What, has the semester begun again already? So it has, so it has. More substantive posting coming soon, but in the meantime, please enjoy these things written by other people:
1. Steven Grant concludes his two-part series examining the career of comics titan Howard Chaykin, and he offers some keen insights on Chaykin’s work after American Flagg!. I thought this passage about American Century was particularly astute:
On the surface an apparent retreat into genre motif in homage to ‘50s men’s paperbacks and writers like Charles Willeford whose work danced between crime fiction and slice of life drama, it follows another Chaykin trait, also found in the THRILLKILLER graphic novels and other works of the era, of mining the past not for iconography for iconography’s sake but to flesh out the context of our present culture. This trait underlies much of Howard’s work, even much of the most minor, and underscores another apparent ongoing paradox: the frequent breeziness of his later work—by the millennium he’s as comfortable with his skills and obsessions as any comics artist could be, and is rarely averse to putting on a show of them—hides an underlying seriousness of intent. Others fixate on increasingly artificial, lifeless “worlds”; Howard—in his way he’s Steve Ditko’s perverse little brother – expresses a worldview, one of the most coherent over time of any ever produced by comics.
Grant goes on to argue—boldly, rightly—that many of Chaykin’s innovations have become “as much of our common language as Kirby’s or Neal Adams’ work.” Read the whole thing. Well worth your time.
2. Claudia at The Bottom of Heaven responds to a recent Newsweek review of Josh Neufeld’s A.D.: After the Deluge with characteristic whip-smarts. People aren’t going to quit writing ill informed things about comics if we don’t call them on it when they do, so go, go, Claudia!
Okay, and here’s another Mountain Goats video, what the heck, in which prog rock is discussed:
Thanks for the shout out! You’ve got me more and more interested in Chaykin…