Sorry for the lack of Weekend Listening this weekend - I've been trying to focus my spare energies on cleaning up the large pile of comics, laundry and unfiled paperwork we call a house, with some limited success. The feature will return next weekend, hopefully with something both tuneful and with an interesting story attached. On the other hand, a total fiasco with a dull backstory could also fit the bill. One never knows!
Spent the bulk of the day at a party for friend Jim's 38th birthday - Yesenia and I were only able to present him with a rain check for his gift, a book which was supposed to have been released in early June (and I've had on order from Amazon for about two months, now), but was just postponed to early August. Not sure what's up with that, as there's no note on the publisher's site, nor the author's.
The book in question is a retrospective of the work of foundational comic artist Steve Ditko, most famous for Spider-Man, but that may be the most atypical of his moody, intense work. I've also ordered a copy for myself, so I'll no doubt be reporting on it - either here or over at Vomit Comix - some time in the next few weeks. Since Ditko has had little or no contact with the press in almost fifty years, and only two photographs of the man are known to exist, it should be interesting to see just what kind of biographical info the author can come up with.
Frankly, it will probably be more than enough if it were as Ditko himself would prefer: let the work speak for itself.
D.
6 comments:
Ditko is the JD Salinger of comic artists..
Beside both of them being legendary (media) recluses, I'm not sure the analogy holds.
Ditko and Pynchon, on the other hand...
D.
Pynchon is unreadable.. so I don't know if that analogy holds either..
So, too, was Ditko, when he wrote for himself. Try reading Mr. A sometime. Only working with a populist like Lee made his work palatable for a wider audience. Ditto Kirby, although that's a more debatable point.
The collaborative nature of comics has definitely made for some strange artifacts when artists felt that they, too, would like to write. All of Image is based on this sometime lunacy.
There's no denying that Ditko had something to say, though.
D.
Always wanted to read that Mr. A..
Oh, it's everything you could hope for in Genius/Crazy, and more:
http://tinyurl.com/5onjfs
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