Rolling 2015 Reading Funnybooks Thread

Got a volume of Concrete I hadn't read yet, Sometimes Comics and this:
http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2015/01/bow-wow-beagle-gordon-sheehan-1943.html

oh and three issues of Nemo i got off ebay.

formally lodging a complaint about the thread title

thanking you for your bravery forks

The Education of Hyman Kaplan - Leo Rosten
The Code of the Woosters - P G Wodehouse
The Diary of a Nobody - George and Weedon Grossmith
Whizz for Atoms - Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle

oh sorry wrong thread

Walt Before Skeezix, the vol zero of the D&Q Gasoline Alley reprint series.

I got Prince Valiant Vol 9 (frankly, no outstanding stories or art but solid enough) and he GIANT Gasoline Alley Sunday's book for Christmas, but I suppose they were late 2014 reading.

I like his thread title

http://theporporbooksblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/unmarried-machine-by-jean-michel.html
http://theporporbooksblog.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=jean+michel+nicolett

followed up my new 52 binge with a Bendis Avengers trade (Norman Osborne becomes an Apdaptoid!) and the first Brubaker/McNiven Captain America book. Has anyone brilliant done a lengthy compare and contrast between Brubaker's Cap and Morrison's Batman? Long runs reconciling characters' histories with plenty of identity switches & sidekick problems. From where I sit, Brubaker comes out ahead (haven't read any BatMoz since the Batman Inc Special).
From my super-limited sampling, it seems like Marvel is much more interested in actually telling stories while DC books just segue from event to event. Nothing will ever be the same in the DC books because nothing ever IS. It's all signifiers tossed about in constant upheaval.
I read the first Fraction Hawkeye trade a few months ago, and damn if I wouldn't read a million books like that set in the DCU.
Next up, I've got a couple Superior Spider-Man books.

Omg latest ish of gi joe vs transformers is so great. There is a "ba-Throom" sound effect at one point.

i've been reading the wrenchies. the art really reminded me of study book comics + then i checked out that website and the author has written for them before

I've been reading Jiro Taniguchi's "The Walking Man" which is a bit like if John Porcellino was Japanese and had impeccable drafting skills.

Caught up with Sex Criminals - I'm loving this one a lot but god do I hate waiting from month to month (or longer with the Image titles sometimes).
Started Transmetropolitan

been catching up on a bunch of great stuff: the mercenary sea, flash gordon, afterlife with archie, and lazarus

have we talked about bitch planet yet?

bitch planet!!

Gonna get that

so good

I've been getting caught up with The Sixth Gun, which has continued to be a real good comicbook. I hope they stick the conclusion, so far it's been a consistently good series. Other than that I'm working through Judge Dredd Case Files v.5, just finished the 4th book of The Incal, re-read a couple issues of Dreadstar and a couple issues of Black Science.

I got the first volume through one of those comic book Humble Bundles. Not bad, but at the end I was like.. this keeps going? Aw man... wonder what the TV series would've been like.

Just knocked out Concrete: Human Dilemma; had no idea Chadwick had done this and was surprised to find a collection.
Major new material for all the characters. It's a shame he seems to have stopped.

Yeah, IIRC Human Dilemma ends with some major plot points left unresolved, and there hasn't been any continuation for years. On the other hand, I think there was almost a decade between Human Dilemma and the previous long Concrete story, so maybe there's still hope?

there was a concrete story just last year (ok, 2012), at least i saw floppies for something when i was in the comic shop (it was after hours and the till was closed so i couldn't buy it)

might've been this:
Concrete: Three Uneasy Pieces (One-Shot) collects the Concrete stories from Dark Horse Presents v.2 #1–#3, January 2012

(um, would that make it reprints?)

Yeah, I noticed that after making my previous post. I haven't read them, but usually the Concrete short stories are just vignettes, and the longer mini-series are the ones that advance the main story. Human Dilemma changes the whole status quo of Concrete in a major way, so it feels like there should be a proper continuation.

finishing up Godland, waiting for local store to get in a copy of Fukitor

TELL ME ABOUT BITCH PLANET.

Meanwhile: http://instagram.com/p/xfC_MCt8rB/

bitch planet is super cool - only one issue so far. dystopian cyberpunky w/ obv political subtext that doesn't beat you over the head. tbh not the kind of thing i'd imagine liking (i was reading the author's after note and was like -gag-) but the story and art are fantastic and i really like it.

thanks, that looks really good.

I have those Herbie archives they are GRATE

highly underrated stuff imo

i don't know if i'm gonna read a book with the tagline, "MAKE WAY FOR FAT FURY!"

+1 for the Herbie archives, great stuff. Alan Moore has claimed they're his favourite ever comics.

I mentioned somewhere that Herbie appeared in a new comic last year, but I can't forth life of me remember which one.

it's THE Fat Fury

xp

Really love Bitch Planet, have also been getting caught up on Copperhead which tickles my sci-fi-grand-Western fancy a little like Lethem's "Girl in Landscape" did.

The Humans accelerated into Born on the Fourth of July-plus-boobs-and-drugs for the second issue, which was unexpectedly serious.

Punks #3 didn't really make me laugh like the first two did, I was pretty bummed.

The Guardians Annual was surprisingly fun!

Near-Current Marvel comix I've come to appreciate because of a Marvel Unlimited Subscription:
Charles Soule's She Hulk
Mark Waid's Daredevil
Kieron Gillen's Iron Man
Jason Aaron's Thor
Peter David's X-Factor
Nathan Edmondson's Punisher and Black Widow
Bendis' Uncanny X-Men and Guardians of the Galaxy and Ultimate Spider Man
G Willow Wilson's Ms Marvel
Warren Ellis' Moon Knight
Felipe Smith's Ghost Rider
Rick Remender's Captain America (though basically everything else he does in this universe leaves me cold)
Cullen Bunn's Magneto

for the life of me, i can't imagine buying those as floppies though. At three bucks apiece? I read through a set of twenty or thirty of those in one night, easily and then i'd have no place to store them. digital all the way with capes and tights.

You should check out Superior Foes of Spider-Man

Oh yeah, that's on the list as well.

About ten issues into Scalped and really enjoying it, even though the lead character is probably the least compelling thing in it (so far). I was wavering, but a hilarious and pointlessly elaborate setup-joke about Merle Haggard's tour bus persuaded me to carry on.

Scalped retains its quality to the end, though IMO the eventual revelation of who killed Gina Bad Horse was pretty stupid. (I would've preferred she'd survived, as she was easily the most interesting supporting character, especially compared to the other women in the comic.) And you're right that Dash isn't the most compelling of leads, I guess Aaron himself figured that out too, since Lincoln Red Crow gets a lot of story space for himself, essentially becoming the second protagonist.

It's a pity HBO or some other channel hasn't opted to do a series based on Scalped, you'd have four seasons or already plotted out for you, and I'm sure people who watched stuff like Breaking Bad would appreciate Scalped too. Though I guess issues of cultural sensitivity would become more pressing when adapting the comic for a larger audience... I'm not sure if there has been much Native American criticism of Scalped, the whole premise might invite it, but IMO Aaron keeps his writing respectful enough, even though his depiction of life on the reservation obviously tends to focus on the negative stuff.

WGN America are developing a live action Scalped TV series with Doug Jung writing and executive producing the series.[8]

Scalped might be the bleakest comic I've ever read. It's great, but it makes Walking Dead look like Tiny Titans.

this idea that Dash not being the most interesting character being a flaw (stated plainly here http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2013/04/01/comics-you-should-own-scalped/ )is kind of ridic. You could say the same of Seinfeld, Silver Age Superman comics (probably not a coincidence), Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series (Macdonald once said Archer as a character was so thin that if he turned sideways he'd disappear). Some eras of Batman belong on that list. I think there's a lot of benefit to having your main character be dull. It's almost a First-Person-Shooter effect.
http://photos-a.ak.instagram.com/hphotos-ak-xfa1/t51.2885-15/10919549_997276330289744_1401810027_n.jpg

I'm aware with this sort of "everyman" theory, the idea protagonist being more like the reader's eyes to the universe than an fully fleshed person (Tintin is probably the most famous example in the comics, Tintin is a cypher and the comics are all about his supporting cast)... But I don't think Scalped is an example of that, Aaron doesn't just use Dash as an observer character, he gives Dash a detailed personal history and inner demons, plenty of pages are devoted to his personal dramas, it's just that they aren't as interesting as, say, Red Crow's dramas.

Hmm - there are a lot of well-written cyphers and straight men. Dash doesn't seem like one of them yet, but then again I'm only ten issues in. Either way -- it's super enjoyable. It's certainly bleak, but it doesn't seem quite as bad as Waking Dead to me - the violence isn't quite so awful, and Aaron appears to able to tell jokes - I think he might be my favourite mainstream comics writer working now outside of Grant Morrison.

Walking Dead quickly became torture porn. Scalped never does, even when the violence ramps and gets very, very, personal.

Here is my current comic reading overview:

Black Science - I'm up to #10. While I like some elements of the series, it's not working for me. The action is relentless, it's pretty much been one long action scene. The artist has some interesting elements to his style, but I find often confusing to look at and follow. None of the characters are likable at all. In theory, I like the madcap alternate Earth time travel angle, but at least at this point the series hasn't gelled for me. The colors on the comic are really cool, it's probably the most impressive part of the book. I got #11 and probably will go one more. It's on the pull list chopping block.

Southern Bastards - I got the first trade over the holidays and read it two sittings. The comic issome pulpy cartoonish fun. I like the idea you could do such a comic with a couple of characters in their 60s getting into a street fight outside a BBQ restaurant. Nick Nolte's voice is what I hear out of my head for the lead character.

Judge Dredd Case File 5 - Dredd was really on a roll. The series gets much darker, pushing further out than anything Marvel or DC was doing at the time. I think the artwork is uniformly very good. I'm a couple of progs shy of Block War in the book. I have read some of these back in the 80s and in reprints, but not all of the progs.

Dreadstar - It's one of my favorite comics. I got that hardcover that had the first part from Epic Magazine which lead me to re-reading the series again. Starlin eventually kind of loses it after issue 12, but I love the early stuff and the first few issues of the series.

i didn't really like southern bastards it seemed a little Walking Tall

Southern Bastards has gone some interesting places since the first coupla issues, but It's still finding its voice. Entertaining, though.

I've never heard of Dreadstar before and want to try out some Starlic cosmic - that a good place to start?

Dredd so good

I think with Dreadstar, you want to start with the original stories that were put out in Epic Magazine and the early Marvel Graphic Novel. It's all one long story, but the first part is a finished piece. The regular series is a s sequel. I think the Warlock/Captain Marvel/Thanos story is probably better, but Dreadstar is a riff on the same zip code. To me, I think Starlin's cosmic comics are a pretty noticeable influence on Grant Morrison.

I'd say Southern Bastards really gets cooking in #4. It's kind of crackerxploitation in a way, kind of reminds me of some old 70s Burt Reynolds movies like Gator or White Lightning although the whole bat thing is definitely a nod to Walking Tall. Thing is that the dude with the bat died in '72, which I thought was kind of appropriate. Its a pretty weird genre for US comics, so I say to the creators go for it and godspeed get weird.

With Dredd, I'm reading a second in Vol. 5 which is all about "case files" getting into the weird crime of Mega City One. Damn that story with basically hackers in the big truck circling the building to tap into networks is pretty prophetic. The episode where the lost Angel family member with his pet rat kidnaps Hershey and they end up at that factory that recycles dead bodies is hardcore as fuk for the day. Bleak genius! Bolland's Judge Death sequel is about one of the most perfectly drawn comics, it's amazing.

I was wondering how far I got with the Dredd reprints before I stopped and according to the comic collection thread it was vol 8. I think that might roughly coincide with when I stopped reading 200ad for the first time.

the grim bleakness I found in Scalped maybe doesn't deserve comparison to Walking Dead (which seems to operate purely from the same "OH YEAH, WE WENT THERE" smugness as Family Guy, only with gore/trauma instead of crude jokes). The way every character in Scalped is compromised and doomed (even unto themselves) is probably why I didn't get farther than vol. 4. It's an unpleasant world to spend time in, though once you're actually in there, so fascinating.
I was just spitballin' on Dash's value anyway, probably muddied the water with the First-Person-Shooter comment. My other examples (maybe Richie Cunningham is a more apt notion) are not exactly ciphers, but not entirely removed from that tradition either. I haven't read Scalped in a few years so I'm mostly talking out my ass here.

i had a meeting with some folks at valiant and they gave me a pile of their current books in trade: Rai, Armor Hunters, Unity, Bloodshot, xo manowar, harbinger, eternal warrior, archer and armstrong, harbinger wars, quantum and woody... these arent' bad! Primary world building architects are Matt Kindt, Jeff Lemire, Robert Vendetti, Joshua Dysart and Greg Pak... Peter Milligan just came on board.

New Humble Bundle Comic bundle is Image based and has Saga, Walking Dead, Cowl, Deadly Class, Alex and Ada, Minimum Wage, Genius, East of West, Elephantman, Cowl, Manhattan Projects, Fuse and a lot more for $18
https://www.humblebundle.com/books

Heh, I just came here to post that. Looks good.

lol i wish i hadn't already bought all of those

i think i asked this in the 2014 thread but is anybody else uncomfortable with the way Fingerman writes/draws people of color in Minimum Wage? it really takes me out of the book with dismay, i had to drop it off my list, but i've never seen anyone else say anything out of the ordinary about it.

in current minimum wage or old school? i've always given him a pass as he seems to be working in a specific MAD bigfoot style that hinges on super carnival cartoonish style for all the characters.

The current one particularly--he's definitely going for cartoony caricature style, right, it just seems like way too often with non-white characters that slides into outright stereotype

gillen/mckelvie at image expo today announced the guest artists on the upcoming wicdiv arc and an august release date for phonogram vol. 3, which i'm p stoked about

Just read the first book of Wicked and Divine since my last post; that's good stuff!

I've decided I don't like Gillen's stuff except for Kid Loki. Everything else just isn't for me.

