Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “comics”
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for XIII Tome 9 : Pour Maria, by Vance et Van Hamme
- kudos:C’est méchant de dire que cet album m’a été utile pour combattre l’insomnie hier soir ? Bon, c’est exaggérer un peu (n’importe quel livre aurait suffi), mais mes sentiments complexes envers cette série continuent. C’est assez intéressant de revisiter l’Amérique latine, et il aurait servi comme occasion de critiquer le militarisme américain, mais pourquoi donc éléver un Irlando-Américain comme « sauveur blanc » pour ces rebelles ? Je continue à lire, mais je continue à me demander si j’aurais du me mettre à collectionner une autre série de bd.
- kudos:
Well, at least some of today’s comic strip characters also have a “non-traditional instruction” day.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 pour XIII Tome 8 : Treize Contre Un, par Vance et Van Hamme
- kudos:Je reprends donc cette série en lisant les albums que j’ai en format physique. C’est comme avant : J’aime l’art, et il y a des éléments de l’histoire qui m’intriguent, mais ce n’est rien de spécial.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 11), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
- kudos:I think I’m all caught up on TPBs now. It looks like a new one ought to be coming soon, but I might start reading issue to issue, because it’s just that good.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 10), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
- kudos:Strong return to the series after the major twists in Volume 9. It does a good job of continuing the themes of the series while still shaking things up—and continuing to deliver major changes.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 9), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
- kudos:Comics do a lot of dumb things to keep readers hooked, shake up the story, etc. When Saga does them, they work. I knew the twists in this episode were coming, but wow did they still land.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 8), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
- kudos:I say this about a lot of Saga, but this volume in particular shouldn’t be as good as it is. And yet…
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 7), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
- kudos:Sometimes depressing art is the best art, and I felt that way about this volume. Saga is violent sometimes, but it never glorifies that violence, and that’s one of its strengths.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 6), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
- kudos:Like with my first readthrough, I’m noticing that every volume is good, but some volumes are just a cut above. This is one of them. What a series.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 3), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
- kudos:This series moves quick and never lets up on the weird. I don’t know how it so successfully keeps me interested in bizarre characters in bonkers situations, but it does.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 2), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
- kudos:This series combines dumb and crazy with genuinely moving, and I’m really glad I’ve decided to reread it all.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 1), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
- kudos:I had been thinking about rereading this for a while, and there’s nothing like a transatlantic flight to get you to finally do it (even though there are two other books I “ought to” be reading. I continue to be amazed that I like this series—and how much I like it. There are so many things about it that shouldn’t work (at least for my tastes), but it somehow goes all the way around and back to captivating.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 pour Shenzhen, par Guy Delisle
- kudos:J’aime beaucoup les albums de Guy Delisle, et j’avais comme objectif de m’en offrir un lors de ma visite en France. J’aurais préféré acheter « Chroniques birmanes » car je ne l’ai pas encore lu, mais en trouvant celui-ci, je me suis dit que je ne l’avais jamais qu’en anglais, une fois, trop vite dans une bibliothèque. J’aime bien sa façon de parler de son travail, sa vie, et ses expériences dans un seul album.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤 pour XIII Tome 7 : La nuit du 3 août, par Vance et Van Hamme
- kudos:Avec l’album précédent, j’avais retrouvé pas mal de mon amour pour cette série, malgré tous ses problèmes. Pourtant, celui-ci (qui sert comme suite directe) m’a encore embêté. Le pire scène de toute l’histoire, c’est ici, quand on montre une tentative de lynchage pour Jones, une personnage qui est toujours capable sauf quand on veut qu’elle soit sauvé par XIII. Répéter des insultes racistes ne me plaît pas beaucoup comme divertissement (même si on veut condamner les racistes), et d’une perspective féministe, le fait qu’elle est en sous-vêtements pendant la tentative est insupportable.
media I consumed in 2024
- kudos:Setting up media reviews for my blog is one of the best side projects that I’ve done in the past couple of years, and I’m happy to be doing a yearly recap for 2024 like I did for 2023. In fact, I started a new review workflow for listening to radio shows, which feels like a bonus (and helps take away from my lower read count this time around). Before my 2025 edition of this, I hope to revamp my review posting some.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Tintin and the fascists'
- kudos:As someone who once owned Tintin au pays des Soviets (but also sold it more out of distaste of the art than the politics) and who is currently rereading a less-but-still-problematic classic Belgian bande dessinée, I really appreciated these reflections. I hadn’t realized that Tintin was about to enter the public domain, and that’s exciting! I’m more optimistic that Tintin can be reclaimed from its fascist, racist roots than Werd is.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 pour XIII Tome 6 : Le dossier Jason Fly, par Vance et Van Hamme
- kudos:Ce tome est encore plus difficile à classer. Comme « thriller », il est assez efficace, les nouveaux personnages sont intéressants, et les petits retours en arrière réussissent à donner du contexte et à accrocher le lecteur. Je continue à aimer l’art aussi. Par contre, le traitement des femmes dans la série devient encore moins supportable. Connaissant quelques femmes qui ont éprouvé beaucoup de douleur à cause de la stérilité, je ne suis pas forcément contre l’idée d’une femme fictive qui éprouve cette même douleur pour des raisons dramatiques.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 pour XIII Tome 5 : Rouge total, par Vance et Van Hamme
- kudos:Je me sens un peu déchiré là. C’était intéressant de voir la fin d’une certaine partie de la série, mais je suis toujours dérangé par les attitudes y présentes. Les personnages féminins dans l’histoire semblent n’exister que pour coucher avec XIII ou subir des menaces de viol. Même si tout cela est insupportable, il est intéressant de voir comment Vance et Van Hamme perçoivent les États-Unis. Quand XIII et Jones se vouvoient, je me demande ce que cela signifie, vu qu’on n’a pas les mêmes moyens de se parler en anglais.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 pour XIII Tome 4 : SPADS, par Vance et Van Hamme
- kudos:Bon, j’ai commencé cette relecture en espérant pouvoir défendre mon amour pour cette série malgré ses problèmes. Il est vrai qu’elle continue à être intéressant, mais le sexisme s’accroît, et ça devient se plus en plus difficile de justifier mon intérêt.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 pour XIII Tome 3: Toutes les larmes de l'enfer, par Vance et Van Hamme
- kudos:Bon, il y a quand-même des limites à mon amour pour cette série, et je n’ai jamais trop aimé cet album. Même si les éléments des complots se révèlent (et se révèlent assez intéressants), la cruauté de l’asile pénitentiaire où se trouve notre héros pendant l’album me dérange. Même si cette cruauté reflète la réalité de telles institutions, ce qui se déroule dans ces pages est pour amuser, et je ne le trouve pas très amusant.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 pour XIII Tome 2 : Là où va l'indien, par Vance et Van Hamme
- kudos:Dès le deuxième tome, on voit déjà combien cette série va se montrer stupide. On ajoute complot sur complot et identité sur identité. On condamne la guerre au Vietnam mais on fête la violence des militaires. Le lieutenant Jones est un paradoxe en elle même. C’est intéressant d’avoir une femme noire comme personnage important et capable, mais elle reste toujours quelqu’un avec qui XIII peut coucher. Je ne devrais sans doute pas pardonner tout cela à la série, mais j’aime beaucoup l’art, j’aime apprendre le langage de ce genre de BD, et il y a des séries qu’on aime malgré leur stupidité, er pour moi, c’est celle-ci.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 pour XIII Tome 1 : Le jour du soleil noir, par Vance et Van Hamme
- kudos:Ce n’est pas un chef d’œuvre, et il y a plein d’attitudes des années 80 qui me gênent dans la série, mais j’avoue que j’ai quand-même un grand amour pour ces albums. Ce premier, c’est bien intéressant, même si on a piqué les meilleures idées de « La mémoire dans la peau ». Bref, ça fait un moment que j’ai envie de relire ma petite collection, et c’est donc maintenant que je commence.
