CARTOON & COMICS EDITION
I’ve been a big fan of cartoons and comics (and animation for that matter) since forever. Around the age of 8 was the first time I remember saying out lied I wanted to be a cartoonist. Although I never did it full time as such, doing naive doodles has been a large part of my professional career. Today, I’m putting together five links to interesting stories and artists from the world of cartooning and comics.
Shazam! So that’s the real story
Recently there were two Captain Marvel movies in the cinema at basically the same time. It was very confusing. They were different in most ways other than both being superhero movies. So I was very interested to get the lowdown on the confusing history of comics, trademarks and rights, and how the two captains tiptoed around each other.
Batman is a great character because as a superhero he’s really just a guy in a suit with lots of gadgets and some serious mental issues (Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man rocks a lot of the same characteristics). Recently on Sad and Useless I came across Ordinary Batman Adventures. Sarah Johnson puts the dark knight into everyday situations. It may be essentially one gag repeated but I really like it.
Also from the archives of Sad and Useless (why do I hang out on a site with that title so much?) comes a visually playful cartoon by Tango. I love how cheeky and visually inventive they are.
Spiegelman battles “The Orange Skull”
Art Spiegelman is one of the giants of comics, a Pulitzer Prize winner no less. He’s also been a comics scholar. This year, Spiegelman published an essay in The Guardian about many comic creators’ immigrant origins and how many of their stories were a reaction against the spectre of fascism and nazism. Spiegelman was asked to contribute to a Marvel Comics retrospective and brought up how much these creators might rally against current day Trump. His essay was rejected because Marvel is trying to stay apolitical. Needless to say Spiegelman was not happy to learn billionaire and former Marvel CEO is a longtime pal of “The Orange Skull”.
In the piece above, Spiegelman writes about how the creators of Superman were weaseled out of the fortune their comics made. Another artist who lost control of the world is KC Green. Two panels of one of his comics became the meme known as “This is fine” where the dog is surrounded by a world on fire. Vulture posted an interesting story about how Green is fighting for recognition and taking down others’ efforts to monetise his creation. It raises many issues about ownership int he internet age.
