Rolling Comic Books 2020 Visions

the difference, which seems obvious on the face of it, is that this isn't racist characters being racist so much as it is Garth Ennis ventriloquizing a big dick slinging black guy with a gun and a STREET ATTITUDE. it's less the sin that he's encouraging people to be bad and more that he's very literally saying "here's what they sound like" to a crowd of dipshits that are totally happy to eat that shit up with a cracker.

ennis' particular brand of misogyny, homo/transphobia and racism is of a particularly pernicious variety imo where he engages in the worst sort of stereotyping and bias but then plays it off as irony or contrarianism or exceptionalism by occasionally playing characters against type. even if you get a giggle out of the house of stan lee publishing the word "cunt", it's still garbage no matter how you cut it

an everglades attitude iirc

i dunno what that means

Ennis is karaokeing (multimedia) blaxploitation dialogue for Barracuda, in the same way he's karaokeing gangster movie dialogue for the white drug-runners etc. We agree that this ironic play-acting has the potential to have a pernicious effect on dumb readers, I just hope that the vast majority of the readers take it as cartoony dress-ups.


Like, the Punisher is an extremely toxic icon, but I doubt many cops and CHUDs dressing up as him are reading comedy miniseries on the Marvel MAX label

(For an author whose teenage works were largely about the societal damage and trauma caused by racism and guns, one would like to think that Ennis isn't maliciously racist, but then I avoid nearly all his post-Hitman work due to its apparent tone or ugliness, so...)

xp: just a joke about the setting of that character, to placehold while I typed some actual thoughts

i like to think i'm sophisticated enough to be able to tell the difference between pastiching tropes in service of casting a fresh and tongue-in-cheek take on problematic material vs showing your ass and calling it a metaphor.

There's not much nuance or cleverness at play in Ennis' mid naughties work, which he was churning out in Bendis-level bulk. It's undeniably pulpy - and, frankly, readable in the way that Pringles are edible. I get where it's tempting to draw a line between Trashman and Punisher if you're feeling charitable, but I re-read a lot of this stuff recently out of curiosity and it's pretty vile... it would be easy to post another 50 pages of clips like the one above without effort.

and it's not just the trappings of prejudice that make it objectionable; it takes real glee in mixing sex and murder in a way that's exhausting and boring and childish and stupid. I literally just opened a random issue to see if I could find an example and this is what jumps out on page three of punisher v5 #24 from 2005.
http://i.imgur.com/NzHldpB.png
maybe it's a question of "if you were 15 when you saw this, it was the coolest comic ever" which is likely why i have a soft spot for the Heavy Metal crew, but this is nothing special.

a fresh and tongue-in-cheek take

I definitely don't think Ennis believed he was bringing a revisionist take to the sort of dialogue he was emulating

re that last spread: see above about finding the tone and ugliness of his recent decades' work offputting. Right there I think he was bringing a revisionist tone to the early MAX Punisher, in the way that revisionist Westerns exposed the hateful bloodiness and sadism that was polished as noble in earlier works - aiming to alarm and repulse the standard Punisher-reading chud by showing "realistic" violence and crimes, and the Punisher character as a proper psychopath. But I get the impression that he became happy with how well that impacted the audience, once he'd developed the skill*, and just continued to mine the furrow to no transformative end.

* in his 1992-2000ish work, he had a variety of tones of comedic violence in different texts, like For A Few Troubles More, Hitman, Preacher, the Punisher mini w/ Steve Dillon where he punches a bear -- so maybe he has many nuanced tones of horror violence in his 2005-20 work. But none of it looks interesting enough in tone, topic, or style to my glancing eye to find out. (I did read the Hitman reunion/sequel minis, or one of them, and he didn't have the comedy down anymore, either.)

Here’s some panels from Ennis’s The Pro:

https://i.imgur.com/iMv92PF.jpg

These are Bendis comics I liked.

Daredevil
Powers (pretty much ground to a halt once he got popular)

Secret War/House of M - not bad.

New Avengers (first few arcs - build up of Secret Invasion good, actual series underwelming...)
Dark Avengers

Some of the later ones seemed like he knocked him out in an afternoon...

https://hcc.catsone.com/careers/4743-General/jobs/13069798-Consignment-Director-Comics-and-Comic-Art

??

go for it dawg

lol, not for me but someone on here certainly must be into it

Not sure if this is the right thread but absolutely astonished
1. to find myself watching a live-action TV Doom Patrol TV series
2. that is really good
3. and features the Beard Hunter

The Top 13 Most Valuable Comics Published Since 1970 (the year of the first Overstreet Price Guide)

https://13thdimension.com/the-top-13-most-valuable-comics-published-since-1970/

what does Overstreet list Slow Jams at?

That list prompted me to peruse lists of more recent material and discover the half dozen comics I own that are worth as much as the thousands of others combined.

Nothing quite in the realm of a Scooby-Doo #1 but still.

The only one of those top 13 I have ever owned was tmnt 1 but it was a 2nd printing

Thing I most regret selling for cash was my complete set of original
Dirty Plotte minicomics

i've owned several beat up Star Wars #1. What's the big deal about the 35 cent one? Lower print run? Collection completists are fucking weird.

my biggest regret was swapping my copy of Funny Aminals #1 for a complete run of Melmoth back in college. I have a digital copy though so no great loss.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funny_Aminals

Years ago, I found a complete run of Eightball (up through the late teens, I believe?) in the back of some musty second-hand bookstore that clearly had no idea what it was. I think it was like $20 total.

Just recently realized that they likely fell victim to a termite infestation a while back that led to me indiscriminately trashing boxes full of who knows what.

