Rolling Comics 2025

Kicking this off with my read-in-2024 list. Have you got any good reads from last year? What are you looking forward to next year? Comics: are they not just for kids anymore? Smash that bookmark thread button.

* for particular faves

Piscou: Les Misérables & Hamlet, Giovan Battista
Lucky Luke: Les Indomptés, Blutch
Best Of 2000AD, Vol.a4, VA
Chainsaw Man, Vol.12-15, Tatsuki Fujimoto
Silly Synmphonies, Vol.2, Todd Osborne, Al Taliaferro et al
River's Edge, Kyoko Okazaki
Mobilis, Juni Ba
Lapin #24, VA
A Favorable Wind On Full Sails, Arantochika
Peepee Poopoo #8008S, Caroline Cash
Black Phoenix, Vol.2, Rich Tommaso
One Hundred Tales, Osamu Tezuka
Fiends Of The Eastern Front, Gerry Finlay-Davies et al
Thieves, Lucy Barton
Santos Sisters #4, Greg & Fake, Graham Swift, et al
Dragon Ball 1-3, Akira Toriyama
Best Of 2000AD, Vol.5, VA
Old Caves, Tyler Landry
The 13th Floor, John Wagner, Alan Grant, José Ortiz et al
Fantastic Four Taschen Edition, Vol.1, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee et al
Açoriante Aguda E Outras Maleitas, Luís Cardoso
Michel Valliant: Macao, Benéteam, Gratm, Lapiére
Transformers, Vol.1, Daniel Warren Johnson, Mike Spieer et al
My Name Is Shingo, Vol.1-2, Kazou Umezz
Best Of 2000AD, Vol.6, VA
Self Esteem & The End Of The World, Luke Healy
Okinawa, Susumu Higa *
Robohunter, John Wagner, Ian Gibson, et al
Batman/Dylan Dog, Recchioni, Cavenago et al *
Cinder & Ashe, Gerry Conway, José Luís Garcia Lopez et al
Ana, António Jorges Gonçalves, Nuno Artur Silva et al
Spider Man: India, Shukla, Gyadu et al
The Steel Claw, Ken Bulmer, Jesús Blasco et al
The Rose Of Versailles, Vol.1, Riyoko Ikeda *
A Guest In The House, Emil Carrol
Hobtown Mystery Stories, Vol.1, Bertin, Forbes et al
Iris: A Novel For Viewers, Van Banda, Tijong-Khing *
Dynamite Diva, Jasper Jubenvill *
Black Phoenix: Lewton & Associates, Rich Tommaso *
Spirou: La Memóire Du Futur, Guerrive, Abilan, Schwarz, Doucet *
Sonic In Waifu World, Jake Machen
Igagauri, Fukui *
Sonic The Comic, issues 1 to 21, VA

Read very little this year except Monica by Clowes (incredible) and whatever Brubaker put out (increasingly mundane). How’s the new Spirou team?

The art is 100% the kind of midcentury modern stuff I crave from the series. It's quite self-consciously in dialogue with the serie's past in a way that might feel a little pandering, but otoh it is a legacy title, so. This latest volume gets very explicit in trapping Spirou in a fake late 50's and the way they find out of it is through throwing a wilder and wilder party, so you get a pantheon of midcentury BD icons dancing to Daft Punk, which is surely worth price of admission.

It's also clearly no longer aimed at kids as there's a fantasy sequence where Fantasio and the Comte die in rather a grizzly way!

Ninja Sarutobi Sasuke, Sugiura Shigeru - Out on NYRC. Kind of a middle point between regular genre entertainment and the pop art deconstruction I expected it to be. Frequently escapes the Japanese period piece setting to include yokai monsters, western settings and pop culture icons (Jean Paul Belmondo has a cameo), but these flights of fancy are explained in universe as ninja mind tricks summoned by Shigeru. The characters also often quote old Japanese pop songs, which the translator has seen fit to replace with western pop tracks. This irks me, but: would I laugh in recognition at the Japanese songs? No. So I'm more invested in gathering ephemera than in enjoying the reading experience, I guess.

The Marvel Art Of The Brothers Hildebrandt

This might be the first new Marvel thing I've bought in 15 years or so, the main attraction was the trading card art which I loved as a kid. A lot of the artists I loved back then don't hold up that well, but even now after looking at hundreds of great painters I still think the brothers had an amazing sense of light and color, and now I notice their paintings also tended to look very hot, so you could feel all the fire and energy blasts.

