Lynda Barry’s Illustrated Syllabus & Homework Assignments from Her New UW-Madison Course, “Making Comics”

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Education, K-12, Online Courses | November 30th, 2015

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Car­toon­ist turned edu­ca­tor Lyn­da Bar­ry is again per­mit­ting the world at large to freely audit one of her fas­ci­nat­ing Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son class­es via her Tum­blr. (To get to the start of the class, click here and then scroll down the page until you reach the syl­labus, then start work­ing your way back­wards.)

The top­ic this fall is “Graph­ic Vices, Graph­ic Virtues: Mak­ing Comics,” a sub­ject with which Bar­ry is inti­mate­ly acquaint­ed. In the professor’s own words, this class is “a(n aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous) blast!”

As in pre­vi­ous class­es, the syl­labus, above, spells out a high­ly spe­cial­ized set of required sup­plies, includ­ing a num­ber of items rarely called for at the col­lege lev­el.

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It’s become a time hon­ored tra­di­tion for Barry’s stu­dents to adopt new names by which to refer to each oth­er in-class, some­thing they’ll enjoy hear­ing spo­ken aloud. For “Mak­ing Comics,” Bar­ry is fly­ing under the han­dle Pro­fes­sor SETI (as in “search for extrater­res­tri­al intel­li­gence”), telling the class that “images are the ETI in SETI.”

The stu­dents have respond­ed with the fol­low­ing han­dles: Chef Boyardee, Gin­ger, Lois Lane, Rosie the Riv­et­er, Regi­na Pha­lange, Ara­bel­la, Snoopy, Skeeter, Tig­ger, Arya Stark, Nala, Nos­tal­gia, Aki­ra, Lapus Lazuli, The Buffalo,Mr. Novem­ber, The Short Giraffe, Nic­ki Minaj, Neko, Vin­cent Brooks, Reg­u­lar Sized Rudy, and Zef.

(Sounds like a rough and ready crew. What name would you choose, and why?)

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As usu­al, Bar­ry draws inspi­ra­tion from the dizzy­ing boun­ty of images avail­able on the net, bom­bard­ing her pupils with find­ings such as the lobed teeth of the crab-eater seal, above.

Sci­ence and music remain pet sub­jects–Afro­fu­tur­ist band­leader Sun Ra serves as class ora­cle this go round.

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Pro­fes­sor SETI keeps the “graph­ic vice” of the class’ offi­cial title front and cen­ter with assign­ments per­tain­ing to the 7 dead­ly sins, ask­ing stu­dents to exam­ine mod­ern equiv­a­lents of the hor­rors depict­ed by Heron­imus Bosch above and 16th-cen­tu­ry engraver Pieter van der Hey­den, below.

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What to do with all of these images? Draw them, of course! As Bar­ry tells her stu­dents:

Draw­ing is a lan­guage. It’s hard to under­stand what that real­ly means until you’ve ‘spo­ken’ and ‘lis­tened’ to it enough in a reli­able reg­u­lar way like the reli­able reg­u­lar way we will have togeth­er this semes­ter.

That’s an impor­tant def­i­n­i­tion for those lack­ing con­fi­dence in their draw­ing abil­i­ties to keep in mind. Bar­ry may revere the inky blacks of comics leg­end Jaime Her­nan­dez, but she’s also a devo­tee of the wild, unbri­dled line that may be a beginner’s truest expres­sion. (Stick fig­ures, how­ev­er, “don’t cut it.”) To her way of think­ing, every­one is capa­ble of com­mu­ni­cat­ing flu­ent­ly in visu­al lan­guage. The cur­rent crop of stu­dent work reveals a range of train­ing and nat­ur­al tal­ent, but all are wor­thy when viewed through Barry’s lens.

The teacher’s phi­los­o­phy is the bind­ing ele­ment here, but don’t fret if you are unable to take the class in per­son:

We rarely speak direct­ly about the work we do in our class though we look at it togeth­er. We stare at it and some­times it makes us laugh or we silent­ly point out some part of it to the class­mate beside us.  To be able to speak this unspo­ken lan­guage we need to prac­tice see­ing (hear­ing) the way it talks.

