Jared Shurin's Blog, page 38

Friday Five: 5 Silent Comics - World Without Words

Jamie's back!

One of the ways in which comics can be defined is as a combining of words and pictures in order to form a narrative. But what happens when the words are taken away?

The following five comics are all silent, by which I mean without word balloons, narration or thought bubbles (sound effects are still allowed). Often used in tales where dislocation or surrealism are key elements, wordless comics can also focus on playing on strong emotional reactions as theres one less thing intel...

Barbershops, Bookshops, Histories and Bad Math

This is a lovely idea - a servicethat puts books directly into kids' hands- at barbershops.You can back them here:

"One day, I was getting a haircut at the barbershop across the street from my school," Irby said. "One of my first-graders came inside, and he plopped down on the couch. He was staring out the window, looking bored. As I watched this all unfold, I was thinking to myself, 'he should really be practicing his reading right now.'"

Imagine though:Barbershops, doctors and dentists of...

The Ides of March!

Our annual excuse to share Rose Biggin's wonderful "Put to Silence" - a story about a story about a murder within a murder:

The director told me the aim was for Brutus, he told me Brutus deserved it, and he gave me a figure and a cash advance. He told me who was in on it: Julius Caesar, Cassius the Conspirator - and now me. They wanted somebody strong and reliable in the chorus, because they werent all as accustomed to the act as I was. They were all committed to the job, dont get me wrong,...

Friday Five: 5 Majorly Helpful Marketing Manuals

Slightly outside our normal remit, but, hey, we encourage people to share the things they're interested in, and I really like this stuff.

The thing is, 98% of the time, when anyoneasks"what should I learn aboutadvertising?", the answer will be"Ogilvy". And - you know what?That's right. I can't even set this up as a controversial "Nogilvy" (see what I did there?) hot take, because the eminently quotable David Ogilvymanaged to churn out advice that's, frankly, bothpractical and timeless. Darni...

Stark Reviews: Duck, You Sucker A.K.A. A Fistful of Dynamite (1971)

Stark says: If you shoot me, Ill fall. And if I fall, theyll have to alter all the maps.

A Fistful of Dynamite sounds almost like a Leone film doesnt it? Yeah, well thats because it is a Leone film: his least known and most overlooked Western, but a Leone film all the same. It also marks his exit from the Western genre witha deafening, nitroglycerine-fuelled bang.

Weve covered a few Western subgenres weird westerns, acid westerns, dinosaur westerns, surrealist animated Westerns but get re...

One Comic travels to Bitch Planet

We each came to this issue of Bitch Planet with a different level of familiarity with the series - so how this one-off story workedfor all our perspectives made foran interesting starting point.

Fun-fact: Bitch Planet was almost one of the first titles we ever reviewed, so it's good finally to get under its skin.

Are we ready to get the Non-Complaint tattoo too? Listen and find out.

'90s Music in Karachi. It wasn���t all bad.

In the early 90s, when I was going my A Levels in Karachi (yeah, that's how old I am shhhh), we didnt have music online.

Hell, we barely had music anyway. MTV was in our lives via satellite dishes but it wasnt the same MTV the rest of the world got - we seemed to get far fewer videos on rotation and you had to wait around for something you liked to come on air. I guess that hasn't changed much.

Our way of getting music was via mixed tapes. We made a wishlist of songs we heard on MTV, at frie...

Atwood, Thompson, Chambers, Ness and More!

Last night saw two literary awards recognise speculative fiction.

The Kitschies, now finishing their seventh year, handed out the following prizes:

Margaret Atwood'sThe Heart Goes Last (Red Tentacle - Novel) Tade Thompson'sMaking Wolf (Golden Tentacle - Debut) Jet Purdie's cover for Sally Gardner'sThe Door that Led to Where (Inky Tentacle - Cover) Square Enix'sLife is Strange (Invisible Tentacle - Digitally Native Fiction) Patrick Ness for his fundraising efforts for Save the Children (Blac...

Radio Drama: "Sorry, Wrong Number" (1943)

"Sorry, Wrong Number" first aired February 25, 1943, onSuspense.

Thoughts Before Listening

Someone told me this is supposed to be good. I cant remember who this someone was, like I have a very fuzzy mental image of some shoulders and a head saying hey this is good or something like that. And I think there was a Malayalam movie that was called My Dear Wrong Number or I Love You My Wrong Number or possibly neither of those things. Thankfully I dont seem to have any other thoughts about this...

Friday Five: 5 Stories by Jeff Lemire

Jamie's back with more recommendations!

Canadian writer/artist Jeff Lemire is a comics creator whose work is bound together by a strong thematic consistency. Lemire really proves as if there was still doubt that comics are a serious literary medium, but he doesnt forget the power this medium has to engage with our emotions.

His stories are some of the most touching to be found, where naive innocence faces the evil and the banality of the world. His art, too, runs the scale from light, exp...