Moebius Draws Adventurous Ads for Maxwell House Coffee (1989)

in Art, Comics/Cartoons | January 24th, 2019

What do you do after you’ve helped cre­ate one of the “first anti-heroes in West­ern comics”; pio­neered the under­ground comics indus­try and heavy met­al album cov­ers; won the endur­ing admi­ra­tion of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, Stan Lee, and Hayao Miyaza­ki; and brought your dis­tinc­tive cre­ative style to the look of sci-fi clas­sics like Blade Run­ner, Alien, Tron, and The Abyss?

Sit back, have a cof­fee, and design a series of ads for Maxwell House. Why not? You’re Moe­bius. You can draw what­ev­er you want. No one’s going to accuse Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s part­ner in the leg­endary nev­er-made Dune film and The Incal comics of sell­ing out—not when con­tem­po­rary com­ic art, sci­ence fic­tion, and fan­ta­sy could hard­ly have exist­ed with­out him.

“Prob­a­bly the most impor­tant fan­ta­sy com­ic artist of all time,” as Art Futu­ra dubs him, the man orig­i­nal­ly known by his birth name Jean Giraud began his career as an illus­tra­tor for the youth press Fleu­rus, who were the first in France to pub­lish fel­low bande dess­inées artist Herge’s Adven­tures of Tintin. The Maxwell House ads here, drawn in 1989, recall those ear­ly days of Fran­co-Bel­gian com­ic art, when adven­tur­ers raced around the colonies, brav­ing wild ani­mals and surly natives.

Moe­bius’ con­fi­dent hand leaves a sig­na­ture in the dense pat­terns of the foliage and slen­der jaw­line of the ele­gant, cof­fee-sip­ping damsel, who does not seem remote­ly in dis­tress, downed plane and curi­ous goril­las notwith­stand­ing. But the set­tings are just as rem­i­nis­cent of Tintin’s juve­nile con­cep­tions of the Ama­zon and “dark­est Africa,” though Moe­bius leaves out the swash­buck­lers and ugly native car­i­ca­tures.

Giraud’s own trav­els took him through Mexico—where he joined his moth­er as a teenag­er and saw for the first time the mag­nif­i­cent West­ern land­scapes he had always dreamed of—and through Alge­ria, where he worked as an illus­tra­tor for the French army mag­a­zine while fin­ish­ing his mil­i­tary ser­vice. Unlike many of his con­tem­po­raries, he por­trayed non-Euro­pean nations and peo­ple with sym­pa­thy and respect.

Though he first took the name Moe­bius in 1974 in order to pur­sue more fan­ta­sy-ori­ent­ed work after draw­ing the West­ern Blue­ber­ry for over a decade, some of Giraud’s ‘70s com­ic sto­ries under the name drew upon real events, like the mur­der of a North African immi­grant, Wound­ed Knee, and the famous speech of Chief Seat­tle.

The Maxwell House pan­els keep things light and sweet, so to speak, though where the cream and sug­ar might be hid­ing is anyone’s guess. The hero­ine of the series, named Tatiana, is “a self-pos­sessed and fash­ion­able young woman who hap­pens to find her­self alone on a desert jun­gle island or the like,” as Mar­tin Schnei­der writes at Dan­ger­ous Minds. Unper­turbed, she takes more inter­est in her cof­fee than the wild­ness around her.

At Dan­ger­ous Minds you’ll find alter­nate unused images and the ad campaign’s droll cap­tions describ­ing Tatiana tak­ing cof­fee breaks from some mun­dane errand or chore. The com­men­tary, though amus­ing, is hard­ly nec­es­sary. We can imag­ine dozens of sto­ries embed­ded in each pan­el. The abil­i­ty to cre­ate such com­plex and evoca­tive illus­tra­tions, every one a world with­in a world, has always set Moe­bius ahead of his peers and many imi­ta­tors.

via Trip­Wire/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

Métal hurlant: The Huge­ly Influ­en­tial French Com­ic Mag­a­zine That Put Moe­bius on the Map & Changed Sci-Fi For­ev­er

