#paul b. rainey

[dinosaurgiantpenny]

[downthetubes]

Paul Rainey signing announced at Gosh! Comics next month, celebrating the launch of his new graphic novel

Award-winning comic creator Paul B. Rainey will be signing his brand-new graphic novel at Gosh! Comics, London, next month

Award-winning comic creator Paul B. Rainey will be signing his brand-new graphic novel, Why Don’t You Love Me, which is being published by Drawn and Quarterly at Gosh! Comics, London, next month. Paul’s been a fixture of the UK self-publishing scene for decades, notably with his serialised science fiction story There’s No Time Like the Present (eventually collected by Escape Books). His grip on…

[librarycomic]

Why Don't You Love Me? by Paul B. Rainey. Drawn & Quarterly, 2023. 9781770466319. https://www.powells.com/book/-9781770466319?partnerid=34778&p_bt

Claire, a depressed, alcoholic mother of two, can barely get out of bed in the morning. Her husband, Mark, can't remember their son's name. In fact, the pair are as disconnected from their kids as they are from life and each other. Mark sleeps on the couch. The pair forget to send their kids to school. The children have are no limits on screen time or anything else. But as Mark tries to muddle through and handle things Claire seems to embrace the idea that their life might be just a dream, or that something is wrong with the world.

This graphic novel is presented as a set of what felt like landscape-oriented, black-and-white Sunday newspaper comics. Each has the title and author's name in the first panel, and they are episodic, showing the family's life one comic strip at a time. I loved it from the first pages when it seemed to be about two selfish adults mostly not struggling at all to be parents, much less good parents, and I had little idea where it was going (though on rereading it I can see how what happens builds from the first pages). I took months to read it because I couldn't bear to read more than a page at a time.

By the end, after the affair and the workplace drama and the far stranger moments, I loved this book more than ever. Everyone in my family is getting a copy in 2023.

And if, after finishing it, you also want to read more of Paul B. Rainey's work, you can find that at https://pbrainey.bigcartel.com/

[virtualmemoriespodcast]

Episode 568 - The Guest List 2023

Seventeen of this year's Virtual Memories Show guests tell us about the favorite books they read in 2023 and the books they hope to get to in 2024! Guests include Ho Che Anderson, Josh Bayer, Howard Fishman, Priscilla Gilman, Bill Griffith, Dean Haspiel, Sara Lippmann, Patrick McDonnell, James McMullan, Lisa Morton, Jonathan Papernick, Andrew Porter, Dawn Raffel, Paul B. Rainey, Peter Rostovsky, Scott Samuelson, and Karl Stevens (+ me)! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and by subscribing to our Substack

Check out the new episode of The Virtual Memories Show

[evoldir]

Fwd: Workshop: MPI_Ploen.ConceptsEvolutionBiology.Feb10-13

Begin forwarded message: > From: evoldir@evol.biology.mcmaster.ca > Subject: Workshop: MPI_Ploen.ConceptsEvolutionBiology.Feb10-13 > Date: 9 October 2024 at 07:00:17 BST > To: rdmpage@gmail.com > > > > The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology is organising a 4 day > workshop to celebrate Darwin's Day on "Concepts of Evolutionary Biology" > from 10-13th February 2025. > > The purpose of this workshop is to discuss some of the most pertinent > and exciting topics in modern evolutionary biology, from origins of life > to predicting evolution. We are particularly interested in bringing > together ideas from different disciplines to achieve a broad-scale > understanding. The full list of topics and invited speakers is detailed > below. The discussion for each topic will involve two speakers. The > first will provide a “concept talk”. Ideally this will include an > introduction to the topic, but will then focus on concepts, perhaps > including historical development of ideas. In those instances where the > topic has proved controversial, then it would be important to provide a > balanced critique of conflicting views. The second speaker will deliver > an “empirical talk” based on current/on-going research. Lastly, > these talks will be complemented by poster sessions and group discussions. > > Early replicators and Origin of life: > > -Nick Lane (University College London) > > Niche construction: > > -Kevin Laland (University of St. Andrews) > > -Blake Mathews (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology) > > Adaptive radiations: > > -Dolph Schulter (University of British Columbia) > > -Christopher Martin (University of California, Berkeley) > > Fitness landscapes: > > -Justin R Meyer (University of California, San Diego) > > -Andreas Wagner (University of Zürich) > > Polygenic Adaptation: > > -Marcus Feldman (Standford University) > > -Neda Barghi (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology) > > Evolutionary Developmental biology: > > -Natalie Feiner (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology) > > -Emilia Santos (Oxford University) > > Multilevel selection: > > -Paul Rainey (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology) > > -Katrin Hammerschmidt (Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel) > > Holobiont and HGT: > > -Ford Doolittle (Dalhousie University) > > -Honour McCann (Max Planck Institute for Biology) > > Predicting Evolution: > > -Meike Wortel (University of Amsterdam) > > -Peter Lind (Umeå University) > > We ask that everyone who wants to participate also submit a poster. > > Registration and abstract submission deadline: 15th of November > > Further details are available at the workshop website: > https://ift.tt/lm8r3wf > > Best regards, > > Organizing team: > > Alejandro Bonive Boscán > Alexander Jacobsen > Beatriz Vieira Mourato > Enea Franceschini > Gisela T. Rodríguez-Sánchez > Prof. Dr Paul B. Rainey (Supporting Principal Investigator) > > Concepts EvolBio