His Thor run that preced the Kid Loki comics was pretty good too, especially considering that he had the unenviable task of tying up the plots Straczynski left unfinished... I thought Young Avengers was really good for the first half, but admittedly the finale was a bit flat - it felt like Killen was trying to out-Morrison Morrison, but his imagination fell a bit short before the finish line.

I haven't read Phonogram, is it any good? The subject matter (indie rock) is something I really don't care about, so I've ignored the comic despite liking both Killen and McKelvie.

Vol 1 is sort of a book-length love letter to Britpop from one misanthrope's persepctive, which I've never much cared for--but Vol 2 (which you can pick straight up from) is pretty fun imo. Colors really pop, writing is wry--and it's not ~entirely~ about Britpop, which made it a welcome shift.

Adventure Time/Dinosaur Comics Ryan North is doing Squirrel Girl for Marvel:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=25308

speak of the devils: http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=2181

http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-clown-of-death-manny-stallman-1952.html

Excellent news! (slightly old news but I've been checking comics news sites a lot less recently) Viz is bringing out Junji Ito's Fragments Of Horror (for the summer). I think that's the first new English translation of his work in a decade.

Image is doing a Heavy Metal/Epic Illustrated anthlogy thing called Islands.

http://www.comicsandcola.com/2014/11/gatignols-and-huberts-petit-looks.html
This looks pretty good too.

http://samehat.tumblr.com/post/106214448573/mangahakuran-the-internet

this is great.

ipad is really the most ideal way to read comix. i have never read as many, or enjoyed it as much, as i do now.

Yeah, have to agree with that. Colours look gorgeous.

^ this is arrant nonsense

How does Thickness look on ipad? How does Little Nemo look on ipad? How does Kramer's 7 look on ipad? How does Ganges look on ipad? How does Prince Valiant look on ipad? How does Tel-Tales look on ipad?

Sic otm

Wouldnt know, havent read any of them, so i guess the jokes on you!

In terms of art reproduction or ideal format or any number of other things, probably not. In terms of convenience, tablets + digital scans are to comics what iPods + mp3s were to music a decade back: a revolutionary dream come true.

Much like music circa late 90s, if the prices were a bit lower on GNs, I'd probably buy a lot more. Feels dumb that most graphic novels are the same price as the American Library complete Joan Didion.

(i.e they are super objects but not super-value-for-money)

Fidelity aside, you could put any kind of recorded music on an iPod and listen to it. There are only a couple of formats of comics that you can even read a page of on an iPad.

I've read thousands of comics on my home computer, zero on my ipad.

xp but if you go to a bookstore now, over half the books they sell are pretty much in that mini-format now anyway

i've read thousands of comic on my ipad. it's a good way to do story-driven comics.

iPad pretty great for floppies as long as they aren't too text heavy or have many splash pages. Even once you get to From Hell page size there are issues without zooming in (see also letterer styles).

I got a couple of Jason Aaron's Wolverine and the X-Men trades from the library and, I dunno, I think X-Men is for me what Legion of Super-Heroes is for other people. I can kind of get the gist of it, but there are just too many characters I don't have a clue about to work up any degree of caring. Really enjoyed the Roger Langridge Thor book and the Mark Waid Daredevil.
What else is going on (Hawkeye, I know about) that is of similar quality to those?

Where do you all get your iPad comics from? Last I bothered to check everything was more or less through Comixology, but I've seen Ta-Nehisi Coates talking about Marvel Unlimited, which sounds like a nightmare/dream.

If you have an iPad, marvel unlimited is good and there is no risk, especially with the occasional promo deal. Subscribe for a month, read all kinds of not-quite-fresh comics, and enjoy.

Yeah, Marvel Unlimited is terrific value. I pretty much only read DC comics up till 4-5 years ago, and it's been really fun catching up (especially with the Sean Howe book on the side).

Wolverine and the X-Men is pretty dependent on Grant Morrison's (better) run on New X-Men - I would go back and read that, if you haven't -- it's almost as good as his JLA run.

Aaron's run on Thor has been my favourite Marvel Now title outside of Hawkeye/Daredevil. The Kid Loki comics obviously. And Aaron did a good, very silly, Spider-Man/Wolverine mini-series a few years ago - they're all on MU.

This is useful too.

my ipad experience for comics has been best served by Marvel Unlimited, humble bundle's book bundles, comixology sales, the occasional torrent of OOP material, http://digitalcomicmuseum.com and a handful of Japanese and European scanlation sites

Read an 8th of Tezuka's Dororo and then just flipped through it and read whichever pages took my fancy. There's a bunch of really good ideas in there, many of them I've seen done by other later people and I'm not sure if that's because they're Japanese myths or Tezuka's ideas.
Some of it's pretty sad, even on skimming.

the all-star superman run was gooooorgeous on a tablet

also read saga partly on tablet y because it look intersting

I think X-Men is for me what Legion of Super-Heroes is for other people. I can kind of get the gist of it, but there are just too many characters I don't have a clue about to work up any degree of caring.

haha totally feel you on this

I've been off the X-Teat for a little over three years now (I'll catch up eventually), but despite having read 90+% of everything X-related up to that point, I'll occasionally look at a newer X-book and be all, 'I have no idea who these people or what is going on.' So I sympathize.

http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1705

John A Lent's book Asian Comics covers all of asia except from japan. 400 pages. Don't know if I'll ever see this in the shops but I'd like to flip through it.

Just to expand a bit on my no-ipad post, I'm all for viewing comics in pixels — not instead of ink on paper, but in addition to — I just want to maximize the experience with my big-ass monitors at home. I have plenty of no-pic prose on the ipad to keep me busy until I get back to the house.

Yeah, it's like my brain can't keep hold of any X characters that weren't in the Claremont/Byrne or Grant Morrison eras, or, at a pinch, the movies. What is a Shatterstar or Gambit anyway? If they don't have good solo stories, I don't feel like I'm missing out.

LOSH is even harder because they're mostly all jockish white/orange dudes in similar costumes!

lol true. those LOSH jumpsuits tend to make a lot of them indistiguishable; probably why I tend to remember Karate Kid and Matter Eater Lad more than the rest.
-Shatterstar is a standard Rob Liefield burly dude with swords instead of guns, but later, gay?
-Gambit is your classical super-accented Southerner created by Claremont to compliment Rogue with a dash of 90s coolness and popped collar design. definitely key to early 90s X-Nostalgia

otm, they hide gambit on tertiary books now because he's so 90s

Not that I disagree, but he had a solo title (his third, I believe?) as recently as two years ago and is about to be featured in a solo film starring Channing Tatum.

yeah, Channing Tatum of 21 Jump Street and GI Joe fame! so 90s.

well, 80s in the latter case but you get my drift

Does Gambit have to be so 90s? X-Men must be the most constantly redesigned characters I can think of.

I think Bouncing Boy is the most memorable Legion member.

besides the horseman makeover where he got darker skin, he's pretty much had the same design for 20 years, no?

ok, maybe I am underestimating his current popularity. it's the whole "MON CHERIE" thing that will forever tie him to that era for me

btw, I actually do have nostalgic fondness for Gambit in case it wasn't clear

(... xp not to mention the headgear...)

lol everyone had headgear in the 90s costumes, why because it's so cool

It was a boon to those in the '90s with excessive orthodontia who would've otherwise suffered torment from their peers.

trenchcoats and headgear. What more could you want?

Pouches. As many as possible.

The jacket has infinite pockets.

"it's bigger on the inside", he said to the ladies

lmao @ 'the x teat'

soooo looks like things are about to go kablooey in the Marvel universe...?

Gambit had more makeovers than that I'm sure. Some of these costume designs only last a few issues.

Nice that Marvel gets to do the 30th anniversary Crisis tribute

Anyone heard about Marvel founder Martin Goodman being talked into publishing in the comic industry by an IRA member? Goodman was so grateful for the idea that he sent this guy money for many years.
Is this covered in the Sean Howe book?

which crossover storyline, shakey? hickman's has been running a really long time and it seems to be reaching completion

they also (spoilers) just set up a plot bit for the upcoming SECRET WAR

I just saw a bunch of tweets from Perpetua re the following (he's at some Marvel event):

- The Ultimate universe is officially gonna smash together with the regular Marvel Universe, permanently
- The new Marvel Universe will be remade from all the pieces from Battleworld
- The Marvel Universe will be gone after Secret Wars #1, only Battleworld will remain
- Alonso says they aren't erasing the history of Marvel, that's not broken, but the new Marvel will combine many things

can I just say... BATTLEWORLD

also lol @ "permanently"

Lol at Axel Alonso's attempt to do Stan Lee-speak: "It's the most co-ordinated event we've ever done."

KIDS THE CO-ORDINATION EXCITEMENT STARTS HERE

are they going to leverage some synergy across platforms??!

that shit always sucks, never lasts and fucks up any interesting storylines but good
i know it makes a chunk of change up front but it demolishes long-term engagement. fans should boycott.

There were hints that 616 & Ultimate were going to moosh together somehow and Miles Morales was going to wind up in the "reg" M.U. -- I can't cite a source though.

Marvel has been pretty good the past few years! I feel like it'll probably be okay, or at least not suck as bad as Flashpoint.

If Jeph Loeb is involved all bets change tho

wtf

they have been introducing little bits all over the place that merge different universes/timelines in an interesting way lately and I have no idea why merging all things down to one line would be a good idea

they also gave their new time-traveling mutant a bunch of extra experience in a couple of the recent annuals and then shot her backward to talk to Xavier at the end of something last month, I think, which I figured was their way of backing out the past-X-Men from the present day

Miles Morales has already made appearances with a number of 616 characters. That much has seemed inevitable for a while.

So basically they're cancelling the Ultimate line, and that's the only change that will probably still be true three-to-five years from now, when Wolverine is merrily romping through the universe once again.

Yeah, at the worst I hope it's Bendis

if it's Loeb then I'm going to stop reading Marvel

Crisis on Infinite Secret Wars III: The Nu-616

Yawn.

The one thing I'll give Loeb mad props for is being in charge of Marvel's television projects and, by all appearances, not contributing in any way to the writing/plotting of Marvel's television projects.

Ach, this is probably editorial's last chance to do an old-school comics-nerds-only clusterfuck before the movie and comics continuities align, and the X-Men are erased from existence forever. I'm sure it'll be a solid 5/10.

It's worth noting that, prior to the Bendisification of the Marvel U in the mid-2000s, the last big line-wide crossovers were Onslaught in '96 and then Maximum Security four years later. This exhausting three or four events per year thing really only kicked into high gear towards the end of the last decade.

I mean, event-wise what are they still tying up?

That goofy Axis junk
Spider-Verse, which I think ends by then, but is already a multi-universe spanning event
Hickman's multi-year Avengers epic, which is apparently the centerpiece with its world-smashing
X-Men crossover w/the young/past X-Men visiting the Ultimate universe
Time traveling new X-Men member Eva visiting Xavier in the past
The young X-Men being in the present
Whatever the hell the Fantastic Four have been up to since I stopped reading

Oh yeah, and Spider-Man 2099 and the X-Men 2099 being real and crossing over with the present, to some extent

I guess I was being awfully conservative with the 'three or four events per year thing' thing, huh?

These aren't events, per se, they're just the current storylines packaged. If anything, Marvel is realizing that the online collection/trade paperback route is where things are going and having discrete storylines or crossovers that resolve within a few months with a collection immediately dropping at the end fits the market. You can do a multi-chapter story with several chapters per month, end it more quickly, and then sell it as a package while there's still some buzz.

It kind of beats the old days where they'd have a giant crossover that took most of the year, had one story beat per month, and the individual monthlies were just "what is the Fantastic Four doing while this is going on"

I said this was happening in (I think) last year's thread, via a Bleeding Ccol link that had characters clearly from other Earths on 616.

I hope Spider-Ham stays in 616

I would be down with that, a la Morrison's efforts to legitimize Captain Carrot.

fwiw
http://www.buzzfeed.com/perpetua/rip-the-marvel-universe-1961-2015#.ho56yKXod

“When you see the scope of the event, [you will] see what we’re willing to do. This is a place where we’re going to be bringing new pieces onto the board and taking old pieces off. You guys will be yelling and screaming, loving and hating in equal measure.”

i guess the alignment with the movie universe was likely inevitable; hope they can get through this nonsense quickly and we can get to the inevitable jaden smith spiderman movie with as few tears shed as possible

Marvel is not in the business of publishing readable funnybooks, they are in the business of cross-purposing intellectual properties across multiple media streams also OMG NEW TOY LINE!!!!

seriously I dunno how anybody endures this shit with a straight face (says the guy who hasn't read a new Marvel comic since the 90s)

image + archie obv where the good comix are being made

Aren't Archie falling into the pit with DC and Marvel by doing all this ultra-serious stuff?

maybe but i greatly enjoy afterlife with archie

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/WashingtonPost/Content/Blogs/comic-riffs/StandingArt/afterlife_archie_NOVcover.jpg?uuid=NQsinngfEeOxxXOeY-nJpw

i mean if this doesn't thrill u then i understand but i am very sad for u

I've never read that, maybe it's good but I don't know why comics people still do retro pastiche and parody of 50s horror comics. That's been done since the early underground days and it still gets presented like it's a novelty.

Anyone remember Frankenstein Mobster? It wasn't amazing but it had its own feel and the presentation at the time was unique. The cover art by other artists really hurt that though.

to be fair, the actual comic has more of a 1980s horror movie vibe

Afterlife with Archie, that is. I'm enjoying it, but there are loooong between-issue gaps that aren't helping

The fifth volume of Ditko Archives is including some bits of his Stanton collaborations, I don't know how much (there's a couple of pages in the previews) but I hope it's a lot because that work is still really hard to find.

Looks like Fantagraphics is doing a Wolverton chronological series now too.

i dig the obvious publishers: first second, drawn and quarterly, IDW, top shelf, oni, fanta, nbm, boom, viz, picturebox, uncivilized

Hi all, so I'm just getting back into comics (first time as an adult) and I'm doing my best but this I just don't

"The new Marvel will instead be a conglomerate of familiar history, elements imported from alternate versions of the Marvel Universe, and entirely new things."

