I recently visited the Petersen Automotive Museum to check out their Hot Wheels collection. My interest in toy cars has recently been revived by Chris Burden's Metropolis II exhibit at LACMA. I strolled over to the neighboring exhibit on Hollywood vehicles and decided to snap some photos of the Batmobile from the 1989 Batman movie.
I used to be a serious comic book geek, so visiting the Batmobile is always a thrill.
Costume from Batman (1989), designed by Bob Ringwood
You can't really get a feel for the overwhelming size of the Batmobile in the movies or photos. It's over twenty feet long and the reflective black paint makes it seem even bigger. The Hollywood gallery is filled with attention-grabbing vehicles, but the Batmobile just dominates the view.
Donald Duck deals with anger management issues in Self Control (1938)
It seems like there is a Bird celebration every few months. For instance, today is National Bird Day. Well, I see nothing wrong with considering the wonders of our feathered friends, appreciating their songs, colors, and grace in flight.
Last year, I didn't do much birdwatching. Hopefully, I'll get an opportunity sometime this year. I live fairly close to the Madrona Marsh, which is an awesome place to spot some cool critters.
Detail from the cover art of Howard the Duck #7 (1980) by John Pound
Maybe next year I'll have photos of actual birds, rather than cartoon ducks. ;-)
It's not often that my mind turns to the consideration of stilts. But reading the background of Cirque du Soleil CEO, Guy Laliberte, it mentions that he was once a stiltwalker. Wow! That's quite a career change!
Now, I know that stilts have gotten a bad image from association with creepy clowns and Uncle Sam marching in a parade. For fans of superhero comic books, the pathetic supervillain Stilt Man may have left a lasting negative impression. However, stilts have a long history as a viable means of traveling over difficult terrain. Moreover, modern stilt dancers can give some awesome performances.
Stilt Man on the cover of Daredevil v.1 #48 (1969) by Gene Conlan and George Klein
So, let's try to dispel the images of the absurd, creepy, or cheesy.
Detail of Howard the Duck #8 (Art: Gene Colan, Steve Leialoha)
With all of the superhero movies filling the cinematic release schedule, you might think that they'd run out of characters to feature sometime soon. If so, you'd be thinking wrong. They may be working through the B-List of superheroes, but there probably are not enough letters to cover all the levels of obscure characters that populate the Marvel or DC comic book universes.
In fact, a Q-List character was featured with a cinematic release on this date twenty-five years ago, Howard the Duck. Oh, that was a bad movie! It had bad acting, bad effects, bad everything!!! It was a failure beyond my ability to express. I still can't understand how anybody thought that this movie would be anything more than a paradigm of awfulness.
Detail of Howard the Duck #12 (Art: Gene Colan, Steve Leialoha)
You see, the source material was some bad stuff. Either it was a goofy anthropomorphic bit of buffoonery or it was a not so interesting bit of pretentious existentialist tripe. In either case, it was unreadably awful, the worst comic in publication. And, if you remember some of the comics of the late seventies and early eighties, there were plenty of atrocious comics to contend for this title of disgrace.
If you're a fellow fan of "Lowbrow" art, then you absolutely can't miss the current show at the Corey Helford Gallery, "Idle Hands: Works by COOP". I've long been a fan of his work, especially that cute devil girl with the Popsicle. There is such a cheeky vibrancy to his images that they always make me happy. Playful, erotic, energetic and silly, they have a gonzo disregard for self-serious aesthetics.
But don't think that they are amateurish. COOP's work is technically exquisite. His color utilization is bold and sophisticated. The line work and compositional design keeps the eyes playing around the canvas. An especially impressive technical feat is how COOP creates a overtly flattened image but, through overlapping text or images, creates the impression of foreground and background. It is a very dynamic style.
Alright. This is going to be another rant post. Be warned. . .
In my youth, I was an avid reader of superhero comic books. Captain America wasn't my favorite character, but I had a fondness for his style and personality. He was totally square, but honest, hardworking, and responsible. He was a paragon of good ol' American virtue, with very little of the jingoism or provincialism that one might expect in an overt nationalist icon.
Since the days of WWII, the USA has experienced amazing prosperity. This material abundance has led to Americans becoming both figuratively and literally fat. The US is the most obese nation in the history of the world!!! Therefore, I find the Dunkin' Donut ad campaign totally annoying! Our national superhero is shilling the lowest of junk food. Even a McDonald's or Wendy's hamburger has a better nutritional value. Seriously!!!!!
Given our obesity epidemic, I can't see that it would be in character for Captain America to do a promo for Dunkin' Donuts. Yeah, I know he's not a real person, just a fictional figure from the comic books. However, this character embodies certain principles of national virtue. Those of us who care about the integrity of character have a right to complain.
While I was on vacation, I had the opportunity to visit the San Jose Museum of Art where the exhibit "The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb's Book of Genesis" was on display. It contained the original drawn pages from which the graphic novel was created. Each page of the comprehensive fifty chapter work was exhibited. I'm not a fan of Crumb's work and I am certainly no fan of the Book of Genesis, but the show was impressive.