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That ear­li­er-allud­ed-to rig­or is no joke. Dai­ly diary comics, 3 minute self por­traits on index cards, pages fold­ed to yield 16 frames in need of fill­ing, and found images copied while lis­ten­ing to pre­scribed music, lec­tures, and read­ings are a con­stant, non-nego­tiable expec­ta­tion of all par­tic­i­pants. Her method­ol­o­gy may sound goose‑y but it’s far from loose‑y.

In oth­er words, if you want to play along, pre­pare to set aside a large chunk of time to com­plete her week­ly assign­ments with the vig­or demand­ed of non-vir­tu­al stu­dents.

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Those who aren’t able to com­mit to going the dis­tance at this time can recon­struct the class lat­er.  Bar­ry leaves both the assign­ments and exam­ples of stu­dent work on her Tum­blr for per­pe­tu­ity. (You can see an exam­ple here.) For now, try com­plet­ing the 20 minute exer­cise using the assigned image above, or by choos­ing from one of her “extra cred­it” images, below:

Set timer for three min­utes and begin this draw­ing using a yel­low col­or pen­cil. Try to draw as much of the draw­ing as you can in three min­utes. You can draw fast, and in a messy way, The impor­tant thing is to get as much cov­ered as you can in three min­utes. You can col­or things in if you like. Look for the dark­est areas of the pho­to and col­or those in.

Set a timer for anoth­er three min­utes and using your non-dom­i­nant hand, draw with orange or col­or pen­cil to draw the entire draw­ing again, draw­ing right on top of the first draw­ing lay­er. The lines don’t have to match or be right on top of each oth­er, you can change your mind as you add this lay­er. You can move a bit to the right rather than try to draw direct­ly onto the first set of lines.

Set a timer for anoth­er 3 min­utes and use a red pen­cil and draw it again, using you dom­i­nant hand, adding anoth­er lay­er to the draw­ing. Again, you don’t have to fol­low your orig­i­nal lines. Just draw on top of them.

Set a timer for anoth­er 3 min­utes and use a dark green pen­cil to draw the entire draw­ing one more time on top of all the oth­ers. 

Set a timer for 8 min­utes and use a dark blue pen­cil to draw it one more time.

Spend the last 8 min­utes ink­ing the image in with your uni­ball pen. Remem­ber that sol­id black is the very last thing you’d do giv­en your time lim­it. You want to make sure to draw all the parts of the pic­ture first.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry Shows You How to Draw Bat­man in Her UW-Madi­son Course, “Mak­ing Comics”

Lyn­da Barry’s Won­der­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Syl­labus & Home­work Assign­ments from Her UW-Madi­son Class, “The Unthink­able Mind”

Watch Lyn­da Barry’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech; Give a Shout Out to the Teach­ers Who Changed Your Life

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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A Comic Book Adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Poignant Poem, Annabel Lee

in Comics/Cartoons, Literature | November 19th, 2015

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We’ve high­light­ed the com­ic art of Mon­tre­al-based Julian Peters before on Open Cul­ture. He’s the man who under­took a 24-page illus­trat­ed adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and then also deliv­ered a man­ga ver­sion of W. B. Yeats’ “When You Are Old,” recre­at­ing the style of Japan­ese romance comics to a T.

While study­ing in a Mas­ters pro­gram ear­ly exam­ples of lit­er­ary graph­ic nov­els, Peters is also turn­ing into a fine illus­tra­tor of poet­ry whether clas­sic (Rim­baud, Keats) or con­tem­po­rary (team­ing up with John Philip John­son on an upcom­ing book of illus­trat­ed poems, one of which you can find here.)

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This adap­ta­tion (above) of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” dates from 2011. Poe’s work gives illus­tra­tors nar­ra­tive aplen­ty, but it also gives them rep­e­ti­tion and ellipses. In his ren­di­tion, Peters gives us two pre-teen sweet­hearts sim­i­lar to Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatch­er, and when Annabel Lee dies from “the wind that came out of the cloud by night,” we get a full pan­el of Annabel’s final healthy moments. Wind is every­where to be found in the com­ic, form­ing white caps on the ocean, and blow­ing Annabel’s pig­tails when we first see her.

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Schol­ars tend to agree that “Annabel Lee” was based on Poe’s first cousin and teen bride Vir­ginia Clemm, whom he mar­ried when she was 13 (and Poe was 27), but who passed away from tuber­cu­lo­sis at 24 years of age. The image of the beau­ti­ful corpse con­tin­ues through his work from “The Raven” to “Ligeia”.