So does spider man get a new origin story? Is it the same spiderman, or a new spiderman with the same origin story, but now he'll do different things? Or new spiderman with new origin story?

When they say a new universe will emerge, but "our history is not broken", are we supposed to know what that means? battleworld's the name of the timeline/universe, like Earth 606 (can't remember the correct number), or are people actually going to only be hanging on a place called Battleworld?

In all seriousness is there a simple way to understand this (a link with plain-speak reading will do!). I probably won't go near anything released in the past five years for a while anyway, just gonna read older stuff, but I'm kind of curious.

Anyway I'm actually really stoked to read a bunch of this stuff. Picked up the 75th anniversary omnibus and might check out Unlimited in a month or two. Must say though they do a good job of overwhelming you with the continually splintering series/timelines etc.

I keep trying to fave all yr posts.

great way to alienate all the new fans who've come into the fold in the last few years with the relatively crossover free and great Ms Marvel, Hawkeye, Iron Fist etc titles.
ugh.

Hi all, so I'm just getting back into comics (first time as an adult)

just read some adult comics tbrr

tbh I think Ms Marvel, Hawkeye, and Iron Fist will remain relatively unchanged. I think the idea is that they're going to have certain story elements be true for characters going forward, but with the acknowledgment that contradictory story elements and origins are all available for writers, because the continuity has been repeatedly busted. All the main franchises have had elements of time travel and interdimensional travel for years, and stuff has been popping through between dimensions more and more in the last decade.

The characters as featured in Marvel Studios film or television projects will replace the current 616 versions of the characters, while Spider Ham and the X-Babies will be replacing their 616 counterparts. The FF will be rebooted as the Fantastic Farts, an incontinent group of septuagenarians having flatulent misadventures in a retirement home for dumb losers.

jesus it all just sounds so awful
these poor writers

This has apparently been in the works for over three years and all of the writers knew it was happening, so they're presumably cool with it. I mean, whatever the end result, I appreciate that Marvel is super intentional about these things and values forethought and planning.

What does it say about me that I'm actually a little excited and seriously thinking about jumping back on the Marvel bandwagon in time for this?

knowing about it well ahead of time is definitely great but /= being cool with it, obv, i mean they all have to go along with it and say how exciting it is in website interviews but i'm willing to bet the only writers who enjoy these events are the ones who are the main drivers of em.

I think they're at least giving the writers the freedom to have their own run-up? Spider-Verse and the X-Men junk going on right now really seem like they gave the writers the keys to do their weirdest dream crossovers

I read a big piece a while ago about DC always trying to be more like Marvel (probably starting in the 60s) but it looks like Marvel are trying to be more like DC this time.

I try to bite my tongue when it comes to a lot of these comics because maybe they're better than most of the ones I had read. But seriously guys, if you're having doubts if this stuff is worthwhile, please read something else, there are so many good creators who need and deserve your time and money more. I don't think the industry is ever going to benefit from Marvel and DC staying on top, people keep waiting for them to change but they should be gradually replaced.

tbh i think most of the ppl posting about this event are also reading a pretty substantial amount of indie stuff

I think in the end I feel the same way about Marvel/DC as I do about the tendency for Young Adult/Teen fiction to sell more heavily and get adapted into popular films. There will always be better/more interesting art, but the drive toward the middle is going to exist and is a consensus zeitgeist. They are blunt media, not going to speak directly to small audiences in the way deeper, more personal works are.

imo they're constantly being replaced and refreshed with the voices from the edges and the ideas new creators bring in, even if they're watered down to fit a framework.

So yeah, buy and seek out the works that speak to you personally but there's nothing inherently with the mainstream.

Yeah, I read plenty of other stuff, but there would have to be a serious degradation of quality and goodwill for me to ever lose interest in Marvel. DC pretty much lost me with Flashpoint so I'm clearly not as invested in their thing.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/07/02/brian-bendis-teases-the-convergence-of-the-ultimate-and-616-universes-in-todays-ultimate-spider-man/

Found the link I posted here 6mo ago.

Spider-verse is kind of superbad fanwank, there's an Aunt May as Spider-Ma'am and Uncle Ben turned out to be still alive a couple of weeks ago. Plus one of the Spider-Mans is still REALLY OBVIOUSLY wearing a wedding ring.

I think you mean Spider-Uncle Ben

there's also Spider-Gwen Stacy!

No, he's just Uncle Ben Uncle Ben I think, he went into an underground bunker at some point before Doom blew something up.

I must have missed that, they found an Uncle Ben in a vault recently and uh any more would be spoilers for today's issue I guess

I might be projecting Doom, from overuse of the word doom.

It's that universe's Uncle Ben, in one of those Morlun-proof vaults

thing is that since getting a marvel unlimited subscription about two years ago, I've really re-engaged with all of the MU titles and this feels like it's gonna demolish my interest. maybe i'm wrong.

I don't think mainstream is inherently inferior, I think it's perfectly possible for it to produce some of the best work and I'd imagine there is plenty young adult books that are as good as anything else but I think those things are a totally different situation for creators than what DC and Marvel are today. The comics mainstream is getting better but I don't think that's got much to do with the big two right now.

Yeah, I'm exactly where forks is. The Marvel Now relaunch and the MU app suddenly becoming functional were both great slate-cleaners, and seems like it'll just muddy it up again.

Also, Robert, I think Marvel has produced some genuinely great stuff in the past couple years! DC not so much.

i deeply wish dc would do the tablet thing so i could re-engage; i just don't see having a go at any major capes and tights universe again on paper so it's gonna have to be a digital sub model

I think the last things I enjoyed to any notable degree by DC and Marvel were..

Haunt Of Horror (which was very uneven)
The Monolith (which lost me when it got into the more superheroey stuff, it's being reprinted by Image now)
Simon Dark (started intriguing but ended badly, Hampton recycled his art too much and it didn't work)
Howard The Duck (Gerber/Marvel Max, I think this is better than people say but it was a long while ago I read it)
Hulk by Bruce Jones (I read the first 6 or 7 issues and they were good, this had some real critical acclaim and I always meant to buy the collected series but I probably never will, I'd rather read his prose books)
Hard Time (like Oz tv show but not nearly as good)
Adventures Of Rifle Brigade (pretty funny in places)

All of these were quite a while ago. Even if the art is good (more of a rarity now) the color probably spoils it (I used to think people exaggerated about the colouring but I've came to agree it is really bad most of the time; Dark Horse, Image and IDW aren't innocent either).

Yeah, man, the majority of that stuff is from 10-15 years ago. They've done lots of good stuff since.

Well, it doesn't help that I only have the smallest affection left for superheroes regardless of who is creating them. But it's not like I'm loving much of what everyone else is publishing either.

I'll probably buy the collected Sandman Overture, but just for the pictures.

Did any of you read the whole of Hulk by Bruce Jones? I'm genuinely curious about verdicts on that.

The Incredible Hulk #34-76 (2002-2004)

Somebody with Marvel Unlimited: do their archives include any of the 70s B&W mags? Rampaging Hulk, Dracula Lives, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, etc...

I'm pretty sure I read the whole Bruce Jones run on Hulk (I have it all but I don't know if I finished it). It started strong but lost a lot of steam as it went on. The art kinda followed suit. The two big hardcovers they put out probably collect the bulk of the best of it.

Yes, my perception of Bruce Jones is of an above average comic bk writer who starts well but fizzles out (most especially on Somerset Jones).I read at least one collection of the Jones Hulks and thought they were just OK - like a slightly below average TV movie, really. Personally I want my Hulk comics to have the Leader, Doc Samson, Jarella, the Abomination, all that jazz, and I missed those generic elements from the Jones issues I read. Also thought the writing was just a bit too on-the-nose 'modern' - terse, no captions/thought balloons, 'cinematic', pseudo-hardboiled.

Hard Time (like Oz tv show but not nearly as good)

Phantom Zone mini-series aside, I don't think Gerber ever wrote any really good comics for DC. It didn't feel like he belonged in that world.

Most of the Hulk supporting characters you mention eventually made an appearance in the Bruce Jones run after he got the more experimental 'Bruce Banner: Fugitive!' stuff out of his system.

Like quite a few guys trying to make a living in comics, I don't think superheroes were ever his first choice. Seems like one of those guys who has no real passion for the characters and sometimes does things that rubs hardcore fans the wrong way. I heard that Peter David retconned his whole run as "just a dream".
I think time travel, dinosaurs, horror and thrillers with a bit of romance were his thing.

http://corpsey.trubble.club/
Anyone ever follow this? The artist roster is huge.

Jones wasn't a bad artist either, in a pseudo-Al Williamson style

Yeah definitely. I think it's odd he didn't do more. That Arena short graphic novel he written and drew had some seriously scary hillbillies.

I think his reasoning was that he was dwarfed by all the artists he was working with (in the 70s and 80s he really was working with the best on a regular basis), but maybe his drawing skills have atrophied after so long.

Also thought the writing was just a bit too on-the-nose 'modern' - terse, no captions/thought balloons, 'cinematic', pseudo-hardboiled.

ugh DNW

Yeah I read a few of them in a ridiculously short time.

Somebody with Marvel Unlimited: do their archives include any of the 70s B&W mags? Rampaging Hulk, Dracula Lives, Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, etc...

i snagged a pile of torrent-y things including a pile of late 90's comics journals, the full gold key run of my favorite martian, the complete Zap comix, some obscure wordless Trondheim books not released in the US, v. 4 of The Imp and Jodorowsky's White Llama.

oh and a few volumes of the work of marc-antoine mathieu; kinda enjoying it.

and based solely on one recommendation on this thread (and my own curiosity), I think i'm gonna get the premium Archie Humble Bundle and report back as to what they've been doing with the character.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

oh and a few volumes of the work of marc-antoine mathieu; kinda enjoying it.

If these include "Julius Corentin Acquefacques" books, they should not be read in digital format, because a large part of them is how Mathieu uses the physical format (a comic book made of paper) as part of the story. Like, the first book ("L'Origine") has a literal hole in it; one panel is missing and there's a hole in its place, and when you read the comic and you come to that page, at first through the hole you see a panel from two pages ahead, and that plays into the story, with the characters unexpectedly playing out future events and then commenting on that, and when you turn the page, now you can see a panel from two pages before, and again the characters react to this weird reoccurence of past events. This is one my very favourite meta tricks ever pulled in a comic, but sadly it cannot be replicated in digital format.

thanks for the background; this stuff isn't available in paper format in the US. If you'd like to mail me a copy, awesome; otherwise I'll puzzle it out in digital scanlation

> sadly it cannot be replicated in digital format.

can't they just copy the panels?

Well yeah, but if you read a scanned page you wouldn't know that the repetition of panels is because of a hole in the page, and the existence of the hole is actually an explicit part of the plot, it's all very meta and breaking-the-fourth-wall.

Forks, sorry, I don't have a copy ot the book, I've always just borrowed it from the library. But since you now know about the hole thing, just pay attention to the two consecutive pages where a panel seem to be weirdly out of order, and the characters react to that, that's where the whole is supposed to be. You should have no problem with the whole meta aspect once you know that.

In general, I think it's a shame that comic book artists don't take advantage of the format like that more often... I remember when I first read "L'Origine", at first I was like, wtf, someone's cut hole to this comic, and the feeling of surprise and joy I got when I realized the hole was a part of the story was just awesome! The only other comic I can think of that takes advantage of how paper comics are physically read is Jason Shiga's Elsewhere. (Don't want to say anything more not to spoil it, but all who like meta in their comics should check that one out... It's essentially an existential "Choose Your Own Adventure" story in a comic book form.)

probably the cost prohibitions, I would guess

Ware's Building Stories wouldn't really work in a non-physical format. Building Stories v similar to 'novel-in-a-box' The Unfortunates by B S Johnson, who also had holes cut into the pages of his second novel, Albert Angelo.

as much as i'm not stoked for the madness, i've been enjoying all the hints about universes colliding that bendis has been dropping in ultimate spider man

loonies being dragged through the background of police station dialogue like ITS COMING, ALL THE UNIVERSES ARE GONNA COLLAPSE INTO ONE

yeah, those were pretty amusing

Read #1 of Captain America, Fantastic Four and Incredible Hulk this week. FF was great, might post some longer thoughts on it this weekend.

Also making my way through Yoshiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life, about a chapter a day. Sooo good, I love the long, slow burn of it.

loonies being dragged through the background of police station dialogue like ITS COMING, ALL THE UNIVERSES ARE GONNA COLLAPSE INTO ONE

https://kangaratmurdersoc.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/animal-man-10-psycho-pirate.jpg

^ a loony, yesterday*

*1990

I got the first issue of Jim Starlin's Thanos vs. Hulk a week or so back. After you read bunches of modern super hero comics, you read this Starlin issue and it's like 1982 again. Colors are a little bleh gray on the book, but it was pretty fun. The thing totally read like an old style Marvel comic, which was kind of novel.

Got Tom Sutton's Creepy Things today. Hope they do a second volume because there's quite a lot of good stuff not included. Love the way these Yoe Books are designed.

Finally read the much-ballyhhod Ros Chast memoir, which was actually pretty great in a depressing way

new bitch planet today

is that 2 or 3, i haven't been to the shop in a minute

2

Alfred Bester, Patricia Highsmith, Mickey Spillane and Manly Wade Wellman.

Are there any other writers who were better known for their prose who did comics in the golden and silver ages? And are any of these comics that notable for being good?

neil gaiman

(oh, missed the golden / silver bit)

dashiell hammett's agent x-9 is just being reissued now
http://www.tcj.com/checking-in-with-dean-mullaney/

George Melly, Barry Took, Humphrey Lyttelton, Barry Norman and Compton Mackenzie all wrote scripts for the newspaper strip Flook in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Forks beat me to Dashiell Hammett. That interview mentions the fact that Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint, worked on X-9 briefly after Hammett.

i will DEFINITELY be getting this new basil wolverton book
http://www.tcj.com/creeping-death-and-snakemeat-basil-wolverton-and-max-clotfelter/
i mean, my god
http://images.tcj.com/2015/01/creep12.jpg

I was looking at that last week and the panel arrangements of the early comics look really weird.

also just zipped through the three volumes of jodo/moebius' Madwoman of the Sacred Heart... what a wobbly, wild read! The art is really first rate.

