2012 what are you reading thread

inundated with comics lately:

Moebius/Jodorowsky - Incal Humanoids reprint
DC Archives Flash Volume 5
Marvel Masterworks Thor Vol 7 (Mangog! Galactus vs. Ego!)

also reading my daughter various issues of kiddie version of Brave and the Bold lol

also hopefully reading Cerebus' Jaka's Story + Melmoth soon....

Should be reading Popeye Vol 6, but it's been delayed to March (or maybe April). I am making up for it with Charley's War Vol 8, Pogo Vol 1 and Walt & Skeezix Vol 5 all in the post.

And of course I am still unfortunately reading all the DC New 52.

Reading New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol. 1. Very happy to have it in this format after all these years of spotty (or absurdly pricey) reprints.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_7Q-tD8eW2rE/SoGRm4RlWoI/AAAAAAAAC-I/fk9EUiwS1iM/s400/despair+comics.jpg

copy of this showed up at work after i'd used it as an online avatar somewhere for years

it's, well, it's crumb

this thread could do with a 'comics' in the title

it's on "I Love Comics"; isn't that enough?

I also bought Pogo but saving it for after Marv & George. Want to savor it.

Bought the first bunch of 'Morning Glories' issues after hearing various people raving... but didn't really like it :(

Journey Into Mystery starring 'Kid' Loki is a real fun comic book. In the last issue he had to give away a box of puppies born in hell.

Journey Into Mystery and Uncanny X-Force are probably my two favorite ongoings right now. Both loads of fun for entirely different reasons.

The first two, translated volumes of the Valerian and Laureline series by Christin and Mezieres - charming, inventive juvenile science fiction stories.

Oh, they've started translating them into English again? That's great, it's one of the finest sci-fi comics there is. Did they start tranlations from the beginning of the series (from Bad Dreams)? IMO the first three books are already good, but the series really finds its voice around World Without Stars or Welcome to Alflolol. Sadly, though, Mézières and Christin kept on doing the series for too long... The quality starts to drop after The Rage of Hypsis, and the final six books are marred by stupid parody characters (for example, the antagonists include space alien Mafiosos who speak Italian) and nonsensical plots. But the run from World Without Stars to The Rage of Hypsis is one of the best comic book runs of all time.

- re-reading the run of Measles one a day
- finally got the final issue of Milligan's X-Force by Fegredo
- about to read Seth Fisher's Flash prestige one-shot, the cover looks promisingly Big In Japan-ish and it can't be more painful than Willworld
- printed out the big Steve Bissette interview from Spurge's site today

x-post

These are the volumes that Cinebooks have produced so far, with a third volume ("The Land Without Stars") promised for April

http://www.cinebook.co.uk/index.php?cPath=184

iirc, some of the Valerian stories were translated/serialised in Heavy Metal magazine back in the 1980s - there may have even been an album or two from Dargaud's brief American foray - but I don't know which stories they reprinted.

Ah, okay, looks like they haven't published the first Valerian & Laureline story, Bad Dreams. It's not a big oversight, it's not essential in any way, except that it explains Laureline's backstory. It's kind of anomalous story, it involves Valerian time traveling to the Middle Ages, where he encounters wizards and magic and stuff like that! In then end Laureline travels to Valerian's era with him, and becomes an agent of Galaxity. BD really feels kinda disjointed compared to the sci-fi adventures that follow, and most of this stuff is never mentioned. There are a couple of important moments in the later books, though, where Laureline reminds Valerian that he isn't from Galaxity, nor its era, which is why she doesn't feel the same loyalty towards it as Valerian does.

Thanks Tuomas, this is useful input (I take it you mean "SHE isn't from Galaxity" in your final sentence)

Yeah, "she".

It's been ages since I read Bad Dreams, but IIRC Laureline was originally an unicorn that Valerian met in the Middle Ages, who then turned into woman. Or maybe she was just a woman who was cursed to turn into a unicorn, and then turned back? Anyway, you can see why Mézières and Christin don't really want to mention these events in the later books. Even in France, BD wasn't reprinted until 16 years after it originally came out.

Speaking of Christin, have his collaborations with Bilal ever been translated to English? Those are some fine comics too, though they are very different from V & L, being realistic political thrillers. (Christin actually used to work as a professor of political sciences.)

Yeah, the major Christin/Bilal albums have been published in English in at least two different different translations, though I think they're currently out of print. The Hunting Party is one of my favourite comics.

Fat Freddy's Cat
Modesty Blaise

I've got that big 'ol Toth book sitting on a shelf waiting to be read. Just read the new BATMAN INC and while I liked it, I got the feeling that I've read the "hero and proxy villain fight it out with wits outside the normal scope of space/time" once too many times. New Cameron Stewart art is always lovely, though.

Still need to get that third TORPEDO album sometime too.

Yeah, I didn't really feel the Batman Inc tidy-up book that much.

Just ordered the TPB of the latest Criminal volume

DAYBREAK - Brian Ralph
Issues of SCARAB by John Smith et al.
BIG QUESTIONS - Anders Nilsen
Some nice back issues of THE CRUSADERS by Chick & co.
1-800-MICE by Matthew Thurber
stuff and so forth

The Angie Wang piece in the most recent BEST AMERICAN COMICS, i.e. the giant florae robots, is excellent. More like that.

Plane
t Hulk at the moment.

Learning to use my new fancy phone, apologies for that last post. It meant to say, planet Hulk at the moment, which is just brilliant.

shaky i'm getting that cerebus to the post. sorry i'm running late. holiday hangover

no worries - many thanks!

just got the new comics journal. Interesting printing choices.

Pogo Vol 1. Taking it slow and savouring it, but an absolute joy.

lol "new" @ forks

what choices dym tho?

honestly didn't know this came out before now!
just the layout and density and breadth

Only thing I've read since, um, October has been the first two issues of Murderbook by Ed Brisson. I think they might be webcomics too, but I'm just that lazy. Really good stuff. Short stories in a similar vein to the Criminal stuff.
I also got Rucka's Stumptown HC recently. Was great. Gave it away already.
Been thinking about rereading the first two Kirby Fourth World omnibus volumes so I can get the last two.
Looking forward to reading current runs on Daredevil and the Flash at some point.
Matt, vol 3 of Torpedo is the sickest, most sadistic yet. Brilliant!

I have some of those in color from the Catalan Communications editions that were put out in the 80s but would like the whole shebang. I take it the whole thing is b/w still?

i thought the catalan editions were black and white, too?

I found this book called The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel in my lobby. Leftist critique of free market thinking -- not much entirely new to me so far but very readable and chooses nice illustrative examples. Some inaccuracy about specifics and overgeneralization but the broader points seem largely right so far.

Vols 5, 6 and 7 are all in color. Just checked the shelf. Granted, it's pretty minimal by today's standards, but looks good. Fairly sure that the first couple of volumes were b/w (the Toth stuff for sure.)

yeah, it's the Toth stuff i was thinking of esp. 7 vols tho', didn't realise that Catalan got that far w/ it - must've been their most successful series. if only they'd done seven munoz and sampayo vols *sigh*

You and me both, man. I've got DEEP CITY and I don't even know if they put out another one.

I just found Brian Talbot's Brainstorm, the complete Chester P Hackenbush in a charity shop. I really like it, any recommendations for more stuff like that?

Might check out Nocenti's Green Arrow. Missed all her Marvel work, but from all I've read about her lately (hilobrow!) sounds like a writer who brings something other than the usual points of reference to comics.

"Nocenti's Green Arrow." -- can't imagine any of these poor fuckers coming in on post-launch titles having a better chance of getting any authorial presence on the book than their predecessors.

v. excited that the retitling of Batman: Leviathan to Batman Inc, and the ed note in Leviathan Strikes, give a glimmer of hope that it will be allowed to avoid, if not disregard, nu-52 contintuity

Fair enough. But sooner or later someone's going to manage to write something good despite or within the constraints. If anyone can find a way to do something worthwhile--or at least interesting--in this tightly controlled climate, it might as well be someone with Nocenti's bona fides.
Pop culture is full of great work done despite & within corporate meddling. Though, yeah, superhero comics has definitely pushed the authorial voice to the realm of creator-owned. Writers with larger creative ambitions can probably find more rewarding work elsewhere.

Though, yeah, superhero comics has definitely pushed the authorial voice to the realm of creator-owned.

This is totally not true (or what I'm saying)! But in the nu-52 business enivironment, where ppl are fired after two issues, told that DC wanted the story to go in a different direction without being told what that is, and everyone is eventually replaced with Rob Liefeld or Dan Didio, I can't see it happening. Sooner or later? Maybe. But on a book that's had literally six creative teams in eight issues, I don't see Nocenti having a chance.

(NB: I have never read anything by Nocenti that I thought was any good, so ymmv)

Well, I have never read anything by Nocenti at all, so there I am. I actually haven't even read any new52 books since Action and Justice League #s 1. I used to really enjoy Green Arrow, I used to really enjoy DC Comics, and I'm looking for a reason to give them another chance.

Over-generalize, me? I actually very recently praised Marvel on Twitter for hiring creators to be creative (w/r/t Daredevil, Deadpool MAX & Hulk Season One), so that's on me.

it was only when i read ppl on ilx raving abt nocenti's run on daredevil that i realised she had any kind of rep beyond "author of some mildly quirky marvel comics in the 1980s". didn't hurt that she had jr jr (inked by al williamson!) as artist for most of that run, or ralph macchio as her editor, someone who was known to be fairly sympathetic/supportive of talent: once tried to read her longshot miniseries (the one (over)drawn by arthur adams) and found it p unreadable tbh. i guess she's interesting because she didn't come from an especially comicsy background, so wasn't a slave to continuity or standard marvel/comic bk situations/characters. but as sic sez, it's twenty years later, corporate comic bks are even more tightly controlled/edited and the whole new52 setup seems like a horrorshow. so gd luck, dr superman!

I haven't really reread Nocenti's comics as an adult, maybe they'd feel pretentious now, but I used to love them as a teen exactly because she did stuff no other superhero comic writer was doing. The Longshot mini is only nominally in the Marvel Universe (you have cameos by Spider-Man, She-Hulk, and Dr. Strange, and that's about it) and it's all about pondering stuff like identity and commercialism. (For example, Mojo is essentially a superpowered movie studio executive who's become a dictator of a planet; IMO Chris Claremont never properly understood Nocenti's vision of him, or Longshot, when he integrated them to X-Men.) Her Daredevil run had stuff like Daredevil and Inhumans battling Ultron, who isn't thinking about conquering the world, rather than what is left of "Ultron" after having copied himself so many times. That shit was different both from the classic superhero stories, and from the grim & gritty Miller-influenced deconstructions that were so popular at the time, so I think Nocenti at least deserves credit for her idiosyncracy.

Hrm. Consider my enthusiasm... dampened. I still think of Green Arrow as old man Ollie, but I gather he's something fairly different now. Some kind of Steve Jobs analog? Does that make Ted Kord Bill Gates? Or was there ever even a Ted Kord in this new DCU? Giant sigh.
Well, that Tom Fowler Hulk book is going to look great!

Worst Ann Nocenti Asides/Monologues/Dialogue

will shortly be re-reading Cerebus' Jaka's Story and Melmoth

a glimmer of hope that it will be allowed to avoid, if not disregard, nu-52 contintuity

oh well

This will be fully entrenched in the New 52, and we'll continue plot threads that Grant has been developing since he came onto the Batman books, but we'll also be introducing plenty of new material. So, it's a lot of fun.

If it was me and since you get to hit the big reset button, I'd bring back Ted Kord as Owlman and play off the Watchman angle a bit with him and leave the Blue Beetle as the kid.

is everybody as excited about the new DC logo as I am

what it look like

Peel slowly and C

hah, so many image search results for 'new dc logo' are for the last new dc logo

last new dc logo was fucking horrible, can't wait to see how they fucked it up now.

BEHOLD

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2012/01/4226bbb335b5f725c7a0ff182a6a16cf.jpg

yes one is actually a Watchmen ref

that's one of the two i get

Problem, Alan?

/trollface

the other two I get are Green Lantern and the Flash, the three grey ones are uh... uh

Secret Avengers #20 was a really good single issue story featuring Black Widow by Warren Ellis and Alex Maleev. Ellis can be really good at packing in story into a single comic book and this one is no exception.

Yeah, I enthused about that one over in the Sandbox while ilx was down -- one of my favorite time travel stories ever. Was #21 the end of Ellis' run? I seem to remember reading that he was on for a six issue run, and next issue is a "Point One" jumping-on point.

That's the end, and the end of Ellis in comics for a while. I will totally buy that trade when it comes out - pure, classic thrillpower, one issue at a time.

Catwoman (whip), Batman (gunmetal grey and blue) and i guess the misty one is just general horror/mystery? My guess is that they affix these where they think they're appropriate as an explanation of the style of the comic?

bro forwarded this to me - MUST SHARE

digging dudes' s.clay wilson vibe... could see buying those.

Carny Tramp!

okay, i bought three issues. will report back.

Art of Ramon Fradon, YES PLEASE
http://www.comicsbeat.com/2012/02/07/the-art-of-ramona-fradon-announced-from-dynamite/

Already pre-ordered from Amazon. I love her stuff so much.

The Jerome Opena issues of Uncanny X-Force are unstoppable. The rest varies wildly, but... wow.

I've read that's a good title. Worth a punt? Is there a good starting point?

The first trade ("The Apocalypse Solution") is definitely worth a grab.

I just finished the first two trades of The Unwritten. It's a really interesting concept with some less than stellar art. I think I glossed over it when it started because the art was so poor.

The Unwritten is great, probably the best thing Vertigo has released in the Sandman/Books of Magic vein since, well, Books of Magic. And I can't see how'd anyone think Peter Gross's art is "poor"... He has a nice, clean and round line, good eye for composition, and the ability to change his style the way the story requires... Maybe the first story arc isn't best showcase for him, but there's some awesome art in the later issues: the Jüd Süss issue, the Leviathan arc, etc. Also, Carey's writing has managed to stay interesting so far. Just as one of the main mysteries in the story was solved and it looked like the story might get a bit stagnant, Carey flipped the perspective and did a really good period piece on 1940s superhero comic artists. It looks like the series is heading for the endgame now, though, I'd definitely recommend reading all of it.

the new finder omnibus

i'm not enjoying it as much as i'd like to, though

Nemesis The Warlock pretty much from the beginning though I skipped that Rock In Comics strip cos I'd read it.
So far up to book 4 where they're on the pseudo Victorian planet and Ro-jaws and Hammerstein have reappeared. I think these ABC warrior types just popped up again after a several year gap in their appearance in the comic.
This was foreshadowed by a different bodied Mekquake appearing in the previous book.

c.s. mcneil is more interesting when she's doing the 'aboriginal sci fi' line than when she's doing the 'here is a metaphor for the inner life of the artist' stuff, i think

"Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story Behind America's Favorite Movies." A bit dry, but an interesting explication of the role of leftist (commie) politics in the film industry and community, primarily from the 30s to 50s.

they made a comic book about that??

reading JLA: Rock of Ages.

