WILL EISNER'S THE SPIRIT, No. 15 (Aragonés, Evanier / Smith; DC, 2008)

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Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review/memory/whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box17): Another of the done-in-one titles that DC was publishing at the time (the superb Palmiotti / Grey JONAH HEX being the other), the only fault in this issue being that not only did the team of Aragonés, Evanier, and Smith have the unenviable task of following Darwyn Cooke's run on the title but that all were working under the shadow of Will Eisner's long and incalculably innovative pen.

As much as I love The Spirit and his world, I find it to be, in the hands of anyone other than Eisner, lacking: Cooke did an admirable job, as did Aragonés, Evanier, and Smith – though the less said about Frank Miller's monstrosity of a film version (that being said, I'd argue that, had Miller tried him in comics (though maybe not the Miller of the mid-late naughties), it would've been a different story: film is clearly not Miller's medium, something I think (and hope) he's come to recognize) the better.

The missing piece in those non-Eisnerian hands? Eisner himself and that spirit (yeah yeah) of innovation: it's as much a part of The Spirit's character as the cape and cowl are to Batman, the radioactive spider to Spidey, and the S-symbol to Superman: to simply tell stories, no matter how enjoyable and fun, isn't enough to make the character resonate. Nonetheless, this issue – and the whole of the DC series – was, if not resonant, then at least both enjoyable AND fun.

Keita Miyazaki

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Stunning sculptures made of salvaged, welded car parts and origami:

sculpture of welded car parts with blue origami spirals and flowers bursting out of it

In his solo exhibition Excess of Desire at Gallery Rosenfeld, Miyazaki’s sculptures appear to grow from the floor or sprout from pedestals. Metal components meet intricate origami, exploring the dualities of robustness and fragility, the decorative and the utilitarian, and heaviness and lightness. The ends of pipes blossom with colorful fans and spindles of folded paper, juxtaposed with car parts in a reference to the 20th-century automotive boom and advancing technology.

Miyazaki articulates ideas around functionality and decay by welding together fragments of mufflers and engines that no longer operate for their intended purposes. He incorporates carefully selected parts, such as specialized mufflers that were produced illegally in the 1980s and 1990s, which rose to popularity because they could increase the car’s noise level and produce a specific sound. Challenging the frivolity of excess in wealthy society, the artist reframes the components as flourishing, botanical-like forms.

You can find more of Miyazaki's work at Colossal and via his Instagram.

Ohio’s issue one is anti-democratic horseshit, (special, single-issue) election day edition

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As Ohioans throng to the booths to decide to whether or not to take away their democratic rights in a single-issue special election concocted by gerrymandered cult-drones (here’s a useful guide as to what wouldn’t have passed in Ohio with the issue one-decreed 60% threshold and onerous requirement to get signatures from all 88 counties instead of the current 44 before any measure could even make it to voters) who claim it has nothing to do with abortion though the signs saying it does are all over the place (and, in one case, plastered in windows AND lawn) – as are the NO signs – a re-sharing of two earlier articles and a record of my duly registering my hearty FUCK NO on this horseshit issue. FFS Ohio, indeed.

sharing is caring as that one plugin used to say

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As we slip and slide and stumble and fumble into the post-SpaceKaren social media paradigm (still love Mastodon and it was fun, Threads, but you're reminding me of a one-night stand that I'm glad happened but still, one night stand; and BlueSky, well, you strike me as the colonial village reenactment of old Twitter – and all of its malign idiosyncrazies), I want to do a quick PSA on the importance of sharing work you dig.

I can post what I'm working on, my little narrative experiments and mental gesticulations, until the end of time – which I'm happy to do, toiling in my own obscurity as I've been doing for the entirety of my 20+ year process of public processing – but the truth is that the only way my work (or any of our work) finds more eyes and/or brains is by someone else sharing it: With rare exceptions, I've never picked up a book or a comic or watched a film or listened to an album because the artist themselves posted about it. You and your reach are the other 50% of the equation, of the deal: a link on your blog or in your newsletter or in your social networks, along with saying something nice (or not nice, if that's your thing) goes further than you can possibly imagine.

I'm trying to get better about it myself: the EarBlisses are part of that, as was the podcast and as are the Postscripts and other random things I share; but I do want to include a blogroll and favorite newsletters and such. I make it a point to share only work I genuinely dig – I don't do transactional shares and I rarely write about work I dislike because a.) I won't waste my time with something I dislike and usually know within the first ten seconds or words whether I'm feeling it; b.), it's a lot easier to piss and moan about something you dislike than it is to be enthusiastic about things you do like; and c.) if I dislike something, chances are I’m going to shape my current work or elements therein to be a reaction against the disliked thus making it actually useful to me.

Here endeth the PSA. Do with what you will.