Barry Humphries wrote The Adventures Of Barry McKenzie as a weekly strip before the films. (Obviously better known as a monologue and dialogue writer and improviser than prose writer, but has about ten fiction & non-fiction & memoir books under his belt too.)

Patricia Highsmith did comics?

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2008/04/24/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-152/

Scroll down a bit to see the Highsmith bit. I once heard Ripley was based on a comic artist she knew but I can't remember where I read that.

I think Spillane mostly wrote those 1-2 page text stories. Apparently Bill Everett and Spillane had some sort of grudge.

I always wondered if those text stories that nobody ever read in old Comics had lots of brilliant ones scattered across them.

Oh man what an unloved unhallowed body of work, those text one-pagers.

I once made an effort to read them, but that was late on in the time I was reading those anthologies. I wish I had read all the ones I came across.

Seems like there's no cheap option for those Alfred Bester DC comics.

Bester co-created Solomon Grundy too.

Nameless #1 was a fun read. When you get down to the core plot, the bad guys in all of Grant Morrison's comics are really the same folk aren't they? I don't say that as a bad thing, but it is his story hook in many ways.

while reading it i kept wondering if this was just an artist's rendition of morrison's automatic writing journal

Patricia Highsmith was once set up on a date with Stan Lee. http://www.scottedelman.com/2010/04/04/stan-lee-was-only-interested-in-stan-lee/

love the url there; clearly not a giving lover

The one review I read of Bitch Planet talked about how odd and inauthentic the use of ersatz Ben-Day patterns was - some guy has recoloured a bunch of pages with an actually 70s-reminiscent style, and not only does it look GREAT, but wow at how ugly the original colouring is generally:

http://jonathanbogart.tumblr.com/post/110308310125/aintgotnoladytronblues-twiststreet-schwabco-i

Felt like the whole comic was kind of a letdown after the title -- found it quite difficult to follow -- ODY-C too. Maybe I don't have patience for comics that involve effort.

I'm really appreciating this coloring talk! I think it's something that bothers me in some titles but not at a conscious level.

Some of the art where the colorist work is obviously a collaboration with clearly defined palettes definitely is a strength of some titles. The Hellboy/BPRD titles, with their limited colors and shading, or most of the titles drawn by Mike Allred (notably often colored by his wife) are very appealing in this regard.

Felt like the whole comic was kind of a letdown after the title -- found it quite difficult to follow -- ODY-C too. Maybe I don't have patience for comics that involve effort.

― Chuck_Tatum, Monday, February 9, 2015 11:42 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

definitely felt ODY-C was difficult to follow--had to read a few pages a few times--but idk had no trouble following BP. a bunch of people i've heard say they were lost at the climax though

I haven't had a problem understanding BP; my only problem is understanding why people are thinking it's great. ODY-C is a hot mess.

http://instagram.com/p/y5W5dqpeGQ/

never heard of eternauta, interest piqued

These are GORGEOUS
http://50watts.com/Okamoto-Kiichi

Wow, love those

Just grabbed 1 & 2 of They're Not Like Us to see what all the fuss was about, so far not really doing it for me. Feels like a Wanted-style spin on like "what if X-Men were. . .bad"

to see what all the fuss was about

literally heard of this for the first time in the words immediately preceding that quote

El Eternauta has always sounded pretty cool and way ahead of its time (a mature, long-form sci-fi/political allegory originally published in the 1950s), I hope one someone will translate it to a language I can read...

"I hope some day someone will translate it"

There are some English scanlations here, but the translator seems to have abandoned the project. Still, even those pages make it clear it's quite unlike any comic published in the US or Europe at the time.

I haven't explored too widely, but Scribd is a service that appears to be offering a brief trial right now (although they do hold your credit info in case you don't cancel) and they have a bunch of comics from a few different companies. I looked at some Marvel stuff but the image quality seemed lower than Marvel Unlimited. However, they have a lot of the recent Valiant stuff.

And lots of Top Shelf, too

can you download drm-free files from scribd or are they 'on loan' so to speak?

on loan

Ah. Off topic for this thread but I saw they're the only ppl who seem to offer an ebook of England's Hidden Reverse.

hm. i will check that out.

https://www.comixology.com/Powers/bundle/160?tid=E150212001&utm_source=comiXology+Digital+Comics+Newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=E150212001_Icon_Powers_Sale

Powers collection on sale for 50% off at Comixology

This is fascinating:
http://www.tcj.com/working-stiff-working-loose-the-1950s-career-of-john-stanley/
who among us knew that John Stanley revived Krazy Kat seven years after Herriman's death? Or that it looked like THIS?!?!?
http://images.tcj.com/2015/02/6-IgnatzPanelsFromKat-650x500.jpg

Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca's Darth Vader #1 was a really good read. I quite liked Larroca's artwork on Iron Man, but he seems to be a kid in a candy store drawing this Star Wars series. I'm definitely not a Star Wars geek but I am a fan, so it is cool to see a scene between Vader and Jabba. It was a pretty well done 'licensed' comic by filling in the blanks on scenes for the comic.

Anyone else notice that the minute Dark Horse lost the Star Wars license, Marvel instantly published their entire catalog in digital format with Marvel logos on it?

Licensed comics makes strange bedfellows. One of the weirder ones I have seen in the past few years was DC putting out a showcase of the 1975 Marvel black and white magazines

Which ones?

I was kind of referring to how certain comic properties would go from one company to another. Back in the mid 70s to come out along a terrible Doc Savage movie, Marvel comics did two Doc Savage comic book series. One was a regular comic book and the other was in their black and white magazine like Savage Sword of Conan. A few years ago, DC still with the rights of Doc Savage reprinted those black and white magazine issues. This year Dynamite is reprinting the same 70s Marvel comics issues in a hard cover. Quite a few of the characters that came out of the pulps have been with multiple publishers in comics also like the Shadow, Elric and Conan.

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/dreadstar-tv-series-jim-starlin-universal-cable-productions-benderspink-1201435486/

That seems like a bad idea

I'm pleased that Starlin is getting a payday, and it serves as another reminder about the importance of retaining the copyright to your creations. Whether it will actually happen is anyone's guess.

Cartoon or live action? I think I'd prefer the former.

That seems like a bad idea

― the plight of y0landa (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, February 18, 2015

i choose to hope

I'm all for starlin getting paid, just think dread star is one of the weaker properties he could forward

The Kaluta art book is the most delayed item I've ever waited for. I think that book was promised over 5 years ago.

Anybody rate Frank Thorne's Red Sonja? The recent collections were coloured so badly Thorne was horrified and the "art editions" are huge and expensive.

xpost here's the thing about Starlin: i always pictured him looking exactly like Vanth Dreadstar, and he kinda does!

http://rivista-cdn.hvmag.com//Hudson-Valley-Magazine/February-2009/Comic-Book-Heroes/Starlin_3522.jpg

Should we start a thread for that? Comic book creators who look like their (fictional) characters? I'm sure there are loads of examples, like Liefeld, Morrison, etc.

I blame Morrison and Bendis for the sudden preponderance of bald characters in the 2000s

Warren Ellis wasn't bald but Transmetropolitan.

it seems impossible for liefeld to look like any of his characters. unless he is irl covered in pouches?

whoa whoa whoa

http://scontent-b.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xpa1/t51.2885-15/925660_957389617624459_317203352_a.jpg

http://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/thumb/e/ee/Rob_Liefeld.jpg/250px-Rob_Liefeld.jpg " class="noborder">

lol ew

there's a recent-ish instagram of Liefeld doing the Liefield face and it allll makes sense now

You mean this one?

http://www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/170328333-db08f4250ab64f490ca4f8586cf12e3b.4ca4de30-scaled.jpg

I remember the first time I saw photo of Liefeld, it was pretty evident why all of his male heroes have the face they do:

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Robliefeldpic_4678.jpg

heh that may be it!!

lol

matt wagner and kevin matchstick from mage.

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/9/99019/1862439-mage1.jpg
http://www.co2comics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/booth_2.gif
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/14/148518/3034418-mattwagner.jpg

oh jeez that's more exact than I ever suspected

the drummer from planetary was john cassaday drawing himself:

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070311134416/marveldatabase/images/b/be/John_Cassaday_001.jpg
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/3/38919/987024-drummer.jpg

Ha!

drummer + matthew lillard = cassaday imo

You could have a super hero team of comic artists as superheros.

I'm not sure if this is actually ture, but I've heard people say that Terry Long, the former husband of Donna Troy, is supposedly is based on Marv Wofman:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Marv_Wolfman_%281982,_cropped%29.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9Bv2nyoPDAQ/UKvBJq6QBtI/AAAAAAAAAA8/V86V15dm8Bw/s640/NTT2.jpg

If it is true, then he basically added himself to his comic so he could have sex with Wonder Girl... Lovely.

makes sense!

And Jack Knight of Starman apparently has the same tattoos as his original artist Tony Harris, though I can't find any picture of Harris online that would show them. In his foreword to one of the Starman collections James Robinson even says that the reason Jack got a new clone body during the outer space arc was because Harris had been replaced by Peter Snejbjerg, so he didn't feel like Jack should have Harris's tattoo anymore.

Here's a pic where you can see he has the same dragon and compass tattoos:

https://igcdn-photos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t51.2885-15/927181_427770554018455_1510507545_n.jpg

this should be a tumblr

Terry Long is a mashup of Wolfman, Perez and Wein.

so i'm reading all of usagi yojimbo now. i read the first 6 books last week and i'm upto gen's story.

usagi is great and highly underrated. Sakai and Aragones are amonst the most prolific and consistently strong cartoonists of their era.

Both completely amazing cartoonists and mostly taken for granted.

http://alanmooreworld.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/dylan-dog-meets-alan-moore.html

hairy-chested love god Neal Adamas and goateed swashbuckler Mike Grell, 1977
https://2warpstoneptune.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/adams-grell-1977.jpg

Just finished Yoshihiro Tatsumi's The Push Man and Other Stories. Picked it up to sort of start delving into his back catalogue, after finishing (and loving) A Drifting Life last month. This one's quite the counterpoint to the (almost) idyllic and hopeful world he creates in that memoir. Its unsettling, stark, dark and often deeply creepy. All of the stories look at down-on-their-luck people (mostly working class men) in 1960s Japan. A lot of them living what you might call dead-end lives, not really going anywhere, keeping to themselves and the small worlds they exist in, in whatever huge japanese metropolis they live.

The tone is realism, but gone a little askew. The last story is about a guy who leaves his girlfriend (who can't get pregnant), for a nasty looking momma rat that he becomes attached to once he realizes its pregnant with like five rat babies. The girlfriend moves out because the rat keeps creeping into the apartment and joining her for her tea ceremony or a shower. But the guy is down with the rat moving in because of some unfulfilled paternal desires. Other subjects include the dating life of a crossdressing (geisha?) dude, a pretty devastating story about sewage workers finding aborted fetuses floating in the currents of garbage and muck of the sewers, impotence induced suicide, murder. And much of it revolving around sexuality and domestic violence; lots of prostitution and abusive relationships between men and women. In the opening story a guy shoves his girlfriends hand into a fish tank full of piranhas, she's been sleeping around and doesn't appreciate that he purposively lost his own arm at his manufacturing job for the insurance payout to help her open a bar. Another guy puts a scorpion in his girl's purse before she sets off for a rendezvous with an older lover. Probably most unsettling was the one about a sperm donor who stalks and then attempts to rape a woman who had been trying (but failing) to become pregnant with his sperm from the sperm clinic.
Apparently Tatsumi would browse police reports for inspiration for the stories, and a lot of them feel uncomfortably authentic. Hopefully he lightens up a bit in the 70s haha, will be picking up one of those next.

that book was my first introduction to Tatsumi, really dug it

http://www.viz.com/search?search=jojo's+bizarre+adventure

I don't know why I'm finding this out so late but the first two parts of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure are getting released in omnibus editions. The whole of part 1 is already out on digital but will be coming out in hardcovers throughout the year.
Part 3 came out years ago in print and is available in digital.

No idea if they're going to re-release the third part in omnibus books or if they are planning to go beyond the third series. I've only read the first 3 parts and I want to get beyond that point.

Digital omnibuses seems ideal for this series because it's so enormous and I have doubts that they'll ever get very far in print. Sad that it taken more anime and videogames to get to this point. Seems that some fans of the franchise aren't interested in the comic, perhaps allergic to good drawings like many manganime fans are.

Amazon is missing volume 2 of part one for kindle. None of part 3 is there either.

it's one of those series that's so enormous it's intimidating to even start (as we talked about with Berzerk also)

perhaps allergic to good drawings like many manganime fans are

reading Shizeru Mizuki's series of Japanese history books 'Showa' and its pretty fantastic. any other recommendations for him?

I don't think it's the queerness of Jojo that puts people off. That stuff is fairly normal in Japanese comics, games and cartoons. I mean Prince, Bowie and Motley Crue are more homoerotic than Jojo, but Jojo is weirder overall.
The old PS1/Dreamcast game is fantastic and hilarious.

Berserk is indeed a commitment (which is a shame because if if was shorter and missing several crucial flaws it would be the best comic I'd ever read) but the different phases of Jojo can be read individually without losing out on too much.

Shigeru Mizuki's Nonnonba is very good.

This user made a good series of video overviews of each part of Jojo.

This one is top 10 strangest stands (stands are supernatural assistants)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=d0uj_mkj6OM

Dig the music references, which often are sadly changed on English translation for copyright reasons.
Names like King Crimson, Tarkus, Purple Haze, Devo, Killer Queen, Sticky Fingers and Vanilla Ice have to get changed but Speedwagon stays I think.

http://jojo.wikia.com/wiki/JoJo_Wiki:Name_Variants

Really sad to miss out on stuff like "White Album Gently Weeps!!!"

Haha, there's even characters called Born This Way and Tubular Bells!

Brremaud and Bertolucci's "Love v. 1: The Tiger" is GORGEOUS and worth a look

Does Dark Horse have some digital sale going on in conjunction with Amazon? It looks like pretty much all of their Kindle editions are $3/each right now, even the lengthy ones. If nothing's been announced, I am thinking there was a serious fuckup.

Ah, it looks like maybe it is just the first volume of different series

Yeah, I saw that Love: The Tiger book today, I was impressed.

Two comics I didn't get because I didn't have enough money and I bought pricey ukiyo-e books instead:

A quite big impressive looking complete edition of Celestial Bibendum by Nicolas De Crecy. There's a bigger Humanoids edition of it that is way more expensive. Dunno if they'll do a smaller for poor people. Maybe they don't do it when a British publisher does the smaller version? I don't like that Humanoids caters to collectors so much, are they trying to keep this stuff obscure?

Part of the reason I didn't buy the Jojo hardcover is that it's less than half the page count I had seen listed. I was worried they were going to string the thing out in more volumes in some crazy last minute change but for some reason it's just much shorter than the forthcoming volumes. Seems that the second series will be in 5 volumes.
I was thinking I couldn't be arsed getting this because I'm not going to reread it but I'd feel guilty for reading and enjoying it many years ago online but not paying for it. It's nice to see the color reproduced.

Think I'll get both these in two weeks.

I asked about Dungeon and the guys said they'd never heard of it. I was quite surprised because they tend to know what's what. I swear I don't think I've ever seen them in physical shops.

heard good things about the recent IDW dungeons & dragons series and apparently comixology is selling them all really cheap now

Gosh has some Dungeons, but Amazon is the best option, unfortunately.

Opinions on Lone Wolf & Cub? I was looking at some today and it has a nice earthy look about it.

LW&C is great. it drags a bit in the middle, imo (the poisoner). but the middle is 4000 pages away...

i keep meaning to pick up one of the newer edition to see how it compares (i have the 28 dark horse volumes which were reversed. new one is apparently larger and japanese style).

or do you mean the NEW ones? (which i didn't know existed until just then)

http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/Previews/25-153?page=0

the newer dark horse omnibus editions retain the reversed pages.

I was looking at the old and new stuff and it all looks nice. The new artist Hideki Mori is very talented.

I think it remains flipped because the demographic isn't overwhelmingly a manga fan one. A shame because I tend to refuse to read flipped art.

i guess they didn't want to have to reletter 8000 pages.

lol

weak! ah well, i got about 11 volumes (the small DH books from 15 years ago mentioned) before I forgot to keep up. maybe when it's all done this time around I'll purchase them all in a manic binge

I don't know if Lone Wolf & Cub is included but some of the older DH manga wasn't mirror flipped but instead rearranged all the panels instead. I think this was partly because the Japanese considered which hand the sword was held in too important to be mirror flipped.

I've just checked and the 28 volume version is flipped

Cover of #28 is also a massive spoiler

http://www.darkhorse.com/Search/Browse/%22Kazuo+Koike%22/PpwNwkt8
That's a lot of Koike.

Just a few volumes until the Lone Wolf & Cub omnibus series is finished (12 books should do it), currently at omnibus 7 with the next two following soon.

Samurai Executioner has been completed in 4 omnibus volumes.

I read first two newer print Lone Wolf & Cub omnibuses and read quite a few of the First comics printings back in the 80s. It is a pretty amazing comic and has some beautiful nature artwork throughout the bloody series. I'm hooked and will eventually read the whole thing.

I'm reading Onslaught for the first time and I remember why I skipped the 90s. Story is a mess, and the Joe Mad art is horrifying (why did/do people like him? He sucks so bad). However, I missed the era of Wolverine with a do-rag mask and bike gloves and being drawn like a poor man's MAXX in full faux-Sam Kieth style. I hope he comes back after whatever the super-sized secret wars thing ends up being.

POWERS this month had another Bendis crack in a police station scene, rando shouting at cops

"how can a war be SECRET if EVERYONE KNOWS about it??"

I missed the era of Wolverine with a do-rag mask and bike gloves and being drawn like a poor man's MAXX in full faux-Sam Kieth style.

I only found about Wolverine's "caveman era" when Comics Should Be Good wrote about it last year, and I was like, wtf, could the 90s have been any more 90s?! Seriously, look at this shit!

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11111/111111327/3025438-110-1997-bennett-feral+001.jpg

And apparently Wolverine going feral means he will also lose his nose, because why not?

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/wolverineferaldisplay.jpg

'take a ride on the meat wagon' is such a baller pick-up line, good job wolvie

finished the last run of Stumptown - kind of... eh? I don't know that a five-issue run is enough for crime stories to develop any feeling.
current chapter of Walking Dead is the best it's been in dozens of issues
a few issues behind on Deadly Class but it's bordering on too nihilistic at this point
Trees #1 was a pretty good sci-fi setup but the problem with owning stores is that I notice and pull first issues for myself but most Tuesdays I'm too stressed with counting and sorting to remember to keep pulling them

read through the first three issues of Dave Cooper's Weasel right before bed; not recommended timing anymore than you would read Chris Ware before trying to sleep. disturbing.

It's odd that a lot of that Weasel stuff has never been collected. I think Cooper might have lost interest in drawing comics.

Ivan Brunetti appears to have gotten tired of writing them. That super depressing stuff must take a lot outta you.

gdmn wolvie swole

I've been on a Kieron Gillen binge and decide I like him a lot more than I thought I did. The first Phonogram is still rubbish and irritating. But everything after I've enjoyed A LOT, even the Phonogram sequel. (X-Men and Iron Man, I haven't read, and the Nazi/3 stuff looks awful and might skip).

S.W.O.R.D. wasn't bad iirc

Reading Transmetropolitan - thought it was very lol80s and then realized it started in the late '90s.

It's very lol in any decade

I've made it through a single Ellis comic, but never a whole story.

Tried Trees but finding it a little nihilistic and dull. It's like a 70s Doctor Who story made up of bland character actors and no Doctor.

I think I am contractually obligated at this point to mention Delano's 2020 Visions yet again http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Visions

Deltrono's 3030 Visions

grady's 8080 visions

a+

It's odd that a lot of that Weasel stuff has never been collected. I think Cooper might have lost interest in drawing comics.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, February 27, 2015 7:19 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he went the julie doucet route and became a painter.

The last two issues of Weasel were just hardcover art collections.

Yeah I got 3 of his art books, they're good but I'm just not into his pure cartoon style. I prefer it when he keeps some level of organic realism and caricature.

upto book 16 of usagi and still not tired of it. so great. glad i gave it a chance (despite its overwhelming quantity)

I've been on a Kieron Gillen binge and decide I like him a lot more than I thought I did. The first Phonogram is still rubbish and irritating. But everything after I've enjoyed A LOT, even the Phonogram sequel. (X-Men and Iron Man, I haven't read, and the Nazi/3 stuff looks awful and might skip).

― Chuck_Tatum, Sunday, March 1, 2015 9:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i can't put my finger on what i dislike about the first phonogram except that i know it gave me a headache

have you done young avengers yet? its ace

also the new WicDiv takes place in part at a rave and i adored how they handled it

i have mixed feelings about this http://comicsalliance.com/joe-casey-jim-mahfood-miami-vice/

just read a scanlated copy of atar gull, that's a helluva piece of work there
http://siguealconejoblanco.es/comics/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Atar-Gull-011.jpg
http://www.avant-verlag.de/comic/atar_gull_oder_die_geschichte_eines_modellsklaven

I got Jojo's Bizarre Adventure part 1/book 1 and Celestial Bibendum. Kinda itching to get those Koike omnibuses but should hold back.

I feel like there's been a huge increase in hardcovers for comics over the past few years and although it looks nicer I'd prefer cheaper books.

This is a problem for me too, kind of a big one. I basically can't afford comics anymore.

How much does it typically add to the cost?

I still don't understand why hardcovers are such a big deal. The only disadvantage for me is that softcovers curl up in the winter cold.

I remember Steve Ditko Space Wars being £10 extra in hardcover. I thought that was nuts.

How much does it typically add to the cost?

...?

If a new cartoonist's debut is a US$35 hardcover rather than a $3 pamphlet, then this adds $32 to the price, plus $15-20 to postage, all before the exchange rate. This is p obviously a barrier to sampling new artists

I understand the priciness of hardcovers is not good, but on the other hand I have so many old paperback comics where the pages have started falling out because the glue tends to weaken with age, so these days I'm always buying bound/hardcover versions of comics if they're available.

But most of the comics I read I borrow from the library, I only buy the ones that I really want and/or that aren't available in local libraries.

http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/14-170/The-Dead-Rider-TPB

Surprised to see this. This series started ages ago and it was called Dead Lander but there was something else called that, so the name had to be changed. There might have even been a third name that was advertised. After all these years the series is finished in book form.
Anyway, Kevin Ferrara is very talented. He's done a lot of the best work for the Creepy revival.

Also
http://www.darkhorse.com/Books/25-034/Creepy-Presents-Alex-Toth-HC

That Toth volume looks a bargain at $20.

I was looking at that recent Howard Nostrand horror comics hardcover the other day, and thinking that was a bit of a bargain too, until I saw how lousy some of the repro was. Shame.

tons of the transformers issues, pay what u want:
https://www.humblebundle.com/books

Getting back to Shigeru Mizuki, did anyone read the Kitaro compilation? I might have passed on that and Cat Eyed Boy because I thought Oninbo was the weakest of the Hideshi Hino horror series. They all look quite similar.

http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/article/sothebys_comics_art_auction
produced almost 4 million euro in sales
http://www.paulgravett.com/articles2/article_images/TintinStatueSOthebys.jpg
^sold for 261k Euros!
http://www.paulgravett.com/articles2/article_images/TezukaSothebys.jpg
^24k euro!
http://www.paulgravett.com/articles2/article_images/StevensSothebys.jpg
^60k euro!

ah well, just go to the link.

I haven't read this new Howard the Duck, but I did just snort at this new tagline
"Trapped in a world he's grown accustomed to"

https://storify.com/debaoki/do-you-have-to-be-japanese-to-make-manga

A series of Twitter posts. It starts off about one webcomic then gets more interesting, with anecdotes about general perceptions of comics from different places, styles, cultures.

lol fucking tumblrettes

in less psychotic news: Archie Is Doing A Digital Collection Of Stories About Wrestling

Woo!

Hats off to Vic Fluro for bringing Nextwave into 616 continuity.

everyone in 616 pretends the events didn't happen.... but they did

you're gonna have to clarify that for me! how did that happen?
but it's a weird time for Marvel. I just found about that X-Men '92 series that puts that animated series into the Secret Wars multiverse. sadly it seems to be written by an asshole who has quickly apologized for years of online abuse

that's an interesting story

Monica Rambeau has been in Mighty Avengers for a while as Spectrum, behaving like a fairly new character and drawn in a Greg Land style. She turns up in Secret Avengers this week and creates a very bright flash while talking about the Beyond Corporation and after she steps out of the light that stops you from seeing her... She looks like she's drawn by Stuart Immonen and is wearing her Nextwave uniform again. Plus she uses the skull asterisks from The Captain's name.

heh nice

hah! She did mumble something in a previous Mighty Avengers issue about having done all this shit in the midwest no one seems to remember

did this get conversation on a different board?
https://storify.com/debaoki/do-you-have-to-be-japanese-to-make-manga

I can't even begin to understand what's happening

Kind of glad I just try to read The Walking Dead and some crime comics and shit, the DC Convergence event and THE END OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE and trying to parse what's happening over 50 different titles would drive me insane.

what's happening with the Marvel Secret Wars event*

that stuff about chris sims harrassing valerie d'orazio is really disappointing. i've been reading and enjoying his comics blogging for years and i was intrigued by his x-men project. i had no idea he was such a fucking asshole :(

weird that a grown man known for his astonishing breadth of knowledge about comic books and children's television is an inept creep when dealing with women

true, but i never got that impression from the stuff of his i've read - he works for comics alliance which is pretty good at supporting diversity in comics afaik - which makes it all the more shitty.

he can be a reasonably engaging writer for sure. still one time i saw a picture of him wearing a my little pony tshirt and it was like, oh ok just because this guy is more coherent than most of his peers doesn't mean he's not a creep.

He's also guested a few times on Rachel and Miles, and they're hella progressive, thoughtful, don't seem like they'd hold much truck with misogynist bullying. I have no doubt that Rachel has weighed in on this, but I haven't had the time to check her twitter or blog.

http://postcardsfromspace.tumblr.com/post/113923434118/do-you-have-any-advice-thought-on-processing-the

did this get conversation on a different board?
https://storify.com/debaoki/do-you-have-to-be-japanese-to-make-manga

― Maybe in 100 years someone will say damn Dawn was dope. (forksclovetofu), Thursday, 19 March 2015 03:27

Don't know.

Quite funny but also terrifying, that guy who says he could get 20 years jail in Indonesia for what he draws.

I don't think the negative reactions to a lot of typical modern angular Japanese style stuff are totally unreasonable, any more than people not liking the Pixar or 90s superhero style. I don't think it's a good thing that mainstream Japanese styles tend to be treated so separately.
I remember being told by art teachers to broaden my horizons for art and it hurt at the time but it's what a good teacher should do. It should be a cause for concern when a student places themselves firmly in a narrow, already established style with all the solutions ready for them; some kids will grow out of it by themselves but some will need more encouragement.

sims has posted a piece on comicsalliance: http://comicsalliance.com/ask-chris-being-part-of-the-problem/

about as mature and reasoned a self-examination as you could hope for, i guess, but that's not going to cure valerie d'orazio's ptsd.

jesus, that backlash in what forks posted is ridiculous. american tumblr youth screaming at fellow americans for doing anime/manga wrong because they aren't japanese seems very tumblr, though

"I have PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder. I have specifically been diagnosed with it because of cyberbullying that I experienced between 2007-2010."

