Todd Klein's Blog, page 228

Excellent Art and Music at Stockton Today

Noah’s Ark by Charles Santore. This and all art images below © Charles Santore.

Ellen and I had a splendid afternoon at Stockton State College enjoying wonders for both the eyes and ears today. In their Art Gallery is an exhibition by children’s picture book illustrator Charles Santore. I’ve admired his work for some time, though I don’t buy the type of books he produces, picture books for young children, but I can highly recommend the exhibit, as seeing his work in person is a delight. There are sample illustrations in watercolor from about ten of his books, with a copy of the book to look at.

A few of the books are written by Santore as well, including this one about a Frog Knight.

Santore is skilled in drawing all subjects, but his animals are particularly appealing.

About half the exhibit features sketches, drawings, and a few finished watercolors from his upcoming illustrated version of “Alice in Wonderland,” here’s a sample drawing of Alice crying.

Santore does sketches, then tight finished pencils for each illustration…

…then a watercolor sketch, and finally a finished watercolor. I’m not sure how he transfers the image from the pencils to the watercolor, they’re completely separate — perhaps a light box? In any case, all the work is great to see. The exhibit runs through March 28th, and Santore will talk about his work on Sunday, March 1st at 1 PM. More info HERE.

After enjoying the gallery show, we went just next door to the Stockton Performing Arts Center for this fine concert of choral/chamber music. My main interest in the concert was to hear more music by Morten Lauridsen, whose choral version of “O Magnum Mysterium” I’ve loved since I first heard it a few years ago. I was surprised to find that the composer himself was there, and he played the piano part for the first short piece of his, “Sure on This Shining Night,” with Choral Arts of Southern New Jersey singing beautifully. Then the Bay Atlantic Symphony’s Chamber Group performed his longer piece, “Lux Aeterna,” and I loved every moment of it. Lauridsen’s music touches me deeply, it fills me with a warm, happy glow. I’ve liked choral music since I sang in the choir in my grade school, and I’ve now added Lauridsen to my short list of favorite choral music composers, alongside Ralph Vaughan Williams, Daniel Pinkham, Francis Poulenc and in recent years John Rutter.

Lauridsen met audience members in the lobby during intermission, so I was able to tell him how much I loved the work…

…and I bought an autographed copy of this DVD about him and his music that I’m looking forward to watching.

The rest of the concert was good too, a new piece by Ola Gjeilo, “Dark Night of the Soul,” again with the composer at the piano, and I liked it, but not as much as the Lauridsen work, and finally the familiar Vivaldi “Gloria in D.”  Fun, and well performed, all.

After leaving Stockton, we had a fine dinner at the Tuckahoe Inn, and were home by 6 PM. That was my early birthday treat this year, and I had a fine time!

And Then I Read: LITTLE NEMO, RETURN TO SLUMBERLAND 3

Image © Eric Shanower, Gabriel Rodriguez & IDW.

This issue is a mind-twisting tour-de-force on the art end, combining the surreal visual styles of Nemo creator Winsor McCay with the equally confounding styles of artist M.C. Escher, known for his optical trickery, and cartoonist Gustave Verbeek, whose 1903-05 comic strip “The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo” had the unusual property of being read twice, once normally and once upside down, with characters that combined images to work that way, as in the main figure here. The storyline is equally clever, with some pages being upside-down versions of others. The content of the story is fairly slight, Nemo and Flip are being chased essentially, but there’s so much going on visually it’s hard to see how a deeper story could have been managed. Impressive and fascinating.

Recommended.

And Then I Read: ASTRO CITY 17

Image © Juke Box Productions.

An interesting mix of science and fantasy this time that reminded me at times of the work of Jim Starlin. Honor Guard, the top super-team in Astro City has many foes, but also many fans, including a mysterious one who, once a year, delivers a table-full of red cakes to their headquarters. As the story opens, a strange purple hominid appears on cake day to tell them his people are the providers, and that he needs to make a sad confession. “Sorrowday” is that confession, which involves the demise of one of Honor Guard and how their deadly foe Krigari the Iron-Handed came to focus on their destruction. It’s nicely told, and has a mythic quality that I found appealing. The art is by Tom Grummett and a crew of inkers, but it all looks fine to me.

Recommended.

I’m back…I think.

I’ve been struggling with getting my Blog back in working order, with help from the support team at Lunarpages, my website host. It’s been a long and difficult struggle, made more complicated by having to move the website to different servers twice. Then lots of complications with the WordPress plug-ins I like to use. At the moment I’m keeping the Jetpack plug-in off, as that seems to be messing things up, and I seem to be able to work with the rest of the WordPress administration pages, like the one I’m using to write this. Hope to be back to regular posting soon, I have a large pile of things I’ve read to be reviewed, for instance.

Technical Difficulties

In case you’re wondering why I haven’t posted anything new here for a few days, my website service provider moved operations from Nevada to California this past Saturday, and my website and blog have not worked right since. I was on the phone with them today, but no improvement yet. Hope to have better news tomorrow. This simple post has taken about ten minutes to process instead of seconds.

UPDATE: My website host has found and solved one problem that has returned the loading time of all my regular website pages to normal. Another problem is still slowing down the blog, so they are investigating further, but at least some progress has been made. Hoping to have news about that soon.

And Then I Read: BATMAN ’66, THE LOST EPISODE

Image © DC Comics, Inc.

