Rolling Comic Books 2019

If you're into it, there's a whole serialized conan short story in text going on in the main book too.

Thoughts on Ales Kot?

Got into his stuff a couple years back. Ok, loves dropping all of his interests/reading into things, stories are kind of flat. Doesn’t come off as clever as he’s aiming for but a couple books were ok.

generation gone was readably okay superheroes-in-the-millar-hyperviolent-fashion
days of hate thought it was quite clever but moved into a space where i didn't give a damn very quickly
his take on bloodborne, quite frankly, doesn't do justice to the video game; this is mostly on point - http://www.tcj.com/reviews/bloodborne-the-death-of-sleep/
tried two issues of New World and signed off
not a fan.

I think of his non-Marvel/DC work I enjoyed Zero the most. I don’t think I’ve read either of the ones forks mentioned

Yeah, I found Days Of Hate a total slog. New World was a relief by contrast, just through virtue of being more colourful and playful and having a sense of humour. Tradd Moore is a dope artist imo.

I was wincing along to the idea of a rebel in the future listening to RATM and Billy Bragg. Then I saw the "Elena Ferrante will never die" graffiti and started to think "ok, maybe they're being ridiculous on purpose".

Parts of Zero was good, but parts of it was total art school showoff bunk. It didn't jump the shark as much as spend a couple of whole issues showing the jumping of the shark with lots of blood splatter and bullets.

I read Zero in singles the whole series and I was kinda pissed reading near the second half. They just went nuts and did that fight scene that went across a couple issues and then the plot got even more bonkers. Thing is for how wack it ended, there was some pages and parts of the comic that were really well done.

I get lured into these Image comics by the first issue being really interesting, then I get behind on my pull list and reading and get the whole series. Once I catch up and read them, I realize that 1/2 of them go totally off the rails and I think "I spent $40 bucks on this turd"... I supposed one more reason to follow series in trade.

The other sadness of following indie comics on a pull list is the one that is amazing that just cold stops and never concludes. Those are worse, as you really do want to read how it turned out.

earl otm on all points

His Winter Soldier series for Marvel is 90% characters and planets named after musicians and Aphex Twin songs

"Die Die Die" by Kirkman, Chris Burnham and some other guy is another one. First couple of issues were fun but good lord people are just f-ing nuts when it comes to the gore these days. Burnham has done some cool comics but I was pretty honked up after reading the next few after say #3 later on in the comics pile. Parts of it seemed a total nick of The Boys and honestly, I don't know if you really want to go there anyway. I dropped Die Die Die from the pull list afterwards with extreme prejudice.

"Black Science" is another series I read the whole thing and wish I would have bailed way early on. There were some parts that were ok, but pretty much all the characters are totally unlikable. Fear Agent is a good read though. I need to get my set of Black Science together and try to blow it out on ebay. Stuff like this makes me just want to go read old Moon Knight or Swamp Thing.

<i>Heroes in Crisis</i> finally ended; I have to say it didn't wrap up as neatly as I hoped. It was a fun read but didn't quite come together. I also hate mysteries where previously known facts are hand-waved away as imaginary. I really liked individual bits of it (particularly the confessionals).

Doomsday Clock #10 came out and we finally get an answer to what Doctor Manhattan's been up to. I have to admit, as silly as this whole project is on a meta level (Geoff Johns, lol) it's been a pretty entertaining series. This issue in particular was quite good, imo.

Is that this?

Here's an honest to god page from DC's big murder mystery event comic. People have been praising the writer as a genius for years. pic.twitter.com/BNOIyvq3LK

— Hurb Cherpley Sea-Doo (@hurbcherpley) May 29, 2019

So that's by Tom King? His Vision run from a couple of years back was awesome, what happened to him?

He wrote a Mister Miracle 12-issue series that covered a lot of the same ground -- marriage and parenthood, what we'll do to protect them, etc. I liked it more than the Vision series.

It was just announced yesterday that he's scripting Duvernay's New Gods movie, for whatever that's worth to you.

King's run on Batman has had dips but has been consistently enjoyable for seventy issues and running.
Omega Men and Vision are both excellent; I need to return to Miracle Man.
I thought Heroes in Crisis was garbage; highlighted all his writerly weaknesses unnecessarily and made almost no sense.
Overall, my sense is that DC is overworking him and his output is watering down but he's proven himself worth following.

also i swear i've made that post like three times already.

xp pretty much agree with you

Overall, my sense is that DC is overworking him and his output is watering down but he's proven himself worth following.

See also any popular superhero comics writer ever

I swear at any given time the whole industry is being written by just 5 or 6 ppl

well sure! But not all those "doing 42 books at once" guys are at all interesting even when they started; cullen bunn and jeff lemire come to mind immediately in that category.

"Hey Bill Mantlo, can you get me a script with (insert character) by 2pm tomorrow?"

"No problem."

