Uncle Kim,

I actually looked it up in the dictionary to find the word. Because if you know a word that I don't, I want to know what it means. Honestly, that was my initial intention, if you read my initial post about it, that was how it was presented.

I just wanted to know if you invented a new word, or knew something that I didn't. Since you have admitted your spelling error, my question is answered and you will not hear me make sport of this incident.

On a side note (from a conversation Bill Lange reported to me), I doubt Harlan would share a cabin with anyone but his lovely bride Susan. This is in reguard to your suggestion that Harlan and I share a cabin in a CBDLF cruise.

By all means now, please continue your war with Mr. O

Your nephew,

Sam

FOE

[This message has been edited by Samuel Catalino (edited 05-06-2000).]

>>Clear storytelling with traditional attention to things like plot, character, and dialogue. Protagonists the reader can identify with (this does not mean infallible heroes, either--Sam Spade is a protagonist the reader can identify with and he has enough faults to fill a room), but who have clear motivations and principles. Art that is readable and appealing to the eye. (That doesn't mean "pretty," either. Chester Gould's work was readable and appealing but hardly pretty.) Stories that fit the medium. (Sorry, but "talking heads" is out of place in a visual medium. As someone once said of another artform, "If everything you're doing could be done just as well--and probably with less work--in live-action, why are you making a cartoon?")<<

Sounds reasonable enough. So could you recommend any comics out there right now that have all these elements? Or, if there aren't any today, some exemplary comics from the past?

Off the top of my head and IMHO, CLAN APIS. With bells on [img]http://207.69.158.95/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

------------------
Marcia Allass
(Editor In Chief, Sequential Tart Webzine - http://www.sequentialtart.com)

Kim Thompson I know her [img]http://207.69.158.95/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

Mr Catalino:

If it is true indeed that you are among the people who express doubts as to the reality of the Holocaust, I can tell you one thing:

I know Harlan Ellison well; I am a real-life friend of Harlan and Susan (not a fan or part of a club like FOE).

If the above is true indeed, as it seems from some of the posts here, then you may think of yourself as a "friend of Ellison" but Harlan is no friend of yours. He would have nothing but contempt for you if he knew your belief.

Harlan vehemently despises creationists, negationists and the likes. (I seem to recall that you have also espoused creationist views publicly ere in the past.)

You are free to believe in whatever you wish to believe, but I would strongly advise that you stop bandying Harlan's name about in public, as I know he would find it extremely offensive.

JM

For that matter, Sam, why don't you share some of your theories on gun control with Ellison, and see how much longer he continues your "friendship"?

For JM and anyone else who's curious:

Sam's revisionism revealed!

Someone should send a copy of that thread to Mr Ellison, just to finally shut Sam up for once.

>>As for "talking heads" being out of place in a visual medium- again, you don't have to like talking
heads, but Dave McKean's Cages (which I've just started) and Jules Feiffer's strips rely heavily on
them, and those are undeniably works of masterful cartooning that couldn't work in any other
medium.<<

McKean is tedious...and anyone who thinks Feiffer's work is just "talking heads" doesn't understand the term at all.

Best, Pat

>>Pat, how about the other three books that have been held up numerous times as exemplary, The Jew
of New York, Acme Novelty Library, and Palestine (since nobody here but Kim has read Sacco's new
book yet)? Each very different from each other and from Clowes's work, none smacking of the "gen-x
nihilism" that you see and detest in Eightball.<<

In all honesty, I'm unfamiliar with The Jew of New York (and I realize that clearly makes me a Philistine in these circles). I'm afraid I find Acme Novelty Library terribly pretentious. I've already said I think Sacco's geo-political stuff has the greatest chance for wider acceptance (though I personally find his politics ill-conceived).

>>I'm also curious why you don't think that comics like these couldn't find a larger audience among people who generally read more "serious" literature, people whose literary tastes are more "intellectual" (regardless of how you feel about these people and the books they read). Nobody's suggesting that people who only read books bought at the drugstore or supermarket will want to read or like Eightball or any of the books you've sneered at, but why do you think that nobody but the
current audience would be interested?<<

One: They have pictures. The audience you think these would appeal to abhor "picture books". They'd consider it a "dumbing down" for the masses.

Two: As "intellectual" as I find these things (and be aware I use that as something of a put-down, as I really consider them "pseudo-intellectual" at best), they are likely simplistic and naive to the audience you think would like them.

Three: There just aren't as many of that kind of people as you think there are. I suspect, for instance, that most of the sold copies of Hawking's "Brief History of Time" are sitting unopened on shelves, next to similarly untouched copies of Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow. These are things a certain class of people buy because they think they should, not because they're ever really going to finish them.

Best, Pat