Print Archive

Want To Be a Zombie™ Super Hero™? You’ll Need to Ask Marvel™.

By Dan Zambonini, June 15, 2010, 12:43 am in Culture, Language, Present, Print

Some 'real' super heroes

Marvel Comics, like many businesses in creative industries, relies heavily on trademarks and licensing to generate revenue. As evident from the popularity of Marvel-licensed films – X-Men, Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Blade, etc. – it’s clearly working for them.

The company – also known as Marvel Publishing, which is part of Marvel Entertainment, which since December 2009 is part of Disney – has registered some interesting trademarks in its time.

Super Hero and Super Heroes are both Marvel trademarks, as is the less commonly used Super Villains. From 1975 to 1996, Marvel also owned a publishing trademark for the word Zombie. Perhaps understanding that this trademark wasn’t enforceable, in 1996 they registered Marvel Zombies, which states in the registration document, “No claim is made to the exclusive right to use zombies“.

According to the ever-dubious Wikipedia, Marvel Comics also own trademarks on two sounds that their characters make: the “thwip!” of Spider-Man’s web shooters, and the “snikt!” of Wolverine’s claws. Our searches of the US Trademark database have yet to uncover proof of these claims, however, and no citation is provided on the Wikipedia page.

Photograph under Creative Commons license from Flickr user Sam Howzit

0
Comment Tweet

Artes Mundi 2010

By Sian Prescott, April 13, 2010, 6:42 pm in Art, Culture, Photography, Present, Print

This year’s Artes Mundi exhibition opened at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff last month. Since it’s conception in 2003, the international Artes Mundi scheme (and award) has celebrated and exhibited contemporary New Media Art from a wide range of cultural backgrounds and countries. The idea amongst all, to connect Wales to a global modern art sphere.

This year’s overall theme was ‘Humanity’. Eight artists have been shortlisted for the award, all of whom are exhibited at the museum. The modern works include video installations/films, photography stills, lightbox images and ink drawings – with only one painting.

Highlights include Peru-born Fernando Bryce’s work, which looks at the ways in which print media reports and covers historical events. Bryce questions the perceptions of history and the construction of what we take as fact. He does so by imitating print media and through appropriation of newspapers and various prints. The images he produces are beautifully hand-drawn in ink, and challenge how we read and accept ‘facts’ in the media.

Chen Chieh-Jen uses film and photography to portray working labour, the social history and the working people who have been forgotten amidst growing consumerism. Chen’s stunning film ‘Factory’ is a beautifully shot piece, highlighting the plight of a factory in Thailand, now derelict; a victim of cheaper labour elsewhere. Amongst the ghostly rubble and machinery, he places former workers, silent in their protest at the way they were treated/sacked; forgotten workers, whose toil and mundane drudgery were unfairly ignored. Chen gives them a voice despite their silence, through slow moving camera-shots amongst the cob-webs, the melancholic death of an industry.

The poetic camera-angles of the aesthetic are a stark contrast to the decay of the topic, or indeed, the corruption in consumerism he wishes to portray.

Other exhibits include video installations and works dealing with issues in immigration, post industrialism, collapse of the Soviet Union and the deconstruction of Zionism. With artists from Albania, Peru, Russia and Kyrgyzstan amongst others, the Artes Mundi successfully brings world class art to Wales and illustrates New Media Art’s worth in expressing serious contemporary issues facing the world today.

The Artes Mundi exhibition runs at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff until June 6th. The winner will be announced on May 19th.

Image by Sian Prescott – of Yael Bartana’s poster Manifesto, which visitors are encouraged to take home with them.

1
Comment Tweet

Robert McGinnis: The Art of the Femme Fatale

By Dan Zambonini, January 31, 2010, 7:14 pm in Art, Design, Present, Print

Robert McGinnis - The Lion House

Robert McGinnis is a prolific American artist, responsible for illustrations adorning the covers of over 1,000 paperbacks. Much of his work concentrates on the crime/mystery genre, which features alluring, semi-naked women, as clearly demonstrated in the Robert McGinnis Flickr pool.

