Monday, February 25, 2013

Flix's Faust -- How Cool is this!!!

Faust, Titelblatt der Erstausgabe
Faust, Titelblatt der Erstausgabe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Flix Zeichnung
Flix Zeichnung (Photo credit: arne bratenstein)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe monument in Leipzig...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe monument in Leipzig, Germany. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Goethe in the Roman Campagna, 1787
Goethe in the Roman Campagna, 1787 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Cover of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/2.1795/s6.html?sort=creationTime#FAZContent

http://www.der-flix.de/english/start.php
http://www.der-flix.de/start.php

Flix is one of Germany's most well-known comic-artists.  I dig his work a lot.  I don't tend to bring examples into class, but that's either due to content, or difficulty of the language.

And really, this is a little far afield for the purpose of this blog, since you probably have to be either a Flix fan, a former grad student in Germanic Studies, an impassioned lover of Faust (One and Two, by Goethe, not the pasty Marlowe version!!), or any combination of the above, to appreciate what the comic artist Flix does in this serialized version of Faust for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (or: FAZ) one of Germany's most well-known newspapers.

The irony is that he really makes the Faust story accessible to a modern sensibility, and also keeps the language level more modest than not -- but you really have to have a clue about the original to appreciate this, oder?  Maybe I'm wrong.  And I do sort of wish he had not entitled it: "Who the $#@ is Faust?"  It would make it a lot easier if he waited to offend sensibilities within the comic itself!
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