The Batman TV show of the 1960s is something I enjoyed as as kid, but even then I knew it was being played for laughs, which I found disappointing, as I thought of Batman as a more serious crime fighter. I’ve tried watching it more recently, and it doesn’t work for me at all now. I haven’t read the comic series based on the show, but the lure of a Harlan Ellison “lost episode” adapted by Len Wein and José Luis Garcia-Lopez was too tempting to pass up.

Under a cool Alex Ross cover, the book looks great, and reads well enough, but in the campy humorous style of the TV show, which I still don’t care for. Even the wonderful drawing was not enough to make me love this comic, I’m afraid. The story is slight, filled with references to the number 2, and even has comic relief in the form of “Aunt Harriet,” who I’d forgotten, mercifully. The action sequences are about the best thing here, and of course they’re much better than anything on the show. Padding out this book are complete scans of the pencils by Garcia-Lopez and the original story pitch by Ellison.

Mildly recommended.

And Then I Read: THE GRAVEYARD BOOK Vol. 2

Image © Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell.

There isn’t a lot I need to add to my review of Volume 1 of this excellent adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel, but I’ll see what comes forth. First, why two volumes? Probably a marketing decision, it’s probably easier to sell a $20 book and then later another $20 book with a guaranteed return audience than to sell a $40 book up front. I imagine it will come out in one volume eventually and sell more copies. I’m all for that, and the probable trade paperback version or versions as well.

This volume contains only three chapters, 6 to 8, but Chapter 7 is at least half the book, and presents the meat of the story: the confrontation between Bod Owens, raised in the graveyard by ghosts and other spooky creatures, and his intended murderer, The Man Jack. It’s action-packed and wonderfully staged and written. Russell’s work on this project is twofold: an excellent script adaptation of the novel, and pretty detailed layouts for every page. Chapter 7 is finished by Scott Hampton, whose style and approach to comics art is noticeably different from Russell’s, but it still works wonderfully. Hampton adds lots of depth, atmosphere and texture with gray washes that brings realism and a seriousness that helps the story. Chapter 6 is by David Lafuente in a somewhat manga-influenced style, and Chapter 8, the finale, is by Russell with Kevin Nowlan and Galen Showman. Russell’s layouts hold everything together. If you haven’t read any of his adaptations of Gaiman works, this is a fine place to start.

Highly recommended.

And Then I Read: LITTLE NEMO, RETURN TO SLUMBERLAND 2

Image © Eric Shanower, Gabriel Rodriguez & IDW.

This issue the new Nemo finally gets to spend a lot of time in Slumberland at the court of King Morpheus, where’s he prepped as the new playmate for the King’s daughter, a role Nemo is not too happy about. Writer Eric Shanower has fun with the bureaucracy and silly customs of the court in this amusing sequence. Then Nemo and the princess tour the royal gardens and Flip, the irreverent rascal shows up and does his best to interfere, but Nemo, whose real first name is Jimmy, seems to like Flip better than the Princess, leading to more trouble for Slumberland. The art on this book is fantastic, full of wonderful architecture and amazing animals, people and plants, not to mention tons of delicate detail. Artist Gabriel Rodriguez does original Nemo creator Winsor McCay proud. The story is light and somewhat fluffy, but so were the stories in the original strip, so I suppose that’s fair enough. Since this comic offers a longer narrative format than a Sunday comic strip, a more involving story could make it even better, but it’s a fine read and a visual treat.

Recommended.

And Then I Read: JUSTICE LEAGUE 36

Image © DC Comics, Inc.

With Ebola in the news last year, a storyline about a super-virus seems inevitable, but Geoff Johns adds a nice twist by tying it into DC history. It’s the “Amazo” virus, after the early silver age villain who could absorb the powers of any super-hero. In the case of the virus, it not only infects, it gives some kind of unpredictable super-power to the victims, which makes them much harder to deal with, as you can imagine. Half the League is down with the virus, leaving Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman to deal with it, and they need to find the original victim, “Patient Zero” to get moving on that. Lex Luthor is being as helpful as he can, which is only fair, since the virus came from his own labs during a break-in. Fine character writing from Johns and equally fine art by Jason Fabok.

Recommended.

And Then I Read: THE LAND OF MIST by A. Conan Doyle

This is the third Professor Challenger novel, written in 1926, thirteen and fourteen years after “The Lost World” and “The Poison Belt.” In fact, the Professor only plays a small part in it, though reporter Edward Malone once again narrates, and is sometimes accompanied by Challenger’s daughter, Enid. The two are romantically involved. Lord John Roxton also appears. The book is about spiritualism, a strong interest of the author in his later life, and seems to at times be a description of how Doyle was drawn into that interest with near-actual experiences (as described in the end notes), at times something of a tract with lectures to the reader, at times a novel with moments of melodrama and action. How much you might enjoy the book probably depends on how interesting you find the subject. I read a fair amount on it in my early twenties, so I found it worth reading, even if Doyle tends to stack the deck by making the mediums and spiritualists very sympathetic, and those opposed to them nasty and cruel. Probably the most exciting episode is the exploration of a house haunted by a very malevolent presence, which would do any horror writer proud. Challenger himself is on the side of the skeptics, and rejects everything Malone and Enid tell him until the end of the book when he finally agrees to attend a seance that has very surprising results.

In all, I enjoyed the book, though some of the lectures were a slog, and it’s not close to “The Lost World” in quality, though I think it better than “The Poison Belt.” I have two more Challenger short stories to read, written after this, to finish up. By the way, I found this book and the short stories as a free download on Amazon.

Mildly recommended.