RIP ADAM WEST
Like so many of you, Adam West was my first Batman. There
are times in my life I begrudged the '60s Batman TV show for perpetuating what
many non-comics readers saw as the campy ridiculousness of the medium as a
whole, but the truth is that without Adam West, I may not have every begun
reading comics in the first place.
My sister sent me a message this morning: "Adam West.
Such a huge part of my memories of growing up with you." And that, more
than anything else I could write here, encapsulates just how special the 1960s
Batman TV show, and West in particular, really was. He's soaked not just into
the childhood of comics fans everywhere, but of everyone we knew, everyone who
grew up alongside us. Adam West is immortal.
Hi there,
How soon is Now? September, apparently. Yes, Fantagraphics
has an all-new thrice-yearly alt-comix anthology on the way and hopefully
you're as chuffed as I am about the news.
Edited by Eric Reynolds, Now
#1 features new work by Eleanor Davis, Noah Van Sciver, Gabrielle Bell, Dash
Shaw, Sammy Harkham, Malachi Ward, J.C. Menu, Conxita Herrerro, Tobias
Schalken, Antoine Cossé, Tommi Parrish, Sara Corbett, Daria Tessler, Kaela
Graham and this insane cover by Rebecca Morgan:
COMIC OF THE WEEK : BOUNDLESS
By Jillian Tamaki
Published Drawn & Quarterly
"I move about the land when and where I want,"
says a squirrel in the titular story of Jillian Tamaki's new short story
collection, Boundless. "I bound across roofs and yards-- fences are
irrelevant. It's all the same to me." In many ways, Tamaki could well be
writing of her own burgeoning career in comics, the inspired choices she makes
on the page and what appears to be an unwillingness to remain contained by
formal comics structure. Artistically, the tales collected in Boundless move from loosely scribbled
drawings to finely detailed black and white recreations of photographs (see
this week's webcomic for more on this) to softly, warmly coloured pictures with
rich, thick lines. Tamaki is as clever with a page of panels as she is playing
with negative space or unfolding images over double page spreads, poetic enough
to juxtapose text and image and let her readers work for meaning, confident
enough to frequently experiment with her cartooning and boil her images down to
shapes that are at times almost conceptions of objects rather than the objects
themselves.
Individually, any one of the short comics here is a clear
example of a surging talent. Collected together, however, Boundless proves to be something extra special, the kind of thing
you would give to a prose reader unfamiliar with the real potential of our
medium, filled with bite-sized chunks of beautiful, dreamy, smart comics. In
fact, I would not be surprised to find Boundless
in bookshops filed next to the best short story collections of the day. It
certainly would not be out of place. I personally was left with same kind of
quiet awe I felt after first encountering Peter Carey's The Fat Man In History so many years back.
Tamaki has a grand imagination and a knack for conceptual
hooks - the "mirror universe" Facebook in "1.Jenny" in
which a woman finds her double leading a vastly different life to her own, the
weird audio-virus of the Ignatz-winning "Sex Coven" (which,
incidentally, made this column's Best
of 2015 list) and the creepy unease, suburban dread and oh-so subtle body
horror of the Amway-satire, "The Clairfree System" being the
strongest examples of ideas that could have been commercial genre pieces. Tamaki,
however, has no time for the cheap payoffs and neat conclusions of most comics
shorts, instead adhering to perhaps the one "rule" of most Capital-L
Literature short stories - create not a beginning nor an end, but a slice of
the in-between.
This eschewing of neat story construction adds a layer of
dreaminess to Tamaki's work. There are no ripping climaxes to be found here, no
heroes to save the day -- instead we have examples such as a woman who finds
herself forever shrinking, another pondering why everyone she was involved with
loved the same movie and a producer reflecting on his attempt to make a
porn-sitcom. Her stories, aided obviously and immeasurably by really lovely
artwork and inspired layouts in which images and panels often "float"
on the page, move along gently, leisurely, and are often over quickly before
another begins, then another, then another. Read Boundless in a sitting and you may feel like you've just woken up
by its end, with Tamaki's stories like dream-fragments recalling themselves in
your consciousness.
I'm going to stop here before I do a disservice to the work
through over-explanation. Find your own
way into Boundless, find your own
favourite story here and soak up those it's surrounded by in this superb collection
which perfectly elevates comics to the realms of Fine Art and Literature.
WEBCOMIC OF THE WEEK : JILLIAN TAMAKI EXPLAINS HER CREEPY SKIN-CARE COMIC
Okay, if you do not want to take a peek behind the curtain of
Jillian Tamaki's creative process making "The Clairefree System,"
look away now.
As briefly mentioned above, "The Clairfree System"
turns the business of selling skin care into quiet, strange dread. Tamaki
actually used numerous found photographs as source material for many of her
images, which would explain the real intimacy found in some of them. I strongly
recommend reading the story before you click this link as Tamaki really unpacks
it all here, including her choice of image and her symbolic intent in
presenting them as she does.
COMICS VIDEO OF THE WEEK : PENGUIN THREADS-PENGUIN CLASSICS
From 2011 comes this video, which is so poorly shot and put
together it makes 1987's Masters of Comic Book Art look like
a cinematic masterpiece. It does, however, detail the creation of Penguin Books
Classic Deluxe line of books, the covers to which are lovely and most of which
were drawn by comics professionals, and in particular, the Penguin Threads
line, all three of which were designed and embroidered by hero of the week and
former high school quilt-maker, Jillian Tamaki.
The Secret Garden, Emma
and Black Beauty got the Threads
treatment, with Tamaki, thrilled to try her hand at fibre arts, taking over two
months to complete the assignment. "Time-consuming and laborious" is
how Tamaki describes the process of creating her embroidery, but the work
speaks for itself and showcases, yet again, Tamaki's flexibility as an
illustrator. Seek these volumes out if you're a Tamaki completist.
See you in two weeks. Love your comics.
Cameron Ashley spends a lot of time writing comics and other things you'll likely never read. He's the chief editor and co-publisher of Crime Factory (www.thecrimefactory.com). You can reach him @cjamesashley on Twitter.
I didn't know about Adam West before reasing this post, I haven't seen his comics as well. Going to look for it and hope that it will be worth spending time. Thank you for sharing it with us
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