As regards Crumb, I've long admired his amazing skills of composition and rendering. Throughout his long career, his ability to structure a panel, within the multi-panel context of a comic book page, is awe-inspiring. However, I have a hard time reading his work because his figures are so egregiously ugly and crass. I definitely respect the skill that he uses in drawing these characters, but I find their odious appearances to be distracting and tiresome. I can only enjoy Crumb in very small doses.
However, within the Book of Genesis, these gnarly homunculi seem appropriate to the subject matter. The world of the biblical Patriarchs is crude and rough-hewn. It is a world where the "Crumb people" seem to belong. Moreover, his attention to detail creates for an immersive experience. Even the infamously tedious "Generations of So-And-So" wherein "Whats-His-Name begat Whos-That, and lived another couple hundred years" is made into an interesting read by creating veristic portraits of people living in the Bronze Age, eating, fighting, farming, dancing, or just looking tired.
That's the key to Crumb's success. The attention to the details of character and setting creates a convincing world in which the reader can easily follow the events being portrayed. The famous stories, like Noah's Flood or the Sacrifice of Isaac, are given superb treatment, but it is the obscure stories, such as Sarah joining Pharaoh's harem or the Massacre of the Shechemites, that really benefit from Crumb's meticulous attention. These are obscure stories that get lost within the rambling biblical narrative, but Crumb's ability to impart drama and significance through his illustrations make them stand out.
Book of Genesis by R. Crumb
As regard the Genesis text, it's still a horrible thing. I've had to read Genesis numerous times while pursuing my theology studies and I really detest it. However, Crumb's rendering of the text smoothed out the incoherency of the text. The images impart an empathic humanity to the characters, as detestable or immoral though they may be. Even the weird things like Lot's daughters conspiring to seduce their father or Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of "red red stuff" feels less absurd or disturbing when portrayed by Crumb's drawings.
My biggest complaint is that Crumb missed the opportunity to express the ideas of the Documentary Hypothesis in this work.
Wishing a Happy Birthday to Siouxsie Sioux, born on this date in 1957.
Yeah, I have an eclectic taste in music. Although I never got into the Goth scene of the late '80s and early 90s, I enjoyed the music. Certainly, it could get a bit overwrought and angsty to the point of hilarity, but, when the excesses of pathos are avoided, there were some memorable works of music. Now, I wouldn't classify Siouxsie and the Banshees as just a Goth band, because their music has notable post-punk elements that don't fit well with the Gothic aesthetic. It's probably most accurate to label them as "alternative rock".
Whatever you want to call them, Siouxsie and the Banshees were wonderfully experimental. Heck, they even have a song that uses the glockenspiel!!!
The traditional media does a terrible job of covering stories about science and technology. Fortunately, the internet picks up the slack. Sites like PopSci, Discovery News, or the New Scientist provide better coverage than the trad med ever did. Likewise, hardcore tech and gadgeteer stories can be found at Wired or Gizmodo. So, being a bit of a "sci-geek", I regularly make the rounds of this Internet "neighborhood".
For the last week or so, I've been seeing a story about mind-controlled "cat-ear" head accessories popping up at a variety of these sites. They're produced by Neurowear, a Japanese company, and are called "necomimi". At first, I paid no attention. I'm not really big on manga or anime, and I'm definitely not into "furry" cosplay. But, as more and more articles came to my attention, I started to think about it.
Alright, I get the whole cosplay angle. Everyone has things that give them thrills. I'm not one to determine what constitutes "having bad fun". If "cat ears" do it for you, then enjoy.
However, under the whole cosplay angle, there was something that caught my attention. The cat-ears reveal mental activity. They are a form of nonverbal expression. That's kind of cool. In the current tech, it's a crude binary tell; ears up indicates mental stimulation, while ears down signifies mental rest. But this is a stepping-stone tech. Future forms of "expression accessories" may have greater nuances. I can get behind that.
But you won't find me wearing cat ears. ;-)
Here's an article from MTV Style that discusses the product in a humorous manner.
Detective Comics #27 (May 1939). Cover art by Bob Kane.
I have been an avid reader throughout my life. I have read widely across genres of fiction and nonfiction. However, one of my favorite narrative forms is comic books (or graphic novels, if you prefer.) Yeah, I don't read them much anymore, but that's not because I've "outgrown" them. Like all art forms, comic books have aesthetic trends and fads that come and go. I'm not a dedicated fan of the genre, so when a trend arises that I don't appreciate I have no problem jumping ship. There is seemingly an infinity of material to read and there is no excuse to waste our precious time on things we dislike.
But this post is about something that I like very much. BATMAN!!!!!
On this date in 1939, Batman was introduced in the pages of Detective Comics #27. I wasn't around for this grand occasion, but I pay homage to it. Batman is one of my favorite characters in all fiction. He is like a mythic hero of the 20th century. Yeah, you can make interesting arguments in favor of the other "superheroes" like Superman, Captain America, or Spider-man, but I would argue that Batman has a greater mythic depth than all the others.
It isn't just in the character of Batman, but in his environment and antagonists. His iconic stories carry a richness of Jungian archetypes. His conflicts are Campbellian in their underlying structure of conflict and resolution. His character has been reimagined on numerous occasions, but the core concept has remained unchanged.
Anyways, I might return to this topic at some later date. Today, I just want to celebrate a classic American Icon. Here's the intro to the 1989 film:
