Platypus of Truth

Another scene from an unfinished novel. After Bukatman's Hellboy's World , I decided to continue my comic book meditations with Glen Weldon's The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture . Between the two books, I've had some time to think seriously about comics in a way I haven't in several years. It's also inspired me (in my own fumbling way) to begin incorporating comic motifs into my own art with the art markers. Right now, that means a lot of Hellboy's black and flat color aesthetic. We'll see if it morphs into anything else in the days and months ahead.

The first full week of classes is over and that means an early end to this year's summer reading at Platypus of Truth. If 2016 saw fewer titles, they were no less enjoyable than in years prior. As usual, topics varied widely with trips into 18th century literature ( The Vicar of Wakefield ) and comics theory ( Hellboy's World ). Without further ado then, let's move on to the awards. Sun: The heaven of scholars always has multiple works vying for the title. This year presented a strong field with several works on colonial New England ( In the Devil's Snare , Escaping Salem , and A little Commonwealth ). Inklings scholarship can never be ignored with Jane Chance's A Mythology of Power  and Mark Atherton's There and Back Again running against Corey Olsen's Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit . Ancient Greece wasn't missing either ( A Storm of Spears ). With such a tough field, it's hard to decide but the award goes to Mark Atherton's There a...

‘I watch thee from the quiet shore; Thy spirit up to mine can reach; But in dear words of human speech We two communicate no more.’ And I, ‘Can clouds of nature stain The starry clearness of the free? How is it? Canst thou feel for me Some painless sympathy with pain?’ And lightly does the whisper fall; ‘’Tis hard for thee to fathom this; I triumph in conclusive bliss, And that serene result of all.’ So hold I commerce with the dead; Or so methinks the dead would say; Or so shall grief with symbols play And pining life be fancy-fed. -Tennyson, In Memoriam LXXXV Another scene from the same unpublished book set in a haunted house. I'm getting more satisfied with my command of the markers. I have a long, long way to go, but working through the new Star Wars  and Vader  comics along with a decade-over-due re-read of The Dark Night Returns  are helping a bit. Posting all this stuff is a bit like being Cosme McMoon in Florence Foster Jenkins : never goo...

Another character from an unpublished work drawn using the flat-color style of Hellboy .

Another picture from an unpublished series.

Here are two pictures drawn during a recent trip to visit family. Both are concept art for the forth volume in a series of unpublished novels which chronicle the strange life of occult detective Ronald Fairfax. The style is inspired by a read through Hellboy's World , an academic study of the comic (and comics in general) by Stanford professor Scott Bukatman. If you like Hellboy, or comics in general, I can't recommend this book to you highly enough. Incidentally, it was also helpful in understanding an illuminated manuscript collection we happened upon during our trip. In other news, teacher's meeting have started, so posting may become erratic over the month of August. It's already be an a-typical summer with far more pictures than book reviews and reading live-blogs. Oh well. It's always Strange Places for us here at Platypus of Truth, and we'll see what the Fall brings.