[franciscomaldo]

#JenniferLawrence protagonizará adaptación de novela gráfica de #A24 #WhyDontYouLoveMe √

Jennifer Lawrence protagonizará la adaptación que A24 hará de la novela gráfica de Paul B. Rainey, Why Don’t You Love Me?. Robert Funke (On Becoming a God in Central Florida) escribirá la adaptación cinematográfica. Jennifer Lawrence / Imagen cortesía Monica Schipper/GA/ Getty Images La noticia llega unas semanas después de que se supiera que Lawrence producirá y protagonizará The Wives, un…

[afnews7]

Jennifer Lawrence e A24 si sono unite per adattare un fumetto di Paul B. Rainey

http://www.afnews.info segnala: La société de production A24 a acquis les droits d’adaptation de la bande dessinée Why Don’t You Love Me ? de Paul B. Rainey, parue en 2023 aux éditions Drawn & Quarterly et encore inédite en France. En vedette de cette adaptation, l’actrice américaine Jennifer Lawrence… Leggi il resto su ActuaLitté…

[anokatony]

'Why Don't You Love Me?' by Paul B. Rainey - A Graphic Portrait of an Unhappy Couple Who are Terrible Parents

  ‘Why Don’t You Love Me?’, a graphic novel, by Paul B. Rainey    (2023) – 214 pages   Here is a graphic novel that depicts a miserable marriage and the resultant bad parenting in horrific detail. We have married couple Mark Hopkins and his wife Claire and their two children Charley and Sally. Claire spends much of her days in bed, is depressed, and drinks too much. Mark, after spending months…

[palombia]

Paul B. Rainey: Why don't you love me #fredagsbog

[yibennianyaji]

Recent Comics: Why Don't You Love Me? by Paul B. Rainey

I've written before about the "it's really good" problem���how to review, and direct audiences towards, a work that is simply gangbusters on every level, and seems to offer no access point for the reviewer wishing to praise it. The ecstatic reviews that persuaded me to pick up a copy of Paul B. Rainey's graphic novel Why Don't You Love Me?—the first great 2023 publication I've read this year, and already very likely to make my list of the year's best books—seemed to uniformly suffer from a subset of this problem: how to praise something exceptional without saying too much about it? Guardian reviewer Rachel Cooke wondered: "Will readers stick with [Why Don't You Love Me?] long enough to reach the twist that makes the effort of reading its first half worthwhile? I can't be sure that everyone will – and yet, I must not spoil this twist, even in the cause of encouragement."

I demur a little from Cooke's concern. Why Don't You Love Me? has a tremendous—in both senses of the word—twist around its midpoint, which lands the book firmly in the realm of science fiction, and which I will do my best to avoid spoiling. But to me what makes the book remarkable is what comes both before and after this moment. It's clear almost from the first page that something more is going on here than initially appears. The pleasure of reading comes not only from figuring out what that something is, but, once you've done so, from gaining a new understanding of the path that led to that realization.

Right from the start, Why Don't You Love Me? sends mixed signals to readers about the kind of comic, and story, it is. The book is presented as a compilation of newspaper strips, originally published on Rainey's website, but hewing very closely to the rigid format of the mainstream funny pages. Each page has three rows of panels, with the top row made up of a large title panel followed by two potential throwaways, and two additional rows with an almost uniform box format. Each page describes a single vignette in the protagonists' lives, and culminates in a punchline. But the style of the art puts one more in mind of subversive, indie comics—thick black lines depicting simplified interior scenes, deliberately unpretty characters, and a lot of emphasis on the accouterments of vice like cigarettes, empty alcohol bottles, or distracting TV and computer screens. The punchlines are more often bleak or gross rather than funny.

