Kirby Studies

8 April 2012

Events

Video from Modern Myths

Thanks again to Modern Myths in Northampton, Massachusetts, for hosting my first talk and signing for Hand of Fire on April 3rd! And thanks to everyone who came. I had a wonderful time discussing Kirby and highlighting the themes and concerns behind my book.

Modern Myths captured the event on video in six parts, and has posted all six on its YouTube channel, here (the link leads to Part 1, but the remaining parts can easily be accessed from there).

Odd, to see myself online in something like “real” time. But it was a delight to live it!

5 April 2012

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Responses

Review in Image [&] Narrative

Wow again. Hand of Fire‘s first academic review!

I’m overjoyed that the leading scholar Jan Baetens (of KU Leuven in Belgium) has reviewed Hand of Fire at the e-journal Image [&] Narrative, and that he has such perceptive and encouraging things to say! A fascinating and affirming response.

Some extracts from his review:

[T]he reading of this book has been, from the very first till the very last line, a wow experience that it is a pleasure (no, a duty) to share with all those interested in the field, a field which Hatfield’s investigation broadens significantly, beyond the incrowd of comics or even popular culture.

[A] landmark publication…. offers fascinating analyses to all those interested in gaining a better understanding of comics as storytelling… [and] fundamental contributions to all emerging and ongoing discussions on the semiotics of comics (and visual culture in general).

I’m so glad that the book’s larger theoretical potential is being recognized!

4 April 2012

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Updates

Nominated for an Eisner!

Knock Me Over with a Feather Dept.:

Startling news times two! This year’s judges for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards have established a new category, Best Educational/Academic Work, and Hand of Fire is among the five books nominated in that category! Worthy company indeed:

The full list of Eisner nominees can be found at the Comic-Con International website, here. I’m sure it will be subject to debate, as is traditional (for example, why not Jaime Hernandez this time around, for goodness’ sake? And, in the Educational/Academic category, why no nod for Marc Singer’s Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics, Adilifu Nama’s Super Black, Brannon Costello’s Howard Chaykin: Conversations, or Tom Inge’s Will Eisner: Conversations?). But I’m very grateful to the judges for establishing this new, and I believe much needed, category—and it’s exciting to be among the first nominees in it!

1 April 2012

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Events

Kamandi @ UConn!

Newsflash! I’ll be speaking about Kirby tomorrow, Monday, April 2nd, at my alma mater, the University of Connecticut—thanks to my friend and colleague Kate Capshaw Smith, her English 6200 seminar, and the UConn Department of English!

Wow. I’m really looking forward to this!

The topic of my talk? Well, besides joining Kate and 6200 for a discussion of Morrison, Quitely, and Grant’s We3, I’ll be presenting (gasp!) an outtake from Hand of Fire—an examination of Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth, my own boyhood favorite and a subject I am absolutely not done with.

My talk will take place at 7:00pm as part of English 6200, in CLAS (Liberal Arts and Sciences), Room 216.

20 March 2012

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Responses

Kirby Dynamics covers Hand of Fire!

Rob Steibel, at his Kirby Museum blog, Kirby Dynamics, has posted a very kind entry about my recent interview with Tom Spurgeon, as well as about Hand of Fire itself. Thanks, Rob, for the encouraging words, and for the shout-out!

Rob follows this with a terrific series of posts building on the concept of the technological sublime as discussed in my book, with a focus on Kirby’s original pencils, and then the finished Kirby/Royer artwork, for page 14 of Kirby’s comic book 2001: A Space Odyssey #1 (Dec 1976)—a real beauty. Nice to see!