Sunday, January 22, 2023

The Wonder of Sound and Vision: Film, TV & Other Media Adaptations of Comics 2022 edition FREE EBOOK

The Wonder of Sound and Vision: Film, TV & Other Media Adaptations of Comics (2022 edition)

Arlington, VA: ComicsDC 2023

online at https://archive.org/details/film-tv-other-media-adaptations-of-comics-2022 or https://www.academia.edu/95495019/The_Wonder_of_Sound_and_Vision_Film_TV_and_Other_Media_Adaptations_of_Comics_2022_edition

INTRODUCTION

In 1977, in a completely different context, David Bowie sang, "Don't you wonder sometimes; About sound and vision?" In the comics world, the question had long been answered with a firm "Yes." Since the earliest days of the comic strip, theatrical adaptions were common, and were soon followed by film shorts. After all, as we've seen with the current plethora of big budget comic book movies, the material to adapt – to reuse, repurpose, revisit, revise, and sometimes retread (I'm looking at you, Blondie) was just sitting there, already paid for. The list includes any type of comic strip, panel or book that originated on paper, but not original animation, even if it later resulted in a printed series. series. It usually does not include videogames, although the level of animation in them has become quite high and it seems as though a convergence between videogames and movies may not be too far in the future. This list and its format originated with Manfred Vogel of Germany. After his August 1997 version, he turned it over to me to continue and shortly after that Manfred died. I would like this list to be a continuing memorial to him. The last version of this was published in 2007, as the boom in superhero movies was just about to take off. I have not seen all of these movies, so I recommend checking against other sources if possible. This is an ongoing project and any corrections or additional information is welcome. Previous versions were released for the indexing group APA-I as Comics Stuff #9 and on my ComicsDC blog. 1,764 additions since the last edition are marked with *.

Public Radio and Voice of America on Comics & Cartoons: A Bibliography (2023 ebook edition) FREE ONLINE

Public Radio and Voice of America on Comics & Cartoons: A Bibliography (2023 ebook edition)

by Mike Rhode

Arlington, VA: ComicsDC, 2023

online at https://archive.org/details/npr-and-voa-2023-ebook or https://www.academia.edu/95438614/Public_Radio_and_Voice_of_America_on_Comics_and_Cartoons_A_Bibliography_2023_edition

Table of Contents

Public Radio citations in alphabetical order …4
NPR on the Danish Islam cartoon controversy …409
Voice of America (VOA) on Comics & Cartoons …418
VOA Danish Islam cartoon controversy …499

Introduction

Radio used to be an ephemeral medium - possibly saved as a recording, but perhaps only in the hands of a private collector. Thanks to the Internet, it has become easy to find a transcript or recording of a show. National Public Radio (now NPR) in particular offers both, sometimes for free. NPR has done many interviews and shows relating to comics and cartoons especially since the 1990s and this bibliography is a listing of them. For a short time, NPR even produced and aired a radio show based on a comic strip - Ben Katchor's "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer", starring Jerry Stiller as Julius. Other public radio stations are included as well, as is Public Radio International (PRI), and Voice of America (VOA) in a separate chapter at the end. Since VOA stories are public domain, some of them have been reproduced in full, a decision made at the time they were acquired, and since this is an ebook, I see no reason to delete them now. Two other chapters capture all the stories of the Danish Islamic cartoons controversy run on NPR and VOA.

Thursday, January 19, 2023

New Comics Research Bibliography 2022 E-book Edition online now for free

Michael Rhode and John A. Lent. 2023. Comics Research Bibliography 2022 E-book Edition. Arlington, VA: ComicsDC. Online at https://archive.org/details/crb-2022-final-edition

