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December 24, 2008
Sketchy Komiks: Leisure
It's Christmas Eve and it's time for an extra special edition of Sketchy Komiks™. This time instead of he customary one pager, it's a 16 page sketchbook comic! I've put this out as a mini in the past. But the books are sold out and I don't really have plans to reprint them. I'm still fond of this story and in the seasonal spirit of sharing and giving, I'm putting the whole thing online.
Posted by tomk at 12:36 AM | Comments (3)
December 23, 2008
Season's Greetings
This is the first time ever I got around to making an holiday card. It's a little thing, 3.3" x 5.2", printed with the Gocco system. After sending them to friends and family I've got a bunch left over. If anyone is interested in getting one of these cards, just send your mailing address to me (tomk {at} robot26.com) and I'll send one off. Offer valid until supplies last.
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Posted by tomk at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
Doodle Dump 005: Roman Cieslewicz
All of the drawings in this week's Doodle Dump™ edition are drawn from or inspired by images created by Roman Cieslewicz, one of my favorite designers and artists. If you're interested in that sort of thing he's well worth looking up. Click on images to see them larger.
Posted by tomk at 12:22 AM | Comments (1)
December 20, 2008
Left Hand of Darkness
Minneapolis is covered by a thick blanket of snow. The temperature is dropping. Winter has arrived for real. It's the perfect time to (re)read Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness again. We're all Gethenians.
Posted by tomk at 11:23 PM | Comments (1)
December 19, 2008
Sketchy Komiks: Popping Bubbles
A satisfying post on Modern Missives transposes the current art market insanity onto another older one: the legendary Tulipmania of 17th century Holland. It reminded me of another recent story about Damien Hirst laying off 20 people as a response to the financial crisis. Then I remembered that I had done a little comic about it in my sketchbook... and this is how today's installment of Sketchy Komiks™ came to be.
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Posted by tomk at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
December 18, 2008
UR : Utopia Report : No. 1
Cartoon Utopia #67 By Ron Regé, Jr
Introducing another new semi-regular feature on Trans-Atlantis: UR™ or the Utopia Report. If you've read this blog, or my comics before you already know that I'm very interested in the concept of Utopia. In the Utopia Report I'm going to start cataloging interesting articles, posts and snippets relating to the general topic of Utopia. As with my posts on the Apocalypse and Utopia in the past, this is to help me organize my thoughts and sources on the subject. It's mostly going to be undigested links and quotes, though I may occasionally comment on if the mood strikes. Hopefully someone out there will find this useful or at least interesting. OK, here it goes.
Momus recently alerted me to an interesting book The So-Called Utopia of the Centre Beaubourg -- An Interpretation by Luca Frei. From the publisher:
Appearing under the pseudonym Gustave Affeulpin in 1976, and coinciding with the inauguration of the Centre Beaubourg in Paris, Albert Meister's fictional text imagines a radical libertarian space submerged beneath the newly erected centerpiece of French Culture.
Student Works: Putting Utopia Back To Work is a fantastic and way too short interview with Behrang Behin about his Stack City student project. Behin's project for a sustainable city is pretty interesting in itself. The conversation veers into some illuminating utopian territory:
[…]abandoning the future as a cultural construct deprives us of a valuable instrument for defining ourselves in the present. You can learn a lot about the ethos of a society by looking at their science fiction. In that sense, the future is a place in our collective imagination, a terrain on which we fight our ideological battles and air out our common neuroses. This is precisely where architecture must play a role. Sustainable architecture shouldn't just be concerned with the tactical level of engineering efficiency and the preservation of resources, but should also participate in the invention of alternative futures in cultural imagination.
Finally, here's something I should have linked a while ago. Ron Regé, Jr has been doing some world building. On his blog, he's been posting drawings of his Cartoon Utopia. I don't know if these will be just a series of drawings, or if he will create come kind of utopian comic-book, but it's amazing to watch a whole world come into being before your eyes.
