text:
Why hasn't functional programming taken over yet?
I've read some texts about declarative/functional programming (languages), tried out Haskell as well as written one myself. From what I've seen, functional programming has several advantages over the classical imperative style:
Stateless programs; No side effects
Concurrency; Plays extremely nice with the rising multi-core technology
Programs are usually shorter and in some cases easier to read
Productivity goes up (example: Erlang)
Imperative programming is a very old paradigm (as far as I know) and possibly not suitable for the 21st century
Why are companies using or programs written in functional languages still so "rare"?
Why, when looking at the advantages of functional programming, are we still using imperative programming languages?
Maybe it was too early for it in 1990, but today?
functional-programming
Péter Török
pankraxpankrax
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NOTE: this question has been discussed on meta at least twice, and the consensus is that it should be kept, albeit archived via the "historical significance" lock mentioned above. I strongly encourage anyone viewing this with an eye toward unlocking it to instead stop and give thanks for not having to participate in yet another tedious discussion about this question, enjoy the answers as they are, and go on about their business. – Shog9 Feb 29 '16 at 21:05
Because all those advantages are also disadvantages.
Real-world programs are all about side effects and mutation. When the user presses a button it's because they want something to happen. When they type in something, they want that state to replace whatever state used to be there. When Jane Smith in accounting gets married and changes her name to Jane Jones, the database backing the business process that prints her paycheque had better be all about handling that sort of mutation. When you fire the machine gun at the alien, most people do not mentally model that as the construction of a new alien with fewer hit points; they model that as a mutation of an existing alien's properties.
When the programming language concepts fundamentally work against the domain being modelled, it's hard to justify using that language.
The problem is just pushed around. With immutable data structures you have cheap thread safety at the cost of possibly working with stale data. With mutable data structures you have the benefit of always working on fresh data at the cost of having to write complicated logic to keep the data consistent. It's not like one of those is obviously better than the other.
Except in the cases where they are longer and harder to read. Learning how to read programs written in a functional style is a difficult skill; people seem to be much better at conceiving of programs as a series of steps to be followed, like a recipe, rather than as a series of calculations to be carried out.
Productivity has to go up a lot in order to justify the massive expense of hiring programmers who know how to program in a functional style.
And remember, you don't want to throw away a working system; most programmers are not building new systems from scratch, but rather maintaining existing systems, most of which were built in non-functional languages. Imagine trying to justify that to shareholders. Why did you scrap your existing working payroll system to build a new one at the cost of millions of dollars? "Because functional programming is awesome" is unlikely to delight the shareholders.
Imperative programming is a very old paradigm (as far as I know) and possibly not suitable for the 21th century
Functional programming is very old too. I don't see how the age of the concept is relevant.
Don't get me wrong. I love functional programming, I joined this team because I wanted to help bring concepts from functional programming into C#, and I think that programming in an immutable style is the way of the future. But there are enormous costs to programming in a functional style that can't simply be wished away. The shift towards a more functional style is going to happen slowly and gradually over a period of decades. And that's what it will be: a shift towards a more functional style, not a wholesale embracing of the purity and beauty of Haskell and the abandoning of C++.
I build compilers for a living and we are definitely embracing a functional style for the next generation of compiler tools. That's because functional programming is fundamentally a good match for the sorts of problems we face. Our problems are all about taking in raw information -- strings and metadata -- and transforming them into different strings and metadata. In situations where mutations occur, like someone is typing in the IDE, the problem space inherently lends itself to functional techniques such as incrementally rebuilding only the portions of the tree that changed. Many domains do not have these nice properties that make them obviously amenable to a functional style.
Sarah Vessels
Eric LippertEric Lippert
"When Jane Smith in accounting gets married and changes her name to Jane Jones, the database backing the business process that prints her paycheque had better be all about handling that sort of mutation." There will be a record Jane Smith's former name, we don't retroactively update all instances of Jane's former name to her new name ;) – Juliet May 14 '10 at 16:55
@Juliet: Sure. My point is that if you have an object that represents an employee, it makes sense to think of the operation "change the name of the employee" to be a mutation of the object representing the employee that does not change object identity. When Jane Smith changes her name you don't create a different employee called Jane Jones that is otherwise the same. There aren't two employees with two different names. It is natural to model this process as a mutation of an object, not as the construction of a new object. – Eric Lippert May 14 '10 at 16:58
This is a good answer, but I think you overstate your case at times. Like Juliet said, although people might think of it as a name change, it really is a name replacement on a deeper level. And although functional programs might be harder for people to read (because it is a learned skill), that isn't generally because they're longer. A Haskell program will almost always be more terse than, say, a Java program — even in a "bad fit" domain with lots of inherent state. – Chuck May 14 '10 at 17:17
+1 It was such a breath of fresh air to read this answer. Fantastic to hear such pragmatism (with an underlying passion for functional programming) from someone in your position. – Dhaust Aug 3 '10 at 5:13
"Because all those advantages are also disadvantages. Stateless programs; No side effects": As far as I understand (I do not know enough about FP to write an authoritative answer) this is not correct. Functional programming is about referential transparency not about avoiding state (even though state must be handled appropriately to ensure referential transparency). Haskell does allow state and mutation. It just provides different (one could argue, better) tools for reasoning about it. – Giorgio Mar 21 '13 at 12:49
Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages
[Haskell]
Why do you think no functional programming language has entered the mainstream?
John Hughes: Poor marketing! I don't mean propaganda; we've had plenty of that. I mean a careful choice of a target market niche to dominate, followed by a determined effort to make functional programming by far the most effective way to address that niche. In the happy days of the 80s, we thought functional programming was good for everything - but calling new technology "good for everything" is the same as calling it "particularly good at nothing". What's the brand supposed to be? This is a problem that John Launchbury described very clearly in his invited talk at ICFP. Galois Connections nearly went under when their brand was "software in functional languages," but they've gone from strength to strength since focusing on "high-assurance software."
Many people have no idea how technological innovation happens, and expect that better technology will simply become dominant all by itself (the "better mousetrap" effect), but the world's just not like that.
Nick DandoulakisNick Dandoulakis
Haskell: after 20 years, an overnight success! – Juliet May 14 '10 at 17:05
follow the link and read the reviews for a rather amusing dis of Grady Booch. No idea who Booch is, but it made me lol anyway. – fearofawhackplanet May 14 '10 at 23:39
Grady Booch is responsible, ultimately, together with Jacobson and Rumbaugh, for the abomination that is UML. – JUST MY correct OPINION May 30 '10 at 13:53
The stock answer is that neither will or should replace the other - they are different tools that have different sets of pros and cons, and which approach has the edge will differ depending on the project and other "soft" issues like the available talent pool.
I think you're right that the growth of concurrency due to multi-core will increase the percentage (of the global set of development projects) when functional programming is chosen over other styles.
I think it's rare today because the majority of today's professional talent pool is most comfortable with imperative and object-oriented technologies. For example, I have more than once chosen Java as the language for a commercial project because it was good enough, non-controversial, and I know that I will never run out of people that can program (well enough) in it.
G__G__
This is very insightful and delightfully pragmatic. Definitely the best answer I've seen to this question in all its forms. – Benson May 14 '10 at 16:46
Maybe by a language for which both are first class citizens will become popular. – Kevin Kostlan Nov 17 '14 at 20:12
Agree 110%. On several occasions, I've tried to get into FP, but I lost the will to continue after a few weeks. I've been programming procedurally for over 30 years and I'm just too used to imperative programming. This is true of the IT industry at large. Change will not come easily nor quickly. – Richard Eng Jun 23 '15 at 16:04
Despite the advantages of functional programming, imperative and object oriented programming will never go away completely.
Imperative and object-oriented programming is a step-by-step description of the problem and its solution. As such, it can be easier to comprehend. Functional programming can be a bit obscure.
Ultimately, a useful program will always have side effects (like providing actual output to the user for consumption), so the purest of functional languages will still need a way to step into the imperative world from time to time.
The current state-of-the-art is that imperative languages (such as C#) borrow features from the functional world (such as lambda statements) and vice-versa.
Anton Tykhyy
Isn't OOP some sort of subset of imperative programming? – pankrax May 14 '10 at 16:35
OOP is a superset. OOP is to imperative as C++ is to C. – Robert Harvey May 14 '10 at 16:44
I don't think OOP is necessarily reliant on imperative programming. Look a Clojure or CLOS -- both are functional, yet object-oriented. – Gabe May 14 '10 at 16:55
OO languages tend to be imperative, but don't have to be. OCaml is a strongly (though not purely) functional language whose entire raison d'etre is OO. – Chuck May 14 '10 at 17:09
