Rolling Comic Books 2019

From a while back, but I re-read Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #31 - the one-shot story where Nancy and Doreen get stuck in hypertime - gotta be one of the best single issues I've read of any comic in years. Such a wonderful series.

Yeah, Squirrel Girl is great. Still haven't totally understood if it's getting cancelled or if the creative team just decided they were done and Marvel went "well, no point in carrying on the title then". If it's the latter that's a bit of a paradigm shift for a Big Two title, no?

She's carrying on in Marvel Rising, I think?

And I think it happens more than one might think - Young Avengers, if I remember right, was also "well we've done what we came here to do"

Also Erica Henderson left on interior art a little while back, still doing covers. (She's doing that Assassin Nation mini at Image right now). The current artist is fine, but definitely feels a little weird since she's essentially the co-creator of this version.

I guess Sandman was cancelled after Gaiman finished?

DC made it a point to "respect" him (true or not, i don't know) by not giving his Sandman/Dream/etc. to any other authors without his permission. They got his blessing for that line reboot recently iirc

I wonder if after the original run was finished, if other writers would be too intimidated by the idea of following Gaiman?

was thinking about what i still read from DC with any interest this year and came up with:

- Action/Superman - Bendis' schtick is starting to wear thin and I explicitly don't care about whatever this LEVIATHAN thing is supposed to be about but when they're not nattering (b)endlessly, the characters feel refreshed/classic/eager to please enough to make these fun reads for me

- Batman - With the fake wedding done, the current WAY too long running storyline has been the moment where I've soured on King's (generally impressive!) run, especially the at-least-twice-taken choice of scripting a single voice interior monologue and fluffing it with pin-up art for a filler issue. I'm increasingly sensing that King was done with bats at around issue #50 but they've made him an offer he didn't want to walk away from... maybe he's gonna do some writing work on the movie? Or they're gonna incorporate some of his themes and they want him as a continuity supervisor or something? In any case, it's been cold for a few months, but I still open a new issue hopeful.

- Flash - The immediately-happening "Year one" reboot they're doing has been surprisingly enjoyable. NB: I am a sucker for the origin stories but my interest often fades once the nostalgia's gone. Only four issues along though; so far, so good.

- Green Lantern - It's everything I'd want a sci-fi police procedural by Morrison to be: arcane, melodramatic, casually clever, obsessive in detail, fun to read in batches of three or more. I would recommend the first trade more or less unreservedly.

- Wonder Woman - G Willow Wilson is a good fit on the book. I need to do an 8 issue reread and see if she's stringing together a good long form story but she's doing well on an issue by issue basis.

And frankly that's it! I think Marvel has a much higher hit ratio at the moment which i could capitulate if asked.

Not for nothing, but I would be inclined to take the various Vertigo/Sandman offshoot books on if only anyone could recommend them. I'm not exactly dying to leap into a new series since they're canceling the imprint; it's off-putting and unclear to me if the current lineup will be folded in or canceled or re-solicited with new creative teams or?

ANYWAYS anybody reading: Books of Magic, Dreaming, Goddess Moon, House of Whispers or Lucifer?

My understanding is that the Sandman Universe and Young Animal titles will be the only surviving ongoing mature readers titles at DC and that they'll fall under the Black Label banner until some WB exec or another makes a different decision on the fly.

I've been buying the Sandman books but I haven't read them yet. Every several years, I do a readthrough of all the related material from Moore's Swamp Thing through like late-period Hellblazer and genuinely love a lot of it, so I want these new books to be good. But I've avoided reading them because I'm afraid that they might not be good. Or at least not what I want them to be. Maybe it's time to make the leap. For you, forks.

I wonder if after the original run was finished, if other writers would be too intimidated by the idea of following Gaiman?

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, July 15, 2019 8:38 AM (fifteen hours ago)

oh yeah, this DEFINITELY would have been the case

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/16900.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Witchcraft-%20La%20Terreur/215418.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Destiny-%20A%20Chronicle%20of%20Deaths%20Foretold/91151.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/54710.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Deadboy%20Detectives/153953.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/214272.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Lucifer%20(Vertigo)/106091.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/215667.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents-%20Petrefax/244535.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Little%20Endless%20Storybook,%20The/194581.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/82313.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/D/DC/S/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20The%20Furies/295292.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Thessaly-%20Witch%20for%20Hire/224911.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Girl%20Who%20Would%20be%20Death,%20The/197110.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Everything%20You%20Always%20Wanted%20to%20Know%20About%20Dreams-But%20Were%20Afraid%20to%20Ask/247999.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/206262.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Merv%20Pumpkinhead,%20Agent%20of%20D.R.E.A.M/268638.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Death-%20At%20Death

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/10783.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20Bast/9405.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20The%20Thessaliad/54926.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/138090.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Sandman%20Presents,%20The-%20The%20Corinthian/259315.jpg

https://atomicavenue.com/Covers/Medium/V/Vertigo/Dreaming,%20The/86290.jpg

Point off for missing the Thessaly miniseries - point restored because the Jeff Nicholson Dreaming issue fucking rocks.

xp okay you're in the clear, we can probably stop short of 'every cover of the Dreaming'

(each of those is the first issue of a separate commission)

xp no repeated writers on the Dreaming covers!

first issue

nb WitchCraft is the second mini, bcz the first one came out during Sandman

If you're talking about the actual character of Dream (as opposed to the broader set of characters/concepts created or revived for Sandman), there actually are very few post-Gaiman instances of such. Morrison's JLA, Kiernan's run on The Dreaming, maybe a couple others.

And frankly that's it! I think Marvel has a much higher hit ratio at the moment which i could capitulate if asked.