For the 1994 Marvel Masterpieces trading card series, Greg was tasked with creating 158 paintings in six months, on top of his daily strip and sunday strip work on Terry And The Pirates!!! Originally he was going to do it all himself (and he said he could have done it too) but he asked Tim to help him, they hadn't been collaborators in a decade. There's a few duds and I was kind of dismayed that a lot of the paintings looked better at trading card size, some of the details look a little too rough at this size with better scanners. But most of them look great, it's a staggering that they could do this in six months.

A fifth of the characters are probably left behind in that era, I barely know a lot these and I was a big Marvel fan in the late 90s. Incredibly, Greg and Tim hadn't been reading superhero comics since the early 50s, so they weren't very familiar with even some of the more popular characters, so they had to do all that research too (their agent helped and I imagine Marvel gave them lots of material). Some of the characters have never looked better.

One of the main features of the book is that a lot of the paintings are sat next to the rough sketches and the photos of all the bodybuilders who modeled for them, it's really great seeing all this, especially the guy who was the model for most of the male characters. I wish the interview with Greg hadn't been chopped up between the pictures, it would have read much better separately. There's several trading cards that they don't have the original art for, so scans of the cards are there; I would have liked to see the original art for the Mister Sinister & Goblin Queen card, but it can't be helped. I think this book was supposed to be their complete Marvel art but there's a few pieces missing like a Silver Surfer & Thanos by Tim, a Spiderman 2099 cover and maybe more? There's some careless mistakes like the last painting being obviously a small fraction of the size it was supposed to be, and some of the characters are not named.

There's a full X-Men 2099 comic, the story isn't that interesting but it's printed with the correct page order for the first time. I don't know the characters well but I like how different they looked from the regular X-Men.

A lot of the later paintings are very uneven. There's some surprisingly bland advertising and theme park art. In the case of the theme park art, lots of changes were requested by the art directors, so that probably didn't help. Greg's mural is weirdly anonymous in style (aside from Psylocke, he obviously loves her), maybe he was uncomfortable working at that size. And the compositions of the later pieces are a lot less dynamic. It's not like an obvious decline in skill, there's just something missing in some of them.

I was surprised that even at age 80, Greg was thrilled to still be doing Marvel and Star Wars art, he even loves all the Marvel films and tv shows. I don't think he ever designed many of his own heroes and villains, he mostly did pinup girls for himself.

This should be reprinted with some corrections but there also hasn't been enough Hildebrandt books for decades, they need a huge retrospective book.

That looks very interesting, hadn't heard of them before.

I think their most famous work is a Star Wars poster, but they pop up in loads of places.

The Hildebrandts were always a bit too Thomas Kinkade with wizards for my tastes but their 'art of' book and Tolkien calendars were as ubiquitous as Frazetta and Boris collections back in the day.

https://www.muddycolors.com/2025/01/1994-marvel-masterpieces/
This isn't all the cards but has most of them, I particularly like the Morbius and Blackout, and this is my favorite Rogue
https://www.spiderwebart.com/images/art/111829a.jpg

I knew an artist called Goblinko and he hated the Hildebrandts and compared the Peter Jackson films negatively to them, as if their art was too polite for even Tolkien. But I think they're awesome, those cards have all the excitement you'd hope for in a superhero story (even though I still sit awkwardly with the genre).

Greg's Phantom Of The Opera and Hel art was pretty great too
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/60/71/ad/6071ad04720ef9e710977d89ed4baea1.jpg
https://www.spiderwebart.com/images/art/102147.jpg
https://www.germanicmythology.com/works/images6/Hildebrandt6.jpg

Also: isn't Hendrick Goltzius the Xtreme superhero artist of his time?
https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/343586/731548/main-image
https://collectionapi.metmuseum.org/api/collection/v1/iiif/340036/771665/main-image

Any Phil Winslade admirers here? I realize I missed a few things by him I might like. There's also highly specific eras of Steven Butler, Steve Lightle and Steve Epting I quite like and wonder if it's worth seeking out some back issues.

I know I used to look over checklists and I never remember anything about Winslade drawing Wonder Woman Amazonia.

There's so little Lightle in general that you might have everything from any highly specific era already.

Diamond file for bankruptcy.

lol that DC gave Diamond a monopoly and killed every other distributor by signing an exclusive deal, then 25 years later may have caused the death of the entire direct market by switching their exclusive to a retailer

I forgot all about Steve Lightle. I had to look him up because the name was familiar; he did those great Classic X-Men covers. Did he have a regular comic that was good or was he mainly a cover guy?

