OREGON BOOKS

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There's something about Sonic Youth that makes listeners want to create art or bang their heads against a brick wall. The music is loud and edgy and on the verge of losing control, but there's an intelligence behind it that brings order to the chaos. It's played by people who take what they're doing seriously but know how to have fun.

And they like to read. All the members of Sonic Youth are artists in the fullest sense who work with other bands and in other mediums and have an extensive network of friends and supporters who do the same. Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo are always talking up writers and were active participants in "Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth," a new anthology. Editor Peter Wild asked writers, many of them friends of the band, to write a story using the title of Sonic Youth as a jumping-off point.

The OregonianDoyle's American Bank Building door that faces Pioneer Courthouse Square. IIn the reflection is the Jackson Tower on the other side of the square.

It's hard to grow up in Portland and not feel the influence of A.E. Doyle, the architect whose many achievements include the Multnomah County Central Library, PGE Park, the Benson Hotel, the Meier & Frank building, the U.S. Bank Building, much of Reed College and the Multnomah Falls Lodge.

Doyle's name hasn't slipped into obscurity, but it's safe to say that nine out of 10 people who take a sip from the Benson Bubblers and walk into Pioneer Courthouse Square have no idea that Doyle designed the water fountains or that his work surrounds them as they stand in the square.

"People who are interested in architecture certainly know who he was, but I do agree that a lot of people don't know anything about him," Philip Niles said. "What I was struck by was how many people who work in his buildings do know who he was and know details of the buildings and are fond of them."

Alex Nino, Frank Cho, Colleen Coover, Howie Chaykin, Darwyn Cooke, James Kochalka, Steve Lieber, Mike Mignola, Ben Templesmith, Tim Sale, Matt Fraction, Stan Sakai ...

Emerald City is setting up to be one heck of a show ...

I don't know what they're putting in the tea on the other side of the pond, but its fueling some of the best work I've ever seen in the graphic novel.

Witness Hannah Berry's Britten and Brulightly, which is every bit as inventive as Posy Simmonds' British tales, Tamara Drewe and Gemma Bovary, while evoking the best of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain. Fernandez Britten and Stewart Brulightly are a rather unlikely tandem of moody private eyes, largely because Stewart is a teabag ... and a teabag whose running commentary is the perfect counterpart to Fern's morose introspection.

Britten is "The Heartbreaker," an investigator and errand boy for jealous or vengeful lovers, whose life work is a bitter collection of files, "every one a compilation of wretched misery, a window onto infinite sadness." When he decides nothing less than a murder can pull him out of bed in the morning, over the transom comes Charlotte Maughton, who's convinced her fiance didn't hang himself, no matter what the coppers say.

Ron Asheton

Sad news today about Ron Asheton, the lead guitar player for the Stooges. According to this article, Todd Haynes' movie "Velvet Goldmine" resulted in Asheton getting together with Mike Watt and eventually, back together with Iggy Pop. There's a heartfelt message on Iggy's Web site.

Kyle Baker pretends not to understand the difference between conception and execution in his response to criticism of Frank Miller's "The Spirit", but his post is doggone entertaining and admirably illustrated.

The 2008 Oregon Literary Fellowships have been announced by Literary Arts, Inc. The 12 writers and two publishers will receive $2,500 each from the organization that administers the Portland Arts & Lectures series, the Oregon Book Awards, and other events.

What's wrong with this picture?

As I have followed the young Magneto through this miniseries about growing up in Nazi Germany and lurching ever closer to the railroad tracks that led to Auschwitz, I have been appalled by Marvel's casual juxtaposition of images of the Holocaust and the usual array of mindless ads.

The double-truck above, from Magneto: Testament #4, is typical. At the left, Max Eisenhardt (Magneto) is sent through the showers at the German concentration camp, the rare showers at Auschwitz that featured water, not Zyklon B gas.

At the right is a full-page ad for the X-Box game Banjo-Kazooie, rated "E-10+" for "Cartoon Violence/Comic Mischief."

The complete double-page spread doesn't fit inside either my scanner or any definition of propriety or good taste.

A mess, at least in the clunky, clumsy, cliche-ridden opening chapter. When he does "crime noir," Ed Brubaker hits one note and beats it senseless. All of this stuff is beginning to sound and look the same, and I don't think that's Sean Phillips' fault. While Brubaker insists he's been thinking about this character and concept for years, he lingered over some of his narrative voice-overs for all of 30 seconds: "Can't be part of the rat race when you're one of the rats who knows you're in a cage." Incognito #1 is the opening chapter in a five-part series about an amoral superhero, Zack Overkill, who's parked in Witness Protection when he's not stealing a Santa Claus suit so he can nail Amanda from accounting at the office Christmas party. Zack and his twin brother Xander apparently caused the death of dozens of morose bystanders in a domestic terror spree, but he snared the get-out-of-jail-free card when his testimony put the infamous crime overlord, Black Death, in prison. There is almost nothing to commend this pulp drama other than the fact that Brubaker is at the helm and the story has to get better.