Kristian Williams

Anti-War

I’ve recently reviewed three comics the subject of war. The three are very different from each other in terms of approach, and they contain very different anti-war messages.

The first, “Timeless Cartoons” reviews Craig Yoe’s collection The Great Anti-War Cartoons. The book includes images from the sixteenth century on. The review ran in The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2010.

The second, “It was the War of the Trenches,” reviews Jacques Tardi’s novel-like treatment of a few minor events from World War I. It’s on The Comics Journal site.

And the third looks at reporter David Axe’s memoir, War is Boring. It, too, is on The Comics Journal website.

Superheroes

Also at The Comics Journal, I reviewed four recent superhero comics, all issue #1’s from Marvel: Avengers, Secret Avengers, Astonishing X-Men, and Dazzler.

Would you believe Dazzler is the best of the bunch?

There’s a reason I titled the series “False Starts.”

Speaking in Portland (July 25, 2010)

I’ll be speaking at the Anti-Racist Action conference in Portland, on July 25 at 4pm (PSU Smith Center, room 236). I will discuss the history of the Portland Police Bureau, focusing on its role in maintaining racial inequality. I will outline both the historical linkages between the Portland Police and avowedly racist organizations like the Klan, and will also describe the racism inherent in policing a stratified society.

Interviews

The first of a two-part interview, “Police Violence and Class Conflict: An Interview with Kristian Williams,” is in the Summer 2010 issue of The Portland Alliance. It originally ran on KBOO back in December. But the Alliance version also includes a graphic I created, titled “Fire the Cops.”

Submedia also just ran another segment of their interview with me, relating my statements about police violence to the recent events surrounding the G20.

Re-Prints

Since the Supreme Court just tossed out Chicago’s handgun ban, Bring the Ruckus decided to re-run an article Peter Little and I wrote concerning the racial history of gun control. The essay originally appeared in In These Times back in 2008, but the Ruckus version, titled “Gun Rights Are Civil Rights,” is quite a bit longer.

Reading Group

North Star Infoshop (833 SE Main St. #108 in Portland) will be hosting a reading group of Our Enemies in Blue, starting July 21. August 11 at 7pm.

Update:

Part two of the Alliance interview is out now as well: “Police Violence and Class Conflict, Part Two: An Interview with Kristian Williams.” Bill Resnick. The Portland Alliance. July 2010. It also started out as a radio interview on KBOO back in January.

Censoring Earnest

We really shouldn’t trust corporate censors any more than government censors.

For example, Apple’s efforts to regulate the content available on its iPad recently led to the redaction of Tom Bouden’s graphic novel adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

Luckily, in this case, good sense and public embarrassment prevailed, and Apple decided to un-censor the comic.

(For more on the Apple controversy, see the coverage in The Big Money and Gawker.)

Drawing Dorian

As it happens, I have recently written a long, multi-part essay for The Comics Journal about cartoon portrayals of Wilde and graphic adaptations of his works.

In the last installment, I discussed long-standing efforts to obscure Wilde’s homosexuality and pointed to Bouden’s comic as a kind of rebellion against that. I wrote:

“One method of resisting invisibility has been to emphasize or even exaggerate the homoerotic elements of Wilde’s life and work. Neil McKenna surely does so, here and there, in his thoroughly gay-centric biography The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. And Richard Ellmann also did so, inadvertently, by mislabeling a photograph of Alice Guszalewicz, ‘Wilde in costume as Salome.’ Tom Bouden’s all-male comics adaptation of Earnest is, likewise, more gay than the original.”

The entirety of my essay, “Pictures of Dorian Gray, Images of Oscar Wilde” — in nine parts — is archived at The Comics Journal.

Here’s a quick guide, in case you don’t want to read the whole thing:

Part One, “The Power of Image” is a short introduction to the series.

Part Two, “The Cartoons of Dorian Gray,” reviews four recent comics adaptation of Wilde’s novel.

Part Three, “Beardsley, Russell, and Salome,” compares classic and contemporary illustrations to Wilde’s play, Salome.

Part Four, “The Double Image,” consider the difficulties with illustrating Dorian Gray and looks at some of the strategies for cover design.

Part Five, “Revealing Corruption,” continues that discussion with a look at internal illustrations.

Part Six, “Actor and Image,” applies the analysis to theater and film adaptations.

Part Seven, “Victorian Cameos,” discusses other comics alluding to Dorian Gray, or to Oscar Wilde himself, and more broadly considers Wilde’s influence on the medium.

Part Eight, “The Tribute Mediocrity Pays to Genius,” examines historic caricatures of Wilde.

And Part Nine, “Oscar Wilde: Martyr, Saint, and Superhero,” recounts the re-emergence of Wilde as a figure following the period during which his name was unmentionable.

Writing Wilde

I had written about The PIcture of Dorian Gray previously for The Common Review: “Dorian Gray and the Moral Imagination” (Winter 2010). That essay explicates the moral philosophy suggested by the novel.

And I wrote a long review of Thomas Wright’s Oscar’s Books, which appeared in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed issue 68/69.

Neither of those are available online.

In the order listed above:

Resistance is a charming comic about kids in occupied France. I reviewed it for The Comics Journal.

I wrote a profile of Yoram Bauman, the “stand-up economist” and writer of The Cartoon Introduction to Economics for the Reed College alumni magazine.

And I reviewed two books on counterinsurgency and anthropology for Z Magazine — American Counterinsurgency and The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual.