Shirts Off!

On a bit of a Billy Childish kick lately.
http://tinyurl.com/2co783g

Superman Mystery

I knew this was a story I had to link to thru Mystery Hoard because it has Superman and Mystery in its title. It's about a Superman painting in a library which is the original for the giant Superman treasury from the 70s.

It turns out the painting is the

first official full-length portrait of Superman, commissioned to promote the Superman radio show that went on the air in 1940 — an image for a medium you cannot see.

The painting’s provenance was a surprise to officials at Lehman College, in Bedford Park, the Bronx.

“I don’t think any of us realized what it was,” said Janet Munch, the reference librarian and college historian. “We knew who it was.”

It all began as Mr. Saunders prepared a biography of the illustrator who painted it, H.J. Ward, who had studied with the prolific painter N.C. Wyeth and also created portraits of the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet. Mr. Saunders knew about the Superman painting because it had been reproduced on Page 45 of “Superman: The Complete History, the Life and Times of the Man of Steel” (Chronicle, 1998). But where was the painting itself?

The author of the book, Les Daniels, said last week that it was not in DC Comics’ offices when he was working on the book. “We used a photograph,” he said.

Martin Pasko, an author of “The Essential Superman Encyclopedia,” which will be published by Del Rey in August, was puzzled.

2010 Wright Awards are coming.

Who Will Win???

The jury for this year's Doug Wright Awards is made up of a stellar coterie of writers and cartoonists:





Geoff Pevere (author, Toronto Star books critic)
Matt Forsythe (editor of Drawn!, author of "Ojingogo")
Carl Wilson (editor/writer Globe and Mail, author of "Let’s Talk About Lov...e: A Journey to the End of Taste")
Fiona Smyth (artist, cartoonist)

The ceremony takes place in Toronto May 8.

The host this year is actor and raconteur Peter Outerbridge.

May Day 2010: Pass on Left

The Archie comics universe is one of scarcity and constant proletarian struggle. Witness this cover image from Mad House Annual #8, 1970. A generational-political schism emerges between the anachronistic beatnik Jughead stand-in and the lumpen appliance porters. A 1930s meets 2010 recessionary class conflict whose main expression is rejection. Rejection of logic. Rejection of good taste. Rejection of proportion. An upside-down world where repo-men both pass on the left, in the rejection sense, and pass on the left, in that they circumvent the already existing left to an outer left that is more left than left. By texting us with his ass, our hungry worker actually steps outside his inane scenario, into the realm of the possible.

"They are trying as directly as possible to sell you experiences, i.e. what you are able to do with the car, not the car as a product itself. An extreme example of this is this existing economic marketing concept, which basically evaluates the value of you as a potential consumer of your own life. Like how much are you worth, in the sense of all you will spend to buy back your own life as a certain quality life. You will spend so much in doctors, so much in beauty, so much in transcendental meditation, so much for music, and so on. What you are buying is a certain image and practice of your life. So what is your market potential, as a buyer of your own life in this sense? "

Slovoj Zizek, Believer magazine interview.

Further reading:

Making sure the recession will not pass the left by...

"We shall pass on to the misfortunes of our “Left” Communists in the sphere of home policy."