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Posts tagged as comics

Here's What a 'Calvin and Hobbes' Animated Series Would Look Like

Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Waterston has always been vehemently opposed to turning his beloved comic strip into an animated series – or repurposing it for any medium – but animator Adam Brown (Ugly Americans) made this short video, which gives an idea of what a Calvin and Hobbes show would look like. Brown commented on YouTube that he'd try to make more of these videos, which is great news as long as Bill Waterston doesn't catch wind of it. He should at least appreciate that the video is very respectful and loyal to his work  and a hell of a lot better than those "peeing Calvin" car decals.

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Leave Bill Watterson Alone

Dear Mr. Watterson is a documentary project that explores cartoonist Bill Watterson, his timeless comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, and their impact on culture. Celebrities like Seth Green and Bill Amend are interviewed, as are appreciative fans, many of whom have grown up with a deep admiration for Calvin and Hobbes. And while the film's synopsis promises that it is “not a quest to find Watterson, who prefers his privacy,” I find that assurance unlikely. After all, the project is named Dear Mr. Watterson, not A Film Where We Talk About How Great Calvin and Hobbes Is. But I can’t blame the filmmakers for hoping to reach [...]

Fighting for Nature: The Stilted Sincerity of Mark Trail

Newspaper comics are a funny thing. Like television, the medium requires a constant output of new material. But due to any given comic strip’s short length, it’s hard to achieve the same depth of serialized storytelling as television, even if the periodical medium welcomes it. A variety of comics, from the satirical Doonesbury to the dramedy For Better or Worse, have successfully achieved not only serialization but also character development over the decades they’ve been in print; however, just as many have shown little to no growth. FromMarmaduke to GarfieldBlondie to Ziggy, an overwhelming number of newspaper comics have fiercely refused to change with the times, their references and rhetoric more at home in the 1940s [...]

Stand-Up Comic Patrice O'Neal Has Died

The great comic Patrice O'Neal, who suffered a stroke a few weeks ago, has passed away, Opie of Opie & Anthony (where O'Neal was a frequent guest) has confirmed. This is very sad news for fans of comedy and fans of good people in general, and there's not much we can do about it but just be sad for a while. And enjoy his comedy; after the jump is his performance from the 2011 New York Comedy Festival, and here is his interview on WTF with Marc Maron.

Belgium: The Kingdom of Comics

Flemish humor. Sounds like a joke about my imminent Sinus infection from all this rain, right? Now that you’ve indulged me my one terrible pun, let’s talk about Flemish humor. Or more broadly, Belgian humor. Beloved by us Americans for exports like high-end chocolate or the Dardenne Brothers or the muscles from Brussels, Belgium also has rich cultural traditions that include humor. The whole Flemish reference comes from the division of Belgium into three regions, each with their own language community: the Flemish region, or Flanders (no relation to Ned), speaks a variation of Dutch; the Walloon Region speaks a kind of French; and then there is the [...]

The Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin Show: Marvel Comics Historian Sean Howe

This week on the Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin show, Jeff is joined by Sean Howe, author of Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

They talk about how Sean Howe managed to research his book, the influence of Stan Lee vs. Jack Kirby, how Marvel Comics became so popular in the 60's and how they are now doing the same with their cinematic universe.

"Maybe the biggest controversy in the history of Marvel is the discussion of whether Stan Lee was the genius or Jack Kirby was the genius, or said in another way: did Stan Lee totally swipe all of Jack Kirby's ideas? I think that is an overstatement, [...]

"Marmaduke, no!": Mocking the Not-so-Great Dane

Since 1954, Brad Anderson’s single panel comic Marmaduke has graced newspapers across the country with the misadventures of the Winslow family’s Great Dane, Marmaduke. Each and every Marmaduke strip boils down to the same joke:

Marmaduke is a large dog that does whatever he wants, much to the chagrin of everyone ever.

That’s the comedic foundation for a strip that has run for over half a century. Everyone responds angrily to Marmaduke’s actions, often with an infuriated variation of “Marmaduke! You’re a dog! Yet you’re acting like a human! But you’re not! You’re a dog!” Regardless of the specifics, the non-Marmaduke characters are always either annoyed or, if they’re lucky, merely curious about [...]