Posted by tomk at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
December 17, 2008
Recent Weather
Posted by tomk at 11:56 PM | Comments (2)
December 16, 2008
Bill Patten at Dusty's
Every other Saturday, at a small bar named Dusty's, in Northeast Minneapolis, Bill Patten and his posse perform a variety of songs. His musical tastes are eclectic, but impeccable. Watch especially for the Dick Dale meets Ennio Moricone mashup which frequently ends the night. No matter what mood I'm in when I get there, I always leave with a big smile on my face.
Posted by tomk at 12:00 PM | Comments (2)
December 15, 2008
Doodle Dump 004: Bored at Work
A brief suspension of Trans-Atlantis posting services comes to an end tonight. I spent the last few days in New York fully intending to keep up the almost-daily blogging activity. Blogging is an activity one can technically do from any location in the world provided there is a semi-reliable connection to the world wide web. But even a short trip demonstrates that the routine required to make even a simple blog post possible is easily disrupted. The lack of set schedule, late nights and odd sleeping hours are enemies of blogging... unless of course those things are routine...
In today's Doodle Dump™ all the drawings were done at work during meetings or boring moments.
Click on the images to view them larger.
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Posted by tomk at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2008
Sketchy Komiks: The Original Affluent Society
A bonus second Sketchy Komik™ this week. At couple of years back I was reading several books on primitive societies. The phrase The Original Affluent Society kept popping up in various texts. It referred to early hunter-gatherer cultures which worked the equivalent of four hours a day to feed and clothe themselves. The rest of the day was spent in leisure. The farm based cultures that followed spent a lot more time toiling in the fields, trying to get the earth to grow some food for them. Farming set the civilization on a work oriented course for the next several millennia. Only the wealthy ruling classes (artistocrats, etc.) were afforded any kind of leisure time, hence the phrase 'the leisure class'. The modern society we live in is the first time leisure has been experienced by a wide portion of the population. We work eight hours a day or more, I guess we still have some way to catch up to the hunter-gatherers.
This sketchbook comic really has very little to do with any of this.
Click to Enlarge
Posted by tomk at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
December 09, 2008
Momus
If you've been reading this blog for a while, you will already know that I'm a big fan of Momus. As of yesterday he is offering as a free download the first of his six albums recorded for the now defunct Creation label. The first one is The Poison Boyfriend, his second solo effort. Keep checking his blog during December for the the other five.
Posted by tomk at 12:18 AM | Comments (1)
December 08, 2008
Sketchy Komiks: Repressed
Another Installment of Sketchy Komiks™.
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Posted by tomk at 01:07 AM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2008
Doodle Dump 003
It's Sunday, and it's time for another Doodle Dump™. This week is a little different from previous ones. The entries are a little less 'doodley'. Most of the subjects are taken from Monocle Magazine, which claims to be be a publication for an "international audience hungry for information across a variety of sectors". I'm not exactly sure what it is that fascinates me about that magazine... yet. But I'm sure it'll be subject of a future post.
Posted by tomk at 02:13 AM | Comments (0)
December 06, 2008
Apocalyptic Vehicles: Segway Chariot
Gary Panter has been very visible lately thanks to a couple of recent awe-inspiring books. Much has been written about his abilities as a painter, cartoonist, TV art director, musician, light manipulator(?), etc. I'm sure this list is not exhaustive. I'm not going to add much to what's been written about him. I just received the new Jimbo mini-comic from Picturebox. It's short, but full of deadpan funny non-sequiturs and great drawing; another Gary Panter quality product. But it contains one image-concept that for me encapsulates the Panter sensibility: Jimbo cruising around on a Segway chariot … Segway chariot! It slices right through the Gordian Knot of late-capitalist post-apocalyptic imagination: modern/ancient, primitive/advanced, peaceful/war-like, banal/sublime, etc. In moments like this I'm tempted to view Gary Panter as an unsung postmodern conceptualist masquerading as a cartoonist… and I mean that in the best possible way! In any case, it's time to dig out Gary's post-apocalyptic Jimbo Gesamtkunstwerk for a closer read.
Posted by tomk at 01:57 AM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2008
Comics in Poland: Zbigniew Lengren
A looooong time ago I promised a series of post about Polish comics. I never got around to starting that until now. Without further delay, here's the first installment.