I am not getting why OOP is a superset of imperative programming. Not all imperative code is OOP, and not all functional code is non-OOP. I would rather say that OOP is to imperative programming and functional programming like aerodynamic wings are to racing cars, or planes, or rockets, or cooling fans, or windmills, or ... i.e., the concepts are related, but not tightly coupled in a 1-to-1 connection. – Sebastian Mach May 24 '13 at 9:27
Hasn't it?
Smalltalk was a great object-oriented system back in the day. Why hasn't object-oriented programming taken over? Well, it has. It just doesn't look like Smalltalk. Mainstream languages keep getting more Smalltalk-like with C++, Java, C#, etc. Fashion and style change slower than anything, so when OO went mainstream, we got it by gluing parts of OO to old languages so it looked enough like C to swallow.
Functional is the same way. Haskell was a great functional language. But we've got even more mass of mainstream programmers using C-like syntax today than 20 years ago. So it has to look like C. Done: look at any LINQ expression and tell me it isn't functional.
Interesting point, but how have mainstream languages been getting more Smalltalk-like? C++, Java and C#, for instance, are not based on message-sending, which (I believe) is the most important part of the Smalltalk paradigm. – Jonathan Sterling May 16 '10 at 3:06
Jonathan: Pick any Smalltalk feature, and observe how it's weakest in C++ (the oldest), OK in Java, and better in C#. For example, GC (Java/C# only), autoboxing (later Java/C# only), closures (C# only), and reflection (present in Java, better in C#). If you want message-passing, look at C# 4's dynamic. That's the most Smalltalk-y of these features, so it's no surprise to me that it's only present in the latest version of the most modern of these three languages. :-) – Ken Jun 2 '10 at 17:54
Javascript, python, and ruby are good illustrations of how it indeed has – nafg May 20 '14 at 6:47
I believe that imperative languages are more prevalent simply because that's what more people are used to. Neither functional programming nor the imperative programming model is more obscure or academic than the other. In fact, they are complements.
One poster said that imperative code is easier to understand than functional programming code. This is only true if the reader has already seen imperative code, especially if the prior examples are part of the same "family" (for example, C/C++, Perl, PHP and Java). I would not claim that it's true for any imperative language; take a comparison of Java and Forth, to make an extreme example.
To a layperson, all programming languages are indecipherable gibberish, except maybe the verbose languages such as Hypertalk and SQL. (Of note, SQL is a declarative and/or functional language and enjoys enormous popularity.)
If we had been initially trained on a Lisp-y or Haskell-y language from the start, we'd all think functional programming languages are perfectly normal.
Barry BrownBarry Brown
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"One poster said that imperative code is easier to understand than functional programming code. This is only true if the reader has already seen imperative code, especially if the prior examples are part of the same "family" (for example, C/C++, Perl, PHP and Java).": Very true (+1): I remember how much effort I had to put into learning Pascal and C when I started to program. And how easy it is to read Scala, Haskell or Scheme now that I have some experience with these languages. – Giorgio Nov 11 '12 at 11:13
The only reason why I still consider mutable state useful sometimes is that it offers an easy way to write fast code (no copying); but the reason for that might be that I do not know enough functional programming and that, for 90% of the situations, you can write fast functional code without using mutable state. – Giorgio Nov 11 '12 at 11:15
One of the most widely used, and long-lived, environments for organising computation is the spreadsheet; essentially a functional programming environment with cells rather than named variables. I don't believe that people, in general, inherently conceive of programs as a series of steps. Programmers steeped in widespread imperative languages, maybe. – jpnp Jan 23 '14 at 16:08
You've gotten enough answers already that I'll mention only a couple of things I don't see mentioned yet.
First and (in my mind) foremost, procedural languages have benefited greatly from their degree of commonality. For one example, almost anybody who knows almost any of the mainstream procedural (or OO) languages to almost any degree can read most of the others reasonably well. I actively avoid working in Java, C#, Cobol, Fortran, or Basic (for just a few examples) but can read any of them reasonably well -- almost as well, in fact, as people who use them every day.
On the functional side, that's much less true. Just for example, I can write Scheme quite reasonably as well, but that's of little use in reading Ocaml or Haskell (for only a couple of examples). Even within a single family (e.g., Scheme vs., Common Lisp) familiarity with one doesn't seem to translate nearly as well to the other.
The claim that functional code is more readable tends to be true only under a narrow range of conditions. For people who are extremely familiar with the language, readability is indeed excellent -- but for everybody else, it's often next to nonexistent. Worse, while differences in procedural languages are largely of syntax and therefore relatively easily learned, differences in functional languages are often much more fundamental, so they require considerable study to really understand (e.g., knowing Lisp is of little help in understanding Monads).
The other major point is that the idea that functional programs are shorter than procedural ones is often based more on syntax than semantics. Programs written in Haskell (for one example) are often quite short, but its being functional is a rather small part of that. A great deal if it is simply that Haskell has a relatively terse syntax.
Few purely functional languages can compete well with APL for terse source code (though, in fairness, APL supports creating higher level functions as well, so that's not quite a large a difference as in some other cases). Contrariwise, Ada and C++ (for only a couple examples) can be quite competitive in terms of number of operations necessary to accomplish a given task, but the syntax is (at least usually) substantially more verbose.
Jerry CoffinJerry Coffin
Excellent comment! I agree wholeheartedly. I find most procedural languages fairly easy to read and understand, even though I'm only a bona fide expert in a couple of them. Can't say the same about FP languages. – Richard Eng Jun 23 '15 at 16:30
Another important point is, in any given paradigm, you find a range of expertise, from newbies to gurus. FP code may be easily readable and comprehensible for experts, but middling programmers may still struggle. Experts usually comprise a very small fraction of the FP community. – Richard Eng Jun 23 '15 at 16:37
No Perceived Need
I recall my old Boss Rick Cline's response when I showed him a copy of John Backus' Turing Award lecture entitled Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?
His response: "Maybe some of us don't want to be liberated from the von Neumann style!"
Mark HarrisonMark Harrison
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Functional is better for some things and worse for others so it will never "take over". It is already ubiquitous in the real world though.
Stateless programs are easier to test. This is now widely appreciated and often exploited in industry.
Concurrency; Plays extremely nice with the rising multi-core technology Programs are usually shorter and in some cases easier to read Productivity goes up (example: Erlang)
You're conflating concurrent and parallelism.
Concurrency can be done effectively using communicating sequential processes (CSP). The code inside a CSP can mutate its local state but the messages sent between them should always be immutable.
Purely functional programming plays extremely badly with multicore because it is so cache unfriendly. Cores end up contending for shared memory and parallel programs don't scale.
Scala is often regarded as a functional language but it is no more functional than C# which is one of the most popular languages in the world today.
Purely functional programming has lots of serious disadvantages so we use impure functional languages like Lisp, Scheme, SML, OCaml, Scala and C#.
Jon HarropJon Harrop
When I think about what functional programming might bring to my projects at work I'm always led down the same path of thought:
To get the full advantages of functional programming you need laziness. Yes, there are strict functional languages, but the real benefits of functional programming don't shine as well in strict code. For example, in Haskell it's easy to create a sequence of lazy operations on a list and concatenate them and apply them to a list. Eg. op1 $ op2 $ op3 $ op4 $ someList. I know that it's not going to build the entire list and internally I'm just going to get a nice loop that walks through the elements one at a time. This allows you to write really modular code. The interface between two modules can involve handing over potentially vast data structures, and yet you don't have to have the structure resident.
But when you have laziness, it becomes hard to reason about memory usage. Changing the Haskell compiler flags frequently changes the amount of memory used by an algorithm from O(N) to O(1), except sometimes it doesn't. This isn't really acceptable when you have applications that need to make maximum use of all available memory, and it's not great even for applications that don't need all memory.
Lance Roberts
sigfpesigfpe
Laziness also interacts less-than-ideally with debugging. – Brian May 15 '10 at 0:35
As I find that many of the bugs I chase in other languages are related to lack of referential transparency I'm less worried about the debugging issues, even though they can be a pain sometimes. – sigfpe May 15 '10 at 23:15
It just takes time no matter how good a technology is. The ideas behind FP is about 70 years old. But its mainstream usage in Software Engineering (in the trenches, in industry) is probably less than 10 years. Asking developers to adopt racially new mindsets is possible but just takes time (many, many years). For example, OOP really got mainstream usage in the early 1980's. However, it did not gain dorminance until the late 1990's.
You need people to be forced to face a technology's strength before it hits it big. Currently, people are using tools that does not not make use of parallelism and things works okay. When apps that do not use parallelism become unbearably slow; then many people will be forced to use parallelism-tools and FP may shot up in popularity. This may also apply to FP's other strengths.
PhilPhil
FP is very good at code reuse. Probably better then OO. I've had to deal with it at work a few times, migrating to different types, and a new system and it was painless. – nlucaroni May 14 '10 at 17:35
@Freddy Rios and @nlucaroni. I reworded the comment to clear up misinterpretation. – Phil May 14 '10 at 22:30
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text:
Q: Angular generate template with dynamic depth of object I have an object Item like that:
{
    name: string;
    parent: Item;
}

