Broken Frontier interview Micrographica creator Ren ée French, who’s exhibiting in the Louvre later on in the year: It’s an incredibly thought out exhibition, called “Toy Comix” co-curated by JC Menu from the French publisher L’Association and Dorothee Charles, curator of the Toy Department of the Musee Des Arts Decoratifs. The artists all had the same guidelines. We each had to produce three pages involving the toy of our choice from the museum’s collection. Some of the other artists in the show are Jim Woodring, Thomas Ott, Max Andersson, Anke Feuchtenberger, and ,Tom Gauld. I chose a velvet duck with wooden wheels for my story and I think Jim picked a frog with a guitar. I can’t wait to see what everyone came up with. [via CR and Journalista] + In the Village Voice, RC Baker recommends two comics-related item. First, a Mr. exhibition [Masakatsu Iwamoto] at Lehmann Maupin, NY until June 23: In bonnets, waitress uniforms, knee socks, and witch’s regalia, these gamines cavort through Tokyo’s bustling anime- and manga-obsessed otaku district. Should the occasional panty- exposing tumble feel more prurient than it does here? If not, a series of smaller, vertical paintings in which cartoonish lasses lift their tops, preen in French-maid outfits, or are simply nude and framed by hairless thighs and scrotum, fit the bill, even while Mr.’s spermatozoa-like signature implies a masturbatory distance from his fantasy objects. Second, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World: Even if you’ve never read a comic book, you can’t escape this four-color Wagnerian’s gravitational pull…Although the plots offer some pulp clich és—no matter how cataclysmic the day’s events, we know “Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen,” will somehow pull through—this sprawling epic brims with prescient references to cloning and personal computers, plus a suicide bomber chillingly named “Justifier.” Humanity hangs forever in the balance, but Kirby’s gangly optimism provides the only god we truly need—unfettered imagination. + The LA Times on Osamu Tezuka. As Vertical Inc say, no mention of the excellent Buddha series.
[Image: ‘Franklin fries H.E.R.B.I.E. The Robot’
(FF #244)]
The AV Club select 10 wonderfully weird moments from Fantastic Four comics, including [via Largehearted Boy] + Superhero Smackdown, the NY Post on Marvel versus DC [via Comics Reporter] + Yahoo report that Fantastic Four director Tim Story is to do The Losers: “I told my agents I didn’t want to do another comic book..I had been in the world of fantasy and I wanted to do something very edgy, a realist action movie. I wanted to find something like a ‘Bourne Identity’ or ‘Black Hawk Down.’..I was like, [Losers] is great — and then I found out it was a comic book.” + Joe Gordon reviews Tank Girl: The Gifting: Tank Girl was the icon of that new, hip, British Comicdom, Cool Britannia for comics before the term was coined in the late 90s, appropriated by the oh-so-cool music set at colleges and the Rrrriot Grrrrls alike. She even achieved the ultimate street cool – Hewlett’s TG art was pinched by a legion of club promoters and pasted into cheap flyers stuck on walls advertising music nights. She was right there in the dancebeat heart of the happening subcultures. + And what of Jamie Hewlett? He’s been decorating the walls of Kabaret’s Prophecy and has designed a vibrator for them. + Paul Gravett on Gary Panter. + The Daily Cross Hatch interview Joe Matt, as does the late Daniel Robert Esptein. + Golden Age comic book covers [via David Thompson] + NY Mag excerpt Paul Hornschemeir’s Three Paradoxes. + Comics Reporter review House. + Forbidden Planet report that a Richard McGuire– designed poster advertises the Flemish STRIP Turnhot festival [more on McGuire later] + Michael Moorcock reviews Andrzej Klimowski Horace Dorlan: Klimowski’s work has been called Kafkaesque but resembles Kafka no more than it does Cocteau. For the most part he sets his characters in familiar places (chiefly in London and Pisa) and gives them ordinary names – George, Ed, Angela, Carmelita. They are frequently described doing ordinary things, and it is mainly in the context of the drawn material that their activities seem strange. It is the superb drawings, of course, that help to distinguish this novel (already short enough to be a Jamesian “tale”) and make it so thoroughly original. + Finally, give McSweeney’s some love and at the same time bag yourself some original Chris Ware’s, Tony Millionaire’s, Marcel Dzama’s or some Jeffrey Brown’s [some pictures here].
