Art Spiegelman’s MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic hits shelves this week, and being huge fans of Spiegelman (and particularly Maus) we couldn’t be more excited. First published twenty-five years ago, Maus has become a modern classic, though it is at times a difficult and disturbing novel. MetaMaus delves into the history of the book with hundreds of pages of answered questions and supporting information and is sure to satiate any fan — at least for a while. If you’re anything like us, you’ll need something to keep your graphic novel kick going when you come up for air, so we’ve put together a list of some of our favorite disturbingly brilliant graphic novels, including the famous Maus. Click through to see our picks, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorites in the comments.
Chances are, when an art world big shot dabbles in cover design, something curious happens. Last year, Superflat art superstar Takashi Murakami covered POP Magazine, flinging a 28-year-old Britney Spears back into a school daze à la fuzzy lightning and manga-inspired styling. It was very awkward, yet gloriously so. Even though Damien Hirst can’t ever resist slapping his “signature” butterflies on everything, this year he had said “signature” butterfly tattooed on a most intimate region of a model volunteer for Garage Magazine. From vintage Dalí Vogue work to Chris Ware’s critical, brilliant and ultimately rejected Fortune cover, here are just some of the arty covers out there for you to flip through. Happy browsing!
We don’t really expect much out of the Hard Rock Cafe chain. Bad, overpriced food? Check. Second-tier music memorabilia? Yup. And who could forget the hippie-turned-yuppie-friendly playlist straight out of the Rolling Stone canon? But, in a story that’s been making the music-critic Twitter rounds today, Hard Rock has managed to impress us with the schlocky depths of their rock nostalgia.
As OC Weekly reports, Hard Rock’s Argentina branch has launched a theoretically cool ad campaign, in which the artists Damian Garofalo and Hugo Orita draw the comic-style stories behind classic songs like The Beatles’ “Let It Be” and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” It seems super-weird, however, that the company signed off on the ad below, which tells the tragic story of Eric Clapton’s alcoholism and his young son’s tragic death. Not only is it generally in poor taste to capitalize on the tale of a little kid who died by falling out a window, but we have a hard time believing it will put anyone in the mood to eat an overcooked burger while Pink Floyd blares in the background, either. See the poster here.
If we had a nickel for every superhero comic tattoo we saw, we’d be set for life. So, while DC and Marvel are great and all, it’s always much more exciting to spot an arm adorned with images inspired by an indie or web comic artist we love. After the jump, we’ve rounded up ten of our favorites, from Daniel Clowes and Adrian Tomine to Frank Miller and R. Crumb.
When we saw Vulture’s post on the top 10 comics of 2010, we were surprised that many of our favorites didn’t make the cut. But obviously, a person’s taste in comic books can be extremely subjective. Forget the battle between DC and Marvel, some people only read graphic novels while others are devoted to manga. That’s why we thought it would be interesting to talk to Gabriel Fowler, owner of Desert Island in Williamsburg, about which new work created the most excitement among his regular customers this year. To be clear, this is not based on sales numbers, just the first 10 releases that came to his mind when we asked. And while you should consider the entire list required reading (or in certain cases, viewing) it’s in no particular order. Enjoy!
Forget all this talk about the death of print media for a moment. Tomorrow a newspaper is born in San Francisco. Issue 33 of McSweeney’s Quarterly will be a one-time-only, old-fashioned broadsheet — the San Francisco Panorama. Its pages will measure 22 by 15 inches. Here’s what this beautiful beast will cover: “It’ll have news (actual news, tied to the day it comes out) and sports and arts coverage, and comics (sixteen pages of glorious, full-color comics, from Chris Ware and Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman and many others besides) and a magazine and a weekend guide, and will basically be an attempt to demonstrate all the great things print journalism can (still) do, with as much first-rate writing and reportage and design (and posters and games and on-location Antarctic travelogues) as we can get in there. Expect journalism from Andrew Sean Greer, fiction from George Saunders and Roddy Doyle, dispatches from Afghanistan, and much, much more.”
Exciting and ambitious for an 11-year-old literary journal, right? That’s why we sat down with Oscar Villalon, McSweeney’s publisher, to get the back story on the project.