Behold Moe­bius’ Many Psy­che­del­ic Illus­tra­tions of Jimi Hen­drix

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Behold Moebius’ Many Psychedelic Illustrations of Jimi Hendrix

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Music | January 17th, 2019


The 1995 release of posthu­mous Jimi Hen­drix com­pi­la­tion Voodoo Soup has divid­ed fans and crit­ics for over two decades now. But what­ev­er its mer­its, its cov­er art should hold an hon­ored place in every Hen­drix fan’s col­lec­tion. Drawn by the leg­endary cult com­ic artist Moe­bius from a pho­to­graph of Hen­drix eat­ing soup in France, it cap­tures the sound Hen­drix was mov­ing toward at the end of his life—his head explod­ing in flames, or mush­room clouds, or pink psy­che­del­ic bronchial tubes, or what­ev­er. The image comes from a larg­er gate­fold, excerpt­ed below, which Moe­bius drew for the French dou­ble LP Are You Experienced/Axis: Bold as Love in 1975.

Jour­nal­ist Jean-Nöel Coghe was sup­pos­ed­ly very upset that he did not even receive men­tion for tak­ing the orig­i­nal pho­to, but in the nineties he and Moe­bius came togeth­er again for a project that would do them both cred­it, a book called Emo­tions élec­triques that Coghe wrote of his expe­ri­ences trav­el­ing through France as Hendrix’s guide dur­ing the Experience’s first tour of the coun­try in 1967.

Moe­bius pro­vid­ed the book’s illus­tra­tions, many of which you can see below, “each of them,” as the pub­lish­er’s descrip­tion has it, “imag­in­ing Hen­drix in a clas­sic Moe­bius land­scape of dreams.”

 

Obvi­ous­ly a huge Hen­drix fan, Moe­bius is in many ways as respon­si­ble for the psy­che­del­ic space race of the 1970s as the gui­tarist him­self. His work in the French com­ic mag­a­zine Métal hurlant—Heavy Met­al in the Amer­i­can version—epitomized the sci-fi and fan­ta­sy ele­ments that came to dom­i­nate heavy rock. His work with Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky on the Chilean vision­ary filmmaker’s abort­ed Dune is the stuff of leg­end.

Moe­bius had illus­trat­ed album cov­ers since the ear­ly sev­en­ties, most­ly those of Euro­pean artists. But his cre­ations as a mag­a­zine and comics illus­tra­tor (and film sce­nar­ist) have the most endur­ing appeal for much the same rea­son as Hendrix’s music. They are both unpar­al­leled mas­ters and nat­ur­al sto­ry­tellers whose imag­ined worlds are so rich­ly detailed and con­sis­tent­ly sur­pris­ing they have birthed entire gen­res. The two may have crossed paths too late to actu­al­ly work togeth­er, but I like to think Moe­bius car­ried on the spir­it of Hen­drix in a visu­al form.

It may not be com­mon knowl­edge that Hen­drix hat­ed his album cov­ers, leav­ing detailed notes about them for his record com­pa­ny, who ignored them. His own choic­es, one must admit, includ­ing a Lin­da McCart­ney pho­to for the cov­er of Elec­tric Lady­land that makes the band look like they’re on the set of a pro­to-Sesame Street, do not exact­ly sell the records’ trea­sures. But Jimi might have loved Moe­bius’ inter­pre­ta­tions of his head­space, a visu­al con­tin­u­a­tion of a promi­nent strand of Hen­drix’s imag­i­na­tion. See all of Moe­bius’ Hen­drix illus­tra­tions here.

