Sometimes I get the feeling that writing Germany´s best comic - related blog begins to become a burden. There is so much stuff to write about, so many other things I have to do that stuff keeps piling up with no end in sight. And the higher the pile gets the more difficult it becomes to decide which part of the pile needs immediate attention.
But whenever I begin to feel this way something reminds me why I started the whole thing. I start to read something in an internetforum and feel the obligation ( or the urge ) to write. And then I get the reaction and instantly remember what sucks about writing on messageboards. Like the fact that you have to explain the most basic things and bring a hundred examples. You could write something like " The sky is blue. " and you can bet that immediately somebody will write something like " Sayz who, retard ? You ? What do you know ? "
And then you begin to argue and you just know nobody will even read what you write or consider your point of view no matter how eloquent you present your arguments. So you spend one hour writing an intelligent, funny, brilliant response only to have it erased by the some glitch in the messageboard software. At three o´clock in the night.
And you think : What am I doing here ? Isn´t this why I started my blog ? Because I had enough of all the negativity and bitching ? And than you get on with writing your blog. Because you don´t have to argue if the sky is or is not blue. You can just send your thoughts out into the void of the bloggospace and people can take it or not.
Now if you are an avid reader of my blog ( sure, like there are readers who read this on a regular basis - aside from my three loyal readers ) you may have noticed that the last few days the only thing I had in this post was a notice and the links. What happened is that I thought I could put more reviews about the fanzines I bought into the last post. But the days went by and I never got around to add it until it finally became time to wrap the post up. And since I already had the links posted I just put them into this post. By the way, I´m writing this ( or begin to write ) on Monday.
Another fanzine I bought on the first day is USTED issue 3. I chose issue 3 because I was thumbing through all the issues and the first two were drawn entirely by one artist. Not that I have something against that artist but one reason for going to the convention was to get to know the spanish comic scene and the spanish artists. And I like a bit of variety in my reading material.
The other reason was that when I was looking through issue 3 I read the story " El buitre " which is an adoption of a story by Kafka. You can´t loose with Kafka. There is always this stigmata attached to Kafka that I encountered on numerous ocassions. Because people think that reading Kafka is hard or difficult. Which it isn´t. As someone who has read Kafka I can tell you that he writes some of the most accessible stories I have ever read. No difficult language, no verbose writing style and no highfalluting words. Heck, it´s easier to read and understand Kafka than the mighty Thor or Reed Richards.
No, the real problem are all the book critiques and intellectuals who go on forever what exactly the work of Kafka means. My tip is, if you want a good laugh just get one of the poket books with Kafka´s work that has the annotations that explains what the stories " really mean ". I mean they give the most irrelevant things importance and base their whole deeper meanings on it. Like the fact that Kafka spent a lot of time in bed. With a complete list of which scenes in Kafka´s work take place in bed or dormitories.
So he was lazy. Like a lot of intelligent people. Intelligent people are lazy and that´s the reason why most inventions were even invented in the first place. The remote control ? Invented by a guy who was too lazy to get up and change the tv channel. The vcr ? Invented by a guy who was too lazy to watch the tv shows at the time they were broadcasted. The car ? Invented by a guy who was too lazy to ride a bike. So if you are a lazy guy don´t feel bad about it. Use it to invent something and make a lot of money. But back to the fanzines.
I wasn´t disappointed with the fanzine. USTED 3 is black and white with a blue colored cover and manages to present seven stories on 40 pages. The stories range from your ordinary slice of life story to the weird and bizarre and even to gangster stories or the abstract. It´s like a ride on a rollercoaster with each story representing another sharp curve or a steeping looping.
Two of the stories are by Esteban Hernandez who is the artist of the first two issues. The other stories each has a different artist and they all have different art styles. Especially the artist of " Itaca deconstruida " reminded me a little of Marc Hempel´s work on GREGORY and TUG & BUSTER.
So whatever you prefer artwise or storywise you will probably find it in this fanzine.
The first link is the blog for USTED fanzine. The second one is the website of Esteban Hernandez and the last on is his blog.
Because of current events on the german messageboards I´m going to end this post now. The next post will be about something complete different but after that we will return to my spanish vacation.
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