Suicidal Tendencies
Posted in Animal rights, tagged advertising, animals on April 26, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Why do so many animals want to be eaten? A new blog investigates. (Hat tip: Erik Marcus.)
Archive for April, 2008
Superman at 70
Posted in Popular culture, tagged Superman on April 22, 2008 | No Comments »
Joe Shuster’s cover, Superman #1.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of Superman. As an offshoot of the celebrations I was interviewed at length about the meaning of the superhero genre by the CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi for the radio program Q. You can listen to an Mp3 file of the interview here.
Krazy Kat’s Final Reflections on Passing
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, Popular culture, tagged George Herriman, Krazy Kat on April 19, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Krazy Kat — please click on art for a better view of this Sunday page.
The facts about George Herriman have been known for a long time: he was born in Lousiana in 1880. The birth certificate listed him as colored. Other documents described every other member of his family as colored. They were in fact [...]
Marked in black
Posted in Foreign affairs, U.S. Politics, tagged China, gallup poll, greatest enemy, Iran, Iraq on April 11, 2008 | No Comments »
This Gallup poll on the identity of America’s “greatest enemy” got fairly good press coverage when it was released in late March, but there’s a lot of food for thought in it that is worth addressing even if we’re a couple of weeks on from the headlines themselves. First, it’s not shocking to see Iran, [...]
Cheburashka!
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, Media, tagged Cheburashka on April 10, 2008 | 1 Comment »
If you talk to Russians and East Europeans of a certain generation, their faces will light up if you mention Cheburashka. The star of a children’s book and series of short films, Cheburashka is as beloved in the east as Winnie the Pooh and the Muppets are in the west. He looks a bit like [...]
When Novelists Attack
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, Literature, Media, tagged Fredric Wertham, Michael Chabon on April 8, 2008 | 2 Comments »
In an article for Slate, I took a deeper look at the controversy surrounding Fredric Wertham and the postwar anti-comics crackdown. During the course of my article I made reference to Michael Chabon’s much-loved novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (where Wertham figures as a very minor character). Somewhat to my surprise, Chabon took umbrage [...]
Francoise Mouly: Underappreciated and Essential
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, Popular culture, tagged Art Spiegelman, Francoise Mouly on April 6, 2008 | 13 Comments »
Charles Burns’ cover for Raw #4.
Is there anyone in the cartooning world who is more underrated than Francoise Mouly? She has strong claims to be the most important comics editor of the last 30 years, but I suspect that if you asked your average comics fan or even cartoonists to name influential editors, Mouly wouldn’t [...]
Superman Never Made Any Money
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, Popular culture, tagged Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Superman on April 5, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Action #1 — the birth of Superman and many lawsuits.
Superman never made any money
Saving the world from Solomon Grundy
– Crash Test Dummies, Superman’s Song
The story of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, has been in the news lately due to a big court decision. I look back on the history here.
An excerpt:
The [...]
Critical Thinking with Cristopher Hitchens: Part I
Posted in Foreign affairs, U.S. Politics, tagged Christopher Hitchens, Iraq on April 4, 2008 | 14 Comments »
Christopher Hitchens: master logician.
September 11 had a strong effect on Christopher Hitchens. “I am only slightly embarrassed to tell you that this was a feeling of exhilaration,” he remarked to an interviewer in 2003. “Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I [...]
Eyebrow Raising Book Covers
Posted in Arts and Aesthetics, Literature, tagged Art Spiegelman, Guy Davenport, Joseph Epstein, Peter Ward on April 2, 2008 | 5 Comments »
I like to read and I like public transit. So I spend a lot of time reading on buses, trains and subways. In general reading in public doesn’t cause problems, although when I was on a subway in New York, a group of teenage boys started pointing at me and smirking while I was making my [...]
