Brain Pickings, a fascinating website run by the supremely-dedicated Maria Popova which she describes as “an inventory of cross-disciplinary interestingness, spanning art, science, design, history, philosophy, and more”, and Bill Watterson’s masterfully-clever, exuberantly funny and visually imaginative comic strip Calvin and Hobbes are a perfect match. Even more so Continue Reading
Comics
Comics review: Oblivion Song (issues 1-3)
The apocalypse is big business these days. For some reason, and it may have something to do with the fact that ever since the optimistic blush of post-World War Two idealism wore off in the early 1970s that we’ve become more and more convinced the world is going Continue Reading
Comics review: Wallace the Brave
Childhood is a magical, wonderful time. In the world of Wallace the Brave, drawn by Will Henry, the pen name of Jamestown, Rhode Island-based Will Wilson, it’s all that and more, a whimsical, fabulous place where you can muse on what it would be like to “heroically [ride] a Continue Reading
Comics review: Atlas & Axis
One of the things I have long-loved about the European style of storytelling, and the reason why I have consumed everything from Agaton Sax and the Moomins as a child through to The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery as an adult, is that it is not afraid Continue Reading
Comics review: Motherlands (issues 1-3)
If I was the multiverse I’d been looking for a new PR agent. The idea that there are multiple versions of our reality sitting cheek-by-jowl in the wilds of space and time – and yes, I’m not a scientist so this is a fantastically wobbly explanation for the concept Continue Reading
Comics review: The Snagglepuss Chronicles (issues 1 & 2)
When news first emerged that DC Comics were going to re-interpret a sizable array of Hanna-Barbera’s most iconic stars such as The Flintstones and Scooby Doo and give them a modern makeover, there some doubt expressed that this could be achieved with any sort of creative substance. After all, delightful Continue Reading
Comics review: The Jetsons (issues 1-3)
Most of us will far too young to recall those headily optimistic days when everyone envisaged the future as a time of limitless potential, a paradise-in-waiting given form by flying cars, machines doing all the drudgerous tasks that take us away from the doing the things we love, and Continue Reading
Comic review: Rocko’s Modern Life (issues 1 & 2)
One of the great delights of Rocko’s Modern Life, one of the great cartoons of Nickolodeon’s ’90s line-up which is finding new life in comics and on the screen again, has always been its devotion to anarchic silliness. Taking a leaf out of the manic hilarity of Looney Tunes Continue Reading
Comics review: The hilarious omni-shambles of Asterix and the Chariot Race
There is something about the Roman Empire that has always cried out for satire. Perhaps it is that it was, and remains, the greatest empire in the history of humanity. Or perhaps that it was so domineering, so efficient, so all-encompassing and damn near omniscient and omnipresent, that besting Continue Reading
On 6th day of Christmas … I read the Giant Days 2017 festive comic special
Love, Actually is not everyone’s idea of the perfect holiday movie, but to me, it is perfect (look it up – it’s a “cannily”-woven in line from the film) and Giant Days, one of the best, most heartfelt comic strips to emerge in recent years, has made inspired use Continue Reading