JohnnyEnzyme

I'd say this series is primarily pitched towards kids and fanciers of the comic medium. The 'superhero' here is like a riff on ComicBookGuy from The Simpsons. He's completely out of shape, unremarkable in physical appearance, and wears one of the silliest outfits since the days of Ma Hunkel masquerading as The Red Tornado in the pages of the classic American comic, Scribbly. BUT he does have a 'comics superpower,' in that he can interact between panels, bending the very laws of the medium. (or dare I say "multiverse?")

We've occasionally seen this technique used before across various famous comics, going back to Little Nemo I think, but generally as more of a one-off gag. In this case it's developed much further, and is unambiguously the entire point of the series. Imbattable (i.e. Mr. Invincible) is amusingly billed as the 'one and only true comic book superhero,' and if you follow that logic, I think it works!

First appearing in Spirou, there are three collected books in this series, plus a special, authored by writer / artist / colorist Pascal Jousselin from Rennes, France. [list of his BD works] 'Mr. I.' has been nominated for multiple Eisner awards and did win an Italian award, the Bologna Ragazzi.

Of course there are some occasional hiccups with Mr. I.'s superpower. What would be the fun without a little kryptonite here and there?

There's a nice, longer-form article below by the School Library Journal's Betsy Bird. It does a fine job getting in to the nuts & bolts of the series, and raises some interesting points, such as the issue of what kinds of comics pander to kids vs. which truly respect their intelligence.

https://afuse8production.slj.com/2020/11/12/review-of-the-day-mr-invincible-local-hero-by-pascal-jousselin/

I first discovered Marco's art in the pages of Heavy Metal, specifically in the #267 issue from 2014. He's from Pontedera, Italy, and seems to have gotten in to comics via his dad, who lettered Tex.

(from the ~25pp story E.V.A. appearing in HM)

Aside from the fact that he also wrote the story, I was mighty impressed by how well he commanded the city architecture from any number of views, the human figures, and his lovely, somewhat 'electric pastel' color palette.

Turini launched the character "Claudia Poe" online (through Lycos and Dot Com), but she has subsequently appeared in dailies like Il Tirreno, La Nazione, Quotiano and Il Centro, on radio, television (local and MTV) and in a comic book called I Sogni di Claudia (Titivillus/Dot Com edizioni, 2002). In recent years, he has drawn for Miss Italia, Sesso Alieno, Blue and Underground Press. --Lambiek, with edits

Judging by his sites, it looks like he also does work for some American heavyweights:

ArtStation:
https://www.artstation.com/marcoturini

Artist site:
https://www.marcoturiniart.com/

I've always loved watercolors, but as a disabled artist with faltering energy, I also found them to be a lot of work to bring off well. Hence, why I'm honestly a bit jealous that nowadays, digital tools allow one to skip much of the drudgery of tediously hydrating paint medium and/or coaxing every little bit out of 'watercolor pencils.' 😮‍💨

But... yes, I must yield to the fact that digital watercolors (like this one) can be quite interesting, lovely, and even ground-breaking in their own way. Rosie herself doesn't seem to have a lot out there yet, but I do hope she keeps working away, as this is a great start IMO.

https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/pinkclouds/

I just loved the expression of this little rat, surprised whilst taking his daily bath. Checking on the author sent me down an interesting rabbit hole...

"Ptiluc" (Luc Lefèbvre) is a Belgian comic artist best known for his humor comics about rats: Pacush Blues (1980) and Rats (1995). Yet he has also taken other anthropomorphic animals as main characters, like apes and monkeys (Ni Dieu, Ni Bête, 1992) and pigs (La Foire aux Cochons, 1998). Ptiluc uses these animals as a satirical metaphor for human society, featuring black and bleak comedy, yet thought-provoking commentary at the same time. Since 2002, he's been a French national. --Lambiek, with edits

Veillée au coin du feu ("Fireside vigil")

Ptiluc's main inspirations come from American underground comix and the French magazines Fluide Glacial and Rigolo. He cites Hugo Pratt, Marcel Gotlib and André Franquin as his prime influences, but also adores the work of novelist George Orwell.

Pacush Blues : This gag comic about rats living in a drain would eventually become his signature work. Ptiluc said he closely identified with this animal species because people always said he resembled one, due to his long nose.

Urinoir : another day, another community bath

This looks like a funny animal comic at first sight, but contains sarcastic and often nihilistic commentary on humanity. There are no single recurring characters. While the comic features some black comedy gags at times there is also more poignant food for thought. The rats often wonder about the meaning of life and especially the role humans play in the destruction of the planet.

I'll be looking for these books and will likely post more of Ptiluc's work in future. It seems enormously promising on all fronts...

At one point Dunn was considered by Gene Roddenberry for the part of Spock in The Cage. He was also originally considered for the role of Balok in The Corbomite Maneuver, but that part eventually went to Clint Howard. (source: These Are the Voyages)

Me, I really enjoyed Michael's work on this ep, as well as on Wild, Wild West, in which he evidently appeared ten times across four seasons!

