Deadpool, that churlish, craggy-faced Marvel anti-hero will be hitting the big screen some time in 2012—played by dreamboat Ryan Reynolds, no less—so like me, if you didn’t know, you’ll be hearing the name and bandwagoning very soon. His gender bender counterpart, Lady Deadpool—girly-churl, blonde and babely—demanded a writer who knows that this is funny, hyper-meta shit and ‘Pool-ies always spit real talk. Enter Mary HK Choi, via phone from Comic-Con in San Diego.

It’s no secret that we heart the TheAwl.com writer and Complex contributing editor around these parts, so when the opportunity to interview Choi for the National Post’s Arts blog, The Ampersand, came up, I belly-flopped to it like an overeager drunk at a fancy pool party. You can read the shorter, more newbie-friendly conversation over there, but the full text is here for the comics and writer geeks out there.

You’ve said your foray into comics happened after childhood. What was the first comic book you read?

I remember reading Arkham Asylum when I was really small, only because my brother had it. It was a really, really beautiful book; creepy and enigmatic and the cover was very beguiling. I remember being young enough to be completely spooked out by the whole thing. But then, as far as sort of a real entree, I sat down and read Preacher. That whole series had a good and substantial long run, so I sat with that and ate its brains out. I think at that point I was good and hooked.

Were you a Marvel fan before you began working with them?

Yeah, I guess that’s the irony. That I’m like “DC, and then Vertigo” and then I was like “and then MARVEL!” But I would say that my familiarity of the comics universe at this point, Marvel’s been pretty much more of what I’ve learned about. And I’m not trying to give you a very diplomatic answer, and my admiration for the “other camp” is not at all compromised. It’s just what I got into and what was around me at the time.

So given the fact that you were old enough to form opinions about these things, did you care about the portrayal of female characters in comics?

I did care. One of my favourite, favourite, favourite, favourite comic books to date is Zero Girl by Sam Kieth. To me, that was a very realistic, poignant, but not precious, depiction of a chick’s coming of age story. And after that, I read this series called Alias by Brian Michael Bendis to which a lot of people are like “J-GAR!” and I’m like, “No, it’s something else!” The character’s name is Jessica Jones—I love how pedestrian that is—an alcoholic private investigator who has a huge backsliding, fall-from-grace because she was previously a super heroine and had these great, altruistic motives and now she’s just cobbling and cajoling a living together and is a mess, and unceremoniously prancing into booty calls and stuff. It’s incredibly dark and her psyche is sort of wounded, but it wasn’t stereotypical or flat. It was very nuanced and studied. A lot of people just assume that it’s all these bulbous-glanded chicks with 18-inch waists, but I came into it so late that, blessedly, other more realistic avenues had already been explored and more complex aspects had been available to me.

And that approach is clearly something you applied to Lady Deadpool.
Totally. And these are two women I’ve mentioned who are not unorthodox in their appearance, in the sense that they’re not laced up or buttoned up. They’re just sort of figuring things out and in transition. But, if you look at it, there are other very statuesque, more ubiquitous-physique ladies who are totally badass and totally developed in their characters, too. Take someone like an Emma Frost—that’s a pretty actualized character, AND she’s a freaking bombshell. She looks amazing, and in white no less.

What does Lady Deadpool have that we haven’t seen before?
It’s just so weird because I can sit here and tout all these things that I’ve done that are (sarcasm) wholly original and never been done before! I think that’s kind of a slipper slope in the sense that I don’t know 100 per cent what’s out there. I will readily admit that I’ve skimmed merely the surface: it’s like small triangle versus iceberg. But the thing I enjoyed about writing Deadpool is that he is completely out of his tree. He’s a complete lunatic, he’ll say whatever and it will be totally linear vis-a-vis his own mania. So there’s that huge disconnect, and a disjointedness to his response to actual stimuli that the reader sees or that anyone who is interacting with him sees. Lady Deadpool is hot, badass, has a bodacious body, but I actually really like the fact that, the way I wrote her, she comes off like a total meathead. She’s very open and crass. I didn’t want the translation of Deadpool’s temperament to the female gender to be like, “Oh, you know, she’s dry!” and “Rapier wit!” I didn’t want it to be meta and ironic because she’s a chick and therefore more graceful in her humour. I wanted her to be exactly like Deadpool, but with female wants—when she sees a guy, or has an opportunity to binge eat, she would just be really into instant gratification. I like that she kind of talks like a dude which, if anyone meets me, they’ll see the parallels in how lazy I was in writing her dialogue because it’s the shit I would say.

Is she for guys or girls?
I think she’s for both. I can definitely see detractors in both genders; guys being like, “Who talks like this?” and girls being like, “Oh god, who talks like this?!” And then both genders thinking this is so déclassé, there’s no real goal here, what’s actually happening? I can totally see people saying that, and they would not be remiss.

So how did you hook up with Marvel in the first place?
They approached me. It’s no secret that my brother, Mike Choi, is a comic book artist and he’s been very well received and has been doing it for quite some time. They do have these boiler plate roles as to who they’ll let submit for them. There were definitely parameters that I massaged myself into because I am previously published and have written little fiction-based, almost fanfic, type things in the front of a magazine that I had launched several years ago. And I have done preorting and actual magazine stories, features and cover stories. I did fall within the scope of being previously published and I understand that it’s completely typical that I do have the background that I do.

But it’s like, you want things right? I launched my own magazine that died, and I was at a bunch of other magazines and those died, and I’ve launched several other magazines beyond that. I did a couple of vanity projects for different corporate clients like PepsiCo and Samsung and Nike. So I was doing a bunch of things, and figuring out what puzzles I wanted to get into. I got into blogging because I was like, “What is this WordPress, HTML thing that I need to know about?” and I was writing for The Awl for a while and I got to do a bunch of food reviews and movie reviews. And just because The Awl was so new, and because they’re so amazing, we had a lot of rapt eyeballs on us. So I know that a couple of reviews I had written were well-received—like I did something for V and 2012 and Avatar. It was weird because I had known the primaries at Marvel for a while, like CB Cebulski, who was like talent scout, writer, editor, and he just got a crazy VP promotion this week. I’d known him socially because he lives in New York too, and my brother lives in California, so we’d gone out for drinks and I’d seen him at events. But I don’t think it occurred to anyone that I’d write for them, and to this day I haven’t gotten everyone in a room and been like “Listen, how did this cross your mind?” But I think there was talk of a meeting where an editor I’d never even met mentioned my writing, as far as they had read it on The Awl blog, so my name started circulating. And when I found out I was ecstatic and being uncouth—spazzing out basically. So the ball started rolling from there.

What was the character development process like?
That’s the thing that’s so rad. I’m writing the first Lady Deadpool one-shot. So while Victor Gischler had explored that this person exists, there wasn’t a lot in terms of what her personality should be. I’m incredibly lucky and blessed that I surreptitiously waltzed into that nexus. It was totally footloose and fancy-free. All I knew was that it had to happen in the future in terms of continuity for other things that were going on. But in the nature of all these Deadpool offshoots existing is that there are also all these other simultaneous strands of parallel-running, and not-parallel-running universes. So I could have ostensibly put her not only in any timeline or timeframe, flux capacitor, or whatever, I could also put her geographically anywhere. So with that much of a loosey-goosey XY, I chose the setting as New York in a one-room apartment with the major crux of the incident being that she can’t get her TV to switch on. Because that’s just hilarious: to take it so myopic that they’re like, “You can do ANYTHING!” and you’re like “Alright, I’m going to do this.” With that in your crosshair though, you can really talk about her.

