This week's Baltimore city paper is the seventh annual comic contest issue and this year's winner is, oh, surprise, Wham City's Dina Kelberman's Important Comics. I really don't mean this in too negative a way. I like her comics, but come on. Wham City? Soooo three years ago.But ok, It's not that Dina Kelberman shouldn't have won, or that she isn't a talented comics creator/artist. Her work is individualistic and funny, and her minis (and I really must stress MINI, some are 1"x1") show that she has the creative wherewithal to do something more than a mutli-layered screenprinted, thread-bound, probably narrativeless piece, made while jerking off (or I guess flicking her bean), thinking about Fort Thunder. And it's not even that I don't like that sort of garbage, I just think every kid at MICA (or your local arts school) need to get their heads out of their ass and acknowledge that just because a majority of people probably haven't heard of Matt Brinkman and Brian Chippendale (and if you haven't, look into it), they're not fooling everyone.
Speaking of obnoxious arts students, there's also an article in the paper about another collective of self-publishing college students, Closed Caption Comics. Some of their work is featured in the paper's spread of contest entries, namely Noel Freibert's "My Friend Pumpskin." Ok, dude, we get it. Everything is kind of gross and melty and doesn't really make sense, alright. Acid is great, right?
What totally weirds me out is that ex-Fort Thunder dude Brian Ralph is a professor at MICA, where all these kids go. They mention him in the article, and show he gives generic praise to a group of young comics go-getters, but how in the world can he stand to see this shit?
My honorable mention for the comics contest goes to "99 Catch 22's" by Jordan Piantedosi of Perfect Stars and Zach "Hazard" Vaupen of Wigger Haircut. I've been reading Perfect Stars since high school and picked up the last Wigger Haircut a couple weeks ago, so seeing anything put together by the both of them is probably going to rule no matter what.
10 comments:
this is incredible. wham city can def. eat a dick.
Yeah, I totally agree. The other comics, like the ones you guys submitted, were SO MUCH BETTER.
huh?
charlotte-
not the point. like i said, i like it, its cool to a point, and i recognize that stuff like that takes talent and skill, but its just tired.
and ive been busy with other shit lately, but ill be around spx. im not all talk.
karen you're such an elite hipster jerk. stop reading secret invasion, someone might see you!
oh god, sammy, what if someone knows i read AMBUSH BUG???????
haha thanks for the positive words and shit! me and jordan are gonna be at spx, if you're there say whattup
zach hazard win
Sorry, this is late in coming and I don't know if you will ever read it or if it will be off your radar entirely. But your post doesn't make sense.
First off: Saying Wham City is "three years ago"- That Dan Deacon album and subsequent publicity madness and giving big-ups to his friends happened in 2007. That's when Whartscape blew up and there were big Jess Harvell articles in the City Paper.
Also: Dina's comics aren't Fort Thunder-y at all! The argument that a lot of Wham City work is based on ripping off Paper Rad's aesthetic is a valid one, but the only thing Fort Thunder and Wham City have in common is their being warehouse spaces where people lived at one point in the past. A lot of the Fort Thunder people made comics, and some of those were straight-up amazing. There is nothing in Important Comics that reminds me of those comics: Those comics are most notable, to me, for the emphasis on movement through space, and for being drawn really intensely, with a lot of marks being made. Dina's comics are super-minimal.
Also, she didn't go to MICA. Some Wham City folks are friends with some Closed Caption Comics people, but they're two different entities united largely by a shared city.
It would be interesting for someone to engage the local comics scene in a critical way as these people get more national attention but the first step is to be coherent.
wait - from charlottes tumblr: "I also loved how the most derivative piece of shit comic in the running (“drawn” by a junk-sick, stole-my-wallet-last-summer-nouveau-artfag-nobody who lives in my old space) gets props. I suppose Plantedosi is somehow more worthy because she’s not at all successful— even if her comic is 1) not funny, smart or interesting and 2) Depends on squalorous warehouse living for its lone gag. How original."
damn, negative negative negative! why do you think she stole your wallet? why do you hate that girl? uh... fuckin dumb points you silly girl.
1) perfect stars IS funny, smart and interesting to those who don't have erroneous beef!
2)"depends on sqalorous warehouse gag"... I mean, you know, those awesome comics that are universal and subject-matter-independent exist... wtf, bendetto, everything is referential, everything is coming from people in different places, as if ANYTHING in life is so passe, so cliche or "dependent"
3) Important Comics feels cynical, jaded, and bor-ing. no zest to life, i want to see happy funny not bitch fuckin not funny funny, you know what i mean hunny?
Post a Comment