Rolling Comic Books 2024

We're close enough, and it gives me an excuse to post my what-did-I-read list.

* means a highlight

Uncle Scrooge's Money Rocket, Luciano Bottaro
Detention #2, Tim Hensley
Catwoman: Lonely City, Cliff Chiang *
Olympia, Vivés/Ruppert + Mulut
All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End, Charles Johnson *
Marvel Knights: Maddrox, Peter David, Pablo Raymond, et al
Complete Aztec Ace, Doug Moench, Dan Day, et al *
Zombie Coffee, Régis Loisel
Absolute Sandman, Vol.2, Neil Gaiman et al *
Best Of 2000AD, Vol.2-3 *
The Night Eaters, Marjorie Liu, Sana Tekeda
A Very British Affair: The Best Of UK Romance Comics
Chainsaw Man, Vol.6-11, Tatsuki Fujimoto
Orochi, Vol.3-4, Kazou Umezz *
Brink, Vol.3-5, Dan Abnett, Culrad *
Drifting Classroom, Vol.2, Kazou Umezz *
Krazy Kay 1931-1932, George Herriman (reread)
Earthman, Robert Nunn
Public Domain, Chip Zdarsky
Judge Dredd: Complete Case Files, Vol.2-3, Pat Mills et al *
Bomba, Osamu Tezuka *
The Many Deaths Of Laila Starr, Ram V, Filipe Furtado et al
Danger & Other Unknown Risks, Ryan North, Erica Henderson
Cukoo, Joe Sparrow
Little Lulu, Vol.2, John Stanley *
Golden Rage, Chrissy Williams, Lauren Knight et al
Blood Of The Virgin, Sammy Harkham *
Nonnoba, Shigeru Mizuki
The Agency, Katie Skelly *
Batman: Failsafe, Chip Zdarsky, Jorge Jimenez, et al
Nancy Wins At Friendship, Olivia Jaimes
Orphan & The Five Beasts, James Stokoe
Moon River, Fabcaro
Congro Congro Comix *
Night Fever, Ed Brubaker, Sean Philips
Enlightened Transexual Comix, Sam Szabo *
Lance Stanton: Wayward Warrior, James Naughton, Dave Bamford
Social Fiction, Chantal Montepellier
The Cat Eyed Boy, Vol.1, Kazou Umezz
Africani, Anani, Mensah
Imboa - Le Roi Et I Fare, Didier-Mada
Un Eternité À Tangeri, Faustin Titi, Eyoum Nsangé
Do A Powerbomb, Daniel Warren Johnson
Rogue Trooper: Tales Of Nu Earth, Gerry Finlay-Day et al
Roaming, Mariko & Jillian Tamaki
La Mort de Spirou, Guerrive, Abitan, Schwartz *

I hadn't heard of that British romance collection!

It's kind of a chore to get through (obv the material wasn't meant to be read in large chunks), but lovingly presented and a lot of the art is topnotch. Plus you get to see teen culture evolve (in the early stories guys are taking girls to jazz clubs, by the end they're listening to Radio Luxembourg).

I've got loads of comics I just look at but don't read. This would probably be the same.

https://www.tcj.com/the-best-of-2023-as-decreed-by-our-contributors/

this is gonna be bad for my wallet. had no idea juni ba has a new one and the Deena Mohamed sounds amazing.

Catching up on recent volumes of Chainsaw Man: as always, impressed by Fujimoto's gift for comedy and for heartbreaking teenage angst while getting somewhat frustrated with the clunky world building (all the demons vs fiends vs humans stuff). The fights are simultaneously highly impressive and very confusing to look at.

I find the clunkiness to be a key part of CM's charm, tbh! But yeah, the worldbuilding AND fight visuals can be equally bewildering

https://blog.fantagraphics.com/fuck-you-im-with-fantagraphics-new-merch/

I'll wait for the "eat hot shit, I read Drawn & Quarterly" undies.

Corny

Guys the “reissue of a t-shirt from eleven years ago” thread is over there

not my fault you didn't alert us 11 years ago

Fwiw, they sent me an email blast titled "F*** You, I'm with Fantagraphics: new merch!", with all the content seen in that blog entry, so it's not like they're treating it as old news...

It was created for the ass-saving kickstarter after Kim Thompson’s death, as one of the lowest tiers available (admittedly above “$1: Gary will add you to his prayers”), so less ‘corny’ than ‘a cheerful way to show support to a struggling org & bereaved staff, and pay tribute to a man who dedicated his entire life to supporting and advancing artists’ imo but anyone’s mmv

(I can’t speak to or endorse any 2024 promo copy, on this or any other topic, put out by any social media millennials who demonstrably don’t know what they’re writing about)

Second volume of the Fanta Silly Symphonies reprint is overall perhaps not worth it, but there's some great Donald Duck content - including one strip where he kills Goofy and one where he gets conned into becoming a carnival geek.

Recent reads:

River's Edge, Kyoko Okazaki - 90's manga about high school kids bullying each other, emotionally abusing each other, checking out a dead body. grim, powerful stuff.

Mobilis, Jun Ba - Easily the most underrated artist in the game? This is deluxe size and totally gorgeous. The story is ok.

Picked up a volume of Lapin, the L'Association periodical, from 1999. Starts with a long comic about living in Serbia under sanctions; another one I really dug was the story of three drunks under a bridge recounting their life stories. Checked on the authors - the drunks story is by François Ayroles, who it turns out has a successful graphic novel out now that I also bought without noticing the name. Aleksandar Zograf, who did the one about sanctions, has a very geocities looking website, but the latest update is from 2021.

Yeah, River's Edge was grim. If you like that I'd recommend Helter Skelter by the same author, though that's more about the modeling industry than high school angst, it's got a similar tone.

I just read both A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll and Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohammed - a little late on these, saw these in some year end lists, both pretty excellent IMO

I assume River’s Edge is based on the 1986 film of the same name?

nah no relation

Huh, weird… the plot sounds similar

Will check out Helter Skelter at some point for sure but think I'll need awhile before I'm ready for that flavour again. The Thick Lines podcast are huge fans.

xposts

I knew a Warhammer player who lived in Serbia under sanctions - to get new 40K figurines, they made moulds of the existing figures, then used melted down money to fill the moulds, because cash was completely useless

wow that's amazing

the comic's take on sanctions is kinda predictable but worth being reminded of anyway - immense misery for the population, growing sense of jingoism/isolation as a result, those in good with the govt get to live the high life regardless

uh waht

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9yAeYzuwtI

I am baffled by "kayfabe." I know it's meaning in wrestling, but when it pops up now it seems divorced from that and I don't understand.

I find those guys creepy but some of their vids are okay in a skim-through-while-procrastinating-from-something-more-important kind of way.

I just finished Infinity 8 based on an ILC recommendation (thanks!), really glad I read it despite some yeeshy Gallic sexism and not loving the ending. Still: very good!

tbc my surprise and reason for posting that video is the title's use of an expression that I thought was exclusive to ilx

Watched the Dave Stevens documentary Drawn To Perfection (on amazon prime of course), I've never loved his stuff that much but have some admiration. There's a ton of artists interviewed and I think it does a pretty good job. It's nice how much Stevens looked after Bettie Page when he found her, made sure she was getting money from products based on her image and often drove her around to do shopping for her for years.

nice list here
https://letterboxd.com/jasikedevicius/list/documentaries-about-comics-cartoonists/

for ppl who don’t read the L&R thread: eight hours left on the annual half-price-voucher sale at fantagraphical books incorporated

This whole story is sad and tragic. Hoping it wasn't real because it's April 1, but looks like it's being reported at multiple outlets.
https://comicbook.com/comics/news/ed-piskor-hip-hop-family-tree-and-x-men-grand-design-artist-reportedly-passes-away-at-age-41/

It's been confirmed by family members.

His (public on FB) suicide letter is pretty vile stuff, just a really dark affair all around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8A3tzAGW8M

I just read up on Arthur Suydam's recent history and it's just awful, he must be the biggest example of an artist I admired who is overwhelmingly best known for his worst work, his 70s-80s-early90s comics are some of my favorites. Don't get the book version of Cholly & Flytrap because it was censored in a bizarre fashion for unknown reasons. Hope he gets it together again someday but I'm not holding my breath.