What was the biggest writing challenge when it comes to going from media to fiction?
Figuring out how much you can get away with saying in 22 pages. There wasn’t a set beginning and an end, so I got to do whatever I wanted. It was kind of like an out-of-body experience. I have no muscle memory or cerebral memory for what curtailing my story into 22 pages feels like. So you overshoot: you cast this impossibly wide net, with holes and tears and dredge up so much crap like toilet seat, old boot, all this crap you can’t use. The first thing I did was sit and write every personality quirk I would need for all the characters, and then I cobbled their interactions. With magazine writing, you sit there and put the LEGO pieces together as a house, and you have your green swatch so you know how many little divets you get and that’s your word count. I can do an interview and think, “that’s my pull quote, my intro.” With this, I couldn’t identify any of the markers, and not only that, there weren’t markers given to me. They were markers that I could conjure, which is just batshit. You can drive yourself crazy being like, “Is that good? Am I brilliant? Am I retarded?” It’s kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure, except it’s got a bajillion pages and you’re constantly flipping and you don’t know where you’re at.

What was the timing of the process?
It was sort of leisurely in the beginning, where I was able to wool-gather and be all precious and pretty about it. And then when something was due it was due. So I got my beats in, I got my script in, I did the edits and the edits beyond that, smoothing a couple things out, location captions. Due-date to due-date, those things were really fast.

What are you going to take away from this experience?
I want to do more fiction. I’m in a very lucky position where during Lady Deadpool I did another 11-page digital with Marvel for another property called Shanna the She-Devil. And that was only 11 pages, and after agonizing over 22, 11 went really quickly. So hopefully I’m getting faster at it. But I definitely want to write a feature-length script for a movie. I’ve tooled around with writing a sitcom pilot with a friend, and that took fucking forever—I couldn’t believe it. So hopefully I’ll just do this, while I do the other thing.

What’s been the most interesting thing about entering the comics world?
I, like, descended upon this whole industry, plucked from the sky—and I say ‘descend’ not like there’s a hierarchy, where I’m waving from an ivory tower but I just came out of nowhere. And with my brother being who he is, it’s like, I don’t know how dubious people are of my merits on a one-to-one basis because I am blessedly ignorant of all of that. But, I think the really nice thing is that—and I know I’m really new—but I don’t feel totally unwelcome. I think that that is surprising. Not that I was like “I thought these guys were assholes! They’re not assholes!” It’s not that, it’s just, you know, people are genuinely inquisitive about where I came from, and curious about my brain and my process because my brain used to do different stuff. And I think I’m really lucky that I know it’s a huge, huge leap from what I do to what I’m doing now. If writing a book for Marvel was the only thing I wanted in my whole life, from when I was a kid until whenever, and I thought about it every day, and there was a patron saint of sequential art that I prayed to and I had a medallion and an amulet…..I would probably, not be disappointed, I’d just have so much invested. Every negative word or disappointment, or every edit I’d have to do would feel like this huge concession, or disappointment or some huge chink in my armor. I’m just doing this from a vantage point that it’s the coolest freaking opportunity I’ve had in a long time, and that’s rad, and I’m really curious what becomes of it. And I really, really hope I get to do it again. And if I don’t I understand—(laughs) it’s not you, it’s me, and that’s fine. I’m glad I have a tougher skin and I’m not so new to the ways of the internet that I stalk message boards like, “No you’re wrong! My intention was this!” I’m in a bubble about that stuff, which is nice.

What has the reception been like?
It feels different. When I went in I started waving like the Queen and there’s a huge flotilla that I got to stand on—No! I’m kidding. Nothing’s changed at all. It’s exactly the same. In fact, I went to buy my comic and I was like, “I’ll have FIVE of those, please!” And he looked SO dubious. He was all eyebrows, and the intonation was like, “This piece of shit?” And my bottom lip was quivering, like, “Yes, I’ll take five,” gesturing with my hand. I’m here as a creator amongst a grip of real creators, so it’s much more of a fanfare at home where all my journalist friends and media people-friends are TwitPic-ing their comic book. And everybody’s like, “Hey nerd, I haven’t been to the comic book store in 20 years!” So that’s been really entertaining, they’ve been really supportive.

