Xylin Room

samehat: neil-gaiman: This was the cover of the first Metal...

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 16:52:45 +0100

neil-gaiman:

This was the cover of the first Metal Hurlant I ever saw. I was — what — 14, and on a French Exchange to Paris and this beautiful magazine filled with comics opened my mind to what comics could be, and the art of Jean Giraud, AKA Moebius, made it so powerful and perfect. He drew different stories in different styles, and everything was beautiful. I bought a copy. I could only afford the one copy, but one was enough.

I couldn’t actually figure out what the stories were about, but I figured that was because my French wasn’t up to it.

I read the magazine over and over and envied the French because they had everything I dreamed of in comics - beautifully drawn, visionary and literate comics, for adults. I just wished my French was better, so I could understand the stories (which I knew would be amazing).

I wanted to make comics like that when I grew up.

I read them when I was in my 20s, in translation, and discovered that they weren’t actually brilliant stories. More like stream-of-consciousness art meets Ionesco absurdism. Didn’t matter. The damage had long since been done.

I met Jean Giraud on a couple of occasions. He was sweet and gentle and really… I don’t know. Spiritual is not a word I use much, mostly because it feels so very misused these days, but I’d go with it for him.

We wanted to work together. I wrote the Sandman: Endless Nights story DEATH IN VENICE for him to draw, but his health got bad, so P. Craig Russell drew it. Moebius’s health improved a little, and he asked if I could write him a very short story, perhaps 8 pages, and make them all posters, so I wrote the DESTINY story in Endless Nights for him. His health took a turn for the worse, and Frank Quitely drew it. And both Craig and Frank made magic with their stories, but somewhere inside I was sad, because I’d hoped to work with Moebius.

And now I never shall.

RIP Jean Giraud, 8 May 1938 - 10 March 2012

This is extremely crushing news

Time for a pause

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:00:33 +0100

I’m taking a break from tumblr, I don’t know for how long exactly. You can still send me messages if you feel like it, they will be forwarded to my email inbox.

discoverynews: shortformblog: awesomebrainpowers: Not to...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:52:11 +0100

discoverynews:

shortformblog:

awesomebrainpowers:

Not to trivialize an incredibly important issue, but I foresee an off-the-charts spike in office productivity tomorrow. Sadly, the websites that track that kind of thing will have gone dark, so no-one will ever know.

tpmmedia:

A lot of major websites are “going dark” on January 18 in protest over the internet bill SOPA, and this timeline shows you how the campaign has ramped up in the last week. Google is even planning a special doodle about SOPA tomorrow. (via TPM)

We’re on the fence about going dark. We’d rather cover the phenomenon and inform people about it than disappear entirely. I asked inothernews about this, and his thought was this: “I think that if it affects us directly in our ability to deliver information to our audiences, then we have no choice but to participate.” However, to us, it seems like it breaks the line between information source and activism; we’d rather tell people about the activists than play that role ourselves. What do you all think? — Ernie @ SFB

Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day.