This had been on my wishlist a long time and a collected edition seems like an unlikely wish granted but I really don't like the recoloring, it was a backup feature in other comics and this might be a rare instance of me being moved to seek out over 20 issues of a comic
https://shop.1firstcomics.com/collections/black-flame/products/black-flame-archives-collected

Reading around that Slings & Arrows Comic Guide from 2003 and it is remarkable how many B-list DC and Marvel characters barely anyone knew what to do with, and often the ones I found most attractive.

Can anyone more in the loop tell me if the recoloring of reprints is getting any better? Because I've heard that Titan have been taking care recently on their Moorcock adaptations.

I don't know how significant the numbers would be but I wonder if any companies have saw reproduction complaints raised and thought they might be losing a significant amount of sales? I would certainly be buying a lot more comics even if there were even just modestly good scans.

Gamora's original costume was really cool, the one that looked a bit like Nightmare with the black rug/cape

I wrote a few of the entries in that Slings & Arrows guide, always good to hear of people actually using it as a reference work.

Apologies for the Amazon link, but they seem to be the only source of info for this new 'Lost Marvels' series from Fantagraphics, which potentially could be really interesting. I'm guessing the Atlas reprints have done OK (I've been enjoying the first two). Still so weird to see Fantagraphics issuing Marvel product!

https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Marvels-Vol-Tower-Shadows/dp/B0D972ZPJR/

#2 meaning Maneely or Venus?

Ward- what was your name in Slings & Arrows? And what do you think of the paper/color of the Atlas reprints, some of them are glossy paper and some aren't. I wonder why?

This costs so much!
https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/the-atlas-artist-edition-no-2-al-williamson-vol-1-the-city-that-time-forgot-and-other-stories

Would love if the they re-did that Ditko short stories omnibus series but I doubt that will be on the cards for long.

This was longer ago now but I wonder why they only did one book in that Joe Kubert Library?

This cover is genuinely horrifying
https://screenrant.com/alex-ross-fantastic-four-blood-hunt-horror-cover/

I've been dissatisfied by a lot of the horror/weird fiction I read because I think a lot of it does the subtle-but-powerful thing poorly and finding that a lot of the science fiction and fantasy I seek out today is kind of yearning for a lot of the superhero art I used to like. But as a reading experience, most superhero comics are completely at odds with me (because most of the creators and companies approaches), so every now and then I think it would be cool to read Silver Surfer, more Doctor Strange, Eternals, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Warlock, Kilraven, The Spectre, Ghost Rider, Thor, etc... and I know it would go badly even if I could find them in decent color. The Slings & Arrows guide sort of confirms that because you'll get huge stretches of issues with nothing interesting. I tried to read the original Doom Patrol and didn't get far. Like Silver Surfer can't get away from repetitive stories about Galactus. Galactus should have fucked off after his first story. Fuck off Galactus.

But again, a lot of the imagery holds up for me, even by artists I'm not completely fond of, even in the terrible 90s I still find a lot of superhero art I still like. I really liked a lot of the trading card art and I was amazed to find that IDW and Marvel did a Hildebrandt Brothers collection.
https://idwpublishing.com/blogs/news/idw-publishes-the-marvel-art-of-the-brothers-hildebrandt-a-celebration-of-super-hero-illustration
An artist I knew was really hated these guys but I'm impressed by how much I still like a lot of these paintings, the colour is gorgeous and they have a lot of the excitement I rarely found in the actual comics. I would really like more books like these collecting all that trading card art from the 90s.
Here's more of the paintings in their trading card form
https://www.muddycolors.com/2015/03/1994-marvel-masterpieces/
What is it with Lilith's tall head? It often looked like she had a piece of cloth between the peaks (horns?) on her head. Why is there 2 Marvel characters called Lilith? Why is there 2 Marvel characters called Warlock? I thought they would be careful about that even back when these characters were created?

This is the Gamora costume I meant, so cool
https://usercontent2.hubstatic.com/11702647_f1024.jpg

I'm not proud of this snobbery but I have to admit that I tend to think less of people when I see toys and statues in their rooms. Not because I have a complete prejudice about them but because they're usually expensive and very poor as sculptures, I see them as expensive, poorly sculpted statements about your love for the characters.
But I kind of love this Peggy Bundy statue
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8a/18/8c/8a188c708165a0a39d23d4416c1cfa5b.jpg
I wouldn't mind having this next to similar statues of Fran Drescher, Janice from Friends and Olive from Seinfeld

Sic, i mean the Adventures into Terror and Venus volumes (Venus is both the second Venus collection - Marvel issued a Masterworks of the first 8 issues - and the second volume in the Atlas Comics Library, a bit confusingly.) As RAG notes the prices on the artists series seem very very high - $125 for the Al Williamson set?? Repro is from the comics themselves, sympathetically restored digitally and no recolouring, paper is non-gloss. Venus is a slightly larger size than Terror but image quality is not quite a good.

