Bonus Link:
Category: Here, Read
Look There: “Carol Day” by David Wright
Look Here: “Duel of the Titans”
Here’s a fun single-page comic, written by Robert Barrett, drawn by Richard Corben, featuring dopplegangers of Conan, Tarzan, and Prince Valiant:
According to The Most Complete Comicography of Richard Corben, “Duel of the Titans” was first published in the fourth issue of the venerable E.C. fanzine, Squa Tront, in 1970, and was reprinted eleven years later, in 1981, on page 25 of the only book on Richard Corben’s career and art, the long out-of-print (not to mention long out-of-date) Flights into Fantasy.
e. e. cummings on American Political Speechification
“next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn’s early my
country ’tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every languagE. E.ven deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?”He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
Thomas Carlyle on work…
[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]
“I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God’s name! ‘Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.”
— from Sartor Resartus, Book 2, Chapter 9, by Thomas Carlyle
Philip Larkin on the fear of death…
[CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear — no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.— from “Aubade” by Philip Larkin
BONUS LINK:
Philip Larkin’s almost perfect poem by A.N. Wilson
Look Here: Original Art by Rudy Nebres
My wife and I purchased the following magnificent page by Filipino artist Rudy Nebres earlier this year:
From the early 1970s to the present day, Rudy Nebres has worked, sometimes as a penciller, sometimes as an inker, and sometimes as both (see above), on comics of all kinds, including “adult”-themed comics, for a wide variety of publishers. He’s a skilled artist who has had a long and productive career, and that’s great for him! Not so great for the average, non-art-obsessed reader, however, is the fact that only a handful of the comics Nebres worked on are worth reading for any reason other than to marvel at the man’s amazing craftsmanship. It’s a pity Nebres never found the perfect project to harness his prodigious talent — if only he could have drawn nothing but Western comics! — but the same can be said for most comics artists of his generation and before who scrambled to make a living doing nothing but “work for hire.”
I don’t know which Warren comics magazine the page we now own is from; the dealer didn’t have the information. The only information he had on his site was “Rook Story p.8 Warren Art,” so it is possible this is a page from a Rook story that appeared in Eerie or one that appeared in the Rook’s solo magazine, entitled, what else, The Rook. From Wikipedia:
He [Restin Dane, the time-traveller known as “The Rook”] appeared in Eerie #82-85, 87-95, 98-105. He got his own Rook Magazine which ran 14 issues from 1979 to 1982 (after which he returned to Eerie and concluded the storyline in #132 and continued in 134 and 136). Warren Presents #2 reprints the stories from Eerie #82-85. Eerie isues #116 and 120 had stories staring his great-grandfather.
After perusing Richard Arndt’s index of Warren Magazines, I would venture to guess that the page appeared in The Rook #11 (or possibly #12). But that’s only a guess, so if you by chance recognize the page, and remember which Warren magazine and which issue the story was in, please post a comment, or send me a private message using the link at the top of the page, and let me know. I’d really appreciate the information.
p.s. If you’re wondering why there are no captions or word balloons on the page, it’s because all that is on a separate clear overlay, which thankfully came with the artwork.
UPDATE 03 OCTOBER 2008:
Acting on the basic research outlined above, I mosied on over to ebay and purchased the two issues of The Rook most likely to contain the story with our page in it. Well, the books arrived today, and I was right. Our Rudy Nebres page was printed in The Rook #11 (October 1981), page 12. The story, written by Will Richardson, is titled, simply, “The Rook.” Mystery solved!
Bonus Links:
Look Here: Five Fantasies by Mirko Ilic
Bonus Links:
Mirko Ilić Corp. official site
Mirko Ilić Exhibition on Flickr – includes a photo of the framed original artwork for “The Victor”; also, this is cool.
Kierkegaard and Supertramp on the End of the World
“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to inform the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who think it’s a joke.” — Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, Trans. Alastaire Hannay (London: Penguin Classics), p. 49.
If Everyone was Listening
by Richard Davies and Roger Hodgson
The actors and jesters are here
The stage is in darkness and clear
For raising the curtain
and no-one’s quite certain whose play it is
How long ago, how long
If only we had listened then.
If we’d known just how right we were going to be.
For we dreamed a lot
And we schemed a lot
And we tried to sing of love before the stage fell apart.
If everyone was listening you know
There’d be a chance that we could save the show
Who’ll be the last clown
To bring the house down?
Oh no, please no, don’t let the curtain fall
Well, what is your costume today?
Who are the props in your play?
You’re acting a part which you thought from the start
was an honest one.
Well how do you plead?
An actor indeed!
Go re-learn your lines,
You don’t know what you’ve done
The finale’s begun.
If everyone was listening you know
There’d be a chance that we could save the show,
Who’ll be the last clown
To bring the house down?
Oh no, please no, don’t let the curtain fall.
Look There: An Alex Toth Gallery
(UPDATE [20 Janurary 2016]: Looks like that Alex Toth Gallery has disappeared. I’d delete the post entirely, except that if I did, I’d lose the nice comment below. So instead, all I’ve done is to remove the link… )
Ragged Claws Network 