Something Good To Read on a Sunday

We made it to the second installment of the Sunday reads. I can now claim this is a regular feature along with New Books in the Shop on Wednesdays and the always irregular The Stupid Pages. If all goes well we should have the first full altcomics podcast on Tuesday August 29 with guest Shannon Wheeler.

Art

Simon Stålenhag’s third collection of narrative illustration, The Electric State, was successfully backed by over 5,000 Kickstarters. Here’s a profile on Boredpanda. He has a tumblr and all the usual sort of social stuff. It’s amazing work. A must for fans of Kilian Eng and Tatsuyuki Tanaka. I’ll be making sure we get his books in the Wow Cool shop. His previous books Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood are available elsewhere right now. BoredPanda is new to me… at first glance it looks like a woolier and more clickbaity Medium, but whatever.

From the excellent Comando Cómic blog by students at IES Avempace in Zaragoza, Spain comes this great process post by David Rubin detailing the creation of a spread in a recent Black Hammer from breakdowns to final color. Article in Spanish. It’s 2017, you’d be surprised how good machine translation has gotten. More books by David Rubin. I think this first came to me via Rick Quinn.

In related news: Jeff Lemire And David Rubin Launch Sherlock Frankenstein Miniseries In Black Hammer Universe This Fall.

A disturbing, but crucial read: GMOs Are Making an Agricultural Crisis in India Even Worse.
I am a big fan and advocate of comics reportage and will try to feature that sort of thing every week.

Music

Pitchfork reviews The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s. Your mileage may vary. This made me think what the 200 best comics of the 60s were, but then I work in a comic shop every day.

They are justified, and they are ancient. In the spirit of the occasion, I stole the following paragraph from Brooklyn Vegan: “Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, aka The KLF, marked their 23 year return as Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, with a three-day event/festival in Liverpool called “Welcome to the Dark Ages” which wrapped up Friday night (8/25). Only 400 tickets were sold and all attendees were considered volunteers.” Some more in-depth coverage at our old friend The Guardian. There is also a book, we are still waiting for copies at the shop as it seems to have sold out the first batch.

The De La Soul Shop has relaunched. Serious discounts can be had “The shop is back!! Use code DeLa20 for 20% off orders of $50+ / DeLa30 for 30% off $100+ / DeLa40 for 40% off $200+ ” delasoul.shop

This post was edited while listening to this excellent Peter Broderick and Peter Liversidge BBC Radio 3 Late Junction Session.

Video

Benjamin Zephaniah is interviewed by The Guardian: ‘I’m almost 60 and I’m still angry. Everyone told me I would mellow’

I know “Video” just ends up being more music. Next time I’ll get it right. Benjamin Zephaniah puts ‘hard to categorize’ at the top of his C.V., so whatever.  

Headline of the Week

Firefighters eat sausages made of piglets they saved from blaze.