Bizarre Russian Woodcuts Depict Pop Culture Icons

Aside from Matryoshka dolls, I confess to knowing little about Russian folk art. That's why when I saw these surreal comic book and movie woodcuts by Andrei Kuznetsov, I decided to read up on lubok prints.

Kuznetsov's cryptic Web site appeared last year, sparking something of a meme. I found the images at Squidoo, but other sites have featured the bizarre prints as well. It's a beautiful thing what a routine Google image search will yield a wandering blogger.

From "Spider-Man" to "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter," Kuznetsov's covered a lot of the nerdy bases with his luboks, which is pretty interesting given the medium's sequential art sensibility. For all practical intents and McCloudian purposes, many luboks are comics. Plenty of them tell a story using words and pictures in a sequence. Just don't ask me what they mean.

They're weird, they're wonderful, they're worth a look after the jump.Spider-Man: