Had a great surprise tonight. Joe Sinnott’s son Mark called Denro to say he was in town with his wife Belinda and their daughter Erin, who’s attending college in Boston. Erin is a writer, who already has two published novels to her name, with a third in the works right now.
We all met up downtown and went out to dinner. I love talking comics and music, but I have to take a backseat to Mark and Dennis when they get going on sports. My sport is running, and being not far from the Boston Marathon finish line this evening, I’m wavering on my decision to give up 26.2-mile road races.
BoingBoing’s Mean Monkey Mondays series ends today. I think the “Man’s Life” covers are the best, although this one doesn’t have any monkeys.
Denro asks, “Hey, is the brave guy trying to save the girl from the crazed turtles (snappers I assume!) or are the brave turtles trying to save the girl from the crazed guy with a knife?!?!?!?” What I’m wondering is if San Antonio is still the Texas home of love-happy girls. And if the woman on this other cover was torn apart by monkeys, how did she live to tell the tale? Maybe the parent who didn’t want her marrying the American with the knife had the monkeys attack her.
You’ll find some more “Man’s Life” covers, equally tasteful and informative, at this link. Some of the covers were painted by Norman Saunders, whose work I first saw in the 1966 Batman bubblegum card series that he did with Bob Powell.
Previously, Saunders and Powell were responsible for the infamous “Mars Attacks!” series, which was based on work by Wally Wood.
Yesterday, Christie’s auctioned a Roy Lichtenstein painting for $42,642,500. The painting is “OHHH… ALRIGHT…”, from 1964. I had to smile (maybe it was more of a smirk) when I read this in the catalog listing.
The seamless surface of Ohhh…Alright… may look as if it was rolled off a printing press in a matter of seconds, but it is actually the product of a long, painstaking procedure. Lichtenstein chose the original illustration from the DC comic book Secret Hearts, which Lichtenstein has made his own by subtly manipulating its content.
Attributing the source material that Lichtenstein used is undoubtedly thanks to the diligent research of David Barsalou, whose Deconstructing Lichtenstein project reveals what’s really behind Roy’s “monumental iconography.”
“Barsalou is boring to us,” comments Jack Cowart, executive director of the Lichtenstein Foundation. He contests the notion that Lichtenstein was a mere copyist: “Roy’s work was a wonderment of the graphic formulae and the codification of sentiment that had been worked out by others. Barsalou’s thesis notwithstanding, the panels were changed in scale, color, treatment, and in their implications. There is no exact copy.”
Nonsense. I don’t deny that Lichtenstein had his own style, but “OH… ALRIGHT…” was copied from a panel in a DC romance comic-book that was drawn by Bernard Sachs, and Barsalou is the only reason why Christie’s acknowledges that. If Art is supposed to be about Truth, Deconstructing Lichtenstein is an essential resource.
The best, and most evocative, use of Lichtenstein’s work I have seen in another medium is by our own Miss Lia Pamina, featuring Margo Guryan’s sublime “Love Songs”.
Here’s me last Sunday at the Albany Comic Con, with Denro and the Sinnott boys — Joe, his son Mark, and grandson Trevor. It was great seeing Joe getting around with no trouble at all, since his hip replacement surgery. I treated everybody to dinner and we all had a great time!
Joe is a lifelong fan of the Giants baseball team, going back to their years in New York, so he was very happy with their win against the Phillies last Saturday night. Joe’s mother’s uncle was John McGraw, which explains his continued loyalty to the Giants after they moved to San Francisco in 1957. Tonight they play the Texas Rangers in game 1 of the World Series. Friends who know Dennis as a loyal Boston Red Sox fanatic, and not a comic book fan, will be shocked to see that he donned a Giants cap! This proves that Dennis is second to none in his admiration and appreciation of Mighty Joe Sinnott. Considering how much I admire the man, that’s saying something!