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Métal hurlant: The Huge­ly Influ­en­tial French Com­ic Mag­a­zine That Put Moe­bius on the Map & Changed Sci-Fi For­ev­er

Icon­ic Footage of Jimi Hen­drix Play­ing “Hey Joe” Ren­dered in the Style of Moe­bius, with the Help of Neur­al Net­work Tech­nol­o­gy

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view Ani­mat­ed (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Every Spider-Man Movie and TV Show Explained By Kevin Smith

in Comics/Cartoons | December 20th, 2018

Look, I’ve nev­er been a fan of Kevin Smith’s ooooooov-rah, per se, but I will nev­er crit­i­cize his abil­i­ty to spin a bloody good yarn. He’s fun­ny, engag­ing, charm­ing, and knows his pop cul­ture. WIRED also knows this, so when on the eve of the (appar­ent­ly very good) Spi­der-verse movie, they called on Smith to sit down and run through every Spi­der-man Movie and TV Show and opin­ion­ate all over that mess. (And because Sony’s con­tract with the Mar­vel super­hero is up, this might be a nice demar­ca­tion line.)

I stepped on board the Spidey-train when he appeared as a char­ac­ter on PBS’ The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny, the edu­ca­tion­al kids show that would screen after Sesame Street. As Smith points out, this Spidey was mute, a red and blue mime who only spoke in thought bal­loons, some of which oth­ers could lit­er­al­ly read as they hung above his head.

Around the same time the ‘60s car­toon was also screen­ing, copy­ing the rogue’s gallery of vil­lains well known from the Steve Ditko-Stan Lee com­ic book. Both this and the Elec­tric Com­pa­ny Spideys had the best theme songs, and they still haven’t been topped. (If you’re a Gen‑X’er, you can drop the lyrics on request, any­time).

Now, before this, there had been a few live action attempts to bring the wall-crawler to the big screen but, well, they’re as cheesy and not-good as you might expect, so for the peri­od dur­ing the ‘90s, Spi­der-man stayed an ani­mat­ed con­cern. The high­light of the ’94-’98 ani­mat­ed series, accord­ing to Smith, is the final meta episode, where Spi­der-man cross­es over into “our” real­i­ty and meets Stan Lee, while Lee’s wife Joan played Madame Web.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Smith gloss­es over the three oth­er ani­mat­ed series that have run since then because of the begin­ning of live-action Spi­der-man films made with the pow­er and mon­ey of the mod­ern block­buster. (Inter­est­ing, I say, because crit­ics are now declar­ing the new ani­mat­ed film the best of the bunch).

Smith isn’t wild about the first Sam Rai­mi film in 2002. He ques­tions the deci­sion to cov­er up emo­tive actor Willem Dafoe with a Green Gob­lin mask for the final bat­tle. How­ev­er, he not only likes the sequel, but calls it “one of the great­est super­hero films ever made” because it nev­er los­es sight of the man behind the Spidey mask.

He chas­tis­es Sony for the need­less 2012 reboot, just five years from the final film in the Rai­mi tril­o­gy. His prob­lem: Garfield’s Spi­der-man is great, his Peter Park­er is not. The oppo­site is true with McGuire.

Final­ly, they got it right with Tom Holland’s ver­sion in Avengers: Civ­il War, that mix of geeky stu­dent by day, cocky quip­ster by night. Plus, as Smith points out, they gave him his Queens accent back. (Mar­vel comics, at least the first cou­ple of years, was always entrenched in a real New York City as back­ground.)

“The real charm of that character…is that he’s cov­ered from head-to-toe,” Kevin says, para­phras­ing Stan Lee. “You don’t know who he is or what he is. You don’t know if he’s a boy, a girl, you don’t know what he is, what race, creed, col­or, any­thing. So any kid read­ing that book can see them­selves as the char­ac­ter.”

And that leads us to the cur­rent film, which Smith can tell you about him­self. It fol­lows that uni­ver­sal­i­ty of the char­ac­ter and explodes it out to a bunch of alter­na­tive uni­verse ver­sions of all races, gen­ders, and genus.

“We live in such a gold­en era (for com­ic book movies),” Smith declares and even in a world of Mar­vel burnout, you want to believe him. Maybe the new film is the way for­ward: more diver­si­ty, more fun, more talk­ing ani­mals.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear an Hour of the Jazzy Back­ground Music from the Orig­i­nal 1967 Spi­der-Man Car­toon

The Math­e­mat­ics of Spi­der­man and the Physics of Super­heroes

The Reli­gious Affil­i­a­tion of Com­ic Book Heroes

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Free: Download 15,000+ Free Golden Age Comics from the Digital Comic Museum

in Comics/Cartoons | November 21st, 2018

The Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um offers free access to hun­dreds of pre-1959 com­ic books, uploaded by users who often offer his­tor­i­cal research and com­men­tary along­side high-qual­i­ty scans.

The site’s mod­er­a­tors and admin­is­tra­tors are par­tic­u­lar­ly care­ful to avoid post­ing non-pub­lic-domain comics (a com­pli­cat­ed des­ig­na­tion, as described in this forum thread). The result­ing archive is devoid of many famil­iar com­ic-book char­ac­ters, like those from Mar­vel, D.C., or Dis­ney.

On the oth­er hand, because of this restric­tion, the archive offers an inter­est­ing win­dow into the themes of less­er-known comics in the Gold­en Age—romance, West­erns, com­bat, crime, super­nat­ur­al and hor­ror. The cov­ers of the romance comics are great exam­ples of pop­u­lar art.

Inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing how home­front Amer­i­can cul­ture reflect­ed fight­ing in World War II and Korea, and the anx­i­eties of the Cold War? The archive is full of titles like “Fight­ing Yank”  (or “War­front”) that trade on true sto­ries of past com­bat and present-day engage­ments. Many, like these “Atom­ic Attack” books from the ear­ly 1950s, have a dis­tinc­tive Cold War fla­vor, with sci­ence-fic­tion­al imag­in­ings of futur­is­tic com­bat. (“See how the war of 1972 will be fought! The war that YOU, your­self, might have to take part in…”)

The muse­um holds some unex­pect­ed and for­got­ten titles, like the Mad Mag­a­zine knock-off “Eh.” Here you can see how look­ing at a com­ic that was­n’t suc­cess­ful enough to have a last­ing lega­cy (and, there­fore, a renewed copy­right) can be enlight­en­ing in and of itself. What sub­jects did “Eh” cov­er that Mad might have avoid­ed?

The DCM asks users to reg­is­ter and log in before down­load­ing com­ic files. Reg­is­tra­tion is free, and—for now—there’s no lim­it on the num­ber of titles you can down­load. You can enter the archive here.

When you’re there, make sure you vis­it the site’s ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of those noto­ri­ous ‘Pre-Code’ Hor­ror comics of the 50s. Also see the Archives and Col­lec­tions area where artists of note have been giv­en their own indi­vid­ual spot­light.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March, 2013.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Com­ic Books Turn Kids Onto Physics: Start with the Adven­tures of Niko­la Tes­la

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

The Pulp Fic­tion Archive: The Cheap, Thrilling Sto­ries That Enter­tained a Gen­er­a­tion of Read­ers (1896–1946) 

Rebec­ca Onion is a writer and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing in Philadel­phia. She runs Slate.com’s his­to­ry blog, The Vault. Fol­low her on Twit­ter: @rebeccaonion.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

R.I.P. Stan Lee: Take His Free Online Course “The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact On Pop Culture”

in Comics/Cartoons, History, Online Courses | November 13th, 2018

“I grew up in an exurb where it took near­ly an hour to walk to the near­est shop, to the near­est place to eat, to the library,” remem­bers writer Adam Cadre. “And the steep hills made it an exhaust­ing walk.  That meant that until I turned six­teen, when school was not in ses­sion I was stuck at home.  This was often not a good place to be stuck. Stan Lee gave me a place to hang out.” Many oth­er for­mer chil­dren of exur­ban Amer­i­ca — as well as every­where else — did much of their grow­ing up there as well, not just in the uni­verse of Mar­vel Comics but in those of the comics and oth­er forms of cul­ture to which it gave rise or influ­enced, most of them either direct­ly or indi­rect­ly shaped by Lee, who died yes­ter­day at the age of 95.

“His crit­ics would say that for me to thank Stan Lee for cre­at­ing the Mar­vel Uni­verse shows that I’ve fall­en for his self-promotion,” Cadre con­tin­ues, “​that it was Jack Kir­by and Steve Ditko and his oth­er col­lab­o­ra­tors who sup­plied the dynam­ic, expres­sive art­work and the epic sto­ry­lines that made the Mar­vel Uni­verse so com­pelling.”

Mar­vel fans will remem­ber that Ditko, co-cre­ator with Lee of Spi­der-Man and Doc­tor Strange, died this past sum­mer. Kir­by, whose count­less achieve­ments in comics include co-cre­at­ing the Fan­tas­tic Four, the X‑Men, and the Hulk with Lee, passed away in 1994. (Kir­by’s death, as I recall, was the first I’d ever heard about on the inter­net.)

Those who take a dim­mer view of Lee’s career see him as hav­ing done lit­tle more artis­tic work than putting dia­logue into the speech bub­bles. But like no small num­ber of oth­er Mar­vel Uni­verse habitués, Cadre “didn’t read super­hero comics for the fights or the cos­tumes or the trips to Asgard and Atti­lan. I read them for fan­ta­sy that read like real­i­ty, for the inter­play of wild­ly dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties — ​and for the wise­cracks.” And what made super­hero sto­ries the right deliv­ery sys­tem for that inter­play of per­son­al­i­ties and those wise­cracks? You’ll find the answer in “The Rise of Super­heroes and Their Impact On Pop Cul­ture,” an online course from the Smith­son­ian, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture and still avail­able to take at your own pace in edX’s archives, cre­at­ed and taught in part by Lee him­self. You can watch the trail­er for the course at the top of the post.

If you take the course, its pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als promise, you’ll learn the answers to such ques­tions as “Why did super­heroes first arise in 1938 and expe­ri­ence what we refer to as their “Gold­en Age” dur­ing World War II?,” “How have com­ic books, pub­lished week­ly since the mid-1930’s, mir­rored a chang­ing Amer­i­can soci­ety, reflect­ing our mores, slang, fads, bias­es and prej­u­dices?,” and “When and how did com­ic book art­work become accept­ed as a true Amer­i­can art form as indige­nous to this coun­try as jazz?” Whether or not you con­sid­er your­self a “true believ­er,” as Lee would have put it, there could be few bet­ter ways of hon­or­ing an Amer­i­can icon like him than dis­cov­er­ing what makes his work in super­hero comics — the field to which he ded­i­cat­ed his life, and the one which has tak­en more than its fair share of deri­sion over the decades — not just a reflec­tion of the cul­ture but a major influ­ence on it as well.

Enroll in “The Rise of Super­heroes and Their Impact On Pop Cul­ture” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

The Great Stan Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

Stan Lee Reads “The Night Before Christ­mas,” Telling the Tale of San­ta Claus, the Great­est of Super Heroes

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from theCom­ic Book Plus Archive

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Stan Lee (RIP) Gets an Exuberant Fan Letter from 15-Year-Old George R.R. Martin, 1963

in Comics/Cartoons, Letters | November 13th, 2018

martin-LETTER

The let­ter above goes to show two things. George Ray­mond Richard Mar­tin, oth­er­wise known as George R.R. Mar­tin, or sim­ply as GRRM, had fan­ta­sy and writ­ing in his blood from a young age. Decades before he wrote his fan­ta­sy nov­el series A Song of Ice and Fire, which HBO adapt­ed into Game of Thrones, a 15-year-old George R. Mar­tin sent a fan let­ter to the now depart­ed Stan Lee and Jack Kir­by, the leg­endary cre­ators of Spi­der-Man, the Hulk, Thor, the X‑Men and the Fan­tas­tic Four (called “F.F.” in the let­ter).

When you read the note, you can imme­di­ate­ly tell that young Mar­tin was steeped in sci-fi and fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture. He could also string togeth­er some fair­ly com­plex sen­tences dur­ing his teenage years — sen­tences that many adults would strug­gle to write today. Above, you can watch Mar­tin read his 1963 fan let­ter note, and Stan Lee’s short reply: “We might want to quit while we’re ahead. Thanks for your kind words, George.” We’re all sure­ly glad that Lee and Kir­by kept going.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

The Great Stan Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

See Carl Sagan’s Child­hood Sketch­es of The Future of Space Trav­el

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Learn Anatomy Through a Pictorial History of James Bond 007

in Art, Biology, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Science | October 15th, 2018

Remem­ber the scene in Tomor­row Nev­er Dies when sexy dou­ble agent Wai Lin hand­cuffs James Bond to the show­er and leaves him there?

Alter­nate­ly, remem­ber “Table 9” from anatomist Bernard Siegfried Albi­nus’ 1749 Tab­u­lae sceleti et mus­cu­lo­rum cor­poris humani?

Kri­o­ta Will­berg, an edu­ca­tor, mas­sage ther­a­pist at Memo­r­i­al Sloan Ket­ter­ing Can­cer Cen­ter, and author of Draw Stronger: Self-Care For Car­toon­ists and Oth­er Visu­al Artists, is suf­fi­cient­ly steeped in both Bond and Albi­nus to iden­ti­fy strik­ing visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ties.

That show­er scene is just one icon­ic moment that Will­berg includ­ed in her mini-com­ic, Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007.

Agent Bond’s sar­to­r­i­al sense is a cru­cial aspect of his appeal, but Will­berg, a Bond fan who’s seen every film in the canon at least five times, digs below that cel­e­brat­ed sur­face, peel­ing back skin to expose the struc­tures that lie beneath.

Sean Connery’s Bond exhibits a vet­er­an artist’s mod­el’s still­ness wait­ing for the right time to make his move against Dr. No’s “eight-legged assas­sin.” Even before Will­berg got involved, it was an excel­lent show­case for his pecs, delta, and ster­n­ocleit­o­mas­toid mus­cles.

Leav­ing her flayed Bonds in their cin­e­mat­ic set­tings are a way of pay­ing trib­ute to the antique anatom­i­cal illus­tra­tions Will­berg admires for their dynamism:

…sit­ting in a chair, tak­ing a stroll, hold­ing its skin or organs out of the way so that the read­er can get a bet­ter look at deep­er struc­tures. Some of the cadav­ers are very flir­ty. The pic­tures remind us that we are the organs we see on the page. They do stuff! 

The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine select­ed Will­berg as its first Artist in Res­i­dence, because of the way she explores the inter­sec­tions between body sci­ences and artis­tic prac­tices. (Oth­er projects include an intri­cate needle­point X‑Ray of her own root canal and Stitchin’ Time!, a fic­tion­al encounter in which Aulus Cor­nelius Cel­sus (c. 25 BCE – c. 50 CE), author of  De Med­i­c­i­na, and sur­geon Aelius Galenus (129  – c. 200 CE) team up to repair a dis­em­bow­eled glad­i­a­tor.

Is there a squea­mish bone in this artist’s body?

All signs point to no.

Asked to pick a favorite Bond movie, she names Goldfin­ger for the mythol­o­gy con­cern­ing the infa­mous scene where­in a beau­ti­ful woman is paint­ed gold, but also 2006’s Casi­no Royale for keep­ing the tor­ture scene from the book:

I didn’t think they’d have the balls! Sor­ry! Poor taste but I couldn’t resist. Although Tim­o­thy Dal­ton phys­i­cal­ly resem­bled Bond as described in the books, most of the movies make Bond out to be smarter than Flem­ing wrote him. I think Judy Dench called Daniel Craig, Casi­no Royale’s Bond, a “blunt instru­ment” which is pret­ty much how he’s writ­ten. He’s tough and lucky and that’s why he’s sur­vived. Plus the machete fight is great. 

Some­times peo­ple get too pris­sy about the body. I am meat and liv­er and sausage and so are you. Your body is inescapable while you live. You should get to know it. Think about it in dif­fer­ent con­texts. It’s fun!

When From Rus­sia With Love’s Rosa Klebb punch­es mas­ter assas­sin, Red Grant, in the stom­ach, she is squish­ing a liv­ing liv­er through liv­ing abdom­i­nal mus­cles.