- kudos:
I recently started to read select newspaper comics to bring some fun into my morning, but this one is going to haunt me for a while.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Batman: Failsafe, by Chip Zdarsky
- kudos:I picked this up because it had Zdarsky’s name on it, and Jorge Jiménez’s art looked gorgeous. It was a fun read, but there are all the problems with it that I have with most modern Batman: It’s violent, absurd, and bogged down in continuity. I’m glad I tried it, but I don’t miss Batman all that much.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for How Comics Were Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page, by Glenn Fleishman
- kudos:I’ve listened to Glenn on The Incomparable for years, and a rule I try to follow is to pay for creative works from creators whose content I’ve often consumed for free. This sounded interesting, I do like comics, and so I bought it on a whim. I don’t think buying a print copy was ever in the cards for me, but I wish I’d at least read it on a bigger screen than my phone: It’s beautifully designed, and there are lots of visual goodies in there.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Animal Man 30th Anniversary Edition (Book Two), by Grant Morrison
- kudos:I like this volume better, but it still doesn’t quite land with me. I suspect it’s because I’m so used to metafiction in more recent comics that I don’t appreciate the sources they’re building on! At any rate, I’m glad I read these, but I can’t say that they were life-changing for me.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Animal Man 30th Anniversary Edition (Book One), by Grant Morrison
- kudos:I feel like I’ve said this about a lot of recent comics, but while I appreciate what this contributed and what it’s trying to do, I just don’t like it all that much. I’m interested in its efforts at social justice moralizing and metafiction, and I understand there will be more of that in the second volume (which I’m looking forward to), but there was too much that felt like lazy comics in here (sexist costumes, silly crossovers and events, two-dimensional characters).
- kudos:
Between a work conversation a few days ago and a podcast I’m listening to this morning, I’ve spent a lot of time this week wishing I were a regular comic book shop customer.
family's first comic con
- kudos:We are big fans of libraries in our family. In fact, live near the border between two counties, and we split our library visits between the Lexington Public Library (where we are residents) and the Jessamine County Public Library (where we are not). Luckily, Kentucky library systems tend to be fairly liberal in handing out library cards, so this isn’t usually a hassle (this was not the case in Central Michigan, but that’s a story for another time).
- kudos:
I appreciate Bible scholar Thomas Römer in an academic sense, but I also sometimes remember that I first discovered him through a French comics podcast where he showed up to say that he thought R. Crumb’s adaptation of Genesis could have been more imaginative, and that’s what really sold me on him.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Sex Criminals (The Complete Edition), by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky
- kudos:I am by nature pretty prudish, and even though I’ve been successfully dialing that down recently, I still feel weird about having read this and even weirder about acknowledging that on a public website. That said, I’ve always felt like I should give this a try since it’s well regarded in comics, and after a few failed attempts in earlier, more prudish years, I powered my way through this complete edition over the past few days.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Public Domain (Volume 1), by Chip Zdarsky
- kudos:I’ve passed this up a couple of times at the library, but an article at BoingBoing got me to give it a try. It’s a fun, meta take on the comics industry through comics themselves, even if it feels melodramatic at times.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for We Should Improve Society Somewhat, by Matt Bors
- kudos:Bors has some great political cartoons in this collection, but I also don’t like political cartoons in large doses, even if that doesn’t necessarily reflect on him!
slides for guest lecture on platform perspectives, digital labor, and the digital divide
- kudos:A few months ago, some colleagues reached out to ask if I would be willing to record a guest lecture for our library science program’s LIS 600: Information in Society. In particular, they were interested in having me record something for a week on the digital divide. I am conversant on that topic, but it’s not an area of specialty for me, so I was unsure about it until I realized that some of the readings for that week touch on topics like platform design that I am really interested in through my work on social media communities.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Astro City (MetroBook 4), by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, and Alex Ross
- kudos:It’s not the best of Astro City (and it feels awkward when trying to work with race and gender), but it’s not the worst either. I enjoyed reading some stories I hadn’t read before, and some of them were really well done.