A spotty run as nominal main penciller on the early baxter format Legion of Super-Heroes (12 issues across two years from ‘84, but he stayed on covers another couple yrs — all good stuff), then the first five of the Kupperberg Doom Patrol (‘87, on newsprint), then mostly pinups and covers.

Classic X-Men also had those John Bolton bonus comics that were pretty good.

The very definition of a Who's Who artist I feel.

The Lightle stuff I was interested in was Daredevil + Wolverine + Typhoid Mary stories in Marvel Comics Presents, it's all in Daredevil: Typhoid's Kiss apparently, so I just bought that.

Don’t really think of Sabbath’s Mob Rules cover by Greg Hildebrant as like a Kincade portrait.

https://comicvine.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/0/229/92095-138809-century.jpg
I like how it looks like Century's superpower is lgbt pride, another image from the 1994 card set

https://bsky.app/profile/dialhforhagai.bsky.social/post/3lgicodrp7s2b
Dino Battaglia in english

more pictures
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/epicentercomics/dino-battaglias-inspector-coke-trilogy-graphic-novels

Les Petits Hommes, Seron - Picked up the first L'Integral volume of this series due to the recommendation of the youtube channel earl grey (whom I do recommend; he's not super articulate about his tastes but he does keep up with bande dessinee, US mainstream comics and indie stuff, which is impressive...less big on manga but lord knows there's no shortage of sources for that). It's...interesting. Feels very much like an also-ran for that era of BD but the series did make it to like 40 volumes so it must've gotten pretty big.

The story is that a mysterious meteor comes in contact with people in a small Belgian town and shrinks them. Since no cure seems apparent, the tiny folks just decide to fuck off and build their own civilization in a field near a military base. This being a kid friendly series from the 60's there is no big moping about around this development, ppl adapt to it pretty quickly, but there is also a hippieish side to it all - the little men end up reacting negatively when the possibility of being brought back to actual size is presented, much preferring their new society over their previous lives, and the antagonists are the military or police trying to uncover their mystery. There's also a charming gag where they keep saying "when I was big" in the way you'd say "when I was small". Things only really start getting stakes during the last story, where they have to leave their safe haven and travel to a cave undetected - I'm guessing that's when the series really started going.

Artwise...the ancilliary material mentions Seron was heavily influenced by Franquin, but tbh for me it crosses the line into rip-off. I mean look at the protagonist of Petits Hommes:

http://www.dupuis.com/v5/img/visuels_resume/petitshommesint.jpg

And then look at Franquin's Gaston Lagaffe:

http://www.dupuis.com/images_blog/images_entete/gaston.jpg

I dunno, prob wouldn't bother me at all if I was reading someone doing company work for Marvel or DC, but within the more auteurist world of bande dessinee...

It's pretty uncanny!

Is Franquin alone in having multiple "tribute" artists mimicking different eras? Chaland does 50s Franquin and Seron does the late 60s version - although it reminds me of the Fournier books too. (It seems like Tome & Janry are the only sui generis Spirou creators after Franquin.)

Related but unrelated - the English versions of the Spirou/Lucky Luke/Dupuis books have been a real monkey's paw. They finally arrived and the translations totally suck.

DO NOT GOOGLE FOURNIER WITHOUT ADDING "BANDE DESSINEE".

I'm guessing there must be Hergé tribute guys at least? But I've never encountered one.

Bummer on those Lucky Luke/Spirou translations...I've resigned myself to just buying the originals when I'm in France. It is perhaps the most space consuming kind of comic culture tho, just having the Intégrales of the biggest classics would take up quite a few shelves.

IMO the sheer volume of books was part of the appeal - I remember, as a kid, reading the catalogue pages at the back of Dupuis books, and getting excited about *how much* there was to read. And then on holiday my parents would just leave me in the BD section of a hypermarche for two hours, quite content

Also lol I obviously had to google Fournier by itself

And yeah, it'll probably take me less time to learn French properly than wait for a better translation

I don't think those Cinebook translations are all bad - certainly the Blake and Mortimer translations are an improvement on the previous English language editions, and I've found the Lucky Luke, Valerian, Bluecoats, Clifton volumes I've sampled to be readable enough. I agree that the Franquin translations are more problematic, starting with that awful Gomer Goof name for Gaston, but I suspect Franquin is just very tricky to translate (the Gaston strips that Fantagraphics translated many years ago (in one of their humour anthologies iirc) were similarly clunky.

I'm guessing there must be Hergé tribute guys at least?

