Ray Harryhausen passed away last week. This has been noted by people more qualified than I to discuss the master of stop-motion magic—Rick Baker, Adam Savage, Todd Masters, George Lucas, Peter Jackson, and more. The superhuman talent and perseverance evident in a Harryhausen effects sequence can easily be seen in countless visual effects artists since [...]
Animator of Sita Sings The Blues, Nina Paley, has a new short, “This Land Is Mine,” concerning, “a brief history of the land called Israel/Palestine/Canaan/the Levant” set to, “This Land Is Mine” sung by Andy Williams. (Via Cartoon Brew)
Grab your silver wolfshead canes, your wolfsbane or just loose the beast within and listen as The Gutter’s own Carol Borden talks about werewolves on Monster Island Resort Podcast. (It will certainly pass the time, if you’ve been chained up for the duration of the full moon).
Kelly Thompson and Colin Smith offer two related criticisms of Wonder Woman #7. Thompson asks, “Is the Destruction of the Amazons the Destruction of Feminism in DC Comics?” And Smith writes, “Of all of the flak fired up to obscure the mean-spirited, thick-headed sexism of Brian Azzarello’s script for Wonder Woman #7, the most stubbornly [...]
Beau Smith tells the story of the Wonder Woman vs. Xena comic that never came to be–with snippets of his script and pages of Eduardo Barreto’s art. (via DCWomenKickingAss)
It’s the beginning of January, cold and dark where I am. The critics are all putting out their best of year lists, and maybe you’re looking for something to read. So here’s my entry into annual lists: 10 comics I liked in 2011 that I haven’t written about. Well 9 comics I haven’t written about [...]
In 2007, Comics Editor Carol wrote a piece about Frank Miller’s 300. As part of experimenting with ways to make timely content from our archives more available, we’re linking to “Frank Miller’s Hot Gates” here in the Notes.
David Brin takes a club to Frank Miller and 300, albeit a very rational and well-informed beating stick (for one thing, he actually seems to know some ancient Greek history!).
Entertainment Weekly is a veritable hydra with one head talking shit about stopmotion and fx master Ray Harryhausen and another defending Ray Harryhausen and handmade special effects. A hydra of two-heads, that would probably look pretty sick in a Harryhausen movie.
Sing, O Muse, of a man of twists and turns, driven off course time and again. Of hacking and slashing and blowing shit up. Of a man who tears enemies in half and twists off their heads. Of saturnine goatees. Of blood red tattoos. Of a moon pale man. A psycho, a murderer, a ghostfaced [...]
Henry Jenkins writes up a handy list of some comics he’s enjoyed recently, divvied into stories of everyday life, superheroes, science fiction/fantasy/horror, and some unclassifiable items.
When James Warren and Archie Goodwin started Blazing Combat in 1965, they made a war comic that might, in Warren’s Words, love guns but hate bullets (195), depicting war as sometimes necessary but always hateful and horrific. Blazing Combat was fully automatic for four issues
I’ve never been a good fan. I am grumpy, contrary and deeply perverse. So Gail Simone kind of sneaked up on me and, before I knew it, became my new trusted brand. I don’t think I really noticed till I was excited because she was writing Wonder Woman
Did you know Ursula Le Guin worked on an Earthsea screenplay with Peeping Tom and Black Narcissus‘ Michael Powell? I didn’t. There’s more in her Vice Magazine interview. (via Kaiju Shakedown)
In the spirit of the season, here are ten, in alphabetical order by author.
I get sucked in very easily by books that are smooth on the surface. If a book has glossy enough writing and a well-paced storyline, then I’m almost always a sucker for it. But when a book also has something intriguing going on underneath the surface, then I feel like my optimism has been rewarded [...]
Despite being a rapacious reader of just about everything, during my formative years I managed to miss any number of writers who are the bedrock of their particular genres. For instance, I read Terry Brooks long before Tolkien (and yes, I’m aware of the gravity of that mistake). I didn’t discover Diana Wynne Jones until [...]
Do you miss the days of dynamation? Stopmotion skeletons and Selenites? Mighty Joe Young and the Minoton? Chinese Jet Pilots has a Ray Harryhausen Creature List with clips of nearly every creature Harryhausen made. There’s also a link to some nice stopmotion footage. Check out the beetlemen by the lesser known but still swell, Pete [...]
A feeling’s been gnawing deep inside me for a while. A feeling that maybe Frank Miller’s hypermasculine antiheros and faceless, breast-thrusting women are exactly what they seem, not just sketchy parody. After reading 300, Miller’s 1998 account of the Spartans at Thermopylae, I don’t have any doubt: Miller means it. His aesthetic is fascist.
What, it’s June already? I’m sure a I had a whole year here a minute ago. In any case, summer means humidity, allergies, and a sad lack of home AC. This year, it also means squirrels in the roof (don’t ask. No, really).