Even this gesturing at a familiar style, however, obscures something entirely different. To begin with, Why Don't You Love Me? feels like yet another entry in the very well-populated subgenre of indie comics about how awful middle class suburban life is, and how the people who live that life are constantly seeking to fill the void in their souls with TV, substance abuse, and inappropriate sex. Our heroes are Mark and Claire, a suburban couple with two small children who seem to hate their lives and each other. Claire is barely functional, regularly drinking herself into a stupor and flying into a rage when asked to participate in the running of the household. Mark puts on a more normal front, but inwardly he's flailing, utterly at sea both at home and at work. Neither one seems particularly committed to their marriage vows—Mark flirts with a woman he meets on the long dog walks he takes to get away from his family, and Claire briefly emerges from her drunken haze and starts playing the role of a devoted parent when she meets the attractive father of one of her daughter's friends. Otherwise, the two are wildly neglectful parents, constantly shocked to realize that they're expected to keep their children fed, clean, and in school.

There's a similar move here to the one deployed so successfully in the first season of The Good Place, where behavior that would normally be horrifying and even criminal, such as Mark repeatedly forgetting his son's name or Claire sending her grade-school-aged children to the shop to buy alcohol and cigarettes, is normalized because it's assumed to fall within the tropes of a comedic format. But right from the start, Rainey establishes that this isn't entirely what's going on. "Christ! Do you mean all this might be real?" Claire asks Mark in the book's first page, and very quickly it becomes clear that the two aren't simply forgetful or neglectful, but genuinely ignorant. Mark has no idea how to do his job as a website designer and keeps complaining that he's actually a barber. Claire doesn't remember her friends' names and remarks to her mother that she'd hoped her deceased father would be alive. It very quickly becomes obvious that the reason the two are so incapable of functioning as a couple isn't that they're estranged, but actual strangers.

Beyond this general impression, there aren't a lot of hints in this part of the book as to what might actually be happening. Which, we eventually realize, puts us in a similar headspace to Mark and Claire, who have experienced some sort of rupture that they are at a loss to even define, much less explain. Even the major twist at the book's midpoint doesn't really answer our questions. It is, however, a jumping-off point to a careful working out of the book's premise that takes up much of its latter half. Eventually, Rainey reveals a thought-out, shocking SFnal McGuffin which is both enormously satisfying when you finally understand it, and gobsmacking when you realize what it spells out for our heroes. (It also makes Why Don't You Love Me? a pleasure to reread, as certain implications that are never spelled out become clearer on a second pass.)

Still, what's most interesting about this part of the book is the way it makes you reevaluate what came before, seeing it not as a gag about marital dissatisfaction, but as an extreme trauma response. In the second half of the book, the circumstances of Mark and Claire's lives change dramatically, giving them space to not only understand what has happened to them, but to grapple with how they behaved in the initial shock of their lives being so thoroughly disrupted. Not all of these stories are particularly dramatic. Claire gets a rather satisfying storyline about learning to stand up to an abusive boss, while Mark debates between the old dreams of his teenage years, and new dreams triggered by his recent experiences. Eventually, they reconnect and are able to forge a new, more honest relationship—one that is completely unromantic, but also the most meaningful bond they have in their lives.

One possible reading of Why Don't You Love Me? is as a metaphor for how depression and mental illness can render us strangers in our own lives, and how in their aftermath we may find ourselves struggling to make amends to the people we failed while in their grip. I think there's a lot of truth to this reading, which gets at at least some of what Rainey is trying to do. But to me, the SFnal component of the book is not merely an allegory, but fundamental to its story, which is about how people cope with having been roped into a science fiction narrative, and how they respond to their own response.

Mark and Claire have both experienced something otherworldly, and this causes them to reevaluate not just their lives, but how they want to live in the future, even under the threat of more SFnal shenanigans. Much of the couple's emotional grappling in the book's second half is about understanding why they treated each other so badly in its first, and in particular, acknowledging how they mistreated their children. It's impossible to say more without really venturing into spoiler territory, but what Why Don't You Love Me? becomes by its end is a deeply compassionate story about ordinary people learning to cope with the unimaginable, finding solace in the most unexpected of places, and figuring out how, even in the face of complete upheaval, to keep going.

[smashpages]

Can’t Wait for Comics | Atone for the ‘Sins of Sinister’ this Wednesday

Check out new comics and graphic novels arriving this week by G. Willow Wilson, Jamie McKelvie, Ram V, Ivan Reis, Rafael Albuquerque, Ryan Parrott, Dan Mora, Paul B. Rainey, Kieron Gillen, Lucas Werneck, Cullen Bunn and more.

