Archive for the ‘Comics’ Category
the whole thing.
annotated contents
10/22/16 now with less spam: blue car, blue car (1998):
eleven “pushkin sonnets” of “auto”-biography. ran as installments
in _the_ten_page_news_. my longest verse effort by quite a ways.
06/24/19 “editorial”: if we had time enough, and money…
(andrew marvell take-off from _indy_unleashed_
[#9—spring ’99]).
06/25/19 essay on criticism: (1998)
alexander pope take-off. with zines.
forgiveness can be less divine than vain/
we shouldn’t err by being too humane.
05/26/20 …my favorite things: photo of shelves (comics etc.).
05/26/20 detail: close-up of previous setting.
(original art; bloomington zine; more.)
06/12/20 jung never did this: six-color i-ching.
(ten-year old “microzine” hand-colored.)
06/20/20 the abyss looks back: photo of me & shelves.
announcing 10pp/10y (the ten page ten-yearly).
06/22/20 the same old thing: a-four-hat four ways.
“an entire course in group theory
summarized on one page”.
07/29/20 the real is at war with the virtual: yesterday’s news.
this one is a little longer.
portrait of me (early 70s) in four-color pen by eva. i used this as a cover for a _ten_page_news_. other stuff.
upper-left: photo of me at notre dame with sue v & jonathan. then (going across) escher, steranko, me (MEdZ), me again—self-portrait in the eigenmann hall days—;carriage return. QUIET! (can’t you see i’m *reading*?) a digest-size document about digest-size documents. jack kirby signature. steranko again. some thing i got at “the enclave” (bexley coffee shop) from the artist in trade for some old comics. starhead catalogue. back to the left. a bunch of pez dispensers. neno coffee-cup. seth? _the_imp_ (not the only one displayed on this wall). collected kirby collector. book about american comics. book about comics with comics cover-art for a cover. little nemo coffee-mug. zine about a strike in alaska. another big fat book about comics. back again. stacks and stacks. titles visible in some versions include krazy kat, SPX, superman, and… pushing it a little… the kirby biography. micky mouse. end of top shelf. cataloguing is slow and unrewarding.
owen’s cooking show: the election-day ep.
sometimes while i’m waiting for AM coffee i’ll
fiddle with books. the ones with easiest access
from the microwave are (most of) the comics.
then math. with some results pictured here.
martin gardner was the greatest-ever pop-math writer
in english. so i have a bunch of his stuff. his
_annotated_alice_ is somewhere else in the house.
you can’t make out the bloomington-high-school-north
coffee cup, but right there it is on top of my diploma.
the red-skull image is by local artist michael neno.
i got it for nothing or next-to-nothing after some
kid scribbled on it. bloomington artist ronald
markman did the _book_of_mukfa_ pages behind the
BHSN cup. the little nemo coffee-cup at the top
(above the _pogo_ stuff to the right of the _peanuts_)
is positioned in front of a (harvey) kurtzman and
a (will) eisner mass-market paperback. fans will
know that these comics greats have the major awards
named after them (and that mass-market is an unusual
format for either).
the _boy_who_loved_batman_ was a gift of my mother’s
(and not the only one in this shelf). it’s up there
with some other batman & superman stuff. i recently
found out that i had a double (a “dupe”, as we used
to say) of _batman_year_one_. so i promptly tore out
a page and gave away the rest of the book. now i’ve
a got a shot of batman jumping out of my guitar amp.
comics fans will recognize the _acme_novelty_library_
stuff as the work of the amazing chris ware; not at
all clear in this shot is the file of serge lang.
which beggars description. but isn’t really math
*or* comics. lang *mostly* wrote about math but
_the_file_ is a thing unto itself.
anyhow. also here’s today’s first dish-load, three ways.
i’ve prepared hash-browns (peel & grate two taters into
a pan of warm butter. turn up the heat & grill until good.),
half a BLT-sub-ranch (leftover “lean” bacon… fatty bits
already used yesterday on other taters). a creamcheese
sandwich half (both on toasted grocery-store airbread),
tomato, lettuce, ranch. & the microwave instant coffee.
getting back to work.
here begins the exegesis of vlorbik (kv) kibrolv.
philosophy and other altered states of consciousness;
poring over one’s past porings-over-of-the-past with
joy and awe like i were some kind of a dick.
evangelical strip
(from the ten page news, number 16
[november 1997]. also from that issue…
and already posted to the net…: the
gospel according to matthew according to
vlorbik and luke 1–5: a sestina.)
here’s a picture of sam arr.
there’s another one (way at the bottom)
here, along with a comment by
me that i intend to repost right here in a
moment (spoiler: long). ah. here’s the
best version i know.
anyhow, i’ve done a lot of (so-called)
“comical strips” with this character
and he usually just faces front and talks
as we see mr.~christ doing here.
so that’s *one* joke “explained”.
