The Illustrated Imagination: Graphic Novels--New Series

Cabbage Rabbit for Readers and Book Lovers

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Thursday June 30, 2011 · 7:00 PM PDT

2011/06/30 · 19:00

It's a huge universe out there (maybe more than one!). There's an equally expansive one inside. Graphic novels travel both. The genre seems limited only by our limitless imaginations and the ability of great artists to illustrate them. They can be as real as your own life or as fantastic as a surrealist's dreams. Graphic novels, like literature or any non-fiction, can be about anything. Picture it...

The ILLUSTRATED IMAGINATION is here to open a small window on the wide world of graphic novels. The series intends to be a starting point for discussion and a chance to widen our experience with all forms of comics and illustrated story-telling. There's no way your humble diarist can come close to covering all that's going on in the expanding universe of graphic novels. Indeed, not only do I miss, because of sheer volume, large swaths of the type of illustrated works I'm most interested in, I miss entire genres for various reasons of taste, time and availability (of cash!). My hope is that you, the eye-strained readers of comics of all kinds, will inform, critique and recommend to us what is worthy, what is fantastic, what is informative in the world of graphic novels. Interested? Read on...

Cabbage Rabbit

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Thursday June 23, 2011 · 7:00 PM PDT

2011/06/23 · 19:00

Cabbage Rabbit

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Thursday June 16, 2011 · 11:29 AM PDT

2011/06/16 · 11:29

Jonathan Last has an interesting article in the Weekly Standard dated June 13 comparing the comic book crash of 1993 – what?! You didn’t know? -- to the housing bubble. Yes, yes; it's the evil neo-neo-con William Kristol’s rag… but I think the story makes some interesting comparisons…criticisms below. While speculation drove up the price of collectible comics, publishers strove to make every comic they released collectible (think bankers, bundlers, builders and speculators). While you may not live inside a comic (at least, figuratively) its value, minus speculation becomes personal. But let’s not forget the role of demand-and-supply or the roguish business practices of profit-hungry middle-men.

Cabbage Rabbit for Readers and Book Lovers

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Monday May 30, 2011 · 2:00 PM PDT

2011/05/30 · 14:00

We hear a lot about duty these last days of May. Patriotic duty. Those who answered the call to duty. Extended duty. Duty to God and country.

Philip Roth's latest novel, Nemesis, speaks to duty in the broad, Kantian sense. But Roth comes to different conclusions than Kant. Acting out of a sense of duty -- answering the call of good will -- can have both good and bad consequences. Nemesis, through no fault of its protagonist, emphasizes the bad.

The book, last in a series now billed Nemeses: Short Novels, visits an America some 65 years gone but with contemporary parallels. Its about a sense of duty felt by a man left at home during wartime, his obligation to social values during natural plague and disaster as well as turning on hints of ethnic and class divides.

Cabbage Rabbit

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Saturday May 28, 2011 · 7:39 AM PDT

2011/05/28 · 07:39

Gil Scott Heron was there first. A poet, novelist and songwriter known for mining Marshall McLuhan's media-centric philosophy and applying it to 1970s radicalism in "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," Heron was equal parts social commentator, freedom fighter and pop star. Known as the Godfather of Rap, a title he vehemently denied in an interview I had with him in 1994, he none-the-less influenced generations of rappers and was sampled dozens of times. Most rappers ignored his plea to "not lean so heavily on rhyme and concentrate on the message" (and he meant the socio-political message). None of that mattered to those of us who were his fans. His message, born in the social upheaval of the 1960s, came through loud and clear.

Cabbage Rabbit

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Saturday May 21, 2011 · 8:13 AM PDT

2011/05/21 · 08:13

Thanks to Paul Krugman -- his blog offers more than economic insight and no-nonsense political comment -- for directing us to this from The Onion: America's Finest News Source. The headline, in typical Onion mock-seriousness: "Budget Mix-Up Provides Nation's Schools With Enough Money To Properly Educate Students."

