* First, a suggestion: Why not load up this delightful 50-minute DJ set from LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy before reading the rest of this post?
* Second, a public service announcement: Charles Forsman’s Muster List aspires to be a comprehensive link repository for minicomics cartoonists and the places online where you can buy those minicomics. It’s amazing.
* Speaking of Forsman, the new issue of his fine series The End of the Fucking World is out.
* Hoo boy: Benjamin Marra’s latest is Lincoln Washington: Free Man #1, a headlong dive right back into Gangsta Rap Posse #2‘s racial swimming/cess pool. “Eagerly anticipated” doesn’t cover it. Read a preview at the link.
* Jillian Tamaki’s figurework deserves some kind of tribute album.
* As do Brian Chippendale’s colossal environments.
* And speaking of figurework, look how fully formed, considered, and lively the bodies and faces were in R. Crumb’s earliest work. It’s like he mastered the hardest stuff first.
* Oooh, this is a good one from Tom Neely. And a relatively rare opportunity to see him do panel-to-panel stuff, too.
* I hope the recent burst of activity (relatively speaking) from Uno Moralez continues unabated.
* L. Nichols has a tumblr and she’s posting some knockout shots of murals and other art she did in a local restaurant. I promise you’re more interested in seeing this than you think you are.
* I have to hand it to DC for coming up with an approach to a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe comic book that isn’t appealing to me in a single way. That takes hard work!
* For a brief moment as I scrolled toward it in my Google Reader, I thought this David Bowie photo was a Renee French drawing. Renee, if you’re reading this, you can still make me right.
* Decoding the aesthetics of Beyoncé’s new tumblr. <3 (Hat tip: Beebles.)
* If you’re not familiar with the bracingly frank sex writing of Vanessa at Nightmares and Boners, you should fix that forthwith.
* Glenn Greenwald is writing about the egregious, openly unconstitutional treatment of journalist and documentarian Laura Poitras, but he could just as easily be talking about Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Occupy protesters, and anyone else who makes the mistake of openly opposing American state power in a way that directly impacts or embarrasses the wielders of that power:
As is true for all states that expand and abuse their own powers, that’s what the U.S. Government counts on: that it is sending the message that none of this will affect you as long as you avoid posing any meaningful challenges to what they do. In other words: you can avoid being targeted if you passively acquiesce to what they do and refrain from interfering in it. That’s precisely what makes it so pernicious, and why it’s so imperative to find a way to rein it in.
See also Greenwald guest columnist Jesselyn Raddack on the Obama administration’s legal actions against journalists. The dark beauty of detainment, harassment, confiscation of personal electronics, mass arrests of and police brutality against nonviolent protesters, press blackouts, and so on is that none of it, none of it, has to stick in a court of law, at all. It’s all a fait accompli. The action’s been taken, and by the time it gets rectified in the near term (you’re released, no charges are filed, you get your computer back, someone gets put on desk duty), let alone in the long term (judicial pushback, as unlikely as that may seem with the current courts), your life has been made vastly more unpleasant, and everyone who sees what happened to you knows that their lives will be made vastly more unpleasant too should they do something similar. Message sent.
* Finally, might you consider Kickstarting my friend Simone Davalos’s fighting-robot documentary RoboGames?
Tags: Carnival of souls, comics, links, music, real life
Once you said, “Marra,” and that the new work was like, “Gangsta Rap Possee #2,” I was immediately interested. If I got all the thoughts I did out of GRP #2 thanks to your saying I should get it, I wonder what inspiration will strike from this new comic?