Wednesday 12 October 2022

It turns out that the calmer this Hulk gets, the stronger she gets

It turns out that the calmer this Hulk [She Hulk] gets, the stronger she gets ... the story’s climax involves her whaling the bejeesus out of the Dark Avengers as she meditates: “I flow with the universe. I bend like the supple reed. I envelop my enemies.”

D. Wolk, All of the Marvels (2015), 251 and footnote

Tuesday 11 October 2022

its only legible words of dialogue are the few that the dog understands

One issue is presented from the point of view of Hawkeye’s dog, Lucky: its only legible words of dialogue are the few that Lucky understands, its colour palette is limited (to the yellows and blues that dogs can see!) and its ‘narration’ takes the form of associative maps of little icon-like images (a trick lifted from Chris Ware’s comics).

D. Wolk, All of the Marvels (2021), 22. footnote

Monday 10 October 2022

The Cedar Walk has been planned and planted by someone was never going to see it

The Cedar Walk has been planned and planted by someone was never going to see it - not him, nor his children, not even his children's children, though they would have had a clearer view of what it was going to be. What amazingly generous confidence in the future those eighteenth-century landscape designers had!

D. Athill, Alive, alive oh! (2015), 23-4

Saturday 8 October 2022

The words 'folk museum' bode ill, suggesting rough brown pottery, more worthy than seductive

 Other beautiful things? Oh yes, the Folk Museum at Santa Fe. The words 'folk museum' bode ill, suggesting rough brown pottery, more worthy than seductive. But folk produce much that is not brown (the Rio carnival for example), and the stuff in this museum was collected from all over by man of the theatre, a master of the art of Display, which makes it a splendiferous palace of colour and fantasy in which you are soon running mad in your attempt to see everything, and there is so much that it's impossible do do that but you end up feeling dizzy with joy. To go to Santa Fe without visiting that museum would be a grave mistake.

D. Athill, Alive, alive oh! (2015), 5