You can find the first few pan­els of Peters’ adap­ta­tion above. Read the rest here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Clas­sics Sto­ries by Edgar Allan Poe Nar­rat­ed by James Mason in a 1953 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Ani­ma­tion & 1958 Dec­ca Album

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Watch the 1953 Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Nar­rat­ed by James Mason

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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W.B. Yeats’ Poem “When You Are Old” Adapted into a Japanese Manga Comic

in Comics/Cartoons, Poetry | November 9th, 2015

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Click on images to view them in a larg­er for­mat.

Last week we fea­tured Julian Peters’ com­ic-book adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” That might seem like an ambi­tious enough clas­sic-lit­er­a­ture-to-comics adap­ta­tion for any artist’s career, but the Mon­tre­al-based art his­to­ry grad stu­dent Peters has put him­self on a larg­er mis­sion. If you take a look at his site, you’ll find that he’s also adapt­ed poems by “Italy’s fore­most poet of the First World War” Giuseppe Ungaret­ti, Sea­mus Heaney’s 1969 poem “The Giv­en Note,” and John Philip John­son’s “Stairs Appear in a Hole Out­side of Town.”

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You see here the ver­sa­tile Peters’ visu­al inter­pre­ta­tion of W.B. Yeats’ “When You Are Old,” a nat­ur­al choice giv­en his appar­ent poet­ic inter­ests, but one drawn in the style of Japan­ese man­ga. In adapt­ing Yeats’ words to a lady in the twi­light of life, Peters has paid spe­cif­ic trib­ute to the work of Clamp, Japan’s famous all-female com­ic-artist col­lec­tive known for series like RG Veda, Tokyo Baby­lon, and X/1999.

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Clamp fans will find that, in three brief pages, Peters touch­es on quite a few of the aes­thet­ic tropes that have long char­ac­ter­ized the col­lec­tive’s work. (You’ll want to click through to Peters’ own “When You Are Old” page to see an extra illus­tra­tion that also fits well into the Clamp sen­si­bil­i­ty.) Yeats fans will no doubt appre­ci­ate the chance to see the poet­’s work in an entire­ly new way. I, for one, had nev­er before pic­tured a cat on the lap of the woman “old and grey and full of sleep” reflect­ing on the “moments of glad grace” of her youth and the one man who loved her “pil­grim soul,” but now I always will — and I imag­ine both Yeats and Clamp would approve of that. You can read and hear Yeats’ 1892 poem here. If you click on the images on this page, you can view them in a larg­er for­mat.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the Entire Com­ic Book Adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Rare 1930s Audio: W.B. Yeats Reads Four of His Poems

Japan­ese Car­toons from the 1920s and 30s Reveal the Styl­is­tic Roots of Ani­me

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Horror Legend Christopher Lee Reads Bram Stoker’s Dracula

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Literature | November 6th, 2015

Did Bram Stoker’s world-famous Drac­u­la character—perhaps the most cul­tur­al­ly unkil­l­able of all hor­ror mon­sters—derive from Irish folk­lore? Search the Gael­ic “Droch-Fhoula” (pro­nounced droc’ola) and, in addi­tion to the req­ui­site met­al bands, you’ll find ref­er­ences to the “Cas­tle of the Blood Vis­age,” to a blood-drink­ing chief­tain named Abhar­tach, and to oth­er pos­si­ble native sources of Irish writer Bram Stok­er’s 1897 nov­el. These Celtic leg­ends, the BBC writes, “may have shaped the sto­ry as much as Euro­pean myths and Goth­ic lit­er­a­ture.”

Despite all this intrigu­ing spec­u­la­tion about Dracula’s Irish ori­gins, the actors play­ing him have come from a vari­ety of places. One recent incar­na­tion, TV series Drac­u­la, did cast an Irish actor, Jonathan Rhys Mey­ers, in the role.

Hun­gar­i­an Bela Lugosi comes clos­est to the fic­tion­al character’s nation­al­i­ty, as well as that of anoth­er, per­haps dubi­ous source, Roman­ian war­lord Vlad the Impaler. Pro­tean Brit Gary Old­man played up the char­ac­ter as Slav­ic aris­to­crat in Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s some­what more faith­ful take. But one too-oft-over­looked por­tray­al by anoth­er Eng­lish actor, Christo­pher Lee, deserves much more atten­tion than it receives.