RAG, my reviews in the S&A Guide are initialled AL; I did a motley assortment of comics I loved (Howard the Duck) and things I reviewed as a favour to the editor - less than 100 titles in all.

yah but the Maneely came out second, so it’s even more confusing. Terror is nigh-unreadable, storywise. but Venus (v2) starts fun and gets actively good once Everett takes over.

The Williamson is so expensive bcz it’s huge — unlike the curated selection of the Maneely Artists Ed, it’s EVERY story Williamson did for Atlas.

I'm fond of Maneely but didn't go for it. Bernie Krigstein did some really interesting work for Atlas but I'm not a big enough fan. I'm most likely to go for Ditko, Bill Everett, Russ Heath, maybe some Kirby. I can't recall if Joe Kubert or Mort Meskin did much for Atlas. Or if the Basil Wolverton stuff was all in that 2 volume series Fantagraphics did a while ago.
I need to have a closer look at more science fiction anthology comics from 40s-70s, I never even scrutinized the EC stuff very much.

Sorry to keep going on about the same artists again and again but I'm surprised of the all the volume and confusing arrangements of reprints that Robin Snyder has published, I'm surprised he never compiled Ditko's essays on his 60s creations, because they're probably the most interesting essays he wrote and they would sell better than most of the other stuff Snyder publishes.
Ditko Unleashed uses quite a lot of quotations from them and you see all these possibilities of how things could have gone differently. Stan Lee suggesting early on that there could be a Spiderwoman but Ditko didn't like it. And funny stuff like readers being uncomfortable about Peter Parker being underage while he dates Betty Brant (presuming she must be an adult to have a secretary job), this never occured to me when I read the series and I'm kind of shocked it bothered readers so much that Lee and Ditko had to discuss changing things. He considered killing Betty but didn't want Spiderman to a be a crybaby "like Captain America"!

I'm really bummed by Loic Locatelli drawing in a more mainstream cartoon fashion than he used to, I wonder why this happened?

Are some Fantagraphics books on really short print runs? Because I was looking for one of their EC books and there wasn't a single copy available, except on the Fantagraphics site

There is a whole reddit group dedicated to Neal Adam's growing earth theory

Some Pat Boyette I like
https://www.comics.org/issue/30263/cover/4/
https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=708392

There's so much from this era of Charlton I love

was looking for one of their EC books and there wasn't a single copy available, except

If they’re not in your local shops, but they are on the Fanta site, then by definition they are still in print

I couldn't see it on any of the online sellers I know for any price at all, I haven't seen that often for their books. Happy to buy it from them of course.

I first saw Atlas comics reprinted, in murky black and white, in those pretty much bootleg UK Alan Class anthology comics, mixed in with strips from ACG, Charlton, Marvel, whatever Class could get his mitts on. As a kid, I was fascinated by these obviously old strips, so creaky but sometimes eerie as fuck, especially when they were drawn by a name I recognised from 'proper' Marvel comics, like Don Heck (who did his best work for Atlas in the 50s). So yes, while

Terror is nigh-unreadable, storywise

these reprint volumes still give me that pleasing eerie feeling of reading a 'shadow world' of comics, a totally different flavour/sensibility from EC, DC, Charlton etc. The trick, as with all these things, is not to read too many in one go.

I only have the Krigstein volume in that Fanta series - no covers, but then he didn't draw many, and this all-time banger wouldn't work in black and white anyway:

https://storage.googleapis.com/hipcomic/p/ab05abcae0c873b1b9cfb4ce5cbd659f.jpg

There's an 'artisan' edition of the EC covers collection from IDW that's pretty affordable.