And the biggie question: why would you say comics are important?
That made my heart lurch. They’re important. I’m gonna go in here. Thinking about where we’re at with technology, how much has changed in our lifetime, how quickly information is processed and eaten, and how we’re all these great big minnow-eating whales that float with our mouths open and all this fucking shit comes rushing in and that’s how we get our sustenance…Everything is so ephemera. News happens really fast and we know every angle of it as soon as it happens. We read stories really fast and the story-writers are going even faster, and everyone is just disgustingly prolific and engorged with information, addicted to getting the information and addicted to putting the information out there. And then think about your RSS feed. Now think about someone having to sit there and draw that for you. The thing that blows me away about comics is that some person sits down, and hunches—they may or may not have lumbar support, I don’t know—and with their hands and brain, they draw an entire piece of art for every snippet of words you’ve committed. That’s, like, kind of beautiful, and it’s heroic and it’s romantic. We’re talking about paywalls, and how we’re gonna monetize news, and this seems like an unfathomably incongruent input-to-ouput to sales to supply and demand-analogy. At the end of it, it’s like opera dude. It’s important. It’s broke if you think about it in terms of money, but someone sits down and makes you a piece of art work, and does it over and over again for each page. And then does that over and over again to tell you a story—and that’s just sick to me. And the fact that it’s print, you know? I’m sure if I had a film background you could talk about it in terms of visual fodder or mis en scene, but I’m from a print background. I will try to make a magazine til the day I die, to cantankerous mocking and derision from all bean-counting people. But I fucking love that. Give me something I can hold—and that’s no detraction away from the comic book apps and the iPad. That’s beautiful. That’s really cool, it’s the future. It feels great. But this is an art form and it’s so noble and it’s important and it’s a wonderful unifier, and it’s a great way to get a story. Everything that you find engrossing on a page, someone has put there for you.

There are very few things in this world that give me the warm fuzzies inside.  (Aside, apparently, from the Cajun Popcorn Shrimp at Gabby’s – that sensation, I found out, is just straight-up heartburn).

Cute babies.  (Note how I do not just say “babies” – a harrowing university job at the Sears Portrait studio has taught me the two are indeed mutually exclusive).   Old people who hold hands.  And cheeseball commercials — often layered with the delicate strummings of some crunchy granola acoustic singer.  I can’t even watch that immigrant Tim Horton’s ad without getting teary.

So it was unsurprising that AT&T’s “Rethink Possible” commercial caught my eye.

Nick Drake’s folksy melody is the perfect whimsical backdrop for sweeping scenes of bolts of billowing orange silk being unfurled across some of America’s most iconic landscapes: the St. Louis arches, the Las Vegas Strip, and the beckoning white sign that’s adorned Hollywood’s hills for decades.  All of this, of course, to promote the company’s supposed wide-stretching 3G network.

But for art junkies around the world, these scenes might look a little… familiar.  New York  City residents might remember 2005 when Central Park’s grey, winter sprawl became the canvas for “The Gates”, a large-scale installation by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude.  Using wide panels of saffron material, they draped 23 miles of park paths in February of that year.

The pair were known for their covered art; creating novel ways of seeing familiar landscapes by enshrouding them.  They were responsible for the wrapping of the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris, the Reichstag in Berlin, and also Little Bay in Sydney Australia – a feat that used up 17,000 work hours and  9,300 square metres of synthetic fabric.

To some, though, the commercial feels like less of an ”homage” than it does a flat-out ”rip-off”.  Given Jeanne-Claude’s recent passing, the main sting came from finding out the television spot is not actually a commissioned tribute, as it might appear to be.

But does it really matter that the concept bears a striking resemblance to past art works?  Doesn’t just about every creative venture, in some way, draw from a point of inspiration - be it literature, music, art, or life?

In her lifetime Jeanne-Claude maintained that there was never a cryptic purpose behind the installations.  According to her, the pair’s philosophy centred solely on the idea of creating “works of art, of joy, and beauty.”

Free spirited Jeanne-Claude (left) and Christo (right) - Photo by Bryan Obrien

The AT&T ad may be just a CGI rendering of a series of real-life wonders. (It’s even more awe-inspiring when you think the two paid for all the materials they used themselves; they never accepted grants or donations to support their art).  But the resulting images provoke the same sense of imagination in a way that just might have appealed to Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s sensibilities.

