I recently finished reading Scott McCloud’s minor classic, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in discussions of art, comics (Euro-american and/or Japanese), and media in general. Itself is written as a comic as it defines and analyzes how comics—an often underrated art—work. In the process, McCloud brings in a [...]

I finally finished Watchmen (after Sara finished it a few weeks ago) and it’s phenomenal! The story is smart and multilayered, the artwork engrossing. Even though “just a comic” it takes time to read because of the many layers of text and images. As an auto-critique of the superhero in Cold War times, it helps [...]

One nice thing about summer break — and in my case, sabbatical leave for the whole year — is that I have more time (not really) for pleasure reading. I’m still reading The Baroque Cycle aloud at night to Sara (we’re about 200 pages into the last volume) and have started Neil Gaiman’s 75-issue comic [...]

Besides Life Getting Complicated as my sabbatical leave begins, there is also the little something called research and writing that I must do. Unlike a certain friend who will remain unnamed who is planning on spending sabbatical time taking tennis and Photoshop lessons (okay, just in afternoons after a mornings of work), need to decide [...]

Okay, so I’ve gained a wee bit of new knowledge via Twitter today. Mr. Gaiman (between book signings for his Newberry Award-winning The Graveyard Book) mentioned in a tweet this morning that the first Saturday in May is Free Comic Book Day in North America. Participating comic book stores are giving away free comic books [...]

The other reason — besides Goya Day — that May 8th is one of my favorite days is that it is the birthday of my favorite author, Thomas Pynchon, who is — unbelievably — 71 years old today. Somehow I can’t picture him as that old. Maybe because the only image I and most of [...]

That’s about the only explanation I have for no posts in April (until now). Even now I shouldn’t be fiddling on the web while I have several chapters to read for my next class session. We’re reading Ian Condry’s book Hip-Hop Japan this week; had fun with it in class today as we talked about [...]

This is weird. Not more than two days ago I mentioned the cultural criticism journal The Baffler to Sara when she asked who Thomas Frank is (whose name I mentioned in conjunction with his book What’s the Matter with Kansas?). Frank founded The Baffler in 1988 in Chicago while I was a grad student there. [...]