Fanta used the main image from that Piracy cover on their paperback Krigstein best-of 20-odd years ago

Yeah, Messages in a Bottle, I have that. And the two biography/anthology hardcovers that Fanta issued prior to Messages. All good stuff (not sure about some of the Marie Sev recolouring).

Will lay off the Krig after posting this, one of the greatest fanzine covers of all time:

https://www.budsartbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/SQ06.jpg

https://heroinesinfiction.blogspot.com/search/label/Agar-Agar

Would love a collection of this, Alberto Solsona's Agar-Agar

Nice! Very strong Enric Sió vibe. And Trade Moore's recentish Doctor Strange comics carry on that technicolour dreamscape style.

A shame he didn't do a lot of comics and his fine art isn't doing much for me (looks nothing like his comics at all), he died young

Picked up a bunch of packs at WorldCon, so far I've only read two:

Batman/Dylan Dog - A lot of fun this! Dylan's helper gets to keep his Groucho moustache, unlike those Dark Horse reprints. Really gorgeous art throughout, and since it's an Italian project the issues themselves are longer than US style floppies. Brief moment of cringe when Constantine breaks into a reactionary speech and Dylan Dog goes "ok boomer", the dangers of someone with good intentions writing outside their experience I guess - the writer mixes up the usual claptrap about social media, virtue signalling, etc. with laments about Piccadilly Circus being "taken over by ethnic eateries owned by multinationals". Except the gentrification of central London is super real and has bollocks to do with "ethnic eateries", in fact if you're in Piccadilly it's just a few steps to an enormous concentration of family owned Chinese restaurants. Anyway it's just a dumb moment, clumsy attempt at putting the reactionary UK in its place, mostly this rocks, you should read it.

Cinder & Ashe - "Mature readers only" miniseries by Gerry Conway and the great José Luís García Lopez. Ads for Killing Joke and Animal Man, DC at its 80's peak. I guess this was Conway's attempt at swimming in that stream, and he turns out...a not particularly good Cannon film. Cajun Vietnam vet teams up with the daughter of a black GI and Vietnamese woman, who somehow still has red hair, and whom he adopted in a relationship that thanfkully does not turn sexual but still gives me the creeps. Lots of sexual assault. Just dumb as rocks, really, but elucidative as a time capsule I guess.

Thomas Woodruff - Francis Rothbart

Two parents get struck by lightning in the wilderness and their baby is brought up by animals, bizarre shenanigans and much elaborate decoration ensue. Most of this is drawings but there's occasional paintings.

I'm completely blown away by the art in this, it might be the most lavish comic I've ever seen, it taken 7 years to make and it shows. It's got heaps of personality and odd ideas, the lettering is so creative that it would be extremely difficult to translate faithfully. The only thing I didn't like is that the whimsical rhyming text is a lot to deal with and made it difficult to get through at times, I kind of wish he'd been more minimal with the text but it's also hard to imagine it being that different. That problem aside, I really love this book and it's a towering achievement.

If you're going to buy this fairly expensive book (the size of the thing, hardcovers and quality of the paper feel completely necessary) you need to be able to tolerate that the young boy main character Francis is naked for the whole book, he has a couple of troubling sexual experiences, there's some weirdly creative defecation and animals killed in brutal ways.

Thanks to Fantagraphics for publishing this, despite the extremely high quality of the work, hardly anyone else would have published this.

I had heard in an interview that Francis is modeled on Sabu but I seen a review that says the father is supposed to be the actual Sabu and the mother is Dorothy Lamour (who I know nothing about)

Not new news, but I just heard about this and am in disbelief that someone -- Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis, of all people! - decided to make this into a movie
https://www.firstshowing.net/2024/first-trailer-for-zemeckis-single-shot-here-movie-starring-tom-hanks/

I read Here as part of a comic book club recently. I loved it!

The movie looks lame-o.

RIP Bernie Mireault :(

Is it too late to talk about Daniel Clowes's MONICA? Bloody hell. Very curious how others found it. I loved it and was (naturally) also a bit creeped out.

Haven't read but heard nothing but great things.

Ex-ilxor Tom is reviewing all of 2000AD:

https://freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2024/08/lets-all-meet-up-in-the-year-2000-intro

Monica definitely among the best things Clowes has ever done but bleak as fuck even by his standards.

