nEuROTIC

provocative, sarcastic, and funny drawings by John Cuneo

via drawn

Piven world

Hanoch Piven's illustrations with found objects. Hanoch Piven is an Israeli artist who is working for magazines, newspapers, in the USA, in Europe and in Israel, a teacher , wrote few books as well, a child like spirit with a sharp and funny eyes and sayings. here his blog

Every man is an island

From The Odyssey to The Beach, islands have been one of the most powerful and magical inspirations to writers... Islands work as social laboratories, says John Harding.

"an extraordinary amount of fiction has taken place on islands, for reasons that are both psychological and practical. In Jungian dream analysis, the sea represents the unconscious mind, and it has been suggested that the island symbolises the ego or the conscious self. Indeed, some psychotherapists ask patients to draw their own island, with the result examined as a self-portrait. It's impossible to be beside the sea and not feel the tug of elemental forces, the kind of forces that gave rise to the earliest stories." going through the Odyssey, Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and others the writers claims that every novel seeks to create its own world and entice the reader into it. "On a fictional island, the writer has complete control, and if one of the main motivations of art is to make order from chaos and so make sense of the world, the opportunity is here in spades....Islands are places to escape to, not only for writers freeing up their imaginations but also for their characters and readers.....perhaps most interesting today as an early example of sci-fi, an island genre that had some currency in the 19th century, before writers discovered outer space . ". " The idea of the island as self. That's another thing about islands. Take a trip on one, and keep going long enough, and you will always end up back where you began".

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Alan Davie. Island Map, 1997 via artcritical

the Heart of Harlem

Bernie Robynson, . "In the Heart of Harlem," cartoon map 1953

Evolution of Speechballoons

It didn't started like that:

Roy Lichtenstein. Look Mickey

Andy, a comic artist, who has great works in his site, such as this Abstract Comics He gives a time line of comic in history from antiquity (300-1000) till the early years of the 20th century...now, for sure his got his own interpretation of what comics was in early centuries...worth watching if only for the beauty of some ancient items...

The 18th century term for speechballoons was 'labels'. in his site you can study various experiments and variations and the gradual change from bands to balloons. Even the later examples sometimes have tiny leftovers of the 'bands' on the other side of the balloon.

During the 18th century, British caricaturists changed the shape of speechballoons from gothic speech-bands or flags into fluffy balloons, our modern speechballoons. The gothic form of speechballoons are speechbands, flags, scrolls or sheets of paper, the modern form of speechballoons are balloons, but also little rectangles, often rounded at the edges, or simply little blocks of text above the heads of the speaker etc. via coudal

1404 - Konrad von Soest - Altar in Bad Wildungen

more readings: History and Theory of the Graphic Novel

Newyorkistan Map

A pastel map, a flat, bird's-eye view of New York City drawn in pen and wash, appeared on the cover of The New Yorker Magazine in its Dec 10, 2001 issue(Note the date: only a couple of months after the 9/11 attacks destroyed the WTC in Manhattan).

It showed the names of the city's neighborhoods Afghanistanicized: Lubavistan, Kvetchnya, Irate, Irant, Mooshuhadeen, Schmattahadeen, Yhanks, Feh, Fattushis, Fuhgeddabouditstan, Hiphopabad, Bad, Veryverybad, E-Z Pashtuns, Khakis and Kharkeezand, and, Lowrentistan, where the World Trade Center once stood.

The map was made by Maira Kalman, who grew up somewhere near Upper Kvetchnya (she did the pen work) and Rick Meyerowitz, who is originally from around Ptooey (he did the watercolor). Both now live in Artsifarsis.

via strangemaps and kottke and SARAH BOXER

A quarter century ago, on March 29, 1976, a simple, pastel map of New York City appeared on the cover of The New Yorker. Drawn from the perspective of a low-flying bird looking west from Ninth Avenue, you could see the world receding from the city: the Hudson River, New Jersey, Kansas City, then the Pacific Ocean and Japan. It was Saul Steinberg's famous "View of the World from Ninth Avenue," a drawing reproduced and imitated countless times.

Perhaps not since Steinberg's drawing had New Yorkers pored over a magazine cover so long. Of course, the maps are totally different. Steinberg's is a delicate drawing done in perfect perspective, with fully realized cars and little witty dotted lines separating Canada from Chicago and Mexico from Washington. The drawing by Ms. Kalman and Mr. Meyerowitz is flat and naןve. Aside from a funny perplexed camel standing in the middle of Stan (Staten Island), the humor is all verbal.

But Mr. Meyerowitz said, "The name never failed to make me laugh when I approached it." The whole map began in fun. "We were on our way to a party in Westchester County," she said. Driving through the Bronx, she suddenly called out: "Bronxistan." And the names started flowing: Le Frakhis (a pun on LeFrak City). Some places on the map have the ring of truth. Lubavistan is roughly where the Lubavitchers live. And parts of Fashtoonks (which derives from the Yiddish for "stink") really did stink once; there were pig farms in New Jersey. "The beauty part of New York," Ms. Kalman said, "is that it is a mishmash. Everybody is running around with a different costume and a different story." New York, like Afghanistan, is made up of tribes with a bunch of exotic names that mean nothing to outsiders. New York City should take second place to no one, as Mr. Meyerowitz said, not even Afghanistan. We are as tribal as anyone. Steinberg's map is tribal, too, but different. His New York is a self- absorbed city. It is us versus them. In the all-important city you can see that taxicabs, people, water towers and windows matter. And far, far away are all those places that don't really matter: the Midwest is yellow, and somewhere out there must be Afghanistan. You can't say those places don't matter to New Yorkers now. Kandahar, Kabul and Kunduz do indeed matter. So do all the -stans and all the -bads. The new map clearly shows that change. It looks like a map of the Middle East has been laid over the whole city. But if you look carefully at New Yorkistan, you'll see New York, resistant as ever. Seventh Avenue is still in Schmattahadeen (the rag district), and La Guardia Airport is still Taxistan. Staten Island will always be just plain vanilla, a place that deserves the name Stan, even if there is a camel standing in it. So the new map is like the old. It is still us against them that wants us dead. If the world gives you Kandahar and Chechnya, send them back Khandibar and Kvetchnya.

This map imaginatively takes this one step further: it divides up New York in new enclaves, at the same time reflecting the fear of contemporary ‘nativists’ and disarming it by placing it in a humourous context. Some examples:

via strangemaps and kottke and SARAH BOXER