links/2024w07

• I've been familiar with Vidocq's wild story for awhile, but this excellent longread is a perfect summation: Eugène-François Vidocq and the Birth of the Detective | The Public Domain Review

• Artist Pandora Graessl’s Transportive “Amor Fati: When the Fire Bit Me” Exhibition | Cool Hunting

• The five finished minutes included in this piece are incredible: The Russian Animators Who Have Spent 40 Years Animating Gogol's "The Overcoat" | Open Culture

• Yours for $25k: Brian Eno's light-up turntable changes colour in "complex and unpredictable" patterns | Dezeen

• Art Bites: Surrealist Painter René Magritte Was a Master Forger, Too | artnet

• Autodidacts FTW: Noriko Sugiyama Transforms Old Kimono Into Luxurious Landscapes | Spoon & Tamago:

At around age 60, with her 3 children all grown up and out of her hands, Sugiyama decided to relocate from Saitama up north to Iwate prefecture where she had relatives, and was closer to her birthplace of Aomori. She obtained her chiropractors license and opened a small practice where she served the local community for over 10 years. 

One day, Sugiyama found a pack of discarded colored markers near a dumpster. Noticing that they were still in good shape, she decided to take them home and begin doodling. Soon, images of trees and rivers all inspired by the nature of Aomori began pouring out of her and onto the pages of a sketchbook. After a year or so of sketching with the markers, Sugiyama remembered her mother’s colorful kimonos that had been stored away. There was no use for them in storage so the artist, whose creative juices were now flowing, decided to begin incorporating them into her work, which eventually led to a style she has coined as “Kimono Reborn Art.”

https://www.spoon-tamago.com/noriko-sugiyama-kimono-reborn-art/

• Excited for this one: Wagner + Jones + Dracula = instant sale: Dark Horse to bring DRACULA BOOK 1: THE IMPALER to eager blood fiends this October | ComicsBeat

• Fourteen views of Himeji Castle | {feuilleton}

• Favorite headline of the week: Yakuza member selling soda arrested for extorting money from ninja spreading flyers in Asakusa | SoraNews24

• Seatbelts inform Steady walking aid for elderly dogs | Dezeen

• ‘Black Panther’ Costume Designer Launches Otherworldly 3D-Printed Handbags | Yanko Design

• Dream home = found: A Pair of Backyard Cabins Are Worlds Removed From Their Main Residence—But Only Steps Away | Dwell

• And finally, a wonderful look inside OSU's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. Need to make a return trip sooner rather than later… Inside the World’s Largest Comics and Cartoons Collection | Hyperallergic

Rapturous

Note to self in the midst of a long paragraph: "be careful that you're not falling into the preconceived notion trap: this is a chance to do it totally differently than before – don't let it slip away." Useful advice, earlier self; slow clap / well done.

X-MEN ‘97 (trailer)

I still have the scars from that finale. Excited for this one.

the collection: recent additions

Been in a bit of a collecting lull of late, mostly sticking with new comics releases and the occasional “ok I can’t pass this up” splurge, this sheet of Walter B. Gibson’s memo paper being among them…

Been on a Spectre kick lately, too…

Scratch one off the “comics I must own before I die and even then” list…

With No. 6, DICK TRACY SMASHES THE BOMBING RACKET, I’ve now only one more to go to complete my set of the 1934 Goudy Big Thrill booklets…

And, finally, in “I’m sure I’m now on a list somewhere” additions...

THE LOBSTER (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)

Input trend of "catch up from the last 10-80 years and finally explore" – see: Cassavetes, The Safdies, Chester Himes, et al – continues with Yorgos Lanthimos (the cinematic Gogol?) and this gem: darkly hilarious in its exploration of the stupidity of extremes (no one here is immune – everyone seems to have the emotional capacity of schoolchildren at recess (which, when it comes to love, I suppose we all do), to wonderful – and horrifying – effect) and far more moving than its weird would lead one to believe. All of Lanthimos’s work duly added to the "must-watch" list.