Reading this week

A few things of interest from this week:

-Two of my comic strip reprint wishes have come true thanks to IDW. This week they announced forthcoming reprint collections of Terry and the Pirates and Little Orphan Annie. Unlike Checker’s Steve Canyon books, it looks like IDW’s Terry reprints will showcase Milton Caniff’s artwork at a respectable size (see my review of a larger Steve Canyon volume from Kitchen Sink). I’m particularly looking forward to reading Little Orphan Annie with the Sunday pages intact, as the otherwise great (and out of print) collection I own (see my review) is only dailies, which leaves one a bit out of the loop every time a Monday strip comes around.

-Du9.org, an excellent French comics site, is now publishing English translation of review and articles. I’ve been enjoying their reviews in French, but this will save a lot of time puzzling out translations. The most recent translation is a review of Mulot and Ruppert’s experimental Panier de Singe.

-This very long piece about “the death of the postmodern superhero” by Greg Burgas was interesting even from an outside viewpoint (I have read very little to none of the works mentioned) but suffers from a repetitive use of the terms “deconstruction” and “postmodern” in ways that don’t really mean what they generally mean in theory circles. He says “postmodern” when he means “metafictional”, that is: using the medium to talk about the medium, often by stepping outside the “fourth wall”. Perhaps most interesting for the fact of how far behind comics are in this regard to literature or film (where we see this prevalent in the 60s work of Barth, Barthelme, Godard, and others).

-My current reading is finishing a second read through of the English translation of The System of Comics by Thierry Groensteen. A review is forthcoming (Monday if I get it all together). It’s a brilliant and inspiring book that you should all be reading.

-David Kunzle has two forthcoming book from University of Mississippi press (who also published the Groensteen book) on Rodolphe Topffer, who if you don’t know is generally considered the inventor of the comic strip: one is a collection of Topffer’s works entitled Rodolphe Töpffer: The Complete Comic Strips, the other is a book on Topffer entitled Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer. Both should be worthwhile reads.

-Neal Cohn’s latest column at Comixpedia, with fantastic comics by Tim Godek, is required reading. I’m working in a similar vein (I think) in my latest Things Change story.

Tags: caniff, comicstheory, comic_strips

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