Lost cities: an appreciation of architecture in comic book art. 
Ice cold abstract modernist minimalism of Somnopolis. All lines constructed rather than drawn. Even the smoke is drawn with a circle template. Nice SFX. Credits below.

Art by Shane Oakley with ink by Ken Holewczynski. From Mr X Vol 2, issue 5. The cover for that issue was pure tonal/collage/repetition/seps exercise by Brett Ewins. One of the best designed comics of all time.

The full spread of the above. I love the contrasting grids - one structuring the architecture; the other, the chaotic car chase sequence. 

Previous Lost Cities here:
https://x.com/BetaTestingTomK/status/1789309506259923239

Lost Cities in Comic Art

Weekend read: Stapledon's Odd John: homo superior, mutants, and the X-Men. A thread. 1/17 

2/17 Odd John by Olaf Stapledon is a fascinating science-fictional artifact. Written in 1936, it anticipates much later science fiction and comics developments. I want to focus on one aspect, its uncanny resemblance to X-Men.

3/17 Odd John is often called the first Superman story, and rightly so. But, in many ways, it foreshadows the mutants of Marvel's X-Men series far more.

4/17 The main character, "Odd" John Wainwright, is born a genetic mutant, or "Homo Superior." Stapledon coined that pseudo-scientific term, and eventually, it became standard in Marvel's X-comics.

5/17 Odd John has telepathic powers. He can read the minds of regular humans around him. However, he can also telepathically detect and locate other "homo superior" beings, precisely how Professor X uses the Cerebro device.

6/17 Cerebro enhances Professor X's ability to geo-locate other mutants in the same way that Odd John learns to do in Stapledon's book.

7/17 John meets Adlan, an Egyptian mutant with significantly developed telepathic power in another curious similarity to the X-Men. Adlan brings to Mind Amahl Farouk -- AKA The Shadow King -- a powerful Egyptian mutant and an archenemy of Professor X.

8/17 Odd John personally embodies the central conflict that animates the X-Men comics: mutual distrust between humans and mutants, or homo sapiens and homo superior.

9/17 On the one hand, John is gentle and nonviolent and wants to blend into a world of humans, but without detection -- like Professor X.

10/17 On the other hand, he learns to distrust humans and becomes convinced of an inevitable species conflict -- to the death. So John is also like Magneto, Professor X's nemesis, and a violent 'activist' for the rights of "homo superior."

11/17 Eventually, Odd John creates a separatist communist-utopian island community for homo superior. In the X-comics, the Genosha island becomes a mutant refuge and the locus of a separatist movement. The only way for humans and mutants to "get along" is to separate them.

12/17 Odd John names his ragtag gang of homo superior "The New Men." So the first "Superman" story was a team book. Much more like the X-Men.

13/17 When Grant Morrisson took over the writing of X-Men, the mirrored-palindrome of "new men" became visually explicit in the new logo created for that series.

14/17 Of course, Stapledon's Odd John predated the X-Men by some 30 years. These ideas became tropes and had diffused widely into science fiction.

15/17 X-creators like Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were sci-fi readers. Still, it's curious that the Odd John / X-Men similarity is not mentioned in creator interviews. Fans have certainly noticed the resemblance. Does anyone know if any of the creators ever mention Odd John?

16/17  Read my full essay on Odd John and the X-Men here.
https://transatlantis.net/2022/05/12/mutants-supermen-new-soviet-men-and-homo-superior-olaf-stapledons-odd-john/

17/17 You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/BetaTestingTomK/CCnNjh9

Odd John and The X-Men

I'm pretty excited about the upcoming @SpaceX Starship test launch 7. I've been obsessed with space and comics since childhood (in Communist Poland). A thread of my childhood space comics (from 1978-1986) in Polish, German, and English. First up, here's the earliest space-scape I drew. Circa 1978-79, maybe earlier? 🧵

The earliest comic I ever drew is "Druga Planeta," or Polish for "Second Planet." Like many today, including @elonmusk , I always believed humanity must become a multi-planetary species. Circa 1982.

"Bitwa o Księżyc," or "Battle for the Moon." A mysterious object must be investigated on the moon! Circa 1983-84.

At one point (1983-4?), I started a series of drawings of theoretical "Colos" (Polish for Colossus) class space warships. Here's "Colos-1." Note the @NASA logo and US flag. Circa 1984-85.