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

care to elaborate on that?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

okay, then i guess i'll continue to assume that you're consciously choosing to disbelieve a woman's claims that bullying led to mental health problems

i think mordy believes her, his stance is more tough shit/deal with it

at least that's how i read those runes

i guess we'll never know

imo there are definitely shitty parts of the web that are worth avoiding, especially if they're places where you've been repeatedly harassed, but when it comes down to it you can't really be a successful person in the comics world without any sort of engagement in the news/forum/social network realm. and if those areas are full of harassment, it hinders your professional career.

there's a bunch of macho shit-talk that is completely unnecessary and some forums and websites should probably be shunned, but if some asshole writer is specifically calling you out, repeatedly, for no reason other than the fact you're a woman and a convenient target, it's bullshit.

the shrugging-off of her concerns might be intended to read like "well, if it bothers you when these communities are shitty, don't engage in them!" but the real message is "if if bothers you, I guess comics aren't for you!"

otm

yup, otm. it's the shrugging-off of those concerns that creates the environment where bullshit like gamergate can fester

otm

I'm even willing to believe Chris Sims and other bullheaded people can change, and even internalize what they're saying in public to the point where apologies are legitimate and directed and phrased in a way that doesn't seem creepy!

The other side of this is the festering rot in these communities that will see any apology as kowtowing to perceived hostile forces. You have to ignore those people, because they're never going to be placated as they will never get that their investment in a fucked-up status quo is hindering not just their community, but their own development. I didn't get into mainstream comics in the early 90s (oh god) because they were a gross shithole with bad sexist imagery, I got into them because they seemed cool and exciting when I was a kid.

If comics and the corresponding community had more diverse, interesting characters (which there were, I ended up buying as much independent stuff and things like the Vertigo line when I could) available it wouldn't have turned me off of comics, it would have helped me be a more well-rounded person.

not belittling anyone's concerns or problems but

when it comes down to it you can't really be a successful person in the comics world without any sort of engagement in the news/forum/social network realm.

are there any writers/artists with no web presence who also don't do conventions?

xp because it seems to me people could just choose to engage as much or as little as they'd like to, same as in any field where you're self employed and the quality of the work (art, criticism or otherwise) could stand on its own without engaging literally every person who has anything to say about anything you're doing.
again NB: not relating this to Sim's/D'Orazio's situation

and if so, when did they really become established figures and what is their background? xp

there's also a difference between "engaging literally every person" and being specifically targeted, for sure

those creators doing the set-in-japan thing you linked above would have probably been fine just ignoring the people making the most noise and accepting constructive criticism, imo, but I'm not sure what the volume was

xp forks: I don't know how you can be in any self-employed field today without actively engaging potential fans/customers/employers via social media, blogs, forums and so on. no more room for quiet toilers in this age.

and let's face it the quality/"cream rises to the top" method of making it is mostly a myth as well

word

tbh it seems to me that for at least a decade the best thing you could possibly do to "make it" in superhero comis is be volubly encyclopedically fannish online

that, or be a second tier supermarket novelist or third-fourth tier TV guy

xp i won't argue the latter point at all but the former i think is more malleable. people can quietly toil and produce work of quality, just not at the speed of creation that is the current webcomic standard.

It's impossible to do that now, because while there have always been countless talented people working in obscurity, the internet allows/requires them to (*sigh*) brand themselves, advertise, platform. So if you're NOT doing that you're already putting yourself a rung down from thousands of others out there across the planet gunning for the same spots. I suppose that's how capitalism is supposed to function - rewarding the hustle over all else...

my wife went all-in on graphic novels for my birthday, I have quite a lot of reading ahead of me, lots of really cool looking stuff:

Sex Criminals vol. 1
The Technopriests
Megalex
Final Incal
Julio's Day
Love and Rockets #7

Just finishing Megalex, it was pretty batshit insane. Will probably tackle Technopriests next.

that, or be a second tier supermarket novelist or third-fourth tier TV guy

sick, truthful burn

I got the shipping notification that the newest collections of Prophet and Lazarus are heading my way :D

are there any writers/artists with no web presence who also don't do conventions?

Alan Moore?

Carmine Infantino?

I think Moore's Facebook page is managed by his daughter Leah, and he's not particularly active in supplying content for it, but it's an official web presence. And his zine Dodgem Logic had a website when it was a going thing.

The best answer I can come up with is Ditko.

haha yes of course

Obviously it's different for people who were big before the internet was. I don't think a big internet presence is that essential to success but I think it really depends on the sort of audience who's going to like them.
But I think it's different for writers and artists. Writers probably have to work harder at the social media aspect.

Ditko does have a blogging fan that does Kickstarters for him and Robin Snyder.

lol yeah I don't think the most established/known writers/artists of the last few decades necessarily need much press at this point

so do you mean to say that all the major artists/writers for DC have twitter/blog/facebook engagement explicitly about their work? I avoid that shit like plague so i dunno but i would think they would all be under non-disclosure clauses with contract labor or am i being naive?

It is good that people are challenging racist and sexist aspects of comics but even after that most of it's going to be more or less the same junk.
I'm doubtful yet still hopeful that people are going to challenge the way the industry functions and highlight the poison of franchise obsession/loyalty, crass consumerism and collector mania.

What I wrote on a geek thread recently..

There's two new-ish shops in Glasgow with "Geek" in their names. I never went into either but I looked into the window of one of them today and it seemed to be mostly expensive collectable junk. I'm a bit worried but I don't know if this poses much of a new threat to anything that is good but it's not nice seeing more people buying into all the worst aspects of this culture.
People often say that this side of comics fandom is dying out and is being replaced by something more positive but I'm not so sure. The bad side seems to be going more mainstream.

Re: comics pros blogging. I think it's part of the progress now. As well as authors talking about being harassed, Jerry Ordway blogged about suddenly being too old fashioned to get steady work and Jason Pearson talked about an editor treating him badly. This used to be exclusive to places like Comics Journal or talked about in pro-zines decades after it happened but now the dirt can come out immediately.

$500 Martian Manhunter statuettes subsidize a shop's ability (their willingness being another thing altogether) to also order $50 coffee table art books that will be of interest to three customers.

xxp No, I am saying that if you are not an established writer/artist right now, you are not going to break into the industry (or really further your position in it) unless you interact with your fanbase online.

If you're self-publishing, I can't imagine not having some sort of presence to sell your wares. If you are an established indie, you would need to make sure you have publicity for projects and have to DIY since you don't have the marketing budget of Marvel/DC, and if you're writing/drawing for one of the larger concerns, you might be able to get away with doing your work and keeping your head down, but you're going to be completely in the dark about some of the "industry" stuff.

But yes, a cursory search indicates that yes, most of these people do have social media accounts.

Looking at comixology's top sellers, pulling out writers/artists:
Jason Aaron (Thor) https://twitter.com/jasonaaron
John Cassaday (new Star Wars) https://twitter.com/johncassaday
G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel) https://twitter.com/gwillowwilson
Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) https://twitter.com/robertkirkman

That's literally just from the first four books on the page

i guess i'm not just saying that they have a social media presence... _I_ have a social media presence
but that they are actively engaging with fans, trolls and pros on a daily basis in, well, i guess the way we do with ILX?

in an open forum i mean.

Old Lunch- Even if that's true, it isn't a situation we should be resigned to. Those art books are often overpriced too. I think we're way too accepting of this crap, it just isn't okay. If there was always more focus on content and quality maybe this stuff wouldn't be a debatably necessary evil.

I don't know what you're looking for, forks. All of those people seem to reply to questions, occasionally send an @ message to their peers, and opine as many Twitter users do. I'd say that's public engagement.

Don't worry about it, it's not very important to me to puzzle out. There are more paths than one, obviously.

RAG: not sure what the solution would be, though. Only direct buy books from indie presses? Shunt business to the remaining B&M retailers carrying comics? I always saw the figure collecting as something the very most hardcore fans were into - hence stores full of figurines that never or rarely sell...

I don't expect any clear or easy solutions but I think these things need to be discussed more. It's interesting that the comic stores I know all gave up on videos several years ago. Obviously there are other places to get them but I liked it when there was a wall of animation, horror films, science fiction tv shows and other cult stuff.
I've always wondered how well the prose book section does in Forbidden Planet, and all those Doctor Who audio discs.
When I started going to comic shops in the late 90s, model kits were quite popular, I think in general that stuff was more interesting than the standard statues you get today. I do actually like toys and statues a lot when there is lots of craft and imagination in there, and doesn't look like it was created purely for the sake of more product.

If there was a God of comics he would cry.
http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=FU3082
http://www.watchmencomicmovie.com/watchmen-kubricks-bearbricks-mez-itz.php
http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=DC19725#.VQt4c9BFAv4

That Watchmen bear is worth several hundred!

For a good decade I used to buy Previews, but the last eight times I bought it I kept promising myself never to buy it again because it's filled with stuff like that. It made me furious. When I saw that a Star Trek Pizza cutter was a top seller and some perfectly good comics are cancelled due to low orders... there are no words. This is really fucked up. Diamond stopped distributing so many worthy comics in favour of more collectables.

http://images.tcj.com/2015/03/Cartoonist_Threadmill-650x858.jpg
http://www.tcj.com/tcj-roundtable-discussion-applied-cartooning/

The latest issue of Red Hood has a whole new take on sideboob; Koriand'r's sister ACTUALLY HAS A BOOB ON HER SIDE.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7288/16704813030_3d4e8e7629.jpg

totalrecallthreeboobedhooker.jpg

Still doing that Scribd subscription thing for another month. Browsing their selection is nearly impossible on iPad, but I ended up reading most of the Judge Dredd stuff recently published by IDW. Between that and the recent Valiant catalog, I think it's a reasonable deal.

"Will probably tackle Technopriests next."

I really enjoyed that comic. The artwork is so good through the whole book in both quality and style. It's pretty much a science fiction Dickens novel. Amazing stuff.

ODY-C gives me a headache

really enjoying the twists COWL is taking though

I got Ditko Archives 5 today. It is a bit annoying paying so much for a hardcover of mostly hackwork I've already seen but his inking was still so nice at that time. All his Dr Haunt drawings are great. I hope the next volume has better stuff. I wonder if they're going to bother with the Gorgo and Konga stuff that Yoe already covered, I hope not. The Stanton pages in the introduction help.
Surprised to see Blake Bell giving a big thanks to Jesus Christ above everyone else in the acknowledgments, I don't remember that in any of his other books.
Not a fan of the 3, 4, 5 covers in this series, don't know why some of the alternative publishers love that modern designy crap that shows off the dotty color of old comics. Why do this when you could choose so many well composed images from the contents?

I noticed that the new Jojo book seems to be selling really well. That's nice.

It's on my list for my next splurge. (Ditko Archives, that is.)

well this made my day

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBHB7PSW8AAylZN.jpg

If they make the sane choice to leave out the Gorgo/Konga stuff from Ditko Archives, then volume 6 should cover 58-62. A bigger period because all the Marvel and Captain Atom stuff isn't an option. It would be awesome if they got to the late 60s Charlton ghost stuff because I've always thought that was some of his best work.

Been flipping through the Newsboy Legion collection. Hard to imagine there's ever been a more working class superhero comic. Quite strange that Joe Simon says in the intro that when he was a kid he thought being a newsboy would be glamorous (apparently lots of kids thought that). I love that one of the characters is called Big Words. Some of the drawings of the kids are so weird. They even throw bricks when they're fighting.
It's not surprising this and Boy Commandos never got a second volume. It must seem incredibly uncool for a lot of DC fans, next to the really cartoony Dick Sprang Batman stuff.

on the artists who look like their own drawings tip: Gil Kane
http://cdn.popcons.com/journals/jatinder_Ghataora/74/UKCAC_GilKane.jpg

That Newsboy Legion sounds right up my alley.

Yeah, I have no idea how much more they had to reprint of that and Boy Commandos. I thought maybe DC would consider the Kirby backlog important enough to reprint regardless of sales. Unlike the other Kirby Omnibus volumes, it looks like they used scans of old comics, perhaps Joe Simon had a say in this, I dunno.
There's a Newsboy Legion story where Scrapper accidentally becomes a popular surrealist artist but art dealing criminals take all the money he makes.

Looking through the Fantagraphics Ingels collection Sucker Bait and I realised they haven't reprinted any covers, I hope that comes later. Don't know if any of the other Fantagraphics EC collections did covers. I read a little about their plans before but there's still a lot I don't know. Does anyone know if they're saving the early and lesser known EC comics for later reprints? Or even Picto-Fiction era stuff? I assume the New Direction era will be a priority for some artists. Will there be a collection for guys who did a lot less like Joe Kubert?

do i have any hope of grasping Multiversity without first getting neck deep in years of DC mythology

no, just buy the Quitely issue if you've read Watchmen a dozen times

Junji Ito's Gyo is coming out in omnibus this week. It was only two volumes but nice to see it out again. Fragments Of Horror shall follow soon. I hope they reissue the Tomie and Museum Of Horror stuff. Praying for more to follow.

If you haven't read Gyo or Uzimaki before, get them now. It's rare for me to be able to say I love comics without any significant reservations but it's true for these cases.

Every issue of Multiversity takes place in a parallel DC universe we haven't seen before. It's occasionally dense (as is Morrison's wont) and you may get more out of it if you have some familiarity with DC mythology but it isn't a prerequisite by any means. I think he's gotten really good at that balancing act of writing mainstream comics that reward old-school fans but can be read by any newcomer who's willing to put in some effort.