I think this has been the case for many years now, but tbh my Marvel pull list has been shrinking steadily through the last year or so too.

my takeaway here is that no one is currently reading any of the vertigo books

I'm surprised it didn't hit harder. Are they no good?
(Btw that Lucifer run linked above by Mike Carey was pretty solid.)

even if they're any good, it has been Didio policy to starve them of internal or external support

very few post-Gaiman instances of such

this was bcz Gaiman made his further work for the company contingent on the restriction of that one character

the harder hit will come when AT&T close down the publishing division altogether, and every other publisher collapses bcz every english-language comic shop in the world goes under

I think I've read maybe a couple issues of Lucifer and none of the others?

I must be the notional reader that only shows up for material when it's a title called Sandman that ostensibly stars that character

I'm not a con person but it is perhaps interesting to note that DC will not have a discrete booth at this year's SDCC but will rather be folded into a broader WB experience. I will not be surprised at all when that entire division is rebranded WB Comics.

they'd probably brand it in some way

branding is how you do your market segmentation, after all

I read a few things by writers whose work I'd liked previously on non-work-for-hire stuff that they drew themselves, eg Terry LaBan, Bryan Talbot, Ed Brubaker, Jill Thompson, Bill Willingham, Al Davison (who did get to draw his issues). The Jeff Nicholson issue Andrew points out was essentially a colour riff on Through The Habitrails.

I wasn't meaning Sandman spinoffs, but really I didn't know if anyone else had continued the character right after in a reboot.

But I did know they didn't just get John Byrne or Bill Mantlo to keep the title running.

They really tried to get Mantlo - in the end, solidarity with Bob Budiansky was the sole reason that he declined.

in case you didn't know, 22 issues in and the dark horse adaptation of gaiman's American Gods with P Craig Russell and Scott Hampton remains one of the best comics on the mainstream racks

via tcj: https://files.constantcontact.com/7c08b62b401/857e5ff9-cc24-4b82-93bd-4687ce4f2a1a.pdf

Dave Lapham put out a 24 page pdf of an unpublished Batman comic he did with Bill Sienkiewicz. “DC had long ago dumped the files off of their server, and Bill had sold the art and later had a hard drive meltdown. The art to this was effectively gone. All I have (and what you’ll see here) are a set of smaller-than-comic-sized printouts from low-res scans.”

Oh, so frustrating! I didn’t know that. What a great run though - with or without Sienkiewicz.

That said, the double page spread with the trail of bats is awesome in a way I can’t remember a Batman panel being in a very long time

very cool! I'm a huge fan of City of Crime, seeing that Sienkiewicz issue #1 take is fascinating

Maybe they don't know or don't like each other, but it always seemed like a no-brainer that Billy the Sink should have been paired with Grant Morrison on a project at some point.

Imagine if the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh segments in Morrison's run when he is trippin' balls were done by Sienkiewicz to show Batman's state of mind.

Lapham's Daredevil/Punisher mini-series is also a pretty good read.

i made a very important thread
Outrageous images from Classics Illustrated Junior

I finally read Otomo’s Domu, which has been on my shelf for years … and did not really enjoy it! Oh well.

I know the paper copy is quite difficult to find (I have the UK collected edition published in 1994ish) So if anyone in the UK wants my copy, I’ll be happy to send it out for Whatever the copy of post is

*the cost of post is

Traded out 10 1/2 long boxes today.

Anyone reading DIE?

It's doing well with the General Public, I've heard, but I'm not sure... it kinda feels like the boring dream sequence episode of a TV show stretched into eternity.

It's on the pull list so I'll give it another couple issues

Yeah, I was surprised by that, I assumed it would be "Writer assumes all of his interests are equally interesting, when one is pop music and another is boardgames"

At the moment it's kind of like bad Gaiman with better jokes. I sorta hate the art too; it's from the Frazer Irving school of pretty-but-unfollowable painted comics.

I dunno, something about it feels a bit "here is my tragic backstory" in a hacky storytelling 101 way that feels unusually lazy for Gillen. Although, to be more generous, I suppose that conceptually fits with a book about player-generated characters.

I dig it. D&D Teen goth angst to the max + mid-life crisis, somehow a winning combination

Anyone reading the 4th arc of Jojo? I don't think I can commit to it again but I'm interested to know what people think. I remember an old fan site saying that everything after the 3rd arc feels forced, but it looks like there's a lot of novelty with the different settings. The woman's prison and the big horse race sounds great but I just cant.

I've only read a few issues of Jojo's but I thought forced was the whole shtick?

Got my kids into Gogor, it is good

it's good fantasy!

It’s not an insane idea to want to b

The English language edition of Maggy Garrisson from SelfMadeHero is the best hunk of comics I've read in quite some time, and the best European homage to Engerland since Jacobs' The Yellow M:

https://www.selfmadehero.com/books/maggy-garrisson🕸

Beehive Press just sent out kickstarter digital edition promos of their lavish new Harrison Cady book and woooooo boy, it looks gorgeous. can't wait for the physical copy.
i've always been head over heels for Cady, but i was not aware he was responsible for so much explicitly racist and anti-semetic work. kinda wish it wasn't so beautifully rendered! Sign of the (turn of the twentieth century) times i guess.

We've barely talked about Gillen's WicDiv since it started, which I guess means there's been a general lack of interest - which is fair! I'm not sure it was very good - but curious for thoughts now it's all over

I thought it was fantastic, I surprised myself by considering getting a (first!) tattoo based on it. I'm aware this is a ridiculous thing for a 44-year-old straight white male to consider about a series largely devoted to early-twenties kids of various colours and sexualities, which I take as a sign of how much I liked it.

But tbh the demographics that it's meant the most to don't really overlap much with ILX, so I'm not surprised by the quiet.