and I want to display all items till the parent attribute is empty. Example:
{
  name: "child3",
  parent: {
    name: "child2",
    parent: {
      name: "child1",
      parent: {
        name: "parent",
        parent: undefined
      }
  }
}

should generate html like that:
child3 child2 child1 parent

How can I do that?
    {{ item.name }}
    {{ item.parent.name }}
    {{ item.parent.parent.name }}
    [...]

Something like that would work, but not if the depth is unknown.
So how can I write a template that does exactly that?

A: SOLUTION 1
You can create a component with a nesting items (recursion):
@Component({
  selector: 'component',
  template: `

{{item.name}}

<component *ngIf="item.parent" [item]="item.parent">
</component>
  `
})
export class Component {
  @Input()
  item: any;
}

And just use it in your component like:
const obj = {
  name: "child3",
  parent: {
    name: "child2",
    parent: {
      name: "child1",
      parent: {
        name: "parent",
        parent: undefined
      }
  }
}

<component[item]="obj">
</component>

SOLUTION 2
Would be to go through an object, and make an array of names .Like:
const obj = {
  name: "child3",
  parent: {
    name: "child2",
    parent: {
      name: "child1",
      parent: {
        name: "parent",
        parent: undefined
      }
    }
  }
}

const getNames = (obj) => {

  let currentObject = obj;

  const names = [];

  while (true) {
    if (!currentObject) return names;
    names.push(currentObject.name);
    currentObject = currentObject.parent;
  }

}

// Here you will get ['child3', 'child2', 'child1', 'parent']
const names = getNames(obj);

// And in the template you can just in a for loop show them

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Rinds of cheese - anything to be done with them?
Hard cheeses such as Parm can be tossed into a pasta sauce.
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Tory Corruption and Covid Chaos: The Class Divide Widens
In 2022 the UK once again finds itself staring down COVID calamity. The omicron variant has spread completely out of control, infecting millions of people and disrupting the winter holidays for millions more. The Tories and their hangers-on are still responsible for this mess, but the world is particularly vulnerable due to one underlying health condition: capitalism.
Though the Government and the bourgeois press are keen to tout the success of the vaccine booster programme, it is increasingly difficult to see where this success really lies. Deaths and severe cases may be down, but the NHS still struggles to cope with the impact of the new infection wave, with lasting staff shortages exacerbated by self-isolation and illness among workers. The backlog in delayed operations now runs into the millions.
There may not have been a full lockdown announced over December, but for thousands of businesses and families there effectively was. Positive cases broke records only weeks after the first case of omicron was detected in the UK, meaning 7 to 10 days of isolation. Countries around Europe shut their borders to Britain, cancelling holidays and sending the travel industry into a tailspin.
As well as people missing festivities with their families, businesses and services were heavily hit with lost trade and staff absences costing billions. For restaurants and pubs, it was a lockdown in all but name.
Following the lead of the Tories in Westminster, the Scottish Government implemented the same policies. Though they respond to criticism of their pandemic policies by saying their hands are tied by Westminster, there is no reason to believe an independent policy would be any different. The SNP and Greens are wedded to the capitalist system, which is the real constraint on what policies they will pursue.
We are now used to the apparently never-ending nature of the pandemic, as infection follows infection, lockdown follows lockdown, and now, vaccine dose follows vaccine dose. The potential need for a fourth dose among vulnerable people is already being proposed.
This over-reliance on vaccination has been criticised by the World Health Organisation, who point out the impossibility of vaccinating the whole world every six months. The reality of this policy, of course, would be that richer countries get vaccines while poor countries would be left wanting.
The problem here of course is not the vaccine itself, which is a vital weapon in the arsenal for fighting the coronavirus pandemic. The problem is that the ruling classes of rich countries in Europe and North America have thought that they could get away with prioritising their own rapid vaccination programmes while leaving the rest of the world to make do with a drip-feed of donated vaccines.
The main motivation for this vaccine strategy was to end the necessity of lockdowns when infections spread, allowing for an uninterrupted flow of profits. This short-sighted calculation has backfired immensely however, giving only temporary relief while preparing the ground for new variants to spread and thus new lockdowns to be imposed.
Despite the feelings of déjà vu this winter, each repetition of this farce is not exactly the same. By all accounts, Boris Johnson has now made it politically impossible for a new lockdown to occur. Though he now appears cautious in public, warning us all that the pandemic is "far from over", it was he and his government who threw caution to the wind on 'Freedom Day' last year, pledging to never look back.
Not long after this, with coronavirus cases surging, began the whirlwind of scandal, as the country found out what the elite were really up to throughout the previous lockdowns: partying, 'wine and cheese', dodgy flat renovations, corrupt lobbying and securing their private interests at public expense etc. Key to all the scandals themselves was the fact that the Tories acquit themselves of all wrongdoing – on Owen Paterson's second job, Boris Johnson's flat, Rees-Mogg's millions. The systems of oversight, designed by the bourgeois themselves, are set up to cover their wrongdoing rather than punish it.
The 'sleaze' — better known as corruption — rife in Westminster and the Tory party in particular has been exposed for all to see, fomenting class hatred of the rule of the rich.
Amidst the exposure of this lawlessness at the top of society, the bourgeois press has heavily telegraphed the idea that new coronavirus restrictions were as good as dead on arrival. "If the politicians won't follow their own rules, why should I?" was the refrain.
The reality, however, is that workers understand the necessity of restrictions, even if no-one is enthusiastic about more lockdowns. They have dutifully followed the rules for nearly two years, missing out on births, deaths and other life events in order to protect society as a whole. This attitude is actually absent among the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois, who think solely of themselves, their 'freedoms' and their profits.
It is the opinions of these 'freedom' warriors that Boris Johnson is most concerned about, because they comprise the majority of the Tory party back benches. This small group has the power to remove Johnson as Prime Minister and are not impressed with his constant proximity to scandal and by-election losses. As shown by David Davis' ideological resignation from the Government and around a hundred Tories rebelling in Parliament, they are least inclined to Johnson when he supports more coronavirus restrictions.
Boris Johnson's supposed source of strength – the 80-odd Tory majority in Parliament – merely masks his weakness as a leader. With the Labour party wilfully side-lining itself under Starmer's neo-Blairite leadership, we are all now fully at the mercy of these self-serving Tory lunatics.
Johnson now says that we must 'ride out' whatever comes next, confessing that he will allow the NHS to be 'temporarily overwhelmed' as infections peak. It is as if the rhetoric of 'herd immunity' has returned, and that 'learning to live with the virus' means getting used to permanent crisis.
The world is already living with the coronavirus, but what this means for the likes of Boris Johnson is very different to what it means for the working class. In spite of everything – the lockdowns, the shortages, the supply chains crisis, etc – the world's richest have only gotten richer in the past two years. Meanwhile, the majority of the world's poor see their incomes stagnate or decline.
This upwards redistribution of wealth was symbolised in 2021 by the absurd space adventurism of billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk. It has swelled asset prices and produced a frenzy of speculation in fictitious values, from corporate shares to cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile workers are being told to tighten their belts as the cost of living skyrockets.
This injustice is odious and has already shown masses of people that the capitalist system itself is unjust and unfair. It is not just this however, but it is because of capitalism that we are in this situation in the first place. Were it not for capitalist austerity that has cut away at the NHS for decades, would we need to suspend our lives in order to prevent it being overwhelmed? Were it not for imperialism, and the division of the world into rich and poor countries, would we be facing new variants emerging from unvaccinated populations every year?
Had the world been run by the working class, with production planned rationally and health being a priority, the pandemic could have ended long ago. Instead, the anarchy of the market and private property prevented this, taking us down our current path.
Workers all over are becoming more and more conscious of this, as they turn towards the labour movement to fight back. The UK's largest private sector union, Unite, won a record number of disputes in 2021, winning 43 new pay deals for workers under the new General Secretary Sharon Graham, who promised to lead more industrial struggles. In the United States, over 100,000 workers across a variety of industries were prepared to go on strike in the 'Striketober' wave, and union organising drives in huge corporations like Amazon and Starbucks have drawn support from wide layers of the US working class.
The potential power of the global working class was on display in Glasgow during COP26, as workers and young climate activists stood together on the mass demonstration through the city. There have been inspiring mass movements and uprisings on every continent, from Myanmar to Chile, to India and Iran, to Poland and Kazakhstan. There will be more this year as the desire to be free from the poverty, inequality and corruption of capitalism breaks through to the surface of society.
The class struggle is a struggle between life and death, and it is only with the revolutionary victory of the working class that the possibility for a new life will be opened for the whole of humanity.
Revolution Scotland Editorial Board
Posted on 10/01/2022 13/01/2022 Author Revolution Scotland EBCategories News & Analysis, UKTags Class consciousness, Coronavirus, Corruption, COVID Vaccine, Editorial, Tories
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Описание: The novel that inspired the major motion picture. Released in Autumn 2017, the glittering team behind last year`s cinematic sensation, A Bigger Splash, brings you a sultry, sensual film of obsession and desire.
Описание: A story of a sudden and powerful romance that blooms between seventeen-year-old Elio and his father`s house guest Oliver during a restless summer on the Italian Riviera. It tells how unrelenting currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire threaten to overwhelm the lovers who at first feign indifference to the charge between them.
Описание: From `the most exciting new fiction writer of the 21st century` (New York Magazine) comes Eight White Nights, a sparkling and `wonderfully romantic` (The Times) Christmas novel.
Описание: [Aciman s] best so far. . . . An existentialist adventure worthy of Kerouac. Clancy Martin, New York Times Book Review"
Описание: In The Light of New York, award-winning photographer Jean-Michel Berts captures the city that never sleeps in moments of dream-like serenity. This photographic gem is a moving homage to the world`s greatest city, seen as a virtuoso sculptor`s masterpiece.
Описание: Set in Alexandria, this memoir chronicles the exploits of the author`s colourful Sephardic Jewish family, from its arrival in Egypt at the turn of the century to its forced departure three generations later. It tells a story of childhood innocence, of intricate family life, and the pain of exile from a place one loves.
"A young man goes to a Christmas party in upper Manhattan where a woman introduces herself with three simple words: "I am Clara." Over the following seven days, they meet every evening at the cinema. Overwhelmed yet cautious, he treads softly. The tension between them builds gradually—marked by ambivalence, hope, and distrust—culminating in a final scene on New Year's Eve in a final scene charged with magic and the passion. As André Aciman yet again explores human emotion with uncompromising accuracy in this piercing new novel. Eight White Nights is a brilliant performance from a master prose stylist.
Описание: Eight White Nights is a lushly romantic novel from the author of the critically acclaimed Call Me by Your Name.


