WFC Bulgaria: Урок

There are things about this film I like enormously. It’s a taut, tense film about nightmarish desperation.

But it seems like there are always options out of the problems that seem to be avoided just for the sake of plot. So my main feeling here is of “but why doesn’t she…?” just about all the time, which is probably not what the filmmakers were going for.

And when her car broke down on the way to pay the 1.37 lev…

Oops! Spoilers!

Love the actors.

The Lesson. Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov. 2014. Bulgaria.

Oblak

  • 1 part ouzo
  • 1 part creme de menthe
  • 1 part vanilla ice cream

Shake ouzo and creme de menthe with ice. Pour into a blender with ice cream and blend. Serve immediately.

Can also be made without ice cream.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.

FF1992: WildB.R.A.T.S: Bad Redundant Art Teams

WildB.R.A.T.S: Bad Redundant Art Teams #1 by Dean Williams and Aaron McClellan.

Dean Williams… where have I seen that name before? Oh, we wrote the execrable Butt Biscuit series from Fantagraphics.

*gulp*

Well, Fantagraphics has published a few parody comics over the years, but they usually make fun of things that are considered interesting by the same people who find Fantagraphics comics interesting, like Filibusting Comics.

This, however, presents itself as a parody of Wild… er… Wild Something? See, it’s so far out of my remit that I can’t even recall what it’s called. Google will know. Yes! WildC.A.T.S! A super-hero comic published by the then nascent Image Comics through Malibu Comics (or something).

Very nice parody cover by Bill Willingham here, but the interiors are done by a different artist. Perhaps that’s meant to be part of the parody.

Yes, anybody that draws super-heroes is gay. *slow clap*

That price list looks cheap by modern standards…

Anyway, the book itself isn’t a parody of Wildcats. Instead it’s a retelling of the story of Image (super star artists at Marvel figuring they could make more money by owning the properties themselves, and hiring a lot of assistants to draw those properties). That sounds like it could be really funny, but…

… it’s not. There’s barely a joke in sight. And I just don’t care enough about these characters to try to decode who they’re supposed to be. Todd MacIjustdontcareland.

Finally, at the end we have five pages of a parody Bob Liefeld book. And again, it’s just… there. (I did like that little Eightball potato head guy popping up in the background up there.)

Oh, well.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

FF1992: S.O.S.

S.O.S. by Mark Kalesniko.

This is brief, mostly wordless story about surviving on your own in the big, bad world. So allegory.

But while somewhat hokey, it’s attractively drawn and somewhat touching. Here we see our hero take a bite out of the nasty shark. See? Allegory!

I think this may be the first Kalesniko book Fantagraphics published, but they’ve published quite a few since, like the Alex series I was less than enthused with.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Excerpt from What Paper? The Printing Aficionado Magazine, Issue 15, Volume XXIV, 2015

Review of the printing of the Dover edition of The Puma Blues (by Stephen Murphy and Michael Zulli) printed by RR Donnelley in China. Paper stock unknown.

When Dover announced a collected edition of the 80s series The Puma Blues, we here at What Paper? anxiously examined the press release for phrases like “shot from the original artwork” or “shot from the original negatives” or even “restored”.

We couldn’t find any of those phrases, which usually means “we’ve scanned in a copy that the local library had available and then sent that to the printer”.

Would our fears turn out to be justified?

Above we see a panel from the new Dover edition. It’s printed on shiny, white, almost sarcastically heavy paper: When turning a page, it feels like you’re turning more than a single page, so you flip the page back again and confirm that you’ve only turned one page.

The lines seem crisp, but it looks like there’s been a lot of ink gain. The smudged zip-a-tone looks rather dirty.

Here’s that panel from the original issue two. The linework looks virtually identical: There’s not a single line in the new edition that wasn’t already on the printed page originally. The tone is less smudged here than in the new edition.

Severe ink gain on black background in the new edition above…

… and identical growth in the original comic book. The Dover edition looks like they’ve scanned the comic book and then run the results through a “sharpen” filter.

But the blacks look nicer and heavier, due to the non-absorbent smooth paper.

Another example where it seems like lines surely are coarser than they were drawn…

… and they’re identical to the version printed in issue four.

Zulli uses a lot of tone, and fortunately there’s no moire effects in the Dover edition (which is a thing that plagues new editions of old comics). However, it frequently looks rather ugly and smudged.

Here’s the original from issue four, which is also smudged, but isn’t dirty to the same extent.

The new artwork from the brief added conclusion to the book suffers no reproduction issues: It’s clear and even.

Of course, it’s mostly text (with computer lettering), so reproduction isn’t that difficult.

The binding is very tight: You have to really work at it to hold this massive tome open, and since the paper is so shiny, you have to move the book around a lot to be able to read it.

What Paper? Rating: Parchment.

FF1989: Kafka: The Execution

Kafka: The Execution by Leopoldo Durañona.

Fantagraphics were publishing fellow South Americans Muñoz & Sampaya in a similar format to this (magazine size with cardboard covers) at the time (as well as anthologising Francisco Solano Lopez). I’m not familiar with Durañona’s work, but this is kinda interesting.

The artwork is a bit reminiscent of Moebius.

These are, of course, adaptations of Kafka short stories, and they’re done inventively, but respectfully, I think. It’s been so long since I’ve read these short stories that I can’t really tell how faithful adaptations they are, but they work on their own just fine.

Durañona is perhaps most famous for his work in various Warren horror magazine, but is still working in comics today, most recently doing an Indiana Jones series for Dark Horse.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.