[downthetubes]

Broken Frontier announces the winners of its 20th annual awards for comics

The leading comics website Broken Frontier, run by Andy Oliver, has announced the winners of its 20th annual BF Awards, voted for by its readers and the BF team

The leading comics website Broken Frontier, run by Andy Oliver, has announced the winners of its 20th annual BF Awards, voted for by its readers and the BF team. The winners include a number of British creators, Beck Kubrick, Michael Molcher, Paul B. Rainey, Emma Reynolds and David Roach among them. The BF team feel the winners and nominees reflect a wide range of the socially conscious and…

[nkengdi]

Deaths On This Day – December - 22

Pre-1600

AD 69 – Vitellius, Roman emperor (b. 15)

731 – Yuan Qianyao, official of the Chinese Tang Dynasty

1012 – Baha' al-Dawla, Buyid amir of Iraq

1060 – Cynesige, Archbishop of York

1100 – Bretislav II of Bohemia (b. 1060)

1115 – Olaf Magnusson, King of Norway (b. 1099)

1419 – Antipope John XXIII

1530 – Willibald Pirckheimer, German lawyer and author (b. 1470)

1554 – Alessandro Bonvicino, Italian painter (b. 1498)

1572 – François Clouet, French miniaturist (b. c. 1510)

1601–1900

1603 – Mehmed III, Ottoman sultan (b. 1566)

1641 – Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, 2nd Prime Minister of France (b. 1560)

1646 – Petro Mohyla, Ruthenian metropolitan and saint (b. 1596)

1660 – André Tacquet, Flemish priest and mathematician (b. 1612)

1666 – Guercino, Italian painter (b. 1591)

1681 – Richard Alleine, English minister and author (b. 1611)

1767 – John Newbery, English publisher (b. 1713)

1788 – Percivall Pott, English physician and surgeon (b. 1714)

1806 – William Vernon, English-American merchant (b. 1719)

1828 – William Hyde Wollaston, English chemist and physicist (b. 1766)

1853 – Manuel María Lombardini, Mexican general and politician. President (1853) (b. 1802)

1867 – Jean-Victor Poncelet, French mathematician and engineer (b. 1788)

1870 – Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Spanish journalist, poet, and playwright (b. 1836)

1880 – George Eliot, English novelist and poet (b. 1819)

1891 – Paul de Lagarde, German biblical scholar and orientalist (b. 1827)

1899 – Dwight L. Moody, American evangelist and publisher, founded Moody Publishers (b. 1837)

1901–present

1902 – Richard von Krafft-Ebing, German-Austrian psychiatrist and author (b. 1840)

1915 – Rose Talbot Bullard, American medical doctor and professor (b. 1864)

1917 – Frances Xavier Cabrini, Italian-American nun and saint (b. 1850)

1918 – Aristeidis Moraitinis, Greek lieutenant and pilot (b. 1891)

1919 – Hermann Weingärtner, German gymnast (b. 1864)

1925 – Amelie Beese, German pilot and engineer (b. 1886)

1939 – Ma Rainey, American singer (b. 1886)

1940 – Nathanael West, American author and screenwriter (b. 1903)

1941 – Karel Hašler, Czech actor, director, composer, and screenwriter (b. 1879)

1942 – Franz Boas, German-American anthropologist and linguist (b. 1858)

1943 – Beatrix Potter, English children's book writer and illustrator (b. 1866)

1944 – Harry Langdon, American actor, comedian, and vaudevillian (b. 1884)

1950 – Frederick Freake, English polo player (b. 1876)

1957 – Frank George Woollard, English engineer (b. 1883)

1959 – Gilda Gray, Polish-American actress and dancer (b. 1901)

1960 – Ninian Comper, Scottish-English architect (b. 1864)

1962 – Ross McLarty, Australian politician, 17th Premier of Western Australia (b. 1891)

1965 – Richard Dimbleby, English journalist (b. 1913)

1968 – Raymond Gram Swing, American journalist (b. 1887)

1969 – Enrique Peñaranda, 45th President of Bolivia (b. 1892)

1971 – Godfried Bomans, Dutch journalist and author (b. 1913)

1974 – Sterling North, American author and critic (b. 1906)

1979 – Darryl F. Zanuck, American director and producer (b. 1902)

1985 – D. Boon, American singer and musician (b. 1958)

1986 – Mary Burchell, English author and activist (b. 1904)

1986 – David Penhaligon, Cornish Liberal Politician (b. 1944), Member of Parliament (MP) for Truro (1974-1986)

1987 – Luca Prodan, Italian-Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1953)

