Eugene & Adventure Fish / Mike Manley / Satellite Maps / Herman the Manatee
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008Commodore Eugene Linder-Flowman and Adventure Fish
Commodore Eugene Linder-Flowman lives in a man-sized aquarium at the zoo, with his very best friend Adventure Fish. After nearly ninety years of thrill and peril, he’s decided to give himself the golden handshake and call it quits. Nowadays it’s sleepy afternoons and writing his memoirs.
Satellite Maps
I don’t usually do write ups for music, my pals over at www.saidthegramophone.com usually take care of that. In spite of that I feel like I need to talk about this band, Satellite Maps. They’re from Montréal and they are, in my opinion, super-groovy. I’m not really qualified to talk about music, I don’t really know too much about the technical details, I just know what I like. Besides, it’s so very rare for me to discover some secret band that no ones knows about. Okay, okay, I’ll fess up that I know three of the members (Gary Janz, Amy McDonald and Shevaughn Battle), but that doesn’t mean anything; they’re my best kept secret, mine alone… regardless of my sharing their existence with you.
Anyhoo, enough of my pointless yammering. Go to their myspace and sample their melodies: Satellite Maps. And, if you’re in the area try to check out one of their shows.
Mike Manley
Boy I wish I had a last name like Manley.
Mr. Manley is an established cartoonist and animator. I know him from his inks in Power of Shazam, and his pencils for Quasar, and Darkhawk. His art is, I would say, essential. Insofar as it is the essence; the essence of the scene, the essence of the story and the essence of the emotion. He’s a consummate storyteller who doesn’t waste a line on tomfoolery and never lets wastefulness get in the way of the progression. His work always just read really well.
I guess that’s a little smothering and kind of pretentious. Still, its how I feel. Let me put it to you this way, when I was a pear-shaped pimple-faced teenager with high hopes of one day drawing comics, I’d look to artists like Manley. He didn’t sugarcoat his compositions (pencils or inks) with the erratic torrents of line or horribly disproportioned figures, the kind so popular in the nineties. His work taught me the importance of the craft of drawing comics. A rare lesson at such an impressionable age.
I also thought Darkhawk was really cool.
I implore you to go to his blog: Draw!
Survey his work, and please take the time to read his ‘about me’ section, its very eloquent.
Herman the Manatee
This is a webcomic about a manatee who’s always getting smacked on the head by boats, or his own foibles. Poor Herman, poor soul. I’ll admit the premise is bizarre but Jason Viola manages to get this hypnotic, rhythmic narrative that’s sort of, well, addictive. Check it out, you’ll laugh and weep, and then laugh again: http://herman.manateepower.com/
