Hark, A Bayou Rebel!

Without a working router I was without internet for most of last week and as such forgot all about this. But as I was making a blog post about the strips I showed to the class last time I suddenly realized I hadn’t shared the (meager) fruits of my (equally meager) Bayou related research. So here it is anyway! It being a one-week late entry for The Searchers, the new hit show on AMC. Speaking of AMC an interesting article I found about Bayou was actually just a short piece about the adaptability of Jeremy Love’s work into the screen medium. Television screen that is, as I realize it already exists on the screens of computer monitors the world around. This would of course be the second time I’ve found something dealing with the nature of converting comics to cinema and further illustrates how many players, both big and small, in the comic book world are relying on adaptations and merchandise to make a profit on their work.
I also read an interview with Jeremy Love about his past and the influences that went into creating Bayou. I find it interesting that this is the second recent literary example I’ve come across of an African American creator leaving behind the South as a child and then revisiting it as an adult. The other was the work of a young playwright named Marcus Gardley who, similar to Love, lives in California but writes about his family’s home of the south.
Finally, the webcomic strips. First I showed Odysseus the Rebel which is the story of Odysseus as the first atheist. Unlike most webcomics this is not an inherently comedic strip and instead tells an ongoing narrative as opposed to being short one-and-dones. It’s also by established comic book creators Steven Grant (best known for creating the Punisher for Marvel Comics) and Scott Bieser (largely unknown for doing indie-graphic novels). The second webcomic I showed was Hark, A Vagrant. Hark is a more traditional webcomic in that it is short one-and-dones and they are intended to be humorous. It’s also created by Kate Beaton (best known for having a weapon named after her in Fallout: New Vegas) an up-and-comer who didn’t really have much to her credit before starting the webcomic. But hey I think it’s great!
And there you go, another over-produced, under-satisfying episode of… The Searchers!