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Alan Kupperberg | Comics Autobiographer
May 25th
Alan Kupperberg is perhaps on of the more versatile artists to have worked in the medium. His long held infatuation and career in the comics is a testament of an unending search for the beauty of essence that the graphic story narrative strives for. Though he no longer worked at Continuity when I arrived in late 1975, we met often at parties and gatherings of the comics community. While his brother Paul worked his way up the corporate ladder as writer and editor at DC, Alan bounced around through the entire range of publishers and studios operated by the more notable comics legends of our time, and forged a career that’s touched virtually every outlet for comics art in existence.
The best way to get an idea of the scope of Alan’s career is through his own website and also his Wikipedia biography. But more than the countless mainstream Superhero comics that he’s drawn, and the array of comic strips and commercial illustration under his belt, the works which most stand out are his biographical comics, some of which are viewable in the Profusely Illustrated section of his site. It’s here that Alan puts his storytelling and drawing talent to the utmost use in chronicling the life and times of the comics industry, as it touched him throughout his career. Alan doesn’t mince words. He tells the stories as he remembers them and the impression they made on him. His personal experiences and the candor with which he tells them are the fuel. His point of view was not uncommon at all in his circles at the time. The difference between Alan and other colleagues is that he felt the stories of the comics community were worthy to become comics themselves. It is a wonderful chronology of a time in the industry that no one else has put to words and pictures quite as he has.
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We’ve become very good friends over the years since my leaving Continuity in the early 1990′s. In that friendship, I’ve come to know a remarkably humble, witty and delightfully good natured colleague with a great measure of unheralded craftsmanship and talent that doesn’t receive its due regard in the more populist comics media of our time.
Alan Kupperberg - Portraits of the Creators Sketchbook.
Shay Brog’s Total Eclipse
Apr 19th
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Posting will slow down a little in the near future due to a demanding comics project with a very tight deadline, that’s also slowed down a burgeoning list of commissioned art assignments.
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Amidst this welcomed predicament, an old acquaintance stopped by to comment on the recent Green Hornet covers for Dynamite Entertainment. Shay Brog’s nice comment there reminded me to have a look at his site, Total Eclipse, which had left a memorable impression on me several years ago. Beyond his superb technical taste in presentation, Shay is an articulate philosophy and psychology graduate from Tel Aviv University, who recently relocated to New York under an employment arrangement with 5Min.com. An ardent comics lover, he is also a high-tech aficionado exhibiting demonstrable insight into a range of subjects. Several articles there moved me to bring them to readers’ attention and are highly recommended, if only for the intellectual honesty and refreshing insight they exude.
Four Dogmas of the Radical Left: On the Arab-Israeli Conflict.
Before diving into deeply contentious subjects, I’d like to precede by stating that I am and always have been a member of the Israeli peace camp. I support the Palestinian’s right to self-determination, within the boundaries of the land acquired by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.
Having said that, It is often the case that I find myself at greater odds with those who are left of me than those who are to my right, regarding the true nature of the conflict and the convulsed history involved. This is why I’m adding this disclaimer here. Read More…
In Defense of Journalism: On Journalism in the internet age.
For a while now, we’ve been hearing about the crisis of journalism. As David Simon (HBO’sTHE WIRE) once put it – Journalists today are expected to do more with less. As Simon has also wisely noted, this crisis in journalism began before the internet, but today, the most pertinent challenge to journalism lies on the web, with it’s “information wants to be free” attitude, and its cheeky anti-authoritarianism.
Most recently, some have suggested journalism can be saved by consumer technology, or that the internet will have to change to fit antiquated business models. Though I do believe journalism is worth saving, I believe both accounts to be naive and ultimately mistaken. Read More…
Meditations on the Political Paradox: On the perfect political system.
I was arguing with an acquaintance on matters tangential to political philosophy. He was arguing from a rather extreme, radical political position, while I was arguing towards a more moderate, and in my opinion more realistic position.
At one point in the debate, I had the urge to just yell at him “But don’t you see that nobody agrees with you??”
I didn’t, because my trained philosophical mind immediately identified that as an argumentum ad populum, a logical fallacy. One can be absolutely right about something even though most people would disagree. Read More…
And lastly, Shay’s thoughts on a Warren Ellis post advocating a somewhat brutal colonization of Mars.
Naturally, there are already groups with the retarded idea that Mars should be kept the equivalent of a natural park or reservoir. I call this idea retarded, because there can be no justification for it. If Mars is not habitable to humans, then there is no ethical question regarding it and how humanity treats it (this is a position sometimes called anthropocentrism). There certainly aren’t any religious questions about it, and terraforming should proceed before some crazy cult decides that Martian territory is holy ground. Read More…
On this last one, while I wholeheartedly agree with the thrust of both Warren’s and Shay’s sentiment, I believe that Titan, moon of Saturn, will eventually become a more favorable candidate for terraforming, if only for its more abundant natural resources needed to propogate a suitable environment for mass human migration. Much richer in atmoshphere, hydrocarbons and liquid seas than Mars, Titan’s primary drawbacks are its minus 180 degree temperature and methane saturated surface. Both, however, are likely to be more easily adjusted for human life than attempting to pressurize Mars’ atmosphere and generate enough water from it for human habitation. It simply seems more viable to work with the abundance of Titan’s resources than to create presently non-existent ones on Mars. Anticipating major and revolutionary breakthroughs ahead in our understanding of planetary growth is also likely to change our entire approach to colonizing the near solar system. Perhaps a good subject to expand upon in a later post when the work pressure subsides.
In the meantime, if any of these interest you, do pay a visit to Total Eclipse through the links above and take a worthwhile intellectual journey, guided by Shay Brog, a most insightful and articulate thinker, writer, and master of technically enhanced presentation.
