Douglas Wolk’s All-Knowing, All-Powerful UberBrain
It would appear that the writer Douglas Wolk has only a single brain, of normal size, in his shaggy head. However, I remain unconvinced that he’s not storing another one (massive, turgid, jigglingly all-knowing) in some top secret subterranean storage facility which he accesses remotely. There’s just no other explanation for the bottomless depths of his knowledge on certain subjects, namely comics, pop music, fringe culture and vegetarian cuisine.
His latest book, Reading Comics, is a must-read for veterans and newbies alike, and there’s a fantastic interview with Wolk by Tom Spurgeon up over at the Comics Reporter right now. If you’re in the bay area, Wolk will be in town this coming Saturday, Feb. 23, for WonderCon, giving a talk called “The Senses-Shattering Return of the Novel of Ideas!” at the Comic Arts Conference. Not to be missed.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:33 am
Dammit – not released on these rain-lashed shores until August, according to Amazon UK. ¡Qué pena! Mer, do me a swap for Jubliee, ha! ;)
Seriously though, this looks really interesting, and possibly just the sort of thing I’ve been looking for as an all-round introduction to the underlying foundations of comics. I love comic books and there are several authors I’ve picked up on in a major way who I now read fervently. On the whole though, I feel similarly about the world of comics as I once did about classical music: with such a gigantic and diverse ocean of material out there, jumping in at random and splashing around in any old direction is hugely rewarding, but I can’t help feeling I’d enjoy strapping on some kind of theoretical water wings to help me doggy-paddle along on a slightly more deliberate tangent. And this book might just do that, by the looks of it. Splish splash.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Excellent…I’ll add it to my library of Books and Comics about Comics. Really a genre unto itself at this point after the groundbreaking work Scott McCloud & the late great Will Eisner did.