§ The Suicide Squad movie doesn’t come out until August 5th, but it’s never too soon to set some squad goals, including individual character posters, in a colorful cartoon style Didn’t see that one coming, really. The posters were tweeted by the cast members and are just in time to promote the special airing Tuesday night on the CW: “DC Films Presents: Dawn of the Justice League,” which is hosted by Kevin Smith with special guest Geoff Johns. A new traiuler for the film debuts suring the special and we’ll learn much more behidn to scenes of the DCU tv world. And of course, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow also debuts on Tuesday, bringing the world of obscure DC characters to your smart video entertainment center.
§ Speaking of DC, they are releasing Batman figures in new colors.based on the classic Rainbow Batman story. Sometimes these jokes just write themselves, eh?
§ The Forbidden Planet blog responded to L’Affaire du Angoulême with a blog post where comics observers discuss their favorite women cartoonists.
§ Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie are doing a very small signing tour. UK only.
§ Alex Hoffman has a series of posts on Comics That Challenged Me in 2015 that includes all kinds of small/micro press comics.
§ Aiden Koch, who has a new book coming out from Koyama Press this year, After Nothing Comes, did a Cartoonists’ Diary for The Comics Journal last week, and it was an actual diary.
§ Johanna Draper Carlson unearthed another story of a very small press comics project that got cancelled because of low sales.You’ll have to click the ink to find out what!
§ On Friday I went to the New Whitney Museum here in Manhattan to see the Frank Stella show. The new building, designed by Renzo Piano, is amazing and remind me why New York is a great city to live in. On every street a beloved diner or shop is being torn down so they can put up a new douche tower to stand empty and launder money for foreign gangsters, so it’s sometimes hard to remember what made this city great. BUT ANYWAY, while I was reading a little bit about the Whitney, I read this about the museum’s origin. It started out as the personal collection of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who spent her money not putting up douche towers, but buying art by John Sloan, George Bellows, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Stuart Davis—all painters who were acclaimed but considered very modernist back in 1930. Via an associate, Whitney offered her collection to the Metropolitan Museum. What happened next will astound you:
But the director, Edward Robinson, who was both averse to modern art and contemptuous of its American proponents, spurned it. Juliana Force, Whitney’s emissary, reported that he told her, “What will we do with them, dear lady? We have a cellar full of those things already.” She stormed out of his office without having conveyed Whitney’s offer of five million dollars for a new wing to house the works.
So instead Whitney started her very OWN museum, dedicated to American art, and housed in various places until it moved into its splendid new riverside digs.
Anyway, what interested me about that anecdote is how…you can’t stop progress. The 20th century experienced several trumpet blasts of modernism that shocked and frightened onlookers—the premiere of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps and the Armory show of 1913 spring to mind. It’s shocking to us today that the paintings Whitney loved would be seen as basement rubbish; that the man who ran such a great institution would have such limited vision is decidedly unshocking. But something new is always going to come along.
§ I wrote about Twitter’s harassment problems a few days ago, and now Anne Wheaton, wife of Wil, has quit becuase of all the abuse she got online:
I deleted my Twitter account last night and immediately felt relieved. I will miss the tweety buddies who were awesome that I don’t know in real life. I will continue to stay in touch with my friends around the world by phone or by my private Facebook account. Instagram has been fun so far so I’m keeping that for now, but when it isn’t fun anymore, that will go too. I like having a blog but who knows if I’ll keep this around. We’ll see. Life is what we make of it. I want my life to be filled with happiness, surrounded by people I love. It doesn’t need to be about awful people having access to me online and labeling it as “freedom of speech” which is why I removed that from my life. We don’t know how long we have on this Earth so I’d like to maximize my time with things that are positive. I think that is time well spent.
§ I’m sure you saw that SNL sketch with Adam Driver reprising his little-seen role as Kylo Ren for a take off on Undercover Boss; Star Killer Base but just in case….
