Unfiltered: the complete Ralph BakshiJon M. Gibson, Chris McDonnell, Ralph Bakshi
Universe, 2008
0789316846, 9780789316844
264 pages
On par with auteurs like Walt Disney, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Art Spiegelman, Ralph Bakshi redefined animation and became a hero to countless generations of fans and filmmakers. If Disney’s life and work evoke images of chaste princesses in gleaming castles, Bakshi’s is a lady of ill repute camped out in a dim back alley. His name is synonymous with the great tradition of American cartooning. Bakshi is responsible for such memorable films and television shows such as: Fritz the Cat, the first x-rated animated feature film, The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse, Spider-man, Heavy Traffic, Cool World, and The Lord of the Rings, which celebrates its thirtieth anniversary in 2008.This is the only book chronicling the career of one of the pioneers of animation. Unfiltered highlights Bakshi’s early years, as well as each of his groundbreaking films, TV shows, and other projects. Unfiltered contains hundreds of pieces of pre-production art, animation cells, and never-before-seen rough sketches, line drawings, and doodles, all culled from Bakshi’s personal archives containing more than thirty years of his life’s work.With contributions from animators, producers, and directors who have been influenced by his work, this is a book like no other, about a man like no other.
The dawn of the color photograph: Albert Kahn's archives of the planetDavid Okuefuna, Musée Albert Kahn
Princeton University Press, 2008
0691139075, 9780691139074
335 pages
In 1909 the French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn launched a monumentally ambitious project: to produce a color photographic record of human life on Earth. An internationalist and pacifist, Kahn believed that he could use the new autochrome--the world's first portable, true-color photographic process--to create a global photographic archive that would promote cross-cultural understanding and peace. Over the next twenty years, he sent a group of photographers to more than fifty countries around the world, amassing more than 72,000 images. Until recently his collection was all but forgotten. Now, a century after he began his "Archives of the Planet" project, this book--richly illustrated in color throughout--and the BBC series it follows are bringing Kahn's dazzling early twentieth-century pictures to a wide audience for the first time, and putting color into what we usually think of as a monochrome world. Kahn's photographers captured times, places, and people we simply do not expect to see in color photographs. They documented age-old cultures on the brink of being changed forever by war, modernization, and Westernization, recording the last years of Ireland's traditional Celtic villages and the late days of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. They photographed First World War soldiers in their trenches as well as the postwar celebrations in London. In the course of their travels, they also took the earliest color photographs in countries as varied as Vietnam and Brazil, Mongolia and Norway, Benin and the United States. After being financially ruined in the Great Depression, Kahn was forced to bring his project to a premature end, but today his collection of early color photographs is recognized as one of the world's most important.The Dawn of the Color Photograph
makes it easy to see why.
Batman : the killing jokeAlan Moore, Brian Bolland
DC Comics, 2008
1401216676, 9781401216672
64 pages
This classic, infamous story in the Batman saga has been recolored with a more effectively cooler palette and set into context with an introduction and an afterword. Escaped from Arkham Asylum, villain deluxe Joker shoots Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon as part of his plan to drive her police commissioner father insane. Intending to prove that anyone can go mad after "one bad day" as he describes in his putative origin story, the Joker also kidnaps and torments Commissioner Gordon. But Gordon remains sane, and Batman recaptures the Joker—the two actually share a laugh at the ambiguous ending. With Barbara Gordon now a paraplegic, the story stands as a chilling profile of madness. The Killing Joke provoked fury among many readers who lamented the disposal of Barbara Gordon as a mere pawn to testosterone; yet Gordon reinvents herself later as superinfohacker Oracle, poster girl for disability empowerment (see Birds of Prey, LJ 7/08). A bonus story at the end paints the quieter, equally chilling madness of a Batman fan fantasizing about killing the superhero—a perfect foil for the publicly gaudy Joker.
La perdidaJessica Abel
Random House, Inc., 2006
0375423656, 9780375423659
275 pages
From the Harvey and Lulu award–winning creator of Artbabe comes this riveting story of a young woman’s misadventures in Mexico City. Carla, an American estranged from her Mexican father, heads to Mexico City to “find herself.” She crashes with a former fling, Harry, who has been drinking his way through the capital in the great tradition of his heroes, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. Harry is good—humored about Carla’s reappearance on his doorstep—until he realizes that Carla, who spends her days soaking in the city, exploring Frida Kahlo’s house, and learning Spanish, has no intention of leaving.
