Archive for the ‘comic books/graphic novels’ Category
The Present Alone is Our Sadness
For a plot summary you may go here. For another take see here. Firewatch has been generally praised as a playable narrative and less as a game. As a narrative, however, its ending has been critiqued as has the various details of its story. The supposedly anti-climatic ending is central to the theme of the […]
Filed under: art, comic books/graphic novels, film, television, trauma, video games | 1 Comment
Tags: affect, Bioshock, Firewatch, fps, William James
It is hard to review a book that you cannot explain or sum up but especially when it is not one that you can explain or sum up by saying you can neither explain it or sum it up. Michael Cisco’s Member is a book that tests the limits of coherency without appearing to do […]
Filed under: art, comic books/graphic novels, Deleuze, fantasy | 1 Comment
Tags: Burroughs, Charles Burns, experimental fiction, Michael Cisco, weird fiction
In a trilogy of posts about escaping the Earth, Land is in perfect form over at his blog Urban Futures. In the first part Land discusses how in exploring the Shanghai 2010 Space pavilion the future is bound to a lack of hardware and an emphasis on children as the potential inhabitants of outerspace. He […]
Filed under: comic books/graphic novels, Deleuze, fantasy, television, video games | Leave a Comment
Tags: accelerationism, capitalist realism, mark fisher, nick land, outward bound, sci-fi, sci-fi western, warhammer 40k
There will be spoilers! Besides the shadow of the Aurora shooting as well as the ridiculous comments from Romney’s camp that Bane was somehow riffing on Bain capital (suggesting that the Romney camp is incapable of a two second wikipedia search to note when Bane was created) most of the talk around the Dark Knight […]
Filed under: Badiou, comic books/graphic novels, politics | 1 Comment
Tags: batman, charlie jane anders, christopher nolan, dark knight rises, mark fisher, OWS
Emerging Weirdness
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities ed by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer is now available. “After the death of Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead at his house in Wimpering-on-the-Brook, England, a remarkable discovery was unearthed: the remains of an astonishing cabinet of curiosities. Many of these artifacts, curios, and wonders related to anecdotes and stories […]
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Tags: ann vandermeer, jeff vandermeer, mieville, Negarestani, reza negarestani, steampunk, the weird, weird fiction
Plasticty of Worlds
Previously, I discussed Graphic Novels and Comic Books in relation to spatiality and the art of drawing (as articulated by Badiou). The act of drawing creates the form itself as well as the background (from the whiteness of the page) embodying a schizogenesis – of the cut that holds together. This stitch-trailed-abscission is the central […]
Filed under: comic books/graphic novels, film, Zizek | 1 Comment
It would be hard not to notice the numerous rapid descents in the Dark Knight which, while uncommon for filmic representations of superheroes, seem particularly frantic and well done. I would argue that this is indicative of the film’s content as well as its form: the Dark Knight is not so much the recognizable ‘descent […]
Filed under: Badiou, comic books/graphic novels, film, Lacan, Meillassoux, psychoanalysis, Zizek | 3 Comments
Tags: Badiou, batman, ethics, quentin meillassoux, the dark knight, the joker, Zizek
Let us make a decision – cut one half of the vicious fluid from the other – for our purposes slime is an organic substance and is different from waste in that waste is what the organic sheds to shed whereas slime harbors a stronger claim to the core of the organism – it’s functions […]
Filed under: Badiou, Brassier, comic books/graphic novels, Freud, Lacan, marxism, politics, psychoanalysis, Speculative Realism, Zizek | 3 Comments
Tags: hardt, marxism, negri, politics, pollution, ray brassier, slime, Speculative Realism, Zizek
Human and Animal
/1/ – Critical Separation What is it that separates human beings from animals? It is a simple question in the most broad sense and one that is constantly answered and simultaneously unanswerable. The connective tissue is one immersed in violence – when humans are treated ‘like animals’ do both the torturers and the subjects of […]
Filed under: Badiou, comic books/graphic novels, Deleuze, film, Lacan | Leave a Comment
The Porosity of the Signifier
/1/ – The Surreal and the Pornographic At the risk of crassness, couldn’t we say that the link between Clowes, Lynch and the pornographic is that of the hole? Isn’t the very dynamic of pornography the interplay between penetration and its limit? Isn’t the pornographic image par excellence that of the completely penetrated woman who, […]
Filed under: comic books/graphic novels, film, gender, Zizek | 2 Comments
Naught Thought 