Goofy cute

http://lyrafay.tumblr.com/post/132554309242/kidskullomania-tell-me-do-you-bweed-veteran

Andy Fairhurst (artist)

I love the combination of kid-size figures with the iconography of classic heroes. Andy Fairhurst, an artist from North Wales, has many more of these pieces on his deviant art page that you can check out here. He also has a set of "geek kids" that is pretty cool, too.

http://superherostatuesfan.tumblr.com/post/130869466115/if-the-kids-are-united-then-well-never-be

Glass-Plate Photos into Art

http://lyrafay.tumblr.com/post/126648858387/jedavu-historic-glass-plate-photos-from-romania

Morning Pick-Me-Up: Little Kids Cosplaying

http://lyrafay.tumblr.com/post/123787984082/alicexz-if-youre-ever-feeling-a-bit-down-just

Animated Comic Covers

There are two talents I wish I had: (1) the capacity to carry a tune and (2) the ability to draw. I don't wish I had these talents in order to earn money at them or become famous by them. I just like to sing (though my brother likens my singing to a cow mooing), and I liked to draw simple cartoons as a kid. (I liked coloring them the best, though. I am a huge fan of coloring.) An example of my work:

An Aged & Coffee-Stained Example of a Drawing From
My High School Days: "Captain Chemistry"

A Cleaned Up Version of "Captain Chemistry"
(That Took Entirely Too Long to Tidy Up in Adobe FireWorks)

Not only am I a complete dork for drawing about a Captain of Chemistry, I still chuckle at my efforts to infuse the word "chemistry" with a Bunsen burner, a measuring glass, and a carbon ring. Like The Doctor, I thought I was clever.

I also came up with a name for my comic strip (the one that I have yet to actually create): "The short End." (<-- The "short" is deliberately un-capitalized to emphasize its shortness, and it comes from the adage: "The short end of the stick.")

While I lack both the talent and physical capacity to be the cartoonist I once imagined being, I still look for ways to be "artistic." I tend towards synthesis rather than creation. It just seems to be the way my brain works. While I cannot craft something out of the ether, I do aspire to combine and animate art already created by others.

One set of animated gifs by Kerry Callen (of classic comic book covers put in motion) illustrates the kind of craft I would like to learn how to do.

Classic Superman Animated Cover

Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #4 Animated Cover

The Amazing Spider-Man #33 Animated Cover

Batman #15 Animated Cover

Daredevil, The Man Without Fear #7 Animated Cover

Fantastic Four #51 Animated Cover

Iron Man #128 Animated Cover

Lois Lane, Superman's Girlfriend #29 Animated Cover

Batman Incorporated (v.2) #13 Animated Cover

Batman, The Dark Knight Returns Animated Cover

Justice League of America #6 Animated Cover

All discovered on tumblr, of course. I'll leave you with one of his best: Calvin & Hobbes.

Calvin and Hobbes: The Days are Just Packed Animated Cover

Sense8

Sense8 Netflix Promo Image

I am only four episodes in and I am already in love.

In fact, I find I cannot binge-watch Sense8 because each episode requires my full attention. Each draws me in and leaves me wanting to linger in the sensations and thoughts it has provoked in me.

I felt this way about the Wachowskis' Cloud Atlas as well.

I find myself haunted and intrigued. I feel as if they are tapping into something profound, some piece of humanity's shared experience right out of the Jungian collective unconscious.

And, as a result, these stories touch me in the same inarticulate-able way that music can stir the heart.

And J. Michael Straczinski -- writer of plays, films, TV, and comics as well as a director and executive producer of one of my favorite Sci-Fi shows in 1990s television: Babylon 5 --  is their co-writer and co-creator! What a combination of idealists and dreamers.

There is something deeply rooted in the human experience that is noble/heroic, despite the harm and selfishness and idiocy we subject ourselves and each other to. These creators write normal humans who are extraordinary within their normality.

And, as with their other works, in Sense8, Straczinski and the Wachowskis proffer a deeply personal interconnectedness, one in which all humanity shares as hopeful, conflicted, inspired, and wounded beings--- one that we all could embrace by letting compassion and empathy be our guides.

If I were to be said to have a mystical belief system, this Netflix show depicts that spiritualism made manifest. We are better for our link to one another, a link that must be believed in and embraced and protected.

Making art with art: "Panels that become Creepy"

On tunblr today, I ran across these amazing gifs fashioned out of classic pieces of art. Unfortunately, my efforts to locate the creator of these little masterpieces was hindered by my lack of Italian language skills. The most common "attribution" I found was: QUADRI CHE DIVENTANO TERRIFICANTI, which Google translate tells me basically means "Panels that become Creepy." Oh so very true.

Supergirl

Helen Slater as Supergirl

I'm old enough that my live-action Supergirl was Helen Slater in the 1984 film Supergirl.











She went on to guest star as Kal-El's mom, Lara, in the WB's (later the  CW's)  Smallville.

Julian Sands (Kal-El) and Helen Slater (Lara) on Smallville

(I confess I had a little crush on Ms Slater back in the '80s and found her Lara preferable to Laura Vandervoort's supergirl in Smallville, but that's neither here nor there.)

Melissa Benoist as Supergirl

Now Andrew Kreisberg and CBS plan to re-introduce the character to TV in the Fall of 2015 with Melissa Benoist as the titular heroine.






Having become a daily tumblr-user, I have also become better acquainted with the construct called "fandom."

I am a bona fide geek-girl from youth having been raised on nightly readings of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and the long lines and action figures for Star Wars IV (the original release). I am most assuredly a fan.

However, I have never before experienced the equivalent of the modern fandom found online: people who claim to love all things nerd-ish but have an amazing capacity to dissect and critique those artforms before they have even had a chance to be fully born.

I ask you, who among us could survive unscathed the brutal onslaught of critique modern artists must wade through to bring their creations to life (to print, the stage, or the screen)?

There has to be a better way to show our love for someone else's creation when we engage in conversation about how and why we love it.

http://dccomicstv.tumblr.com/post/119103587760/king-fergus-reacts-to-the-supergirl-trailer-and

Wonder Woman on The Mary Sue

Click the pic to go to the article.

Now here's a lengthy article I am most happy to link to on The Mary Sue: "Wonder Woman and the Paternal Narrative: the Rise of Wonder Woman, the Fall of Women" by Doctor Bifrost.

According to the credit at the end of the article, Doctor Bifrost is not, in fact, from Asgard:

Doctor Bifrost is a software engineer, writer, reader, activist, and big-time nerd. He was brought up on The Lord of the Rings, The Left Hand of Darkness, Greek & Norse mythology, and comic books, which he’s been reading since he was four. He’s still running a D&D game he started in 1982. Doctor Bifrost enjoys well-thought-out world-building and nice merlot. He can be reached at DoctorBifrost@gmail.com.

Cover A of Wonder Woman #1
from the New 52 (2011) featuring
the art of Cliff Chiang

The article is a good read and addresses a dramatic shift in Wonder Woman's origin story with DC's New 52 reboot of their story-lines in 2011. I am quite a fan of Cliff Chiang's art work for the series, but I have to agree with Doctor Bifrost's complaint that transforming Diana's back-story into the archetypal "paternal narrative" version of the hero journey has robbed the series of its vital spark. 

Ironically, in the second issue of the series, the comic itself presents the traditional story of Diana's birth: being shaped from the clay by her mother Hippolyta...

...only to dismiss this original version of the story as legend used to cover up the nature of Diana's true birth. Hippolyta finally confesses: "There was a man. No, there was more than a man. There was a God. The God. There was Zeus."

Brian Azzarello, the writer, utilizes the familiar trope of Hera's dangerous jealousy of Zeus' paramours and hatred of his bastard children from Greek myth as Hippolyta's rationale for lying to Diana about the true nature of Diana's birth. 

To add to the heartbreak Diana feels over her mother's lies, Azzarello depicts her as feeling ashamed of her "new" birth, so much so that she must exile herself from her sisters, her mother, and Paradise Island forever. 

Before this revelation, Diana's identity well into adulthood was of a woman born as a "perfect Amazon" -- someone so wanted that her mother's prayers created her, a miracle. Talk about taking the agency out of a female narrative. 

And by replacing it with the paternal narrative, Azzarello and the editors at DC have also replaced pride with shame as one of Wonder Woman's defining experiences.

Mash-Ups: GoT & Disney

When I was teaching, one of my favorite projects to assign was the video mash-up. The creativity of my students was boundless: they would stitch together some of the weirdest genre combinations (clips from Mary Poppins with a horror trailer soundtrack, for example) into something completely awesome and entertaining.

On tumblr, I came across some hilarious images mashing up Game of Thrones characters with a Disney animation style. After some research (in order to be able to attribute this fine work to the actual creators of said images), I ended up at Refinery29.com and an article by Lauren Le Vine.

There I learned that illustrators Anderson Mahanski and Fernando Mendonça created the images which can be found on their website: Combo Estúdio.

John Snow & Ghost

White Walker/Other

Tyrion Lannister

Cersei Lannister

Daenerys Targaryen with Drogon

Brandon Stark and Hodor

Arya Stark and Sandor Clegane (The Hound)

Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth

Lord Varys

Oberyn Martell (The Red Viper of Dorne) and Gregor Clegane (The Mountain)

Melisandre (The Red Woman)

Social Media

Social Media is an amazing and strange thing, especially to this forty-sumthin' non-digital native.

Ironically, my nickname in high school was "Unsociable Nerd." (Luisa G. used to tease me about this almost daily, noting how I never attended parties or went to sporting events after school.) As a true-blue introvert by nature, just being sociable at all takes a whole helluvalot of energy.

Don't get me wrong. I like people. I like them a lot. My occasional misanthropic tendencies come straight from my idealized notions of what humanity is capable. It is only those of us who see "what a piece of a work is a man" who become jaded when we (humanity) fail to employ our "apprehension... like a god" to IRL problems like poverty and climate change.

So how did this introverted misanthrope get mixed up in all this social media? I now stalk artists -- professional and amateur -- on DeviantArt and post their works on my Tumblr page, which I can then embed here on my blog. And that post, subsequently, I will no doubt share on FB and Twitter to make sure it gets seen.

I'm even propagating myself in social media. SOCIAL media...

Weird.

And, it hardly takes any energy at all.

Nice.

http://haffpint.tumblr.com/post/117807217682/mr-j-by-danielgrzeszkiewicz

The above is Daniel Grzezkiewicz's latest: Mr. J. (Joker from the Batman universe). It is a disturbing take on the latest rendition of the Joker in the Batman comics by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo.

(I even get all my comics electronically

now through comiXology--

who needs to get out of the house to be social?)