Come back Kangarat Murder Society!

Just read the Morning Glories collection (issues 1-12). It's kind of a shameless Lost/Harry Potter hybrid, the art is generic, the characters aren't very interesting, and the scripting totally sub-BKV. But I'm sort of hooked on the story, nonethless. I just wish it was better.

Steve Ditko's Shade The Changing Man is kind of brilliant, I think, and probably better than any of the versions that come later.

Chuck puts his finger on a lot of why I run away screaming when cognoscenti of the comics blogosphere rhapsodize about whatever comic they currently love. I almost inevitably read it and find it "okay" at best, often showing its influences broadly on its rolled-up sleeves which are carefully ironed so that not even a stitch is out of place. It's just so goddamn dreary and uninspired most of the time. Shameless is right.

Oh yes, I'm in a bad mood today. Maybe I need to re-read KING CITY or something.

to see if the rhapsodic comics blogosphere cognoscenti were right to love it?

Nah, because I liked it.

Since Marvel is having a sale on their digital comics unlimited service, I took the plunge and the last couple of days I have been catching up on stuff I missed (X-FORCE/X-STATIX) or revisiting my youth (WHAT IF?). I've already got my money's worth and plan on digging deep on some of the 70s Cap and Avengers runs before long.

If anyone has must reads I might have missed I'm open to suggestions.

It's probably not a cool choice, but I get some chuckles on some Deadpool comics. It's pretty hit and miss, but he fights guys like this at times.

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/5/53205/1215364-white_lightnin___copy.jpg

The Man Who Grew His Beard by Olivier Schrauwen is what I've been obsessed with most lately. Can't quite put it down. The drawing assignment piece with the cat, the mouse and Mr. Peters is priceless.

I should totally give Deadpool a go. I skipped most of the 90s.

It's pretty hit and miss, but there is some definite fun in there.

Deadpool shrank The Rhino around and then carried him around his neck on a chain.

He fought Bullseye a while back and all I have to say is "meat coat".

The whole Cable & Deadpool series is a fun read too. Really one of the better Marvel runs I have read since getting back into comics.

I like fun comics. Garth Ennis did a Punisher story with Wolverine and had a steam roller, 'little people gangsters' and great artwork by Darin Robertson that is a scream. Maybe the best Wolverine crossover ever and that is saying something.

I'm wanting to read Dan Slott's She Hulk as I guess that is supposed to be a real fun comic.

Incredible Hercules is a pretty fun series too.

that unlimited service don't work on iPad i assume?

I don't know. Probably not. But at $42 or something I'm cool with it on my desktop.

Apparently it's Flash based, so I guess not.

Just read What If #28 - "what if Daredevil was an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.?" with art from Miller & Janson. Kinda stupid but quite fun.

A lot of the first WHAT IF series is indeed kinda stupid but quite fun, with some strange art matchups. I have fun re-imagining WHAT IF PHOENIX HADN'T DIED as a twelve-issue crossover maxi-series as written today. It's much more fun to imagine than it would actually be to read.

Fun fact: the first Marvel comic I bought that wasn't a licensed title was WHAT IF CAPTAIN AMERICA WERE ELECTED PRESIDENT.

I read that very What If? last night! Silly fun.

You should totally get the WHAT THE humor issue if they have that, though I wonder how well some of the jokes have aged.

I bought all those when they came out. Don't think I have them anymore and they aren't on the digital service. I'd love to see if they agd well. Should look for not brand ech too.

Re-reading a bunch of stuff that I've had in storage for 5+ years. Missed the hell out of my Frank and Rare Bit Fiends collections. I'm currently slowly working my way through all of the "Vertigo Universe" (Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Sandman, Books Of Magic, etc., etc.) stuff from the beginning. I'm up to about '96 now. Still surprisingly engaging and good value...except when it's pointedly not. Next up, maybe my Nocenti Daredevils? Human Target? There's too much good stuff to choose from.

Was just directed to this (it's a friend of mine presenting the segment, back in 1992).

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

Oh -- it's a BBC kids art show, a segment about comics with some 2000AD stuff.

my fave WHAT IF is totally the one where Kirby reimagines the early Marvel Bullpen as the FF!

http://images.wikia.com/marveldatabase/images/8/85/What_If%3F_Vol_1_11.jpg

Sol... Brodksy?

er Brodsky

yep, sol brodsky as the human torch. brodsky was stan's general troubleshooter, production manager etc at marvel in the 60s. he used to be one of the suspects for inking FF #1, but the smart money seems to be on George Klein, these days.

I like the segment where Peter Milligan and...who else, can't recall, were on a UK talkshow in the 80s, looking incredibly dapper.

Also, I just bought the first Carl Barks Fantagraphics book, which I'm curious/stoked to read, as I've never (knowingly) read any before

oh wow dude that's heavy

like seriously, i don't know if i'd rate anyone as a storyteller higher than barks. I'd put him ahead of the hernandii, eisner, tezuka, herge...

whaaaaat omg want did not even know those were out

they're supposed to be releasing the complete barks over time
the paper quality is AWESOME, it feels like reading a gold key issue.

Yeah, it's a beautiful book. There's some dorky essays at the back for the ahem, "serious fans," but it still looks like a proper kids' book. My partner went from "that's seriously the dorkiest thing you've ever bought" to "that's niiiiiiice" in like two seconds.

I've been catching up on the Kirby/Lee Captain America series from the mid-to-late 60s and absolutely loving it. I've read a lot of Kirby's return to Marvel Cap run from the late 70s, but never had a chance to read the Tales To Astonish/Captain America stories. There is something special about Cap in Jack's hands at his peak; never before or after has the visceral kineticism of Cap in action felt so muscular and punishing.

This Marvel online subscription this is blowing my mind. I wish DC would do the same.

convince me it's worth it? What are the particulars? Logistics/programs/cost/renewal options/what it gets you/media format/etc?

It's $60/year (though there is a code on their Facebook page for some % off through the end of the month that made it roughly $42). It allows you to go to their website and read flash converted scans of thousands of their comics, from the 40s through some time in the recent past (seems to vary by title, but looks to be around 12-24 months for most current runs). There are huge gaps and titles completely missing (like Power Man & Iron Fist from the 80s), but they are adding stuff every week, both new and old.

It all depends on how much you like reading comics on your computer. I wish I had a working laptop or that they'd make an ipod compatible version (it'd get me to finally pick one up), but for that price I feel like I'm getting a decent deal.

you can browse the collection and find FAQs and such here:

http://marvel.com/digital_comics/unlimited

okay, so they don't actually publish new comics online? that seems weird.

they do - you just have to buy them individually. Not part of the giant back catalog thing.

ahhhhhh. hm. seems like a "close the barndoor after the cow left" strategy on their part, especially without ipad support. It's still easier to pirate than to buy and far more convenient.

I think they sell new stuff through Comixology and other comic apps for ipad and the like. It's incredibly easy to buy digital comics if you want to do so. Services like the one I signed up for will keep me from scouring for downloads of old comics if they keep adding things.

What I don't think they've figured out is a pricing structure that works for new stuff because they don't want to kill brick and mortar comic book stores, even if they'd be better off doing so in the long run. I can't remember the last time I bought comics that weren't trades or hardcovers.

This MDCU thing is like netflix streaming for their comics; a great idea that will only get better as it grows. Really needs an iOS interface though.

yeah, i hear you. if they had an ipad interface i would buy literally right now and keep a sub going until i died.
i remember talking to an erstwhile ilxor and comic journalist about a year ago who had just written a piece about marvel's online plans and when i asked him what the hell they were thinking he said "they aren't"

I think that sums it up quite well. None of these publishers seem to know what to do with online besides go after the pirates, which is like killing an ant hive with your finger tip. You might get an impressive pile of dead ants but you ain't done shit.

Someone has to say, "Our periodicals are now digital. Print is for collections. Our periodicals are cheaper because we've eliminated a huge cost and discount structure. Our print editions will be nicer and with value added material. We will offer a discount on the collection if you have bought all the periodicals included and you purchase directly from us."

But they are deathly afraid of fucking over the retailers that kept them going the last 25 years so won't take that big a step. Instead they lurch around blindly hoping for something to magically work like the direct market did when the newsstands started to fade.

hear hear
marvel or dc needs to make scott mccloud their head of digital distribution or something and just fix the problem. make a partnership with google or something and set up a business plan for the ongoing stories as opposed to letting them turn into a festering cesspoool to fish ideas for movies out of.

I think it's not hard to fix the business model, but that won't help the content of most of these shit giant crossover merchandising monstrosities. There needs to be a Head Slapper In Chief who just walks around the table at these company creative retreats smacking editors and writers when something horrible comes out of their mouths. They better be working out because that's a prescription for Tommy John's surgery.

hear hear

nonsense, the fact that DC haven't boasted about the actual numbers for the switch to day-and-date for nu-52 digital plainly indicates that it's not sustainable in any way. and if they do choke off the comics shops, in a year that over 30% of the bookstore market in the US has collapsed, where are they going to sell these print collections?

(not to mention that DC's production department has lost the ability to actually make books where you can read the pages. I'm not giving them another $40 for a JH Williams book with an inch of art and random word balloons lost in the gutter.)

"not sustainable in any way"
you mean not sustainable in the way that their current infrastructure is organized? of course not.

i'm sure i've said something like this before on ilc, but i STILL can't buy into the kult of barks (tho' i'm looking forward to the fanta editions, to help change my mind) - like, at their v v best his duck comics strike me, the ones i've read, as entertaining morality cum adventure stories w an increasingly pessimistic/reactionary/misanthropic etc p.o.v - nicely crafted and allbut, visually, entirely faithful, and totally derived from, a global brand, all soft lines and no rough edges, not actually that funny, or even very INTERESTING, most of the time, especially when put aside the far more quirky, personal, inspired, unique children's comics by ppl like herge, goscinny/underzo, franquin, leo baxendale etc etc.

forks, the word 'storytelling' has to be the most baggy, useless term in the comics critical lexicon - are you saying that you prefer the actual STORIES in donald duck comics compared to love and rockets etc etc, or do you mean that at the level of panel-to-panel continuity, barks is superior to tesuka or whoever, or what? (sorry, i just REALLY hate the word, want to stamp it out of the discourse. i mean you could say that, say, Druillet disregards all the accepted rules of 'good storytelling' - clarity, structure, formal symmetry, coherence and so on - but, as Jack Kirby said when he saw some of Druillet's work, "now THAT'S comics!")

the latter: that he's able to panel by panel connect images in such a way that no one else can touch. I like the hernandez bros STORIES better but i like Barks' storytelling.
i say, i say STORYTELLING son

Ward is 100% correct from my PoV.

And I've spent more money than I care to imagine (and definitely more than any of you should remind me of) on Don Lawrence reprints. Seriously. All of Trigan Empire and all of Storm from the Don Lawrence Collection. It makes my head hurt.

I have very fond memories of the Trigan Empire from reprints in Vulcan when I was small, but the crazy price of the modern reprints puts me off going near them. It is a shame that no one has put them together in a more affordable format. I know they are painted full colour and all that, but does each book really need to cost 70 quid (or whatevr it is - it's certainly more than the 5p each issue of Vulcan was)?

Oh, I also bought (and haven't yet read) L'Incal.

I've been catching up on the Kirby/Lee Captain America series from the mid-to-late 60s and absolutely loving it

is this collected somewhere now...?

Essential Captain America vol. 1 (or, uh, the internet)

The Trigan Empire and Storm sets are cheaper if you agree to buy the lot but... erm... not much. You get one book free.

black-and-white? fuck that shit

that's why I went with "uh, the internet" for mine

get the MDCU subscription! Worth the money. Now reading the Nick Fury stories from Strange Tales. Astoundingly creative and fun.

I dunno, feel like I spend enough time in front of a computer screen, and I don't have an ipad or anything like that (can't say I really want one either)

Yeah, I'm sure if I lived in your neck of the woods I'd find more out-of-the-house sources of entertainment, but whaddayagonnado.

Just read this issue of Strange Tales:

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/62/6204/P7V1100Z/posters/dan-adkins-strange-tales-162-cover-dr-strange-and-nebulos-flying.jpg

And I have to say, Nebulos the prow-headed goofball is one of the worst Marvel villains I've ever come across. And I've bought multiple issues with Madcap, so I'm pretty familiar with crappy Marvel bad guys.

Just read the first three collections The Bellybuttons, and I really love this series! It's like a crueler version of Clueless or something! Basically it's a story of three high school girls that consists of 1–4 page strips which end on an gag, but there are also running plots which are usually more serious, and even some of the gags are pretty sad if you think about them (for example, several of them are based on a geeky teen boy who always threatens to commit suicide if he doesn't get his way). The dynamics of the comic are are really well thought out: two of the three protagonists are very superficial and mean towards the third one (who's almost the only decent person in the whole series), but the writer occasionally shows that these two also have pretty fucked-up backgrounds, yet the series never goes into some Freudian psychodrama that would explain away their awful behaviour. I can't think of too many comics that would manage to balance comedy and tragedy as well as this one does... And thank good Cinebook has decided to release this series in the original European comic books size instead of 50% size they've use with many other series they translate. The art is really fluid yet detailed, it wouldn't have worked quite as well in diminished size.

Honest question for those of you versed in Marvel 60s lore: when did Avengers get good? I have slogged through the first three years worth and it is almost universally horrible. Some fun characters in the early Kirby involved issues (I love Kang), but then it is dreck for years. Stan seems to be phoning it in, and I can't say Don Heck isn't too (though I'm inclined to think that's just Heck being Heck).

I'm thinking I should have started with the Thomas/Buscema issues.

Englehart era imho

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Actually, start with the Kree-Skrull War -- #89 starts sowing the seeds, Neal Adams art starts #93. The M.U. starts getting more interesting when the Avengers mix it up with its more cosmic aspects, even though it's still Roy Thomas writing. (His dialogue and soap operatic subplots are nails-on-chalkboard for me.) The Englehart run is really good stuff.

Avengers is just weak conceptually imho, which is a hard thing to overcome. Basically it's the JLA with an endlessly rotating cast of lesser characters, it's not like there's a lot to work with. Agree about the cosmic stuff being a saving grace as far as plot devices go.

