J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

907 Followers 229 Following

Library worker, researcher and writer about culture from the first third of the 20th century, depressive. https://jonathanbogart.net

Ben Carrillo, Dreamer (2025) A brown-skinned man with a black mustache and short blonde hair lies shirtless on top of a U.S. flag with a flower crown, with dramatic lighting. A mock-Parental Warning label is the bottom right corner warning parents that it contains conscious lyrics.
Nesi, Pretty Bitch (2026) A computer-generated, possibly AI, image of a young woman with white eyes standing in a filthy police lineup room, wearing a white fur jacket, a crop top, a necklaace that reads Pretty Bitch, a miniskirt, and cross-patterned fishnet stockings. She is smirking and holding up Nesi - Pretty Bitch as an identifier. There are lens flare circles all over, and a Parental Advisory sticker is in the bottom right corner.
Branbel, Se Es Feliz Sin Mucho (2026) An orange-tinted photograph of a dark-skinned shirtless man holding a cutout drawing of a dilapidated city house over his face, with a refrigerator out front, a flower on the balcony, bars over the windows, and a bird sitting on telephone wires above. Grafitti on the building includes Branbel and Cali. He is also wearing a cartoon chain that says Branbel and the initials of the album.
Single-page strip by Javier Mariscal in El Vibora, a Spanish underground comics magazine, in 1982, showing a beach scene divided across twelve panels in homage to a famous Gasoline Alley strip from the 1920s, but with typical 1980s freshness.
The first of three pages of a drawn sequence by Ana Juan, a Spanish artist born in Valencia in 1961, in the pages of Madriz, a Spanish arts and comics magazine, in 1986. The title, "Las noches de Pompeya," is a reference to a 1948 song written by Argentinean tango composer and bandleader Aníbal Troilo. This first image shows couples of varying social classs dancing to the accompaniment of a bandoneón in a phantasmagoric Buenos Aires street while a man in a red-and-black striped suit and a large purple cravat stares in anguish at the viewer.
A drawing of Fine and Dandy, two hobo characters from Seth's 2005 graphic novel Wimbledon Green, who are within the fiction of the book the protagonists of an understated, poetic comic book of the late 40s and early 50s.
Shannon, Tropical Mood (2026) A woman in fishnets, high heels, and a tasseled skirt sits backwards on a wooden chair in front of a blue building with white accents. A yellow tub featuring the word Peligroso sits next to her, full of what looks like groceries.
Merveille, Wondersummer (2026) A photocollage. One half is a woman in a denim outfit with a shawl collar holding an electric guitar, and the other half is magazines, notebooks, records, and fabric in a variety of languages.
An expressionist José Muñoz drawing of a tango being danced by a tall man and a short woman to the accompaniment of a banondeón being played by a black man.
Cécile McLorin Salvant, With Every Breath I Take (2026) A black-and-white photo of a woman with a closely shaved head, her face half in shadow, looking up from tightly-striped fabric.
Anitta, Equilibrivm (2026) A photograph of a woman from behind. She is shirtless with long brown hair, wearing a brown wrap low on her hips, and is holding a massive wreath of grasses and flowers on her head in front of a painted red background.
Créol, Unik (2026) A highly polished photo of a woman in a pink fishnet dress over black ingerie, with knee-high red boots, a beaded headpiece, and lots of silver jewelry, sitting on an armchair and smoking with her eyes closed. She is surrounded by ornate old-fashioned furniture but also worker's tools.
Rincon Sapiência, Um Corpo Preto (2026) A photograph of a black man in a tan suit and green beret, his jacket decorated by lots of large jewelry. He is standing in front of a soccer net, from which many different club jerseys are hanging. A brick building with banana trees in front is in the background, with denser forest behind that.
A narrative panel of abstracted watercolors showing a military skirmish at night, lit by burning fire.
A full-page drawing of the Amazon, with jungle piled up behind it, a cloudy sunset above, and a small village with fires burning on the banks. The drawing is loose and blocky, with flat colors somewhat reminiscent of stained glass.
A full-page panel of the Amazon rainforest, with colorful parrots, twisting vines, and endless forest above placid water.
Cover to Lope de Aguirre: La aventura (1989) by Felipe Hernández Cava (scrip) and Enrique Breccia (art), published by Ikusager Ediciones in their "Imagenes de la historia" collection. The illustration, in a slightly exaggerated mode of classic adventure cartooning, is of several tired, hard-bitten, scarred Spanish soldiers in various seventeenth-century garb looking skeptically at one another.