In ten low-bud­get films made by British exploita­tion stu­dio Ham­mer, Lee por­trayed the mon­strous-yet-seduc­tive blood-suck­ing noble­man as a very prop­er Eng­lish­man with “a cer­tain las­civ­i­ous sex appeal”—begin­ning with 1958’s Hor­ror of Drac­u­la (see a trail­er above) and end­ing with 1973’s The Satan­ic Rites of Drac­u­la. I find Lee’s Drac­u­la so mem­o­rable that I was delight­ed to hear the audio above of him read­ing an adap­ta­tion of the nov­el, in ten parts. The video begins with titles and an estab­lish­ing shot from the Ham­mer films, then segues to images from a 1966 Drac­u­la graph­ic nov­el, the source of the “pret­ty faith­ful” adap­ta­tion by Otto Binder and Craig Ten­nis, for which Lee wrote an intro­duc­tion.

The audio here was also record­ed in 1966 by the book’s edi­tor Russ Jones. Comics blog­ger Steven Thomp­son remarks that “since Drac­u­la is made up of a series of let­ters, jour­nal and diary entries, the writ­ers here log­i­cal­ly take a more straight­for­ward route of telling the tale while main­tain­ing the episod­ic feel quite well.” Rather than the voice of Count Drac­u­la, Lee reads as the nov­el­’s epis­to­lary nar­ra­tor Jonathan Hark­er, and the Drac­u­la in the art­work, drawn by artist Al McWilliams, “bears more than a pass­ing resem­blance here to actor John Car­ra­dine,” a notable Amer­i­can actor who played the char­ac­ter in Uni­ver­sal’s House of Franken­stein and House of Drac­u­la. Nonethe­less, Lee’s voice is enough to con­jure his many excep­tion­al per­for­mances as the pro­to­typ­i­cal vam­pire, a char­ac­ter and con­cept that will like­ly nev­er die.

Schol­ar and writer Bob Cur­ran, a pro­po­nent of the Irish ori­gins of Drac­u­la, argues in his book Vam­pires that leg­ends of undead, blood-drink­ing ghouls are found all over the world, which goes a long way toward explain­ing the endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of Drac­u­la in par­tic­u­lar and vam­pires in gen­er­al. We’ll prob­a­bly see anoth­er actor inher­it the role of Stok­er’s seduc­tive­ly creepy count in the near future. Who­ev­er it is will have to mea­sure him­self against not only the per­for­mances of Lugosi, Car­ra­dine, Old­man, and Mey­ers, but also against the debonair Christo­pher Lee. He would do well, wher­ev­er he comes from, to study Lee’s Drac­u­la films close­ly, and lis­ten to him read the sto­ry in the adap­ta­tion above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Lee (R.I.P.) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and From “The Fall of the House of Ush­er”

Christo­pher Lee Nar­rates a Beau­ti­ful Ani­ma­tion of Tim Burton’s Poem, Night­mare Before Christ­mas

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Hear Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” Read by the Great Bela Lugosi (1946)

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Read the Entire Comic Book Adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

in Comics/Cartoons, Poetry | November 4th, 2015

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Two years ago, we high­light­ed for you the begin­ning of a promis­ing project — Julian Peters’ com­ic book adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s 1910 poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” At the time of our post, Peters had only com­plet­ed the first nine pages of his adap­ta­tion. And, about those first pages, our Josh Jones had this to say:

Dante is where “Prufrock” begins, with an epi­graph from the Infer­no. Peters’ first page illus­trates the ago­nized speak­er of Dante’s lines, Gui­do da Mon­te­fel­tro, a soul con­fined to the eighth cir­cle, whom you can see at the top of the title page shown above. Peters’ visu­al choic­es place us firm­ly in the hell­ish emo­tion­al realm of “Prufrock,” a seem­ing cat­a­logue of the mun­dane that har­bors a dark­er import. Peters gives us no hint of when we might expect new pages, but I for one am eager to see more.

Hap­pi­ly for Josh … and the rest of us … we can now find out where Peters took the rest of the project. The adap­ta­tion is now com­plete. 24 pages in total. All now on dis­play on Peters’ web­site here.

