11-28-2022

[brigid]

Sylvia by Nicole Hollander for 11-28-2022

Ah, if only bath houses still existed!

I read "Sylvia" as a kid with a baffled sense of interest. It felt like looking at something I couldn't quite see, like a scrying mirror covered in mist. There was something THERE, it was IMPORTANT, and it was just beyond my understanding.

The cramped figures, the voices coming from off-panel, the art felt weird and dangerous.

One of my big wishes with Sylvia was that it was easily accessible in a larger format. It's always looked too small and too smudgy and that's part of the charm but I want to see more of the linework.

Anyway, I love Sylvia. It was one of those things that cracked open a door that I eventually walked through.


Yes, I'm Hot In This by Huda Fahmy for 11-28-2022

Memes are just packets of information that spread from one person to another. It's why two people are able to communicate as shown in this cartoon. It's why certain very short pieces of music indicate impending death. It's why there's medieval marginalia of soldiers riding on snails. People who aren't the audience of memes don't understand the memes, they're baffling and easy to dismiss. But if you're the audience then it's easy to decode the layers packed into a simple image or sound.

This is an excellent example of that.