Word: comic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Blessings on British writers! They are keeping the comic novel alive and well with very little help from other quarters. Perhaps it is the malign ghost of Evelyn Waugh that tweaks them into action, but A.N. Wilson's social satires and David Lodge's academic lampoons have a vigor and recklessness that are often in short supply in more serious work...
Step aside, Superman. Get back, Batman. Make way for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the latest superheroes to make the big leap from comic books to the silver screen. The who?, you say. Then you haven't been paying attention. The Turtles -- four wisecracking, pizza-guzzling reptile masters of the martial arts -- are already the biggest animated adventure act to hit television since Ghostbusters cartoons. Kids adore their hip and slightly naughty sense of humor ("Let's haul shell out of here"). "I like Michaelangelo because he's a smooth dude, a party animal," says Michael Serio, a 7-year...
...unlikely heroes made their debut seven years ago in a black-and-white comic book drawn by Peter Laird, now 36, and Kevin Eastman, 27. Laird had been "scraping out a living" drawing eggplants and such for the gardening page of a newspaper in Northampton, Mass., when the editor of a local comic magazine suggested that he collaborate with Eastman, an amateur cartoonist who was working as a short-order cook. One night in 1983 -- and neither can remember why -- inspiration struck. Eastman drew a humanized turtle wearing a ninja mask and carrying a katana blade. The idea...
...talking-head format allows Roth to play to his strengths of critical intelligence and pitch-perfect ear. Few writers can touch him when it comes to the illusion of natural dialogue or the comic possibilities latent in high- mindedness. Deception is not a full orchestration of Roth's abilities but a chamber version. Stripped of narrative, the voices are free to play off each other. They may also offer the most delicious deception of all. Could this skeletal novel be just loosely stitched exercises from Roth's notebooks? Mirrors, mirrors on the wall, who's the falsest of them...
...Washington share a consensus in favor of statehood for the capital. Congressional Democrats nominally support creation of "New Columbia," which would have two seats in the Senate and one in the House, all certain to be filled by Democrats. But Republican opposition and the district's propensity for comic-opera government keep statehood low on the agenda...