Currently.
The Death of a Once Great City
This weekend I went out, a fancy dress shindig for a friend's birthday. My costume as hastily thrown together and oh so last minute. But the venue the outing was at, The Flapper in Birmingham, is due to close at the end of this month.
The initial plan for a block of luxury apartments has fallen through but this has no bearing on the closure of the premises. A new developer is welcome to come in and propose essentially the same plan.
In the future, archaeologists digging in Holland Park, London may unearth a JCB. Why? Because when you spend millions kitting out the basements of your London townhouse (guidelines prohibit building upward), why spend money to retrieve aforementioned diggers? Build around them and leave them down there. It's someone else's problem.
I thought of Birmingham, London and other places when reading this article today in Harpers on the gentrification of New York.
"Almost everything of use has gone. There was Oppenheimer Meats, a butcher shop whose founder had reportedly fled Nazi Germany and, I was told, brought his business down to our neighborhood from Washington Heights sometime in the Forties. A large, imposing man with a bristling mustache, he would strut behind his counter like a Prussian field marshal, but he hired people of every color from the neighborhood and left them to run the shop when he retired. Then, a few years ago, according to its new owner, Oppenheimer’s rent was tripled. Out it went. Over on Amsterdam, between 97th and 98th Streets, was a whole row of enterprises: an excellent fish store, a pet shop, a Mexican restaurant named for Frida Kahlo, and a laundromat we used to call the St. Launder Center, thanks to how part of its name had been torn out of its awning. Then they were all gone, too, without warning. Soon after, I ran into Shirley, doughty little Asian abbess of the St. Launder Center. She said the landlord had upped the rent from a hefty $7,000 a month to $21,000, which is a hell of a lot of laundry."
Artists need pockets
"Men’s dress is designed for utility; women’s dress is designed for beauty. It’s not a giant leap to see how pockets, or the lack thereof, reinforce sexist ideas of gender. Men are busy doing things; women are busy being looked at. Who needs pockets?"
Via Austin Kleon
On The Radio, It's Always Midnight
"In the town of Whitesburg, Kentucky, it is 4:06 A.M., and WMMT is broadcasting Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.” Would I ever put that song on out of choice? Probably not. But knowing it is going out to who knows who, somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains, do I love it? Yes, I think I do. Maybe that’s the joy of all this. Podcasts are the predominant audio medium of our time. They can be beautifully produced, as good as a good book, and perhaps they will supersede radio. But there’s something about the knowledge that countless unknown others are listening to the same thing as me, at the same time as me, that can’t be replaced."
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dedp0p
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The Fog (dir John Carpenter, dp Dean Cundey, 1980)
The Hitchcock, Argento, and Lovecraft influences are clear, but The Fog is also John Carpenter’s Barry Lyndon.
And these stills, as lovely as they are, don’t do justice to the way Carpenter and Cundey navigate space through camera movement, shifts in lighting, and the blocking of the performers. Just an extraordinary film — the movie I imagined when I heard Halloween described to me many years ago.
Carpenter without people.
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Indiana Jones - Adventures of Indiana Jones (Kenner)
Free Belloq.
Whilst we're on the Black Mask train, I should also remind you that Eternal is out on January 31st.
Written by Ryan K Lindsay with art by Eric Zawadzki, colours by Dee Cunniffe and edits by myself, this oversized graphic novella is going to be a beautiful looking comic to hold and flip through.
People are already saying incredibly nice things about this comic on Twitter and I can't wait to see it fight its way into the world come the end of the month.
The order code is up top and if you want a bit more info then click here too.
The trade paperback of Beautiful Canvas, a comic I edited, by Ryan K Lindsay, Sami Kivela, Triona Farrell and Ryan Ferrier is out on February 21st from Black Mask Studios.
If you held off on getting this in singles, then click through to the link to get the low down on why you should be picking this up come February.
Metropo is now live on Kickstarter. The project is a 'slice of cyberpunk life' short story collection incorporating both prose and comics.
Words are by Magnus Aspli and features artwork by Naomi Franquiz, Mary Safro, Vivian Truong and Rob Croonenborghs with additional art by John Jamtli and Emerson Dimaya.
I'm incredibly proud to have been a part of this project as its editor and I really want others to experience the stories and art within.
The campaign has got off to a good start and runs for two weeks. Please take a look and consider pledging to make the project a reality.
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Jim Steranko ~ Outlander. One of the 3 best artists in comics ever, on his A-Game. Sean Connery starred in the movie of this.
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Filthy Billy, I know what you did, nasty Billy!
Black Christmas (1974) dir. Bob Clark
Via Kickstarter. A really funny and sweet comic about living with depression.
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Comic Book Page Technical Specifications
This is a post for comic book artists preparing their pages for their publisher or colourist. I’m aware that many pros still don’t know some of this stuff, often because the bigger publishers have production teams who will take the incorrectly sized or shaped pages and adjust them before passing on to colourists or for print. However, this a) is giving more work to people that you can easily do yourself and b) reduces the amount of control you have over how your work is printed. It makes sense to provide files that will present your work in the best way possible.
So, the basics of a digital page file:
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Hells Kitchen Movie Club #3: Hell Comes to Frogtown
A light one this time, because even though these two are ~not okay~, not every day is about the struggle. Sometimes it’s just about Roddy Piper, and losing stupid bets with your friends.
Previously in Hell: 01 // 02 // 03 // That time the Punisher’s creator gave us a thumbs-up
We’ll be throwing this up on my twitter tomorrow and my insta on Tues, but thought we’d sneak it out a day early to our tumblr family. As ever, huge thanks to my collaborators, line artist @dave-acosta and colour artist @deecunniffe, they are amazing, follow them.
Confession: I can watch Sorcerer without the aid of alcohol. I am a monster.
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