“there was things […] he stretched…”
is of course by mr.~twain, but it
sure seemed to fill the bill here
so i gave the line to jesus. the
chapter-and-verse citations were
right when i checked them years ago;
i sure don’t vouch for them now.
no “resurrection”, you’ll notice.
enough for today.
[BEGIN QUOTED MATERIAL]
i too “wasted” school like dave
and his friends. but there were
always plenty of cool kids all
around me doing school-like stuff…
but cool!… in elementary years.
this was bloomington and we…
the kids i knew and loved…
were many of us “faculty brats”
like i was; i’m a child of IU
every bit as much as of bloom-
ington, particularly in these
early years. anyhow.
so i was way ahead in reading;
this became such a point of pride
for me that you could call it
a defining characteristic.
my whole theory of *academic* learning
is: books will replace your life with
something far better. deep literacy
is like mecca or the gohonson or something:
hold it in your heart and pray
without ceasing (find *something*
to read that induces that
“*this* is what matters” feeling
[that otherwise mostly comes only
from… but this is a PG rated blog]).
but back to schools. somebody said
something about, essentially,
communities of scholars. and *this*
is the heart of the matter where
“schools” as opposed to “learning”
is our topic. the neoliberal occupation
imposes the doctrine that the purpose
of all organizations is to make, some
big pile of money somewhere, grow.
while at the same time to make,
as many people as possible,
sit quietly and listen. ideally,
for example, one is a “communications”
company designed to get people
to try to debug deliberately-broken
software… i’m talking to you mister gates…
at their own expense with the help
of *as many incomptent*, first off
*robots*, but then layers-of-dim-workers,
as can be made to pay or to get
people to quit trying to solve
their problem (while still of course
paying in; the problem with
“contracts” being that the entity
living in real time with a body
cannot *get anything from*
a monster existing only in
men’s opinions and the
laws of the god-damn land;
whereas they can send goons
of ever-increasing scariness
and will you better believe it).
and schools must be made to
run the same way. or else.
so the communities of scholars
that formed so naturally back home…
and still do in lots and lots of places
i’m sure; the occupation is not yet
complete but the real america gets
harder and harder to find all the time…
are *damage* to management if
they can’t be made to visibly
*serve management’s goals*.
which are that everybody sit
quietly and listen of course.
this is the only job power wants to fund:
make ’em listen to us peacefully so we
don’t have to get nasty.
you’ll never get anything else
from government schools.
read the bible for hecksake.
the “jewish” program is the
biblical program for the priests.
the biblical program for the
masses is frequent brutal asskickings.
that’s why there’s a book of kings
(actually several; samuel counts)
and that’s why when j-h wants
to punish the people he imposes
a census. why the cross…
a torture device… is the symbol
of a god-the-father religion
and “submission” is the name
of the other. if you want it done
right, well there’s nuns and rabbis.
more likely to value scholarship
than teachers carefully bred to
act as slaves of robots run by
moneysimple thirdraters.
dig in and hide if you’ve got
a good thing going.
end morning ramble. anybody still here?
i love you for it then you better believe it.
& oh how i love being me. thanks, u-school!
i’m going to SPACE next week.
it’s columbus ohio, so the list
narrows down pretty quick:
the “arnold classic”, SPACE,
and, um, let’s see… there
*must* have been something
else…
“ameriflora”, maybe, in your
dreams. “miracle mile”, back
from the “miracle” days of
the long-gone late-great
thriving american working class
that shopped (until it dropped)
there. no. never mind.
the chief attraction of columbus
for *me* is that this is where
i *am* (moving around… or
even moving *stuff* around…
is *much* harder than they’d
have you believe…; & of course
the *next* best thing about
columbus is that *madeline*
lives here (and our happy home
*is* our happy home, much to
my surprise). and *staying*
here keeps me this way (happy).
it’s (1) cold (2) cruel
world (3) out there.
the (very existence of)
the billy ireland museum is,
enough to put columbus *somewhere* on
the comics “map”… and there’s already
a better list of local-and-quasi-nearby
talent at the “space” site… so let
me just give a shout-out to ray (!!) t
and “max ink” (still working as far as
i know); one more for glen brewer (even
though i think glen has quit the scene;
his _askari_hodari_ was, for me, very
much a local highlight).
everybody knows about _bone_;
it won’t escape my notice here
that the astonishing paul hornschemeier
lived here, too, when he was getting
started and i met him (and he drew
a cover for my zine gratis… eat
your hearts out). in fact, ghod
*bless* columbus. good night.
The Mathematical Cartoons of Larry Gonick (spotted at Reality Tunnels; thanks!). This guy rocks.
the livingston review 
