§ Matthias Wivvel has his wrapup of Angoulême 2010 including an appreciation of Baru:
In this context, it seems auspicious that the Grand Prix winner (for his life’s work) is Baru (aka. Hervé Baruléa, b. 1947), in that he is one of the great proponents of a working class and immigrant perspective in Francophone comics. Best know to American readers for the gorgeous but comparatively minor Road to America (1995-97, Drawn and Quarterly ed. 2002), his first major work, Quéquette Blues (1984-1986) pretty much established the blueprint for his work — a gripping tale of youthful enthusiasm and rebelliousness set in a working class suburb. It remains an energetically humanist portrayal of youth with a strong socio-political undercurrent. The masterpiece is L’Autoroute du soleil (1996), first serialized in the early 90s in the Japanese weekly Morning, which adapts the expansive storytelling techniques and page count of manga to tell a road story of two young working class men on the run from a neo-Nazi group. It is simultaneously a portrait of post-industrial France and a moving coming-of-age-story. Of late, Baru has tended toward self-repetition to diminishing returns, but he is still a major voice in Francophone comics, presenting an important, rarely-seen point of view.
§ Geek-o-system has several of their geek-oriented Power Grid rankings, including Top 30 Geeky Writers, which includes many of the folks you’d think it would include.
§ USA Today blogger Whitney Matheson went to the SNL-powered fundraiser for the stage version of Phoebe Gloeckner’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Marielle Heller is adapting Gloeckner’s 2002 book as a play. It follows a teen girl in ’70s San Francisco who, among other things, has a sexual relationship with her mother’s boyfriend. It’s a pretty intense story but worth reading and beautifully drawn. (You can preview several pages on Amazon.)
§ Some people have been puzzled — REALLY– by the iPad’s adaptation of the golden mean screen 4:3 ratio but this mystical size is juuuuuust riiiiight for some magical, mystical objects:
Take a look at any newsstand. Most magazines you’ll find are in roughly 4:3 format. This is true not only for the US, but I measured some French and British magazines as well, and it’s close to being an industry standard. Newspapers will also be more readable in 4:3 than widescreen. And look at books: most hardcovers are around 4.5:3, as are most trade paperbacks.
One of the selling points for the iPad is its use as an e-book reader, using Apple’s iBooks software, and Jason Snell sees the iPad as a great device for displaying comics, saying, “the iPad’s 1024-by-768-pixel display, while in the unfashionable 4:3 aspect ratio, is just about the right shape for a comic-book page.”
§ Jimmy Callaway at PopMatters looks at The Grim Superheroics of Rick Veitch
§ Chris Butcher says the Beguiling, one of Toronto’s most prominent comics stores, will no longer be carrying Bluewater comics.
§ Return with us to the ’90s for the story of whatever happened to BoHoS and Maggie Whorf, teen comics scribe:
With all the talk of women in comics and comics for women that has gone on over the past few years, I’m always surprised that very few people brings up BoHoS. Unlike most comics aimed at teenage girls, this was actually written by one.
§ #Gailhateswomen: The Twitter Meme ….gimme a break.
§ Craig Thompson is still alive!
I am *relieved* that the iPad isn’t some widescreen solid state DVD player. It’s bad enough that my iMac’s screen is squashed into this format, leaving me with empty real estate on the sides while my Photoshop documents get scalped and kneecapped. Finding a monitor with >1050 vertical resolution is an exercise in frustration. A 16:9 screen is good for one use and one use only: watching movies and TV shows that have already been shoehorned into that awkward format. A well-design multipurpose device will never use one.
wasn’t a section of Baru’s Quéquette Blues reprinted in RAW #1 vol 2, or was it a different story?
B b b but… wouldn’t 16 x 9 have been quite suitable for two-page spreads?
(Not that I’m complaining. I would have preferred an ISO standard 1:√2 proportion…)
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