Art

After things here yesterday got a little too real, I'd like to get back to just talking about cool and wonderful things. Like Jaume Plensa's new installation at Madison Square Park, entitled "Echo." The 44-foot high fiberglass resin sculpture depicts the head of a 9-year-old girl caught in a meditative state. Set among the fresh green of early Spring, it gladdens my heart every time I see it.

Matt Seneca reminds us of something that needs to be said often.

As a Spring Friday afternoon unspools, no one is thinking about the internet or comic books, but rather the most primary and wonderful thoughts of all, and this Craig's list posting about a missed connection at the R. Crumb exhibit at the Society of Illustrators, says it all. Hit the link for the WHOLE story:

via Alex Segura, a DVD cover for the great episode where "goatee" and "Evil Spock" became forever synonymous. While we're at it...here's Hanuka's sketches for an illustration in the New Yorker accompanying a review of...SPIDER-MAN TURN OFF THE DARK. AND for added fun, go read "The Dirties" from MEATHAUS by Tomer and brother Asaf.

The just arrived issue of PW Comics Week has a nice preview of Celluloid, Dave McKean's first graphic novel since Cages. You'd think an undertaking of this sort might have gotten a little but more hoopla. Perhaps when people start looking at the art, it will Celluloid is described as a "pornographic work of art" about a man, a woman and a porn film that all intersect. It's out from from Fantagraphics next month.

Normally we don't run more than one Marvel PR in a day -- and they send out about 38 each and every day -- but when we saw that Joe Quesada had done a variant billed as the "No dry eye in the house" variant for The Death of Spider-Man storyline just now wrapping up in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN...well...we had to share. Because we like everyone to blubber in the afternoon. It's good for you.

This July, Marvel is serving up a RED SKULL miniseries starring the villain in the Cap movie, written by Greg Pak with art by Mirko Colak. David Aja has provided some tasty covers, influenced by WWII imagery from propaganda posters and the like.

Guyen is a 19-year old Cambodian/Vietnamese/Chinese/American artist living in Montreal, CA. More here.

Artist Josh Medors has been battling a rare form of spinal column cancer for several years. The Hero Initiative has been helping him for some time, and now they are teaming up with Marvel for a special Spider-Man print to benefit Medors. PR below:

Artist Josh Medors has been battling a rare form of spinal column cancer for several years. The Hero Initiative has been helping him for some time, and now they are teaming up with Marvel for a special Spider-Man print to benefit Medors. PR below:

Illustrator/animator/visual storyteller Shaun Tan gets profiled in the Sunday NY Times Magazine, the traditional anointing of a major creative figure.

Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson has a been a notorious recluse for 16 years or so; however, he has broken his visual silence for a pretty worthy cause, Michael Cavna reports. Watterson has donated a painting -- yes a painting -- of Richard Thompson's Petey character from Cul-de-Sac to a Parkinson's disease benefit. (Thompson suffers from that illness.)