In his lone appearance on Star Trek, he played Alexander to perfection, a chronically-abused 'runt-of-the-litter' who famously turns the tables on his abusers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dunn_(actor)

Sadly, he seems to have lived in constant pain across his life due to physical problems, ones which ultimately killed him at 38yo. This dude was an absolute boss as I reckon it.

Still kinda blows my mind that director Richard Linklater got four top-shelf actors in to this scene, which is from his beautiful adaptation of sci-fi author Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly.

In any case, this is just a little random, sideways-thanks to @[email protected] for his lovely, ongoing work on the orange cat cartoons. ^^

If someone told me I could spend the rest of my life loafing through Henk's gorgeous ligne claire, I think I could die a happy enzymatic.

Which brings me to this panel, randomly discovered today. I had little idea what it said, but I loved the intrinsic layout and energy. Then I remembered that Nacktmull had previously discovered that Google-translate could make hay with this stuff. So why not?

Oh well, so it's about red nylons and dated bragging rights. Ho hum.

And of course, two people talking past each other, something definitely amusing in its own right. Two people focused on the greatest, most trivial of issues. In any case (he said, like the Lock-picking Lawyer), what have we learned here today?

Well, I guess it's that G-T is already pretty kick-arse at this stuff (DeepL doesn't seem to recognise images yet), but with some limitations. For example, it didn't naturally recognise the Dutch word "rimboe," because it had been split in two due to the needs of the panel limits. I tried to fix it there, but is "wilderness" really the best translation? I wonder...

I don't think I'm making any great insight to state that these hit me a lot like lightbox and stained glass art, but with a level of extra detail I really enjoy, and tackling subjects I haven't seen too often in this format. Either way, the designs are just gorgeous IMO.

The Last Betrayal

Mike (of Smirap Designs), was born in Manchester, UK, but now lives in Athens, presumably returning to his ethnic/national roots. He's a freelance graphic designer who works in a bunch of different specialties, up for various challenges.

L: Chasing the Sun, R: Lost Time

Lots more of his stuff can be found at his site:
https://smirapdesigns.com/

L: Khepri, R: La Divina

Personally, after finding and sharing plenty of continental stuff from England, Spain, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, a couple Nordic countries, Germany and Poland, I'm a bit relieved to finally share some nice work related to Greece. The Czech republic is next on my list, and eventually I'd like to post nice content from every Euro country I possibly can. Eastern Europe is still sadly under-represented here. :S

Well, cheers.

Today's little translation find:
The backstory here is that in order to help shirk work, Gaston has invented a rubber doll that looks exactly like himself.

Now I get the sense that these panels didn't originally appear in sequence like this, but were sprinkled in to an album, helping to keep the trick working for as long as possible.

https://mutalieju.tumblr.com/post/113201018957/mii-riam-spirou-gaston-lagaffes-lifelike-rubber

Clicking a panel blows it up, and then right-left moves through them. Enjoy.

There are already a couple posts here about Schuiten, but the other day I discovered both a nice little overview (EDIT!) and a full interview preserved through the Internet Archive:

Overview:
https://www.messynessychic.com/2016/06/30/where-has-this-amazing-comic-book-art-been-all-my-life/

Interview:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230402053916/https://neotextcorp.com/culture/francois-schuiten-interview/

I've read my share of whimsical, surreal graphic novels by Manara, but this was one of the few times I've come across one his short stories. In this one, I was thoroughly impressed how he tackled the chilling, abusive power of the Italian Catholic church in post-Ren times.

I also thought the jump cuts in the story were truly masterful, in which the reader gets exactly the amount of necessary info and context to move forward without waffling or delay. Note: The story was translated to English in the Heavy Metal Summer '88 issue.

----> https://imgur.com/gallery/w1CbNC1 <----

As for Manara himself, there's so much to say that I'm not sure where to really begin. To me, he's without question a genius of human expression, pathos, and the mysteries of human nature. I'm sometimes a bit frustrated by the same-ness of his female characters, the lack of story structure, and the fact that there always seems to be an erotic context to his stories, but based on my experience with Italian BD, those seem to be fairly lukewarm complaints.

More on him here:
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/m/manara.htm

Floor796 is an ever-expanding animation scene showing the life of the 796th floor of a huge space station. The goal of the project is to create as huge an animation as possible, with many references to movies, games, anime and memes.

Most of the characters are clickable: you can find out what kind of character and follow the link to the source. Non-clickable characters are fictional.

So this is a one-person project in which the author created the site, the animation software, and all the imagery. Somehow it's almost too good to exist, yet also the most 'internet-y' thing ever.

The particular block above is dedicated to the Spanish series of the same name from the early 90s (Farmacia de Guardia). In addition to characters from the series, the following references have been added:

Wunschpunsch;
Breaking Bad;
Asterix, Obelix & Getafix;
Severus Snape (Harry Potter);
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End.

----> https://floor796.com/ <----

Use the mouse to move around and the scroll wheel to zoom in & out.