Monica was outstanding. The only Clowes I had previously read was Ghost World, which was a different sort of thing. Monica reminded me a lot of Twin Peaks s3, in the ways that it was disjointed in the best ways, like looking at a story reflected in a shattered mirror.

I recently read David Boring which was very good. Thinking about diving into the Complete Eight Ball set.

(“The Complete Eightball 1-18”)

Clowes is a fantastic stylist with the sensibility of a sociopathic robot. I don't know why I bother. He hasn't been funny or surprising in 30 years.

ok 20 years

Need to check out Monica. Remember really liking Patience of his more recent stuff

Monica out in a month. It might be Clowes’ best book, and definitely his best conceived-as-a-graphic-novel novel. (But would have been mindblowing if it first dropped as a run of revived Eightballs, and only revealed itself as one work upon reading the second issue or w/e.)

― vashti funyuns (sic), Thursday, 31 August 2023 22:59 (one year ago)

I foolishly expected a happy ending right until the final page - I had my hand covering the last panels but could see the page of red to the right and thought, "that doesn't look good." DON'T OPEN THE EGG MONICA!!!

Totally agree re: Twin Peaks Season 3 - I wonder if it was an influence, Clowes must have been starting Monica around the same time that it came out. And of course they're both absolutely creepy and weird, without ever being all "Hey, I'm creepy and weird!".

In other "noted indie comix guys of the 90s/00s" news, I also just finished Adrian Tomine's "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist" and thought it was delightful, it's basically comics Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Getting my ass kicked by Riyoko Ikeda's Rose Of Versailles. A formative girl's comic in Japan. Just an amazing sense of page design, and such expressiveness, character's emotional states reinforced by lettering, panel shapes, etc. Author was a communist and if that shows up, so far it's been in the refusal to cast Marie Antoinette as an innocent victim, she is portrayed as calculating though oblivious, an anti-heroine just trying to get hers, but also the comic doesn't pass judgement, it's made clear this is the only role she could have in that system.

Seeing manga portrayals of her, Louis XIV, etc. also just objectively very funny.

i think i've heard of this one before - probably in relation to Utena, which seems to have taken a lot from it. definitely will keep a lookout for it

https://www.darkhorse.com/Books/3010-746/Dimwood-HC
Was wondering when this would come out. Nice to have a nice big chunk of new comics without any serialization. More exciting to me anyway.

I really wish the newest Den reprints hadn't been spread across five books because I wouldn't have felt like a sucker at all if it was just one or two books.

Taken a look at Dan Nadel's Art In Time anthology (sequel to Art Out Of Time) and there's a lot of interesting stuff in there, Willy Mendes is pretty fascinating hippy stuff and I need to see if Sharon Rudahl painted more stuff.
Isn't this nice?
https://64.media.tumblr.com/e57893a66f7f93247c3fd42bd14cb3da/80d5ccb0ccddf4f3-7a/s1280x1920/3ca9386fe2f66eed0f3e56ca8d749a7b52577cdb.jpg

Looks cool! Art Out Of Time rules, even if you do have to get the magnifying glass out for some of those strips.

https://shop.treasuryofbritishcomics.com/catalogue/RCA-B0279
more Don Lawrence adventure comics

https://darkworldsquarterly.gwthomas.org/british-fantasy-comics-1955-1984/

Her boyfriend has the same hair as her
https://shop.treasuryofbritishcomics.com/catalogue/RCA-G0044

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t08t94t6UQA
I found this quite fascinating. Pulp Empire came out in 2021 but it's getting a new printing, it's about government influence on american comics and Hirsch seems to have uncovered quite a bit of new information (although surely some of this was discussed in Alter Ego or Comics Journal interviews?), a good deal of it is about racist depictions. Didn't know Lev Gleason was a communist.

Had any of you heard that the 50s crusade against comics was partly an effort to clean up america's international image? I knew that american horror comics were getting a bad reputation in britain (but maybe that came a bit later?) and I think even superhero comics were controversial in france but I hadn't heard about India or anywhere else before.

Here's a listing of Commercial Comics, everything was either propaganda, eduction or safety orientated.
https://www.comics.org/publisher/2929/

This is probably one of the comics meant for south america
https://www.comics.org/issue/1841375/cover/4/

Had any of you heard that the 50s crusade against comics was partly an effort to clean up america's international image?

no but is there some suggestion of this somewhere?