When Harry and Carla’s relationship of mutual tolerance reaches its inevitable end, she rejects his world of Anglo expats for her own set of friends: pretty-boy Oscar, who sells pot and dreams of being a DJ, and charismatic Memo, a left-wing, pseudo–intellectual ladies’ man. Determined to experience the real Mexico, Carla turns a blind eye to her new friends’ inconsistencies. But then she catches the eye of a drug don, el Gordo, and from that moment on her life gets a lot more complicated, and she is forced to confront the irreparable consequences of her willful innocence.
Jessica Abel’s evocative black–and–white drawings and creative mix of English and Spanish bring Mexico City’s past and present to life, unfurling Carla’s dark history against the legacies of Burroughs and Kahlo. A story about the youthful desire to live an authentic life and the consequences of trusting easy answers, La Perdida–at once grounded in the particulars of life in Mexico and resonantly universal–is a story about finding oneself by getting lost.
Wimbledon Green: the greatest comic book collector in the worldSeth
Drawn and Quarterly, 2005
1896597939, 9781896597935
125 pages
From the critically acclaimed cartoonist of Clyde Fans and It's A Good Life comes a humorous graphic novel on the obsession of comic-book collecting.
Taking a break from the serialization of his saga Clyde Fans and the design of The Complete Peanuts, critically acclaimed cartoonist and illustrator Seth creates a farcical world of the people whose passion lies in the need to own comic books and only in pristine, mint condition.
Meet Wimbledon Green, the self-proclaimed world's greatest comic-book collector who brokered the world's best comic-book deal in the history of collecting. Comic-book retailers, auctioneers, and conventioneers from around North America, as well as Green's collecting rivals, weigh in on the man and his vast collection of comic books. Are Green's intentions honorable? Does he truly love comics or is he driven by the need to conquer? Lastly, is he really even Wimbledon Green?
A charming and amusing caper where comic-book collecting is a world of intrigue and high finance. Part riotous chase, part whimsical character sketch, Wimbledon Green looks at the need to collect and the need to reinvent oneself.
The SpiritDarwyn Cooke, Jeph Loeb
DC Comics, 2007
1401214614, 9781401214616
192 pages
Darwyn Cooke - the visionary creator of 'The new frontier' - turns his attention to the classic Will Eisner creation 'The Spirit' in this hardcover collecting the first six issues of the new series from DC Comics plus the Batman/The Spirit special!
Alias the cat!Kim Deitch
Pantheon Books, 2007
0375424318, 9780375424311
136 pages
At the center of the novel Kim Deitch deftly places himself and his wife Pam–a passionate collector of Halloween cats from the 1920s and 30s, whose collection is impressive to say the least. But when she buys a mysterious old cat costume, she and Kim find themselves in wholly new territory: the lost world of Alias the Cat who, in 1915, appeared not only in a comic strip and film serial, but in real life as a freedom-fighting superhero.
When Kim begins to research this forgotten figure, he uncovers one almost unbelievable story after another: about the Furries, a tiny subculture of people who dress up as cartoon animals in order to have sex; about Keller and Frankie, two seamen stranded on a Pacific island, forced to make cat toys to appease the natives; about the secret lover of Alias’s alter ego, Malek Janochek; and, of course, about Deitch’s own Waldo the Cat, the common thread weaving the stories together as Kim and Pam move toward a fateful showdown in Midgetville...New Jersey, of course.
Alias the Cat is Kim Deitch at his eye-catching, mind-bending best.
Kim Deitch will be a visiting artist at the Museum School in September 2009: check back here for more details as the event draws near!
Roots of art education practiceMary Ann Stankiewicz
Davis Publications, 2001
0871924811, 9780871924810
146 pages
The 'Art Education in Practice' series provides working art educators with accessible guides to significant issues in the field. Developments in the field of art education are consolidated into a clear presentation of what a practising teacher needs to know. Each title in the series delivers sensible solutions, transforming research and theory into tangible classroom strategies. Paramount to the series is the concept of informed practice, whereby important and often complex art education topics are put into the context of the working art teacher and real classroom environments.
Community art in action
Kristin G. Congdon
Davis Publications, 2004
0871926318, 9780871926319
121 pages
Why we teach
Sonia Nieto, editor
New York : Teachers College Press, c2005
Teaching meaning in artmaking
Sydney R. Walker
Davis Publications, 2001
Using the art museum
M. G. Stewart, Denise Lauzier Stone
Davis Publications, 2001
Video art
Michael Rush
New York : Thames & Hudson, 2007
The contract with God trilogy : life on Dropsie Avenue
Will Eisner
New York : W.W. Norton, c2006
Castle waiting
Linda Medley
Seattle, Wash. : Fantagraphics ; London : Turnaround [distributor], c2006
All-star Superman
written by Grant Morrison ; pencilled by Frank Quitely
New York, N.Y. : DC Comics, c2007
