Having formated, migrated, and tossed oh so many hard drives and browsers, I’d completely forgotten that lost bookmark, German Electrocomics.
That is, until Derik Badman of Comixtalk reminded me. Gotta love Badman (cue 60′s theme song) for the librarian thoroughness in his analyses!
Electrocomics
Panels & Pictures @ Comixtalk
I cracked out a web page last night. Nice to see that I can do it still; and especially rewarding since it’s for a really good cause.
It’s a thing that I am very proud to be part of, and that has been a long time in the making. At about the same time that I posted a short, rambling essay on Facebook about everything that’s wrong in Danish comic culture, a handful of people in that culture were building a network to better the same conditions I were addressing.
They must have thought it wiser to have me on their side than outside, shouting in the rain, because soon after I was accepted into the Internet forum used to collect ideas and compare visions.
In short, we intend to operate as an advisory organ in all things comics; to help cultivate the (frankly, famished) Danish comic hortography by establishing a network spanning creators, publishers, retailers, educational and cultural institutions, etc.
Also, to help the artform take its rightful place in the media landscape by curating exhibitions, anthologies, and otherwise promote comics nationally – as well as Danish comics internationally.
The Danish Comics Council is now inviting people to a constitutional meeting in late March, and it’s the informational website for that organisation I have spoiled my night’s sleep to construct.
Finally something worth losing sleep over 
Pre-class: today is going to be a step backwards in terms of assignment duration. I think we need to take a break after the first longer comic, and try and apply to a shorter form what we have learned about storytelling as well as process.
There will be music, and free association from that. An intermission of sorts, almost a recess. Same with tomorrow’s class, which will be a showing of “The Mindscape of Alan Moore”.
Post-class: the short assignment, preceded by a brief and erratic explanation of what can be achieved with page layouts, brought out some shortcomings, both on the part of teacher and students.
The advantage of teaching people without preconceived ideas about comics is also the great challenge in that they lack the casual knowledge about visual storytelling. Trying to explain it to them I fell on my ass, metaphorically speaking.
Listening to Alan Moore tomorrow can either clear things up or confuse them even more. Moore, I am afraid, swings both ways.
Oh, and beginning Wednesday, we will start working on the students’ final, large assignment. It will be entirely free in terms of content and form like last week’s, but being the last task of the course, I have higher expectations this time.
The students have until Wednesday morning to gather visual clues and inspirational pieces to point me in the direction they want to take with the final comic. Excited to see how that’ll turn out!
Given a rare chance to switch music on the old iPod, I gave in and reloaded Jex Thoth’s eponymous debut. It’s only a couple weeks ago that I removed it because I hadn’t heard much else for a month or so, and I was afraid I’d wear it out.
My current schedule is really cramped at the moment (6 hrs transportation a day, 4 days a week!) and I suppose I’m not exactly in an extreme metal mood, especially not with the amount of coffee coursing through my body. Ergo, the more spazzed out bands went in favor of Ms Thoth and her henchmen.
When first I heard the album I was a bit wary, but from second sitting onward I was hooked on their special (although not exactly unique) brand of back-to-the-roots downer rock.
My first association was to Black Sabbath, and I could easily imagine Jex Thoth to have come out right on the heels of that particular nexus in modern music. Like Sabbath, their music is heavy and proto-metallic, but definitely more influenced by rock and blues than by the genre that grew into metal.
Apart from the simple yet effectively sluggish riffs that invoke a time less occupied with shredding guitars, it is the unabashed use of Hammond organ that gets me thinking of late sixties (heavy) music. I’ve never been a Doors fan because I’m more than a little annoyed by Morrison’s art posturings, but I do apppreciate the creepier aspects of the organ sound.
Jex Thoth is also mining the back catalog of bands less known to me for inspiration, like Black Widow and Pagan Altar, which I’ve obviously had to investigate, too. There is no bit of plagiarism that I can detect, I hasten to add. But certain moods and general sounds are echoed on Jex Thoth (the album) and for me that spill of primitive doom has hit a dry spot.
I say “primitive”; My Brother The Musician was less kind. He noted that if they were a local upcoming band he would have urged them back to the rehearsal room.