I don't remember where the "UG" character came from. Did I make him up? Or copy it? Anyway, he had sick space adventures. His spaceship is named after the Roland synth keyboards. It loses its wings to metal-eating spacebirds, but fortunately, it can land with retro rockets. 1984-85.

There are more UG adventures. He battles "Der Herr Der Roboter" or German for the "Robot Master." One of the spaceships is named "Hai" or "Shark." Another resembles Discovery One from 2001 or the Eagle Transporter from Space 1999. Or a hybrid of both. 1985.

I was obsessed with Funky Koval, a Polish sci-fi comic. I attempted my version with mixed results. One of the ships is a pointy Space Shuttle. 1985-1986.

Another page from the Funky Koval "tribute" comic. Space pirates have a space-shark-ship that overwhelms Funky's much smaller spaceship. But they get sucked into a black hole… which looks a lot like Millenium Falcon's hyperdrive! 1985-1986.

This was supposed to be an Indiana Jones comic, but it starts in space! 1986.

This one skips ahead to around the time of the final Space Shuttle mission. "What kind of civilization goes to the moon and just stops!?" At that moment (as it was for many others), I started looking closer at what @SpaceX and @elonmusk were doing.

Thanks for reading. That's it for now. Let me know if you want to see my more contemporary space comics!

Childhood Space Comics: A Thread of Dreams

I posted the top 5 most popular posts on my blog, TransAtlantis. Now it's time to post five essays that get lost in the shuffle. A thread.

Will Eisner's Narrative Architecture; Notes on The Contract With God Trilogy—a close look at Eisner's use of #architecture to structure his narratives.

https://transatlantis.net/2022/03/01/will-eisners-narrative-architecture-notes-on-the-contract-with-god-trilogy/

Notes on Comic Book Maximalism—towards a definition of comic book maximalism via a look at George Perez's art in Crisis of Infinite Earths.

https://transatlantis.net/2020/07/09/notes-on-comic-book-maximalism/

Dreadstar—an ongoing fresh look at Jim Starlin's creator-owned star-spanning comics series from 1982.

https://transatlantis.net/tag/dreadstar/

Pawn of the Demon: Batman and the Fractal Self-similarity of Superheroes—a meta-analysis of the superhero genre.

https://transatlantis.net/2019/03/24/pawn-of-the-demon-batman-and-the-fractal-self-similarity-of-superheroes/

Infinite Hyperobjects: Crisis on Infinite Earths—Do the DC & Marvel universes qualify as Mortonian hyperobjects?

https://transatlantis.net/2020/07/16/infinite-hyperobjects-crisis-on-infinite-earths/

Science Fiction, Music, Comics. The Secret Origin of Comics Criticism—musings on the possible origins of comics criticism… how does a fan become a critic?

https://transatlantis.net/2018/12/23/science-fiction-music-comics-the-secret-origin-of-comics-criticism/

And here are the top 5 most popular posts:

https://twitter.com/BetaTestingTomK/status/1529870021261832202?s=20&t=XtaRK0MfPvL19p3HpGFSCw


You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/BetaTestingTomK/kaLiGw1

Dreadstar 7 and the Evolution of Cyperpunk Graphics

"The history of civilization is discovering and manufacturing new auditory phenomena and the privatization of sound."

A thread on sound, noise, silence, cosmic background radiation, echolocation, memory, and civilization.

A couple of my short sound/noise comics are now on view in Apocalypse Magazine. You can check them out as references for this thread. 

https://apocalypse-confidential.com/2022/05/28/noise-a-history-white-noise/

The following notes and theories here are compiled by Adalbert Arcane for my book, Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse. They can also be read here:

https://transatlantis.net/2022/05/27/beta-testing-the-ongoing-apocalypse-adalbert-arcanes-notes-and-theories-to-the-sound-strips/

I am often asked if the first strip, WHITE NOISE, is inspired by Don DeLillo's novel. No, it isn't; I was not aware of this novel at the time of the strip's creation.

What did Big Bang sound like? According to some scientists, gigantic sound waves pulsed through the super-heated matter that made up the Universe shortly after Big Bang.

All matter was affected by this noise, sometimes described as a deep hum. This primordial sound left an imprint on the Universe as the so-called cosmic microwave background noise.

In a sense, Big Bang contained all the sounds of the Universe. When you add all the sounds together, do you get silence? Or a massive cacophony? WHITE NOISE?