If you’re not famil­iar with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” I’d strong­ly encour­age you to revis­it a post in our archive where you can hear “Prufrock” being read by T.S. Eliot him­self and also Sir Antho­ny Hop­kins. There you can learn more about Eliot’s mod­ernist mas­ter­piece.

Note: Julian is look­ing for a pub­lish­er to help put his com­ic book in print. If any pub­lish­ers want to chat with him, you can find his con­tact info on his web site.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot’s Rad­i­cal Poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Read by Antho­ny Hop­kins and Eliot Him­self

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats & Oth­er Clas­sic Poems (75 Min­utes, 1955)

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

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iTunes Terms & Conditions Adapted into a Graphic Novel: Read It Free Online

in Comics/Cartoons, Technology | November 4th, 2015

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In the past, we’ve brought you the cre­ative work of R. Siko­ryak. An illus­tra­tor who teach­es at the Par­sons School of Design in NYC, Siko­ryak has a pen­chant for cre­at­ing com­ic book adap­ta­tions of lit­er­ary clas­sics. Take for exam­ple Dos­toyevsky Comics where Bat­man stars in a com­ic book ver­sion of Crime & Pun­ish­ment. Or Wait­ing to Go, which mar­ries Wait­ing for Godot with Beav­is and Butt-Head. 

In his lat­est project, Siko­ryak veers sharply away from lit­er­a­ture toward lan­guage that is much more tech­ni­cal. Now, on his tum­blr, you can find iTunes Terms & Con­di­tions: The Graph­ic Nov­el.

Adding a new page every day, Siko­ryak is cre­at­ing an illus­trat­ed ver­sion of the “com­plete, unabridged legal agree­ment.” You can cur­rent­ly view the first 49 pages. Click here. Go to the bot­tom of the page. Then start scrolling up as you read.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bat­man Stars in an Unusu­al Car­toon Adap­ta­tion of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Comics Inspired by Wait­ing For Godot, Fea­tur­ing Tintin, Roz Chast, and Beav­is & Butthead

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John Lennon’s “Imagine” & Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” Adapted into Smart, Moving Webcomics

in Comics/Cartoons, Music | September 28th, 2015

Would John Lennon’s “Imag­ine” have been such a big hit if it had come from an unknown singer/songwriter instead of one of the most famous rock stars in the world? Impos­si­ble to say. Maybe a bet­ter ques­tion is: could any­one else have writ­ten the song? “Imag­ine” has become much more than a soft rock anthem since its release in 1971; it has become a glob­al phe­nom­e­non. Among the innu­mer­able big events at which the human­ist hymn appears we can include, since 2005, New York’s New Year’s Eve cel­e­bra­tion and, just recent­ly, a per­for­mance by pop star Shaki­ra at the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly just before Pope Fran­cis’ his­tor­i­cal appear­ance.

It seems an odd choice, giv­en the song’s appar­ent anti-reli­gious mes­sage. And yet, though Lennon was no fan of orga­nized reli­gion, he told Play­boy mag­a­zine in a 1980 inter­view that the song was inspired by “the con­cept of pos­i­tive prayer” in a Chris­t­ian prayer book giv­en to him by Dick Gre­go­ry. “If you can imag­ine a world at peace,” said Lennon, “with no denom­i­na­tions of religion—not with­out reli­gion but with­out this my God-is-bigger-than-your-God-thing—then it can be true….” As if to under­score that par­tic­u­lar point in his adap­ta­tion of “Imag­ine” in the video above, car­toon­ist Pablo Stan­ley includes such reli­gious­ly diverse, yet ecu­meni­cal fig­ures as the agnos­tic Albert Ein­stein, Protes­tant Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., Hin­du Mahat­ma Gand­hi, and Rasta­far­i­an Bob Mar­ley, along with less-famous free­dom fight­ers like Har­vey Milk and mur­dered Russ­ian jour­nal­ist Anna Politkovskaya.

