Joel Trussell has a blog, for frequent applications of his kaleidoscopic frying pan to your funny bone.





I just got some Thomas Herpich comix in the mail and now I can definitely start flogging his stuff too... he is nutso, like early Julie Doucet, yet completely artistically sound at the same time. Like early Julie Doucet. Inotherwords, check him out before he stops drawring, like Julie Doucet!

Wot's more, there's new materials at Chris Harding's lovely site. And plus it's mysterious!!! Go hence!

Thanks to cartoonbrew for noticing this development!












PS There are still believers in Afanasy Nikitin!
If you are waiting for your Das Brick comic book, do not despair!

It's getting too cold to ride a bicycle.

It might be best if you dismantled it and played the nutcracker suite on the carcass.

It's from the metafilter.

WFMU has bought YouTube!

No, not actually... but as of today they're heaps better than YouTube, since their UBUWEB warehouse of avant-garde film and video is now available for streaming ... in other words, it's youtubular!

No more waiting in long lines with intimidating Hungarian intellectuals to see the midnight showing of obscure art films, or waiting all night for some humongous file to torrent into your brainpan. Another public service from your friends at 'FMU!

I had a blast at the Harvard Book Store tonight, playing Santa. Herewith is my report (from their newly-burgeoning not-for-grownups graphic arts section, naturally).

When you find yourself peeking into your stocking, I hope your friends and loved ones have remembered to get you these cluster-bombs of merriment:

The Collected Moomin Comic Strips! Believe me, this has all the Tove Jansson you'll need to get through the long, wintery winter.

If 1930s Popeye strips had been drawn by Tony Millionaire, in Finland in the 1950s, Tove would not have needed to draw Moomin.

You can be glad she did.














For any of you tots who accidentally spent the 80s reading Goosebumps (or worse, watching TV), here's your chance to get caught up with the funniest writing that came out of that chrome-finish decade.

No, not Dave Barry... this! The collected piercing wit and fame-bashing wisdom of SPY magazine, in one easy-to-purchase tome!








Lastly, but far from leastly, this treasure of a coffee-table book made my lungs collapse, my larynx dilate, and my uvula ovulate: Art Out of Time, edited by Dan Nadel, is a compendium of zillions of forgotten illustration gems from the 1900s through the 1960s. Wild, fearless, and unrelentingly wonderful introductions to little-heard-from comic geniuses.



I leafed through it and felt like giving up: it's a veritable bottomless pit of inspiration.



Buy it for someone you love, or do like I did and get somebody you love to buy it for you!

You either love Mary Blair's stylized 1950s artwork, or you don't. It's A Small World is not everybody's cup of meat.

I think MB is a barrel of monkeys, and when somebody digs up a nice scan of her graphic design, I feel obliged to point folks' attention to it. Is nice!

It needs to be seen. Can not say more.

The newest bestest internet meme: the post-it note comes to life; some nostalgia for everybody who misses being in the office.

Puzzled how to make your life more like Ren & Stimpy? Get the soundtrack... lovingly assembled, and available over at the Secret Fun Spot.

Every so often I remind everyone in the world that you can't not read Bibliodyssey.

Whatever it is you're looking for, it is there.

Joel Trussell has a new ad
and it looks nifty.

Novo Drziac's Velky Keychac (The Great Sneezer)... just one of the treasures from the aforementioned darkstrider collection.

Starewich is here! Ptushko is here! Trnka and Zeman are here! Crazy nonsense I never even laid eyes on before! I am deed and gone to animation heaven.

Do not miss Kim Blanchette's Cup-O-Noodle Cinema either!

Ho ho! I am kilt! I am deed!

There's this orc or wizard or something... THE DARKSTRIDER... and he has put together a most scintillating confectionarium of stopmotion treats! Really! It's not a passage to Middle Earth. It's very awesome.

Don't recall where I got this... Bruno Corte has a great blogful of illustration and inspiration. Easy on the eyes.

Dekotora!

from

the metafilter.

Been a banner month for bug pics, this.

This bunch is from boing boing .

How I love the films of Alexander Ptushko. Here is pretty fine transfer from Sadko, with a pretty spooky, serene Phoenix of Happiness.

Na mean?

Star Wars in 3 minutes!
From the mighty Probot Productions !!

The sweet part of waiting 12 years to find something is when you actually find it!

Enough ugliness! Here is a mound of shiny pretty jellyfishy fractals to soothe your aching eyeballs.

When you were a kid, you probably wondered aloud, as you watched Bigfoot footage, "What sort of medium could possibly make this bigfoot footage even harder to see?"

Thanks to youtube, the classic bigfoot movie is now, incredibly, even harder to see.

American Pie III is in high-definition, and meanwhile Sasquatch just gets more and more low-def. What does it all mean?

Cartoon Brew tells us to watch Potapych the bear. I like cartoonbrew just fine... this little movie is OK but not world class if you ask me.

Watch it for no dollars, and see for yourself.

I am indulgent with this because it is supposed to be Russian, and because it has a drunk bear.

Q: What is better than a song by Lenny and Squiggy?

A: The whole album.

The Sandman!


How'd I hear about it? Hydrocephalicbunny, silly.

Have
I already
expressed
my
appreciation
of clunky Flash?