In a sense, I like to think that the band and I share an affinity for looking back at points of divergence in the developments of our chosen media, and use them as inspirations for almost contrafact experimenting, like I try with a couple of the Astoria pieces.
Through all this, I have been sidestepping the big forte of the band’s sound — Jex Thoth the vocalist’s evocative performance. The fact that she has been compared to one Janis Joplin (which is a bit of a stretch) only emphasizes my point of their music being closely tied to 60′s and 70′s movements.
Whether she is a schooled singer or not, her expressive singing conveys a lot of emotion with a minimum of bravado. And although there is a trend for female singers in heavy music these days, I don’t recall hearing one that is so uniquely her own before, without leaning on the mannerisms of male Death Metal vocalists, or Björk, or Broadway musicals (foad, Nightwish!)
At the moment, I’m having trouble finding much enthusiasm for any music, but even so Jex Thoth – the band, the singer, and the album – are one thing that I return to in this torrent of early mornings and changing trains that is my life right now.
After Monday’s comic history slideshow we have started making the first longer comics. It’s rehearsals at this early stage so there’s no real pressure on the students when it comes to shape or contents. I don’t much care about the color of the beast, or how many legs it has, as long as it lives and breathes by noon tomorrow.
Most are progressing as planned (and instructed) while others are trying to break the mold in first go. The smarter of them will learn from that, those who don’t may succeed anyway. This first practical week is tryout time.
I know how hard it can be to work in a roundtable environment, and if asked nicely, I let individual students go elsewhere to work as long as they touch base before class ends at twelve. Although that is all well intended, morale is slipping a bit, and people seem to forget about asking before going off to wherever.
It’s a rotten way to end the week, but I’m going to have to bring that up tomorrow. The course I provide is very much an open playground, but it does have its confines, most importantly time. And, basically, it’s as much my time as their own that is squandered.
So tomorrow is Evil Teacher time.
So far this week, I have been away from blogging because I’m listening my way through Comic Geek Speak’s footnotes for Watchmen. It’s an admirable task they’ve undertaken, but I’m constantly annoyed by the off-the-cuff references to common superhero fare like Justice Society of America, symptomatic of the level the subject matter is approached, making me question if some of the people discussing this work have actually *read* it, as opposed to leafing through it at their comics dealer.
It must be this point of attack, coupled with the big Hollywood movie coming out, that make the geek speakers tiptoe around details of future events in the narrative. To me, that Spoiler Alert mentality of Internet fan forums is inhibiting any serious discourse about the work.
Also, the footnotes for chapters (or “issues”, ARGHH!) 1-4 are largely presented and laid out by one Peter Rios (not sure I have his name right), and his insightful, ambitious reading is noticeably absent in most later sessions, that plunge into a superficial description of page to page action. Only in the obvious example of the symmetrically arranged chapter 6 do they venture deeper than object-level narrative devices; structure is largely unnoticed or not appreciated.
This is highlighted by a soundbyte of the participants grumbling at the complexity of the work : “Comics are supposed to be fun!” Yeah, but there’s playground swing fun, and there’s discerning, intellectual fun. Fanboi.
I have cringed my way through the later episodes, especially when the professed geeks show off their incapability of deeper insights than “Rorschach is a badass”. Once, a participant openly admits to not reading the text piece for the chapter in question, these background features being an important part of the overall narrative.
In discussion of chapter 5, the “analysis” reaches a new low as another esteemed Comic Geek expressed his dismay at the demasking of Rorschach, revealing that his alter ego is the scruffy doomsayer we have seen walking the streets since page 1.
This duality proves a disappointment to that reader, who complaints that “I can’t attach emotionally to characters that I don’t look up to”.
Holy unhealthy hero worship, Batman! Watchmen is exactly showing the flaws of the superhero, and you don’t realize that 23 years down the line …?
That angle and level of entry is the big pitfall of CGS’ footnote project, but I’ll keep listening through to the end, keeping my fingers crossed for Peter Rios’ (?) return. And, to be fair, I am taking down notes, so there are (in)frequent insights to the podcast, no matter who’s manning the mike.