Tuesday, August 02, 2016

RIP Carlos Nine


Apart from this notice by Paul Gravett I've seen very little mention of his passing. Which is sad because he had some of the most impressive ability in comics from the last few decades, Only his Dungeon book got an English translation and I've been hoping for more for years. It's a shame about Jack Davis (who I also loved) but c'mon comics people, why didn't you make a bigger fuss over Carlos? (I mean a bigger fuss in general, not that I think he deserved a bigger fuss than Davis)


7 comments:

Ibrahim R. Ineke said...

i remember a jazz musician telling me with a sad grin "every musician i admire is dead"

it comes to that.

Moebius, Jeff C. Jones, &c &c.

Marcel Ruijters said...

Then you should start looking for heroes that are still alive. Or decide that you don't need heroes to look up to anymore.

Personally, i am saddened if old heroes' work is slipping into mediocrity. For instance Charles Burns doesn't interest me anymore since Black Hole. But then someone like Michael DeForge comes along, whose dark stories carry the same kind of frisson as the discovery of Mr Burns's work a quarter century back.

OT: I haven't seen that many comics by Nine yet. I rather see him as a graphically wild illustrator, a modern-day Grandville. But i may be wrong.

Ibrahim R. Ineke said...

True, all dat. Not saying all my heroes are dead though. Jesus & Muhammad are still alive to me.

Ibrahim R. Ineke said...

Re: burns. That xxxed out ( was it called that) seems interesting, with its Herge/Burroughs mashup.
I don't trust my own feelings about deForge's work though i understand its appeal- i half fear my having missed out on punk makes me susceptible to that aura of the 'new'/fool for the hype. That said, i thought First Year Healthy really poetic. Oh well.

alkbazz said...

heroes are shorttime lives

Paleo said...

Carlos Nine was an outlandish virtuoso, i grew up seeing his drawings in newspaper stands and then i saw his original artwork, it looked even more impossible crafted than the printed stuff (smaller too!)

Jesus & Muhammad can inspire plenty of genocides; and all my respect goes out to them for that! but give them a set of competitive watercolors and they both will be forced to suck Nine's balls for eternity.

God is a harsh, Abrahamic judge of watercoloring skills.

Ibrahim R. Ineke said...

Was there any specific reason i gave you to ridicule my beliefs, David?

As to inspiring genocide, let's give due credit here to the past century of secularism. Let's take a moment to remember Robespierre, and reconsider his achievements.

If you do not believe that, yes, strangely enough, Bach's choral works, or the Sistine Chapel, or any art, can be weighed against suffering - then why make art at all?

Suffering, after all, is not cumulative (i.e. the maximum of pain on this earth is the amount of pain a single creature can encompass in experience. Anything beyond that, in numbers or size, is abstract. Or would you say that
one human murdered/life taken is worth less than many?)

Anything may inspire anything. But art inspired by religious beliefs is not cancelled out by atrocities inspired by them. Could the contrary be true?