Comments on: Panel Madness Day Four: Rubber Blanket Issue 2 Page 38

By: The Walrus Blogs » Asterios Polyp » Four-Colour Words

The Walrus Blogs » Asterios Polyp » Four-Colour Words — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:41:14 +0000

[...] less about real people or situations. If we get less of Rubber Blanket’s ink-stained, handmade bravado here, we also get fewer caricatures. Bit players who could easily be painted in the broadest [...]

By: Madinkbeard » MoCCA 2009 Recap

Madinkbeard » MoCCA 2009 Recap — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:05:10 +0000

[...] (this is where I learned they sold out of copies). I gave him a copy of my crit zine, as it had the piece I wrote on one of his pages from Rubber Blanket in it, which it turns out he had read already. He thought it was a little overboard, but to me that [...]

By: Joe Willy

Joe Willy — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:59:54 +0000

I wonder if the comics would be easy to reprint. In those days, Mazzuchelli was probably cutting rubylith to get those color effects. I remember an interview with Dan Clowes talking about trying to reprint color work with hand cut color separations (might have been Ghost World’s blue tones) and discovering that the film had warped and the plates no longer lined up and it needed to be completely redone. I wonder if Mazzuchelli even has original art for some of the Rubber Blanket stories or if the film was the original art.

By: Journalista - the news weblog of The Comics Journal » Blog Archive » Feb. 23, 2009: Return to Big Nothing

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:43:31 +0000

[...] A single panel Link: Derik Badman, Tucker Stone and Sean [...]

By: plok

plok — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:01:39 +0000

…Rather, the “lifting up” is the thing that’s invisible, as it’s in the overlapping of the first and second “panel”…and not where I saw it, at first.

There, that’s got it, finally! An intiguing effect.

Whew.

By: Stephen Frug

Stephen Frug — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:39:35 +0000

I’ve been hoping for a reprint of this for years. (Mazzucchelli’s adaptation of City of Glass is a favorite of mine.) I have issue #3 — slightly easier to get — but have never seen #1 or #2 for anything less than exorbitant prices. Now you’ve made me want them even more, damnit!

Oh well. At least Asterios Polyp should be fun…

Thanks for this!

By: DerikB

DerikB — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:27:42 +0000

Thanks, Tucker.

By: Tucker Stone

Tucker Stone — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:48:48 +0000

Rubber Blanket is one of the few comics worth paying exorbitant ebay/used circuit prices. I don’t regret a penny of the money it took to track it down.

and Derik? this is a fantastic piece of writing. Thank you.

By: Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Tab Dump

Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Tab Dump — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:52:38 +0000

[...] Madinkbeard analyzes a panel from an old David Mazzucchelli comic, “Discovering America.” For my tastes, “Discovering America” is the single best-drawn comic I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, it’s long out of print, and copies are expensive. [...]

By: plok

plok — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:46:29 +0000

Well, I think it’s got to be the time-signature of that orange image that gets me…and yet at first you look (or at least, I looked) right through it. So, it’s interesting…it’s almost like a heard beat, if that makes any sense…like an ordinal membrane of orange that marks time almost, in a way, “invisibly”. And then a tenth of a second later I see the image as figure not ground, and the pieces all fall into place. To me it’s an astounding effect: note the white swooshy stuff on the right side of the page, I think the reading and diegesis flips again, there, because as I lock in on the orange figure those lines suggest to me the hauling up of the globe, the sensation of weight and awkwardness…the overlapping panels I read at this stage as a) grabs globe, b) lifts globe, c) smashes globe down…and yet simultaneously the whole picture is “smashing down”, and there’s no “lifting up” at all. It’s a really interesting double-vision, just fascinating, and it looks so bloody simple: the lifting-up uses the same lines as the smashing-down does.

Inordinately elegant stuff! I also can’t help but notice the fairly “A” shape of the central figure’s legs…wow, it’s just really very neat, is what it is.

Amazing! Thanks, Derik. Purely fascinating.