Saturday, June 30, 2007

Pope on a rope


Okay so PAUL POPE's work appears in two prominent magazines just out on stands this week. First up is a nice full page illo leading off a segment in WIRED about the sure-to-be-wretched Transformers movie. More interesting is a two-page Pope comics commissioned by GQ in which in their own words the magazine asked some of America's best graphic novelists to give us a personal look at their favorite places on earth. Unsurprisingly perhaps, Japanophile Pope takes us on a quick tour of Tokyo.

It's a pleasant if too short piece. One thing that's amusing is that Pope opens with a shot he at this point almost seems fetishistic about--a closeup of a pair of hands poring over a map. It seems Pope uses some very close variation of this shot in almost every comic he draws (or at least his THB comics). As for the Tokyo travelogue Pope recommends cheap overnighters in "love hotels", says that the "public restrooms in Japan are genuinely spartan, featuring holes in the tiled floors and BYOTP (ugh, good reason to stuff those fast food napkins they always give you too many of in your pockets). Pope also decries the lack of good vintage clothing stores in Japan, admits a fascination with the rituals of Sumo, says to avoid the white noise of the pachinko parlors, and instead partake of Kobe beef.

Lazarus Awake

Well Google's takeover of Blogger somehow fucked up my log-in many months ago and part of the reason I've posted nothing since january was an inability to log-in (I tried every method of fix, albeit half-heartedly and when it wasn't rejecting my password it was saying my blog no longer existed. The blog existed and people could read it, I just couldn't EDIT it).

So I'm finally relenting and starting a new one...shit. Don't know why exactly...my life is still in ruins (things have never been worse financially and socially and professionally...and emotionally). But given the reading I've been doing and the interesting tidbits that I still glean about comics (despite having ignored all internet message boards for the past 9-months) I still get the urge to share, as I did in the library today.

So welcome back all (none) of you. I'm just whistling in the desert.

Original TCI blog some good stuff here

ORIGINAL BLOG (archives I guess)

When blogspot sold to Google I lost the ability to edit the blog or log in properly. Maybe I'm dumb (ok well that's a given) and certainly I haven't been motivated, but I can't figure out how to edit it now. So I'm giving in to Goole and opening a new blog under my Gmail account.