And if a stupid, cheeseball commercial manages to do that…well then you’ve already gotten way more out of 30 seconds of air time than seeing those Rogers Wireless kids.

Lucy Waverman, food writer for the Globe & Mail broke the news on Thursday night via her twitter, and The Star has a follow up story today detailing the surprising and sudden end of Chatto’s award-winning work with Toronto Life.

Saying that Toronto Life is “heading in a new direction,” TL’s editor Sarah Fulford further went on to explain to The Star that  “James’ type of column – the 3,000 word dining column….was a very particular kind of writing for a particular time and place… We’re not looking to replace James.”

The move is surprising given how many accolades Chatto has racked up at Toronto Life during his tenure. The natural question of course becomes — what direction is Toronto Life hoping to go in, if its future does not include a writer whose work has been internationally recognized and awarded?

Not to be all catty and bad-punny, but as someone who loves Toronto’s food scene, this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Although Chatto tells The Star there is no animosity, one has to wonder if this doesn’t harken a dumbing down of content for Toronto Life due to inevitable cost cutting measures. Either the magazine believes it can’t make money with “old school” (read: intelligent and thoughtful) writing taking up precious pages, or it simply can’t afford it.

Either way, both Toronto’s magazine and restaurant communities seem like they lost on this one.

With that piece, calling out by-then booming indie rock and discussing the influence (and co-optation) of black American music on highly profitable, infinitely more marketable white-fronted bands, Frere-Jones embarked on a pseudo-rise to fame. (Not to say he wasn’t paid-attention-to before, but the work entered a larger consciousness—bigger than just those who read the New Yorker or obsessively follow music criticism).

There are two things about rock critics today: 1) a lot of them are smarmy, self-important fuckers who style themselves on the glamorama of Lester Bangs or the wry, witticisms of Chuck Klosterman, and, 2) a lot of these “so-calleds” are everywhere, and therefore pervasively annoying. Frere-Jones is neither of these. Despite the sometimes-controversial pieces, writing for a general interest audience, he’s more a story-teller than a teller. Okay, I guess because ‘critic’ is in his title, you might say he’s at least kind of smarmy, but based on the semi-bumbling, totally unpretentious talk he gave at Hot Docs’ Critical Mass, Frere-Jones is just a guy who understands music: the kind of rock critic you want to read.

It’s very exciting for writers to see their quasi-idols celebrated but given the above, it’s important—particularly in a blogger-dominated world—to see the humble star. During his hour and a half, Frere-Jones constantly gave it up to readers and fellow critics. He relayed a poignant letter; the 101-year-old reader wrote about the first time she heard jazz in 1920 (the police came over and told her family to turn that off, it was Sunday) and ended her short piece with a simple, “My, how things have changed.” He derided the raging Internet-kills-criticism debate and recommended other critics worth checking out, including Nitsuh Abebe and Zach Baron. He also answered my question about race and music: (I’m paraphrasing) “We’ll always have that discussion because of the contributions of black American music, unless something crazy happens like we get a black president or something.” His metaphors were hilariously on-point: “Lady Gaga is everywhere, she’s like a gas, like pollen” and “Music from God’s eyeball.”

Forgive the Old World thinking, but it’s nice to see a writer with skill and nuance celebrated. Aspiring rappers have their Jay-Z’s and singers have their Mariah Carey’s, actors have their Clooney’s and professional nothing’s just have to pick up an Us Weekly or flip on Dancing With The Stars; with the demise of print journalism, the rise of blog wars, and the introduction of “blogger” as a new hyphenate, it’s even nicer when that fete-ing isn’t diminished by ego.

For some reason I’ve always had this hate on for Dave Eggers. Well, I guess there is a reason, just as much as their is a reason to hate Bono’s face – it’s everywhere, or at least was for the most part of the aughts (for the record, that is the first time I have used that word, as well as the last). But unlike my hate for Bono, which is based on a combination of him and his music being annoying, I have read, listened to and watched very little of Egger’s vast multitude of projects – and the few that I have, I’ve liked. The San Francisco Panorama, the 300-some odd page one time newspaper put out by Egger’s publishing factory, McSweeney’s, is one of those.

