Charming book - The Bushy Tail Family: Kathleen Nixon 1953
Fritz Lang's Nibelunglied and Orson Welles' Macbeth - the 1st and 3rd are from Lang whilst the 2nd and 4th are from Welles - not closely similar, but I'm thinking Welles was partly inspired by the Lang film for the set design...
stuff:
xhibition - real human corpses stripped of their skin and covered in latex - a little freaky, but good for studying anatomy -
http://www.centredessciencesdemontreal.com/fr/activites/activites_bw2.htm
This wraps it up with that Ken Riley Reader's Digest job There are a few more spot illos that I left out...
Speaking of Queen Elizabeth, I read Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida - Freaky - We get into the dark, tragic phase of Shakespeare's plays - His father died, Queen Elizabeth died, maybe his wife had an affair - did this affect his plays? It's all conjecture but this one's ending is pretty weird and dark - it's about the Trojan War and is sort of a take on Homer's Odyssey, yet he didn't base it on Homer, but on the medieval Trojan War compilations and additions -
http://www.lire.fr/enquete.asp/idC=51245/idR=200
Hugo Pratt gets a cover feature in a French literary magazine currently on the stands. He's basically my role model for what a cartoonist can achieve. I've read a lot of his stuff, they have them all at the library, but it was all in a bit of two-month burst, so the stories are now all one big blur. I do remember feeling that this was more of a literary experience, the stories had a more literate, erudite, mature bent. I got into Robert Louis Stevenson because of Pratt...
All I remember is that he lifted Harvey Kurtzman's 'Jivaro Death' in Two-Fisted Tales directly into one of his Ann of the Jungle stories... Corto Maltese in Siberia, which takes place during the China-Russian war, and features Rasputin (not the historical Rasputin) stands out as a favorite. Fort Wheeling is another favorite, story-wise.
Frank Cho - that's some cool inking - great line - he knows when to go thick and when to go thin - the lines really flow with all kinds of subtle changes of thickness and tapering - he knows when to go tight and slick and when to keep it loose and sketchy - he knows when to throw in some black, he can go realistic or cartoony - he keeps it clean and clear but his line still has warmth and character; and he keeps it dynamic lively - so yeah that's some cool inking -done with Micron Pigma pens (size 02, 05, and 08) .