Fantômas is a master criminal created by French authors Marcel Allain (1885-1969) and Pierre Souvestre (1874-1914) in a book series begun in 1911. Allain and Souvestre would first create a rough plot for each novel, and then (according to Wikipedia) “go off and write alternate chapters independently of each other, meeting up to tie the two halves of the story together in the final chapter.” (This method helped the authors produce 32 [!] Fantômas novels in three years, until Souvestre’s untimely death; Allain then wrote eleven more Fantômas adventures between 1925 and 1963.) The character has been adapted into movies and TV shows, first in Fantômas: À l’ombre de la guillotine (Fantômas: In the Shadow of the Guillotine), directed by silent movie pioneer Louis Feuillade. The image above, of a blue-masked supervillain version of Fantômas, is from a James Bond-inspired reboot that included three movies in the mid-1960s. Brrr…!
During the early days of the pandemic, children’s illustrator Mo Willems posted fifteen Lunch Doodle videos, where he taught kids how to draw his characters and make finger puppets and silly games. According to the NBC Today TV program website, Willems will be returning on March 15 with a one-year anniversary Lunch Doodle episode, an introduction for children (and adults!) to the fun of creating abstract art. (Willems’ next book, due in October, is Opposites Abstract, designed to spark readers “to express themselves abstractly.”) While you wait for that new Lunch Doodle, you can find last year’s Doodles here, and there are also links in the Today show article to Willems’ favorite art museums (including The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh and The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art) and to an appearance Willems made on Today in September 2020.
Comix Experience, a chain of two fantastic comic shops in San Francisco, sponsors a “Kids’ Graphic Novel of the Month” club featuring YouTube interviews with creators. The selection for the February 2021 Kids’ Club is Oh My Gods! by Stephanie Cooke, Insha Fitzpatrick and Juliana Moon, a book-length comic about Mt. Olympus High, a school populated by gods, goddesses, and one confused human girl. Watch the interview with Cooke, Fitzpatrick, and Moon here. Other recent choices include Timo the Adventurer by Jonathan Garnier and Yohan Sacre (November 2020) and Lightfall by Tim Probert (October 2020). And here’s an archive of over 150 Comix Experience interviews for the Kids’ Club and other reading Clubs (including, be warned, discussions of graphic novels for adults).
This is for people who live in or near the Playhouse’s hometown of Boone, North Carolina. Coming up in late March and early April, Appalachian State University’s Staff Senate is sponsoring their annual AppKIDS Superhero 5K, a charity event that raises money to support “K-12 children in Watauga County who need winter clothing, shoes, food, and hygiene resources.” This year’s race is virtual, but as ever, costumes are strongly encouraged! For more information, go here.
50 Watts, a site for anyone interested in the history of graphic design and book illustration, has two posts with examples of Davide Turconi’s collection of movie strips (many just two or three frames in length) from the early days of the medium. Many of these snippets are from movies otherwise lost: human neglect, combined with the chemical properties of nitrate films, has resulted in the disappearance and decomposition of over 50% of the American and foreign films made before 1950. The first 50 Watts post focuses on film strips with legible images; the second post features strips in states of extreme disintegration, a process which can create beautiful, haunting textures and patterns. Samples of both are below. And here is an article (in Italian and, if you scroll down, English) about the origin of Turconi’s collection.
This weekly blog post is written and compiled by Craig Fischer. To send along recommendations, ideas, and comments, contact Craig at [email protected] [.]