(At least I still have my complete early Acme Novelty Library collection, warped though they might be by my apartment flooding. I don't have the greatest luck when it comes to having undamaged possessions, it would seem.)

SW#1 was right on the cusp of one of their price hikes, from 30 to 35c iirc, and most of the print run was at the other price.

Same book in every other respect though! Just a shorter print run with a 5 where a 0 was and that accounts for thousands of dollars in value.
goddam ocd numismatic fever if you ask me

Which is just one of the many reasons I typically dngaf about the value of my comics. Like I saw that a very particular edition of Mad Love is worth quite a bit, and worth quite a bit more than other editions of Mad Love. Pretty sure it's the one I own. Do I really care enough to find out? I do not.

I used to have a GSXMen#1, wonder if it's still in one of the longboxes. I bought it and a copy of #94 for $2 each in Ft. Worth in...1976 or '77.

I have the early Zap! Comix, what are those worth?

some of the most-reprinted comics in history

But these are the originals!

Atomic Avenue guides:

#1/1st printing at $3000, 2nd printing at $600, 9th printing at $14.50

#2/1st printing at $540, 2nd printing at $210, 9th printing at $3.95

#0/1st printing at $300, 2nd printing at $190, 10th printing at $2.95

#3/1st printing at $32, 2nd printing at $48, 3rd printing at $72, 4th printing at $6, 5th printing at $4, 6th printing also at $4, 7th printing at $11.50

I haven't gotten to read them yet as the demo copies I bought initially are still circulating but the TKO GNs I started carry during the shutdown are getting a lot of good buzz from customers.

https://tkopresents.com/collections/titles

(The boxed set of individual comics is weird since they didn't release as monthly issues and I'm not carrying them.)

sic in revealing the diminishing value of reprints shocker

also the only new recent publisher that doesn't seem like a blatant attempt to sell a property to Netflix

are you being sarcastic?

Interesting, I didn’t know Zap #0 was the 3rd to be published

are you being sarcastic?

No - they might be that as well (I mean, if you can farm IP successfully it's probably a good business model) but the way they've gone about things feels less like that than Aftershock, AWA or Vault.

xp Intended to be first, but a publisher flaked out with the original art



diminishing value of reprints shocker

this is indeed a shocking reading of the prices on #3

TBF, I did not actually read that far before I decided to go full wisenheimer.

also the only new recent publisher that doesn't seem like a blatant attempt to sell a property to Netflix

Silver Sprocket and NYRB both launched since Vault and Aftershock btw afaik, and Floating World only started doing things that weren't one-off tabloids or art objects last year

There are all sorts of issues going for eye opening prices these days.

It probably started with the big Harley first appearance issue, but look at what those Batman cartoon related comics are going for these days. They used to be total dollar box stuff, but not anymore.

what does Overstreet list Slow Jams at?

I know you are joking but I really liked the first 2/3 of Slow Jams, the chapters that were serialized in NON. The last chapter was awful though, and I never could muster the motivation to read anything else he did.

Years ago, I found a complete run of Eightball (up through the late teens, I believe?) in the back of some musty second-hand bookstore that clearly had no idea what it was. I think it was like $20 total.

Since I was buying Eightball as it came out it is always a bit surreal to see how sought-after those individual issues are (were? is there still the same demand after the complete reprint?). They were always easy to find even in the more mainstream-oriented comics shops, which I can't say about a lot of other 1990s Fantagraphics titles (outside of the other 'hits' like Hate, Acme, Naughty Bits).

I have always had mild regret for not buying the earliest issues of NON, which were quite common in Boston at the time and which I knew were rare in other parts of the country, but honestly those early issues were pretty mediocre.

My biggest regret is not buying the copy of Mark Marek's NEW WAVE COMICS that was in the quarter bin at a local convention. 25 cents! What was I thinking??Clearly nothing.

I had a signed copy of New Wave Comics that I deeply regret selling in a moment of poverty. That and Hercules Among the North Americans seem like prime candidates for NYRB re-issues.

I know you are joking but I really liked the first 2/3 of Slow Jams, the chapters that were serialized in NON.

i don't even know what the joke would be

Oh, I thought you were kidding that Overstreet would list an obscure self-published title like that.

(Er, they don't list it do they? OK, I just looked on ebay and the cheapest copy, albeit signed, is $1000?? I probably gave away my copy too. Yeesh.)

for those who care, Keith Knight's semi-autobio magic realism show "WOKE" is up on Hulu. I've been a fan for awhile, glad to see him get this.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/08/909707072/in-woke-cartoonist-keith-knight-drew-from-a-real-life-wake-up-call
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYt5HEabwvM

I care! Like Morris and forgot this was related to Knight

It's pretty good! Some of Knight's issues with women still coming through but Morris is really comfortable carrying the high concept well.

fucking awesome
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/nyregion/christian-cooper-amy-comic-graphic-novel.html

Mr. Cooper said the graphic novel was deliberately not an exact recounting of his May 25 interaction with Ms. Cooper.

“I think that is the beauty of comics, it lets you reach that place visually and viscerally,” he said. “And that’s what this comic is meant to do: Take all these real things that are out there and, by treating them in a magical realist way, get to the heart of the matter.”

In the final pages, as Jules and Beth verbally spar, in Ms. Martinez’s images the woman’s words physically diminish.

“You see her words become smaller and smaller, and less important,” Mr. Cooper said. “Because it’s not about her, it’s about the ones we’ve lost and how we keep from losing any more.”

alternative view: that is hideous in an impressive number of ways