Jorma Taccone to Direct the Film Adaptation of the Graphic Novel The Great Unknown

SNL/The Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone has been tapped to direct The Great Unknown, an adaptation of the graphic novel by Duncan Rouleau. It'll be his second time directing a movie, after the underperforming MacGruber. Here's what to expect in terms of the plot: The comic centers on a slacker with delusions of grandeur who believes his so-called great ideas are popping up elsewhere. After failing to convince his friends and family that his mind is being pilfered, he goes on a quest to solve the mystery behind the idea thefts.

The movie will be an action comedy, while the comic is billed as a "lowfi-scifi," which sounds [...]

What Marc Maron Looks Like Before and After You See His Face

As the first entry in a neat series in which comic book artist Harvey James draws podcast hosts before and after seeing their faces, he's done a really interesting pair of portraits of Marc Maron. After hearing Maron guest on Comedy Bang Bang, James says he had a picture of "an angry, difficult guy who talked about jerking off and eating snacks" that ended up looking quite different from the real Maron. So weird how vividly what we talk about, and the way we talk about ourselves, colors people's perceptions of us. And of our glasses.

The Perry Bible Fellowship Releases Its First New Comic Strip in Over a Year

The Perry Bible Fellowship is maybe my all-time favorite comic strip. I am very much biased, as it started as a comic in The Daily Orange when I was a student at Syracuse and I became friends with its creator, Nick Gurewitch, but I will still stand by it forever and ever. I was very sad when Nick retired from making new comics weekly. But hey, look at this! Today he released the first new strip in ages. And if you're not familiar with the PBF, I am very jealous, as now you get to go through the archives with fresh eyes.

Chris Ware's 'Building Stories': Finding Joy in the Most Unexpected Places

No one seems to think Chris Ware is very funny these days.

Judging by most of the reviews of his recent Building Stories — a graphic novel comprised of fourteen differently shaped comics packaged into a fifty-dollar, several-pound box — Ware has tapped directly into the goopy primordial stuff of human misery. At its simplest, Building Stories is about the inhabitants of three apartments in a Chicago three-flat near Humboldt Park, and about how their lives intersect and then break away from each other.

It has no set beginning or end, and the reader controls how to move through the narrative. In this way, the book plays with [...]

Matt Groening Ending 'Life in Hell' After 32 Years

So, apparently Groening is able to end very long running things he's involved with – who knew? The 1669th and last Life in Hell ran last Friday, June 15th and for the next four weeks, editors will run strips from the archives, but then on July 13. it's done. Groening commented, "I’ve had great fun, in a Sisyphean kind of way, but the time has come to let Binky and Sheba and Bongo and Akbar and Jeff take some time off.” Other than being at one time an incredibly popular comic strip, peaking at a 379-paper syndication, it is also directly responsible for The Simpsons. James L. Brooks [...]

Comedy's Love/Hate Relationship with Garfield

When I was younger, there was no greater pairing than the holiday season and Garfield. I’d watch wide-eyed as he'd float down 5th Avenue in the Thanksgiving Parade; I’d pop in our VHS recording of A Garfield Christmas, and I’d adorn our tree with Keepsake ornaments of that lovable fat cat dishing out Christmas cheer. But this love affair with Garfield was over as quickly as it began, and soon I was off to bigger things like Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and Webelos.  But I never forgot about Jim Davis’ cartoon cat, and considering the rise of strange, dark, and incredibly funny material the internet has created about Garfield, [...]

Family Circus Cartoonist Bil Keane Has Died

Bil Keane, the creator of the Family Circus comic strip, has died at 89. He had been drawing the comic since early 1960. Here's what he said in a 1995 interview about one of his favorite strips:

It showed Jeffy coming out of the living room late at night in pajamas and Mommy and Daddy watching television and Jeffy says, 'I don't feel so good, I think I need a hug.' And suddenly I got a lot of mail from people about this dear little fella needing a hug, and I realized that there was something more than just getting a belly laugh every day.

Oh boy. I'm [...]

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