St. Vincent - Prince Johnny

Stromae Feat. Lorde, Pusha T, Q-Tip, and HAIM

Fabiola - Part One

Her mother had raised her like a boy. She liked the freedom that it afforded her, even if she was still forced to cover her hair. Like a boy, she could attend dinners, sitting motionlessly, looking down, careful to keep her legs closed together. Her mother taught her to eat slowly, pausing between morsels. She was to never reach for what she wanted, but to ask politely and quietly without imposing. News traveled quickly about this. A throng of young men had approached the house threatening rough music, but her father beat the ringleader mercilessly and ordered his companions to pick him up from the pig shit. They had already earlier tried to take her against her will, calling her a whore, but a quick flash of the knife and a sudden drawing of blood had changed their minds. This after they had humiliated her in the streets, throwing food and rocks. She did not care. Not with all these voices.
 

The men at the table ignored her as they spoke about politics, trade, and the way of a world she would likely never experience. Hiding in plain sight, she used their talk to imagine travel and adventure. Sometimes she would get to sit near to him. The young man with the voice that stood for her above all the others, deep and assertive, yet elegant. Unable to raise her eyes from her meal, she could never see him, but she could smell him and feel the warmth radiating from his body into hers. These sensations called to her with a force she could not explain or even acknowledge to herself. She did not know it, but this was why she did not care about violence and humiliation. She wanted everything these dinners had to offer her. Or, at least, she thought that she did. That was before his hand brushed against hers for that one quick moment. And she heard him apologize for his transgression. After that she could think of nothing else but transgression.

COPRA

Source: The Comics Journal

"Reading Copra we see these elements plainly inspired by superhero comics of the past, minus the explanation of context that would be offered up by dozens of books published every month for decades on end. Here it is always the first time, although there are no introductions to set out ideas of any limiting parameters. Everything is in media res, as if Fiffe is trying to capture the feeling of reading a random comic-book issue and not understanding who all the characters are meant to be- but somehow he forgets that those old comics, when well-made, were constructed so that a first-time audience could find them, and be provided with introductions to characters and recognizable stakes. In other words, they told an actual story, and didn’t just demonstrate the artist’s approach to color and page design.

I acknowledge that to a practitioner of the form, the artist’s approach to the labor of their job might be the most interesting element. This is a twenty-dollar collection of a comic explicitly designed for people whose ideal comics reading experience is paying fifty cents apiece for old Norm Breyfogle comics, and who feel as if the stories and scripting mostly just get in the way. Those readers are out there, and I hope they find Copra, if they have not already. But other readers, seeking a comic they can actually read, may hearken back to the early ’90s, and wonder, “How is this particularly different from the first wave of Image Comics?” The only real answer is that Fiffe is comparatively disinterested in splash pages."

Hannah Diamond - Every Night

Yeah, so I knew I was going to have to post this the moment I set eyes on that cover...

American-Russian Relations

Bear Time Is My Favourite Time

The latest episode of Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men dropped yesterday. This week they discussed in some detail Bill Sienkiewicz's work on New Mutants. They make the claim that Sienkiewicz's work marks a turning point in comics generally (although here I think what they really mean to say is 'superhero comics generally')--a ripping open of the envelope with respect to what the pages of sci-fi inflected, action adventure dramas could do.

I wish that they were right. I wish that the page to the left was indeed a turning point. But it really wasn't. Sienkiewicz has been influential, yes, but the body-stocking- punch-em-up-will-they-or-won't-they-kiss-this-week crowd will always look to Jim Lee and the like before they even consider challenging either themselves or their audience with something evocative and expressive rather than naturalistic and classical.

At any rate: this Sienkiewicz kid has it goin' on!