THOUGHT BALLOONISTS

Our Eddie: From Hell Redux

Craig here, interrupting our usual weekend silence to note an excellent response to our Eddie Campbell post of April 1:

http://blog.kobek.com/2008/04/02/thoughts-on-the-visual-style-of-from-hell

Go and read, please. Jarett Kobek has some fascinating things to say about From Hell: he compares its visual style to Victorian newspaper engravings, and argues that the book is less a contemporary graphic novel than a "Victorian Novel done graphically," following the storytelling and visual tropes of the era.

Thanks for the smart commentary, Jarett. I'll try to reply in more detail soon, and I encourage everyone else to chime in on the comments thread.

Following Up on Iron Fist

CH here, briefly. This Twosday's Iron Fist discussion (see Craig's opening post and my reply) has become part of an interesting discussion of comics "continuity" going on at Chris Roberson's Interminable Ramble and Siskoid's Blog of Geekery. Thanks, guys, for responding to us Balloonists and serving up plenty of food for thought!

Siskoid's intriguing series of posts about Bubble World Theory in Myth-Building have addressed, among other things, Iron Fist and Swamp Thing. Chris's post in reply, regarding the idea of the "retcon," effectively ties together Siskoid and us here at TB. Then Siskoid has further thoughts on the notion of retconning.

The follow-up comments have been sharp too. It's nice to see this web forming!