Hitler on the toilet, how can you resist

like i picked up Ultra Comics because it said "#1" and "Multiversity" on it thinking "oh here's an on-ramp," not realizing i guess that they're *all* "#1"s? and i ~got~ it but also sensed i was missing most of what made it worthwhile for everyone peeing their pants about it.

each one is kind of a riff on a comic style

I still haven't read Ultra Comics but one of the underlying threads of the preceding (and ostensibly standalone) issues is a haunted comic book called Ultra Comics that keeps turning up and wreaking havoc in all of these disparate alternate universes. So, yeah, the impact is probably diluted somewhat without the build-up. But you unwittingly read a haunted comic book that's probably going to wind up destroying our world as a result of your having read it, so that's something.

one of the underlying threads of the preceding (and ostensibly standalone) issues is a haunted comic book called Ultra Comics that keeps turning up and wreaking havoc in all of these disparate alternate universes

yeah that's definitely a thing that is apparent in ultra comics

I think Old Lunch's point is that in all the other Multiversity #1s it's referred to explicitly, so actually having it in your hand makes it a cursed object that you know you're handling - so in effect reading it means you're responsible for all the previous #1s happening.

damn it, hoos

what made it worthwhile for everyone peeing their pants about it.

who's peeing their pants about it, apart from long-term Morristans* going "uh this wasn't worth the wait and is finally Morrison-by-numbers and really in so many ways a direct retread of FC"

*eg Uzumeri, Jog, the Mindless, Singer

I think Old Lunch's point is that in all the other Multiversity #1s it's referred to explicitly, so actually having it in your hand makes it a cursed object that you know you're handling - so in effect reading it means you're responsible for all the previous #1s happening.

― the bowels are not what they seem (aldo), Tuesday, March 31, 2015 8:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i follow! i'm just saying morrison makes this like the opposite of a secret

that's how Morrison works, he lets you know in issue #1 that the apocalypse is coming, and you can evaluate the plot

Friend convinced me to start reading Preacher - halfway through the first collection and I'm pretty much done between the sheriff's kid with the 'arseface,' the sheriff 'fucking himself,'and the start of the next story where a criminal has his jaw blown off in pretty much the same image as everyone else who's gotten shot.
Does it get better or is Garth Ennis just that awful 24/7?

at the time it was kinda innovative; don't really have a lot of excuses why i own it now

h8 that shit

and all the 'gonzo' tough guy culture-jamming scripters that tumbled along in its wake

otm, the worst is people who think they understand why something problematic is entertaining and then make their own work which is just 100% problematic and not at all entertaining

If you've just started reading Preacher or are considering doing so at some point in the future, the first question to ask yourseff is: Am I between the ages of 14 and 22? If the answer is no, please feel free to not read Preacher and know that you really aren't missing anything.

yeah i read preacher thinking "i wish i'd found this when i was 15"

Feel like the world need a reverse-recommendations engine - oh, you thought Preacher was awful and Transmetropolitan was cheesy and dumb? You should also avoid <x>.

I thought Transmetropolitan was pretty ok when I was in college. But the series was '97-'02 and I was in college '99-'03 so it worked out perfectly.

I was not 15 when I was in college, but really, I kind of was.

If my personal experience is anything to go by, I would guess that it was probably a mid-to-late '90s rite of passage to initially buy and enjoy titles such as Preacher and Transmetropolitan and Strangers In Paradise until you slowly came to realize that they were embarassing garbage aimed at an audience you no longer belonged to.

tbh I think 1/3 of Sandman falls into that

Read less Preacher, read more Shade the Changing Man.

otm

The impediment being, though, that DC ran out of steam less than halfway through collecting Shade in trades (as has been their super-fun tendency with most of the classic Vertigo series). Thankfully, the entirety of Preacher will be available in perpetuity.

I think I'm missing a little bit of Shade at the end, but I got a near-complete run off ebay years ago

Which reminds me, I need to troll ebay some more. I want to read more bad cyberpunkish titles of the 90s. Do you know how hard it is to track down a full run of Ghost Rider 2099?

Shade trades will get you up to #19. there were 70...

comixology has them.

(i hadn't realised there were so many. some classic bachalo / pennington art in them as well. must dig them out)

which shade are you guys talking about? i assume the vertigo + not the original ditko?

To be fair, the series slowly goes downhill after issue 50. I think I remember reading something about Milligan wanting to end it around then and DC wanting it to continue with a different writer, which prompted him to begrudgingly continue.

xpost We're talking about Vertigo. Same character, different take. Ditko Shade lasted < 10 issues, IIRC.

i've never read it but u've all inspired me

Ditko Shade is great too, but a totally different thing from the Vertigo series.

Milligan's Shade series is cool, but two of the miniseries he wrote for Vertigo around the same sort of time are even better (and reach fully satisfying conclusions) - The Extremist drawn by Ted Mckeever and Enigma drawn by Duncan Fegredo.

Milligan has some stuff that is more workmanlike but as far as writers go, I think he's generally underrated

Milligan has had a patchy career, but he's certainly underrated. Enigma was one of the best miniseries Vertigo ever put out. Skreemer (which probably would've been a Vertigo mini if it had been issued a year or two later) is another great early '90s Milligan project. And his one-shots like Face and Tainted were pretty good, too. Then he had those weird post-Vertigo wilderness years where he wrote awful stuff like Elektra before he came back in full force with X-Force/-Statix and the Human Target ongoing. Lots of stuff worth checking out.

There was a stretch of time when Shade was my favorite ongoing title, so I'd still highly recommend it despite its unevenness. I reread it two years ago or so and most of it still holds up.

I loved Milligan's run on Shade at the time. Would almost say its better than Sandman (certainly the art is better)

Too true. The early Bachalo stuff was a little muddy and not terribly special (which may have been due to the inking), but I became a huge fan once he hit his stride a year or so in. Even most of the guest artists during his tenure (like Glynn Dillon and Phillip Bond) were great.

I hadn't really thought about it until now but I probably learned a lot about drawing by heavily aping Shade-era Bachalo.

Saw something unexpected today: a complete(?) Marvel collection of Weirdworld. The title isn't very appropriate, it looks a lot like Elfquest and any number of Tolkien inspired 70s-80s stuff.
Some nice black and white Mike Ploog at the start but later on John Buscema with someone painting over him, it looks a bit cheesy but it's still impressive.

I didn't know about that collection. There weren't all that many Weirdworld installments (it just popped up now and again in anthology titles like Marvel Fanfare and Epic Illustrated), so I would assume it's complete. I wonder if it's been released to promote the (apparently) completely unrelated Weirdworld miniseries that's part of Secret Wars.

Yeah I just heard about that. Marvel pretty much never reprints anything for its own sake, it always has to tie into a larger plan.

There's a notorious early issue of The Comics Journal where they fawned over the full color Weirdworld strip, which first ran in a colour Marvel magazine. The airbrushy finishing (from memory, by Rudy Nebres?) was pretty 'advanced' for Marvel at that time, but nothing that wasn't being done better in Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant, and of course the story was the usual sub-Tolkein bollox, cranked out by good old reliable Doug Moench.

I saw that new collection in the window of Forbidden Planet today - smaller than the original magazine printings, which can't help.

more gorgeous ogden whitney superhero stuff
http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2015/04/skyman-ogden-whitney-1940.html

Kodansha are translating Junji Ito's Cat Diary! Hooray hooray! Maybe we'll get Hellstar Remina soon.

http://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2015/04/STK668561-300x461.jpg

real or shopped?

out today

o brave new world

i flipped through the archie and predator book
there's a scene where the gang are on a tropical island and there's red rain coming down from a palm tree on a confused moose and its two flayed bodies hung by a predator.
this is played for laffs

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2015/04/ty-templeton-in-critical-but-stable-condition-after-heart-attack/

coming soon

http://i2.wp.com/pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/sharknado-promo_2.jpg?crop=0px%2C61px%2C900px%2C603px&resize=446%2C299&zoom=2

Okay, I thought for sure that one was a shop (mostly because the art looks like some shit) until I just now saw the news story. I guess literally anything can happen at Archie Comics now.

it's been like that for a few years now - the gay character w his own book, Archie gets killed, zombies vs archie etc.

This was linked to in the Comics Journal Herb Trimpe obituary. His diary from his last days at Marvel to being unemployed then becoming a teacher. I found it very interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/010900edlife-56-edu.html

I could imagine a good book full of accounts from artists who became too unfashionable to make a living in the mainstream.

I can't decide whether this is the greatest ever solicit or the worst ever.

DOOMED #2
Written by SCOTT LOBDELL
Art and cover by JAVIER FERNANDEZ
1:25 Variant cover by MATEUS SANTOLUOCO
On sale JULY 15 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

The secret origin of our Doomed hero is revealed! Plus: Tons of stuff gets smashed!

just digitally paged through Schau and Runde's "Margarin"
good lord

https://tytempletonart.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/daredevil-hearts.jpg

Yay!

haha wow

Got preview copies of Secret Wars #1 in the mail, just finished it, zero idea WTF is going on in it. It's like an Avengers 2 fight scene across 32 pages

Bought Johnny Viable And His Terse Friends for my brother because he's a big Aylett fan. Read some of the fake letters pages and they were hilarious. He has such an impressive knack for surreal absurdity.

Bitch Planet is awful good.

i haven't read the newest one yet--i liked it a lot at first but it feels a little like the story is wandering and i'm losing a little interest.

I tapped out on Bitch Planet. Wasn't clicking with me at all.

Picked up a used copy of Toppi's Sharaz-De: Tales from the Arabian Nights that Archaia published in 2013. It's gorgeous.

alex + ada wrapping up this month, i've really been enjoying that one.

Crickets #4 came out (!!!) and I haven't held a better-smelling comic book in years

It's a liiittle frustrating in that the whole issue is Part 2 of one of the stories from #3, but that wouldn't be a problem if Harkham gets another issue out within a year.

I never got #2 because of Diamond dumping it; just looked and it's going for $100 on Amazon. WELP

Black River is about the ugliest and most dispiriting comic i've ever read, think Johnny Ryan with a straight face
http://www.tcj.com/reviews/colville-and-black-river/
panel clips don't really do it justice, it's the sheer accumulation that does it.

anybody gonna read a-force

i read it. it's cute. i think we discussed it briefly over on the secret wars thread?

Xpost forks you could have just said "josh Simmons"

He obviously has his thing, idgi but there it is.

A-Force is in my ever-increasing to-read stack.

Black River was my first exposure to Josh Simmons. A bit of internet reading suggests this is his milieu, eh? It's dark as fuck; a grimmer and messier Chris Ware in spirit.

yeah it does nothing for me whatsoever. facile.

in other news, I can report that Avengers #50 (1968) has both a full page ad for The Mothers' We're Only In It For The Money LP and an in-story reference to Wonder Warthog...

*frantically pulls up the issue*

I've gathered most of the Secret Wars comics from the last couple of weeks but haven't started them, I don't think I can do the whole mess Aldo-like justice.

Sales are crazy but I think people might burn out quickly with so many miniseries and wrap-up series and the main one.

Haven't read this week's stuff but last week's crossovery stuff was pretty fun. Nothing exceptional but I think there's something to be said for "fun and forgettable". So far they really seem to be getting the portentous-to-goofiness ratio just right.

Simmons shifted into that blacker-none-blacker mode in the last ten years; his earlier stuff was played more goofy and jaunty, even when dark at the core. In, for eg, House it added up to less than the sum of its parts for me, but Cockbone was a masterpiece for that accumulative effect.

Is Priest's Black Panther run supposed to be making me nauseous? I'm 15 issues in, does this get better?

Just read Superman: Earth One Volume Three, I'm sorry to say. It's basically the same as Morrison's Action Comics. He even gets armour at the end. I can't imagine who DC thinks the audience for this is, aside from grumpy old jerks who hate-read library copies.

Er

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvw1iENsPgc

Akira the Don and a mate, innit. Old Shell-Head isn't actually involved beyond doing wizard hands in the video.

He does look old, but then he is - Zenith was 28 years ago.

i have a Fauves single he was involved in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0WS6nn7L7g

i just read Fumimura and Ikegama's "Sanctuary" from front to back, it's as misogynistic and well drawn and lengthy as Cerebus.... it's an amazing piece of work and compulsively readable but potential readers should be aware that one of the lead characters is a guy who rapes women in bathroom stalls as a kind of wacky character flaw

I ended up with a fair amount of down time while traveling and ended up binge-buying and reading much of the Judge Dredd stories of recent years via amazon/kindle. I need more Dirty Frank, now.

I've never read many of those Fumimura and Koike comics but I've always found them interesting to read about. Some of them are so politically incorrect that it's hard to imagine them getting officially translated now but it's fascinating how they delve into all these feelings seemingly without trying to rationalize anything too much. I suppose that could make them tedious too but I'd like to read more of the stuff.

they're pretty fetishistic but undeniably well executed in terms of long form story and flawless draftsmanship
http://www.dtaweb.com/ryoichi_ikegami/images/content/sanctuary_vol3_1.jpg

I like Ikegami's art. To anyone who's read Crying Freeman: maybe my memory is faulty but wasn't there a scene in which the hero tries to subdue a woman by punching into her vagina?

I always knew Sho Fumimura better as Buronson. I didn't discover until last year that he named himself after Charles Bronson, just like the guy that got that Refn film based on his life.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/house-of-1000-manga/2015-05-07/poverty-princesses-and-zombies/.87920

Three books about people working in Japanese industry.

I adored the online sampler version of Manga Zombie, it's probably my favourite book about comics, very inspiring, even if I finally got to read those comics and they were all disappointing, the book feels almost like an exciting manifesto or rallying cry for more fucked up comics.

omg SO GOOD

http://www.comicbookresources.com/imgsrv/preview/0/0/1/TF-GIJ-07-pr-5-0bbfe.jpg

what is that??

xp I remember reading a few pages of Sanctuary in the '90s as a teenager and being pretty shocked. the artwork was pretty captivating

Just read Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell (2008), pretty good- loved the mood and brush work

I'm sure that image is from the Scioli Transformers/GI Joe thing.

