We still die and we still go to market. This morning my mother sent me out to get a bottle of rye for the Christmas party they were throwing later and I dropped by the comic book shop on the way back, talked with the boys, picked up two riso'd minicomics and that Daredevil.
Right now, I can go out and get a North American comic that draws from all over Europe and Japan as well. We are in a peaceful and productive mode of cultural exchange. This is a renaissance, people. No matter how it feels to be here.
The governors of Nueva España, now called Mexico, wrote of themselves as "we who have been placed at the end of time". It always feels like the world is ending.
We all of us look out our windows upon change, but I don't think anyone would want to go back to the way things were. Technology will not save us but it can help. And it seems like everyone "in the scene" has a clear image of something better.
We'll get there.
Because so many have fought the good fight. A Kirby panel exploding into atoms of xerox-machine grit. The sands of time symbolized by old newspaper and Yokoyama panels and Moebius hatching. The four frames from a superhero monthly that stay with you for a lifetime. And the books full of art that you keep your whole life. Zines. Tezuka. Knowing we do it here as good as anybody else did it. Being part of something.
No matter where we go from here, we can only go forward.
Images from all the great comics I've read over the past three days:
1. SFSF Supplementary File 2A by Ryan Cecil Smith, self-published
2. Daredevil vol. 3 #7 by Paolo Rivera and Mark Waid, Marvel Comics
3. "Hell's Angel" by Yoshikazu Ebisu in Comics Underground Japan, Blast Books
4. "Little Red Riding Hood" by Juani Ta in (ku)š! #7, Bidriba Grafiskie stasi
5. Paranoia #1 by Kipper and Paul O'Connor, Adventure Comics
*DTU turns 2
2 comments:
First of all, congratulations on turning two!
Second: Is that Daredevil book THAT good? I'm kind of burned by superhero comics lately, so I've only been buying Wonder Woman (which is great, but hardly a superhero book in its current iteration) and Action Comics (which will probably get the axe on my next visit ti the LCS). I've been reading tons of praise for DD in the last few months, but most of it on mainstream websites whose opinions I take with a HUGE grain of salt. However, your enthusiasm for it in the last few posts has been palpable, so I'm considering giving it a shot when it comes out on TPB, even if it still feels unreal the notion that a book like that could be THAT good.
eh, it's not transcendent, it just isn't compromised. the state of mainstream comics is such that that feels pretty special. i probably give it too much praise.
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