Comix

three five things make a linkpost

Art & Criticism, Comix, history, Your Happening World
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This was made just for me:

The Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization (DARMC) makes freely available on the internet the best available materials for a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approach to mapping and spatial analysis of the Roman and medieval worlds. DARMC allows innovative spatial and temporal analyses of all aspects of the civilizations of western Eurasia in the first 1500 years of our era, as well as the generation of original maps illustrating differing aspects of ancient and medieval civilization. A work in progress with no claim to definitiveness, it has been built in less than three years by a dedicated team of Harvard undergraduates, graduate students, research scholars and one professor, with some valuable contributions from younger and more senior scholars at other institutions. For more details on who we are, please see the People page.

DARMC’s coverage begins under the Roman empire and extends nearly a thousand years toward the present by encompassing the medieval world. Although the initial post-Roman focus has been on medieval Europe, Byzantium and the Crusades have not been neglected, and we have begun to include the essential third leg of the tripod of medieval civilization, the Islamic world.

““If you’re going to do a piece of work in three days, you have to have everything properly prepared.” Michael Moorcock on how to write a novel in three days. Patrick Nielsen Hayden comments that a lot of aspiring writers could learn from this, to just get going and write rather than fiddle until everything’s perfect.

Way to make me feel old Amanda — Nirvana’s Nevermind twenty years old this year. This wasn’t the life changing record to me that it was for other people, but if there’s any album that marks the spot where the nineties begun and the eighties ended, this was it.

The Justice League goes to Hogwarts and a duller idea I cannot imagine. If this ever happened it would be the perfect spiritual heir to those stupid X-Men/Star Trek crossovers Marvel put out in the nineties.

Speaking of rather pointless Marvel titles, the latest installment of Nobody’s Favorites is another one. I actually have this series, bought out of back issue bins on the “this looks interesting and different and is only fifty cents” theory. Never read it.

Comics piracy

Comix
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Tom Spurgeon on whether comics publishers should look at piracy for online pointers:

Two huge on-line manga stories may clinch this CCI as the Year Of Digital Comics Announcements. Viz launched its Viz Manga site, I believe in conjunction with an anniversary party; a group of Japanese publishers discussed their JManga effort at a panel devoted to same. I have no idea if either of these ventures will be successful. Strangely, you can make a case either way based on the thriving on-line piracy of such material. On the one hand, piracy has shown that consumers will indeed process this material on-line; on the other hand, paying for such material on-line as is the case with at least the Viz effort is an entirely different process. Heck, you can even make the case that piracy will have little to do with either effort, and I bet those involved will even make that case so as to duck the issue entirely.

And they would be right. The only thing comic book piracy proves is that people are willing to read comics on the screen, which we knew anyway. Apart from that I don’t think piracy proves one or another that going digital will be succesful or not for any given comics publisher. Certainly much less so than e.g. music piracy showed the way for legal downloads. The piracy scene is fairly hardcore & packratty, relatively small compared to other forms of piracy and getting pirated comics requires a moderate bit of technological skill in that you have to be able to deal with bit torrents or Usenet and know how to deal with *.cbr/cbz files. Hard as it may seem, the people involved, pirates and downloaders both are genuine comics fans, probably buying comics as well as downloading them. It’s not clear that this is the kind of audience publishers should try to reach when it’s almost as limited as the core comics audience anyway.

What comics publishers should try to do is to reach the much bigger audience that quite likes comics, but not enough to bother going to comics shops. Comics need to be available easily, cheaply and of interest to mainstream audiences. Worrying about piracy doesn’t help.

The Amsterdam of Theo van den Boogaard: must see

Amsterdam, Comix
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poster for the Theo van den Boogaard exhibition in the Stadsarchief

So today I went to the Theo van den Boogaard exhibition in the Amsterdam city Archives, which was small but brilliant. Theo van den Boogaard is one of Holland’s best cartoonists, having started his career in the sixties, working for various counterculture (so to speak) magazines creating a series of ground and taboo breaking comics. His greatest succes however was with Sjef van Oekel, an incredibly anarchic, chaotic comic strip drawn in what is perhaps the most disciplined art style possible, the Ligne Claire or clear line. Sjef van Oekel, who started out as a character in a Dutch satirical television show, is a middle aged and self absorbed, doesn’t quite think like normal people and his actions usually cause chaos and destruction all around him. What makes it work is the clear, precise ligne claire style Theo van den Boogaard draws his adventures in, set against the background of the immediately recognisable city of Amsterdam. His drawings are chock ful of detail, yet you get them immediately. His drawing style also did well on various advertising posters and artwork he did for companies like the Dutch railways and other public transport providers, as well as the city of Amsterdam.

All of which was on show in the exhibition, which put the focus on the city of Amsterdam as van den Boogaard portrays it. So you had the various adverts showcasing new railway stations and such, but also large extracts of the Sjef van Oekel strips showing how he had used Amsterdam in those. Alongside those there were also other pieces of artwork that don’t feature Amsterdam as much but provide some context for his career. It’s not just the finished artwork on display either: for some of the key drawings the working sketches and various stages and research material is shown as well. It’s great to see all this art shown actual size and up close, seeing all the details less noticable when published in a smaller format.

Theo van Boogaard at work

What struck me about it is not just the meticulous way in which van den Boogaard works, but also how he’s not afraid to warp the city when he needs to. He’s not stuck to his research or the need to keep the city real, but sticks bits and pieces together when he needs to, in the same way Hollywood sometimes uses bits of Vancouver to be New York say, but much more believable. Van den Boogaard has that ability to make you see the city through his eyes, so that when you walk out of the exhibition you see Amsterdam all clear lines and looking exactly as if van den Boogaard had drawn it.

Against this realistic background van den Boogaard puts his larger than life characters, constantly in movement, always slightly exaggerated even when standing still. This is of course a general characteristic of clear line strips, but unlike some van den Boogaard’s characters always look as if they fit the decor. His characters look as if they could walk off the page immediately and not look out of place in the real Amsterdam..

The exhibition is small and can be gotten through in an hour, but its focus on Amsterdam, on how van den Boogart shows the city and uses the city, manipulates and mutates the city for his own needs makes this exhibition work. If you are in Amsterdam sometime before the 14th August, are interested in comics and have had enough of all the highbrow musea, admission is only five euros and it’ll give you much to think about it. Be sure to also pick up the book of the exhibition.

Comic strips on strike

Comix, Dutch politics, Oh Those Crazy Cloggies
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Blast, the spending cuts on arts are also hitting comics

As I posted about a week ago, the current rightwing supported by racists Dutch government is putting through radical cuts on the arts. Though these measures have already gone through parliament, resistance against them hasn’t ended. And although comics in general barely get any government support anyway, that doesn’t mean cartoonists aren’t engaged with this struggle. Which is why today a dozen or so odd comic strips in as many daily newspapers had the same message.

Shit! The spending cuts on arts are also hitting us! Ehh... I see no difference

Each participating comic drew its regular cast as stick figures, with some variant on the slogan “the spending cuts on arts are also hitting comics”. Participants include Peter de Wit’s incredibly popular sarky psychiatrist Sigmund (top), as well as Fokke & Sukke (bottom), Mark Retera’s Dirkjan and many others. It’s of course unrealistic to expect this protest to change many people’s minds, but it is a good way to show the disastrous consequences of the slashing of art funding even to people with little use for art. Everybody reads the funnies after all.