Sounds like a dream job, even in that situation lol

I've heard that Joe Gill (who was perhaps only behind Paul S Newman as most prolific American comics writer) was asked to write stories just as he was about to leave and could whip something up in 15 minutes, probably shorter than 22 pages though.

guiltily agree that Doomsday Clock is trash but a fun read

feel kinda bad that geoff johns must think it’s his Big Artistic Statement though

why would you feel bad, he got paid $$$$ to deconstruct his own mistakes

That tweeted page (“Bros before heroes”) is indeed awful... the art sucks too. (Who’s the green, bare-breasted heroine?)

Well, she's getting hugged by Harley Quinn, so if she's not Poison Ivy, she should watch out...

Cullen Bunn and Jeff Lemire were already writing The Sixth Gun and Sweet Tooth respectively when they started their big careers - I'd rep for both. My read is that Lemire is interested in doing a bit of everything (I enjoyed Descender), whereas Bunn would rather be making horror.

guys, get this: Doomsday Cock. It’s about Dr. Manhattan’s casual nudity

i thought this run of TCJ diaries was pretty good; will keep an eye out for Melanie Gillman's work in the future:
http://www.tcj.com/author/melanie-gillman/

http://images.tcj.com/2019/05/WLAR-Day-10-768x1024.jpg

check out When the Crow Flies if you like this

Saw the couple pages where Manhattan is explaining how the timeline is shifting and I have to say that is some pretty potent DC nurd catnip. It seems an extension of the old 'hypertime' that Morrison and Mark Waid were putting out there.

I still say Johns it would have been a heck of a lot cooler if the Flash that showed up in Final Crisis and in the New 52 would have been the Barry Allen from old Earth 1. One reporters opinion.

That Morrison GL/GA issue is an absolute stinker.

Slightly off-topic but I recently became curious about DC and Marvel novels. Always wondered how well superheroes might work in this medium (same with martial arts, I wonder how much it relies on the visual and could you novelize a Fred Astaire film successfully?) and given that one of my bigger frustrations with the comics is the usually very rushed art, it might have some advantages.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?33519
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?30173

There are some authors with good reputations here but I'd imagine much of this was hack work.
Batman anthologies contain Asimov, Silverberg, Sheckley, Tepper and Landsdale. Wonder Woman anthology has Pamela Sargent. Steve Rasnic Tem is in Batman and Silver Surfer anthologies. Lansdale also wrote a Batman novel about a man who transforms into a car.

I think Joe Pulver said he'd like to do a Doctor Strange story and I was intrigued but as usual I'd prefer something in the milieu that isn't tied down to an existing IP, even ripoffs of Doctor Strange, Aquaman, Namor, Green Lantern and Swamp Thing might be preferable but how do you ripoff Ghost Rider and Silver Surfer without completely ripping them off?

Anyone read the comics of Nnedi Okorafor, Saladin Ahmed and Cassandra Khaw? It's difficult for me to understand why a prose writer would want to enter into comics where you don't get to choose the artists and probably done on tight deadlines.

Saladin Ahmed's runs on Exiles and Black Bolt were fun, to me.
Why would a writer do comics? Because, they're comics. Comics are great. ;)

But giving away the control of the visuals must be hard. I mentioned recently on another thread, Rachel Pollack (mostly a prose writer) was horrified by the art she was saddled with on New Gods (and it was particularly bad).

Ahmed’s taste in comics, as inferred from millions of retweets of him I saw before I even knew he was a writer, suggests that he has almost no interest in visual narrative & thus would be a fine Marvel writer.

Also, I wonder whether it was James O'Barr or an editor who chosen Somtow and Attanasio to write Crow novels, because that sounds pretty cool.

After reading a bit more about online fanfiction, is there any famously good fanfiction or does it all just get lost in the shuffle?

Other comics writers better known for prose works: Patricia Highsmith, Alfred Bester, Manly Wade Wellman, Lucius Shepard, Nancy A Collins, Nancy Holder, Nancy Kilpatrick, Elizabeth Hand, Harlan Ellison, Genevieve Valentine, Catherynne M Valente, Margaret Atwood, Joe R Lansdale, John Shirley, Neal Stephenson. Any good comics in there?

Did Clive Barker write any of his own comics?

It's been a long time since I read Nancy A Collins' run on Swamp Thing but i think it was ok.

China Mieville's run on Dial H is great though.

Related: an anthology of prose by comics writers
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?284814

Kazumasa Hirai (8 Man, Wolf Guy, Spiderman) seems to be well known for both comics and books. Hideyuki Kikuchi (Vampire Hunter D, Demon/Wicked City) done some original comics.

i should try rereading lethem's omega the unknown: y or n?

lansdale has done good comic work!

Collins's Swamp Thing run is pretty much abysmal imo.

Caitlin Kiernan's Vertigo work (she wrote the bulk of The Dreaming with a couple miniseries digressions) otoh is pretty good.

Barker wrote a lot/all(?) of the most recent run of Hellraiser comics from several years back.

I need to read more Lansdale comics, because that first Jonah Hex mini he did with Tim Truman is badass.

Loved Lethem's Omega mini-series, even though I'm not sure what he was going for with that final issue.

I like lethem’s omega way more than the one novel of his I’ve read (as she climbed across the table)

Weirdly the comic it most resembles is city of crime, the lapham batman book (but for spoilery reasons)

Ha x-post, the spoilery reason was to do with that last issue