Online Commentary & Diversions:

• Review: "[The Squirrel Machine is a] darkly disturbing, brilliantly drawn story... B&W pen and ink drawings elucidate complex machines and Victorian-era architecture in baroque detail, while surrealist imaginings take turns for the truly repugnant. Sexual perversion, putrefaction and serial-killer style artworks are all ornately portrayed, as are the buildings, shops, horse-drawn carriages and crumbling mansions of a 19th-century small town. The story, while told primarily in pictures, includes a stilted and formal dialogue that only adds to the perversity. ... Though not for the faint of heart, this obscure tale will offer rich rewards to the right kind of reader, one who appreciates grotesque horror, angry mobs and the creative explosion of a repressed Victorian sexuality." – Publishers Weekly

• Review: "In this memoir [Giraffes in My Hair], [Bruce] Paley openly shares his stories of the '60s and '70s, and by the end you'll feel like he's a long-lost uncle. ... At some point, this book will probably become a movie, but I suggest you check out the uncensored version with [Carol] Swain's great artwork, which sets the scene perfectly. It's a miracle Paley survived to tell these anecdotes, but I'm glad he did." – Whitney Matheson, USA Today Pop Candy

• Plug: Animator Jan Stephens recommends the works of Thomas Ott

• Profile: Joe Heller, editorial cartoonist for the Green Bay Post-Gazette, talks to the Philadelphia Inquirer's Tirdad Derakhshani in a syndicated article about the influence of Prince Valiant ("The release of Prince Valiant, Vol. 1: 1937-1938, the first in a new series of gorgeously printed, hardcover Valiant collections from Fantagraphics Books, served as a bittersweet reminder of the century-long rise and eventual decline of a great American art form, the comic strip"), with accompanying video

• Hooray for Hollywood: Popeye optioned for CGI movie; please don't screw it up

• Onomatopœia: Stephen Worth at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog presents a great Basil Wolverton rarity: an article Wolverton wrote for the Daily Oregonian in 1948 titled "Acoustics in the Comics." Learn the difference between "SCHALAMPF!" and "PFWUMPFPH!" (It's a re-run, but still worth a look)

• Things to see: Is Steven Weissman (a) prepping for Halloween, (b) inventing a new superhero, or (c) hoping to get cast on the next season of Project Runway? Whatever it is, I like it

From Chris Diaz, who went to Dan & Terry's signing at the 14th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival this past weekend.

All-Clowes edition!

• Review: "I found the main characters relatable enough that when more or less out of nowhere... the sci fi/psuedo-super hero elements kick in, it's a shock to the system that threw me but that I also cared about. In not that many pages, Clowes had got me invested in these kids, so no matter how bizarro the next act was, I was in for a pound... There really is some smart stuff said in the course of this narrative about human nature, growing up and power..." - Ben Morse, The Cool Kids Table, on Eightball #23 by Daniel Clowes (via Sean T. Collins)

• Hooray for Hollywood: In an interview with Comingsoon.net, Michel Gondry says the Daniel Clowes-scripted animated movie Gondry's co-directing with his son is still moving forward (via The Beat)

UCB’s PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE HOSTS GHOST WORLD SCREENING AND BOOK RELEASE PARTY

Join the Pacific Film Archive in celebrating the charmed works of two Bay Area originals: Filmmaker Terry Zwigoff and cartoonist and screenwriter Daniel Clowes.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2008 at 6:30 p.m.

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

2625 Durant Avenue #2250 • Berkeley, CA 94720 • (510) 642-1124

Clowes and Zwigoff will host a special screening of the Ghost World film, followed by a Q&A and book signing to celebrate the release of Ghost World: Special Edition.

This deluxe new edition of the bestselling graphic novel expands the original book — which tells the story of two best friends, Enid and Rebecca, facing the prospect of growing up and apart — from 80 pages into a 288 page, behind-the-scenes tour through the making of both the classic book and the subsequent hit film. Including a new introduction and several pages of new strips by Clowes, as well as over 200 pages of "extras": the Oscar-nominated screenplay by Clowes and Terry Zwigoff, dozens of pages of never-before-collected ephemera, including unused concept drawings, notes, movie posters, foreign edition covers, merchandise, and much more, all annotated by Clowes. Truly lavish, definitive and comprehensive.

"I really identified with the girls in Ghost World. They made me feel like I wasn't so alone." – Lisa Simpson, The Simpsons

 

Variety has the scoop.