The usual summary of comic book artist Will Eisner’s career follows the formula that he drew the Spirit all through the 1940s except for the war years and a bunch of ‘graphic novels’ from 1978 till the end of his life in 2005. There’s a long missing period between 1951 and 1978 during which he packaged and adapted cartoon art to commercial purposes, which has not been readily available for our scrutiny or pleasure. It is sometimes summarily dismissed as being of little interest. - Artist
Eddie Campbell reappraises
Will Eisner's missing years.
posted by Artw
on Aug 31, 2009 -
13 comments
Bought a video game second hand and found it doesn’t have a manual? Or have you been thinking about that great manual that came with that copy of
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past you owned years ago and wouldn't mind taking a look through it again? Well, help is at hand!
Vimm offers you heaps of free pdf manuals from retro systems as old as the Atari 2600 and as recent as the N64! Meanwhile
Meekeo does much the same, although it mostly looks after current generation systems (including the PC) only. Finally, if you own a Nintendo Wii, DS, Gamecube or Gameboy Advance, Nintendo is
offering up full colour pdfs of games they publish(ed) for these systems, as well as manuals for some of their older games.
posted by Effigy2000
on Jan 5, 2009 -
15 comments
So I reinstalled an older game,
StarTopia (Flash required and RIP
Muckyfoot, you will be missed), t'other day and discovered I'd lost my manual to it. Never fear, for
Real Time Strategic Carnage had about, oh, a bazillion times more info about the game than did the manual that actually came with the game, which should come as no surprise to most gamers. RTSC has detailed information on a number of strategy games, old and new, and I recommend it to your notice wholeheartedly.
posted by WolfDaddy
on Nov 9, 2003 -
3 comments
Why Won't We Read the Manual? I'd say we are a pretty tech-savvy group here. Do you STOP to peruse the instructions before you touch the "on" button of your new "must have" tech toy (to say nothing of your new microwave)?
Probably not. But there are reasons, according to this Washington Post article. I, for one, have been burned royally by manual writers. Scratching my head, I often hear myself mumbling "What the hell are they talking about?" And, in fact, don't you just hate when they are actually wrong?!
Having been a manual writer, I always try to put myself in the place of someone who comes into the situation completely cold. I'm afraid that's not always the case.
posted by Taken Outtacontext
on May 26, 2002 -
28 comments
2002 Worst Manual Contest - as selected by Technical Standards, Inc (a documentation company). Some pretty good examples of confusing or confounding manual design (also check the
2000 - 2001 winners), with everything ranging from poor translation ("Operate it on the loosen condition of the levers without comfirmation can cause the handle pole bent and cause Incident") to perplexing images to just poor or absent proof-reading. PDF-intensive.
(Heard about this on NPR's "On The Media")
posted by tpl1212
on Mar 25, 2002 -
6 comments