1988 – Chico Mendes, Brazilian trade union leader and activist (b. 1944)

1989 – Samuel Beckett, Irish author, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1906)

1992 – Harry Bluestone, English violinist and composer (b. 1907)

1992 – Frederick William Franz, American religious leader (b. 1893)

1993 – Don DeFore, American actor (b. 1913)

1995 – Butterfly McQueen, American actress and dancer (b. 1911)

1995 – James Meade, English economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1907)

1996 – Jack Hamm, American cartoonist and television host (b. 1916)

1997 – Sebastian Arcos Bergnes, Cuban-American dentist and activist (b. 1931)

2001 – Ovidiu Iacov, Romanian footballer (b. 1981)

2001 – Walter Newton Read, American lawyer and second chairman of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission (b. 1918)

2002 – Desmond Hoyte, Guyanese lawyer, politician and President of Guyana (b. 1929)

2002 – Joe Strummer, English singer-songwriter (b. 1952)

2004 – Doug Ault, American baseball player and manager (b. 1950)

2006 – Elena Mukhina, Russian gymnast (b. 1960)

2006 – Galina Ustvolskaya, Russian composer (b. 1919)

2007 – Charles Court, Australian politician, 21st Premier of Western Australia (b. 1911)

2007 – Adrian Cristobal, Filipino journalist and playwright (b. 1932)

2009 – Luis Francisco Cuéllar, Colombian rancher and politician (b. 1940)

2009 – Albert Scanlon, English footballer (b. 1935)

2010 – Fred Foy, American soldier and announcer (b. 1921)

2012 – Chuck Cherundolo, American football player and coach (b. 1916)

2012 – Ryan Freel, American baseball player (b. 1976)

2012 – Cliff Osmond, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1937)

2012 – Lim Keng Yaik, Malaysian physician and politician (b. 1939)

2013 – Diomedes Díaz, Colombian singer-songwriter (b. 1956)

2013 – Hans Hækkerup, Danish lawyer and politician (b. 1945)

2013 – Oscar Peer, Swiss author, playwright, and philologist (b. 1928)

2014 – John Robert Beyster, American physicist and academic (b. 1924)

2014 – Christine Cavanaugh, American actress (b. 1963)

2014 – Joe Cocker, English singer-songwriter (b. 1944)

2014 – Bernard Stone, American lawyer and politician (b. 1927)

2015 – Peter Lundblad, Swedish singer-songwriter (b. 1950)

2015 – Freda Meissner-Blau, Australian activist and politician (b. 1927)

2016 – Chad Robinson, Australian rugby league player (b. 1980)

2017 – Gonzalo Morales Sáurez, Costa Rican painter (b. 1945)

2018 – Simcha Rotem, last survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (b. 1924)

2018 – Herman Sikumbang, Indonesian guitarist (b. 1982); casualty during 2018 Sunda Strait tsunami

2019 – Ram Dass, American spiritual teacher and author (b. 1931)

[virtualmemoriespodcast]

Episode 525 - Paul B Rainey

With his fantastic new graphic novel, Why Don't You Love Me? (Drawn & Quarterly), cartoonist Paul B. Rainey has crafted a deeply human story out of a deeply weird premise, taking the reader from bleak, black humor to the most heartfelt moment of connection. We get into the challenges of serializing this story over 6-plus years, the ways in which science fiction can help us reframe our day-to-day lives, the midlife meltdown that led to the creation of My Imaginary Band, and the ways Why Don't You Love Me? explores what it's like to look at one's life and ask, "How did I get here?" We also talk about the perils of writing a story with such a great twist that it's difficult to talk about (spoiler alert!), the amazing experience of being published by D&Q after years of self-publishing his comics, the amazing experience of getting a blurb from Neil Gaiman, why he's never watched Groundhog Day, how Planet of the Apes either ruined or fulfilled his life, how he finally came around on Krazy Kat, and a lot more. Follow Paul on Twitter and Instagram and check out his shop • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our Substack

Check out the new episode of The Virtual Memories Show

[brokenfrontier]

Gripe Night - Paul B. Rainey is back with Another Collection of Darkly Humorous Strips and Semi-Autobio Flights of Fancy

Gripe Night – Paul B. Rainey is back with Another Collection of Darkly Humorous Strips and Semi-Autobio Flights of Fancy

Paul B. Rainey is indisputably one of the true veterans of the UK small press comics scene with a prominent presence on the circuit for decades rather than years. His acclaimed comic series There’s No Time Like the Present was a landmark moment for serial self-publishing in the UK, recognised some years back by its collection by Escape Books. Aside from his prolific solo output he has also…