#curatorKardambikis

[ourcomicsourselves]

The Cage by Martin Vaughn-James (2013 - original printing 1975)

The Cage hits like a brick in a hurricane.  And I’ve read a few reviews that talk about its cryptic nature and its fracture of time and its difficulty to read.  But I know what it is.

It’s the process.  The wasteland at the end of a massive project that rips and rends and fills the sky with black.  

There’s no humans out here in the wasteland.  There are the remains of human environments - skipping backwards and forward through time.  Now housing a record player.  Now filled with plinths.  Now the bed is broken under the weight of cinder blocks that are leaking ink.  Now the ink is in the hallway.  Now the clock is ticking again and the deadlines are bearing down. Now the sheets have broken free from the bed and are violently trying to escape their building but it’s too late.  The image of them was recorded long ago and reappears now - an old comic book panel blown up as a billboard.  Tucked into the shit end of an alley, not as an advertisement, because there’s no one here to trade with - a warning.  

This shit is hard.  And beautiful.  And within the ellipsis, in the spaces between panels, and the turn between pages are all the empty spaces to explore and grow into and be destroyed by.

~ Christopher Kardambikis

[ourcomicsourselves]

Do Anything (2010) by Warren Ellis

I’m going to set the stage for this week by talking about a book about comics.  Do Anything is an essay by Warren Ellis, originally serialized by bleedingcool.com in 2009.  It is a meditation on and an exploration of comics and connections as viewed through the head of Jack Kirby.  The burgled robot head of Jack Kirby - which is the reprogrammed robot head of Philip K. Dick - just in case you didn’t yet understand this to be a science fiction story.  It traces a specific spider-webbed history of comic books through the life and influence of Kirby, The King of Comics.  But, it is also about how comics are made - the daily nuts and bolts of the medium, yes, but also, and most importantly, the craft of comics.  

Warren Ellis is a favorite writer of mine for many reasons.  One of which is just how much he puts his interest in the craft of writing and story telling out into the world on a regular basis.  You should sign up for his newsletter, Orbital Operations, to read his weekly thoughts on what he’s working on, what he’s reading, what concepts and news he’s interested in, and what he wants to murder.  Morning, Computer is his blog where he types at briefly in the morning, I imagine, before he’s fully caffeinated and still toying around with what he wants his gears to be turning towards for the day.  He speaks regularly and makes his talks public and if you’re interested in creative people talking about the things they are interested in and why/how they work you owe it to yourself to download Cunning Plans, his e-book that collects his talks from the past couple years.  

One of the talks in Cunning Plans I heard him deliver in person, in a shitty barn in someone’s backyard in LA.  And his interest in place and space as inseparable with time (ghost roads) shines through the barn speech, and through much of his writing.  And through Do Anything as well.  Do Anything is a work that reveals itself in layers and I have made a point to re-read it annually.  A way to refresh the paintings on the cave-walls of my brain.  A ritual to recharge the series of connections that are comics and to think about the medium and creators that I love from a different angle.  

And if I haven’t sold this book to you enough, know that the climax of the essay is framed by Bowie singing “Heroes.”  And it makes my head buzz and my hands shake every time I read it.

~ Christopher Kardambikis