By: Greg Rowland

Spider-Man and Dr. Strange co-creator STEVE DITKO (born 1927) is the third member of the triumvirate of genius that originally conceived the Marvel Universe. Yet while Stan Lee and Jack Kirby reflected aspects of the […]

By: Annie Nocenti

CHARLIE KAUFMAN (born 1958) writes film scripts that zig when you expect a zag. Fantastic notions are met with deadpan nonchalance, creating comedy of simmering delirium. He redefined the screwball comedy as more of a […]

By: Peggy Nelson

No one writes edge-of-your-seat, action-packed, cinematic cliffhangers better than NEAL STEPHENSON (born 1959), and that’s just the talking-heads parts of his novels of ideas. He mashes up solid theoretical discourse (physics, cryptography, philosophy, semiotics) with […]

By: Matthew Battles

In a wire cage in the Pisan sun at the end of the Second World War, the forces of chaos and order clashed for EZRA POUND (1885–1972) more keenly than ever. With the accusation of […]

By: Joe Alterio

If the sexualized children’s gardens of white gloves and dildos sharing the same animation cel are old hat to today’s otaku-obsessed hipsters roaming the pop-surrealist galleries, we have auteur animator RALPH BAKSHI (born 1938) to […]

By: Patrick Cates

Unlike his namesake and ancestor, FRANCIS BACON (1909-92) was never granted a knighthood for his services to educated society. Nor should he have been. He deserved a title much loftier and more distinguished: Grand Horrifier […]

By: David Smay

She lacerated the enemies of pleasure.

By: Lucy Sante

No one has come closer than NESTOR MAKHNO (1888-1934) to establishing that paradox, the anarchist nation. Born in rural poverty in the Ukraine, he got his education as a teenager in prison, where he had […]

By: Ingrid Schorr

Those who question or resist PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973) are overthinking. No need. The man did all the thinking for you. He could have been an immensely appealing sentimental artist, but he forced himself to be […]

By: Douglas Wolk

The hip-hop producer MADLIB (born 1973) is also a helium-voiced rapper (Quasimodo) and a one-man jazz “quintet” (Yesterday’s New Quintet), among other alter egos. Since 1993, he’s contributed to dozens of recordings, and his breed […]

By: Sarah Weinman

To call “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC (born 1959) a parodist is to understate his technical proficiency and artistic skill. Anyone can satirize a song or a movie and upload it to YouTube, but Weird Al is […]

By: Tor Aarestad

Though Iggy Pop did Iggy first (and better), STIV BATORS (1949-90) did Iggy with a striver’s zeal in the right place and at the right time. The arrival of the Dead Boys in 1977 marked the […]

By: Joshua Glenn

Her Earthsea fantasy novels — most signally, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1971), and The Farthest Shore (1972) — concern the education of a young wizard, and are recommended for those who […]

By: Ingrid Schorr

A straight line runs from rockabilly pioneer WANDA JACKSON (born 1937) to Jason and the Scorchers and the Cramps. Watch a 1958 performance of “Hard Headed Woman”: Jackson juts her guitar in a most unladylike […]

By: Mimi Lipson

“Just because you got them big udders don’t make you something special.” So says Earl Peterson (DIVINE, born Harris Glenn Milstead, 1945-88) to Dawn Davenport (Divine, again) in two of her greatest roles. And Earl […]