Hard copies of Kri­o­ta Willberg’s anato­my-based comics, includ­ing Pic­to­r­i­al Anato­my of 007, are avail­able from Bird­cage Bot­tom Books.

Lis­ten to an hour-long inter­view with Comics Alter­na­tive in which Will­berg dis­cuss­es her New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine res­i­den­cy, anatom­i­cal research, and the ways in which humor informs her approach here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Spell­bind­ing Art of Human Anato­my: From the Renais­sance to Our Mod­ern Times

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

When Andy Warhol Made a Batman Superhero Movie (1964)

in Comics/Cartoons, Film | October 4th, 2018

Each of us has a favorite Bat­man movie. My own alle­giance still lies with the one Tim Bur­ton direct­ed in 1989, a pro­to­type of the mod­ern dark super­hero block­buster in which Jack Nichol­son made quite an impact as the Jok­er. But Heath Ledger made an even big­ger one in The Dark Knight, an espe­cial­ly beloved entry in Christo­pher Nolan’s acclaimed Bat­man pic­tures of the 21st cen­tu­ry. These days, with enough dis­tance, some even admit to enjoy­ing Joel Schu­macher’s ultra-campy takes on Bat­man from the late 1990s, or their spir­i­tu­al pre­de­ces­sor Bat­man: The Movie from 1966, an exten­sion of the self-par­o­dy­ing tele­vi­sion series star­ring Adam West. But before all of them there was Bat­man Drac­u­la, direct­ed by no less a vision­ary — and no less a Bat­man fan — than Andy Warhol.

Star­ring Warhol’s fel­low exper­i­men­tal film­mak­er Jack Smith in both title roles, Bat­man Drac­u­la pits the Caped Cru­sad­er of com­ic-book fame against the vam­pir­ic Tran­syl­van­ian count of leg­end, the mil­lion­aire vig­i­lante who seems to fear noth­ing but bats against the immor­tal recluse who spends much of his time in the form of a bat.

Smith may bear a faint resem­blance to Chris­t­ian Bale, Nolan’s Bat­man, but there all aes­thet­ic resem­blance to the “real” Bat­man movies ends. Shot in black and white on var­i­ous rooftops around New York and Long Island as well as in Warhol’s “Fac­to­ry,” Warhol’s unau­tho­rized approach to the mate­r­i­al seems to get as abstract and spon­ta­neous as most of the cin­e­ma put togeth­er by his coterie — or at least the sur­viv­ing footage makes it look that way. Though Warhol did com­plete Bat­man Drac­u­la, he only showed it at a few of his art shows before DC Comics called and demand­ed an imme­di­ate end to its screen­ings.

Nobody has found a com­plete print since, but you can watch a few min­utes of the sur­viv­ing footage cut to “The Noth­ing Song” by the Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (a much more endur­ing prod­uct of the Fac­to­ry) in the video at the top of the post. Below that we have the LowRes Wün­der­bred video essay “Decon­struct­ing Andy Warhol’s Bat­man Drac­u­la,” which pro­vides more details on the mak­ing of Bat­man Drac­u­la and its con­text in the careers of Warhol and his col­lab­o­ra­tors. The Film His­to­ries video on Bat­man Drac­u­la just above gets into how the movie opened up a “Pan­do­ra’s box” of unau­tho­rized Bat­man and Bat­man-like movies, includ­ing The Wild World of Bat­woman and the Fil­ipino Alyas Bat­man at Robin. So many Bat­man projects, offi­cial and oth­er­wise, now exist, and so many more remain to be made. But will any of the mate­ri­al’s future stew­ards push its artis­tic bound­aries as much as Warhol did?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of Bat­man in Cin­e­ma: From 1939 to Present

City of Scars: The Impres­sive Bat­man Fan Film Made for $27,000 in 21 Days

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Warhol’s Cin­e­ma: A Mir­ror for the Six­ties (1989)

The Uncen­sored Andy Warhol-Direct­ed Video for The Cars’ Hit “Hel­lo Again” (NSFW)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast