Rolling Comic Books 2020 Visions

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

oh come on now.

why are the real ppl both greasy and glowing? why are there a dozen light sources in every panel, but/also the sun itself is in two different locations in the second one? why do the green-bronze metal binoculars reflect as clear glass in his spectacles? is there a page-specific reason why the leaves and the binoculars and the grass and the tree trunks and the main guy's hoodie and the highlights on his skin and the part of the blonde ponytail that's in shadow despite facing the sun all fairly similar shades of green? why have the ghosts of every black person this woman has ever screamed at been photoshopped in from different spectral realms, instead of either standing next to each other or passing through each other? using the same pre-installed "emphasis ellipse" border in black in panel 3 as you do in red in panel 1, but with smaller lettering, makes it confusing as to what tone of voice you're trying to communicate. &al.

Both 'fucking awesome' and 'hideous' are overstating the case here, imho.

why do the green-bronze metal binoculars reflect as clear glass in his spectacles?

The art is bad, but I assume those are meant to be bifocals of some kind(?) Those curves at the bottom of each lens appear even in the top panel (where there's nothing to reflect).

bifocals for only when you want to read things held to the left of your jaw

I'm not a fan of the art but it doesn't always pay to be realistic with lighting.

frankly the art is the least interesting thing by far about that and i would imagine that should be obvious?

sic will tell u what is obvious, in protracted detail

the art is what you read

are you maybe not familiar with the story behind this and that's why you're being so dismissive of it? trying to be charitable here.

Sic has a 20-pt list of insider facts and a complete timeline of the incident he's just putting together for you, ulysses.

Having said that, all power to the guy, but I can't imagine wanting to actually read this.

we’re going to be in real trouble if someone who is a better artist makes a more-competently executed version from her perspective

lol mh

As much as I laud the intention behind this comic, I gotta agree with Sic that the art looks awful, mostly because of the colouring , which looks like they're straight from the "now that we have them fancy computer colours, let's make everything shiny!" '90s school of comic colouring.

Also, on minor note, the writing on that NYT article really illustrates why replacing the word "comic" with Will Eisner's more respectable term doesn't necessarily work... A 10-page "graphic novel", huh?

frankly the art is the least interesting thing by far about that and i would imagine that should be obvious?

Then why make a comic, sorry Graphic Novel?

I sometimes think some people do comics to do things that probably would have gone mostly unnoticed (fairly or unfairly) in another medium.

okay, maybe you guys ARE unfamiliar with the details here? this was a huge story in NYC. Christian Cooper, the aggrieved birdwatcher in this situation, has been doing comics with Marvel since the 90's. Via wiki:

Cooper has written stories for Marvel Comics Presents, which often feature characters such as Ghost Rider and Vengeance. He has also edited a number of X-Men collections, and the final two issues of the Marvel Swimsuit Special. Cooper was Marvel's first openly gay writer and editor. He introduced the first gay male character in Star Trek, Yoshi Mishima, in the Starfleet Academy series, which was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award in 1999. He also introduced the first openly lesbian character for Marvel, Victoria Montesi and created and authored Queer Nation: The Online Gay Comic.Cooper was also an associate editor for Alpha Flight #106 in which the character Northstar came out as gay.

If you're completely unfamiliar with the incident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_birdwatching_incident

why make a comic, sorry Graphic Novel?

Cooper got to rewrite himself as the hero in a story that put him in potential danger and, better yet, couch it in a way so that people who can't connect the dots between this kind of harassment and police brutality can see how one leads to the other. He got to do it in a media that was meaningful to him and then distribute it broadly to a mass audience without putting a price point on it. If your takeaway from all that is that the light sourcing is off...

It can be a great and noble and worthwhile project and still be shit.

Exactly. I was aware of the incident and Cooper's background in writing comics, so when I saw the link I got excited about what this comic could've been, and was subsequently disheartened to see the art. Obviously his intentions are laudable, and if the comic reaches a wide audience and has an impact on the US discourse on racism, that's fantastic, but I don't see why we can't also lament the fact that a comic with great potential was saddled with such substandard art?

gosh, i wonder why cooper or his editor may have picked Alitha Martinez and Mark Morales to do the "substandard" art on this book?