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One of the first comics I remember looking at was Professor Filutek by Zbigniew Lengren (1919-2003). It ran weekly in the Przekrój magazine from for over 50 years, a record run in Polish comics. It was very well know in Poland. It’s closest analog in the USA in terms of name recognition was probably Peanuts, though Filutek never achieved the kind of commercialized ubiquity of Peanuts merchandising. As far as I know there were no Filutek toys. Perhaps that was just how things worked in Communist Poland. Or maybe it’s because Filutek had a more ‘New Yorker’ sensibility and wasn’t translatable into plastic baubles. I don’t know. There was an animated cartoon though. I’ve never seen it.
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I recently stumbled on a small collection of the Professor Filutek strips on Abe Books. I was struck by a kind of gentle modernism of the strip that’s rarely seen in western cartoons. The art is minimalist, with that 1950’s pen line. The characters and objects and are rendered with precision and economy. Professor Filutek is a kind of cartoon version of Monsieur Hulot. He’s absent-minded, generous, a child-at-heart full of wonder at the everyday chaos of a rapidly changing world.
The introduction to the book claims that Lengren himself didn’t know the age of Professor Filutek. According to the cartoonist, the character’s beard may have been glued on! Filutek is often shown interacting with children. He waits in-line with kids to see a Tarzan movie, buys art supplies to help a boy create better graffiti on a wall, or entertains a toddler with a bicycle pump. But this isn’t a simple endorsement of childishness. In a famous strip, Professor Filutek corrects the spelling of vulgar graffiti. Write on walls if you must, but at least learn to how spell! Break rules, but do it well. In some ways he reminds me of eccentric Zen Masters; older than dirt, wise, but with the impishness of a child. The strip has a playful didacticism that’s seen in other cultural products of Eastern Europe of that time (like the Chechoslovak Krtek and Russian Cheburashka cartoons…). It encourages playful co-operation, generosity and good manners. It punishes selfishness, greed and rudeness. The possibility of human progress and betterment is palpable in every frame.
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I’m not sure if that’s true of all Filutek cartoons. The collection I have is from 1957. At that point in time, the communist project in Poland was still young. It was a few years after Stalin’s death and a only year after the death of Poland’s Stalinist Prime Minister Boleswlaw Bierut. These were the early years of the cultural thaw, de-stalinizaton and Roman Polanski’s early films. It was an optimistic time. It would be interesting to compare Lengren’s work from the 50 years of it’s existence. I wonder if Poland’s numerous political shifts would be detectable in the absent-minded life of Professor Filutek.
Zbigniew Lengren's memorial featuring Filutek's dog Fafik, his umbrella and hat in the Old Town in Toruń, Poland. Fafik hadn't appeared in the strip at the time the collection I have was published. Photo from Wikipedia.
Posted by tomk at 08:53 PM | Comments (3)
December 03, 2008
Sketchy Komiks: Life on the Moon
Welcome to another installment of Sketchy Komiks™.
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Posted by tomk at 05:23 PM | Comments (0)
December 02, 2008
The Caveman Cycle
I was commissioned to do some cavemen drawings based on the caveman of my Uncivilized Books logo. The commission didn't work out, so I was stuck with a bunch of sketches of cavemen. The only thing left to do was to ink them. All the originals are about 4x5 inches in size. If any caveman fans out there are interested, I'd be willing to part with one or all of them for a small fee (I'm cheap!). Email me tomk (at) robot26.com or post a comment below.
1. caveman walks I
2. caveman rockman
3. caveman walks II
4. caveman stonedman
5. caveman walks III
6. caveman walks IIII
Posted by tomk at 03:04 PM | Comments (3)
December 01, 2008
Felix Kubin
"I am a child living in the body of Juri Gagarin. He is empty like a corpse. His eyes move slowly like radars. First comes the idea then the technology. Children are angels, sometimes they fall into nothingness. I am Juri's ventriloquist." - Felix Kubin
Posted by tomk at 03:32 PM | Comments (1)