Stan­ley’s “Imag­ine” orig­i­nal­ly appeared in web­com­ic form, sans music, on his blog Stanleycolors.com. It seems that sev­er­al peo­ple took excep­tion to an ear­li­er, most­ly black-and-white draft (which also includ­ed what looks like the once-very-South­ern-Bap­tist Jim­my Carter), so Stan­ley issued a mul­ti-point dis­claimer under his revised, full-col­or ver­sion. He states that this “is NOT an anti-reli­gion/athe­ist pro­pa­gan­da comic”—charges also unfair­ly levied at Lennon’s song. Stan­ley does­n’t address the fact that most of the famous peo­ple in his com­ic, includ­ing Lennon, were assas­si­nat­ed, though this blog post offers a sug­ges­tive the­o­ry with inter­view footage from Lennon him­self.

In every respect, the com­ic adap­tion of “Imag­ine” hews pret­ty close­ly to Lennon’s call for world peace. In anoth­er Bea­t­les-penned bal­lad-adap­ta­tion, how­ev­er, things take a much dark­er turn. Stan­ley uses his per­son­al expe­ri­ence of near-sui­ci­dal depres­sion in his com­ic real­iza­tion of Paul McCart­ney’s song of lost love, “Yes­ter­day.” (See a video ver­sion above, web­com­ic ver­sion here.) This is grim stuff, to be sure, but Stan­ley assures us that he “over­came that sit­u­a­tion.” His com­men­tary offers a hope­ful take on the painful end­ing: “Look­ing at the yes­ter­day reminds me that I should thrive for the tomor­row.” I’m sure McCart­ney would agree with the sen­ti­ment.

For many more smart, moving—though non-Beatles-related—comics from Pablo Stan­ley, see his blog, Stan­ley Col­ors.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The John Lennon Sketch­book, a Short Ani­ma­tion Made of Lennon’s Draw­ings, Pre­mieres on YouTube

Hear John Lennon’s Final Inter­view, Taped on the Last Day of His Life (Decem­ber 8, 1980)

The Rolling Stone Inter­view with John Lennon (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Evolution of Batman in Cinema: From 1939 to Present

in Comics/Cartoons, Film | August 27th, 2015

Bob Kane cre­at­ed Bat­man in 1939 as a way to ful­fill the public’s need for more com­ic book super­heroes in the wake of Super­man. And, by 1943, Bat­man made his way from pulpy print to the screen for first time.

In this video trib­ute to the many looks of Bat­man through the ages, Jacob T. Swin­ney advances chrono­log­i­cal­ly, but also the­mat­i­cal­ly, focus­ing on the inter­play between Bat­man and his side­kick Robin; the fetishiza­tion of Batman’s tool belt; and the evo­lu­tion of his cos­tume from fab­ric (his clas­sic look up through the ’80s) to the BDSM-inspired rub­ber out­fits that have last­ed since Michael Keaton donned the sol­id black get-up through Chris­t­ian Bale’s inter­pre­ta­tion. (It does seem that Ben Affleck’s ver­sion will not devi­ate from this course, but add some armor. He will also con­tin­ue to perch on top of spires and tall build­ings and stand watch over the city.)

The oth­er evo­lu­tion worth notic­ing is in Batman’s voice, and what it says about America’s rela­tion­ship with author­i­ty. In the ear­ly seri­als up through Adam West’s icon­ic TV ver­sion, Bat­man speaks in clipped but enun­ci­at­ed tones, some­where in the region of news­cast­ers and G‑men. This con­nects Bat­man to the detec­tive part of his char­ac­ter and telegraphs his innate good­ness. But once Keaton takes on the role, Bat­man speaks in a low, grave­ly tone to suit his vig­i­lante ethos, designed for meet­ings in dark alleys. This is how we want our heroes now.

This “seri­ous” shift takes its cue from Frank Miller’s ground­break­ing The Dark Knight Returns com­ic book, which is ground zero for every super­hero film since that wears its grit­ty real­ism on its sleeve. This affect­ed speech reach­es its fair­ly ridicu­lous apoth­e­o­sis in Christo­pher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Ris­es, where both hero and vil­lain are incom­pre­hen­si­ble. The only thing left is par­o­dy, and that’s how we end this video, with Will Arnett’s voice ani­mat­ing the Lego Movie’s ver­sion of the super­hero: affect­ed, nar­cis­sis­tic, and believ­ing too much in his own myth.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bat­man Stars in an Unusu­al Car­toon Adap­ta­tion of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment

Slavoj Žižek’s Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy Decodes The Dark Knight and They Live

The Dark Knight: Anato­my of a Flawed Action Scene

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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