New Yorker on Comics

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Somewhat deluded, snarky, pseudy, unresearched article on comix at the New Yorker. Gives quite a well-deserved kicking to Harvey Pekar, but otherwise somewhat poor. (Sample quote, on discussing Persepolis: "We don’t go to graphic novels for political philosophy.")

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/051017crbo_books1

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 14:09 (twenty years ago)

Pile of wank.

― chap who would dare to kill all the threads (chap), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 14:23 (twenty years ago)

"The nineteen-sixties decided that poet types would thenceforth wield guitars; the eighties imposed percussive rhythm and rhyme; the two-thousands favor drawing pens."

So what you're saying, right, is that comics are the new rock'n'roll!

Dude.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 14:29 (twenty years ago)

not a single mention of my precious Beto.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 16:08 (twenty years ago)

...or Seth or Chester Brown (huge seller in Canada!) or Tezuka or Tomine... etc.

I'm just bitter because I can't read the IC thread till tommorow.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 21:14 (twenty years ago)

I'm re-re-re-reading Poison River right now. It blows my mind. I'd take it over 1,000 Jimmy Corrigans...and I love Chris Ware as much as the next person.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Thursday, 13 October 2005 01:57 (twenty years ago)

pretty lame article, yeah. i laughed at his dismissal of manga, but it still reeks of new yorker-style snobbery (he wouldn't be caught dead looking at "kinky romance manga for GIRLS"). why do all these "comics = art" articles inevitably focus on the same 4 or 5 people?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 13 October 2005 05:36 (twenty years ago)

This IS The New Yorker we're talking about. If it doesn't focus un upper class protestant caucasian angst, they barely know it exists.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Thursday, 13 October 2005 05:42 (twenty years ago)

hey um this IS the new yorker, half the guys mentioned pay their rent thru nyer freelance work. hell half those guys are probably IN this nyer. pretty sure the ware focus came from ware being the one contemporary (ie. not crumb i guess is what i mean) comix guy getting alot of museum/gallery play (he was like the toast of that one whitney show right? or maybe my eyes just jumped to his name cuz 'hey lookey - chris ware!'). despite the results (and i do like schjeldahl alot on his own turf, he's very profun) i do like reading an art critic take on comix if only as a change of pace from the usual litcrit alternative; it's pretty funny to see how ridiculous he finds the idea of someone just writing, not even drawing their own comic is. i'd prefer an actual comix critic (however few and far between they are)(big ups to wolk here whose sim piece in the believer is a step in the right direction)(and another sigh that if spiegelman was still there maybe this reads better though who knows; maybe we'd've gotten a comic out of it). this did seem sorta redundant though - the nyer's ran reviews of persepolis and ware, big feature on clowes, etc. already - does schjeldahl read his own magazine?

― j blount (papa la bas), Thursday, 13 October 2005 06:26 (twenty years ago)

Another New Yorker article that exaults Peanuts to the highest? NO WAY.
Why doesn't this article focus on new work that came out this year?

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Thursday, 13 October 2005 15:53 (twenty years ago)

what new work that came out this year has been shown in a gallery already?

― j blount (papa la bas), Thursday, 13 October 2005 18:59 (twenty years ago)

countdown to infinite crisis?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 13 October 2005 19:01 (twenty years ago)

i hear mary boone went buckwild for the omac project, it resonated or something

― j blount (papa la bas), Thursday, 13 October 2005 19:09 (twenty years ago)

this year we present the ULTIMATE VENICE BIENNALE

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 13 October 2005 19:10 (twenty years ago)

i love peanuts as all know but it does sorta irk me how since the "complete" reprints were announced everyone's suddenly embraced it as a prototype for the modern depressive indie comic - which was really only one aspect of the strip. i mean, to read articles like these you'd never imagine that half the time it was about a dog and his pretend adventures with a little bird.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 14 October 2005 01:16 (twenty years ago)

And that isn't indie? I'll let Kochalka know.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 14 October 2005 07:01 (twenty years ago)

x-post!

that's because everyone knows the strip turned shit when it was about a dog and his pretend adventures with a little bird (also because those strips ran years after they had a chance to be a formative influence on the generation of cartoonists that produced the modern indie comic - even those reading in the '70s have always talked of being far more influenced by the concentrated intake of work in paperback reprints of '60s strips, rather than the occasional viewing of weak '70s work at the breakfast table before Dad came down and claimed the newspaper)

― kit brash (kit brash), Friday, 14 October 2005 07:07 (twenty years ago)

well, i didn't mean that as a putdown of the snoopy and woodstock strips (which are quite a bit better than ppl remember them being), i just wanted to point out that ppl who paint peanuts as being all gloom n'doom and "l'il neurotic" jokes are ignoring about three-fifths of it!

i also think the only thing really wrong with '70s peanuts is that it isn't '60s peanuts - i.e. still better than all but a handful of all other strips ever. the sunday page where charlie brown is sitting on a bench reminiscing about the times he used to sit and watch the little red-haired girl (who has apparently moved away; one of the very few times peanuts acknowledged the passing of time) is possibly the most moving thing schulz ever drew.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 14 October 2005 08:17 (twenty years ago)

ten years pass...

seeing a lot of uproar on FB over this one today:

https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13510910_10153811737573869_6947878920656246645_n.jpg?oh=44ef963f5f5441c083ceebfa3f35c032&oe=57D85537

― Darin, Tuesday, 21 June 2016 20:48 (nine years ago)

Uproar from adults whose parents still pay their rent?

― Manspread Mann (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 21 June 2016 21:41 (nine years ago)

The thread for making up fake New Yorker cartoons

― Andrew Farrell, Wednesday, 22 June 2016 12:30 (nine years ago)

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