as I was drifting into sleep last night I thought of something urgent that I must say on my blog. Should I get up and scribble it on paper? Nah, I thought to myself, I won't forget something that good.
Until it comes back to me, here are a few links:

Dith Pran, ‘Killing Fields’ Photographer, Dies at 65 - NY Times- March 31, 2008

Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people’s rights, died in New Brunswick, N.J., on Sunday. He was 65 and lived in Woodbridge, N.J. Mr. Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Mr. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation.

Recall the famous image of Marilyn Monroe from the movie The Seven Year Itch where her dress is billowing in the udraught from the grate of the New York subway? Well somebody has made assorted animals from plastic bags that stand in the same updraughts. here is Air ZOO and Air Bear (link thanks to my pal Mia Wolff)

(Anyone bored to tears with arguments about late comic book artist Vince Colletta should read no further) The comments box of my post of 3rd May last year on the subject of comic book artist Vince Colletta is still attracting contributions. I wrote it in the first place in response to the absurd accumulation of abuse toward an artist whose work I enjoyed when I was a lad, and indeed it contributed a great deal to my ideas about pictures and how to make them. It would seem beyond understanding that the little drawings in kids' comic books from fifty years ago could inspire the kind of adult animosity I was reading, much of it by people who don't know what they are talking about (e.g. here). Somebody must feel that his youth has been robbed from him and somebody else must be made to suffer for it. One Dan McFan points the finger at Mark Evanier, and he has started a blog titled Is Mark Evanier mentally ill?

Do you bash Vinnie Colletta every day of the year? If, for instance, you don't talk to a comic person that day, do you bash Vinnie to your butcher or your dry cleaning guy? Do you wake up screaming "I hate Vinnie!" Is your dog even sick of hearing Vinnie's name? Even though he or she has never read a comic book, is your therapist intimately knowledgeable about everything to do with Vinnie? When you can't pinch one off do you cry out "Damn you, Vinnie?" I am convinced that you are mentally ill. If I wasn't laughing so hard right now I'm sure that I would be crying. What did this man do to you to inspire such hatred?I need to start a topic about this, if not here, then somewhere else. People need to know and have the right to weigh in on your fixation and loathing of Vincent Colletta because you are considered some sort of authority. Some comic fans respect you. And you are one of the great perpetrators of the "Vinnie erased the sacred Kirby's pencils-Let's burn him in effigy" club.

Before I leave this interminable disquisiton: Evanier usually makes irrrelevant snide points about Colletta's use of assistants, a custom that became quite prevalent in the '70s, which was a dull period for comic books anyway, with gang inking teams, in which a hack mentality set in across the board (the period in fact in which Evanier learned his craft). Most of the output was so awful it's not worth arguing about (and hey, anybody who thinks comic books are worth arguing about in the first place is in trouble)(I like to think that my own interest in this subject is of a higher order, that is, the fate of art and of artists, their life and posthumous reputation, as implied by my blog title). However, being hired that way was always a good means for aspiring youngsters to get into the business, a kind of unofficial apprenticeship, and also an artist could earn cash in a lean period by helping out a fellow practitioner who had more than he could handle. Furthermore, when we hear that Roz Kirby would help Jack by filling in his blacks and other simple inking procedures we think, aw isn't that cute. It works both ways and can't be used as a criticism in itself. The next major criticism is always aesthetic. The critic doesn't like the inked lines. Simple as that. But bear in mind that most comic book appreciation, like most comic books, is bankrupt of any meaningful aesthetic thought and feeling. I have demonstrated that the lines in question had value for me, discussing their textural qualites of dryness and roughness and muscularity, and the aptness of these to the subject of Norse Myth, and I liked them above all the other inky lines, the shiny and liquid and sleek ones of the time, for the reason of suitability to my preferred subjects. Finally, there are the lines and figures left unseen (removed). I didn't see them when I was ten and it's too late to care now. I was influenced by the ones I did see. If Kirby felt miffed, that's one thing. That you or I should take his side in a tide of anger is absurd. To vent your moral indignation upon a situation that cannot be in any way affected is to leave the path of wisdom. And there are more important things to be angry about. Unless you are a comic book fan, in which case God help ya.

(update. 1.35 am EST. After underestimating the number of comic book fans determined to be upset over this subject at the drop of a hat, I've gone back and closed the comments boxes on all previous posts that mention it)