Released in December with a limited initial run of 20,000 copies (which was also limited to the San Fran area), people are still writing things about Panorama for a few reasons: It’s taken them this long to find it, and it’s taken them this long to read it. I found mine about a month ago and have yet to crack the inner sections.

Generally I liked the newspaper but really didn’t see how it was reflecting the unused potential of the medium, except for the fact that the lay out was closer to a magazine’s. The content was really good (good enough that they had to print another 20,000 copies to meet demand), but they also had a few months to put this together; comparing it to a daily or weekly seems hardly fair. But then I got the comics section and all of Egger’s ubiquitous pretensions just disappeared. Here was 14 full-colour broadsheet pages of ink, speech bubbles and words like SPUK! spelled out in funny bubble letters. I don’t know a lot about comics, but even I recognized some of the artists: Seth, Chris Ware (who does the monthly cartoon in Maissonueve mag, which I subscribe to but can never spell the first time), and none other than the pulitzer prize winning New Yorker cartoonist Art Spiegelman.

I wish I wasn’t so lazy because I would gladly scan some of these great comics, like Adrian Tomine‘s Optic Nerve, which is hilarious and mature and sort of like the Watchmen if it didn’t take itself so seriously. But like I said, lazy. That is probably for the best though because Panorama isn’t online for a reason – you actually have to buy it and read it like an old school newspaper. At $20 in most independent bookstores, it’s some expensive newsprint too, but the well worth it for those interested (no I did not get reimbursed my $20 for saying that either). The first thing that struck me about the comics is that they were original, although that might be the wrong word. Ziggy, that depressed, introverted little weenie, was original, but he’s been syndicated so far and wide that the only face more annoying than his is, well, Bono’s (as mentioned before). Actually, if Bono, in between his philanthroping, counting to four in Spanish and singing cheese ball rock songs, started ruminating out loud on the funny little things in life, he could possibly be the most annoying individual in the history of Earth. Oh wait, he does do that too.

Anyways, enough about Ziggy and Bono, and more about good comics. The only actual real newspaper I have seen attempt to do this has been the National Post, and that was very short lived. A full page of original comics was in every weekend edition, and it seemed to last for a couple of months before being cutback significantly and spread out. Actually, the only regular comic from the short lived section seems to be Steve Murray’s Posties. Alongside his equally as funny Extremely Bad Advice weekly column, he could be the only Canadian cartoonist who is actually publishing fresh, original comics on a weekly basis. Kudos to the Post for doing this, as well as to the Panorama for trying to point out that if newspapers would just allow the space, there are a lot of talented local cartoonists out there whose characters haven’t been telling the same jokes for the last 40 years.

photo of Panorama via

UPDATE: In terms of working cartoonists, I somehow forgot about Gary Clement, also at the Post. I’m sure I’m missing more though.

Twice yesterday at work I got caught watching this commercial and snickering quietly to myself. To American readers who might have seen Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” during the SuperBowl: it’s not my fault that we don’t get your ads. It was actually after the first commercial break of Tuesday night’s episode of Lost that it finally came to my attention (and enhanced the night’s viewing experience with a bit of comedy).

Of course it plays on cliched female expectations of heterosexual relationships (and gender norms of masculinity), but it’s kind of ingenious because it recognizes that often enough it’s women doing the buying for their men. There’s also great freaking writing and acting; “What’s in your hand? Back at me! I have it. It’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. Look again! The tickets are now diamonds!” Plus, I like how this black dude is positioned as Fabio-type feller. They should make a franchise out of him. He could be as successful (but hopefully not as debilitatingly pervasive as Budweiser’s Wasssaaap!). Lastly, I have a thing for dead-pan one-liners and “I’m on a horse” might be up there with “I’m dead” (skip to 5:45) from The Chappelle Show.

