THE SARTORIALIST – NYC STYLISH STRANGERS HAPPILY CAUGHT BY A CANDID CAMERA
The Sartorialist
by Scott Schuman
Penguin Books
2009, 512 pages, 5.2 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches (softcover)
Scott Schuman once worked in the fashion industry but found that the outfits that amateurs wore on the streets of New York City to be a lot more interesting than those from famous designers. He began photographing people on the street who caught his eye, and, with their permission, posted their images on his blog, The Sartorialist. His street photos had their own style, and soon fashion followers were happy to be caught by Schumans’s candid camera. Soon The Sartorialist blog became legendary in the fashion world. It was also the first of many photo blogs to feature street fashion – showcasing what people with a personal flair wore everyday. This brick of a book collects the best of The Sartorialist’s first 10 years of images. It works as a one-stop shop of hip clothing designs; it also works as a document of “what they wore” in 2010; and it also works as a cool gallery of contemporary fashion photography. It lacks the richness of the life stories in Humans of New York, but it gains something by focusing so obsessively on the design decisions of creative people. A second volume called The Sartorialist X, takes Schuman outside of New York to other cities of the world. – Kevin Kelly
THE LATEST ASTERIX BY THE NEW TEAM IS MORE INVENTIVE AND MUCH FUNNIER THAN ITS PREDECESSOR
Asterix and the Missing Scroll
by Jean-Yves Ferri (author) and Didier Conrad (illustrator)
Asterix
2015, 48 pages, 8.9 x 11.6 x 0.4 inches
One has to sympathize with the writer-artist team of Ferri and Conrad, taking on the daunting task of creating new adventures for Asterix 56 years after the small-but-mighty Asterix the Gaul’s creation by Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. The new team’s first Asterix adventure, “Asterix and the Picts” in 2013, was understandably a little stiff, both in terms of humor and art, as if the new guys didn’t want to risk disrupting so many years of tradition. This time around, however, they’ve loosened up considerably.
“Asterix and the Missing Scroll,” the 36th entry in the series, is more inventive in plot and much funnier both in script and visuals than its predecessor. The story is a riff on the WikiLeaks scandal, and a quite brilliant one at that. It turns out a journalist named - punningly, in the best Goscinny tradition - Confountheirpolitix, has secured a censored chapter from Julius Caesar’s autobiography that details the emperor’s repeated defeats at the hands of Asterix, his rotund pal Obelix, and their village of indomitable Frenchmen. The journalist wants to publish the story, so he turns to the only people Caesar can’t beat to help him with the job. Hi-jinks, of course, ensue.
Along with the light political commentary, there are the usually puns and running jokes - Obelix is flustered by his horoscope, which warns him to cut back on his favorite meal of roast boar, and complains about his fate throughout the book. There’s also a clever scene near the end that pays loving tribute to the strip’s original creators.
Conrad’s art is gorgeous. While he’s still emulating Uderzo, his line is a bit crisper and he pulls off several showstopping large panels, beautifully composed and full of rich detail. His visual storytelling is smooth and clear and he pulls off slapstick scenes without a hitch. Only the least-forgiving of Asterix purists would dislike this story, and those new to the series should be thoroughly entertained - even young children who don’t get all the subtext. It’ll be fun to see what the new team does next time around, when they’re even more comfortable filling Goscinny and Uderzo’s shoes. – John Firehammer
Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.