I'm sorry Daniel, probably missing the point here - but there are LOADS of Herge tribute artists, or at least people working in that clear line style, starting from past Herge associates like Edgar P Jacobs and Bob De Moor, through to ppl like Joost Swarte and even Chaland:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/10/Freddylombard.jpg

Just last year, a Scottish comics artist did a pretty nice Herge homage called Tara Togs – The Silence of Unicorns:

https://comicon.com/2024/02/13/comicscene-to-launch-tintin-inspired-original-graphic-novel-tara-togs-the-silence-of-unicorns/

Oh no, I am aware of Hergé's tremendous influence and the ligne claire thing and etc. But looking at that Chaland cover you posted I don't think anyone could actually confuse it with Hergé's style and Jacobs, too, I think has a an identifiable style. It's the difference between influence and shameless imitation, which is what I see in Seron - though that sounds quite cruel when I do think he's very good at it.

I have Bad Completist Tendencies and I’m stuck in a Creepie/Eerie/EC Comics reprint pit. Those things are a river that will never stop.

Recently read Stone Fruit by Lee Lai which I enjoyed. Family drama with a trans main character and lovely artwork, especially in scenes when two parental figures play with a child and they transform into wild things.

I keep trying to like Megahex and it repulses me. Then i’m back at the comic book shop picking it up again, every time, thumbing through it, wrinkling my nose and putting it back. It’s like sardines. I really, really want to like sardines but it’s not happening. But maybe next time.

Yeah I got off the Megahex train a while ago. Think that series peaked during the covid years.

EC Comics seem tailor made to best of anthologies but I certainly understand the completist impulse.

I thought there was a million french artists who drew like Seron?

xpost to Daniel

Well to totally imitate the studio style of the postwar Tintin albums - all that 'authentic' research and background detail - would require time and resources simply unavailable to most other comics creators.

Unrelatedly, I've been enjoying the 'Treasury' facsimile editions that DC have been bringing out - large format reproductions of reproductions of old Superman, Batman etc comics etc, or original material like the Neal Adams Superman vs. Muhammad Ali comic.

Oh, and EC reprints are so complicated! The old black and white Ross Cochrane box sets are beautiful - nice large size, shot in almost all cases directly from the original artwork, with exemplary 'liner notes' and colour cover repros. But - nowadays some of them are pretty expensive to pick up (if you can find them) and nice as they are, they don't actually 'feel' exactly like an EC comic from the 1950s - you need the interior colour. That's why those black and white Fanta single artist anthologies are also slightly lacking - again, good repro, nice design, and you can't really deny a whole book of Kurtzman or Krigstein or Wood or Davis at their best, but they're a bit too small, and part of the appeal of EC is getting that different mixture of styles and sensibilities within a single comic. Now the Dark Horse volumes have colour, and in paperback are pretty good value for money - six issues of an EC title for under $20. But - the computer colouring they've used is really, really REALLY horrible and inappropriate. So, to my mind, until now the best EC reprints are those colour comics that Cochrane brought out in the 80s/90s - pretty faithful repro, decent colour approximation and in most cases still pretty easy to pick up. They did some 'annuals' that stitched together five repro issues of eg Vault of Horror that are especially sweet.

And now we have the first in a large format high price reprint series from Taschen, starting with Weird Science. Here they've gone with tweaked original colour which is possibly the best solution for 70 year old comics. Here's a link:
https://www.taschen.com/en/books/comics/08179/ec-comics-library-weird-science-vol-1/

It's sort of blasphemy but there was some thicker EC reprints in the eighties or nineties (not the annuals) that had slightly shitty printing and it was one of those cases where the ratty quality added something to it for me. Of course I'd prefer the best reproduction possible but I like a cheap and nasty look sometimes. I have a Barbara Steele 60s Italian gothic (The Ghost?) that looks 1000 years old somehow but still very watchable and I really like that.

I feel the same way about certain Lucio Fulci films I first saw on VHS - they’re just not the same all cleaned up for blu ray, something - an eerie effect - has been lost.

Robert Eggers was saying something similar about the best quality versions of Murnau's Nosferatu, you can see the flaws in the makeup now but in worse prints the film looked more ancient and frightening.
But there's lots of poor quality versions of films I find unwatchable and annoying.