I have used Open Office on a windows PC - no problem. I am using Fedora and in the middle of an important document the program crashed? I tried to recover the file using the wizard and only got back the first entry of a CALC Sheet.
Can you help me to recover all of the data please - Two hours of work - gone!
If you want someone here to look at your document to see what, if anything, can be recovered, then you need to upload the spreadsheet. See [Forums]How to attach a document for more information.
Alternatively you could try do it yourself by reading through [Hint]How did I fix my ODT file Warning: That topic is extremely long.
Fedora comes with LibreOffice preinstalled. Why do you install OpenOffice?
If the data which survives is that which was there when you opened the file, then there is no way of getting back the data you entered during the session as it was always held in memory and never saved to disk.
c) how to un-delete the temporary files AOO wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. This will recover your file as it was when you last opened or you last saved it and is probably your best hope.


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Posted in NewsTagged adam baumgold gallery, art institute chicago, boom studios, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, james ensor, laila milevski, Mark Beyer, michelangelo antonioni, New York Review Comics, rubin museum, sophia foster-dimino, SPREAD ZINEFEST
Aaron Cockle
Richmond, VA Scene Report
Frank SantoroOctober 23, 2011Riff Raff / Scene ReportsThis week's scene report is brought to you by AdHouse Books brainiac, Chris Pitzer. AdHouse is one of the best publishers around – and Chris is one of the nicest guys around (a rare combination!). He lives in Richmond, Virginia and was kind enough to write up a report on the local comics goings-on there. Check it out below the new DeForge cartoon. Speaking of Mr. DeForge – holy shit – I can't stop looking at his story in the new Thickness – I can't stop looking at the whole issue more precisely. It's a perfect object. Editor slash publisher Ryan Sands is a print genius. Students of the form will wanna pick this one up. It's a clinic on how to print your own magazine and make it look better than anything you could ever get from "professional" printers. ————– Top 5 Marvel Lay Offs of All Time 1. John Byrne 2. Jim Shooter 3. Pond Scum 4. Alejandro Arbona 5. Jody LeHeup **Honorable Mention: The guy who got fired for writing nasty things about his boss in the backgrounds. I think this past week's Marvel layoffs news is reflective of how corporate comics culture eats its young. Marvel doesn't give a fuck about supporting folks who make good comics for them – who work for them. Boycott Marvel! ————— MINI-COMICS LEGEND JOEL ORFF NOW AT WHATTHINGSDO WEBSITE!! Stop the presses! One the biggest influences on my work in the early '90s was Joel Orff. He made slow moving "landscape comics" about working on riverboats or driving taxis or being trapped by winter. Orff self-published sincere, heartfelt comics that read like poetry – and WHATTHINGSDO has archived one of his best works here. Don't sleep on this unearthed gem from the '90s zine scene. Also – Looking at WTD – I feel like it's a type of digital anthology that has been around for awhile – like since the dawn of websites – but now I look at it differently than before… in a good way. Maybe it's just that Jordan's a good designer and he makes it all look so new every time I look at it. ————– Don't forget! My CARTOONING CORRESPONDENCE COURSE starts the first week of November! Hurry up and apply – you can do it! I will make you a comics expert in eight weeks! Applications due this Friday the 28th! ————— INTERMISSION FUNNIES by MICHAEL DEFORGE —————————– Richmond VA scene report by Chris Pitzer So the other day I get an email from good ol' Frankie asking me if I'd be interested in giving a "scene report" for my locality (Richmond, VA). The James River This is Frankie, so how could I not? I mean, I look at this as if him and let's say Jim Rugg or Tom Scioli or Dan Nadel were coming down to RVA to visit and this is what we'd do! Now, I hate to admit it, but sometimes, my mindset is to NOT share this type of info. Because what if some of my favorite haunts become to crowded, picked over, or popular? Ugh! But again, THIS IS FRANKIE… and I just can't say no. So, I guess I'd imagine those guys getting in around noonish, so we'd probably have to get a bite to eat. Since our first couple stops would be in and around the VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) area, I think we'd hit The Black Sheep for a bite. And I do mean a bite. This place has become VERY popular over the last couple years, and has even been on at least one foodie show. One of the things they do is take your typical submarine and upscale it to a battleship. One weekend while my wife was away, I got one of these battleships and made it last into three meals. And the decor is to die for. Their menu changes throughout the year, so enjoy what you can. Also, save room for that fantastic peanut butter pie! Now the next two places we'd hit are actually in walking distance to The Black Sheep, so if parking was OK, we'd probably just leave our car there and walk on up to Broad Street and hope that the Richmond Book Shop is open. The Richmond Book Shop is one of those weird funky places that you NEVER know if they'll be open or not. Most of the times I drive by, they aren't. So, if you stumble upon them being open, it's like finding Shangri-La. It's run by Bob Lewis, who is himself sort of an "establishment" to the scene. Before I "knew" Bob, I knew of his selling spots. I would covet the original Montgomer Flagg, Seth or Charles Vess illustration that he had in an antique store. Bob has had his pulse on comics since forever, so you can talk about the old days and wax nostalgic… But back to the shop! The last time I was able to get into the store, I came away with the following: Eclipse Magazine #1 (oddly, the only one I was missing from my collection), something called The Mercenary (which I haven't read yet) and the first three volumes of Pluto… which I fell in love with! Here's a pic of Bob with Greg and Joel from the great DC-Area Big Planet shop. You can sort of see the shop in the background across the street. I took this photo as we were walking towards our second destination: Velocity Comics! Of the few places I'll talk about in this report, Velocity is probably the biggest scene. It's just the best comic shop in Richmond (if not Virginia?), so a LOT of customers, creators, etc. stop by and peruse it's fine selection. Also, with it's proximity to VCU, it always seems to be hopping. Patrick Godfrey runs the store, and he does a great job of it. I like the fact that I'll more or less find anything I'm looking for, as well as enlighten me to some locally produced work. He also organizes get togethers with local creators that I wish I could attend… but it seems I'm always busy. After we hit Velocity, I feel like I need to take them to one of those "great American comic shops". You know the one. It's the one we all know. The one that is like the Simpson's comic shop. Comics in the front, porn in the back, and untold riches in between… Stories. Stories actually has three locations. (I think at one point they had five?) But for the sake of this trip, I think we should hit the mothership… even though that means we have to cross the James to go to the Southside. Once there, the mural will let you know you've hit your destination. Once inside, it's tough to really figure out what you want to look at first. They essentially have outgrown one store and become three in this one location. They really do seem to have everything. I tend to hit this shop when there's something old I'm looking for. Back issues, old graphic novels, toys… whatever. I found one of those Floyd Farlands at either this one or the West End location once. And I actually found a few mini-comics here one time too. After all this exploring, I'm sure we're bound to be hungry, so then we'd hop back in the car and actually head back to where we just were. Two of my favorite RVA restaurants are in walking distance of Velocity Comics. Those establishments are Ipanema and Edo's Squid. I'd probably hit Edo's first, but if the line was crazy long, we'd end up at Ipanema. Edo's is fantastic Italian & Seafood. Probably the best calamari and eggplant parmagian I have ever had. Ipanema is vegetarian, but still have a few meat entrees. Great bar and was used as a scene in the series Local by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly. Heck, I guess we could hit both if we had it in us. Now, before I close, I know that when Frankie was asking about a "scene report" he was asking about all the wonderful people who live in Richmond, and the fantastic stuff they do. Honestly, I don't make it out all that often. I'm old. I try, but sometimes I just can't get out there. But there are a LOT of great comic-associated peeps. A few weeks back I was lucky enough to have lunch with Johanna Draper Carlson, who writes that fantastic blog Comics Worth Reading. The other day I picked up the local magazine RVA, and there was a feature on Julia Scott. (Julia just happened to with the Afrodisiac contest we had at Velocity Comics back on the tour.) And this weekend I'll probably see our pal Oura at the Richmond Zine Fest. He did do the poster, after all. (And there are MANY, MANY more people I could mention… like Rick Spears having his party for his new book release, or the fact I need to schedule a fall dinner with Tom De Haven… but down that road lies the names I will eventually forget…) Well, I hope this helps convince some of you to visit Richmond, VA. It's a nice place. Share this page: [...]
