Word: spain
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...chickens for his daily fifth of cheap booze. Along with confidence men, carnies and cops, the geek is just one of the grimy characters of William Lindsay Gresham's cult 1946 novel "Nightmare Alley," now turned into a gripping graphic novel by the veteran comix artist known as Spain...
...much a yarn as a boiled leather strap, "Nightmare Alley" (Fantagraphics Books; 134 pp.; $14.95) tells the story of Stanton Carlisle, who we first meet as an ambitious assistant to a phony medium on the traveling midway. As drawn by Spain, Stanton has the good looks and blank expression of a department store mannequin, and the same sense of morals. Coldy ambitious and hotly lustful, he learns the medium's secrets and begins a "two-a-day" mentalist vaudeville act with Molly, a virginal looker with a thing for daddy. Never satisfied, Stanton tricks up a house and puts...
...Well, here is the real stuff. Not a neo-noir homage, but the genuine india-ink original, "Nightmare Alley" combines the creepy world of Tod Browning's movie, "Freaks" with the relentless cynicism of a Jim Thompson novel. As adapted by Spain, "Nightmare" pulls you into a secret world, with its own colorful language. "You can go back to carny and find another kootch show. But I want to have big dough," is a typical line, delivered when Molly hesitates on trying out the spiritualist "dodge." Throughout the book you get a privileged inside look at the tricks...
...better than Manuel "Spain" Rodriguez at bringing a vivid cast of freaks, grifters, and phonies to their graphic realization? As one of the original coterie of "Zap" artists, Spain has been creating left-leaning comix about outcasts and the exploited since the mid-sixties. Part of a comix generation that made its reputation by breaking taboos, Spain's instinct for sensationalism - never have a smooth bust when you can have erect nipples - also perfectly match the pulp, exploitation origins of "Nightmare Alley." Drawing as he always has, with thick, black lines, Spain's technique graphically represents the dark tones...
While I agree that high academic standards should be upheld for study abroad students, I do not think that making it easier to go abroad must entail making it easier to be abroad. In Spain I took four rigorous, challenging classes with distinguished, talented and attentive professors. This should be the norm for study abroad at Harvard, but without the red tape—taking a leave of absence, losing student status (and thereby having to pay off loans), sorting out housing concerns—which students like myself had to go through to get there. We?...