Funnily enough this review of a recente EC collection dovetails with this discussion:

Looking at the black and white version of “Foul Play” and comparing it to the original coloring; the impact, the meaning of the text, is changed entirely. “Foul Play” as originally published, is a gruesome little story about revenge. The lurid coloring is as much a part of it as the crackling sound on old Blues records or the grain in classic noir films – there is only so much you can clean them up before something becomes "lost."5 The effect of the art in Foul Play and Other Stories is completely different – what the eye perceives is not the story but the lines. Whatever mood created by the colors, and Davis and Co. knew their stories would be printed with coloring, is discarded. Therefore, we have two “Foul Play” tales – one is a horror story, and the other a celebration of the artist.

https://www.tcj.com/reviews/foul-play-and-other-stories/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=foul-play-and-other-stories

the effect is certainly different but the stories still work great, I keep colored versions and black & white versions

it's a worthy discussion, for sure. i personally lean towards crappier, more authentic colors vs. linework only, but on that TCJ article they use some good examples that could go either way

went back to the Midwest to see family and dug around in the basement, found the box with my old comics

(1) why was I so into West Coast Avengers

(2) this is better than I remember (this is the only issue I had) - makes me want to track down the rest https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Tailgunner_Jo_Vol_1_4

(3) found a FF with Reed and Sue being tortured by Mephisto in hell until Franklin vaporized him, that was fun

I can get the appeal of West Coast Avengers. It wasn't good but it was a deep pull, the superhero comic equivalent of finding your favourite rare old r&b single.

Last night I started Habibi by Craig "Blankets" Thompson. I've been putting it off because it's so big but it reads really quickly and the art is gorgeous. It'll take me a few more nights to finish but it's very impressive so far.

It made me wonder what he's been up to and it looks like he has a new thing coming out soon, collecting a serialized memoir about ginseng farming? I'll probably pre-order it.

I remember a Muslim friend being very not impressed with Habibi, don't remember the actual points of contention tho.

Re: Steve Lightle. Marvel Comics Presents 175 (the last issue) is more sought after than I would have thought (people selling it for stupid money on ebay). I used to get bundles of that series in back issue bins.

Deep dive look at the new Taschen Weird Science, with comparison to previous reprints:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWm4fS7Vhqw

Just discovered James Spratt. He done an unfinished adaptation of A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's extremely NSFW. There's a short appreciation by Dan Nadel linked, makes total sense he'd like it, Spratt is very outsiderish. There's also links to Spratt's sculptures. A shame his personal site is falling to pieces on the wayback machine.
https://www.erbzine.com/spratt/
For some reason if you get to page 23a, it stops and you need to come back to the main page and see the last pages.

Started reading Promethea last night. It’s kind of a slog? Like a cross between Miracle Man and Wonder Woman with stiff dialogue. The art is beautiful, I hung out and went to some concerts with the inker Mick Gray when I lived in San Jose. Super nice guy and he was very proud of how it turned out. I’m going to work at it some more but I don’t know if I’ll make it to the end.

Yeah I didn't have enough interest in magic as a practice to get into that one.

Bumper Book of Magic even further in that direction.

Last night on University Challenge there was a round of questions about Darryl Cunningham’s graphic novels (plus an Alan Moore question in another round).

Obligatory grumbling at Alan Moore being credited as the "author" of From Hell with no mention of Eddie Campbell at all.

Finished Promethea a couple of weeks ago and thought it was a real achievement. But, yeah, an interest in magic(k) is a big help especially as it reaches the end.

The Bill Sienkiewicz drawn issue of Batman: The Long Last Halloween is really gorgeous. It amazes me looking at some of the other issues and recent comics in general that while some old timers like Janson, Romita Jr. and Miller seem to have lost the qualities that made their best art work so well, Bill S. still has the magic.

Of that generation, Jaime’s new collection shows he’s still at or close to his peak, the upcoming Tyler has her doing new things with line, layout and color, and if we last long enough for Kuper’s Hebdo collection to come out and be horribly timely, that might be seen as the best distillation and refinement of some of his common approaches to mode, color and mordant didacticism.

Is that Sienkiewicz issue stand-alone? I’d dip in and check out where he’s at.

Yes, the Sienkiewicz is a stand-alone. They're using different invited artists for each issue.

Agreed, Jaime H also still doing great work.

Working my way through the Complete Eightball (issues 1-18). It's pretty good, but the main stories are the best part. First 9 issues or so always have an A Velvet Glove Cast In Iron bit and the last 9 issues have Ghost World. Lot of kinda caustic 90's Crumb-light humor that hasn't aged great. Ghost World was a big step up for Clowes.