Niall Breen on LICAF 2016
Comics WorkbookOctober 23, 2016Festivals and ShowsTo the lake district! AWAY!!!! A video posted by Niall Breen (@niall.breen.comics) on Oct 14, 2016 at 9:17am PDT Last week I traveled from Ireland to join the Comics Workbook crew in Kendal, England for The Lakes International Comic Art Festival. The Lakes Fest (LICAF) is an unusual beast in today's world of heavily branded industry conventions. Marketing itself as a "comic art festival" immediately stands it apart from the large majority of sales-orientated cons which exist in most larger towns and cities throughout England and Ireland. While there is a venue at LICAF for artists and publishers to sell their work, this is not what pulls in the tens of thousands of visitors each year. LICAF instead focuses on education and appreciation of craft, with a packed roster of artist talks and workshops spread over the weekend. This love of craft and appreciation for artists seems to be a reflection of an attitude that naturally exists in Kendal; a town which, despite its modest size boasts a number of cinema spaces, theatres, art groups, and live music venues. Kendal is a town which thrives on art and when it came time to host this years LICAF, the whole town seemed fully on board. The weekend's events were held in numerous locations throughout the town, from local pubs and cafes to the town hall and library. Even businesses not directly connected with the event went to great effort to create window displays fitting the Festival. The talks and workshops held throughout the weekend were well attended. There was an air of excitement buzzing all over as people were given the opportunity to sit and talk with their heroes. Even on the streets of Kendal the public brushed shoulders with comics superstars in a way which seemed exciting and yet, completely natural. I attended the Comics Workbook Composition Competition workshop which was run by Mr. Comics Workbook himself, the great Frank Santoro. Connor Willumsen and Aiden Koch were also in attendance, providing moments of insight and balance throughout the talk. The workshop was well attended and drew a wonderfully diverse audience. Children and adults, amateurs and professionals – it was a wonder to see how Frank's process worked so well for everyone in the group. Each person was guided through so confidently and with such positivity that nobody felt unable or less capable than anyone else. In fact, many of the experienced British comic artists in attendance marveled at Frank's aura of positivity, a trait which seems to be rare in the industry. The standard of work which came from the group was very high as everyone seemed to get on board with Frank's ideas very quickly. We all left having completed a 4 page, pamphlet style comic. Not bad for a two hour session! I also managed to sit in on Connor Willumsen's workshop later that day. This class drew a small group of dedicated artists. We took great inspiration and warning from Connor's industry stories. Seeing him describe his composition method was great as I could see how it was tied to Frank's fundamental ideas, even if they go about the process differently. Another huge moment of inspiration for me was when Connor talked about how his ability to program code meant that he had greater control over how his work can be displayed. This seems more relevant now than ever as we are in a time of uncertainty over how to show our work on the internet. Each of the current options for artists (Tumblr, Instagram) seem to come with some level of restriction. It was great to see that Connor had taken the matter into his own hands and made a site which worked for him. It shows a level of ingenuity and determination which I think we will all need to strive for to stay afloat in the digital age. Overall, my experience of LICAF was one of community, of inspiration. For one weekend, makers and fans came to Kendal to share ideas, work together and grow. There was no line separating the novice and the master. There was only respect and the flow of ideas. LICAF is a rare and beautiful thing. ———————————————————————————— Niall Breen makes comics in Sligo Town, on the west coast of Ireland. You can find more of his work HERE. Share this page: [...]
Aaron CockleDecember 5, 2016NewsAaron today with The Partnership Between Comics & Healthcare; "Hogarthian Progresses in Eighteenth-Century Graphic Satire"; More RESIST!; Opportunities for Cartoonists; Hart/Corman/SAW; Best of 2016; Correspondence Course Early Application Deadline Looms Largely ————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————— The 172nd meeting of the NY Comics & Picture-story Symposium will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016 at 7pm at Parsons School of Design, The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). Free and open to the public. Cynthia Roman on "Hogarthian Progresses in Eighteenth-Century Graphic Satire" Sequential narration in satiric prints is most famously associated with the "modern moral subjects" of William Hogarth (1697–1764): Harlot's Progress (1732), A Rake's Progress (1735), Marriage A-la-Mode (1745), and Industry and Idleness (1747) among others. Less well-known is the broad spectrum of legacy "progresses" produced by subsequent generations drawing both on Hogarth's narrative strategies and his iconic motifs. James Gillray (1756–1815), celebrated for his innovative single-plate satires, was among the most accomplished printmakers to adopt Hogarthian sequential narration even as he transformed it according to his unique vision. Gillray's forays into Hogarthian progresses kept the idiom relevant for further development by later graphic satirists including G.M. Woodward, Richard Newton, Charles Williams, Williams Elmes and George Cruikshank whose works will also be considered in this talk. Cynthia Roman is Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Paintings, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. She is editor and contributor to Hogarth's Legacy distributed by Yale University Press, 2016. ————————————————————————————————— More RESIST! The Washington Post gives the Gabe Fowler, Françoise Mouly, and Nadja Spiegelman's RESIST! publication. The editors say they have received more than 500 submissions for the 40-page tabloid. Contributors so far include such noted cartoonists as Roz Chast and Carol Lay. (Submissions can be made at www.resistsubmission.com.) "With this project, I knew that there must be people who felt as crushed as we were, and that they needed to not just say it but shout it, and make it into a physical object," says Mouly, who previously teamed with her daughter on the Blown Covers blog. "That howl of protest needed to be gathered, preserved, and therefore vindicated — the first step toward building a future where we can feel more included." Check here if you would like to support this endeavor or pre-order a copy. ————————————————————————————————— Opportunities for Cartoonists! A resource for open anthologies, calls for submissions, and other comics-related opportunities. Curated, but can't make promises; please be careful with your work! Submissions welcome but are subject to our discretion. ————————————————————————————————— The art of following a dream and surviving great loss The Gainesville Sun profiles Tom Hart and Leela Corman and their Sequential Artists Workshop. "The moon in Florida follows roughly the same path as the sun — from east to west in the Southern sky," writes Hart in "Rosalie Lightning." "I don't remember it being so reliable in New York." ————————————————————————————————— Best of 2016? The lists of comics are starting to proliferate, I guess people (the writers) are still writing these sorts of things, and we (the readers) are still reading them. Rachel Cooke at the Guardian blog Andy Oliver at Forbidden Planet International blog Paste Magazine ————————————————————————————————— The Winter Semester of the Santoro Correspondence Course for Comic Book Makers Starts December 29, 2016. 8 week course, $500, 10 spots available, apply by December 13, 2016 and get $100 off course fee. ————————————————————————————————— Suzy and Cecil – 12-6-2016 – Sally Ingraham (@suzy_and_cecil) Share this page: [...]
Captain Easy
Frank SantoroApril 12, 2016EssaysFrank talks about Captain Easy, Roy Crane's seminal comic strip. Available at Copacetic Comics: http://www.copaceticcomics.com/comics/captain-easy-volume-one Video by Michael Pisano | www.michaelpisano.com Share this page: [...]
Frank's Comics Corner #3 – House of Mystery #177
Comics WorkbookFebruary 24, 2017EssaysFrank's Comics Corner #3 – House of Mystery #177 – 2-16-17 Share this page: [...]
Posted on May 16, 2016 by Aaron Cockle
Antonioni Comics Continued; Sophia Foster-Dimino; Genesis Breyer P-Orridge; SPREAD Zinefest; Adam Baumgold Gallery; NYRB Comics Release Party; Boom Box Profile; James Ensor Temptations
CW continues it's feature of Laila Milevski's Drawing Antonioni. Please take some time to read/re-read/re-re-read this comic, it's one of the most creative uses of the Frank Santoro Grid Technique System I've seen to date.
New Sophia Foster-Dimino Comic
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Try to Altar Everything Exhibition
March 11-August at the Rubin Museum, NYC
For nearly half a century Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has been questioning the meaning and substance of identity through artistic endeavors, willful reincarnation, and physical shapeshifting. Try to Altar Everything, a selection of paintings, sculptures, and installations, will explore the ways that Hindu mythology and Nepal's Kathmandu Valley have influenced the artist and h/er work.
SPREAD ZINEFEST
I hear Groningen is lovely in June.
