If you are interested in an intriguing movie based on a work in comics besides “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” you will want to see “The French Minister.” This comedy could be your window to offbeat political satire and French comics all rolled into one.
Filed under Comics, France, French Comics, Movie Reviews, movies, Paris, politics
There are a number of reasons why you might be curious about this show. The main reason to see it is because it’s funny. Politics and humor go hand in hand but they don’t always add up to something really funny. Sometimes, it is sent to us by the Gods. What else explains Tina Fey as Sarah Palin? Sometimes, it is sent to us by Garry Trudeau. Yes, that Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist of “Doonesbury” fame. His humor is recognized as rather wry and dry. But for this series, he’s eased up a bit on the drollness. He allows his characters to breathe and, in doing so, has established a good extended rhythm for the small screen.
Filed under Amazon, Amazon Originals, Amazon Studios, Jeff Bezos, Television, Web Content, Webisodes
Editor’s Note: Here in Seattle, we have an election this Tuesday. And, here in Seattle, we are going through some vastly problematic growing pains. What exactly are we doing as we sprout condos in every conceivable spot? Well, rest assured, Seattle will elect someone mayor. However, we the citizens of Seattle need to look beyond this, or any, election. Consider, for example, visiting a site looking to make a difference, Reasonable Density Seattle. Sure, growth can be wonderful, just as long as we don’t stomp out the very reasons Seattle is so attractive.
Visit us every Monday for a new installment of Ballard Comics.
Keith Knight is one very funny, and profound, cartoonist. What is the secret to his success? Consider this life lesson: It is all in the doing. It applies in art school, law school, med school, any kind of school. “I’ve been doing this for years,” said Keith to a question I put to him about his success. That comment says it all. It is a part of this interview that stays with me. Knight has created a wonderful life for himself that includes making a living as a cartoonist. He has done it with style and become a significant voice. And he is easy to find and to keep up with, especially with his special subscription service you can check out here.
In this interview, we talk about activism in comics as well as the nature of humor. We go over a long and rewarding career. And we look at some exciting things that lie ahead, like Keith’s first full-length graphic novel, “I Was A Teenage Michael Jackson Impersonator.” Keith has also branched out into live action videos which bring his comics to life. And there is a comedy show, based on Keith’s life as a struggling cartoonist, that is being pitched so we’ll see how things go.
Keith Knight has three comic strips he regularly creates, there are two weekly strips, “The K Chronicles” and “(Th)ink.” And there’s the daily, “The Knight Life.” He also has strips in Mad Magazine: “Father O’Flannity’s Hot Tub Confessions” and “Bully Baby.”
Also in this interview, Keith jokes about his focus being, “the fight for a more decent cartoonist’s wage.” Certainly, his concern is over the same stuff most folks worry about: healthcare, education, and “not being condemned if you’re poor or low-income.” When asked about his thoughts over his legacy, Keith’s mind turns to the 500-page collection of “The K Chronicles,” published by Dark Horse Comics and that you can take a look at here.
Just click below to listen to the interview:
If you’re in the San Francisco area, you can stop by and visit with Keith at the Alternative Press Expo on October 12 and 13.
And you can also listen to Keith on Totally Biased with W. Kamu Bell on FXX, broadcast live on Tuesday, October 22.
Keep up with Keith Knight at The K Chronicles site here and The Knight Life site here.
Filed under Comedy, Comic Strips, Comics, Keith Knight, Political Cartoons, politics, Protest, Race, Race Relations, Social Commentary, Social Justice
KEEF KNIGHT‘s hilarious and insightful comic strip, “The K Chronicles,” is a prime example of how to speak truth to power and get people thinking and taking action. Now, Keef has a hilarious video for your consideration, with more to come, no doubt. But, first, this one is definitely going to make you think…and laugh.
More essential info directly from Keef Knight:
Filed under Comics, Humor, Keef Knight, Protest, Satire, Social Commentary, The K Chronicles
“The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance to Ecocide” is full of whimsy and wisdom as it follows its characters on a journey to save the planet. It’s all up to a group of friends to figure out if they can smash the capitalist system or just give up and go shopping. What makes Stephanie McMillan’s comic strip such a page-turner is her ability to find the right mix of humor and intelligent discourse.
Stephanie McMillan’s sense of urgency and comedy is irresistible. She has placed a whole new generation with the burden of saving the planet but they’re pretty clueless. There’s Kranti and Bananabelle, who just barely know the struggles from the past. Kranti, an African-American, is quick to join a protest rally and yell, “By any means necessary!” And Bananabelle, intuitively, recognizes that won’t go over well with the “mainstream liberals.”