It’s maybe not as mind-blowing as when 4chan star Creepy Chan popped up on America’s Next Top Model (and almost won too. She was robbed), but still, it’s some more nice mainstream spillover for the site. On his blog Barrick conveyed the expected shock and amusement but also took a good dig at The State of the Media:

1. I remain stunned and amused that due to a careless bit of journalism in a small town newspaper half a planet away, something I did seven months ago as an off-handed visual critique of the 2010 mascots has garnered this much attention, and
2. now that it has garnered all this attention, that the [Vancouver] Metro is the first and only paper to have contacted me directly by any means at all.

So how’d it happen? Because I believe in the fundamental awesomeness of people, I wouldn’t discount this being the work of a Polish 4chan user at the paper having some fun, but more likely it’s the result of lazy Google image searching. As Barrick himself blogged, before all of this even happened his Pedobear/Olympic photoshop job was a top search result for the terms “Vancouver 2010 mascots”. Which reminds me of the time I wanted to blog about how The Walrus magazine, in a bid for kindly donations, released a video of entirely white people fawning over the publication’s brilliance; I plugged that into Youtube’s search engine and mistakenly got this video of a walrus fellating itself:

Yeah OK that joke is half a year late, but holy crap look at that thing go!

This post is dedicated to the memory of Conan O’Brien’s “The Masturbating Bear”.

Via

It might not be a stretch to call Bill Watterson my favourite artist of all time. If pictures are worth a thousand words, Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes were tiny microcosmic epics — each three panel strip having the wit, imagination, verve and poignancy of any an English lit curriculum novel.

With Calvin & Hobbes commemorative stamps about to be launched by the U.S. Postal Service, Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter John Campanelli took a total shot in the dark, emailing the reclusive cartoonist a series of questions with no expectations of a reply. Incredibly, Watterson did in fact send back answers, the first “interview” the local artist had done since roughly 1989. It isn’t without cause that Watterson was jokingly called “The J.D. Salinger of cartoonists,” but coincidentally this interview took place before Salinger’s recent death.

The transcription isn’t particularly insightful, but reveals a lot about Watterson’s artistic sensibilities about his work and his own (clearly private) personal life.

Read the full article here.

First off, iPad? Ew.

Second, Apple has got itself some phenomenal swag, as the kids say. It created enough buzz with this product launch to render an Obama State of the Union speech all but irrelevant and the kicker? The company describes its own product as magical.

Whaaaaa? Can you imagine if Ford came out with a new car and called it “The most fuel efficient, stylish and magical car in its class”? They would get laughed out of the country. I think the use of that one adjective is going under reported in all this tablet hoop-la, but hey — that’s just me. I’m totally going to call everything I do magical from now on though; be forewarned.

Anyways, as for the iPad itself, my initial reaction was… meh. It’s a giant iPod touch, which may or may not be exciting depending on who you are. The potential of the hardware does make you think though.

If, for example, a university professor somehow found a way to put an entire course syllabus, text book, videos of his lectures immediately after class, powerpoint notes, relevant website links, interesting journal articles and videos (TED videos or whatnot) into an easy to navigate interface, one that allowed for simple bookmarking and note taking… couldn’t a device like this revolutionize the way students learn? Instead of a textbook and a pencil, suddenly you can immerse and navigate all your information in a more tactile manner, plus amendments can be made in real time.

It certainly beats WebCT. I hated that thing.

That same train of thought can naturally be applied to magazines and newspapers. Some may whine that Apple didn’t do enough for print media, but I totally feel it is incumbent on magazines and newspapers to learn how to evolve their content for an entirely new type of medium. Somewhere between a blog, a website and a magazine is a digital publication that has the intimacy of print but the interactive and rich-media experience of a website, mixed with the responsiveness of a blog.

It’s not up to Apple to make that product, but it has created a device which makes that product inherently feasible (if not inevitable).

At first blush, the iPad may not change the world, but it has definitely prodded the technological paradigm in the direction of digital tablets as a medium. Think travel guides, cook books, interactive museum guides with video… the possibilities are endless. The potential for the iPad is enormous, constrained only by the software developed for it.

Considering currently the thing has no multi-tasking capabilities, or even flash, I am unimpressed. But I am intrigued. We may laugh at the stupid name, but in hindsight this might be a more seminal product than we currently realize.