I keep this link on the permalist at left... it's labeled Jack Kirby. So it's always there. But look, it's only the internet and eventually the site will fall apart, or some lawyer will shut it down, so do yourself a favor and check out the amazing introduction to Jack Kirby's monsters at monsterblog like today. Now!

Really.

You owe it to yourself. Buying all these old comics on eBay would cost you like $14 million. Clicking is free. The site is a panopticon of marvelousness.

I am old enough to remember the
ur-Snuffy but my brain has cauterized the wound and I can't recall this hideous trauma at all.

Hooray!

It's from boingboing, y'know..

Remember when the future was gonna be exciting and creative and great?! Alive From Off Center anyone?

The world was supposed to belong to Laurie Anderson!

Laurie Anderson!

Laurie Anderson!

(Image at right is from this eyepopping site.)

When people talk to me about manga and Japanese animation, I clasp my arms over the top of my head and run as fast as I can. Miyazaki? Heavens yes. Japanese music? By all means.

Manga, tho... no es bueno. Yet I had to stop and wonder about Tekkon Kinkurito.

From what I make of the French (at fous d'anim), it's directed by Shojiro Nishimi, the guy who did Mind Game, and the art direction is by Shinji Kimura, who did Steamboy. Both of which are movies that I might have seen, if they weren't all ... manga-ey.

Can it be completely bad? Ehhhhhh?

Well, the stills look marvelous, anyway.

At least we don't have to worry
about the impending extinction of mankind just to keep the spirit of
Neal Hefti alive.

Whew!

Here's one that your pimply teenage neighbor already told you about. He saw it on the way home from seeing Borat.

it are funny

"Kids" are two commercials that any kid could make. Or so it seems.

At least Antoine Bardou-Jacquet makes it look easy.

Thanks for the heads-up from cartoon brew.

Heh heh... is this the first robotic octopus hug on record???

There's plenty more where that came from.

Thanks! to the metafilter!

Fear and Loathing in Mos Eisley is funny, for a second or two... mostly the picture at right says it all.

Clunky flash can be pretty amusing, no?

Eddie Munster

Look everybody!

Catherine Chalmers' Safari! A bug movie filmed in her own apartment!

A treasure from this month's Film Comment.

Just when you think you've finished reading the internet, you find Mein Walkman ist Kaputt, and that just leads to a gazillion more piles of awesomeness.

Down the rabbithole with you!

This is how to avoid opening that jug in the dark. Thanks, Uncle Carlo!

Are you still giddy from the giant, lovely, you-are-in-the-grass-next-to-them portraits of bugs from Microcosmos? Then you will enjoy this Flickr search...









...and these Russian macro photos which got Boing Boinged a few days ago.






















Then, get wicked small with these pictures.
My new motto: If it's nerdy and pretty, I will adopt it.

There are huge piles of heebie-jeebies at my house, since our VHS copy of North Pole Nutrias arrived in the post today!

Now we know what happens when Dusty and Treasure travel to the North Pole and confront the Virus that dissolves toys!

There's dancing, music, puppet hijinks, and more vivid colors than 100 View-Master reels!!

Purchase here!!

Les Hauts Sommets: a gentle reminder that skiing is extremely terrible, among other terrific stop-action flix you should see, from David Gaultier and Irene Iborra Rizo.








For any other Michel Gondry fans out there, I think these flix will remind you of early Gondry animation.

As does this tribute animation: El Gorrito del Morfeo by Raúl Garcia Llores.



Thanks to fousdanim blog.

There is a ton of unbelievable animation out there... and a bunch of it is on the web if you know where to look. (These were all mentioned at Cartoon Brew at one point of another.)

You can get The Mystery of the Third Planet for 99 cents on eBay. I bought it, and I will absolutely give you your money back if you aren't blown away by the fluid, intelligent, creative animation. From what I can tell from IMDB, it's the same guy who did Cheburashka, which is a must for any stop-action buff. Cheburashka is better, I daresay, than Gumby! Really! And the Mystery movie is light years better than what you think it will look like. Imagine 1970s crap animation, done by the Snow White-era Disney animators. I couldn't imagine that either. Just spend the 99 cents, you cheapskate. Like I said, I'll pay you back if you don't like it.












Next up, The Thief and The Cobbler which is free. So I shouldn't have to make a big pitch. It's free, so check it out. The animation is priceless, and the commitment that folks have made to restoration is really touching. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than any CGI crap they're tossing off at us these days? Without a doubt.

Go torrent this thing, even if you've never torrent-streamed anything before (I hadn't; nothing on my PC crashed when I did. Take the plunge!!)

Finally, there's the straight-up financial commitment to buy Le Roi et L'Oiseau. It costs real money. I bought it from amazon.fr and had it shipped from France. Am I cheap? Yes I am cheap. Shipping DVDs from France is a big deal to me, and I am ready to complain if this undertaking is a waste of my hard-earned money... let it be known that I am ecstatic about this flick. It is genius, and I haven't even scoped the extras disc yet. Le Roi = Dumbo + Chuck "Daffy Duck" Jones + Sylvain (Les Triplettes de Belleville) Chomet.

No, seriously. It's that good. Money-back guarantee, from France even.

This film rox. It's not in English tho, so get your eyes buffed to a high shine.