His talents are also employed for movie posters. Among the most memorable of his film output to date are the posters for Breakfast At Tiffany’s, The Man With The Golden Gun (along with many other James Bond posters), and the collectable cult-classic poster for Barbarella.

A recent documentary, Painting the Last Rose of Summer (2008), beautifully captures his story and creative process.

The Lion House photo by Flickr user Olivander

0
Comment Tweet

Wisconsin Death Trip: Just In Time For Christmas?

By Jackie Mehlmann-Wicks, December 3, 2009, 11:00 am in Culture, History, Past, Photography, Print, Uncategorized

Wisconsin2

When I was in my early twenties, an older friend leant me a book called Wisconsin Death Trip.  That particular copy was falling apart – the pages shuffled awkwardly against the spine – and seemed as old as its subject matter: a series of photographs taken between 1890-1910 by Charles Van Schaik, an American who learned photography after moving to Jackson County and thereafter spent fifty-seven years capturing small-town life in Black River Falls.

It sounds fairly dry, but the majority of the book concentrates on images of the deceased, which for some reason the good citizens of Black River Falls saw fit to dress and pose as though they were still alive.

The very idea sends chills down my spine, though the photos strike a peculiar balance between the macabre and the truly tragic (especially the portraits of young infants) which keeps you flipping through.

wisconsin1

To add another note of disconcertion to an already eerie discovery, the town that Van Schaik was in the midst of documenting was plagued by disease, madness, suicide, murder, addictions, business and farm failure, and an overall despair stemming from harsh living conditions – all of which seems to infiltrate even relatively innocent portraits.

The book itself, which was written in 1973 by Michael Lesy, has since been adapted into a film, which speaks volumes about the extensive resonance of this beautiful, ghostly text.

Images from Wisconsin Historical Society

3
Comment Tweet

Platform Agnostic Publishing

By Amy Thibodeau, November 30, 2009, 12:20 pm in Culture, Present, Print

OR Books from OR Books on Vimeo.

As Rupert Murdoch tries to ban the Internet in a fruitless effort to save traditional printed newspapers, others are looking to the web to offer innovative, new modes of publishing to help keep the industry afloat. Although some people still refer to self-publishing through channels like Lulu as ‘guerrilla’, more and more people from traditional mainstream publishing backgrounds are catching on to the possibilities inherent in exploiting current technologies to invigorate a dying industry.

Take John Oakes and Colin Robinson. Between them they have institutional credentials like the Associated Press, New York Times, the Guardian, CNN … and they have jumped ship from the traditional publishing industry to start their own press called OR Books. They are founded on the principal of ‘Platform Agnostic Publishing’, meaning they are willing to use whatever platform and means necessary to sell their books. The term ‘Agnostic’ usually references someone who is skeptical about faith – it’s the “I don’t know” answer to the question “Do you believe in God.” Although the origins of the word as applied to publishing are hard to source, it seems to refer to a skepticism about choosing just one channel (i.e. print) and the willingness to experiment with multiple ‘answers’ to the distribution problem.

If a consumer wants a hard copy, OR Books will print it and ship it off (but not until the order has come in – no pre-buy runs, no waste). If you want an e-book at a reduced price, they’ll do that too. The only thing they won’t do is sell to you through an intermediary – they want to interact directly with their clients. Oh, and they also use every tool known to the Internet to market their products, including movie trailers for books. Although they don’t offer the range of innovative options Cory Doctorow does in the distribution of his latest book, they are kicking the crap out of Murdoch who is probably closer to their age demographic and background.

One of the best things about OR Books is that because they don’t have a huge bureaucracy, their “system allows a rapid publishing turnaround so relevant books can intervene quickly in issues of the day.” A few weeks ago Sarah Palin released her book Going Rogue and within days, OR Books released their response called Going Rouge, an impressive to-the-moment book about America’s obsession with Palin, written by some leading cultural critics. Yours for $16 in paperback, $10 for the book or $20 for both.

0
Comment Tweet
« Older Entries