Forget it, forks, it's TCJ-town.

gosh, i wonder why cooper or his editor may have picked Alitha Martinez and Mark Morales to do the "substandard" art on this book?

Ronald Wimberly had a quiet, single-page comic about an experience he had the month after the bird-watching incident spiked by the New York Times: https://www.patreon.com/posts/40895750

Are you really trying to suggest that because of the comic's message and creators it's somehow above criticism?

Wimberly did get this run in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/greetings-from-the-new-brooklyn
Also LAAB #2 (actually #3 but whatevs) just got funded.

I'm fully aware of the details of the story, I just didn't think this was very good. But as I said, all power to him. Just because it's not my thing doesn't mean it won't do what it's meant to do.

Anyone else read Scioli's new Kirby book? Quelle surprise given the subject and creator, but it's really goddamn good.

Yeah, I picked up the Free Comic Book Day preview, which takes us up to the creation of Captain America and the first encounter with Stan Lee. Thought the use of first person narration was a bit of a risky move that mostly paid off, although if anything it made Kirby sound more... linear... than he tended to be in interviews - does the full graphic novel list sources? I'm hoping that this will at least nudge Evanier a bit into completing his Kirby biography.

I know I am wrong, but I have never been especially moved by Kirby's work. Handing in my ILC badge.

I mean, it's hell of al lot of work, in different styles and genres over 40 years, not to be moved by. Once Kirby hit his mature style in the 1950s almost everything he drew was pretty magnificent, and some of it could be surprisingly elegant. Even when his drawing chops declined in the late 70s, you'd still get glorious psychedelic pages that are genuinely visionary and have worn far better than some of the more 'relevant' superhero stuff, imho.

I think he's best when his dialogue and his art are working together towards a heightened affect - everything is urgent, everything is alarming, if people are sitting around at a picnic then you can only assume that their mental machinations are drowning out the shuddering squeals of monstrous machinery happening just out of the panel. (okay, the terrible alliteration was more a Stan Lee thing)

But both threads are definitely an acquired taste!

I think it's also easy enough to just not be able to get with non-modern superhero comics, or indeed superhero comics at all.

I'm sure it's a lack in me, definitely.

Again, there's lots of Kirby stuff that's in other genres apart from superheroes (although yes, the 60s Marvel era is what he's best-remembered for now).

I'd recommend his Fourth World stuff and his 2001 adaptation to those who aren't otherwise onboard. The closer you can get to unadulterated Kirby, the better.

Now I'm one of those 'wrong' Kirby fans who doesn't particularly like the Fourth World stuff, or at least doesn't hold it in such high regard as many (I prefer pretty much all of the other early 70s DC stuff - Kamandi, the Demon (Kirby's most underrated series imho), even The Losers. ) The early 4th World comics are marred by some especially poor Vince Colletta inking (talk about adulterated JK!) and the whole thing would have benefitted from stricter editorial control/advice, although not necessarily from Stan Lee-dialogue/captions. Kirby was so stuffed with new ideas he sometimes lacked the discipline and focus to stick with a consistent storyline - and sometimes he simply lost interest (I think the original plan with the New Gods was to hand over the three linked titles to other creators, something that DC were never go to play along with, having 'captured' their rivals' key artist).

Once Mike Royer came aboard as Kirby's main inker at DC, things obviously markedly improved visually and yes, it's a much 'purer' version of the Kirby aesthetic - although it seems clear that the general readership preferred Kirby inked by someone like Joe Sinnott, who smoothed out some of the rough edges in Kirby's pencilling. The 2001 Treasury edition was inked by Frank Giacoia, an excellent veteran inker who really preserved the power in Kirby's work while at the same time giving everything a nice crisp line finish.

Also, the pasted on Superman heads in Kirby's Jimmy Olsen books are so jarring and inappropriate that I find it hard to look at those issues.

FYI, the Scioli bio touches on many of the points in your post. I don't know exactly how fact-based it is (although, to answer your question upthread, there are a number of sources cited), but it gets pretty deep into the weeds.