Then there’s Kranti’s brother, Nikko, and his lover, Javier. They are both at the mercy of the current economic tide. Nikko manages to just get by with his design work. Javier, has let things slip in pursuit of his art and relies on Nikko’s meager income. All four of these unlikely heroes will be stretched to their limits as they try to do the right thing.
Guidance and advice comes from Victoria, a theorist guinea pig; and Bunnista, a trigger-happy rabbit. Each of them, in their own way, have some wisdom to share but they are still working on the ultimate answers. Victoria is uncompromising in her ideals. Bunnista is too eager to blow things up.
As the story unfolds, we find ourselves exploring the available options to make this a better world: everything from community gardening to murder is on the table. What is really compelling about this comic strip is just how far it is willing to go. If Kranti and Bananabelle didn’t appreciate what was meant when someone said, “By any means necessary,” they certainly do by the end of this tale.
One of McMillan’s goals with this particular story is to raise awareness of how corporations are raping the environment, specifically with bio-engineering. She is seeking answers. And the one thing she keeps returning to is the unequivocal need to rid ourselves of global capitalism. But, at every turn, she shows us how futile that effort appears to be. The great contradiction is that we have no choice but to fight the system, a fight that may appear to be too big to win. All life on the planet hangs in the balance. The only sure thing is that we must persist, live to fight another day. It’s a cliffhanger to the story of life that we must all live with.
And just how do you end capitalism? Well, that is an ongoing discussion. This current comics collection makes that clear. The subject is too vital and complex to address in just one book. For instance, McMillan has a guide to the people’s struggle, “Capitalism Must Die,” that will soon come out. For now, “The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance to Ecocide” provides an educational and entertaining look at what happens when people must confront the system.
Visit Stephanie McMillan at her website here.
“The Minimum Security Chronicles: Resistance to Ecocide” is published by Seven Stories Press. This book is a 160-page trade paperback priced at $12.71 and is set for release on October 8, 2013. Be sure to visit our friends at Seven Stories Press here.
“The Beginning of the American Fall: A Comics Journalist Inside the Occupy Wall Street Movement” does a remarkable job of giving you a sense of the Occupy movement by placing it into proper context. Yes, there is a healthy and vigorous unrest across the globe but what to do about it? At some point, the spirit of protest from the 1960s began to seem like a relic. There was the yuppie backlash of the 1980s. And there was a strident cynicism from Generation X that found Baby Boomers, on the whole, to be self-indulgent navel gazers of the highest order, especially when it came to their politics and activism. They are a tough crowd, those Gen Xers but that harsh critical outlook led to a whole new Do-It-Yourself movement. And from that, arose another generation with strong opinions, Generation Y, or the the Millennials. With social media and gadgetry at their command, this new generation finds itself all the more connected while also all the more self-absorbed.
This bring us back to the recent past and the present. Are people most likely to steer their own lives within relative safety and comfort or do they take notice of the social unrest they see on the news from time to time? That is the question that the author of this book had to pose to herself while still in high school in the early 1980s. Stephanie McMillan picked up a book that would change her life. It was “Fate of the Earth,” by Jonathan Schell which lays out the prospect of nuclear war and how nations are willing to put the planet at risk for the sake of warmongering. This galvanized McMillan into a life of activism. Shortly after that book, she read the newspaper, the Revolutionary Worker. This planted the seed in her mind that the solution to social ills would ultimately come through revolution. Thirty years later, and with plenty of experience in what is possible through protest, McMillan was to finally see in her lifetime a people’s movement on a grand scale.
McMillan sets the stage for us by highlighting some of the key characteristics of 2011, the year that the Occupy movement took hold:
2011 is so recent that it may as well be today and at least the next few years ahead. It’s not a pretty picture, is it? Corporate greed goes unchecked, will continue to go unchecked, and people and the planet suffer for it. When McMillan goes into details about the rise of the Occupy movement, there is a palpable sense of urgency. We are drawn into her concern that the movement she had favored, “Stop the Machine,” was soon to be overshadowed by the rowdy new kid on the block, Occupy. It’s clear these are two very different approaches. Stop is highly organized and has a leadership structure. Occupy is founded on anarchism and relies upon collective decision-making. Will they be able to work together? Or will they work against each other? In a wonderful series of exchanges, McMillan draws for us how a people’s movement finds its way. Her illustrations are funny, irreverent, and quite honest. While she’s a participant in this story, she doesn’t shy away from depicting the inconsistencies, bickering, and mistakes that occur along the way.
