The Crib Sheet

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Yvan Alagbé

Yvan Alagbé interviewed by The New York Times.

The real canon of comics emerges here and there, that's true, but the false canon prevails and, considering the barbaric times in which we are living now, it will continue doing so, at least during my life time.

Friday, March 9, 2018

Perfection - Coda

Here's what Frédéric Pajak says at the end of his Intro to the Oeuvres 1 book (my translation):

It's true that Buzzelli wasn't recognized enough as an artist and it's true that he is a bit forgotten. With the exception of some small printrun examples, over the last thirty years his work hasn't been republished. How could we have endured all this time in the ignorance of this lucid, funnily exasperated, visionary spirit?

Well, the explanation is quite simple: comics readers have been idiots. Once I hoped they stopped being so, but all hope is gone now.

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Perfection

I promised perfection, and here it is:

Guido Buzzelli, La Trilogia, 2017.

Guido Buzzelli, Oeuvres 1, 2017.

If I still had it in me to search this blog I could quote myself ranting against comics publishers a lot. What I said the last almost ten years of this blog's life could hardly give a worst idea of the species at hand. From subverting every aspect of comics in reprints (layout and colors especially) to poor production values, everything publishers did was, and is, disrespectful to readers.

That's exactly why I want to call your attention to the two reprints above, one Italian, one French. The pages were magnificently reproduced from the original art and the paper is top-notch (matte instead of garish; beige even in the Coconino Press book). All the extra-diegetical material is also great, from the covers you see above to intros and documents about the author (in the Les Cahiers Dessinés edition especially).

So, anyway, as I said, perfection exists, believe it or not. A huge thanks to Igort and Fréderic Pajak. Not to mention that absolute genius of comics, Guido himself!...

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Those Crappy Reprints

I'm always amazed by how great the color in old American newspaper comics sections is.

For instance:

Earl Duvall (w and p), Al Taliaferro (i), unknown colorist, "Silly Symphonies", March 6, 1932.

IDW is reprinting these gorgeous looking pages. They look so good the only thing they did was to publish a slightly (where needed) retouched version, right?

Wrong!