Comic Inspirations at Adam Baumgold Gallery
New York Review Comics Release Party
Friday, May 27 at 7pm at BookCourt in Brooklyn
On Boom Box
The success of "The Lumberjanes" started with grass-roots efforts. Ms. Watters and her fellow creators — Brooke Allen, Grace Ellis and Noelle Stevenson — made copies of the first eight pages, included an order form, and gave them out free. "It was supposed to be eight issues, and then it became something much more, kind of growing ever since beyond our wildest dreams," Ms. Watters said.
Temptation: The Demons of James Ensor at Art Institute Chicago
The exhibition was 2014/2015 but there is still an elaborately designed interactive aspect available to those with an internet connection.
'Before the compositions I feel anxious and exalted,' wrote Ensor in 1887, commenting on his work as he began to develop The Temptation. More than a century later, as we explore his monumental achievement, we share something of those emotions. To study the work is at times disturbing but—as we hope you will agree—it is, above all, exhilarating.
PIX 2016 | Noah Van Sciver Interview
The Alabaster Pizzo Interview – Mimi and the Wolves
Juan FernándezAugust 26, 2019Interviews Juan Fernandez: So, how did you find yourself working on what has become Mimi and the Wolves? Alabaster Pizzo: I worked out the story in my head and doodled characters for it for a long time before actually committing to it. I had a central story I wanted to tell, and I decided to set it to basically an extended adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood. In Mimi and the Wolves, more so than anything, it feels like you're weaving a lot of personal experience and spinning it metaphorically, to create new spaces for yourself and readers to process the emotional landscapes that you may have navigated in your life. What is your writing process like for manifesting those feelings through characters, sequences and images? When I started writing this comic I was fresh from leaving a complicated relationship, and from making myself "hyper romantically available" for the first time (I'll leave that vague). As 23-year-olds sometimes do, I put a lot of dramatic weight on my experiences, which I don't necessarily feel anymore, but I still think it's worth it to write about the different kinds of relationships adults find themselves in. I think I've altered it and blown it out enough that anyone can insert themselves into the story and find it relatable. I like to think I've fleshed the characters out well, but I had the advantage of basing them mostly on real people. I enjoy drawing animal characters to begin with, but casting animals is also a good way to change a likeness, if you're telling a true-ish story. What was your first memorable experience sharing Mimi and the Wolves with public? I wrote a mini-comic in 2012 called "Wool" that featured Mimi and another character not related to anyone in the main story, as a sort of test run, also it was essentially me venting about another frustrating romantic situation I'd gotten myself into (I've aged out of this forever I hope, lol). Tumblr was big then and it was hugely validating to post panels from the first chapter of Mimi and the Wolves and watch the likes and reposts stack up. God, I miss Tumblr every day. I wouldn't be where I am now without the comics community I found there. In The Complete Talamaroo, you explored a raw, wild society of critters, in Hellbound Lifestyle, working with Kaeleigh's writings you were deep in the city, as in Ralphie and Jeanie, in the world of social relations. Mimi and the Wolves finds us dancing between the wild and civilized. Can you talk a little bit about your personal relationship with the city? With wilderness? I'm often reminded of how different my comics are from each other. Which is true, they are. The theme of "the city" factors in a lot, because I'm a city person. In Mimi and the Wolves, the city and wilderness serve to separate the society of the wolves, who are more wild, don't wear clothing, and eat meat, from the other animals who live in the city. When the events of the story were happening for me, I had just moved from a really central location in Manhattan where I was living in a small apartment I shared with my sister and whatever friends or romantic partners were staying with us, to an apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn, 45 minutes away by subway, essentially alone. Most of the things I did day-to-day still required me to go back to Manhattan, and my sister lived in the old apartment for a couple more years after I left. For the first time, I was really out on my own and able to do whatever I want without scrutiny, and I had a private space. I'd meet up with everyone again after a few days and tell them what I was up to, sometimes to their horror. So although I was definitely still in the city, emotionally I was out in the wilderness. It made sense to make this more literal in the comic. In real life, I don't see how I could ever live in a metro area with fewer than 10 million people. I crave being surrounded by strangers. I'm also passionate about public transit and sharing resources. I'm curious about what has attracted you to the goddess Venus. Why Venus? This is me straight up referencing Venus in Furs, which I've honestly only read part of, but I have listened to the Velvet Underground song 1000 times. Outside of the work you've done on this book, do you read a lot regarding mythologies? I used to more than now. A friend sent me a meme that had something to do with "girls who were mythology stans in middle school" and I was like, oh yeah that was me. I like how Greek/Roman mythology leaked so much into our modern language and art. I think that now, I'm less interested in the content of myths ancient peoples told each other and more interested in the people themselves and what purpose the stories told. I'm not religious and I think all human behaviors and events have practical reasons behind them. When I sat down to plan Mimi and the Wolves, I intended to inject a lot of ritual and alchemy, but I wound up focusing on the realistic relationships between the characters more. Unfortunately I think this left the lore a little half-baked. Do you have any experience practicing or learning about Theosophy? No. I'm generally turned off by modern-era Western cherry-picking of non-Western religion and spirituality, I like to go to yoga for the physical benefits and to be able to be present in my own body for an hour out of my day, but I always skip the chanting. I'm a non-religious white person and chanting in Sanskrit feels uncomfortable. Is it distasteful to have a statue of Buddha or Shiva in your house if you're not Buddhist or Hindu? I'm troubled by how many people around me seem to actually believe in Astrology and crystals. I grew up around Catholicism, so I feel no need to adopt pieces of religion as an adult. I didn't start thinking about this until recently so I don't know if these sentiments are imbued in Mimi at all. Maybe they are? Mimi is certainly looking for something divine to give her life meaning. Given the level of control that you have on this project, as the sole creator, as compared to say your work with Kaeleigh or commercial illustrations, or your work in animation, what do you find to be the biggest challenge? What comes as a source of relief? Definitely being my own bookkeeper/distributor was hard for me. I'm glad I've decided to relinquish that to people who know what they're doing. Self-publishing was fun when I was young or only printing 200 or less handmade books, but I think I'm beyond that now, and happy to have someone else manage the business side. I like interpreting someone else's words. Without the responsibility of writing, I can focus on drawing. Of course I wind up inserting some narrative that might not have been present in the original text, but I think that's what makes the work better. I work as a story boarder on a cartoon; I'm given an outline that's looser than a script and allowed to add visual jokes and dialog as I see fit. Similar to the illustration work of Tove Jansson, you offer readers patterns and textures to explore while they move through the world of your comics. What is your favorite thing to draw in your backgrounds? I love to draw home interiors, store interiors, and city neighborhood scenes. A landscape of pine trees is easier but less fulfilling. Though much of your work has dazzling colors that are used expertly to create depth and clarity, Mimi and the Wolves is completely black and white. What has motivated you to keep it in black and white? When I started the project I was only drawing in black and white. Partly because I liked that look, and partly because I was printing everything myself and color is so much more expensive to print. I prefer to do colorwork now, but I have a really hard time doing color images of Mimi. Her world is black and white. I've never found a method of coloring that feels authentic to it. Could you talk a little bit about your process in creating this book? What tools did you use? What was the flow of your drafts like? First I write an outline of what has to happen in each chapter, then I break it down into a script. In the beginning, I was winging it more which I kind of regret now. I like to tell people not to dwell too long on initial planning but jumping right into a large work with no planning is also not good. Then I just get to drawing it. I don't thumbnail or pencil more than one page at a time (probably also to my disadvantage but by now its hard to break this habit) I used to pencil on graph paper but now I do the "pencil" digitally which is much easier. I print that and trace it on to bristol paper with a crappy rollerball pen that turns yellow