Monday, April 18, 2011

Rutu Modan's Mixed Emotions

For a brief time The Crib's favorite Rutu Modan wrote and drew a blog at The New York Times site. I'm so glad that women saved this childish and adolescent art form (I'm exaggerating again, sorry!, but an exaggeration is part true, right?). Here I give you Mixed Emotions.
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4 comments:

  1. steven samuelsApril 19, 2011 at 8:30 AM

    Domingos, what did you think of "Exit Wounds?" I wasn't taken by it, really. Maybe I should get around to looking at her newer stuff.

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  2. IsabelinhoApril 19, 2011 at 8:56 AM

    Hi Samuels:

    I liked _Exit Wounds_, but to say more than this (which is nothing, really...) I would need to reread it.

    I don't think that it is as powerful as "Jamilti" (my favorite Rutu Modan story). Maybe some comics artists are more suited to the short story... ahem... Adrian Tomine... and they come aboard the graphic novel train because... you know?... they must... But Rutu Modan seemed to handle things quite well... As I said above: I need to reread _Exit Wounds_ (I kind of remember the ending being a bit disappointing though).

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  3. steven samuelsApril 19, 2011 at 6:49 PM

    "Exit Wounds" to me felt kind of lightweight. Decently made, but too safe as a whole. But no, it wasn't bad.

    Yeah, Tomine is pretty shallow. His contribution to Kramer's Ergot 7 was hands down the worst thing in that book. He seems to have a real "blonde woman" fixation that he hasn't worked through enough. That and his "Shortcomings" is enough to make me swear him off forever. Haven't read his short stories, though.

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  4. IsabelinhoApril 19, 2011 at 7:27 PM

    Oh, it’s nothing to write home about. It’s Tomine pre-Clowes at first (1991): with a punk aesthetics kind of DIY looseness. By 1994 the Clowes influence is so strong that it is painful to watch. Being just one to four pages, or something like that, the stories are more to the point that’s all. I always defend Tomine because people accuse him of things that they gladly accept in Captain America, or some other genre fluff…

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