Another strip, NOISE, A HISTORY, attempts to historicize the question: "If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?" Asked another way: "If a tree fell in the extinct primordial forest, did it make a sound?"

The history of civilization is discovering and manufacturing new auditory phenomena and the privatization of sound. The buzz of civilization is the comfortable WHITE NOISE masking the uncomfortable hum of nature.

We co-evolved with sound, it surrounds us at all times. It's surprising how much humans rely on echolocation for their stability & their relationship to the world. Memories are spatial. We're built from accrued layers of spatially tagged memories—we are a memory echo chamber.

The ambient sound of the world acts as an aetheric substance that allows us to move through the world by orienting via sound and vision. It allows us to be outward-oriented, following the sounds and sights of the world as a desiring machine; Deleuze's 'body without organs.'

What happens when we encounter silence? The quietest room in the world is in Minnesota, approximately five minutes from where the author currently lives. Many describe the experience inside the room as "maddening."

Our relationship with world-sound breaks fundamentally when you 'become the sound' inside the anechoic chamber. The sound of your internal organs reminds you that there's no there, there–nothing to anchor you. The desiring machine breaks down. 

You become 'organ without body'… analogous to a schizophrenic steaming mass of microbial life arranged in shapes and patterns; a chattering miasmic fluid; a viscous semi-liquid bag of mostly water with skin stretched tight like a drum. Who is playing the drum?

Adalbert Arcane's notes & theories to those strips on my blog:

https://transatlantis.net/2022/05/27/beta-testing-the-ongoing-apocalypse-adalbert-arcanes-notes-and-theories-to-the-sound-strips/


Order signed copies of Beta Testing the Ongoing Apocalypse here:

https://transatlantis.net/product/beta-testing-the-ongoing-apocalypse/

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/BetaTestingTomK/gw5vCox

Noise, A History: A Thread on Sound and Noise

Cartoon Dialectics 3: In the last issue, the world ended... but did it really? Post-apocalypse looks a lot like present-day. Maybe history doesn't end?

Revealed: the violent final moments of Igloo City, and the dark secrets of Project Cthulhu. 

Also, who or what is Eve? With guest appearances by Gaia and Nanook the philosopher. 

Including a new essay by Adalbert Arcane, Aesthetic Education, and more!

Preorder Cartoon Dialectics 3.

https://uncivilizedbooks.com/cartoon-dialectics-3-by-tom-kaczynski/

You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: https://typefully.com/BetaTestingTomK/8hBaZjl

Cartoon Dialectics 3

A thread of the top 5 most popular posts on my TransAtlantis blog. Topics include The Omniverse fanzine, Kazuo Umezu's and Yuichi Yokoyama's #manga, Atari Force, #Bitcoin, and the #Multiverse.

The most popular post on my blog is The Omniversal Method. It's a close look at the influences that still reverberate from Mark Gruenwald's Omniverse fan magazine: from the #Multiverse to crises on infinite earths to #comicbook realism.
https://transatlantis.net/2020/08/01/the-omniversal-method/

This review of Kazuo Umezu's classic #Manga sci-fi #horror, The Drifting Classroom, goes hard with a deep examination of the surrounding context, including the development of ecological ideas in 70s Japan. #ecology https://transatlantis.net/2019/01/11/ecological-collapse-and-the-horror-of-kazuo-umezus-the-drifting-classroom/

The 80s title, Atari Force is full of concepts that now dominate #Marvel & #DC comics and films— #Multiverse chief among them—the driving engine for the story. It even has an America Chavez-like (from Dr. Strange 2) character who leaps between universes
https://transatlantis.net/2020/05/27/atari-force-1-13/

Reading Yuichi Yokoyama's mysterious comics via J.G. Ballard's first novel, The Wind from Nowhere, and riffing on narratives without psychology, Dubai's hypermodernist #architecture, and Etienne Louis Boulle's massive paper monuments.
https://transatlantis.net/2007/11/27/enigmatic-engineering-yuichi-yokoyamas-visionary-architecture-part-1/


A short personal reflection on my experience with #money and #hyperinflation in formerly #Communist Poland in the 70s and 80s. This experience is examined in the light of recent developments in cryptocurrency and #Bitcoin specifically. https://transatlantis.net/2021/12/09/whats-so-interesting-about-bitcoin-anyway/