and ruins the original over time, but I do a lot of edits after I scan the page so I don't really consider the original worth anything. In Photoshop I scale the page down slightly, turn the art into black and white pixels, and make any edits. I try not to add anything that looks like it couldn't have been drawn by hand. It's tempting to draw white lines over black, but because I wouldn't have done that in the initial inking phase, I try to avoid it, or make it look hand-drawn. How do you structure your pages? Is it an intuitive process that comes as a result of space constraints When you think about organizing your pages, what is your guiding principle? I sometimes do a very quick thumbnail of what layout I want to use, also, I used to be in the habit of taping up all the finished pages in order over my workspace so I could reference them at a glance and try not to put two similarly dense pages next to each other. Otherwise, it's very intuitive. Something I would like to change about it is how dense some pages are, but I was always thinking about keeping printing costs down (also I'm small and lifting 200 book's worth of pages is hard). I think the story would benefit from more slow wandering sequences, full pages or spreads. Oh well. Given that you've been working on this story consistently for over 6 years, what keeps you coming back to this world, to see this story through? I gotta finish it!! The core of the story, the "true" part, feels much less urgent now. I didn't think I'd be working on it this long, but the breaks I've taken from it have been to work on other projects. Also, people seem to really like it! I'm fortunate to have had pretty good responses from my other work, too, but this is the story people want to see the most, I think. For anyone looking to work on a long-form piece like this, what advice can you give, for making progress and balancing life and work? When I started this project I wasn't working consistently, and I was able to take chunks of time off completely if decided I needed to rush to get a book done for an event. Only in the last year and a half have I started working a regular 9-5 job, and it's very hard to make time to do other work around it (I also do illustration work). Luckily, the television industry has long breaks built into it, between seasons or productions, and that's when I've been able to get back to working a lot on comics. Whether you are busy or not, starting something that will wind up being 400 pages is daunting. I guess my advice is just to start. You're almost certainly gonna hate the first pages you did, years later when you're finishing the last few pages. To that, I say, whatever. Show me an artist or writer or musician or film director who doesn't think the same thing over the course of their career. While I didn't think Mimi would take me so long to produce, I don't mind that it's been with me so long, while I've grown artistically and emotionally. Have you read anything good lately? I read every night before falling asleep since I was in first grade, until about the time I got a smart phone, and then I started at internet garbage until I fall asleep. About 6 months ago I decided that sucks and I got a library card! Recently I've been into memoir (or mock-memoir), unconventional narrative style, the recent histories of American cities, and the combination of these. Some good ones I've read this year: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn, The Story of Junk by Linda Yablonsky, The Last Bohemia: Stories from Williamsburg, Brooklyn by Robert Anasi. I'd like to get more into non-fiction. Do you keep any books by your bedside? A how-to book called "The New Plant Parent" because I'm really into houseplants! Thank you for your time, Alabaster! Share this page: [...]
Art Trip: Pots, Lamps and Comics in Rio
Anna ManciniJuly 29, 2016Art Trip / EssaysA couple of weeks ago, I visited the "Carlos Scliar – from reflection to creation" exhibition at Caixa Cultural, in Rio de Janeiro. With a friend by my side, who is also a designer and cartoonist, I had the chance to look closely at his paintings, drawings and screen prints. I wasn't really familiar with Scliar's work, although his name does figure among the greatest Brazilian artists. This ended up being a fortunate ignorance, because reproductions will never do his work justice. Getting to know it in person was a touching experience, especially regarding his colors and subtle use of texture (I'll leave the pun). In many of his paintings, you can see layers of paper and fabric that serve only as a tactile hint beneath the paint. It left me wondering if it served in any way as a direction for the compositions, or if he had it all planned from the start. In other works, this layering is more evident as he uses collages of music sheets and book pages. It was a pleasure to take a closer look at the patterns of mite-eaten paper carefully incorporated to the paintings. I've been experimenting with layering and collaging in my sketchbooks and these observations have inspired me to explore it further. Another happy moment of this first close encounter was a realization similar to, I imagine, what occurred to Sally Ingraham at the Georgia O'Keefe exhibit (as she writes here). Not too far into the gallery, as I walk, noticing the artist's synthesized depiction of flowers, candles, pots and lamps, I see comics. Two of his compositions follow the well-known 9-panel grid. Into the exhibition's second room, this similarity becomes more evident and justified. Here are his drawings and screen prints, with more explorations of what can be seen as a comics grid, and a graphic style similar to what flat design trends and contemporary illustration seem to be channeling lately. The justification comes from a video interview with Scliar, played on loop at the center of the room. In this interview, the artist recounts his trajectory as an illustrator; the influence of pop-art and german expressionism in his work; his early experiences with typography for a newspaper; and later on, as an art director for an avant-garde magazine. After watching it in full, my friend and I left thinking how it all made sense now, to somehow "find" comics in a work coming from a background like that. ————————————————————————————————— Art Trip is a series that features reflections on art and comics, and the adventures that transform those who seek it out. ————————————————————————————————— Manzanna, or Anna Mancini, is a Brazilian freelance designer, illustrator and comics artist. Check out her work HERE. Share this page: [...]
Summer 2016 Rowhouse Update
Juan FernándezJuly 29, 2016School UpdatesShare this page: [...]
Sally IngrahamMarch 7, 2018NewsSally here with Regine L. Sawyer, the "Black Pulp" exhibition, new work from Derick Jones, and more! ————————————————————————————————— Here's a good article about the recent BAM Black Comix Expo, which features mini-interviews with a number of creators, among them Regine L. Sawyer (pictured above). She got into comics through X-Men. "It's a series that had so many women—and particularly women of color—with characters like Storm or Psylocke or Jubilee. Storm just jumped out to me because she was so regal and strong and beautiful. She will forever be my favorite character because of those aspects of how she carried herself. I knew, This is for me. I have to create comics. I created my first series, The Rippers, when I was about 17 years old. I created it because there were books that I was seeing where I really didn't like how women were portrayed. So I created a character named Rhiannon O'Cair who's an intergalactic bounty hunter that's accused of a crime she doesn't remember committing. Do you feel like your identity, gender, or ethnicity made it difficult to break into the comics community? As a woman of color, starting out I wasn't really considering who I was in that sense. I just felt that I was a writer—I had written comics and prose my whole life—and I just felt like I had something to give. So when I came into the community, and it became a "thing" that I was a woman and that I was black—it's not that I wasn't prepared for it, but I just felt like, "Oh man, are you serious?" I just really wanted people to read my books and not worry about what I looked like. When I realized that that was an issue a few years later, that's when I founded Women in Comics and said, "OK, well if you're going to look at me, you're going to listen to me, too." I had a lot to say about who I am and what is important to me. It's so important that us as women of color have a say about how we're portrayed in the media. So, now you can't shut me up. Advertisement Do you feel excited about being in a fair that's celebrating black creators? I feel very fortunate to be a part of this movement. I've been going to shows and doing this for about 12 years, so I'm just very happy to see so many people that are here at this particular show who are out supporting not only us, but getting excited for Black Panther. To see this turn out is really really amazing, and again, I'm so happy to be a part of the movement." Read the rest of the article HERE. ————————————————————————————————— There is an essay about the exhibition "Black Pulp" at the African American Museum in Philadelphia (through April 29the 2018) on Whyy. The exhibition showcases various forms of mass media, but there are a lot of comics involved, which is timely, considering the incredible success of Marvel's The Black Panther film. One of the curators, Mark Gibson, remarked on what is interesting about that story in the context of more historic representation in comics and "pulp". "It was significant for Gibson to see people like himself represented in comic books. "I'm 38, and thinking about what