collapsed under its own weight and around that time, I pretty much stopped buying them. Five bucks for a twenty-four page comic book is almost as ridiculous as the twenty-dollar CD – neither comes close to justifying its exorbitant cost except to unhealthily obsessed fans. It’s a shame because, like records, comic books have been priced out of the very market that most enjoys them, juveniles.

ANYWAY…I still have my comic book collection and, as you can see, various action figures and toys from that era. Lately, I had been considering boxing it all up and perhaps even getting rid of them altogether, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. But since getting the new camera, I noticed on the weekends that we get this really lovely mid-morning sunlight through the windows, which moves slowly across the west wall of the living room. Looking for subjects, I resorted to the toy box and started messing around with the camera settings and snapping pictures. While I have still not quite figured out the optimum exposure, the photos I’ve posted this week consist of the best shots of the bunch and I think, with some tweaking in Photoshop, they look pretty darn nifty. So, that’s why all the superheroes!

Peter Parker is Spiderman

Tony Stark is Iron Man

Reed Richards is Mr. Fantastic

Bart & Lisa Simpson

Jim Woodring's Crazy Newts

(Thanks, Keith!)

Ben Grimm is The Thing

Hillbilly Comics (Charlton, 1955)

As a quasi-Yankee who deliberately migrated south of the Mason-Dixon Line, I am sensitive to the stereotype of Southerners that still persists – perhaps deservedly.

Be that as it may, this particular wordless strip by Art Gates scanned and posted at Again With the Comics is brilliant. As a commenter remarked, “Hank the Hermit” is really a Taoist.

Via Boing Boing.