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Monday, July 20, 2009

Monday night!

* On the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing, Kotte catches Moon Fever (and there's only no cure). The Nation celebrates the Gil-Scott Heron way.

* 21 artists who changed mainstream comics (for better or worse).

17. Chris Ware
Though he’s philosophically more in line with the alt-comics community, Chris Ware draws so much media attention, and his books sell so well, that his work is arguably more mainstream than any current superhero title. Ware’s innovations in comic-page design—which include temporal shifts conveyed by complex diagrams and frames within frames—were inspired by Art Spiegelman’s ’70s experiments and by Richard McGuire’s seminal Raw story “Here.” But Ware marries his fetish for design with a singularly sardonic voice and a God’s-eye perspective on his characters, creating an overall tone that’s like a turn-of-the-century circus poster crossed with the post-war angst of literary lions like John Updike and Richard Yates. Ware’s influence is mostly seen among the younger alternative crowd and contemporary commercial artists, but his use of staccato pacing and visual repetition has popped up in a number of superhero comics over the past decade as well.
* Is Harry Potter no longer a ticket straight to Hell?

* Steve Benen remembers the day Medicare enslaved us all.

* Aliens in vintage postcards.