Isegoria

Roger Ebert shares his list of the best movies of 2006 — yes, 2006:

Yes, I know it’s a year late, but a funny thing happened to me on the way to compiling a list of the best films of 2006. I checked into the hospital in late June 2006 and didn’t get out again until spring of 2007. For a long while, I just didn’t feel like watching movies. Then something revolved within me, and I was engaged in life again.

I came to the terrible realization that I saw none of them in 2006, and I’ve only seen one, The Departed, since then. I’ve been a bad cinephile.

If you enjoy retro-future art, you should enjoy these rare pieces from unlikely sources, including Soviet science magazines.

If you enjoy pulp art, you should enjoy the work of Norman Saunders.

(Hat tip to Michael Blowhard.)

I’ve never seen the British show Not the Nine O’Clock News, but this satire of the then-current Life of Brian controversy, General Synod’s Life of Christ, is spot on:

Batman and Dostoyevsky — together at last:

Have you ever wondered what the great Russian novel, Crime and Punishment, would be like if the protagonist were Batman instead of that whining fool, Raskolnikov?

Wonder no more.

This re-imagining of the morality classic is brought to you by R. Sikoryak and presented in full over at the Again with the Comics blog.

As AWTC author, Brian Hughes, says, “This marriage of Classic Russian Literature and the Caped Crusader of Gotham also serves as further proof, if any were needed, that everything is better with Batman.”

In Japan, Ink, Daniel H. Pink looks inside the Manga-Industrial Complex, where amateurs self-publish comics known as dojinshi — and the big publishers let them use their popular characters, under an implicit agreement, or anmoku no ryokai:

However, because permitting — let alone encouraging — dojinshi runs afoul of copyright law, the agreement remains implicit: The publishers avert their eyes, and the dojinshi creators resist going too far. This anmoku no ryokai business model helps rescue the manga industrial complex in at least three ways.

First, and most obviously, it’s a customer care program. The dojinshi devotees are manga’s fiercest fans. “We’re not denying the viability or importance of intellectual property,” says Kazuhiko Torishima, an executive at the publishing behemoth Shueisha. “But when the numbers speak, you have to listen.”

Second, as Takeda put it at Super Comic City, “this is the soil for new talent.” While most dojinshi creators have no aspirations to become manga superstars, several artists have used the comic markets to springboard into mainstream success. The best example is Clamp, which began as a circle of a dozen college women selling self-published work at comics markets in the Kansai region. Today, Clamp’s members are manga rock stars; they have sold close to 100 million books worldwide.

Third, the anmoku no ryokai arrangement provides publishers with extremely cheap market research. To learn what’s hot and what’s not, a media company could spend lots of money commissioning polls and conducting focus groups. Or for a few bucks it could buy a Super Comic City catalog and spend two days watching 96,000 of its best customers browse, gossip, and buy in real time. These settings often provide early warnings of the shifting fan zeitgeist. For instance, a few years ago several circles that had been creating dojinshi for the series Prince of Tennis switched to Bleach, an indication that one title was falling out of favor and another was on the rise. “The publishers are seeing the market in action,” Ichikawa says. “They’re seeing the successes and the failures. They’re seeing the trends.”

Taking care of customers. Finding new talent. Getting free market research. That’s a pretty potent trio of advantages for any business. Trouble is, to derive these advantages the manga industry must ignore the law. And this is where it gets weird. Unlike, say, an industrial company that might increase profits if it skirts environmental regulations imposed to safeguard the public interest, the manga industrial complex is ignoring a law designed to protect its own commercial interests.

These Japanese manhole covers are so very, very Japanese.

(Hat tip to Drawn!)

Enjoy this Rare Bill Watterson Art — from before Calvin and Hobbes:

While a student at Ohio’s Kenyon College, Bill drew cartoons for the school newspaper The Kenyon Collegian and for the yearbook. Thanks to the generosity of Nat D., a schoolmate of Bill, here are scans of Bill’s work from that era.