I've read most of the Englehart run before, but had never gone back beyond the odd issue here and there (like the Vision debut, for example). It's pretty dire.

I wish they had more 70s/80s stuff scanned already. I'd love to reread the Yellowjacket wife-beater run.

They have 12 Englehart comics, most being either the first batch of The Defenders or Avengers/Squadron Supreme Serpent Crown stuff. All of which I've read in recent memory. Urgh.

Worth reading the Busiek-penned Avengers relaunch? I'm not a big fan of his but they have that whole series.

If not, I think I'll revisit Excalibur for the first time in 20-odd years. Still a sucker for Alan Davis art.

Why did nobody tell me that the Kirby Black Panther of the 70s started with a story called "King Solomon's Frog"? I'll be reading this run ASAP.

man I am dying to get around to Kirby's Black Panther and 70s Cap America runs

the thomas-buscema-palmer- adams avengers are all-time great superhero comics, and superior to the englehart issues, imho (better artwork, for a start - too many of the englehart issues are drawn by bob brown, ugh). personally, i prefer the more 'mundane' storylines, like the introduction of the vision or the first yellowjacket, to the cosmic shit that roy got into later in the run, but there's very little of his overwriting or continuity-obesessing here, just really solid, colourful, inventive and involving marvel comics - don't sleep on em!

i mean, what other superhero comic in 1968 had stuff like this?

http://www.littlestuffedbull.com/images/comics/locs/avengerspoetry/avengers57.jpg

profound, too

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/Avengers(1000)_058_20_001.jpg

seems like a manufacturing fault

Worth reading the Busiek-penned Avengers relaunch? I'm not a big fan of his but they have that whole series.

It's worth a read, yes. Busiek is never mind-blowing, but he's always solid, and he obviously loves The Avengers and their history; references to various Avengers stories published throughout the decades keep popping up, though you don't need to be familiar with those stories in order to get these ones. Busiek's writing is decidedly old school (was this the last time third person narration was used extensively in a major Marvel comic?), but if you like that kind of stuff, it's very entertaining. I'd say the biggest flaw in Busiek's run was his attempt to incorporate racial politics and an affirmative action plot to The Avengers; I respect him for trying to do that, but it just doesn't mix well with cosmic shenanigans his run is mostly about.

i'm sure i've said something like this before on ilc, but i STILL can't buy into the kult of barks (tho' i'm looking forward to the fanta editions, to help change my mind) - like, at their v v best his duck comics strike me, the ones i've read, as entertaining morality cum adventure stories w an increasingly pessimistic/reactionary/misanthropic etc p.o.v - nicely crafted and allbut, visually, entirely faithful, and totally derived from, a global brand, all soft lines and no rough edges

i have to object to the idea that barks's comics are 'totally derived from' the disney brand -- the style and tone of barks's comics are NOTHING like any disney cartoon, donald duck himself is a completely different character (it's impossible to read one of those comics and imagine donald speaking in that voice he has in the cartoons -- at least, i can't), and barks invented most of the characters other than donald so he was the originator of the 'brand' if anyone was. (and it seems unfair to complain that he has 'no rough edges' after complaining about his pessimistic misanthropy!)

but if it doesn't hit ya, it doesn't hit ya. i used to have a hard time explaining to ppl why i liked 'peanuts' before the fanta reprints started coming out...

people who don't "get" Peanuts are dead to me

Aw, I kinda like that Bob Brown/Frank Chiaramonte art during the Englehart run.

J.D., the "visually" in that para of mine you quote above emphasises, i hope, that i was talking about barks' actual comic strip drawing, rather than his writing - ie i don't think the way that he drew donald departed from the house style model sheets (nor would you expect him to, tho' again to me this points to the limitations of disney corporate comics as opposed to marvel or dc corporate comics, where there's a greater degree of freedom of interpretation - ie curt swan superman doesn't look identical to wayne boring superman, ditko spiderman looks v different to romita spiderman, and so on. i think most 'general' readers would be hard pressed to distinguish, from pictures alone, a page of donald drawn by barks from a contemporaneous page not drawn by barks.) ditto w/ the 'rough edges' comment, tho' i agree that the complaint is prob contradictory and poss unfair.

WmC, while i admire and even share yr enthusiasm for reliable old marvel pros like geo tuska and sal buscema, i think brown is WAY below their standard - he seems totally unengaged by the material, indifferent to the characters and oblivious to engelhart's cosmic ambition. and i know it's kinda harsh to compare brown, always a second-stringer even prior to his stint on the avengers, w/ john buscema, poss the finest draughtsman marvel ever had, at the v height of his powers, inked by the great george klein or tom palmer, but the difference is like night and day imho

Guys, Kirby's 70s Black Panther is batshit amazing. On issue 5, and it's somewhere between Mister Miracle and joe Casey's Gødland. Nutso and with no context whatsoever. No backstory, no reasoning, just thrill after thrill after thrill. Loving it.

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and those busiek avengers are ok, but they TOTALLY channel roy thomas!

I needed an Avengers break after 40 issues of suck.

I think one downside of Kirby's work is the cookie-cutter interchangeability of some of it. I suspect he had notes and sketches left over from Mister Miracle that he just turned into Black Panther stories, complete with dwarf sidekick.

I'm sure it's true, based on what I'm reading. However, the juxtaposition of Black Panther in these kind of stories is wonderful. He keeps saying, "I'm a King! I behave in specific ways!" Great straight man for utter madness.

those black panthers were excoriated by fans at the time of their release, partly because they followed a much-loved run on black panther by don mcGregor that was sort've the apex of 70s 'relevant' marveldom - complicated, flowery, politically and socially engaged, sophsticated in a way that kirby never was, for good and bad. kirby, of course, paid absolutely no attention to the mcgregor comics, or any other form of continuity, in favour of his own (as WmC suggests) 'pre-fabricated' universe.

EZ, I've never been able to read GODLAND as every time I looked at, I just got angrier and angrier. Does it actually do anything other than riff off Kirby?

Thirded on those Kirby BLACK PANTHER books. They're just great (and not everything The King did for Marvel in the 70s was. Theres some post-MADBOMB issues of CAP that I just can't read). Pretty sure I read somewhere (maybe here) that he was using the PANTHER books to comment on his return to Marvel and working for new masters.

I'm also pretty sure it was around this time that he got his nickname "Jack the Hack" from his time at Marvel, which I remember comic shop owners and readers using openly when I was reading comics for the first time in 81-85.

Currently reading BULLETPROOF COFFIN (v.2) and quite enamored of it.

i don't think the way that he drew donald departed from the house style model sheets

i think most 'general' readers would be hard pressed to distinguish, from pictures alone, a page of donald drawn by barks from a contemporaneous page not drawn by barks.

i think most 'general' readers would be hard pressed to distinguish, from pictures alone, a page of donald drawn by barks from a contemporaneous page not drawn by barks.

wow, really can't disagree enough here.

Yeah. Ward, I'm not sure if you know this, but back in the day Disney comic artists were anonymous (the only credit the comics had was a signature of Walt Disney), and the only reason Barks become famous in the first place was because readers started to recognize his work regardless of the anonymity, which lead to some fans tracking down the "good Duck artist".

ward, past conversations on here suggest that you're really super astute as regards comix but I'm wondering how much disney reading you do? Like are you into rosa or murray or gottfredson or jippes or any of the top tier guys?

EZ, I've never been able to read GODLAND as every time I looked at, I just got angrier and angrier. Does it actually do anything other than riff off Kirby?

GODLAND starts with Kirby, obviously, and the art doesn't really push past Kirby cosmic (though Scioli does discover his own bent on it as the series progressed); however, Casey is doing some sort of weird metaphysical Hunter Thompson thing with the scripting and stories that consistently has me doing double takes, laughing out loud, and re-reading pages in a desperate attempt to figure out what the hell is going on. Easily my favorite comic of the recent past.

But I completely understand if you can't get past the Kirby pastiche & homage part of the enterprise. It's pivotal to the whole thing but it's put off a bunch of people I know and respect.

Don't look at Godland as a Kirby ripoff, it's turning what Kirby does into it's own genre. That said, it's also about the big cosmic kind of comics that Steranko and later Jim Starlin did.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TQfeVLnZ9do/Tu_FXOEiJnI/AAAAAAAALxc/4X0FsaxvhrQ/s1600/INT_Godland_2.jpeg

If anything, I think the big two need to channel MORE Kirby and get rid of all of this sad sack aping TV scripting B.S.

that art makes it look like a pretty faithful rip tbf

I wouldn't say it is more druggy read, as Jack's stuff is plenty trippy, but Godland is more than just a homage.

Either way, it's not like the King is making new comics.

I'd figure fans of Morrison's more trippy super hero stuff would like Godland, as it is in the same vein (although with an artist that is definitely channeling the King).

Scoli is at least as good if not better than Howard Porter.

Then again, I am a big Joe Casey fan. That guy is way better than most of these dolts doing super hero comics and for some reason never caught on as a popular writer at the big two.

I'm starting into Christopher Priest's take on Black Panther and She-Hulk by Dan Slott. Those are some fun comics at least so far. I read the first 12 issue run by Slott on She-Hulk and it is great, one of the most enjoyable super hero runs I have read in a while.

Certainly in total agreement as to channeling more of the crazy creativity of The King, but not his style necessarily (not that you were.) I just wish both the writing and the art hadn't hammered on that point repeatedly in the first arc that I read. Perhaps I'll give it another try, but I may just be predisposed to be irritated by Mr. Scioli's art (his AMERICAN BARBARIAN makes me want to tear my hair out -- THUNDARR wasn't The King's finest moment, yet even that is being mined.)

aww the post-madbomb issues of captain america featuring THE SWINE are amongst my all-time favourite kirby komiks - this sequence, where the swine overfeeds a starving prisoner, has stuck in my mind for thirty years (nice giacoia inking, too)!

http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/dynamics/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Captain_America206-05.jpg

^sorry if that's huge!

oh and thank you tuomas, but yes i did know about the anonymity of disney cartoonists and barks' reputation as 'the good duck artist' - but, as you say, that was a title bestowed by a small group of american comic book fans (some of whom, like mike barrier, were also experts on animation) who, I would argue, were eager to construct (or, more charitably, 'discover') a heroic individualist auteur working deep within the the disney machine.

forks, i have to confess that american funny animal comics are not my 'specialist subject' but i've nothing against them, especially - just give me King Leonardo and his Short Subjects over Donald bloody Duck any day!

someone explain to me why I keep expecting Ulitmate X-Men to get better

I mean, the most recent issue was actually kind of interesting but not interesting enough to justify the three issues before it

In other news, X-Factor remains awesome

Ward, some of this is likely narcissism of childhood preferences but I will ride or die for Barks 4eva

forks did you ever get those issues of Fukitor...?

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as on old british left-winger, i'm certain that some of my anti-barks antipathy stems from a reading, many years ago, of dorfman and matellart's how to read donald duck, which is a crude but stirring dismantling of a certain kind of cultural imperialism - still worth a read, imho

Everybody has an uncle or nephew, everybody is a cousin of someone, but nobody has fathers or sons. The only mother shown on regular basis is Beagle Boys's mother, who lives outside the law and who almost never shows affection to her offspring. This non-parental reality creates horizontal levels in society, where there is no hierarchic order, except the one given by the amount of money and wealth possessed by each, and where there is almost no solidarity among those of the same level, creating a situation where the only thing left is crude competition.

this is totally true but at the same time kind of admirable for its ingenuity and subtlety

i've read some anti-disney/donald/barks stuff along those same lines but it's worth noting that by the time you and I got on the scene, Donald was already a discarded icon and barks had negotiated special dispensation to make and sell fine art renditions of the ducks without paying the beast. They were indisputably and forever HIS CHARACTERS (check the taliaferro comparison) and if disney ate off his back it wasn't any more so than Marvel did to Kirby
but point me at yr specific article and i'll give it a go.
there are other mother characters in the donaldverse btw: daisy, grandma, glittering goldie, etc. but there's something to be said for the "it takes a village" young boys adventure story world that Barks created where, by and large, the pecking order between donald and his prepubescent nephews is roughly equal and where dewey is often wiser and more on top of things than scrooge

and yes i DID get those issues of FUKITOR and they were fucking AWESOME
though the print/paper quality was a tetch squalid. Stories and art were top notch s.clay wilson steez
i should and will buy the rest of the issues and i recommend giving it a shot yourself if you dig that kinda WAY over the top thing

btw, i just finished the first two books of joe daly's dungeon quest and they are really really great, can't wait to rip into his other work. he's a real find!

When I discovered fandom in 1976, prices for Barks duck oils were in the low four figures, iirc. I don't remember what prints went for, but it had to be peanuts. If I ever get hold of a time machine, I'm going to make my zillions on comic books, original comic art and Apple stock.

barks' oils = what if thomas kincaide painted ducks

forks, this is the bk i was talking abt, still in print:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3199/3119096290_a9d0dab171_z.jpg?zz=1

damn, did not know that his original oil paintings were selling in the six figure range
i'm not gonna stan for his "fine art renditions" they're nice enough but more collector bait
they kept him in coin though so i'm all in favor
i'm a fan of rosa's (i think right) interp of the scrooge story: that every coin matters as a concrete reminder of his history/legacy, not as genuine filthy lucre

haven't read that book but if we're talking about thoughtless imperialism herge is about a billion times worse an offender than barks -- 'tintin au congo' is easily the most nauseating comic i've ever read.

also worth noting that barks worked for western publishing, not 'disney,' and received zero feedback or attention from the disney studio in 20+ years of drawing his comics.

Lucky for him in the long run.

interesting memoir by the dude who translated that book into english: http://nafsk.se/pipermail/dcml/1995-June/004368.html

Did anyone read a 1995 Paradox series called Family Man by Jerome Charyn & Joe Staton? Longshot, I know.

sorry. That was my comic dark age when I was far too poor to buy any comics.

i read family man when it came out, can't really remember a damm thing abt it, other than it was far less satisfying than the two graphic novels that charyn created with francois boucq (simply a much finer artist than joe 'functional' staton.) the magician's wife in particular is superb.

I know it has some fans on comic sites but I do not remember if anyone's discussed the Prophet "relaunch" of the last few months.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/03/19/prophet-23-preview-brandon-graham-simon-roy-richard-ballerman/

It's been pretty good so far. I may have... more thoughts when I'm not in an 83 degree room.

completely missed it. Never read any Prophet whatsoever.

That's a plus! It's a "continuation" in the loosest, loosest use of the word. It's a whole new comic where the first issue is #21 and the character has the same name as an Image character from the 90s.