It's in the video I linked and probably in the book.

Ah, I’m on zing so don’t even see the video thumbnails.

It’s certainly not discussed in the best documentary about the Senate investigations into comic book delinquency.

Video title is "CITY LIGHTS LIVE! Paul S. Hirsch/Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism"

https://www.comics.org/issue/247718/cover/4/
very meme-like

Been reading the UK Fleetway Sonic: The Comic from archive.org, due to becoming a listener of Sonic: The Comic: The Podcast.

I have very vague memories of picking up an issue of this when I visited London as a kid. Getting into the podcast I assumed it to be a discardable cash in that the hosts harbour nostalgic affection for, but they actually make good cases for the different writers and artists involved (a lot of whom overlap with 2000ad) and how its story is also the story of the UK comics industry in its 90's death throes.

Early issues also feature adaptations of all sorts of Sega properties, including Golden Axe, Wonder Boy and a grody Shinobi strip that is basically Game Of Death but with every martial arts cliché you can think of thrown in.

Also confused by the variable quality of stuff, just read issue #5 and it features both a sophisticated, luxuriously drawn Shinobi strip that would have passed muster in any US comic of the time and a lead Sonic strip that feels like outsider art or something genuinely drawn by a child.

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/spuk-geschichten/4050-96557/
look at this poor guy have near death experiences for hundreds of issues, that's something I usually only think about when seeing so many covers of a series

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/vanessa/4050-46951/
Looks just like Misty
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/bessy/4050-33226/
Lassie lookalike the ran for 30 years and nearly a 1000 issues

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/gespenster-geschichten/4050-39134/
lots of nice covers here

https://vimeo.com/744354825
Short documentary about golden age comic artist Lily Renee. There was news and a graphic novel about her in the last few years but I missed all that

Hobtown Mystery Stories, Vol.1: The Case Of The Missing Men - Nancy Drew meets Twin Peaks kind of caper about teens uncovering strange going ons in the Pacific Northwest. Think you'll know if it's your kinda thing from that description. The part that stuck with me most was one of them seeing, in the middle of a parade (itself resembling the one in Cutter's Way), some sort of evil gnome, who is never fully explained during the rest of the story. Dunno why that nasty little creep freaked me out so much but it did.

Iris: A Novel For Viewers - Classic Dutch comic inspired by the erotic French comics of its era. Story's very much of its time - young pop star caught in the clutches of a sinister record exec, also there's tons of nudity - but the psychedelic art is a delight.

Dynamite Diva - Fun collection of comic strips and pin ups, originally published on Instagram, featuring a one eyed female vigilante, drenched in 70's grindhouse aesthetics. Author talks a lot about his love of Chester Gould. Amazed he's in his early twenties, dunno why I assume these old styles would stop drawing interest, I sure as fuck was into a lot of them when I was a kid and they were already ancient history.

Iris was interesting and fun to look at, but yeah, story-wise very much of its time

Igaguri, Fukui Eiichi - Super influential judo manga from the 50's. Narratively this sets the pace for shonen, protagonist is ridiculously noble and the opponents he defeats tend to then become his new mates, inspired by his goodness. But while this is all very serious the art style is clearly influenced by American newspaper strips, and the comedic ones as opposed to adventure stories; some of the characters end up looking a bit like how Carl Barks draws those generic human-dogs, though they are not supposed to be animals at all. There's a lot of gag strip skills just in the movements and expressions. I'm guessing it ran in a paper or something too because the structure is very much Sunday strip. A really fascinating read.

https://www.tcj.com/the-best-comics-of-2024-as-chosen-by-tcj-contributors/

Think it was Tom who once said that individual lists are always fascinating, compiled lists always iron out any quirks and provide a bland consensus. I think that's true, but part of me does wish there was an "official" top5 or something to check for alongside these daunting individual lists.

the print Journal (separate editorship) does a critics poll with an “official” top ten and a full essay or feature on each

July's as good a time to catch up as December, I s'pose.

If you want to cover books that came out between July and December, yeah.

Quick eyeball has Blurry at #1 consensus, Sunday at #2 and Final Cut at #3.

Eight mentions for Sunday on the online list for 2024; the final chapters had five last year, which made it consensus #4, and it was ranked #3 in the print volume.