analyze this

September 11th, 2006

Whoa. Guttergeek, The Discontinuous Review of Graphic Narrative, just posted a lovely, academic review of Fun Home by Michael Moon, a professor at Emory. It has some interesting psychoanalytic insights. If you like that sort of thing. Which I do.

Take for example the amazing picture (top of p. 44) of her child-self in silhouette, observing her father laboring in his embalmer’s role over a bearded and naked corpse from which he appears to have extracted heart, lungs, stomach and bowels through a gaping hole in the front of the body….Here is meticulous, Thomas Eakins-like physical detail, in both drawing and writing. But here too (although we may overlook it) is probably the book’s most harrowing visualization of Bechdel’s worst fears about her father: that he lacked, to a radical degree, some kind of crucially important interiority.

Site maintenance in progress

September 11th, 2006

Things might look a bit bent out of shape until 12pm today. Doing some site maintenance. Thanks for your patience.

Episode 494

September 11th, 2006

Man. I’ve been trying to get this up since last week. Still having trouble with displaying the large-print version. In the meantime, click here or the image below for the large version on Flickr, and take your chances. Apologies if it doesn’t work with your browser.

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