Oh, so it actually is (a new iteration of) the Prophet I'm thinking of:

http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/0/229/91590-18185-106491-1-prophet_large.jpg

aah. Read the word "Liefeld" in that link and quickly averted my eyes.

It's linked from the URL I posted, but this intro article to the first issue is a good summing-up:
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/01/17/prophet-comic-brandon-graham/

This basically came out of nowhere, as far as I can tell, and has been a lot of fun. Weird aliens with biological technology, a guy who has just come out of stasis and snaps into being a warrior of sorts, and some half-remembered quest.

IGNORE WORD LIEFELD HE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT

like, a lot less than he had to do with the Alan Moore Supreme issues, even

okay, I'll keep an open mind

If you buy this, Liefeld will not need to derive as much of his income from "drawing" things. Buy this.

reading my old issues of Matt Wagner's "Mage"

life is so much easier if u don't think abt rob liefeld at all

only comic i've read recently is a gn translated from the french by the UK publisher Self Made Hero, called sand castle by frederik peeters (art) and pieree oscar levy (story). it has a terrific idea - group of rather obnoxious ppl find themselves trapped on a beach where they all begin to age terrifying quickly - but doesn't quite deliver as a fully satisfying narrative. some of it aspires to the kind of social horror/bourgeoisie scolding of a michael haneke film, but is too slacky characterised and constructed to match haneke; other parts are airily metaphorical (there's an interlude where we're told a fairy story about a king who barricades himself against encroaching death). the 'shocking' element is its treatment of young sexuality, which is a v v tricky thing to make work in any artform, and doesn't work at all, here, when combined w/ semi-grotesque cartooning that again is p inconsistent, in terms of care and attention and finish, even panel-to-panel. i'm being quite harsh - its not w/out merit, and i wld be interested to see what other ppl think of it.

This basically came out of nowhere, as far as I can tell,

it's Brandon Graham

prophet looks v v moebiusy

likin' the look of it! and hey, that Supreme run was pretty nice.

I'd rather read more KING CITY or the second MULTIPLE WARHEADS volume (which I think is largely done, or was at Stumptown last year).

Just finished JOE THE BARBARIAN and am torn. On one hand, it's a fairly slight adventure yarn with very nice art. On the other hand, does it really need to be anything more than that?

I was kinda disappointed with Joe the Barbarian... Yeah, it was okay as an adventure yarn, but the main novelty (that the rooms in the house provided the settings for the fantasy world) didn't really work; the connection between the fantasy kingdom and the real world was mostly arbitrary. Also, some of the more dramatic moments came were also kinda random (why the heck did those kids set the dog to Joe's house?), and the final revelation (relating to the dead father) came totally out of blue, plus it had nothing to do with Joe's adventure, so it felt like the happy ending wasn't earned.

It's the first GM book I haven't INSTANTLY read. Was waiting for the paperback trade. Art is lovely though.

Yeah, the sam

Yeah, the same for me. Was really excited about it first, since the premise seemed like a surefire road to Morrison goodness, but in the end he didn't really get anything new out of a story that's been told a million times. Basically it felt like Morrison didn't have the time/inspiration/whatever to do this properly, so he just produced a half-assed script because he wanted to showcase Sean Murphy's art anyway. And the art is gorgeous, of course, but this could've sooo much better with better writing. Hopefully Morrison and Murphy will collaborate on something else in the future.

<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/King-City-TP-Brandon-Graham/dp/160706510X/";>More (okay, not more) King City!</a>

Catching up on Morrison's ACTION and am now convinced that it could be a good comic if it were all actually on the page. I'm getting the exact same feeling reading that that I got when reading FINAL CRISIS, like I was reading every other panel of something that could be great.

BULLETPROOF COFFIN #2 was all kinds of crazy skull-munching action and dread. Last couple of THUNDERBOLTS have been good too. Hoping the book will continue to be good when it gets turned into DARK AVENGERS later this year.

Catching up on Morrison's ACTION and am now convinced that it could be a good comic if it were all actually on the page. I'm getting the exact same feeling reading that that I got when reading FINAL CRISIS, like I was reading every other panel of something that could be great.

yeah, this. at least in FC the time compression and fragmentation made sense. here it reduces a promising story to total rubbish. no character development, no sense of narrative flow, just this rush of half-developed happenings. especially disappointing after a very promising start.

also agree abt joe the barbarian being a minor disappointment. great set-up and wonderful art, but the real-world story wasn't anywhere near as well developed as its fantasy counterpart, so the whole thing kind of fell apart as it moved into the final act. also, it seems like grant set up a story wherein joe basically had to die, couldn't accept that, and lazily DEMed his way out. still nice to look at.

the plotting, monster designs and world-building on prophet have been fun, but i wish the art were more refined. or expressive or personal or just just something, anything but this formless, scrawly mess.

Farel Dalrymple's drawing the next two, then Graham the one after.

^JOY^

would love to see a dave cooper issue. also, they need to get him to do a backup story for adventure time. brandon graham too.

p.s. hey, are you reading adventure time?

nah but I'd never heard of the cartoon before ads for the comic turned up on the back of Snarked.

Cooper would be great, but he quit comics cold turkey a good nine or so years ago (apart from a dope Pip & Norton reunion with McInnes c. 2010)

Infinite Horizon a retelling of the Iliad set in the near future with Ulysses represented as a U.s. marine captain. Only just started it so can't really say much more. Looks ok so far.

Read #0 of Hoax Hunters last night which seems fun .

also Fables #115 which I guess I'm still interested in. seems to be more child centric than it was when I started. Or is it. does have several plots running at the same time still.

Cooper would be great, but he quit comics cold turkey a good nine or so years ago

Jesus, has it been that long? That dude was a titan. And if I'm recalling his TCJ interview correctly, he was (amazingly) self-taught. I just found a bunch of his stuff in my storage. It's on the docket.

Also found in storage and am currently reading The Infinity Gauntlet. Still holds up decently, but it's largely a nostalgia trip back to that summer when I first started collecting Marvel comics and, between buying that stuff and a ton of Marvel trading cards, slowly learned who that slew of mysterious characters were. What a fun and exciting time.

wow, i don't really follow comics culture too closely, never been a TCJ reader, so i didn't know that cooper had "officially" quit doing comics. just knew that weasel was the last comix-type thing i'd seen by him, and that was quite a while back. sad :(

I was a little wary when Weasel switched from a regular comic series to hardcover books of his illustration work, but I'm glad I kept buying it. That stuff was amazing.

I wish I could remember where I read about/saw this, but he basically lies face-down in this harness thing and does all of his work facing the ground. Which is apparently pretty great from an ergonomic standpoint. Always wanted to try that.

interview w/ macinnes someplace? i've read that, too, but like you, i can't remember where. it's an interesting idea and speaks of a fanatic's dedication.

He doesn't really, but he wants to. Drawing table visible in expanded photo here.

Likin' Prophet. Diggin' Roy. Dalrymple will be fun to see.

Wolverine and the X-Men also.

Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred is three issues in and can't be touched.

NO SPOILERS I HAVEN'T BEEN TO THE SHOP YET. #bulletproofcoffin

THE GRAND COSMIC JOKE GETS MORE TWISTED. ALL I'LL SAY. #bulletproofcoffin

(plus the double splash pages are awesome)

r baez. sadly, it's one of very few titles i'm happy to be reading at the moment, along w prophet, skeleton key and adventure time.

r baez otm, i mean. bulletproof coffin really is great.

Bulletproof Coffin is great, but Image's distribution in Ireland is shite (largely because no one here wants to read weirdo comics, I suspect), so nothing has appeared here since #1 of the new series. This is not unlike the first series, where the penultimate issue seemed to never arrive. Curse you, fickle fate.

I was thinking, though, that on the basis of the first issue the new BC is not unlike the promised prequels to Watchmen.

Image have the same distribution in Ireland as they do in the rest of the planet, if the issues aren't turned up it's probably because the shops just aren't ordering them (and possibly that Diamond are slacking)

Alison Bechdel's 'Are You My Mother?' is really quite dull. I loved 'Fun Home', but this is, though done with technical excellence, a glorified version of the art you see in community health organisations and psychiatric hospitals--therapeutic for the artist, and of little value for anyone else.

the new yorker excerpt kinda looked that way tbh
and all the people i know who think bechdel is a great comic artist tend not to be comic nerds
i liked fun home just fine, but i think stuck rubber baby and the photographer are about a dozen times better, just to pick two

The GREEN RIVER KILLER book from Dark Horse with art by Jonathan Case. Very good. As was the MY FRIEND DAHMER book by Derf. Read issue one of RESET by Peter Bagge which was meaty and rubbery and priced right. Issue #1 of THE SHADOW was bloody but felt more set-up than actual issue. Oh, and the new Ben Marra comics which are infuckingsane.

love Dykes, barely like Fun Home. though the stiff computer lettering and stiff, unopenable pages were the main thing that stopped me buying my own copy.

(also I prob haven't read any Dykes from the last 20 years.)

interview I read with Bechdel said the entire point of the new book was trying to make her mother say she loved her.

Yikes

Yeah, I don't even have a funny response to that. Horrifying.

"glorified version of the art you see in community health organisations and psychiatric hospitals"

That is super mean (and also hilarious). Shame, though -- I loved Fun Home.

it's a weirdly candid thing to say in an interview but to be fair a substantial proportion of all the art ever made by anyone is motivated by 'wanting to make x say that x loved me', maybe a fifth or so

actually I got it the wrong way round. ish:

AB: I feel like this book is at its core just a simple and quite pathetic effort to get my mother to hear me tell her that I love her. I could not possibly do that in person, I mean I've tried that. I've done that. It goes okay, but it's never what I want. And even having done this, I don't…you know, I'm still waiting for some kind of response from her that I'm sure I will never get. She really feels like the book is -- she sees the hostility, she doesn't see the love. And that is distressing to me.

BNR: It's so clearly drenched in love and in longing for that kind of response from her. But part of the tragedy of the book is that she doesn't feel like -- well, like the kind of character who's going to be able to give that sort of response.

AB: Something that really captures her sort of split response to the book is that I got a pre-pub review that talked about my "substantive yet essentially distant" relationship with my mother, and I showed her that review and she was really psyched about it. She thought it was good. It was a starred review, and she was happy about that. She did not seem the least bit fazed to hear our relationship described as "substantive yet essentially distant." I think she would agree that's accurate.

BULLETPROOFFFFFF COFFFFFFFIN. Yowza. Not so much a story as a machine for breeding and mutating images. Amazing.

i was also (very) underwhelmed by fun home, didn't like the art or lettering and, a bit like harvey pekar w/ maus, i even started to feel sorry for the father... forks comment that her work appeals more to non-nerds seems otm to me - its a (rather precious)literary memoir masquerarding as comics (i don't remember a single sequence that could've only been achieved w/ panel-to-panel continuity). it mystifies me why debbie dreschler's slightly similar - but far superior - Daddy's Girl gn didn't get anywhere near the same amount of attention/acclaim.

or (moreso in my mind) carol tyler's far better "you'll never know"

i even started to feel sorry for the father

you're meant to feel sorry for Vladek in Maus! Artie is a total dick

i feel like 'this is a bad comic because it appeals to people who don't read a lot of comics' is kind of a bad look

nobody is saying that

and all the people i know who think bechdel is a great comic artist tend not to be comic nerds

forks comment that her work appeals more to non-nerds seems otm to me

those things are true, but it isn't what makes her work bad (imho)

to invoke maus again, its p obvious why it might appeal to ppl not marinated in comic bk lore - 'big' subject, provocative metaphor, simple drawing/storytelling etc - but maus is a great work of art, and fun home ain't

a lot of the work is being done in the relation between the always-reflecting narration and the always-dramatising images.

http://ed-rex.com/sites/default/files/2010_09/fun_home_page_93.jpg

there's also the insistence on the form of the fun. home itself, that it is visibly there all the damn time is important.

http://hoodedutilitarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Fun-Home-09.jpg

sure, it's a cartoonist's comic, it's not formally innovative, and there are ways the same point could be put across in other media. but to claim it's 'masquerading as comics' seems a stretch.

also, maus is fn awful

also, sic - yeah, but vladek is a dick too!

lol thomp i will leave you with yr horticultural virtuosity and i will stick w/ my maus, ty

not sure what you mean by 'cartoonist's comic', and the relation/disjuncture between narration and image is obv a p common feature of films etc w/ voiceovers, tho yes, it's interesting to see it tried in comics i guess. maybe i just find bechdel v v boring, i dunno

I thought Fun Home was likable, but Dykes to Watch Out For is Bechdel's magnum opus. Everyone should check that one out, even if you didn't like FH... It's less lit crit friendly (more like a political lesbian sitcom), and more "comicky", if that's what you prefer. A reasonably prized "Essential" collection that collects about two thirds of all the strips came out a couple of years ago, though personally I'd recommend acquiring the softcover collections which have all the strips plus some extra material.

It's kinda interesting how Bechdel's comics have been marketed to people outside the regular comic book audience, though. For example, my copy of Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For has a cover that looks like this:

http://images.whitcoulls.co.nz/images/ar/97815634/9781563410864/0/0/plain/hot-throbbing-dykes-to-watch-out-for.jpg

But the more recent DtWOf editions have a unified cover design that looks totally different:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1563410869.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

As a comic book fan I obviously prefer the first, more cartoonish cover, but you can see how the newer covers were designed to make the the books more "respectable" and easier for non-comic book types to buy.

I thought Fun Home was good work technically and structurally, but I'm not a huge fan of memoir from the start, so her let-me-sell-you-my-self-performed-psychoanalysis didn't really move me.

I read Fun Home compulsively in one sitting and was def engaged by it but found it a very chilled experience. Controlled almost to a fault.

Got My Friend Dahmer at the Mocca fest 2 weeks ago and loved it. Not sure if Derf's style (which reminds me a little of Max Crumb's) would lend itself well to subjects NOT involving psychosis? Makes me want to check out his GN about punk rock or the one about being a garbageman.

can i just

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1308048274l/2959319.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c5/Completepeanutsvol15052.jpg

Yeah, I was gonna say that the new Peanuts reprints seem to be following the same logic as the new DtWOF editions.