I finished Habibi by Craig Thompson. I liked it a lot, the artwork was gorgeous. I've since read some of the criticism against it which I understand; a white non-muslim guy throwing himself into the iconography and culture as a well-meaning but misguided response to 9/11. Still, the art is nuts and I can appreciate it on it's own terms.

Picked up Tongues by Anders Nilsen on a whim. Looks cool.

Reading Brandon Graham's Prophet series. Sometimes the art is great and sometimes it's sorta lame. Started off really good so I'm trying to stick with it.

no At Long Last Batmans at all at my local.

Justice Warriors, Matt Bors, Ben Clarkson et al - I dunno, I think I've just read too much 2000AD for this to land for me? Dystopian future satire and yeah of course it touches on a lot of 2025 concerns that vintage Dredd and etc couldn't, but it still feels like a bit of a tired approach? Amusing enough tho.

I'm a big fan of Bors' political cartoons but was hoping for more from JW as well. Haven't read the second series yet though, and I am curious about his Toxic Avenger

I haven't seen Romita Jr since Kickass but an entire adult lifetime doing monthly comics is about 90% likely to lead to decline.

How many people can still make a decades long living off drawing american comics? Is that ending now?

https://www.zapkapowcomics.com/top-10-most-variant-covers/
this is insane

The Walking Dead one at least kind of makes sense since it continued to get reprinted and sell year after year

Nejishiki, Yoshiharu Tsuge - The third volume of D&Q's archives of Tsuge stuff, and very much a turning point: out are the repressed, benevolent wanderers of previous volumes, in are horny, neurotic wanderers traveling around an absurd, ghostly Japan full of the debris of the past. Great stuff, though the Holmberg essay at the end is too exhaustive for me (a pleasant problem to encounter, tbf).

The N Word Of God, Mark Doox - Text alternates with pastiches of Byzantine art. The narrative, such as it is, concerns "Saint Sambo" and his philosophical considerations on race in America. Full of wordplay and keeps you guessing as to where the author actually stands; Saint Sambo initially preaches a policy of politeness and good cheer in order to escape the wrath of the whites, but by the end of the book he is engaging in a project of dismantling the concept of race altogether, while holding white ppl accountable for their invention of it. The pictures are gorgeous and also, I'm sure intentionally, difficult to look at, since they take in a lot of racist and minstrel imagery. Definitely not like anything else I've read recently.

I’ve always assumed Dan Abnett was kind of a hack but I’ve really enjoyed the first volume of Brink -- it’s a 2000AD sci-fi-horror-police-mystery thing from about ten years ago with Expanse and Infinity 8 vibes and lovely Ian Gibsony art. It seems like a very post-Covid piece of work so I was surprised to find it came out in 2017. Just adding here as a recommendation - it’s the strongest genre comic I’ve read in ages - and also curious if maybe there’s some good stuff I’ve overlooked in Abnett’s work.

I like Abnett! I enjoyed his Fiend or Foe low fantasy series in 2000AD. Agreed Brink is his best of what I've read, great cosmic horror vibes. Another one he's got going is The Out, which I've been following for years now and still only have a vague notion of what it's about. Haven't read any of his big two work, supposedly the GotG stuff is good? Anyway I like that he writes warhammer novels and Doctor Who audio dramas and promotional comics for UK rollercoasters, he has the old timey pulp writer spirit.

Yes the guardians run is good

Ooh thanks I’ll check those out. Reading Brink I was thinking, “good characters / interesting setting / exciting plot / no continuity BS or extraneous worldbuilding” seemingly such a hard ask from genre comics (as opposed to genre books).

Edit: *I was thinking, why is

Been watching this guy go through the TCJ top100:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQqe4BNePeM

The zine looks interesting too, too bad it's US only.

Anyway when he got to Sugar & Spike I remembered chatting to someone first year of uni who was like "I LOVE Sugar & Spike", making a mental note - "I'm sure this will get reissued soon, I'll pick it up then". Since that still hasn't happened (I think the DC Archives in the video came after that convo, but I sure didn't notice) I decided to ebay it and got myself a basically new feeling copy of the collection in the video.

Occasionally a bit cloying but the jumps the comic makes in how toddlers would perceive the world and, through reasoning, arrive at utterly bizarre conclusions are kind of brilliant. Also what an anomaly, a guy who became an editor and THEN convinced DC to let him write his own comic after. It's great stuff.

also anyone read this? recently namedropped by Crumb biographer Dan Nadel as one of the greatest books about comics ever written:

https://www.tcj.com/reviews/funnybooks-the-improbable-glories-of-the-best-american-comic-books/