McMillan’s main concern is on the eventual work ahead. Throughout this book, we are treated to a treasure trove of insights, facts, and ideas on some of the best options when attempting to do the most good with the energy of mounting social unrest. McMillan boils it down to an unquestionable need to rid ourselves of global capitalism. It is capitalism that is the problem. But just how do you rid yourself of capitalism? Aren’t we all, at heart, hapless consumers? As Pogo, the celebrated comic strip character once said, “We have seen the enemy and the enemy is us.”
It is as if a goal is being proposed that is unattainable. Are we seeking to change the world or just a part of it? The answers are not all there but at least we’re asking questions. The very act of questioning is part of the answer! We are not mindless drones. It’s a fundamental impulse to resist oppression. This book proves to be an essential guide in this great new age of change.
“The Beginning of the American Fall” is published by Seven Stories Press. It is a 141-page trade, priced at $12.71 US. Visit our friends at Seven Stories Press here.
What do the critics know? What does anyone really know..unless they take the time to carefully take in the subject? The subject in this case is David Chelsea’s new collection of comics, “Everybody Gets It Wrong! (and Other Stories): David Chelsea’s 24 Hour Comics Volume 1.” Novelist Mary Robinette Kowal put an intriguing question to the master cartoonist. She asked him which piece in his new book is his favorite. His ready reply, “Jesusland.”
Keep in mind that this new collection of comics by Chelsea was created for 24 Hour Comics challenges. That, my friend, is a challenge created by another master cartoonist, Scott McCloud, who first proposed that an entire comic book be created in the span of 24 hours, one page per hour. The book collects the first six (out of sixteen thus far) that Chelsea has undertaken. It’s a very special set of circumstances that you enter into with a 24-Hour Comic. One of the liberating factors is the freedom you have to do whatever you want in real time. And it makes sense that Chelsea would favor “Jesusland” since he was riffing on the current state of affairs: the 2004 Presidential election and the Republicans mobilizing the Evangelical vote to secure Dubya’s second term.
You can read the interview by Ms. Kowal with Mr. Chelsea here.
Visit David Chelsea here.
And pick up your copy of “Everybody Gets It Wrong” here.
Filed under 24 Hour Comics, Comics, Commentary, Dark Horse Comics, David Chelsea, politics
In a New York Times op-ed, by Ekow N. Yankah, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, we get some sobering analysis of what has happened. We need calm and contemplation as we forge ahead. Mr. Yankah makes a case for this being, in part, a matter of faulty law.
There is a way you can help change the law and you can find it here.
For now, Mr. Zimmerman is free but he does have more legal issues to contend with. And he must live with what he did. It was repeatedly said in the Zimmerman trial that this is not supposed to be about race. But it is. Even if we set race aside for a moment, Mr. Zimmerman is only protected by the most contrived of law.
Shortly after the news broke of the killing of Trayvon Martin, I posted about it. You can read that post here. At the time, I responded to the assertion that Mr. Zimmerman was responding to Mr. Martin’s hoodie. That didn’t add up then and it doesn’t today. It wasn’t enough for George Zimmerman either. He knew, as anyone with a passing knowledge in Florida law would know, that he was protected by Florida law, the highly controversial STAND YOUR GROUND law.
It is about race. We have made a lot of progress over the years but did we somehow magically resolve all issues on race? We can seek out justice. And part of the solution is the law. You can make a difference by signing a petition to ask the U.S. Justice Department to review STAND YOUR GROUND here.
An update: From the Washington Post, the latest on Attorney General Eric Holder against STAND YOUR GROUND, you can read that here.
Filed under Democracy, George Zimmerman, Justice, Law, Media, Race, Stand Your Ground, Trayvon Martin
Putin leans in. Will only vodka spill, instead of bloodshed?
Illustration by Otto Dettmer, The New York Times
Here at the Comics Grinder news desk, things move along at whatever pace seems right. My friend, and editorial assistant, Roy, will occasionally drop off a book or some notes for consideration. One never knows what to expect. But you can always rely upon it being something interesting.
This time around, Roy dropped off a copy of “Vodka Politics” by Mark Lawrence Schrad. It’s one of those refreshingly readable and provocative academic books that he favors.
Before Roy was off to his next adventure, I asked him if he’d gotten the news that Putin is signaling that he’s open to a diplomatic resolution to the crisis in Ukraine.
Continue reading →
Share this:
Like this:
3 Comments
Filed under Books, Commentary, politics, Russia
Tagged as Alcohol, Books, Entertainment, Gonzo journalism, History, Journalism, News, Obama, Politics, Putin, Russia, Soviet Union, Ukraine, Vodka