* Here’s everything George R.R. Martin is working on at the moment. Sounds like the fourth Tale of Dunk and Egg is finished.
* How far did you get in Jennifer Kahn’s New York Times Magazine piece on psychopathic children before you recoiled in horror? I hit the panic button at the cat thing, predictably. But in all seriousness, this is a very strong and very troubling article about something that I’ve wondered and worried about since I first started reading about serial killers years ago. Violent sociopathy is a real challenge to a liberal democratic society’s ideas of justice and liberty, and pop-psych serial-killer books tend to hammer that home hard. Kahn’s article adds some welcome, though no less challenging, ideas to the discussion, pointing out that a graduation to adult violent sociopathy is not guaranteed, and thus something likely can be done to save these kids and their future victims, just as people who’ve inherited heart disease can be prevented from dying from it. The problem is no one’s really sure what that something is. Lots more to ponder in this thing: Could you love a cruel child? Why is it so disturbing that the kid at the heart of the article doesn’t just lash out, that instead, he…waits?
* Roger Langridge quits working for Marvel and DC over creators’-rights concerns. I guess this is how it’ll work: people at the margins leaving, and publicly declaring why.
* The Mindless Ones come forth to tackle Mad Men‘s “Lady Lazarus.” A friend planted a far less optimistic appraisal of Peggy in my mind a while back than the one espoused by the Mindlesses, and I’m finding it tough to shake.
* Andrei Molotiu has had it up to here with your so-called “stories.” I like Andrei and I like many of the abstract comics he’s championed, but this post reminds me of that Sopranos episode where the local rock band guy complains about how the Beatles have boxed in his own genius.
* Oooh, a new I Just Figured It All Out from Tom Neely.
* Oooh, a new A Wrinkle in Time promo image from Hope Larson.
* Oooh, a new gif/image gallery from Uno Moralez.
* This is a gorgeous Karl Wills page. Funny, great physicality, love the blood spatter, love the big white thighs, love the erasure of the faces as the fight begins.
* Rob Bricken’s piece on the CW’s forthcoming Green Arrow show Arrow made me laugh. “People might accidentally recognize the name ‘Green Arrow’ — we all know how unpopular superheroes are nowadays!”
* Can you imagine listening to M83’s “Kim and Jessie” as a real-live emotional teenager?
* “You think you’re better than me?” is humankind’s worst emotion.
* Finally, there’s a panel in this Puke Force strip by Brian Chippendale that sums up America’s drone wars so perfectly and devastatingly I don’t even know what else to say. You’ll know the one when you click the link for the full comic.
Tags: A Song of Ice and Fire, books, Carnival of souls, comics, fantasy, George R.R. Martin, horror, links, music, real world, TV
Oh, we’ve got our worries too!
(Last week’s post ended a little… uh… prematurely, much to our chagrin)
Molotiu is 100% correct.
Tim, you’ve got to commit to one contrarian stance or the other and stick with it. A few weeks ago you were defining popular art based on whatever the dumbest possible audience reaction is. Now you’re demanding art reach for unprecedented heights. I can’t keep up!
I contain multitudes, my friend.
The two positions don’t necessarily have to contradict. And I don’t think that Molotiu is calling for art to reach “unprecedented heights,” he’s pointing out that comics is falling into the same trap as prose, where the avant garde is comprised of a series of stylistic dead ends and derelict rhetoric. I don’t know if he’s completely right about comics – there’s a lot of exciting stuff out there that he either doesn’t see or undersells. But much of what passes for cutting edge in this little punchbowl we call home is pretty mediocre.
Popular art becomes relevant when it picks up the responsibility of ideological critique abandoned by the dessicated avant garde. It would be great if there were another, smarter show that had picked up the responsibility of talking about the slow heat death of capitalism than THE WALKING DEAD, but that’s the world we’re given.
It’s the world one of us has been given, at least.