The Comics Research Bibliography began as an online resource in 1996. John Bullough, struck by the success of the Grand Comics Database crowd-sourcing project, proposed a companion project of a compilation of works about comics. Michael Rhode was the only member to join him in compiling an online Comics Research Bibliography. Bullough selected a citation format and created a web interface hosted on his school's server. We both contributed citations, from our local newspapers and collections, especially from Rhode's books and magazines. In the early days of the Internet, we were unaware of John Lent's similar project which he had started for an academic publisher. Both online library catalogues and booksellers have made it less necessary to have an author's books listed, but it seemed silly to have reviews of the books and not the citation for the book itself, so collections of comics were added fairly early in the project. Since updates to the online version have stopped, Rhode has decided to produce a semi-annual print and electronic version to fill the gap. He and Lent began working together on the International Journal of Comic Art over a decade ago, and at the conclusion of Lent's publishing contract, began sharing bibliographic data. Three previous print appeared as Volume 11, Number 3 of International Journal of Comic Art (626 pages) and Comics Research Bibliography, 2012 (two volumes, 832 pp.) and CRB, 2018 (two volumes, 1253 pp.) and one e-book CRB, 2020 (1324 pp.). This bibliography is a continual work in progress – the authors literally have thousands of additional citations waiting to be formatted and included. Many new articles have appeared due to the growing acceptance of comic art as a subject of interest at the same time the Internet has become a mass publishing media. As the years passed, and the Internet expanded, online citations grew far more rapidly than print ones. We are trying to be a quality filter by only grabbing substantive articles, or interviews off the web. If one types 'Fantagraphics' into Google's search engine, almost 3 million results are returned, but if you look at the Fantagraphics entry here, hopefully we will have some substantive pieces on the company that will be useful for research.

* marks entries or articles that are new since the last published version – 2,855 of them.

An ebook of the original website from 1996-2009 was also created today and will be available at https://archive.org/details/comics-research-bibliography-1996-2009-final This e-book was generated from the sites captured at the Internet Archive to supplement later editions of the CRB, which still do not have all the citations that were included on the original website.

Thursday, January 12, 2023

Thierry Groensteen - "Bande dessinée et art moderne: du divorce à la reconciliation?"

Presentation at the Huberty & Breyne Gallery, Brussels, Belgium. December 12, 2022

The spacious Huberty and Breyne gallery in Brussels played host to the first in what appears to be a cycle of conferences focusing on the relationship between comics and Art with an inaugural talk by noted French comics scholar Thierry Groensteen. Though the publicity for the event promoted a presentation titled "Are Comics Art?" (as seen in the poster above in its original French language version), Groensteen went in a slightly different but still related direction with a presentation titled "Comics and Modern Art: from divorce to reconciliation?"

In a talk that lasted just under one hour, Groensteen laid out a progression of anecdotes, observations and examples to evoke what he saw as challenges associated with situating comics within an arts and media landscape. From Groensteen's perspective, the historical progression of the cultural legitimation of comics - especially in France - has benefited from the notion that comics sit at the crossroads of the visual arts and narrative art. In this context, the "artification" (Groensteen's term) of comics as a graphic and/or plastic art has been supported by museums, galleries, heritage auctions, whereas the promotion of certain comics as Literature by the Letter and Arts establishment has certainly elevated its status as a narrative art. With this dual-track development, Groensteen openly mused whether comics had changed over the years as a result , or rather has the way we look, consider, study, and practice comics changed?

Leaving that question dangling, Groensteen segued into discussions of modern art that privileged its avant garde and experimental practices - especially its focus on form, time, space and a rejection of narrative - as a way to contemplate another dimension in how comics are situated within the Art landscape. The examples that Groensteen presented, as seen below in the appended photographs, were chosen to suggest a specific progression of comics from the avant garde rejection of narrative to the appropriation of the experimental practice and aesthetics to tell new kinds of visual narratives. Hence the divorce and reconciliation reference that is made in his title to the presentation.

This summary hardly does justice to Groensteen's prolonged and sustained observations, which were amusing, thoughtful and thought-provoking. The entirety of Groensteen's presentation (delivered in French and including the question and answer session that followed) is available as an MP3 audio recording in the link below. The running time of the recording is 1 hour 15 minutes.

Audio Recording - Thierry Groensteen @ Huberty & Breyne

N.B. The meowing that one hears in the background of the recording that interrupts Groensteen at certain points of his presentation is the audio of an art installation from the Onomatopée show that was on display at the Huberty & Breyne Gallery from 25 November 2022 to 7 January 2023.

Also presented below are photos of the images that Groensteen showed in his presentation to illuminate some of his observations and arguments about comics as seen through a modern art lens. The photo captions provide information about the artist and/or work referenced, as well as the time in the recording when Groensteen mentions them.

- Nick Nguyen

All photos taken by Nick Nguyen