#17
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Fin de Fantastic Soap.
Fantastic Soap: a webcomic about the Fantastic Four, the world's greatest super hero team. Art by Jack Kirby and words by Frank Irby.
It's done. It's great.
(click on comic to read high-res version.)
First Archive Buy "The Fantastic Four" Ask the Fantastic Four!
It's done. It's great.
(click on comic to read high-res version.)
First Archive Buy "The Fantastic Four" Ask the Fantastic Four!
March 15, 2011
March 15, 2011
March 5, 2011
February 25, 2011
#14
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Dr. Dre is on some Dragon Ball Z shit in the new “I Need A Doctor” video. I love Dre’s “All I see is Slim…All I need is him” line. It’s an almost-gay level of man-love. It’s weird because I think Eminem is supposed to have written this verse maybe. Or maybe they collaborated on it. There must have been some weird vibes in the room.
It’s I need a Doctor but Dre, as he points out, also needs Em. Detox should have come out in 2003…about the same time Eminem was getting fucked up on drugs before his comeback in ‘08. That’s why Relapse 2 was renamed Recovery. Em needed to come back all the way before he could help Dre.
I’m reminded of…
I’m out the closet, I’ve been lying my ass off
All this time me and Dre been fucking with hats off
February 18, 2011
#13
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Going through a hip hop phase right now. Getting an SP-303 soon and now writing raps. Very inspired by Das Racist and Childish Gambino and OFWGFTA. My God, Odd Future… (Not style-wise, but the ideas.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CyMuBi-kH8
Anyway, I’m having lots of fun with it. It’s so fun. And I think it’s actually good. If I were a better rapper the songs would be hot, I think. For now maybe I can be the Jeffrey Lewis of rap?
Also I think I have to keep on this: I want to be the first rapper-novelist. That would be swag.
February 11, 2011
#12
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I found this so funny… From Cahiers du Cinéma in 1958, speaking to André Bazin and Charles Batsch:
—What do you think about Vincente Minelli?
Orson Welles: Hey, we’re meant to be having a serious conversation. We’re talking about real filmmakers.
Besides badmouthing Nick Ray and Vincente Minelli, Interviews with Orson Welles is filled with stuff about how frustrating his career was. There are constant references to not getting enough work, to only being offered bit parts in bad movies that needed some class. Reading it all together is kind of sad. These upcoming comics are, in a way, about that sadness.
February 4, 2011
#11
Sorry about the typo. I did these first pages very quickly. And since a lot of the coolest features that popped up started as mistakes, I think it’s fine to have some rough edges so long as the thing is comprehensible.
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My current favorite playlist is “dasdarkcoldpond”, which is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Shut Up, Dude by Das Racist, some Cold War Kids, some Bardo Pond (including Bardo Pond), and K.K. Rampage (who, like Das Racist, give away a lot of their music).
Kanye’s album is the first one of his that I’ve listened to closely. I’m trying not to shuffle it in with his other stuff, which is what I do when I get into an artist. These days you can get a whole discography and just listen to it all at the same time: this has some drawbacks. Without the visceral experience of pressing play and going through a physical disk to listen to a discrete package it’s hard to get into the groove of what that package (album) is about. It has taken me a very long time to get from the Beatles as a monolith to the Beatles who made Beatles For Sale, the Beatles who made Revolver, and the Beatles who made Abbey Road.
Some bands (like K.K. Rampage!!) you want to toss together in order to rock out with, but someone sort of important like Kanye is best to take in these snapshots that are albums. Or with comics anyway.
January 28, 2011
January 21, 2011
#9
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Jersey Shore return to Jersey was so great. New York Times Best-Selling author Snooki was so sympathetic. She is in love with Vinny and his junk. There’s a scene where Snooki walks away jealous and Vinny is left with Deena… he takes a beat and all deadpan says “So what’s it like to be a dental hygienist?” So sit-commy.
Last season The Situation really began to take on the role of instigator, knowing this was the direction the thing was heading: more contrived. This season he’s more of a comedian than a dramatist, but almost painfully self-aware. This is the direction I see the show going in: it will become a sort of low-culture Curb Your Enthusiasm. MTV should really have them take improv classes.
But who knows if the phenomenon will last that long. We can only hope!
January 14, 2011
#8
This is the first appearance I think of the Hand of Frank font I made using some website (can’t recall it now). Godard would love this. Hope you enjoy the different fonts for everyone because it won’t last long.
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I’ve got another tumblog now about a lot of stuff: Rat Heaven, check it out.
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I just finished Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem a couple weeks ago. For writers I think there must be a distinct benefit to finding out some tantalizing details about a book, imagining what it is like, and then reading it to mild disappointment. The book was pretty good, I should say—but it wasn’t what I imagined it would be. As I read I just imagined the book I’d rather read, until I had a cool book in my head (which I am now attempting to recreate).
I did enjoy the actual book. Loved the characters and their names and the situations. I admire his ability to set up situations that can explore ideas…
I love Amazon reviews. Here’s a taste from one on Chronic City:
Let me explain what I mean by the word “hipster.” A hipster is an illiterate nerd.
I’m afraid I’m becoming what he says, but I guess I can avoid it by reading about hipsters. I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling guilty about reading enough. The paradox is that I cannot imagine being on my deathbed and thinking “I didn’t read enough.”
January 7, 2011
#7
With this we are back to regular updates. The comic is getting weirder from here on, but neater too.
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Abhay at Savage Critics has a new post up about fantasy worlds in comics. Not only were X’ED OUT and JOE THE BARBARIAN about traumatized people creating fantasy worlds, so was I Kill Giants from a couple years back. Of the three I’ve only read the latter, which was pretty good.
Afraid to end up making jokes about the economy, Abhay tries not to get into why these sorts of stories should be cropping up. It seems to me that it should be something about comics. They’re images you hold in your hand. Surely they would lend themselves more to these stories where different sorts of images are side by side, different worlds.
This parenthetical from a discussion of how Batman becomes a writer in Grant Morrison comics killed me:
(Indeed, Batman is now only a writer but a modern mainstream comics writer, insisting we read spin-offs of lame characters no one really wants to read when they could be reading about Batman instead. Schlubby Japanese Guy is Brother Voodoo to Batman’s Whoever-the-Hell-Thought-the-Audience-Wanted-More-Brother-Voodoo)
And this:
However much his BATMAN run might have concluded in some bizarre out-of-nowhere affirmation of friendship, it’s such a lonely comic. It’s not difficult to read the BATMAN annotations and imagine Morrison himself as no longer King Mob, but become Ragged Robin– trapped now, trapped by his career, trapped by a DC Universe he’s wished “alive,” trapped in a room with old Silver Age comics, gone sad trying to figure out how he can get them to make sense.
I think I have the same imaginative sympathy for artists. Sometimes I have more sympathy for them than their art. I have read more Grant Morrison interviews than comics this last year. I liked most of them better than Final Crisis. I don’t read comics much anymore but I still read Abhay, man. I think he block quotes himself here, and takes pictures of comics at lazy angles (which are new, far as i know). Seeing the actual objects—covers and spines and creases and all—made me miss comics.
September 10, 2010
