Art – Page 19 – the coffee philosopher

Posted on November 22, 2012November 22, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

Reading Batman On The iPad

You’ll recall that I indulged in reading a bound trade copy of the first seven issues of DC Comics ‘New 52 Batman.’

Well, it quickly became clear that if I wanted to continue the story, I’d either have to wait until next spring, when the next six or seven issues were bound, or catch up by reading the latest issues on my iPad, because comic book stores don’t have space to keep back issues like that.

In any case, the title of this darn thing should have given away what I eventually chose.

The physical technique for reading (scrolling?) through on an iPad took a few moments for me catch on to. But the effect is dwnright cinematic. My two complaints are that if you choose to pull back and view an entire page rather than a single panel, the resolution suffers greatly, particularly when reading the dialogue; and that sometimes, you just need to see a larger image because of how the panels are arranged (smaller panels placed over a larger panel, for example), but it doesn’t always make clear when you should pull back and it gets a little confusing. The latter, though, can be mended by practice on the reader’s part.

When I left off, Batman was looking more than a little battered and he remains that way when issue #8 opens. Which, artistically, is a good thing. One of my complaints was that square jawed men tend to look alike and that the only way I could differentiate Bruce Wayne from the character of a particular politician was by Bruce Wayne’s boyishly tousled hair (and I didn’t like him with boyishly tousled hair; too young and hip when I feel he should be formal and old money styled).

Now Bruce Wayne’s hair is tousled from having been been beat up and battered. He looks appropriately aged and appropriately unique. Not just another squared jawed hero, but a particular one. Of course, that also runs contrary to an earlier criticism, which I implied that I almost wanted the earlier Wayne to be more generically handsome and rich than uniquely something. So I hold two ideas at once? So what? Read Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, ’cause he totally says that’s cool, at least sometimes. Or, at least, he writes about it a lot.

As if taking advantage of the cinematic appearance on the iPad, several action sequences are broken up in that ‘Bourne’ style – with fragments of the body seen, rather than a complete whole. Frankly, that style works a whole lot better in a comic than in a movie. Assuming the comic pulls back to show the whole every so often. Christopher Nolan’s first two Batman movies suffered from incomprehensible action sequences on account of never pulling the camera back to give the viewer an idea of geography – of where characters were situated in relation to each other.

#8 comes dangerously close to the error of making what had been a dangerous, nearly unstoppable villain before (in this case, a sort of owl ninja – which is a lot more impressive than it sounds) into something a little more manageable. In the first seven issues, Batman struggles to fight even a single one of them. Now, he’s fighting a bunch of them and having too easy (though still a difficult) time of it (particularly as he’s still hurt).

Posted on November 21, 2012November 21, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

Midweek Staff Meeting

They also have a great collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

Benjamin’s afterlife.

What are we supposed to have learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Chief Justice William Rehnquist: An unreconstructed, hypocritical, pill popping racist or a left handed albino Eskimo pipe welder?

Posted on November 19, 2012November 19, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

Monday Morning Staff Meeting – Where The Poets Are

And the hottest new poetry scene is in… Queens.

Or Melbourne, Australia.

Or Forklift, Ohio (not a real place).

Or Seattle, Washington.

Sadly, none of these places are Washington, DC or St. Petersburg, Florida.

DC is, perhaps, a little too institutional. Though it’s got a thriving visual arts scene. But the local poetry scene is very slam-centric. There is the Beltway Poetry Journal, but that’s exclusively online and I’m looking for more. I’m just not a slam person, as I’ve said before. I love poetry on the page, even when I read it aloud. Yes, there are the readings at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which I attend religiously, as well the Poet Laureate and other readings at the Library of Congress. But nothing which seems half so interesting as what’s happening elsewhere. But they – the residents of elsewhere – they feel that way too, don’t they?

And Florida is Florida. We elected Rick Scott for governor, for heaven’s sake. The man ran a company that in a very real and tangible way defrauded the taxpayers of this country for billions. You can’t write an elegy that depressingly sad.