Any Richard Sala fans? I've never read a single thing by him but his work looks quite interesting.

i love sala but he's very one note. Try anything!

yeah I haven't read him in a decade bcz I felt I'd read both of his stories enough times by then, but none of the versions of them are bad

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/481/18555949782_0ae893be87_z.jpg

Wow, this Joker 75 variant cover with him as St Sebastian for GA by Billy The Sink might just be the best thing DC's published in years.

damn

i like Bill S's cover for Detective Comics: Convergence #2

http://www.dccomics.com/comics/convergence-2015/convergence-detective-comics-2

and this recent catwoman sleeve was striking:

http://www.dccomics.com/blog/2014/11/24/preview-monday-catwoman-36-and-dead-boy-detectives-11

guys you are trying to point to "the best thing DC's published in years" and the best you can do is single images specifically designed to destabilise the marketplace and damage their customers very ability to sell actual good comics to potential readers

lol yes

Neat single pieces of art are nice, but publishing garbage between the covers that's only for people who would read super pajamas people regardless of writer and putting gimmicks on top is... well, the exact thing the editorial staff did in the 90s when they worked elsewhere

or maybe koogs' aren't variant-associated, zing browser won't show me

but you still can't think of actual comics

that detective comics was written by len wein? mildly interested now...

scabbing for Before Watchmen pays big dividends

When was the last time Len Wein wrote a good comic - 1973?

See what I had to say about the Detective in the Convergence thread.

I take sic's point entirely, but the sad thing is it's closer to being true and not just hyperbole than it should be. That's the depressing truth about DC these days (that said, I enjoyed both Bat-Mite and Bizarro this week). I probably write on here about DC enough, but by and large since the DiDio/Johns age really took hold they have been singularly joyless with very few exceptions. This is a company who basically gave Rob Liefeld a whole line, remember. IN THE LAST FEW YEARS.

Mind you, Marvel have fucked up royally at the moment:

Secret Wars #4 two weeks late to 1st July

Secret Wars #5 six weeks late to 13th August

Secret Wars #6 three weeks late to 2nd September

Not even the promo items (above) are immune.

Secret Wars Battle Standee One Sheets two weeks late to 1st July

And the crossover issues follow suit…

1602 Witchhunter Angela #1 one week to 10th June

1872 #1 five weeks to 8th July

1872 #2 three weeks late to 12th August

A-Force #2 one weeks late to 8th July

A-Force #3 three weeks late to 12th August

A-Force #4 weeks late to 9th September

Age of Apocalypse #2 one week late to 5th August

Age of Apocalypse #3 one week late to 19th August

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #2 three weeks to 8th August

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #3 four weeks to 5th August

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #4 two weeks to 19th August

Black Widow #20 one week to 29th July

Bucky Barnes: Winter Soldier #10 and #11 both four weeks to 5th Augusrt

Civil War #2 two weeks to 5th August

Civil War #3 one week to 19th August

Future Imperfect #2 two weeks to 1st July

Future Imperfect #3 three weeks to 22nd July

Guardians of Knowhere #1 four weeks late to 15th July

Guardians of Knowhere #2 three weeks late to 5th August

Hail Hydra #1 one week late to 8th July

Hail Hydra #2 two weeks late to 12th August

Infinity Gauntlet #2 one week late to 24th June

Infinity Gauntlet #3 three weeks late to 5th August

Inhumans: Attilan Rising #3 two weeks late to 15th July

Magneto #20 one week late to 22nd July

Marvel Zombies #2 two weeks late to 22nd July

Master of Kung Fu #3 one week late to 8th July

Ms. Marvel #17 four weeks late to 5th August

Old Man Logan #2 one week late to 17th June

Old Man Logan #3 two weeks late to 22nd July

Punisher #20 one week late to 29th July

Siege #1 one week late to 15th July

Siege #2 one week late to 5th August

Spider-Island #2 one week late to 5th August

Spider-Island #3 one week late to 19th August

Squadron Sinister #1 one week late, to 17th June

Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde #1 four weeks late to 22nd July

Star-Lord and Kitty Pryde #2 three weeks late to 12th August

Thors #1 one week late to 17th June

Thors #2 two weeks late to 29th July

Weirdworld #2 four weeks late to 22nd July

Weirdworld #3 three weeks late to 12th August

Years of Future Past #2 two weeks late to 1st July

Years of Future Past #3 two weeks late to 15th July

It’s not just the Secret Wars but the Star Wars that are suffering, with Lando issues slipping and Darth Vader seeing three issues now scheduled for one month.

Darth Vader #8 three weeks to 5th August

Darth Vader #9 four weeks to 19th August

Darth Vader #10 one week to 26th August

Star Wars: Lando #3 slips two weeks to 26th August

Star Wars: Lando #4 slips three weeks to 16th September.

Other late shipping books from Marvel include Silver Surfer #15 three weeks late to 2nd September, Howard the Duck #5 one week late to 5th August, George Romero’s Empire of Dead Act Three #4 two weeks to 5th August and #5 two weeks to 9th September, Silk #6 slips two weeks to 5th August and #7 two weeks late to 19th August and Amazing Spider-Man #20.1 two weeks to 12th August

Also, has All New Hawkeye #4 got old Hawkeye fever? Three weeks late, to 22nd July…

While the final issue of Fraction and Aja‘s Hawkeye is currently scheduled for the 15th of July.

That's apples and oranges though?

I'm not using one as an excuse for the other, sorry if it came over that way. I meant them as completely different stories.

By Seven Soldiers / Final Crisis standards, that doesn't seem so bad.

Personally I never bother keeping track of what's coming out 'till the Wednesday of release, so delays don't really bother me. Isn't there an ILCer who runs a comic store? Maybe they could speak to a specific delay that's caused sales to drop off.

There's a new weirdworld series....?

1602 Witchhunter Angela #1

finally, a title that telegraphs the premise

It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the old Weirdworld, Jon. It looks like it features Arkon and Man-Thing.

hey guys a new Pope Hats came out, like actually through Diamond, so you can get it in your own country by just going to a comic shop

there's no need to buy 27 terrible comics and talk about how they're terrible

Yes, sometimes I feel like most of the comic threads are in the "defend the indefensible" or "why are (x) so shit?" type of threads.

I feel like I've been drifting away from comics a bit but I've still got a pile of seemingly good stuff to read.
Looked on amazon and there are three French language (which I can't read) Carlos Nine books on kindle. I'm a little tempted because he's such a good artist.

i tried to read eightball again and remembered how depressing velvet glove is.

does anyone have any favorite 80s Judge Dredd arcs I should seek out? :)

oh god velvet glove ;_;

David Boring is also super depress.

I just picked up Paul Hornschemeier's Three Paradoxes at the library and couldn't put it down till I finished it. I mean, it is very short. But really good - kind of reminded me of Louie, the whole tall tale aspect.

Also after mainlining Marvel for a year, I forgot I like non-superhero comics too, so that's kind of a relief.

single images specifically designed to destabilise the marketplace and damage their customers very ability to sell actual good comics to potential readers

The Joker covers are open order and wouldn't cost the consumer any more than the regular cover, tbf.

The very fact that the jargon you use in your post exists serves to underline how exploitative and anti-communication the base practice is.

If the clever art swipes on the last 4 pages of Section 8 are any guide, this is actually going to be a really good DC comic.
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/06/10/the-great-swipe-file-ever-from-todays-all-star-section-8-1/scan-18/
http://cdn.bleedingcool.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Scan-17-600x526.jpeg

http://cdn.bleedingcool.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Scan-18-600x576.jpeg

Is the "new" dark knight noir really just the dark knight returns without the colouring? Seems a bit... cynical?

James Morrison, explain to me what those are in service of? They're pretty amazing.

oh garth ennis? never mind.

It's a revival of a part the best thing Ennis ever did, comedy gangster / male friendship / sometimes superhero book Hitman. Section 8 was a contemptuous superhero parody.

Aw it would be great to get him on actual Batman. Proper costume too.

Tommy Monaghan appeared in Batman Chronicles #4 between his run in The Demon and the Hitman series, if you want to get your Spring 1996 on

does anyone have access to a torrent or zip of golden age Fiction House comics? I'm curious to read more and they're a pain to find.

there's a lot of one off "read on browser" or comics museum sites offering dribs and drabs; i'd like a bundle if possible.

They're a tad expensive (though cheaper and better reproduced than a lot of similar hardcover collections) but PS Publishing have collections of Sheena and Planet Comics.

Thanks to whoever recommended Miss Dont Touch Me in a previous thread - picked up a library copy and read today. It's very good, even if the second set of stories is a lot weaker.

i hunted down a pile of fight comics and ghost comics from fiction house... holy shit these are amazing.

Did you try DC++, forks? There's shockingly little I haven't been able to find there.

not familiar with it honestly. i just broke down and grabbed em one at a time from the digital comic museum

Two things I'm hoping to buy this week..

Junji Ito - Fragments Of Horror
Graham Ingels - Grave Business (never even knew this was coming out this year)

As good a place as any I suppose: Kieron Gillen on why comparing sales vs sales across indie vs big two is bullshit: http://kierongillen.tumblr.com/post/121756273497/market-maven-is-the-wicked-the-divine-in

Fragments Of Horror has a really fancy dustjacket with another image embossed into the main one. The stories look crazy.

so THIS is interesting: All Negro Comics #1 from 1947
http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=22625
http://www.tomchristopher.com/?op=home%2FComic+History%2FOrrin+C.+Evans+and+The+Story+of+All+Negro+Comics
http://www.tomchristopher.com/home/Comic%20History/Orrin%20C.%20Evans%20and%20The%20Story%20of%20All%20Negro%20Comics/images/image002.jpg
http://www.tomchristopher.com/home/Comic%20History/Orrin%20C.%20Evans%20and%20The%20Story%20of%20All%20Negro%20Comics/images/image001.jpg
http://www.tomchristopher.com/home/Comic%20History/Orrin%20C.%20Evans%20and%20The%20Story%20of%20All%20Negro%20Comics/images/image008.jpg
http://www.tomchristopher.com/home/Comic%20History/Orrin%20C.%20Evans%20and%20The%20Story%20of%20All%20Negro%20Comics/images/image009.jpg

Race and economics have always been emotionally charged rallying points and from this date we can only look to the model of history and judge for ourselves. Surely the mainstream publishers had an interest in cultivating the black market. Parent’s Magazine published two issues of Negro Heroes, dated Spring 1947 and Summer 1948, featuring reprints from their Calling All Girls, Real Heroes and True Comics. Fawcett published three issues of Negro Romance, the second issue being reprinted by Charlton as Negro Romances number four, dated June through October 1950 and May 1955 respectively, as well as a series of sports hero comics about 1950 that included short runs of books starring Jackie Robinson and Joe Lewis. White companies also designed and distributed tabloid sized inserts of comics and general interest material to be inserted into black newspapers, but All Negro Comics was not only the first comic of original material to be marketed to blacks, it was the only comic book produced by blacks, and the only comic book featuring black characters in lead heroic roles. After this, with the very obvious exception of several anti-racist EC stories, blacks disappeared from comics except for background in the jungle books, where the day was always saved by white jungle kings. Blacks were never seen in street scenes, never anguished over lost romances or romped in teen aged innocence. Probably the next time a black appeared in a comic book was Spiderman 18, November 1964, where a black cop is depicted. There were exceptions to prove the rule: some romance comics with photo covers used occasional pictures of relatively darker girls, but with straight hair and generally caucasian features, and there’s a solitary black on a mid 1950s Charlton cover about the time they reprinted Negro Romances. Gabe Jones of Sgt Fury’s Howling Commandos debuted with a May 1963 cover date, but in true comic book fashion, the series depicts integration of the armed services at a time when there was none, while comics in general made no mention of a contemporary issue. Blacks were never seen in their true percentage of the population until after this first appearance in Spiderman. The first silver age black hero, the Black Panther was created by Lee and Kirby and debuted in Fantastic Four 52, July 1966. A series of black history comics were released under the general title of Golden Legacy, between 1966 and 1972. There were sixteen issues published with most titles reprinted in 1976, and again in 1983. The last American edition of Classics Illustrated, number 169 was Negro Americans The Early Years published in 1969. The second issue of All Negro was never published.

This series of books by the redoubtable Emmanuel Guibert are GREAT
http://www.amazon.com/Ariol-Just-Donkey-Graphic-Novels/dp/1597073997
plus there's cartoons!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndVXRuKYp6E

Finished Ito's Fragments Of Horror (the first time in ages I've read a book soon after buying), it's very good. I think his work is getting even more surreal. My favourite story was the one about the Blackbird woman. I feel that the story of the quirky author is referencing a trend in japan?

http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/11/8931399/2015-eisner-award-winners

lol at saga grabbing the eisner a year after jumping the shark. fiona staples is still killing it but gah.

i mean, were the 2013 and 2014 awards not enough?

shoulda gone to hawkeye on the merits imo but probably lost votes due to only putting out like 5 issues in the past 12 months

http://www.comicsresearch.org/entries/rebels.html
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/291149294?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1

Comic Book Rebels by Wiater/Bissette, anyone?
Been curious about this book for a while. The review is discouraging.

It's pretty drastically dated now.

lol at saga grabbing the eisner a year after jumping the shark. fiona staples is still killing it but gah.

― resulting post (rogermexico.), Sunday, July 12, 2015 6:10 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i picked up the latest saga thinking i'd sufficiently kept up with it, but i was completely at a loss as to why anyone is doing anything anymore

and that's having stayed current

For those interested, a complete edition of Puma Blues is being solicited for release in September.

The only two titles I currently have any self-control about are Saga and Lazarus. Hopefully by the time the trade comes out an arc will have appeared out of Hoos's confusion.

commenter goes thermonuclear on the Eisners:

It’s been fascinating watching the comic industry have the least amount of black people represented in any creative field while its participants praise themselves constantly for diversity. What they really mean, as reflected by the Eisners, is that they are having more kinds of white people (homosexuals and women) win awards, and maybe 1 black person per year. And if you’re a white person CREATING a story about white women it’s a gold rush.

sick burn

def enjoying Lazarus more than Saga but that's not nec saying a whole lot right now

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/07/06/heavy-metal

Sounds interesting but really don't like the sound of more movie/tv franchises. And how are they going to establish a music label called Heavy Metal?

publishing full-color Lord of Light is cool, not sure I've ever seen those (iirc everything I've seen was b&w)

I always thought they were just black and white.

This week sees the debut of Islands, which is basically Image's own Heavy Metal. I'm not really grabbed by any of the previews but I'll be interested to see where it goes.