The cover to Spirou et Fantasio: Les chapeaux noirs et 3 autres auventures (1952) by Jijé and Franquin, with Spirou and Fantasio in western outfits. Spirou is holding a pistol and trembling.
Sarah Sampp, Visão Piranha Mixtape (2026) A woman wearing a low-cut top with sweater sleeves, large curlers in her long hair, and biting down on a long acrylic fingernail, on a red background.
Lili Damita in a sparkling, embroidered orientalist robe with a long trailing turban
Lili Damita in a bizarre wire headdress and intricate fan drinking champagne with I think Jack Trevor in evening wear.
La Guru, Agítese Bien Antes de Usar (2026) A closeup of a woman's face. She has partial grills on her teeth, heavy makeup and leopard-print fingernails, and bangs. There's a Parental Advisory sticker in the bottom right corner.
A page from the first issue of Hellboy: Wake the Devil, in which Hellboy is outfitted with a "new and improved" jetpack, then dropped out of an airplane over his destination.
Cover to Hellboy Omnibus Volume 1: Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola & John Byrne A Mignola drawing of Hellboy in the tentacles of an octopus-like monster as Rasputin stretches out a hand behind him.
Tayc, Joÿa (2026) A photo of a bearded, heavily tattooed black man in a sleevless rusty mesh top and white linen trousers with lots of gold jewelry in a downcast pose reminiscent of Rodin's Penseur, except that his gold-tipped fingers are at his forehead instead of his chin. The background is a splotchy tan wall with faded green carpet. There is no text.
Tokischa, Amor y Droga (2026) A photograph of Tokischa in a wedding dress standing on rocks in front of a raging sea. She is doubled over holding her stomach and screaming at the camera.
A photograph of a Compaq Portable II, a light gray box with a monitor taking up half of the interface, with two 5" floppy drives taking up the other half, and a keyboard connected by coil cord to the main unit. There is green glowing text on a black background on the monitor.
Octávio Pro, Batom Vermelho (2026) A not-great Photoshop job of nine women wearing red surrounding one man wearing red and a gold chain, all on a red background.
Charly Gynn, Sin Suerte, Nacimos Bendecidos (2026) A photo of a pink-haired woman in a dry landscape of barren trees wearing post-apocalyptic fashion, with boots made of dollar bills, many of which are scattered on the ground behind her too.
Romeo B, Noches Sin Promesas (2026) A black and white photo of a man with long braids standing in profile looking contemplatively in front of views of Rio de Janeiro, New York City, and Seville. There's a Parental Advisory sticker in the upper right corner.
Letón Pé, Golosa (2026) A photo of a woman in a low-cut black dress and a large fur boa holding a cocktail with three cherries. She appears to be spitting out glitter, which includes the title of the album in watery digital letters.
IZA, Afrodhit (2023) A shoulders-up photographic portrait of IZA, a black woman with long, heavily beaded braids, turquoise eyeshadow, and black lipstick, on a black background. A symbol has been digitally added to her forehead: a half-circle with a dot in the middle.
MXKA, Xclusiva (2026) A young woman sitting on a bejewelled bicycle, her feet on the neck of the handlebars, one hand up like she's riding a bucking bronco. She's swearing baggy culottes, a lacy bikini top, full length black sleeves, a profusion of scarves at her waist, and green high heels. Her eyes are downcast but she's smiling.
“Have you ever noticed,” said Dimble, “that the universe, and every bit of the universe is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?” His wife waited as those wait who know by long experience the mental processes of the person who is talking to them. “I mean this,” said Dimble in answer to the question she had not asked. “If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family – anything you like – at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.” ― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
Charles Coburn and Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve
today’s spelling bee insisting that “groovily” is not in word list
Comic Book Guy: Oooh, I've wasted my life.
Lenexx, I <3 Funketon (2026) A highly embroidered square of glossy purple fabric, with the album title sewn into a crossbar and the artist name sewn in the vertical bar.
Still Life (Centrifugal Explosion of Colors) by Gino Severini, 1913. A Cubist still life divided into blocks of color, each of which changes the representation of the items depicted.
Boy Wonder CF & Charlee Way, La Liga Femenina (2026) A shiny pink logo of the initialism LLF over a black background, with tall windows faintly visible in its glow.
The cover of Pink by Kyoko Okazaki, a marker-colored line drawing of a young woman in a hat and sundress holding a crocodile-skin briefcase, posed very individually.
The cover to the first volume of Perramus, El Piloto del olvido [the pilot of forgetting] by Alberto Breccia and Juan Sasturain. The inset drawing is of four skull-headed men in military caps in a car. One is driving, another holds a pistol.
Bongeziwe Mabandla, Ndingubani (2026) A photograph of a man in a gold suit standing at the top of a grassy knoll. He is holding a large painting of a woman in a red dress on a golden field in front of a farmhouse, with green behind and blue fading into black above. The painting is at a 45 degree angle to the camera. The real sky above the man echoes the painted sky in the painting.
Six Sex, Ultra (2026) A woman in a pose reminiscent of iconography of the Virgin Mary, except she's in a bikini and has a vacant stare on her face. Noisy digital rainbow textures behind her only emphasize the porny artificiality of the image.
Greeicy, Candela (2026) A photograph of Greeicy set in a starry black frame. She is looking over her bare shoulder with wet hair. The tattoos on her back have tongues of flame licking up. Her name and the title are in airbrushed chrome fonts that strike me as very 1980s.
Flying Lotus, 1983 (2026) A black-and gold photograph of a lily in deep focus.
A photo of a man with big curly brown hair and a big bushy white beard.
Melly, Mais Forte Que a Dúvida (2026) A blurry black-and-white photo of a black woman with a nose ring and long dreads half-smiling.
Photograph of a dramatic stage, empty of people. A rough wooden structure, with a cross, a chimney, and a door, dominates the set. A bench is below the cross stage center, and a prie-dieu is set up some ways to the right. Dry reeds and cattails are in the background and wings, and a tree with Spanish moss hanging from a branch frames the right side. The outlines of bare, twisted tree branches stick out over the light gray background.
Fernanda Abreu, Da Lata (1995) A woman standing in the middle of, and decorated by, innumerable artifacts made of tin.
Thirteen Going on Eighteen #17, Jan 1966. Cover by John Stanley. Two young women are dancing in a crowd of other teens. Judy (a brunette) says to Val (a blonde), "If you see my partner around, Val, will you tell him where I am?"
Pauline Baynes' map of Narnia, as seen here: https://www.paulinebaynes.com/?what=artifacts&cat=79&image_id=495
A photograph of the marquee of the Chicago Theatre, taken from the south, showing: Comedy Bang Bang Ground Beefing Tour Tonight
Neutro Shorty, El Disco de Salsa (2026) The cover is a close-up photograph of a suit-wearing man playing the conga, cut off below his collar. His hands are heavily tattooed and he is wearing a blinged-out watch.
Thirteen volumes of comics in a wide variety of formats, sizes, and illustrative styles resting on a blanket spread over an armchair.
Jade Baraldo, Não Há Nada Mais Honesto Que um Sonho (2026) A photo of a woman with a pink frilly low-cut top and a fringed bob sitting at a desk in a very cluttered room and looking up.
Cover to "Starstruck: The Luckless, the Abandoned and Forsaked" by Elaine Lee and M.W. Kaluta, published as a Marvel Graphic Novel in 1985. Kaluta's retro-futuristic cover design features Galatia 9, a waifish blonde in a skimpy outfit, and Brucilla, a beefy brunette in sports armor, accompanied by a phallic robot.
A centerfold gag from Spanish magazine El Jueves, in the form of a fake poster for Superman XXV: La aventura de nunca acabar [The adventure of never ending]. A drawing of a bald, wrinkled Superman in a wheelchair and breathing apparatus flies toward the viewer against a black background. Inset photos at the bottom show "Luisa Lane" as an elderly woman, "Jimmy Olsen" as a rough fiftysomething, "Luthor" as a skull, and text "Dirigido por el nieto de Richard Lester" [directed by the grandson of Richard Lester].
A Jules Feiffer cartoon of an Israeli soldier talking to a Palestinian prisoner: "The whole thing is an image problem, you understand? Americans are watching on TV. Which distorts history and makes US the villains! And we depend on U.S. support... But Americans have a short memory. Soon they'll be on to the NEXT crisis. While you and I will STILL be here. In fifty years America will be done as a power. And you and I will still be here. So I suggest you adjust. And go back to digging our ditches and picking up our garbage."