Posted on November 14, 2012November 21, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

John Keats

I’ve been carrying around a little leather bound copy of the collected poetry of John Keats. It’s a little smaller than a trade paperback (though larger than a mass market paperback). It’s a beautiful piece of art and not the sort they make anymore. Leastways, I only ever see such things for sale in used bookstores.

My mother-in-law and father-in-law have been in town and the latter and I have been spending a lot of time together.

I don’t speak much Thai and he doesn’t speak a great amount of English (though vastly more than my Thai), but we both like to get out and about and do things. We went to see some museums over the weekend (the Library of Congress’ Jefferson Building and the National Gallery of Art) and I carried that copy of Keats with me, on account of it fitting so nicely into a coat pocket and on account of it always being a good time to read good poetry. When moments presented themselves, I pulled it out, opened it to the section marked by the satiny ribbon, and read snippets of Endymion.

I do wonder that, as the e-books over take books, will books like my Keats come back? As physical books become as much objets d’art as anything else, will little, beautiful things like this come back into fashion? But will that also presage the end of something else? After all, don’t I love my collection of pulpy books, the symbol of a great error of mass publishing and also of mass reading?

Posted on November 11, 2012November 11, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

The Sunday Newspaper – Poetry In Jakarta

The Call to Poetry festival.

T.S. Eliot Prize nominees announced.

In Newark, poetry matters.

Do you young people still read and go to libraries? (hint: yes, they do)

Posted on November 8, 2012November 8, 2012 by the coffee philosopher

The New 52 – Batman

I always get the urge to walk inside when I pass by a comic book store, but I’m frankly intimidated. I haven’t even remotely kept up in, quite literally, decades (not since I used to buy comics at the 7-11 style convenience store near our home in Norfolk, Virginia when I was a kid).

But I read about DC Comics relaunch, The New 52, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to start fresh and maybe keep up with a series.

There’s a comic store near my office, and I was in a frustrated kind of mood. It was actually about money troubles, which makes purchasing comic books sound counter-productive, but I needed the distraction and, oddly enough, doing this would, I felt, give me a certain feeling of accomplishment.

Because the various series have, nonetheless, been out for a while, I’m like 13 issues behind, so I went for one of the bound collections containing the first six to seven issues.

I told me story, in brief, to the owner and asked for his help and recommendation.

Firstly, he told me I’d be better off buying one of the bound collections, because he was unlikely to have the first thirteen issues of any of the series in stock.

He himself particularly enjoyed Batman, Batman & Robin (there are, something like three of four New 52 Batman series, including the original ‘DC’ of ‘DC Comics’ – Detective Comics), Wonder Woman, and Swamp Thing.

I’d rather had it in my head, as a sort of token nod to history, to get either Detective Comics or Action Comics (which is Superman), but I settled for the owner’s advice and got Batman.

Batman is still friends with Robin. And Actually, several former ‘Robins’ have advanced on (one becoming Darkwing and another becoming Red Robin; the current Robin in this series being uncomfortably young looking for a reader approaching early middle age who has concerns about child endangerment). This was a little worrying, not being a fan of the whole concept of the Robin, but it worked okay here, not in the least because none of the current or former Robins were major players (though the oldest former Robin and current Darkwing looks to maybe be a bigger player in future issues).

The artwork was generally very good, though Bruce Wayne and a mayoral candidate named Lincoln looked entirely too much alike (strong jawed, broad shouldered white men; the only way I could be sure is that Lincoln brill creams his locks while Bruce Wayne sports a disconcerting looking, mussy, curly, bedhead thing). The fight scenes were well done and walked carefully that fine line between the Batman who is just a really fit guy in a black and grey suit and Batman who something more, who is, well, a superhero. Good work on closeups of the face and using those to advance the emotional core of the story and to dramatize the inner life of the characters.

They build this new mythology about the ‘Council of Owls’ well (though the whole ‘owls eat bats’ thing is a bit of stretch for me) and I’m looking forward to reading further issues.

And I think I’m going to start reading one other – maybe Aquaman. Or Action Comics. I’ll see what happens when it happens.