comics meant to me, I would analyze the black characters to see if they are believable," he said. "That wasn't the same as with white characters." Gibson was impressed with the identity of the character. "He's a black king from a country that has never been conquered by colonialism." Previously, comics with black main characters or by African-American artists were often restricted to a Negro audience. "Torchy in Heartbeats" is a serial about the romantic and work life of a beautiful young Negro woman in the 50s. "All-Negro Comics" (1948) was an anthology comic book that included "Dew Dillies," about baby Negro angels. In 1965, Dell published "Lobo," a collector's book about a black cowboy fugitive." Read more about the "Black Pulp" exhibition HERE. ————————————————————————————————— New work by Derick Jones above – you can keep up with what he's been drawing and thinking lately HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Vice offers a look at Jackie Ormes – read it HERE. And then read Nancy Goldstein's Jackie Ormes: The First African-American Woman Cartoonist, which the article draws from, for the full story. HERE is a review of Incognegro: Renaissance #2 by Mat Johnson – look for this new series on the shelf at your comic book shops. The Knox News has an article about Oliver ("Ollie") Wendel Harrington, one of the first black political cartoonists – HERE. Samir Barrett drew the character Static every single day in February – see the drawings HERE. Read about his project HERE. Ramon Esono Ebale, a cartoonist from Equatorial Guinea who was jailed 5 months ago while visiting his home country to renew his passport, has had all charges against him dropped – but he's still in jail. Whit Taylor writes and Chris Kindred draws this comic for The Nib about how the Tuskegee Experiment made African-Americans distrust the medical system – HERE. ————————————————————————————————— Vision Box – 3-8-2018 – by Cameron Arthur ————————————————————————————————— Joanie and Jordie – 3-8-2018 – by Caleb Orecchio Share this page: [...]
Juan FernándezAugust 8, 2016NewsJuan here with your news for the day: Locas Reimagined by the CW Derby Team; Rep. John Lewis speaks with Rachel Maddow; ARM'S LENGTH by K.L. Ricks; Applied Comics in Action: Doctors Drawing Mickey Mouse; Paul Gravett interviews Alexander Tucker; Ken Parille on Comics Criticism in 2016; Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman reviewed by Bill Boichel; new STREET ANGEL; special weekly Rowhouse Auction preview: CLOWES. ————————————————————————————————— Locas Reimagined I'm happy to announce that we are featuring a collaborative comics jam by the Comics Workbook Roller Derby Team on the site this week. The team copied and transformed Jaime Hernandez' 1984 story, Locas Starring Hopey. This bout featured work by Allie Doersch – Alyssa Berg – Anna Mancini – Gabriella Tito – Sacha Mardou – Jillian Fleck – Jackie Huskisson – Jennifer Lisa In case you've been sleeping under a rock, Comics Workbook Roller Derby is the world's only all-female, cartoonist-operated "roller derby of the mind" league. The league is comprised of strong, diverse, and independent women from the international comics community. ————————————————————————————————— Memorializing a life in the Civil Rights Movement Congressman John Lewis speaks with Rachel Maddow over at MSNBC about his work with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell on their graphic novel trilogy, March. March brings readers a vivid comics account of Lewis's "lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation… Book One spans Lewis's youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins." The third and final installment is out now. It's great to see Lewis speak of the road map he's tried to create to guide and inspire a new generation to the way of peace, love and non-violence, to follow the moral obligation of taking action in the face of injustice. ————————————————————————————————— Arm's Length Pt. 1 K.L. RICKS' newest comic, Arm's Length is out over at Hazlitt Magazine. It's an enticing first chapter. Damn, if this comic doesn't breathe. Ricks' inking is smart, evocative and efficient. Inspiring stuff. Ricks' knows how to leave you hanging, hungry for more… ————————————————————————————————— Applied Cartooning in Action: Doctors Drawing Mickey Mouse Cartoonist Benjamin Schwartz writes over at The New York Times about the role that comics can play in the professional development of medical practitioners. It's a brief look at the holistic nature of cartooning and the effects of the craft on it's practitioners' empathy and perspective. The concept of doctor as storyteller is not a new one, nor is the idea that it's a critical component of a doctor's identity. What's changed in recent years is the idea that storytelling is a skill that can be taught directly in the classroom—that it's not some vague life skill that can only be learned through experience (or, worse, the type of ability one either does or doesn't have). Credit for this development goes in large part to Dr. Rita Charon, an internist at Columbia University Medical Center. In the early two-thousands, she formalized a program in narrative medicine, with a stated mission to train health-care workers "to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness." ————————————————————————————————— Paul Gravett interviews Alexander Tucker Paul Gravett and Alexander Tucker, author of World in the Forcefield, talk about alienation from the art world, the relationships between music, painting and comics, conveying spiritual concerns through comics over on Gravett's site. Be sure to dive into Tucker's existential boredom if you're hungry for something new. I'm interested in how you see the relationship and dialogue between your music-making and your comics/art-making? The thing I didn't like about the fine art world was having to tie up concepts and ideas into neat little fully formed packages, what I feel about music and comics is this attempt to create a fluid way of expressing ideas, the process can become the actual piece of work and the lessons learned can weave themselves into the work throughout the act of making the song or comic page. colloquial, slightly cynical everyday speech. What are your ideas behind this? I've always liked the balance between the mundane and philosophical, the everyday and the fantastical. Since my early teens my love of surrealism and directors like David Lynch, Derek Jarman and Terry Gilliam introduced the concept of reality's thin veil between the spirit world and our own. ————————————————————————————————— Ken Parille on Comics Criticism in 2016 Parille's got a satisfying piece on the state of comics criticism in 2016. 7 hot takes. It's real, it's honest and it gets to the core of the idea that it's only good comics that will foster the growth of comics as a form. Anything else is likely to just be hot air. Parille puts forward an idea I'd been thinking about for a little. Comics criticism and discussion in a hyperfractured mainstream? What does that look like? How does it exist and not eat itself alive? Enter post-relevancy. It might sound silly, but it's a useful sentiment: Relevancy criticism often plays an ironic joke on its writer. We're convinced that we matter when calling out the man and his corrupt ideology, but perhaps our truth-to-power musings and mumblings only advance the corporate agenda: "Everybody's talking about the scandalous new issue of Wondrous Lad! So I bought a copy and tore it apart on my blog!" We excitedly create free buzz for mega-corporations and they move more units. Who's the chump now? Not the post-relevancy comics critic. She refuses to be co-opted, to be an unsuspecting shill for shit. An aesthetic adventurer with a sublime sensitivity to image, form, and detail, she seeks out comics that the mainstream ignores — yes, even fears! She heroically undertakes the sub-minimum-wage, time-consuming, socially-unrewarding, and emotionally-alienating journey of reading and writing about comics with deliberate care. She returns from her solitary excursions with something revelatory — and irrelevant — to offer us. She's my role model. ————————————————————————————————— Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman reviewed by Bill Boichel Bill Boichel's got a hearty review of the 1986, desert-island classic, Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman on the site this week. Few people can write as insightful reviews as Bill, so it's an honor to be able to share his writing with you here. This is an oldie but a goodie <3 Where to begin with such a book. It is clearly and definitely the best book ever done on Krazy Kat, which is, at least in our estimation, the greatest work ever produced in comics form. Ergo, it is, Copacetically speaking, the best single volume of comics ever produced. In other words, it wins the Deserted Island Award™: If there were one comics related book we'd take with us to a deserted island, this would undoubtedly be it. And as if that weren't enough, it has now been reissued in an economy softcover edition that'll only set you back a double sawbuck. Think of it – a lifetime of pleasure and consolation for what it would cost you to spend a few hours in a bar. And they say there is no God. ————————————————————————————————— —————————————————————————— New Private Rowhouse Auction – 7.31-8.6 Last but not least, I'd like announce that this week's Rowhouse auction will start Wednesday at noon NYC time. We will be auctioning off artwork and other rarities generously donated by the great Daniel Clowes over on eBay. Stay tuned for details – or email Frank here santoroschoolATgmail.com – You won't want to miss this! —————————————————————————— until next time, Juan Share this page: [...]