Sources in the Congressional Budget Office reported that as a result of a clerical error, $80 billion earmarked for national defense was accidentally sent to the Department of Education, furnishing schools with the necessary funds to buy new textbooks, offer more academic resources, hire better teachers, promote student achievement, and foster educational excellence—an oversight that apologetic officials called a "huge mistake."

Read the whole piece....and weep from laughter, yes; and bitter irony.

Cabbage Rabbit Review of Books and Music

The Angry Poet: "Housing Bubble"

Cabbage Rabbit

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Sunday May 15, 2011 · 12:08 PM PDT

2011/05/15 · 12:08

The Angry Poet loves greatest hits. The Angry Poet holds a grudge. The Angry Poet can't help but look back, get nostalgic about things that happened three-and-some years ago if only to become angrier...as if there wasn't enough right now. The Angry Poet did not and does not own a home. Still, the Angry Poet is angry. And because he's been a renter (proudly, and out of necessity, since 1981) the Angry Poet, without any recent experience of his home-owning own, can take a high horse position. It should make you angry.

Cabbage Rabbit for Readers and Book Lovers

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Saturday May 07, 2011 · 11:00 AM PDT

2011/05/07 · 11:00

The Angry Poet shops in thrift stores. The Angry Poet suffers resentment (thus the anger). The Angry Poet is certain that "class warfare" means he's under attack. The Angry Poet believes in punishment for those who would abuse his sister. The Angry Poet believes that it is not what you own, but how you take care of what you own. Thus...

Cabbage Rabbit for Readers and Book Lovers

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Saturday April 30, 2011 · 3:00 PM PDT

2011/04/30 · 15:00

The Angry Poet get solicitations but doesn't understand how he, of all people, is eligible for rewards, bonus points and mileage plans. Why The New York Times even thought him among the 200,000 of its readers most likely to buy a new Lincoln. The Angry Poet doesn't even own a car. Road rage? The Angry Poet saves his anger for poetry.

Cabbage Rabbit for Readers and Book Lovers

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Saturday April 30, 2011 · 12:21 PM PDT

2011/04/30 · 12:21

Pessimism towards the charges against Greg Mortenson as well as pessimism towards Mortenson's defense seem to cast shades of gray on everything in his home town of Bozeman, MT. Then it snows....

Cabbage Rabbit

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Saturday April 30, 2011 · 7:17 AM PDT

2011/04/30 · 07:17

In the mid-1970s, everyone loved singer-songwriter Phoebe Snow. Her strong pliant voice, its tremolo and dulcet tone, singing things we wanted to hear; yes words mattered and she was one of our great lyricists, but that voice, bouncing the words around, sending them sky high. Where did it go?

Cabbage Rabbit for Readers and Book Lovers

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Sunday April 24, 2011 · 4:30 PM PDT

2011/04/24 · 16:30

What makes the angry poet angry? Reading. Reading the papers, the blogs, certain books makes him angry. Reading poetry makes him angry, not because of what's written but because of what's not. The angry poet wants poets to be angry. He wants them to be angry at politics, angry over social issues and angry at ethical lapses from those whose lapses affect us all. Anger loves company and the angry poet can't find enough. So he writes and the angry poet finds he's not so angry after all. His angry attempt at poetry, "Sell Off," follows...

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The Illustrated Imagination: Graphic Novels--New Series

The Illustrated Imagination: Graphic Novels

The Housing Bubble and the Comics Crash of 1993

Philp Roth's Latest Novel: Duty As Nemesis

Gil Scott-Heron: Message To Rappers

Dream On: Government Mistake Funds Education

The Angry Poet: "Housing Bubble"

The Angry Poet: "Hand-Me-Down"

The Angry Poet: Credit

Snow Cover: Pessimisim and Three Cups of Tea

Phoebe Snow: 1950-2011

The Angry Poet: Sell Off