I like well-designed covers! I don't think that they make the book as a package less comicky, just more like a nice complete package. Some comic artists are good at graphic design, some aren't, and it doesn't really matter on floppies but having a nice graphic designer stamp-of-approval on covers that puts them on the same footing as prose books makes for a nice mixed bookshelf, imo.

the p'nuts reprints are plainly not trying to draw in non-comics buyers, they're comprehensive reprints of the comic strip peanuts

the new Peanuts reprints seem to be following the same logic as the new DtWOF edition

these are apples and oranges, not even comparable imho

the fanta peanuts volumes have been a massive success, kept fanta in business and then some etc, and their 'look' has been much copied throughout the industry eg

https://shop.idwpublishing.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/5e06319eda06f020e43594a9c230972d/d/i/dicktracy_11.jpg

the design on the peanuts volumes is by seth, of course, so that's one cartoonist paying tribute to another (and in fact, using design to communicate his feeling/appreciation for the comic). simiarly, chris ware has done design work on gasoline alley and krazy kat reprints. i don't know if that's the same w/ the two bechdel volumes, or if she designed the covers herself. i actually prefer the second version, because on the evidence of the first cover, bechdel isn't much of a colourist, again assuming she coloured it herself (a surprising number of great cartoonists are actually poor colourists of their own work!)

of course, the success of the peanuts reprint bks is mostly due to the fact that peanuts is one of the two or three most popular comic strips worldwide ever - making the distinction btween comic readers and non-comic readers meangingless - and it has never before been reprinted complete in sequence with v good reproduction. they cld prob have designed it on indesign in abt five seconds and it wld still have sold v v well.

Also the older Peanuts paperbacks (1960s ones iirc) are not a world away from the Seth design sensibility.

the example that thomp gives above is a uk edition, which were condensed versions of the (yes, v. nice-looking) american originals. i don't know abt the us editions, but those little britishes paperbacks had to print the panels vertically rather than horizontally to fit the page format - so, not an especially effective way to follow schulz' storytelling.

I thought I remembered as a child them being 6 panels to a page therefore 2 days and it being 1-2/3-1/2-3 in setup. Then again, I had the Peanuts Festival which was 3 panels across.

I read the Peanuts reprints avidly until about 1970, when I suddenly stopped liking them. This has not happened with Dick Tracy, Walt & Skeezix, Krazy Kat, Popeye...

In fact, I finished Popeye the other day. Some of the panels in this edition are the funniest of the lot, but as a whole the series has been one of the finest things I have ever read.

i actually prefer the second version, because on the evidence of the first cover, bechdel isn't much of a colouris

I have no interest in reading this in general but the original one is fucking hideous, would never pick that up. the second one is just a superior design.

Also the older Peanuts paperbacks (1960s ones iirc) are not a world away from the Seth design sensibility.
― Hierophantiasis (Jon Lewis), Friday, May 11, 2012

2/3 of the way through JUDGE DREDD COMPLETE CASE FILES, VOL. 2. McMahon's got a lot of energy, but his main purpose seems to be to bum we out that I'm not, at that moment, looking at Bolland or Ewins.

yeah, but vladek is a dick too!

sure but 2/3 of the book is about WHY he's such a dick as an old man, Artie's mostly just a brat

Some comic artists are good at graphic design, some aren't, and it doesn't really matter on floppies but having a nice graphic designer stamp-of-approval on covers that puts them on the same footing as prose books makes for a nice mixed bookshelf, imo.

the original Dykes were never in floppies nor sold to a "comic book" audience - they were in Kliban-format TPBs and probably sold 55% in gay bookshops, 40% in other independent bookshops, and 4.9% in US chains, with .1% in a handful of comic shops that ordered them direct from Firebrand

anyway that first one is fun and gives an idea of the tone of the strip and is inviting due to being by the author's hand - the second one is stiff and awful and looks like a textbook. (And due to the designer obviously taking ten minutes flat to knock it up on computer, makes one not feel like investing one's own time into it.)


The earliest Dick Tracy volumes were a DIRECT copy of Seth's Peanuts covers, to the point where it's mindboggling they could even credit, and bothered to pay, Ashley Wood (!). When Dean Mullaney came on board at IDW he changed it up as much as possible while keeping the same vibe, presumably out of sheer embarrassment.

As a comic book fan I obviously prefer the first, more cartoonish cover, but you can see how the newer covers were designed to make the the books more "respectable" and easier for non-comic book types to buy.

― Tuomas, Friday, May 11, 2012 8:58 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jeez louise, as fan of half-decent design (and comic books, obviously), i prefer the recent edition. the fact that something is a comic book is no excuse for bad coloring, cramped layouts and gross lettering.

also, maus is fn awful

― thomp, Friday, May 11, 2012 8:31 AM (9 hours ago)

thank god for crazy people. more mice for the rest of us.

i don't read many comics anymore. this is about it at present:

1) was optimistically following several of DC's new 52 titles, but now i'm down to, well, to none. not even morrisson's action comics, and i'm a card-carrying g-moz fanboy. have heard good things about mieville's dial H, so i might give that a shot...

2) i kind of love graham's prophet, esp w dalrymple on board. need more of this kind of non-continuity bound, wildly inventive, galaxy-spanning, psychedelic sci-fi.

3) ADVENTURE TIME!

4) brian churilla's the secret history of DB cooper is awesome so far. worried that it's gonna bog down in "serious espionage" shit.

5) always up for more orc stain, when and if it comes out.

6) jon lewis apparently has true swamp out in paper again. want, but have't seen a copy yet.

7) was excited by the vaguely moebius-like art and colors of the first issues of azzurello's spaceman, but the story got boring quick and the patois killed it for me.

that's it, i guess. would buy basically anything drawn by graham, pope, quitely, andy clarke or frazier irving, but i don't know what they're up to at the moment. not to mention brendan mccarthy, perpetually MIA.

psyched to have king city in a nice bound volume, flex mentallo, too. recoloring doesn't bother me. kate beaton's hark! a vagrant is probably my single favorite comics-type purchase of 2012 though. want the fantagraphics joost swarte book, but can't afford it at the mo. wonder if we'll ever see a second volume of x'ed out. and if we do, whether it'll come to us via pantheon.

but now i'm down to, well, to none. not even morrisson's action comics, and i'm a card-carrying g-moz fanboy.

I'm reasonably certain the coming issues will continue the problems I (and presumably you) have had with the series thus far, but the most recent issue, #9, might be one to return to (assuming you haven't already read it).

i kind of love graham's prophet, esp w dalrymple on board.

YES. Looking forward to the upcoming Graham w/a issue.

always up for more orc stain, when and if it comes out.

May be a while considering GODZILLA...

wonder if we'll ever see a second volume of x'ed out.

I'm pretty sure it is - saw something the other day, the second cover, I think.

Here's a link for the Burns x'ed out sequel!

feel like i'm alone in way preferring 'fun home' to 'dykes to watch out for,' which really only got really good in the last couple of years -- i read the collected (tho not 'complete,' frustratingly) DTWOF last year and bechdel's sudden maturity as an artist, after like 200+ pages of kinda-engaging soap opera stuff with iffy drawing, was kinda breathtaking.

neither is comparable to 'maus,' tho, which is all-time top 5 material IMO.

kinda agree, felt like a huge leap from DTWOF to Fun Home, but it could seem that way because we read Fun Home first

read dykes first, fun home is way better overall

lacks dykes' charm and easy/immediate/offhand appeal tho

feel like i'm alone in way preferring 'fun home' to 'dykes to watch out for,' which really only got really good in the last couple of years

Me too! I actually gave up on Dykes before it got good. Wading through the early, iffy stuff got too boring. But then that's also why I've never really got to grips with the Hernandezes either, so feel free to shoot me.

xaime's been completely solid and on top of his art and storytelling for a loooong time, don't get the comparison

gilbert comes and goes

yeah, wld say that jamie was p much great right frm the start (especially drawing-wise), gilbert started heartbreak soup in issue 3? of L&R? cerebus might be a better comparison?

i get impatient with the early L&R stuff but art-wise it's always been really strong -- definitely way ahead of early bechdel, which is just really incompetent cartooning.

honestly, i think JH is one of the finest american long-form comix artists & writers ever, period, with very little competition

Don't know if we have a Rolling General Comics Industry News thread, but Filipino artist Tony DeZuniga has died.

http://www.newsfromme.com/2012/05/10/tony-dezuniga-r-i-p/

reading Batman Inc. pretty fun.

aw, i liked dezuniga

No judgment on these particular designs, but another point for the "comics collections should have good graphic design" pile: http://blog.newsarama.com/2012/05/22/why-cant-more-comics-look-like-this/

I do wish more series had solid spine designs.

Read Joe the Barbarian. Artwork was phenomenal. I don't think I quite understood what Morrison was going for in this story, beyond the kind of stuff he's did in Flex Mentallo, Final Crisis, Batman RIP, etc.

Yeah - its... too ambitious? It hints at duelling realities, but just meanders about. It's a nifty six issue series that doesn't need the bloat.

Eh? I didn't notice anything ambitious about it, if anything the it felt there was too little ambition. The division between the real and fantasy world was straightforward right from the beginning, and (unlike in Flex Mentallo), there were no further twists or ambiguities that would've made it more interesting. Plus the ending (the way Joe manages to save the house) was a deus-ex-machina ass pull, nothing in the story even hinted at that direction.

it was kinda set up early that he would be rewarded by hearing his father somehow by saving the world, so it kinda made sense - the deeds being in the "tomb of the iron knight"/basement

Xaime's made a few huge jumps forward in excellence in his time - he was rly rly good by the mid-80s, but then Death Of Speedy is a quantum leap into greatest alive territory. and coming after the major misfire (for a bookstore-formatted reboot) of the Ti-Girls two parter, Love Bunglers / Browntown is like a hibernating god stretched, shook off his winter coat and went "oh what? yeah I guess I can still show up everyone in my own and all younger generations, nbd"

I did find it way easier to get into Beto as a teenager bcz his writing was stronger earlier. And the underlying drawing was there from the start, but the pen/feathering style (combined with italicised lettering) isn't as immediately welcoming as his later brus/spotted black work.

I liked that Joe The Barbarian didn't feel the need to throw in a twist, once the division between realms was set up, but that consistency would have felt more rewarding in a single graphic novel than over something like a year or more's serialisation

Re Hernandezes, I bought the first few books of the old collections, and couldn't get past the not very good sci-fi/cavewomen in space stuff the series begins with. I know it changes later on, but I lost my interest before getting there.

pen/feathering style (combined with italicised lettering) isn't as immediately welcoming as his later brush/spotted black work

yeah this was re Jaime's Rockets period btw

I love that "major misfire" story. Doesn't compare to what follows it, but still.

Re Hernandezes, I bought the first few books of the old collections, and couldn't get past the not very good sci-fi/cavewomen in space stuff the series begins with. I know it changes later on, but I lost my interest before getting there.

This is just hugely, hugely tragic and why I'd recommend newbies skip that stuff altogether on a first readthrough. I would strongly suggest that you do yourself a favor and try again at some point where the rocketships and dinosaurs stop showing up.

I love the early Xaime stories, but if that's what it takes to get to the masterpieces like Death of Speedy and beyond, then ^^^^ otm.

Yeah, y'know, come back to that early stuff when you wanna see the first appearances of characters and, like, figure out what the deal is with Rena Titañon or whatever, but don't let it be the impediment that keeps you from enjoying some of the finest comics ever.

Those early stories are especially great to go back to now that the characters have reached middle age. Knowing what's to come, the pathos is overwhelming.

deric and WMC otm

OK, so where _is_ a good starting point? Which book should I buy first?

The most economical method would probably be to get The Locas Collection directly from Fantagraphics -- 1320 pages in 5 volumes, all the Locas stories from vols. 1 and 2 for $65. But if you want to go one volume at a time, I'd say start with vol. 2, The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S.

So, uh, I'm not hallucinating the extended Mountain Goats reference in the new Mighty Thor, am I?

Nope. Fraction said Marvel goofed and forgot to put in the title - "the best ever death metal band out of Broxton".

deets!

There's a Jeff, a mention of his buddy Cyrus and the band they were in, and a few "Hail Satans". How those are integrated to a larger story you have to read for yourself.

ok i'm never gonna understand it then

now reading: old Berni Wrightson horror comics

I just finished reading Dan Slott's run on She-Hulk. Surprisingly fun. Maybe I should read his Spider-Man stuff next.

She-Hulk went so off the boil by the end that I no longer felt like following Slott's work anywhere

His Spider-Man/Human Torch mini is terrific fun, though - drawn (and ghost-co-written) by Ty Templeton. The collection was a digest, so mildly annoyingly tiny and difficult to read, but appealingly only eight bucks or so.

The first 12 issue She-Hulk series was much better than the following run. It definitely ran down as it got caught up in continuity and had to be reined in by editorial. Of course, that was also when it sold the most. People are silly.

I'll look for the Spider-Man/Human Torch. Not sure if they have it in the digital reader thing.

They do have it on MDCU. That's my next read.

Thumbs-up on the SPIDEY/TORCH mini. Bonus Spidermobile.

Just reread the WARLOCK series from Marvel (pre INFINITY-EVERYTHING). It's still great. It's still terrible at the same time. Things were done with pages there that defy description.

There's finally an Essential Warlock coming later this year with all that early stuff in it.

Best news I've heard all month. But it'll be b/w won't it? I've got scans of the WARLOCK SPECIAL EDITION from 1984 or so (as well as paper originals). Might pass on that, but probably don't have the willpower.

AFAIK, all the original 70s Warlock comics have already been collected in Marvel Masteworks Warlock Vol. 1. (the pre-Starlin stuff), and Vol. 2 (the Starlin comics). They're kinda pricey, but both are hardcover and about 300 pages.

Eh, I always hate those B&W reprints. You can feel the missing color.

yup. They feel sort of pointless

I guess the point is paying 15 bucks for the B&W Essential edition, instead of 50 bucks for the coloured Marvel Masterworks one?

Pretty much. They're designed for us poors.

b&w = incredibly evocative of the way that certain britishes marvel comics fans hem hem first experienced these 'classic' stories - eg in cruddy black and white weekly reprint mags. but also, black and white sometimes lets you appreciate the line/artwork better eg i don't think colan and palmer's tomb of dracula issues have ever looked better than in the essential volumes, and also, lots of the colouring choices made on these super-deluxe 'archival' reprint problems are just as diminishing as stripping out the colour altogether - inappropriate (computer) re-colouring, muddy reproduction of original comic book colour, etc etc. as a big hunk of reading material, which wld often cost thousands to buy in the original editions, the essentials represent v v gd value for money, imho (generally, dc/national have always kept better quality stats of their titles, so the showcase series generally have nice clean pages that haven't been obviously re-drawn/'restored').

also, the early issues of warlock, pre-jim starlin, are p ho-hum and not especially deserving of hardbacked deluxoid reverence

tho i do concede that the magus shld always be in colour

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c6/Themagusoriginal.png/250px-Themagusoriginal.png

As long as the Masterworks volumes are still being issued, I think the Essentials are a wonderful idea. There's lots of stuff that I want to read but that a) I don't think really requires the deluxe treatment and b) that I don't want to pay a lot of money for. The Essentials are just so economical. I have pretty much everything up through 1970 and it only set me back, what, a couple hundred bucks? That's pretty rad. There's stuff like Kirby's Thor that I'll probably eventually shell out for the color reprints of, but I'm cool for now.

I imagine Colan's dynamism, the hites and dites and the sense that characters in motion were moving almost too fast to see, made coloring his work a little more difficult in those pre-digital days. I should have asked Carl Gafford about that back when I was in CAPA-Alpha, but never thought of it.

but also, black and white sometimes lets you appreciate the line/artwork better eg i don't think colan and palmer's tomb of dracula issues have ever looked better than in the essential volumes,

OTM. I don't even want to see Colan in color anymore, it just gets in the way of what's great about him.

Colan was so awesome; he was like a "third way" at Marvel. No Kirby in him at all, no Ditko either. Who the fuck followed him stylistically?

Ditko also looks fucking great in Essentials black and white. Kirby/Sinnott too. Kirby/Colletta though, NAGL in B&W. You need the colors to tell you where the boundaries of the figures and objects are.

Jonah Hex also looks awesome in its B&W phonebook.

Have to say that a lot of the old ghost story/haunted house/whatevers comics look fine in B/W. Superhero stuff often suffers but I can read it just fine and it's a hundred times cheaper than the hardcovers and a lot easier than bargain bins.

After getting to peruse a lot of Colan through the MDCU I have to say that, as much as I love him on the Tomb OF Dracula I pretty much hate him on superheroes. I find his Iron Man and Daredevil issues almost unreadable. Except for covers; the man was born to do covers.

I love the Essential Spider-Man Ditko volumes. To see his line work evolve is such a joy. Can't read his Strange stuff in black and white though. Not trippy enough.

hey so I'm feeling pretty good about going off Slott as mentioned:

http://toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/why-i-loathe-and-despise-spider-man.html

I read the Spidey/Torch team-up and I liked one out of the five issues. Tried to read the Spider-Man BIG TIME story and gave up two issues in. Slott lost the plot after that first She-Hulk series.

xp Uck. That is kinda gross. What happened to you, Dan Slott?

fucking A that spiderman costume alone is a crime

I just picked up the first Starman omnibus, and I'm two thirds trough it. I remember reading and really liking some of these stories in the 90s, but they feel much more dated now: there's the constant namedropping of Jack Knight's cultural reference points, the jaded first-person narrative, the Vertigoesque purple prose... In general I think the actual stories have some nice elements, but the narration tends to wear me down. Does it get better in future volumes, or should I just give up reading the other five omnibuses?

I made it through the first three omnibuses, and it was a fun read. The references stay dated, but they're somewhat toned down after the first volume. I guess I should get around to the other volumes... I was inspired to read them mostly from the Scott Tipton/Comics 101 columns praising the series

recently stumbled upon my old cache of Colan's run on Amethyst and whoah that shit was way darker/more psychedelic than I remembered

What issue #'s were Colan?

Dylan Horrocks occasionally reps for that comic. He wished he could write a reboot of it when he was doing bat-verse DC scripts in the early 00s.

Apparently DC is getting off the dime and reprinting AMETHYST, but as a SHOWCASE b/w book. I suppose it's better than nothing at all.

I'm remembering that the only way you used to be able to get the FOURTH WORLD comics was as a greytoned b/w set of 4 books. That's how I first read 'em, actually. Eventually they came around (I guess Morrison basing a lot of his later DC work in FW helped...)

Pretty sure Colan did JEMM: SON OF SATURN as well, or a chunk of it, and it was pretty good.

Colan also did the vastly underrated NIGHT FORCE, which became kind of a template for Vertigo-style storytelling long before Vertigo. Think that just got recently collected.

Reading through ESSENTIAL DR. STRANGE v.3 and there's a ton of Colan in that. Colan inked by Tom Palmer, even. Brunner inked by Romita and Giordiano and Janson. Good stuff. Trippy Englehart stories, too.

amethyst = drawn by ernie colon, not gene colan

d'oh that's right my bad

anyway yeah that comic is weird

I might be re-reading all the MICRONAUTS comics. Just maybe.

oh man...

Going on vacation and I should read something good for me, but man I DON'T WANT TO.

That backyard adventure issue is burned in my brain.

I have a complete run of those, one of the only big chunks of Marvel/DC I've kept with me across all the moves. Partly cause I love them and partly cause I know they'll never get collected/reprinted due to gnarly licenses/rights.

Basically the first dozen or so issues are mega and then after a lull of a year or so it picks up and gets awesome again.

That backyard adventure issue is burned in my brain.

haha yeah - look out for that lawnmower!

I still feel bad about what happened to Bill Mantlo. He did good and bad stuff but he was always at least weird.

yeah, an awful tragedy

Agreed on Mantlo. Now that I think about it, his work was probably more influential on me as a kid than Claremont or Gerber was. He was one of those workhorses who just got chucked to the wolves.

I guess Bill Mantlo was kind of schedule glue for Marvel during that time, which might be why his stuff is so maddingly inconsistent. If they needed a script in two days, he'd deliver, if they needed on the next day, he'd deliver, if they needed one in two hours it was done.

The first year of Micronauts with Mantlo and Golden is one of the best comics of that time. It really was a pretty good title most of the run even through the re-start later in the 80s.

Its kind of quaint to think back how unique it was to get into a comic that started with issue 1 was around that time (with say Rom or Micronauts or Shogun Warrior), which coincides in the period where I started reading comics on a month to month basis. Before the mini-series and the direct market taking over the comics, it was kind of a oddly unique thing to some extent. I know I would get something like Shade the Changing Man because, heck man this is a #1.

or say Machine-Man...as a #1

Its kind of quaint to think back how unique it was to get into a comic that started with issue 1 was around that time (with say Rom or Micronauts or Shogun Warrior), which coincides in the period where I started reading comics on a month to month basis.

This. (I also began serious monthly buying at that time).

Yeah, but doesn't that time period come just before the proliferation of mini-series and then it seems like there were number ones all over the place.

Then the plague of series reboots came...

Proliferation of miniseries begins with Wolverine iirc. Rom and Micronauts kicked off in... '78?

To be a pedant, ROM and MICRONAUTS weren't ever billed as miniseries (though there was an X-MEN/MICRONAUTS series that indeed was.) MICRONAUTS ran for 53 issues and then had a follow-on series that ran for almost 30. ROM went into the 80s or so, IIRC. WOLVERINE, however, may have been the miniseries that started that particular gold rush, but it wasn't until 1982 or so.

Just read Finch's THE DARK KNIGHT vol. 1. With the exception of the Morrison "Return" story (naturally) a total dud; i was kinda surprised just how bad it was, honestly. About 11 pages of story per issue, a nonsensical plot, horribly '90s storytelling hallmarks like way too many splash pages and dropped twists, etc.

xpost yes, I was making the point that ROM and MICRO come from before the miniseries explosion, when a #1 issue was a big deal.

New comics in 78-79 when I was a kid were still mostly bought on spinner or magazine racks in stores.
The whole thing with mini-series kind of started in the early 80s with a trickle building to a regular thing but only at the early book stores and comic book shops that bought 'direct' like almost all comics are sold now. That said, I remember even tracing down an odd issue here and there out of a supermarket in the mid-late 80s.

I remember when a local used book store started a sub list like maybe 83-85, which in essence was the first comic shop in my town and the ENTIRE pull list for all publishers for a month was on the front of one sheet.

You take something like Marvel in the mid-70s up till maybe 81-83 when the direct market started to happen and become popular, you can about count out easily near all of the series that started at issue 1. DC had some too, but they also did a whole lot more anthology comics back then with multiple characters in one title.

Let's see...staying out of the b&w mags looking at My Comic Shops search engine looking for new titles Marvel 76-82. 31 titles in like six years, quite a few of them being the new series they started with Kirby coming back to Marvel.

Howard the Duck
Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-man
Human Fly
Star Wars
Battlestar Galactica
Shogun Warriors
Rom
Micronauts
2001
Devil Dinosaur
Godzilla
John Carter Warlord of Mars
Logans Run
Man from Atlantis
Moon Knight (I remember that this one later this one went comic book shops only at one issue and that one was always worth a buck or two more as a back issue, as it was harder to find. I think it is #23, if I remember right.)
She-Hulk
Ms. Marvel
Machine-man
Black Panther
Inhumans
Eternals
Champions
Conan the King
Marvel Fanfare (the first regular direct sold title)
Nova
Omega the Unknown
Red Sonja
Spider-Woman
Star Trek
Team America
What If

it was an odd collection of stuff, no doubt

Yeah, lots of that stuff is way below the radar. I'd completely forgotten about HUMAN FLY and the INHUMANS/ETERNALS axis of books. I miss MARVEL FANFARE. Pretty sure DAZZLER should be on that list, too, and I recall it being something of a big deal that it was direct sales shops only (though I could still get it at 7-11).

Still, that only comes out to about 5-7 new titles a year. I wonder how many of them were always intended to be limited runs, if any? Or did they really plan on SHE-HULK being in continuous publication until 2012? (The last is rhetorical.)

Speaking of Inhumans/Eternals, from the hints dropped in the Avengers books and on Newsarama and other sites, my guess is Bendis is going to take over/reboot the Cosmic Marvel U. I assume it's part of a big plan to give Thanos a high profile for a couple of years leading up to Avengers 2.

I bet those'll be the best comics ever. Brian Bendis would totally be my go-to creator for a sense of cosmic grandeur and wonder.

My knowledge abt Bendis is all second-hand but even I sense sarcasm there

Woah. Sorry. The sarcasm indicator's light burnt out. #forever

2012 What You're Listening To Thread:
http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/46135
Your host, Art Spiegelman, Sophie Crumb, Nick Bertozzi, Ivan Brunetti, Seth, Megan Kelso, Joe Sacco, Gary Groth + some guy who travels to Asia to dress up as Santa also featuring interviews with Kim Deitch and Françoise Mouly

Bendis taking over the cosmic Marvel stuff would be awful! For a while the cosmic corner was the only constantly enjoyable part of Marvel because it wasn't tainted by Bendis' "realism" and tendency to write superhero comics like they were a cop show or war movie.

can't wait for the bendis cosmiccomics, might make them a bit less boring than usual

also, i don't wait to be a parade pisser but ppl are really really overrating mantlo on this thread, the man prob wrote more terrible marvel comics than any other 70s marvel hack

Hooray for terrible Marvel comics of the 70s.

gd luck w/ that run of mantlo-written human flys, matt

or issue 30 of the defenders feat mantlo's tap-dancing supervillain tapping tommy:

http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/tappin16.gif

Gladly.

that looks amazing tbh, would happily read a blogpost with like 20 panels from the story

Word.

Rereading SLASH MARAUD. Is insane.

I have that somewhere in the house, I think. Paul Gulacy?

Moench/Gulacy. Yeah. Never been reprinted. DC in 1987 went all mental.

Moench, another guy who really had his moments among expanses of meh. Aztec Ace was awesome.

I absolutely loved MOKF at the time, but it hasn't dated very well.

My favorite Gulacy memory has nothing to do with his work. In the long, great TCJ interview with Tom Sutton, Sutton rattles off some artists of his era including 'The Gulacys'. Groth says something like 'You mean Paul Gulacy'?. Sutton: 'Yeah, aren't there a couple of them?' Groth: 'just one as far as I know'.

WmC I have been trying for ages to identify a MOKF issue from the mists of my recall. It might have been an annual or special or something-- what I remember is that it was a clear ripoff of The Circus Of Dr. Lao. Shang Chi was proceeding past a number of cages with various wise monsters in them, with whom he held dialogues. Do you remember anything like that?

Didn't ring a bell, but I looked through the scans I have and it's #36. Art by Keith Pollard/Sal Trapani -- "Cages of Myth, Menagerie of Mirrors!" lol

Moench, another guy who really had his moments among expanses of meh.

agree w/ this, tho' at the basic level of craft i think moench is a better bet than mantlo or tony isabella (tho' he's no peter b gillis or john warner, either). also, moench was just insanely prolific for marvel during the 1970s, it's kind of amazing that things like MOKF or werewolf by knight had any quality at all

oh, and i've been reading and enjoying the first five or so volumes of XIII by van hamme and vance, and IDW's first Spaghetti Bros translation, by trillo and mandrafina (dunno if DR SUPERMAN still reads any of these threads, but i think he wld really enjoy this volume, as wld p much any fan of torpedo)

My favorite Gulacy memory has nothing to do with his work. In the long, great TCJ interview with Tom Sutton,

P much my only Gulacy memory is a hugely foggy recollection of - I think - him being interviewed in AH, and telling a story about a fan who'd gotten his address out of the phone book and driven across the country to turn up at his door and shake his hand, and Gulacy looking past the kid to see his driving companion rolling around in cut grass on Gulacy's lawn. "Uh, is your friend OK?" enquires a worried Gulacy. "Oh yeah, he's just reconnecting with nature, we've been cooped up in the car for three days," reassures the kid.

And that kid's friend was......... Steve Rude.

[If anyone remembers the details of this better or I have it completely wrong, please correct me!]

slash maraud is a fun time

The thing about Bill Mantlo was he was Marvel of that period's go to guy when books hit the scheduling skids. Pretty much they could give him a comic to write in the afternoon and the guy would have a script back the next morning. I don't doubt that many of the clunkers in that period of comic creators is basically the same thing.

Paul Gulacy was definitely one of my favorite artists when I was a kid. I'd like to track down those two Six from Sirius mini-series him and Moench did for Epic (a few years before Slash Maraud for DC) and give them a read again. I remember liking them but I don't remember the stories at all.

Doug Moench also did quite a few cool things with Batman over the years. If you have never read Doug Moench's two Hugo Strange stories he did in Legend's of the Dark Knight with Paul Gulacy, they are worth searching out. There is also a pretty cool Batman annual he did with JH Williams III that is pretty much Batman meets Master of Kung Fu that is worth searching out.

DC reprinted a LOTDK Moench/W3/Gray three-parter as one of those Presents spined floppies last year

(it wasn't great and of course looked gross on that cheap shiny paper)

MOKF #36! Thank you WmC!

Earl is completely right about much of the bronze age output from both big companies. When you're asked to turn around a script in a night (and that happened more than once), you're going to get junk. It might be entertaining junk, but it's likely to be junk.

Funny, I used to love Gulacy but the work he did on CATWOMAN put me off his art. Maybe it was the inking. I just remember not liking it a lot, probably because it wasn't Cameron Stewart, Javier Pulido or Darwyn Cooke, and those guys made that book. Time was, that was the best book that DC was putting out monthly.

It put off the writer of the book enough that he quit rather than keep seeing his scripts turned into T&A showcases

"It put off the writer of the book enough that he quit rather than keep seeing his scripts turned into T&A showcases"

Do you have a quote from Brubaker that states this? I figured he left for Marvel which is why he left the book.

Gulacy:

At first Ed was on me about making her appear too sexed up. I always drew her really sexy, maybe even too over the top, but that's what people expected. She was this kind of slutty cat burglar. Who are we kidding? (laughter) Every artist wanted to take a crack at her.

Ed pointed out that the outfit is like something a biker chick would wear. Not so form fitting. I disagree to some extent. I feel she should reveal her body form a little more in the outfit. I know what my readers expect of me and I wasn't born yesterday that the rise in sales you mentioned just might have a little something to do with the fact that the readers want to know what Gulacy is doing with that woman's body month to month.

What's considered tastefully done is subjective. In our society, we're bombarded with sexual imagery day and night because advertisers know what people want. Princess Leia didn't become a babe until Lucas had her clothes ripped off and chained to Jabba the Hut. Catwoman is no exception.

We spoke at the beginning but I haven't talked with him in some time. That could actually be taken as a good sign. In other words, the ship is running smoothly.

yyyyyyyeah, that's unpleasant to read

I'd quit before that, mostly 'cause the stories weren't as enthralling. The book felt like it had an ending at #19 or so, but kept on a rollin'.

Eh not that cool got to admit, but really kind of par for the course and times I suppose.

I got no issue with cheesecake, but in the case of Catwoman, they'd shed that entire aspect of the book starting with the new #1. When it suddenly started reverting, I started losing interest. I'm a grownup. I can find better girl art if that's what I want to read.

guess i'm jaded, i'm with earl here... blame julie newmar

Apropos of nothing, just would like to add that Mark Evanier's blog is well worth a comics fan's time, if y'all aren't already reading it. Yesterday's piece about Ben Oda was really nice, and very much an Evanier Blog Post.

http://www.newsfromme.com/

Finally reading the newly-collected FLEX MENTALLO. Must say it's more technically adept, but I miss the candy colors so far.

I haven't been reading many comics the last few months. I got a pretty good stack of newer issues to to read. In the last couple of days though I picked back off my shelf and finished the last issues in Essential Captain America Vol. 3 and some in Essential Avengers Vol. 5, which is basically Steve Englehart's first stories in both titles.

Carl Barks' "Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes" - jesus christ this is some sour stuff. definitely a few in here I will not be reading with my child.

reading Courtney Crumrin with my daughter - suitably goth teen witch stuff

read new Bechdel, My Friend Dahmer book, um, the "Lost in Andes" Carl Barks collection. thinking about going back to Cerebus next, but i'm kinda in the mood for some more lighter reading before diving back into Sim's mind. any suggestions?

i would like to HEARTILY recommend Joe Daly. Dude is amazing. It's too early to even think this but I wanna say he's on a par with Clowes or Woodring.
http://www.avoidthefuture.com/2010/05/interview-joe-daly-creator-of-dungeon.html

i'm also rereading Parasyte, which is great and slowly slowly slowly tunneling through McNeal's Finder

wow, that daly book looks really interesting

Red Monkey is fun but Dungeon Quest is top of the line. Very much like the book you would've written in high school about you and your friends going on a D&D quest except more fucked up and somehow it works. It also has the dash shaw penchant for obsessively charting and updating minutia in the margins. Can't wait until it's available in a complete single volume; it's gonna be in my top 100

and volume three is out in a few days!

i think johnny ryan is kinda doing the same thing with prison pit and it's not bad, but it's, you know, johnny ryan, so it's more like an autistic kid drew it on notebook paper

man i should not be allowed to look at amazon
i'll be buying those fanta EC repackages

I'm glad you're so effusive, I want to be convinced into buying some comix

aaaand i just bought:

Gloriana by Kevin Huizenga
Journalism by Joe Sacco
Dungeon Quest: Book Three (Vol. 3) by Joe Daly
Scrublands by Joe Daly

yay amex points

mordy i can pretty much guarantee you're going to love dungeon quest; it is tailor made for nerds like us

the origin of Fuckitor

ok, i ordered the dungeon quest books and the sacco. i'm still willing to make a play on one or two more if someone feels particularly passionate about recommending something??

Jake Karns needs your money

idk, i just read that fuckitor comic + it was pretty disturbing

new LOEG is out...?

personally I find Karns disturbing yet hilarious.

sort of like Frankenhooker

it was def funny, but i don't think it's something i want to own... also, i think i got the point from the few panels at that link. i don't need to see more.

fukitor is great if you have a taste for s. clay wilson and/or Ec comix; I would totally cop that he's not for everyone.
mordy, if you haven't read sacco's footnotes in gaza you TOTALLY should

DIAL H was surprisingly good, having just read the first two issues.

The Don McGregor/Paul Gulacy SABRE (1982) is insane. Probably unpalatable to a lot of readers of today's comics, but I dug it. Is it good? Well, I dunno. Is it engaging? You bet.

I've never read SABRE, but those pages you shared on tumblr where cool.

I've been reading the classic Frank Miller DAREDEVIL and the BONE -ROSE story. For some reason I've be ER read the latter and so far it's good.

I figure most people would think that SABRE is too ponderous to actually read. I don't agree.

Wondering what the rights situation for that book is. Would like to see a tribute edition one day, but I bet there's only like twenty people on the planet who'd actually buy it. And I'm tired of printing books people won't buy.

always felt that the v. last thing don mcgregor needed was LESS editorial... constraint, tho' i have a certain fondness for the DETECTIVES INC follow-up GN by mcgregor and rogers.

never been a huge gulacy fan tho, kinda stiff and derivative of steranko, w/out any of steranko's (kirby-derived) energy and mad design skillz

i'm reviewing: fantagraphics.com/jewishimages - haven't gotten it yet tho

Sounds cool mate

forks, u were otm re dungeon quest. so fucking funny. i'm half-way through the third book and the only reason i haven't finished it yet is bc i'm pacing myself so that i can enjoy it longer. should i check out daly's other stuff?

hells yes

just don't expect them to be quite that good

I am really really enjoying Rucka's current run on Punisher.

I bought a used copy of Gipi's The Innocents. Love that guy.
http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/taken-from-life-an-interview-with-gipi/

Also strongly recommending everyone get on the Kazimir Strzepek train, dude is great
http://studygroupcomics.com/main/category/contributor/kazimir-strzepek/
^i assume these are the beginnings of Mourning Star #3? It's been almost five years since the last book.

Yes. Fkin love Mourning Star.

i wanna set up a comic reading day at my pad with Jon and Mordy. I've got several walls of reading material and could buy a few beers, order some food and curate an hour or three of choice reading. I'd encourage folks to bring material for me to get at as well.
Who else is a NYC/NJ ILCor? Maybe we should make a day to do this.

Once I finish prepping my hardcover (three weeks?) I'll be pretty free.

Just read through a bunch of the offerings of Monkeybrain comics on Comixology. The Roberson/Culver and Tobin/Coover books stand out as superior in the initial offerings.

Also splurged and bought THE KREE/SKRULL WAR issues of THE AVENGERS. Roy Thomas, Sal Buscema, John Buscema, Neal Adams and Tom Palmer. There's some great fun in there, far more unhinged than I thought they would be at first.

rilke - new poems (stephen cohn tr.)
plato - republic, parmenides (b. jowett tr.)

Over the weekend I finished reading the original run of Frank Miller on DAREDEVIL (I re-read BORN AGAIN a few years ago). I haven't read them since they came out, but truly understand why they still receive such praise. There is so much story packed in each issue; his run as writer & artist is roughly two years and he puts in what would now be a decade's worth of developments. Also, much more adult and fucked in the head than I expected. Hard to believe these had the Comics Code seal on them.

I think I'll work my way through 80s Miller in the next few weeks. Been a good while since I've read ELEKTRA or YEAR ONE.

i went to the comic book shop today during lunch hoping to find mourning star. no luck, tho. i guess it's OOP? anyway, i wanted to leave with something so i bought that hunter s thompson bio - Gonzo i think it's called or something? guy at the store said it was good so i figured what the hell.

I haven't read them since they came out, but truly understand why they still receive such praise.

I do too... even still when I went back to them a couple years ago I didn't hesitate to get rid of them. They're unrelentingly bleak, not really enjoyable to read. Probably most enjoyable for the artwork/design.

like the drug stuff is just ridiculous

They're brutally dark. And Daredevil is a dickhead. Glorious work though.

they're "adult" in the most juvenile way possible

Joshua Ferris - Then We Came To The End (amusing enough)
E.L. Doctorow - Homer & Langley (grabbed me instantly)
Essays of E.B. White (meh, tbh)

whoops, sorry thought this was the book thread

Through the Judge Dredd epics, somebody just streamed several torrents of them. Currently on Chopper.

curious where ppl are getting cbr's of 50's-80's shit these days (aside from torrents, which I can't do). My main go-to place pretty much became a ghost town with the Mega shutdown. PM me if there's somewhere I should know about.

newsgroups?

Mordy, I bought that HST thing online on a whim. Kind of has a moment or two, mostly just seems like the voice is off.

try mIRC. back when i was downloading a ton of comics i hung out on some #comics chat. if you set up a TCP whatever fileserv (which was easy to do and i did) you even get access to like members-only fservs + html landing pages for downloads. i haven't done it in awhile tho, so i couldn't tell you where to begin..

ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN is still really crazy good. And crazy. Crazy, mostly.

picked up Jason Shiga's Empire State hardcover for ten bucks last week. what an appallingly trite and pointless pile of shit - it's amazing enough that any author could finish it and then think it worth turning in, but that real grown-up book publishers and editors all pumped it through the system is just astounding.

at least it meant a paycheque for John Pham to "colour" it, hope he'll get around to Sublife #3 some day

that seems unnecessarily harsh

no man I really want Sublife #3 to come out!

DIAL H #3 was good, but everytime they mentioned telephones I kept thinking about that DOOM PATROL story and just want to read that instead.

new volume of Dungeon Quest is SO GOOD, loads of really weird weed smoking and homoerotic stuff tho so tread carefully
new huizenga is unsurprisingly brilliant.
looking forward to reading sacco's journalism tonight

i cosign the brilliance of new dungeon quest

kevin h is unstoppable, best of his generation IMO

his stream of consciousness stuff is so ballsy and clever

What the hell is Dungeon Quest *googles furiously*

it's so good! get it asap. fantographics publishes it

I can't I'm reading "everything Bolano ever wrote" right now

2666 is pretty sweet too, i must admit

new huizenga is unsurprisingly brilliant.

wait what's the new huizenga?

gloriana

lol, that is 11 years old

(first time in hardcover tho)

yes.

ordered dungeon quest

"2666" is not pretty sweet. I was liking it until it got to the fourth part. I figured it'd go in this direction, with the "Bouvard et Pecuchet" references in the previous chapters, but this is some Bret Easton Ellis-level grinding and I feel like I'm wasting my time. Also I'm annoyed that everybody read it already four years ago. And b/c I loved "The Savage Detectives" and "Amulet".

So annoyed that I forgot why I came to this thread, which wasn't to bitch about 2666 but to talk about how happy I was to start reading 60s Incredible Hulk last night

First and last parts of 2666 were alright.

The part about the murders was all time tedium.

To tie it into comics, the only other time I felt so bogged down by a book was Reads.

Funny! I just finished "Women" a month ago and haven't gone any further

then you'll LOOOOOVE Are You My Mother?

xp

I've been reading King City but put it down for a bit. Probably picking it up this weekend.

http://www.comicsbeat.com/2012/05/07/preview-dungeon-quest-book-three-by-joe-daly/

xxxpost There's some good stuff here and there after Women but yeah it's pretty rough for the most part.

I avoided this problem entirely by just skipping Reads. at this point the only other volume I haven't read and am curious about is Minds.

In hindsight that is the way to go but at that point I had convinced myself I was going to read the whole thing (the actual breaking point was the first half of The Last Day, where the cumulative effect of Reads, Rick's Story, the goddamn Woody Allen character etc etc, caused me to say "fuck it" and skip to the end).

Minds was OK, though.

owenp, what 60s hulks? have always found the v early issues by lee and kirby p rough going (not helped by leaden dick ayers inking) but once the roy thomas/herb trimpe were established (i'm guessing late 60s) its a really consistent marvel comic bk w/ some near-classic issues ("Heaven is a Very Small Hulk"!) i esp like the way that thomas (and the ppl who followed him like steve englehart and len wein) couldn't just write 'The Hulk' in a caption - he always had to be 'the emerald man-beast' or 'the jade goliath' or whateves

or have i said too much abt dopey old marvel shit

No I am feeling yr prose on this, Ward. I need to get one of those Hulk Essentials one o' these days.

agree w Ward - Hulk doesn't get interesting til the late 60s/early 70s

I'd like to get another look at the issues John Severin inked.

i had a friend in high school who was a serious hulk nerd and he had (in reprint or original) basically every issue of the hulk and any appearance in marvel books. this was before there was a broader mass market audience for this stuff so as you might imagine he spent a lot of cash on it. i read most all of it and i found the hulk, more or less until peter david, to be kind of a not very good character

well, it is always difficult to write the adventures of an inarticulate monster-simpleton every month for years and years - didn't p david 'solve' that by turning hulk super-brainy? - but he can also function as the focal point around which an amusing supporting cast can orbit (a bit like tomb of dracula, maybe)? some writers solve it by being geniuses - eg steve gerber had v merry fun w/ the hulk in his defenders issues.

yeah WmC, trimpe/sev was well tasty - kirbyesque dynamism in the pencils, meticulous rendering in the inking. sev was also performing miracles over dick ayers on sgt fury round abt the same time.

think essential hulk #3 is the one to go for - hulk 118-142, and you even get captain marvel #20-21 - stunning gil kane/dan adkins artwork - and avengers #88 thrown in too. really gd clean repro on the black and white a/work (which i know is not to shakey's tastes, but sure suits severin's linework...)

yeah, i like the defenders run too

well, it is always difficult to write the adventures of an inarticulate monster-simpleton every month for years and years

convo reminds me of my wife's hatred of Man-Thing. Every time I get out the essential man thing phonebook she gets enraged.

"What's the deal with Man-Thing? Does he even have a mind?"

"No"

"That's fucking stupid!"

those with no mind BURN at your wife's touch

lol

I think the joy as a kid and even in hindsight on the old Hulk comics was really the solution to every problem was pretty much "HULK SMASH" and "LEAVE ME ALONE". And who in this world would not like to some points just do that. The setup of the Hulk series did lead it to get completely weird with his villans, as most of the time he would just wander into some alien invasion, circus, military test or criminal plot and just smash it up.

I always think one thing they screw up in the Hulk movies and TV is that he doesn't talk at all. I think that leaves out quite a bit of the fun you can do with the character.

Just finished Dan Epstein's Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s. Still working on Rob Kirkpatrick's 1969: The Year Everything Changed and Ed Sanders' Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side. Just started David Browne's Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970.

I might need to expand my window on the world.

Sorry! 1) Read thread title--check. 2) Read board name--oops.

I have to buy a new printer tonight (power outage/surge fried my current one) and am going to toss the Margaret DVD/Blu and a couple of strip collections and/or graphic novels into my Amazon cart while I'm splashing money around. Quick! Give me recommendations. I'm thinking about a Roy Crane volume...what else?

What would be the first Lynda Barry book I should get?

did u get the dungeon quest books already?

No -- remind me what they are again?

OK, looked upthread. Looks interesting, but I may hold off until next order.

Did you get Pogo yet?

Don't have Pogo. This may make me an apostate among comics literati, but...I don't really like Pogo.

Oh. (Insert sad face)

o shit, krazy & ignatz

there you go!

I think I want to get those directly from Fantagraphics -- they have the 1st and 3rd of the enormous bricks (600 pp) of complete Sundays for $57 each.

No Lynda Barry recs?

Freddie Stories is my favorite Lynda.

So many choices. Also, Hignite's Art of Jaime Hernandez is on sale for $16.

What would be the first Lynda Barry book I should get?

If you just want to investigate her, The! Greatest! Of! Marlys! is a splendid introductiony best-of. If you know her already but want a self-contained fulfilling read, One! Hundred! Demons! is a great option. If you know you love her and want to start a major collection, D&Q's Blabber Blabber Blabber: Volume 1 Of Everything is super-early stuff plus the first few years of strips, I believe - the Girls & Boys era.

Picture This and What It Is are kind of motivational speakers in book form to encourage you to use your creativity - not recommended if you're after narrative.

I used to read Ernie Pook's Comeek and loved it. Just don't have any of her books. I wound up not putting any Barry in my cart, since I plan on making a big Krazy & Ignatz order from Fantagraphics as well.

....because you want to save the money? Fanta don't carry other non-tiny publishers anymore, if that's what you were planning

Because the 1916-1924 and 1935-1944 hardcover collections are available for $57 each, and they're only available for crazy dollars on Amazon. I'll fill in 1925-1934 with the 2-year softcover collections probably.

marlys or 100demons is worth it, i will ride or die for barry 4eva
i would also do cruddy; she's a great writer

when you pick up Cruddy and begin to read Cruddy you will not be able to stop reading Cruddy until Cruddy is over. It's that intense.

i approve of this message

Because the 1916-1924 and 1935-1944 hardcover collections are available for $57 each, and they're only available for crazy dollars on Amazon. I'll fill in 1925-1934 with the 2-year softcover collections probably.

I meant why no Barry

in your cart

yeah why no Barry
in your cart
in your cart

i mean

Oh fluck fluck I'm buying so many comics today

No Barry because I pretty much hit the spending limit I had in my head. I should have put some Barry in the cart anyway, yeah.

100 demons was not my bag... too freeform mishmash

I can see by what you carry that you've not been to Barrytown

started dungeon quest

it's like a fucked up earthbound

xp wasn't that a Ben Folds Five song?

dungeon quest vol. 1 was awesssss

instantly ordered vols. 2 & 3

any other tips for comics that are heavily inspired by games?

Ganges ish 2 yo

I got Dungeon Quest #1 and #2 today and decided to gift them, uh, after about 50 pages. Not for me, I'm afraid. But, they did remind me of how much I loved reading Marc Bell ten years ago

What didn't you like about them?

Ganges?

ish 2 yo

http://www.fantagraphics.com/components/com_virtuemart/shop_image/product/ddcc5a78c83024b941008de3d11dd2ea.jpg

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5586486-ganges-vol-2

sounds interesting....

ganges is flatly amazing.
i would also be curious to hear what didn't click with you re: dquest owen. Too brosephy?

mourning star is very games influenced i think
it's sorta fist of the north star-y

i get how it's like Fist of the North Star, but what games influence?

i dunno exactly; it has a similar sort of gamelike narrative i guess

Dquest #2 quickly confronted me with the least funny page of "ur a faggot" I think I've ever read? I've been called a faggot on the street and it's been funnier and more tasteful and more meaningful.

Not that that was the only thing, but some of my best friends like Tim + Eric and that's OK!

I've been so out of the game in expressing negativity, I'm out of practice, I'm sure these Dungeon Quest comics will find a good home somewhere and I'm looking forward to gifting them

well if it's any sort of a mediating factor, the third book has more assplay and forest gnome masturbation than the average issue of x-men
i don't know what to make of this dude's attitudes toward homosexuality. he clearly is into drawing anuses and penises because those are a major part of the plot!
it's somehow not offensive to me but maybe that's because i was raised on a steady diet of Spain Rodriguez and Jack Jaxon and S. Clay Wilson and the like and this seems more of that lineage than anything else

the faggot stuff made me feel uncomfortable too

and yeah, that too

also that nerdgirl is this silent female character who remains sexless and without personality right up until the moment she is captured as a treasure.
TBH i am honestly chalking both of those up as teenage male power fantasies; I see the narrative as being spoken from the mind of a few fourteen year old boys playing tabletop games and the weird obsession with "winkys" and not being "faggots" and the abstraction of women into inscrutable tagalongs all plays into that

i was bothered by the 'faggot' stuff, and i think i chatted w/ forks a bit about the silent female character, but at this point i'm willing to believe that the author is trying to develop something and not just being a shithead. particularly because he has such mastery over his content that it doesn't seem like his Id escaping, and also bc like forks mentioned the homoerotic stuff keeps getting ramped up more and more. i guess it could turn out that he's a brilliant Sim-like creator whose interesting stuff + style is always pushing against the grain of his crazy. but i suspect that he's more interested in cultural ideas of masculinity, hetero + homosexuality. SPOILER like when the one character passes out and they insert the suppository capsule in his ass and first, the loving visual detail showing the suppository slowly being inserted, and then the whole discussion of whether the anus pulled it in, or if the suppository pushed itself in, etc. i mean, weird as fuck and totally bizarre, but hard to believe he's just being a homophobic jerk.

nb, if it bothers u, i don't have any problem with that and i think DQ probably isn't for most ppl, let alone everyone. but i also think it's incredibly compelling and i'd love to read some serious crit breaking down what daly is doing. maybe we should start a DQ thread tbh.

go for it

"Faggot" don't bother me itself, but that was really the moment when I realized I'd paid $40 just to watch the author jerk off. Bumping around in the darkness of one's own id is one thing, and like I said, I love a Marc Bell and he's got as many buttplay detours and cockring subquests as anybody.

Oh, I didn't want to present "the other thing" b/c I don't like getting neg on internet. "It's not for me thanks tho" - official quote

ha, you don't have to like everything Owen!

I got in trouble with a long time reader from France (with whom I had exchanged letters and music tapes back in the 90s) over an incidental character derisively saying 'bunch o' queers' in this strip:

http://trueswamp.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/thirty-seven/

I felt horrible about offending him but still felt like 'well, the character is a douchebag, so it's apt' but maybe I don't have the right to make that judgment...

Meanwhile I have another character, a central one going back to the beginning, whose verbal signature is to swear in just about every sentence; 'cocksucker' is a constant favorite with him but it's value-neutral the way he uses it, just another word for 'person' or 'thing'. I suppose that's why no one has ever objected to him in the same way, I dunno...

woo, my Mourning Star comix came in

So Wow Cool came thru for you, excellent.

oookay maybe Dungeon Quest doesn't sound like my bag

I'm a) massively lazy and b) of poor moral character, so I'm only now sitting down to make my way through around 8 months of backlog of cbrs/cbzs. So far the surprise standouts have been a) Journey Into Mystery, Kieron Gillen's Kid Loki comic, which is a liiittle like a semi-twee version of Lucifer and b) Avengers Academy, which is proper superpowered teen soap.

They also demonstrate the idea that crossovers are best with teams that don't already have books. Avengers Academy has a visit from the homeless Runaways, which is basically the platonic model of a crossover - everyone's motivations are clear, everyone gets a little time in the light, everyone gets to bounce of a new character in an interesting way. JIM's crossover with New Mutants is an abomination - gimmicky alternative universe, starts with a #1 issue separate from either of the books, doesn't have a wrap-up issue.

I should note that I am intending to buy a bunch of stuff after my cbr shame!

heard some intriguing things about Journey Into Mystery alright. Haven't read much Gillen but i HATED that britpop thing he did

The JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY I've read has been solid (not caught up at all though), as was his THOR that preceded it. THOR and related SIEGE issues were probably the highlight of that stupid event. I wasn't a big fan of the much vaunted PHONOGRAM either, but Britpop wasn't my bag in the first place.

Journey into Mystery is a pretty fun comic, although coming to an end soon I gather. There are definitely some good issues in the run, especially anything to do with Loki's 'dog' and the 'Mephisto walks into a bar issue'.

Skipping back a bit. Comics with a gaming inspiration: please check out Levon Jihanian's work. He is serializing his work currently on the Study Group site. His project is called Danger Country. I bought a Danger Country mini from him at Stumptown last year which was super great.

His work is like a deranged ADVENTURE TIME rendered in the spare early DnD guidebook style. I felt the mini was light for the price, but that's a pretty common feeling with minis (for me.) Still interesting, though.

why can't I get ADVENTURE TIME dvds in UK gaaaaah

Got most of my big orders yesterday --
Complete Captain Easy Sundays Vol. 1 (1933-1935)
The Art of Jaime Hernandez
Casanova Vol. 1 - Luxuria
Krazy & Ignatz - Complete Sundays Vol. 3 (1935-1944)

Hope to get the K&I Vol. 1 today -- was a little surprised that Fanta shipped them separately.

Guys guys
http://www.comicstripnation.com/broom-hilda/broom-hilda-20120725.html

wow

to be fair, unlike america's editorial cartoonists (who should be fkin ashamed of themselves), the dude who draws Broom Hilda files his shit way ahead of time. But yeah wow.

Yeah, I was gonna say, newspaper strip artists have to work weeks in advance. I remember one interviewee (Trudeau?) saying he'd gotten down to 2-3 weeks out from publication and his syndicate was shitting bricks.

didn't even get it at first and then

In other news, Desert Island will have a copy of Essential Hulk Vol. 3 by Friday...

my fantagraphics lost in the andes turned up today woot

that council of owls batman storyline is surprisingly enjoyable!

Anyone read/seen this? http://www.thezoom.co.uk/ Quite wonderful, and actually funny homemade comic by a British 11-year-old. It's very Oink.

good find!

Yeah, that's a lot of fun.

The Parkinson's Disease is getting too much to handle with a daily deadline; Richard Thompson is ending Cul de Sac next month.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/richard-thompson-ends-cul-de-sac-comic/2012/08/17/06a7fda6-e819-11e1-a3d2-2a05679928ef_blog.html

This is killing me.

still never seen it. there's no US compilation?
Finder is amazing btw

Lots of collections!
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=cul%20de%20sac%20richard%20thompson&index=blended&link_code=qs&sourceid=Mozilla-search&tag=mozilla-20

http://www.gocomics.com/culdesac

http://assets.amuniversal.com/821fa8304dbf102dbf94001438c0f03b

cool, i will buy one.

Some reader-selected favourites.

those are great! which collection should i get?

I've always read it online and it's been great from the earliest days, so I can't recommend one over the other. Looks like Golden Treasury has the most.

yeah, Thompson had been a pro cartoonist for yeeaars before launching even the Sunday-only Cul De Sac (he also has a second weekly strip, Richard's Poor Almanac, that's been going a decade longer than the syndicated daily CDS), so by the time the syndicated version happened he was well on top of his game.

Chris Mautner's six favourite Cul De Sac characters

Nice. Just ordered the treasury from Amazon. Thanks for the rec!

anyone read Trollope? Can You Forgive Her? is a fabulous 830-page yarn.

i've only read Crisis on Infinite Parish Churches, tho i hear Secret Wardens is p gd too

Trollope, very prolific, kind of the John Byrne of his era, no?

http://www.ep.tc/john-wilcock/index.html

Looks great!

I just picked up Tom Gauld's Goliath and Joost Swarte's Is That All There Is? for $2 each. Psyched to read them both.

Just finished Irredeemable which was interesting. think I'd had the first several for last couple of year but not read them. But it was interesting, not 00% sure about the ending.

Now reading through The Unwritten, got about 1/2 way so far.

Also been reading Ender's Game which I had d/loaded part of a while back. Enjoyed it, though it is obviously based on a children's book, even if they are hyper intelligent warmongers.

Which was the companion story to Irredeemable? Or was that the one? I read the first couple volumes of that (the one about the reformed supervillain) without having read the original series it was spunoff of, not bad. I should go back and pick these up at some point. Are they both over?

I just picked up Tom Gauld's Goliath and Joost Swarte's Is That All There Is? for $2 each. Psyched to read them both.

jealous

Which was the companion story to Irredeemable? Or was that the one? I read the first couple volumes of that (the one about the reformed supervillain) without having read the original series it was spunoff of, not bad. I should go back and pick these up at some point. Are they both over?

― Nhex, Saturday, September 8, 2012 7:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Incorruptible, not sure if it's over but would think it likely since Irredeemable came to a pretty definite stop. Assume it had a life of its own not purely in tandem with Irredeemable so it might have continued.

Love and Rockets 5 is as good as you think it is
Got the Joost Swarte book, now in softcover

fuck, they're up to #5 now? jesus. i still haven't finished the old vol. 2 reprints

what if i think it won't be very good?

love & rockets and extraordinary gentlemen are probably the two most critically acclaimed comics that i do not enjoy

you are just wrong, sorry ;_;

about which? both?

jamie's drawing alone = pure pleasure

about L&R

(I like LoEG a lot but it's not in any realm near to L&R)

I've kind of lost the thread of Gilbert's comics -- if there are subtextual or metatextual levels to his work of the last few years, I'm not getting them, and don't really enjoy the straight narrative enough to want to try.

But Jaime, every panel for me is an amazing distillation of everything great about comics. I get a buzz just looking at it.

Slaine, from the beginning onwards. Currently got him being pursued by Lord weird Slough Feig after he tried to rescue Medb a few issues earlier.