This is just to give a link to a great painting of Superman, by a fellow named Pearlstein, called, not surprisingly, Superman. I owe my friend Jes Simmons for the painting and the link, and have recommended PrettyFakes to him. Here’s the link.
Author Archive
The Greatest Comix Ever
faked by Jack Butler Wednesday, February 4th, 2009Just thinking out loud here. I figure I have to or this becomes another one of those “essays” I “ought” to write instead of a fun thought that others might want to elaborate.
What I have in mind isn’t a list. What I have in mind is whys and wherefores, sort of the way professor fury writes about G.P.R.D.
Okay, define your category. Not to exclude other possibilities but so as to not waste time arguing over.
And the Oscar for Greatest Superhero Graphic Novel (or Series of Graphic Volumes Telling One Story (or World Evoked by a Complex of Interlinked Stories)) goes to . . .
Hearing blank verse in all the wrong places
faked by Jack Butler Monday, January 12th, 2009Shakespeare has an overwhelming affect on some of us. I remember my youthful frustration that one could no longer write Shakespearean blank verse and be taken seriously. (A fact I discovered in the trial, by the way.) But some of us can’t give up that easily.
Bayer aspirin, W. B. Yeats, and native Americans with toothaches
faked by Jack Butler Monday, January 12th, 2009“Only connect,” writes James Dickey in a poem about a powerline worker. I make a few small connections from time to time, and they always give me pleasure. Not much to do with them otherwise but report them, so here goes.
Here’s one: We have all frequently heard the phrase “common sense,” usually together with the popular remark, on the verge of cliche itself, that it isn’t really common at all. I suspect there is a confusion here between two senses of the word “common.” In the modern sense, we mean “to be found anywhere.” I suspect the phrase originally meant “common” in quite another way. The older meaning is “basic, fundamental.” In other words, if you had even the elements of the most basic rules of making sense, you had common sense. The implication is that it does not require a genius of logic or philosophy to tell what is what, but that even “common” or basic sense will suffice.
Hulkarrific
faked by Jack Butler Saturday, October 25th, 2008Just saw The Incredible Hulk, the new and better one. Fun enough, but cause for yet one more lament on the ignorance of movie-makers with regard to physics. Listen, I’m not even critiquing the ridiculous supposition that “gamma” radiation could somehow transform a biological organism and not kill it outright. That comes from way back in comics history, and I’m happy enough to have the character of the green one that I will keep my mouth shut.
A bit of satirical fiction
faked by Jack Butler Thursday, October 16th, 2008Okay, blame Professor Fury. He said I could do this. I aint taking the heat. This is a story, yes, an entire short story. Long for a post, but then, in hyperspace there’s infinite room, aint there?
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this guy I know’s poem
faked by Jack Butler Saturday, January 12th, 2008This guy I know, Joseph (Joe) Graves, is an actor, a scriptwriter, a poet, and a movie-maker. For several years now he has been teaching in China. Teaching Shakespeare in China. Joe is from Arkansas. The Salic passage (I had to look it up) is the prolonged debate which opens the play about the law that prohibited French women from owning property. For me one of the deeply moving things in the poem is that for all the narrator’s protesting, it is obvious that the searchers have come to the right person. How many people would have even known what they mean? (more…)